when we were young

the aesthetic of our house has taken a change for the better

after only owning our own home for 10 months, we now have our first clock on the wall!


my girlfriend moans that she never knows what the time is in our house, having to check our phones is obviously too much of an inconvenience and the clock on the oven is barely ever right, due to having the buttons to change all manner of things, including the clock, at a rather convenient height so that people are forever leaning on it (we are currently an hour fast i think)


the clock was in fact a birthday present from my mum before we had even bought the house and is part of a rather fetching layered effect set of photo frames, which we picked up afew extra additional frames to match it so as it didn't look quite so lonely on the wall

all the photos are of me and my girlfriend, and i despaired as we went through a crowded harddrive of five years of pictures that of all the ones picked, none of them showed me with a decent amount of facial hair

gifted with rather young looks, and still being ID'ed at the age of 27, i made a significant life choice to remain bearded, or at least quite stubbly, this decision is also beneficial to my rather lazy attitude to shaving

i relented and went with the pictures we had chosen, there was nothing wrong with them at all except i felt that they didn't reflect me, as i am right now


which got me thinking on how long these photos are gonna be on display, and how we and our lives may change

of course we could always update the photos, but then again we could also be in the same house in our 40's or our 50's, perhaps with kids that are growing (or grown) up, and i wonder what they will think of the photos, and considering that i already cringe looking at my bald, non-fuzzy youthful face i wonder how we will look back on them ourselves in the years to come

every photo that is now proudly framed up carries certain memories with it, of the time and the place and what we were up to, on the beach in felixstowe after my cousins wedding, chilling with a beer at the balloon fiesta in Bristol, both in fancy dress at a friends birthday party, out for a sunny day in hyde park, a dry day at Glastonbury and just messing about with the camera when she bought it for me in 2006, times worth remembering that don't deserve to be languishing on a 100gb hard drive

part of the queue

i didn't expect to be in Bristol this past weekend

i didn't expect to be stood in a queue for three hours and forty minutes either

but this was what was necessary if you wanted to get into the Banksy vs Bristol Museum exhibition that is running until the end of August

we arrived early enough on saturday morning and thought the queue looked reasonable, until we realised it was being filtered and actualy snaked back and forth on itself in an adjoining road, and didn't end there either, crossing the road and trailing down a further, longer road

luckily my girlfriend who had planned the surprise trip had also heard horror stories of three hour waits so we were fore-warned, so, stood on the end of a ridiculous queue we formulated a plan to pass the time, we passed up on the idea of taking it in turns to sit on our own drinking in the wetherspoons opposite the museum while the other held our place in the queue and instead she let me wander off to an oxfam bookshop i'd spotted on the condition that i left her my generic mp3 player and brought back a trashy magazine detailing the latest woes of Jordan, Cheryl, Posh, et al

another thing i didn't expect (and neither did my girlfriend) was to find a Forbidden Planet store on my little wander so when i returned i was in possession of a couple of reduced graphic novels and a copy of reveal

despite the horrendous waiting time everyone seemed to be in quite good spirits as we basked in the midday sunshine, kids waited patiently, old men made hats from newspapers to shield their balding heads from the searing sun, a strategically placed ice cream van took a small fortune as practically everyone grabbed a lolly or an ice cream as the queue passed it, and i got half way through a Grant Morrison penned JLA story (which was a bargain at £4, was published just after i quit reading comics - including JLA - and carries straight on from the Aztek graphic novel i recently read) before we got to the entrance of the museum.

and once inside, the ground floor of the museum has been thrown over to Banksy with room full of a large display of stenciled canvases in Banksy's usual style and used stencils from works that have graced the streets over the past few years and another room full of disturbing 'living' creatures including a monkey, a rabbit, a number of fish and sausages and some newborn chicken McNuggets that all need to be seen to appreciate the true unsettling horror of Banksy's twisted vision and social commentary.




but the whole three story edwardian museum needs to be explored to get the full experience as a number of the sculptures, paintings and displays have been tampered with to bring them to life and give them a modern slant, all just sitting cheekily alongside the museum's usual exhibits, i still don't know if i managed to spot it all but my favourites of the ones i did find include the dildo standing proud among the stalactites and the stuffed beaver awarded a fishing trophy.



i've intentionally not mentioned absolutely everything i saw so that anyone thinking of going can experience it for themselves but i'm sure there are a number of sites that document the exhibition in greater detail, including this one i found