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Digitalia

Digital Abstracts

By Steve Wilde

Meanwhile....
October 23, 2009

We spent last two weekends in Lichfield and Brighton, in what appear to be mostly alcohol related activities. Lichfield involved a lot more eating than Brighton! And we looked in at the Book Barge, whilst in Staffordshire. Which is vaguely cultural. Th eBook barge is in Barton under Needwood not far from Anslow where we had a nice lunch at the Burnt Gate.

Just before we left I was frustrated by the refusal of our shit Tiscali DSL connection to, well... connect. So on our return I thought I best buy a new cable before wasting my breath telling Tiscali how crap they are again. I couldn't find one long enough to go round the room so placed the router inconveniently in the middle of the hall and it still wouldn't work. I picked the phone up to waste my breath on what they laughingly call Customer Services to be informed by the recorded voice that I should call from a phone that I am a able to sit in front of the PC and speak from [makes sense]... During which a series of modem like noises whirred through the phone and by the time I was ringing them again from my mobile, in front of the PC, the bloody DSL was working again. So I decided to save my breath. I have no idea how the phone can affect the DSL, surely things are separated at the filter? But I have called them before to say that our TV and internet fucks up every time the phone rings... And what did they say? Try a different phone! Yeah, thanks for that.

Anyway, less of my bleating on about that. Last weekend, well Friday [16th] to be precise, we trained it down to Brighton to visit Kev & Karol etc. But before being sociable we sloped off to the Laines to buy an engagement ring and I did the one-knee-thing on the beach, betwixt piers, as the sun set. Cue much hysteria everywhere we went as a sparkly Art Deco ring was flashed! And much champagne was popped open in return! Our first port of call was Kerry & Rob's [very loosely] Spaced themed cocktails evening. I think I made a very good go of trying every single drink considering we had started early with Kev & Karol but by the time we got to bed at 5:00am I was grateful for a bit of a lie down!

Somehow, we were up again at about 10:00 or 11:00 on Saturday morning. Bloody Mary's and bacon sandwiches seem to set us straight and as Sam went off to the shops with Kerry , Me and Kev got to grips with his newly acquired APC40. But not without his PC putting up a fight. When I left home on the Friday I was despairing at the fact that I had no time to rebuild my own PC, which had gone into a sulk earlier in the week, just after the DSL line had remedied itself. I had started trying to repair it but it was in an eternal reboot loop when we left... Within minutes of looking at Kev's PC it was doing exactly the same thing! But, luckily for us, his played ball within a couple of hours and let us get to work on a tune.

At around 11:00pm, I think, we braved the cold to wander round to Paul & Sarah's Disco Dungeon for a bit of a party. None of us feeling over lively but determined not to miss out. Kev broke first and wandered home to bed around 3:00am while I sat on the sofa upstairs talking crap to anyone who would sit still long enough. DJ's came and went, seemingly between club engagements; sets were played , drinks were drunk and time slid by. I have no idea what time it was by the time I headed downstairs for a bit of a boogie. I also have no idea how long I was down there but eventually the place petered out and we adjourned back upstairs. At some point Kev returned, more supplies were sent out for and daylight came and went.

Come 9:00pm we had to find some food and a bed. Within an hour we were eating an Indian back at Kev & Karol's before crashing until midday on Monday. The Bloody Mary's weren't quite as effective that morning so we wandered out in to the cold and had drinks at the Hop Poles before popping into Jamie's Italian for a late lunch. We picked a good time as it was between lunch and dinner services so got a table easy and some hearty portions... Unfortunately for me. As the Wild mushroom ravioli I had for a starter was probably enough but it was followed by a monster porcetta, to which I couldn't do justice. After all the olives, bread and chickpea popcorn we had to start it was all too much. It didn't help that Kev ordered a portion of each of the three different types of chips between us, of which the polenata chips were the most fantastical. It was all good though and the staff were very attentive and informative. We need to go back with better appetites.

After popping back to Kev & Karol's for a couple of hours "recuperation" we managed to get ourselves back to London. After which it has been non-stop but my PC is finally rebuilt, although the DSL still works when it feels like it!

Last night was the Affordable Art Fair drinks reception, which meant meeting up the Kev & Karol again as well as catching up with Marianne from Gallery One and talking weddings and anniversaries. Today's is Kev & Karol's tenth. Lawks is it ten years since that Best Man experience? Strange AAF this year. Mostly because it was prints rather than paintings that caught our eyes. More of that in a separate post.

Suffice to say today was a serious lie in before making it to the Chord installation at the Kingsway tram subway, by the skin of our teeth... Mostly thanks to the roadworks around Brockwell Park delaying the 68 bus. I can't understand the thinking behind Conrad Shawcross not wanting anyone to photograph the installation. Without the appropriate lighting and adequate camera, surely no one is ever going to capture anything worth reproducing commercially. Most of the group we were in weren't that interested in the work anyway. It was the fact that we were able to look around the tram subway that drew us all there. I just have to see how my pictures of the tunnel itself came out now. It was one of those to flash or not to flash scenarios. I should have taken a tripod!

On the way home we stopped off at Lowlander for some seriously strong lager [Chimay, A festive Kriek called Glubier and De Graal] followed by a visit to Sophie's Steak House, which was surprisingly good for somewhere so huge, but did require a walk over Waterloo Bridge to wake us up. We thought we might make ourselves comfy in the Terrace Bar at the National Theatre, but it seems to have resorted to closing at 8:00pm rather than the 1:00am of our last couple of visits.

Categories: Art, London, Photography, Food & Drink

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