Life Less Literary |
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A small selection of the many things that have happened to Dan Sumption, his family, friends and colleagues
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Wednesday, November 28, 2001
I read a piece by Anthony Bourdain in the Observer this weekend where he mentioned his view that in countries which are known for their cooking they built up the skill through neccesity... no, that isn't right. Oh, I dunno, it was something like that. But it got me thinking - perhaps we should go back to getting a vegetable box delivered. I found that one of the most fun things, culinary-wise. Every week, a random selection of seasonal fruit and veg. It's how I discovered beetroot (wonderful stuff), and somehow any dishes (almost) that includes necessity among its ingredients has a certain flavour you don't get when you have too much of everything. Mind you, it does make some of the more exotic recipes (or pretty much anything in the Millenium Cookbook) impossible. Add comment | this item I wanted to read this, I really did. But... the mock-storytelling and incessant jingoism were too much for me. Leave the literization of real life to someone like Truman Capote. Add comment | this item We finally got to see Amélíe! And yes, it is as good as everyone says it is. If not better. Add comment | this item Forgot to mention what I did Saturday morning, after the Cardiacs gig. Had to dash back up to Sheffield to babysit. Somehow got to St Pancras just as the barriers had shut and the train was beginning to pull out. So I had an hour to wait for the next one. I stuck my bass guitar in the left luggage (at £4 for the hour, a complete rip-off, but then my back muscles had already torn themselves to shreds, and as I still had to carry around my courier-bag complete with laptop, clothing, 2 hefty books and about a dozen assorted cables, I felt justified. Then I headed off in the direction of Russell Square to find myself a second breakfast. On the way I passed the language bookshop, and staring at me from the window was a kids book of Japanese. Brainwave time. Mark had been asking me to stick some Japanese text into the designs I'm doing, but I wasn't too happy about doing it at random without knowing what I was writing. So I headed into the shop to look for a book. Of course, it wasn't as easy as all that - I suddenly felt like I wanted to actually learn Japanese, and then I realised that I had not only the sounds to learn, also a script (or 3). Ah well, as I'm in it for the design, I thought I'd do the unusual thing and start with the written language and then maybe branch out into the spoken. I almost bought Basic Japanese through Comics but in the end settled for Beginner's Japanese Script. I strode out of the bookshop feeling purposeful, and made it a little further along the road to a small French café who make some of the best pastries in the world. Had some kind of spinach and cheese feuillete, which was served with a really simple accompaniment of lettuce and cucumber but... so fresh! I dunno, maybe I was just in one of those mindsets where anything could be amazing (bit hung-over from the night before as well), but it tasted better than anything I could imagine. Especially the lettuce! Had an almond croissant with my pot of tea, and sat there working my way through Japanese exercises. The book is great. I didn't seriously imagine myself sticking with it, but the first few exercises were so simple, relating scrappy pictograms through their development into Kanji symbols, like... hmmm, hold on, how do I encode some Kanji into this HTML... nah, sod it, 1 impossible thing before breakfast is quite enough. Anyway, I stuck with the book, kept on going for half of my train journey (the other half I was bashing away on the laptop, doing Hillman Curtis Flash tutorials in a very restricted space). Now I'm busy looking up local Japanese teachers. And, wouldn't you know it, the University of Sheffield has one of the biggest East Asian studies departments in Europe! I also had some fun looking through Japanese titles on Amazon - stuff like this. Mind you, looking back I think perhaps I should just have bunged some random Kanji symbols into my designs - after all, if the Japanese can throw together Anglo-sounding band names like "Rancid Japan" and "The Michelle Gun Elephant" then the least I can do is return the favour. Add comment | this item Tuesday, November 27, 2001
