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Gallery of Wonder

Meeting Jonathan Ross and crew at the Hot Sauce offices, Paul and I were treated to sensory overload, trying to take in just a portion of the original comic artwork he has stored in a number of drawers (not to mention the small selection hung on sundry wallspace, including the toilet!). JR could start his own gallery single-handed. The artists covered are innumerable, though there is an emphasis on Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, who have drawers mostly to themselves. To say the collection is awesome would be no kind of understatement.

The offices also are crammed in every corner with all kinds of toys, videos and media. It’s quite an experience to browse the place. Here’s JR sitting at his desk…

Gallery of Wonder

And here’s me and Paul posing with JR and the slightly wonderful double-page spread from Devil Dinosaur #1:
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Freedom and Stuff

We had our fourth monthly London Comics meet yesterday, which was cool. With that and several people urging me to stay in the London area, I guess I’ll be looking for somewhere in this vicinity to move to. Where, I’m not sure. Last minute attempts to find a sharer here have failed to elicit any response per se, and I’m sick of being on my own in a place far too large/expensive for one person, so onwards we go.

Sarah, who was at the meet yesterday, has posted her page for the Freedom anthology, which I think is fabulous. Hope you agree.
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White Space

Let’s talk about ambience. It’s by way of a ‘sort-of’ criticism of this house. It’s not a major problem, but what interests me is how so many people appear to disagree with my viewpoint.

Most of the walls are white.

Worst of all, for me, is the living room being all-white. I’m countering it to some degree—I’m filling as much wall space as I can with original artwork and prints. It improves things a lot. (Okay, so I might move. But the new place will 95% probably have white walls too, and I’ll be dealing with it the same way.)

I hate white walls. To me, it lacks atmosphere—it creates a feeling of sterility. Some people call it neutral but I call it sterile. If I had the autonomy to repaint this place, the living room would be a subdued purple or a reddish-brown. Whatever you hang on a wall like that really pops out, pleasingly, and the backdrop is so much warmer and friendlier.
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To Move or Not?

Okay… one more stab before making a final decision on whether to move from here.

I’ve had problems finding someone to share this place. There were a couple of possibilities, but ultimately they wanted somewhere cheaper and nearer the city centre. (Bit of a contradiction in terms, that, unless you want to live in a complete dump. The centre is only a 25-min tube ride away anyway.) The other problem is that I’m a bit ‘funny’ about who I’d share with.

Absolutely no religious nutters, no crack addicts or hookers, no Nazis. Etc. I don’t suppose those objections are so unusual, thinking about it. 😉 But no doubt I can be cranky and eccentric sometimes, which isn’t to everyone’s liking. And I’m quite nocturnal more often than not.
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Biology 101

Yeh, a regular posting frenzy tonight, but I just had to write this down while the window was still open… news item on TV about women in the workforce.

One middle-aged lady said: ‘I think women make the best Number Twos.’ (Poo, really?!)
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The Big Buzz

Oh, for the sake of balance: there is a huge, fuck-off Sainsbury’s round the corner. The clothes are rubbish and the Sound & Vision selection is about as tokenistic and paltry as you’d expect, but the food on offer (it is ostensibly a food store, after all) is nice and extensive.

And they sell Cote d’Or chocolate. *sigh* There goes the blood pressure again, but what the hell. I like it. It has a pretty little elephant on the wrapper (also embossed on the choc segments). The noir variety comes in 70% cocoa and nuclear-strength 86%. I’ve given in to temptation twice. I was awake for days.
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Want Some Fat With Yer Grease?

Another thing about London (well, this small pocket of London I’m in right now): fish and chips. Like, where?

I don’t have fish and chips often. A handful of times a year. But occasionally one does get the urge. And this is especially true if you can’t have said meal. In the approximately local vicinity, there are loads of eateries. Millions of them. Bazillions. But no fish and chip shop. What’s that all about?

By far the most common kind of eatery, around here, and perhaps London generally (I mean the cheaper bits of it, to be honest), is the fried chicken bar. You know, the one that offers stuff ‘just like’ KFC only half the price. Which is quite neat, because for half the price you get twice the calories, twice the cholesterol and twice the artery-hardening grease and fat!
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Listen to This

On the other hand, I heart my sound & vision system. My new DVD/CD player came today from Richer Sounds. Like the amp/decoder (also from Mr. Richer’s emporium), it’s a Sony model. The whole system, including speakers, as it stands, cost 240 quid, which is a good deal.

Sony’s name speaks for itself, but what I like about their gear is that they’re so user-friendly, and the manuals (for once) are really comprehensive and helpful (rather than the usual badly-written sketches in several languages). For instance, the player was not automatically sending a 5.1 signal to my amp, but the manual pointed the way in seconds. I have so many issues with instruction manuals that this makes a big difference to me.

The new player is impressing me a fair bit. While the old player was perfectly acceptable, the Sony’s sound output has a definite edge. I am hearing things on my CDs I hadn’t heard before. The amp is not a powerful one (you couldn’t shake the walls with it, but in a residential setting, this isn’t a great idea anyway), but I love the complete ‘wall of sound’ I can get from the set-up, which includes a cheap-but-effective sub-woofer.
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Milk!

One thing you London types don’t understand at all, and for completely different reasons us Brummie Provincials find hard to grasp, is the milk thing.

I really miss milk in glass bottles. Back in the stix, even if you didn’t have it delivered, you could stroll to your local corner shop, et voila, bottles of milk! Glass bottles. Loads of them.

London’s too ‘trendy’ and ‘high-speed’ for that. I have the most corner-shoppish corner shop you ever saw in your life down the road, but… no milk in glass bottles. It comes in plastic bottles. Very small ones, medium ones, huge ones. All plastic.
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