Posts tagged fremsley
Fremsley
Empty box: two batteries, 'toy not included'
Steve Whitaker - Colour Original from V For Vendetta (1989)
It’s the colour original for Book Three, Chapter One “Vox populi”, Page One, after the prologue.
I’d known Steve for several years, since long before moving to London. He was actually an excellent comic artist and a first class illustrator, but far too much of a perfectionist to ever be happy with what he was drawing at any given time to make a living at it. He also bored very easily and would lose interest with projects; there was always something else to seize his fascination coming up next. He didn’t have the patience or willingness to compromise to be a career comic artist; he loved the art-form too much for that.
He packaged up several of the pages he’d coloured for the US reprint-&-continuation of V For Vendetta in spare bluetones and gave them to select friends. Mine appeared as a late birthday present and I was thrilled at the sentiment and the originality. He had picked it very carefully, all too-aware of my personality…
Steve was a lot of things, but mostly he was a teacher. All he ever did was impart knowledge. Steve was taken suddenly ill at his father’s house and died from a stroke in the back of a cab taking him to the hospital, late February 2008.
Hotel Terminus Reine - Art Deco Luggage Label, 1950s
I say 1950s, possibly earlier though. It’s unused. Its twin is stuck to the outside of a very old solid-state suitcase, sitting under the stairs at the back of a dusty cupboard. It belonged to my dad and was much used by him in Europe from long before I was born. I always loved the design of this little ovoid. The mixing of styles, but I prefer to feel the representation of the massive Chaumont viaduct and attendant train is dominant.
The unused label - pre-peel/slap; the kind one had to lick to get it to stick (kinda like a woman) - was discovered originally inside one of the few nic-nacs I have left to remind me of the man I barely saw, who died when I was six. Found it again today whilst working on a skateboard I found damaged and discarded in the street (I’m turning the deck into a shelf), going through my remaining clippings, stickers and so forth.
Slight twinge. More that it references a previous life for me, to do with where and with whom I used to live, than my father per se. The past, you can’t touch it but it can still touch you. Of course, the trick is managing the effect that mnemonic has.
Shit.
Today I finally finished listing my record collection. All the sevens, the twelves, the LPs. It has taken a while. Not because it’s massive, it’s not, merely largish, but the process has been hindered by a not-quite subconscious reluctance. Now I have no excuse though. Now I *have to submit the list to various dealers to see if they’re interested in buying it as a collection. I could probably get more for it if I tried selling it myself piecemeal. But I don’t have the luxury of the time to do that. And also… dragging it out like that, like losing pieces of oneself incrementally, torturously slowly, would just. Fucking. Kill. Me.
Bollocks.
(*I have an aversion to starvation.)
Cactus/Tulips 21st April 2013
Story. Of. My. Life.
(Taken from net (not tumblr) but don’t know source; thank you to whomsoever.)
Double Bollocks from the Planet Bollocks with a side order of Bollocks in a Bollocks sauce.
Bugger. So, five days into trying to fix the PC and counting.
One OS reinstall and subsequent reconfiguration and redownloading relevant utilities; fatal crash half way through second day of process. Give up. Go to bed.
Third day. One clean wipe of the main partition on the main drive, one OS cold install and subsequent reconfiguration and redownloading relevant utilities; fatal crash in later stages of second day of process. Different fatal crash. This time disc failure is clearly indicated just beforehand. Begin system back-up but crash occurs during process. Give up. Go to bed.
Today. Turn on PC, doesn’t get past manufacturer’s warning of disc having failed; was expecting something like that. Wipe main partition of main drive. Again. (Actually that’s still current; it takes three hours.)
Intend to remove that from the machine, wipe the entire contents of the smaller internal drive (where I have my primary back-up of music, images and documents) and do cold install of OS there instead. Two possible issues. One: that just leaves me during this process/at all with one external back-up of all my stuff, spread over two external drives, one of which is suspect. Two: The smaller partition on the failing main drive contains the manufacturer’s utilities; the small drive I’ll be attempting to install to after removing the main drive doesn’t have that and I can’t make a copy. So whether or not the manufacturer’s OS DVD will even be recognised/allowed is the first possible stumbling block. Assuming that works however I still have another two days of redownloading and configuration ahead of me. Including - the final stage - my own files from the one remaining external copy.
Trepidatious? Whatever gave you that idea.
Now excuse me, I have to go chew another three-hundred Ibuprofen and my friend wants their PC back; as it is they’re making me type wearing rubber gloves because they think I’m the kiss of death now.
Bollocks.
Three days after moving my PC set-up the damn machine died.
It had been playing up for most of a year, so it wasn’t the physical move that killed it. Degraded OS build/possible board issues.
In the midst of attempting to rectify that.
Soon, I hope.
Next…
Domesti City
1. My existing computer racking about a month ago. Sitting inconveniently in front of the front-window in the middle of the floor for three plus years. This used to be necessary as there used to be two PCs, two printers, two screens, the turntable, tape-decks and speakers all on here as well as other bits of kit. However for the longest time there’s been just the one PC and now - after three effing years - that I’ve finally completed digitising the cassettes and the vinyl a set up this bulky defies logic. The turntable (left of the screen under the dustcover) and the tape-decks are back in their boxes. Quite apart from that, this is industrial racking designed to carry 75Kgs a shelf and my little pc and screen don’t even trouble it. If anything it’s unstable because it’s not under compression.