bllddrum-bump, bllddram-bump, bllddrim-bump..... diddleumpum... bllddrum-bump, bllddram-bump, bllddrim-bump..... diddleumpum.. (this time it's Shuck it Up by Medeski, Martin & Wood) Add comment | this item Listening to Litany by Alan Ridout from the CD 20th Century Sacred Music. Glorious, especially in our church-hall-like living room. A large choir singing "DEAR LORD, DE-EEE-E-EEE-LIVER US" in a demonic-type diminished key (or something like that). Add comment | this item Monday, November 26, 2001
Haha. (from www.mccargow.com) 1st Circumlocutionist: I have in my possession an animal belonging to the family Canidae, and it appears that he does not possess any extra-facial olfactory organs. 2nd Circumlocutionist: Could you therefore impart to me, such knowledge as may be necessary, to describe how that animal circumvents the problem of satisfying his olfactory senses? 1st Circumlocutionist: Unfortunately, the non-ambiguity of your enquiry does not easily permit me to provide a clever answer, but I am in fact thinking of referring the animal to an olfactologist. However, the animal does have a fairly unpleasant body odour, should you be interested. Add comment | this item Been thinking more and more of getting some new speakers - my Wharfedale Dentons are about as old as me, and not the best in the world, certainly since I blew the tweeters and replaced them with cheapo Maplin ones. Popped into Richer Sounds with Lolly. Looks like I'm choosing between this, this and this. Tempted to go with the Mordaunt Shorts. Not that I have the money. But I can dream, and maybe in the new year... Add comment | this item Sunday, November 25, 2001
Had a great few days. Called round on Jan Thursday night - chatted for hours. I remember very little about what it was about - music, Flash programming, films, red wine, that kinda stuff. Ended up stealing his bed and relegating Jan to the sofa when I crashed at 2am, up early the next morning but then... a very chilled day. We got up fairly early (ouch!) and headed to a local café. After the waitress had chased an itinerant pigeon around the place several times and out of the door, I ordered the most amazing brie and roasted vegetable sandwich, with crunchy lettuce, on a huge brown bap sprinkled with sunflower seeds. Yum. Washed down with some lovely hot splosh (tea). All done very slowly, while reading the papers and enjoying life. Back to Jan's for some CD burning, a little Freehand tutorial, and some more chat. Jan introduced me to Hillman Curtis's site, and told me I should buy his Flash book - I did so on my way home (coincidentally, Jan's friend who had borrowed his copy ages ago rang the same evening to apologise for not being in touch and offer to drop the book around the next day). I'm currently learning lots from the book - my opinion on it, now the property of Amazon.co.uk, is as follows: Some excellent design tips, let down by sloppy presentationHad lunch with Jan - organic stir-fried vegetables with short-grain brown rice and cashew nuts, gloriously gingery and perfect comfort food, accompanied by a smoothie of apple, carrot, kiwi fruit and parsley, from Goose in Shoredich. Then I set off West for Teddington. After a freshen-up at my Mum and Dad's, I went East again up to town, to see the magnificent Cardiacs at the Astoria. Sat in the pub for 40 minutes reading What Hi-Fi (need some new speakers) before meeting up again with Jan, followed shortly by Arthur, Jorge, Simon and Dave. The gig was wonderful (they always are), but I had a bit of a different time from other Cardiacs gigs - the Astoria is huge, and after being split up from the others, Jan and I grabbed a table up at the back of the balcony, near the bar, and watched from a great distance as various Cardiacs past and present strode and pogoed around below us to the rhythm of a bouncing audience. They were looking well and truly... older than before, but having lots of fun. And, joy of joys, numerous ex-members guesting... Bic Hayes on guitar for a couple of numbers, Tim Quy (didn't he die?) on percussion for one or two, and best of all Dominic Luckman took over on drums towards the end and suddenly it all came flooding back - those fucking long arms flailing chaotically but so powerfully around the drums, complete magic. And then, the icing on the world, they played The Whole World Window (sniff) at the end, and did the old bit with the whole rigmarole and stuff and wot, and they did come on, a man and a lady, and the man and the lady they were all dressed in the posh things, and they did have the flowers, and with the flowers they did give them to the people what did make the music, and thank you and thank them and everyone was very thanking before throwing flowers at the audience, and bows and tears and fondful gestures of love, and the confetti it was bombing, and raining everywhere, and it