The clock is still on the wall
One of my favourite pictures of one of my favourite cafés (Banff).
If you go in and notice that clock missing one of these days, it’ll mean I swiped it*. But for the time being, it’s still in its place.
*Can you blame me? It even says ‘Pour manger bon’ on the face! Objects that speak French to me are as good as mine, I say (if they are beautiful and simple that is, like Clock here).
Must outdo the Death Book
A week from today it is Christian’s birthday.
Last year, I bought him something hard to find that he really liked (and a watch, just because I wanted a back-up present in case he didn’t like the first one. I’m chicken that way).
If you have seen ‘Road to Perdition‘ (Christian and I have and it is one of his absolute all-time favourite films) you might remember in Jude Law’s apartment some crime scene photographs hanging off the wall. It turns out, they’re real – real New York Police Department 1920s crime scene photographs. And they were compiled into a book called ‘Evidence‘. So I tracked down a copy and gave it to him for his birthday (I flipped through first, to make sure it wasn’t hyper hyper gross. Err, maybe not but still really kind of graphic. Anyway).
He opened it and looked through and said ‘What is it?’. So I explained. And then I asked him if he liked it. He thought about it for a second, then said ‘You bought me a Death Book! Yes, I like it.’ He even said it was really thoughtful.
For next week I have something for him and I’m getting really jittery he won’t like it (I get present anxiety just before giving, always). I have been forbidden to buy anything else – he gets really embarrassed by gifts so one is about his limit.
If I am going to openly rebel and spend more money, it has to be on something as good as the Death Book. Or better. I’m in a tight spot (as George Clooney would say in ‘Oh Brother‘): you see, a Death Book is hard to top.
And yes, we have ‘Road to Perdition’ on DVD already. I really am in a tight spot…
Looking for excuses
To buy Little Brown Pen’s Paris perpetual calendar. Want to hear them?
I love beautiful things, and it’s beautiful.
I don’t buy calendars because I never find any I like, and I don’t like throwing them out when the year has finished. Too existential in a mundane way (time gone by, trash). This one is reusable forever.
I lived in Paris for three and a bit years and I miss it very much. It contains 49 little pieces of Paris.
I love the number 17 (which is my birthday coincidentally), and this one has the 7 penned the way it should be: with a bar across it. So it satisfies one of my little manias (while stomping across it for ’7′ and ’27′, but you can’t have it all).
I want it and I have picked out a wall for it. It’s already got its own reserved spot.
In the spirit of prioritising hair over tooth, do I now prioritise Paris calendar over further tooth surgery?
The chicken explorer
Here is a funny thing about me: I am a clean neat-freak. I love bleach, pine disinfectant, eucalyptus spray (kills 99.9% of germs!). But show me an abandoned building, a derelict house, architectural neglect and ‘It-a makes-a my heart-a go boom-a ticky boom’ (the Italian captain from ‘Allo allo‘, yes?).
I start to jump up and down, my mind busy with the pictures I could take and thoughts of what could possibly be in there. Except:
- These types of places can be dangerous (asbestos, structural weaknesses and collapsing floors).
- These types of places are patrolled, or very clearly marked as private property. Did someone say ‘breaking and entering’? I like my blank criminal record too much.
On occasion I have asked for access – and gotten it (the legal way, yay!), but mostly I have a mental inventory of places around Melbourne and around the world I would kill to have a look at, and probably never will.
Being the chicken that I am, pictures of others’ daring forbidden urban explorations are as close as I will get to certain places, and are often enough to give me a thrilling fix. I don’t know the name of this person, but I am really grateful he risked his life by walking on (in use!) Parisian métro tracks to the abandoned St Martin stop, closed for the last 40 or 50 years. Just knowing it exists (not exactly sure where it is though) and that these gorgeous painted ads are still intact makes my day.
Boom-a ticky boom.
(St Martin article originally via Frogsmoke).
Reflections
Feetsies in the window of a really amazing Chapel street store. Read Swept up
This is one of my favourite hair things: a comb that belonged to my grandmother. It’s only plastic but it feels like the most precious piece of plastic in the world. And it comes in very handy when my hair wants to do its own thing (which is pretty much everyday).
Impossibly cool
According to this, some of my compatriots are. And also Jean Seberg – I agree. Didn’t she look absolutely darling in ‘À Bout de Souffle‘?
The Jump Book
I found this on Matou en peluche (don’t you just love her blog name?). I knew some of the photographs but had no idea who was behind them, or even that there was a book! Philippe Halsman believed that asking a person to jump was the surest way to capture their essence in the picture. I love that idea. Although there will be no jumping for me since I strained the ligaments in my right ankle last Friday, during my little performance.
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