2/3. The alcove to the left has these ugly drill holes in it from a previous tenant’s wall-shelving. (Here you see them after I’ve filled those I can’t use and put screw-plugs in the others.) It’d been masked by standing shelves of my own until about six months ago when my rolling life-laundry saw the stuff on those either disposed of or better dealt with. Being a pauper I couldn’t afford to buy new wall uprights and shelf-brackets but I felt the alcove better suited my PC usage now so I needed something to put it all on. It didn’t have to be pretty it just had to work.
Recently the loft was insulated so I dragged down all the scrap wood, chipboard and boards that had been spread across the joists up until then (even more recently dumped in my housemate’s study, much to her inconvenience). It all needed severely cleaning and in some cases sanding. I used three very disparate pieces for shelves and cut pieces from a couple of others to use as suspension brackets. It looks straight-forward but it was a complete pain in the fucking arse getting these awkward bits into some semblance of a useful and rigid construct that would also fit the already existing holes in the wall.
4/5. I had half a small tin of black gloss paint left from a previous job so I painted the shelf-frame twice, over two days, then left it for four more to dry sufficiently to handle without marking it. After wall mounting it I left it for a further full two weeks for the paint to harden. Especially on the non-porous composite board that makes up the keyboard-desk at the bottom.
The middle upright is not connected to the shelves. After mounting I fitted a small block of wood under the top and middle shelves to spread any potential strain on the left and right brackets (no room under the bottom shelf). Essentially though it’s for show to cover the pre-existing holes and match the other uprights.
6. Finally got around to deconstructing the old racking yesterday. First thing today before putting everything back together in the alcove involved vacuuming up the centimetre deep grit and fluff where the rack had been…
7. Every time I move/set-up a computer station I profusely curse Edison and wish I’d been born in a parallel where Tesla-tech was prominant, not this fucking doomed backwater reality. Look at all that wire. Ludicrous.
8. Space! And I can see out the front window. Well, for now. The ink-jet printer you can see resting on my workbench on the right is going on the pedestal on the left. I only use it for printing CDs, it doesn’t get a lot of use. Good thing too as the ink for it is more expensive than Unicorn tears by volume.
Good luck avoids me like a dolphin avoids cricket.
Sixteen Days.
Posted two to three hours after he died. Sixteen days after my sixth birthday.
It arrived three days later. I saw it for the first time a quarter of a century later.
Page from Alan Moore’s unpublished BIG NUMBERS #3. (That is a little close to the knuckle for this poster…)
- Fremsley, June 2006 …elsewhere.
Rope
My icon. A refugee from one of the many large bonfires of 2000/2001 when I had a big life-laundry. I found this blown from the ashes of one fire in particular the next day, liked the imagery/irony/significance, cleaned it up and kept it.
Ah. Good.
Just got called an ‘absolute diamond’ by someone on here for posting something that no-one else has even noticed (though I suspect it would be popular if they did). My stealth-tumblr presenting something I’ve had sat on my hard-drive for two years raised a whole actual smile. This calls for tea. (What doesn’t?)
Mnemonics
This morning is full of mnemonics.
A little while ago I caught a scent of something that took me back to my earliest school days at the Primary/Junior school I attended, and the smell of the dinner-ladies preparing the school dinners in the kitchens (not ‘lunch’ you fucking southern ponces) in the morning, for the assembly hall/gym, where we all ate. Mixed with the particular tone of the sunlight in the morning around here at the moment it was so vivid a sensation that it stopped me dead where I was; my mind filling in the blanks, adding the other smells of those empty suburban streets and the cold morning air and the slanting sunlight through the green and across the low buildings. If I’d been crossing the street that could have been messy.
It was very jarring as I try not to remember my childhood. As right after I started school is where it all started. Even if the naked, raw nostalgia of that mnemonic is so powerful. More saudade than nostalgia I suppose…
Then I turn on the machine and whilst cycling up the external drives I glance at this place and see a mention of one of my favourite pieces of folklore. And that rips me straight back to Denmark Street, where I first heard it, between St Giles-In-The-Fields and the start of Charing Cross Road.
When I first came to London, the person I came with and people we knew who already lived here would frequent one of the more basic bars in Denmark St. I don’t remember where it was exactly, or what it was called even, but I remember it profoundly. It was in a basement, probably below one of the music shops, and had a small bar in one corner, being just one room itself. There were a couple of small wooden tables and - mostly desired - stone/brick alcoves all around the edge. It was wonderful. It was also a complete death trap as there was only one way in or out, a steep flight of stone/brick steps. If there’d ever been a fire it would have turned into an incinerator.
I’d be surprised if it’s still there, at least in that form, not now. But then again, with what goes on in catering/entertainment in high-density central London, it’s clear to anyone that the people who police licensing and Health & Safety there are completely bent, or else completely incompetent, likely both, regardless of the big show made of ‘cleaning up’ the area every few years (i.e turfing out the most publicly visible, the most blatant and, of course, those who won’t pay up).