was a joyous occasion of love and peace and fellowship and hello and goodwill to all you men. (and the ladys, but they are included). Ahhh. Mmmm. (sigh). Haven't seen them do that in 15 years. I remember the first time I saw them and they did that big ending thingy, It was in the Marquee (the old marquee, the old OLD marquee) with all their school uniforms and dirty faces and flourescent nurseries for troubled children, and my head was a bit different, and my body was half-naked, and I'd spent the whole night slam-dancing with very friendly energetic people, and the man and the lady did come on with the flowers and the confetti it did went "BOOM" and I got it stuck all on my perspirating skins, and all the half-naked people with the funny jumping dances came together and hugged and kissed and said "hello, who are you?" and it was one of the loveliest things that ever did occur in the history of this species. Hmmm. Hope I don't have to wait so long until the next gig. Add comment | this item Friday, November 23, 2001
Monday, November 19, 2001
Discovered that Mike Harrison has got his website act together - some interesting reading matter there. And it lead me on to They Fight Crime... which was nice. Add comment | this item Friday, November 16, 2001
I had a wonderful brand experience today(!) Real cluetrain stuff. Just happened to get my home insurance renewal from Royal Sun Alliance (or More Th>n as they're now known) at the same time as a piece of junk mail from the Prudential. I noticed that RSA we're still charging me for rebuilding costs of £275k on my buildings insurance, rather than the £210k that it should be, and the resulting cost made up most of the nearly 600 quid they wanted to charge me. So I rang the Pru. The guy I spoke to was wonderful - very friendly, chatty, obviously not sticking to a script, and explained to me like an intelligent human being how it could be that their insurance differed from RSA's, and which bits of their offering could prove a problem or not be as good. He even apologised profusely when I had to go and fetch Lolly, who had just woken up in the cot near me, and... well, was just human generally. Thumbs up to the Pru. Oh, and I saved 200 quid. Add comment | this item Having a revelationary mental states day. Erm... something like that. Been trying to adapt to being at home and looking after the kids, and getting to know Lolly better, but it's been hard. Then today I took Lolly out for most of the day - carried her around in my arms rather than taking the pushchair. It was great - got to talk to her and look at each other and interact, all things I couldn't do with her facing the other way in the pushchair. And now I feel like my mental state has clicked properly from London/Sheffield/work/blah mode into family mode. Then this evening, trying to work on stuff, and wondering why it's taking me so long to make any kind of progress, I realised that I have slid over the past couple of years from programmer/production mindset into manager/troubleshooter mindset, and I flit from one job to the next applying my touch but don't just let myself immerse myself for hours, days, weeks in one project and keep it all in my mind so I can chip away at it. So next I need to work on getting back some of that tenacity. Add comment | this item Tuesday, November 13, 2001
Had a great weekend with Lola. David, whose flat I borrow when in London, was back in the UK for 1 week before returning to Canada with his new wife Andrea. We were going to miss their wedding party, due to lack of babysitters, but wanted to catch up with them anyway. Then Gill got ill and decided to stay in Sheffield, and Rowan opted for the easy life and decided to stay with her (in the end they both went to see Harry Potter. Without me. Grrr). So Lolly and I drove down to London (in car minus stereo, as it was nicked last week - made for a slightly dull journey, but I managed to sing a few songs to Lolly). We turned up at David's flat (which, for most of the last 2 years, has been my flat) just before he had to go and negotiate with the housing association - they had decided he wasn't around often enough, and needed to spend a bit more time in his flat if he didn't want to lose it. The meeting didn't go well - they asked for 6 weeks notice before David left again (hard to arrange as his return flight was already booked for Tuesday) so, somewhat sadly, David decided to move out for good on Tuesday. It was a strange moment for both of us - he was losing his home of 10 years, and I was losing my London hideaway. To cheer ourselves up we went for luch at The Spitz, Spitalfields. David and I had roasted cod on mashed potato with fennel & red wine jus (or something like that), which was very pleasant but not completely filling. So we had to cadge Spitz chips off Andrea and Andy (another friend who was up from Glastonbury for the party). The chips were phenomenal - hard to believe that they could find a potato big enough to make a chip that large. Afterwards we wondered over to Brick Lane and visited the clothes warehouse on Cheshire Street.The place was piled high with naff kitsch clothes, apparently shipped over in containers from Canada (I asked David why he didn't just buy them in Canadian thrift stores, but apparently they're cheaper here). I couldn't resist picking up a few dressing-up clothes for Rowan, including a superb Michael-Jackson-style 1980s red leather jacket. We returned to David's flat and started to divvy out the possessions, as there was far too much for David and Andrea to take back on the aeroplane, even with Air Canada's generous baggage allowances. I bagged a tuner (something my stereo system's needed for a long time), some books and comics, and David's Kilt (memorabilia from my first Bone Turtle performance). Next stop was Steve and Sue's, to say a quick hello and visit 10-day-old baby Jade. Then back West to my parents' house for rest and recuperation. Lolly woke me at 7am demanding breakfast. As nobody I know in London was likely to be up before midday on a Sunday, I decided to make and early start and head back for Sheffield. As we got onto the M25 I thought "I can't be bothered to drive right around to the M1 - I'll take the M40 instead". Once on the M40, this thought was supplemented by "it should be getting on for lunchtime by the time I hit Birmingham, and Lolly will probably be awake again by then. We might as well check out the city, as I haven't been there in 10 years". This we did, driving around for an hour in a fruitless search for nappies before parking up and finding somewhere to eat. We passed the rear of a restaurant (Bank), quick swish-looking but with several families dining, so I thought we'd give it a try. Turned out to be a little more upmarket than I thought - we were asked whether we had a reservation and my name taken by the Maitre'D before being shown to our table. Still, the staff were very friendly and Lolly enjoyed herself. After the restaurant we visited the National Sea-Life Centre next door. Lots of fish and other water creatures, and I think Lolly enjoyed herself almost as much as I did. Then time for more thinking. "We're halfway across the country already, and right next to the M6, why not pay a visit to Hannah and John in Liverpool?" which is what we did. Much of their house still looked in the same state as last time we visited, but the bits that had been worked on looked absolutely flawless. Hannah knocked us up some baked avocado and a cup of tea, we chatted for a bit and then set off across the Snake Pass back to Sheffield, and were home in time for Lolly to go to bed. And I took my camera with me, so we ended up with another Life entry. Add comment | this item Friday, November 09, 2001
Had some skunk last night. Not something I normally enjoy all that much... bit of a last resort really (and, hey, still a class A drug despite recent relaxation on Cannabis laws). But... d'you know what? It was actually quite an enlightening experience. Apart from the stoned walk back through Pitsmoor (dodgiest part of Sheffield) at 11pm with £3 grand+ of electronic equipment on my back, I felt quite relaxed and, once I got to bed, my mind was, what's the word?... fertile! Had loads of useful Flash thoughts for various incipient Flash projects (I lay for half-an-hour, listening to the wind whistling around the house and disturbing the wind-chimes even though we tried to hide them from the wind as best as possible, and thought "I hope it's this windy tomorrow night - I'm gonna record all this for background sounds for Mount Fuji [the Hirogishe woodblock print which is to become Bradonpace's website). Then I managed to structure Liv4now's branding proposition in my head, had some thoughts on personal websites... loadsa stuff really. Shame not much of it stuck in there until morning, but even with what did remain I've got plenty to be getting on with.... Add comment | this item Thursday, November 08, 2001
Aren't train journeys wonderful things? Used mine as an opportunity to update my life photo albums - added pages of photos from Terry's birthday dinner, my latest visit to London, trips to the local parks with Rowan and Lola and Guy Fawkes night fireworks (like below only moreso). Add comment | this item Monday, November 05, 2001
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