It was well worth braving the half-term hordes at the Hayward Gallery for this. Standouts were Carlos Cruz Diez’s Chromosaturation (a blue room, a red room, and a green room, sort of), Olafur Eliasson’s Timeless Garden (fountains frozen by strobe light in stop-time animation), and James Turrell’s Wedgework (a Rothko built from light).
I was strangely soothed…
A Turrell Wedgework
If you’re interested in modern Russian art (and you are, right?), I can recommend the current two-fer exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery. A sample:
Photo by Vikentiy Nilin (1993 onwards). Is that guy really sitting there? No idea…
You know… The feeling you get after you’ve dragged yourself round some “easy” winter ride. I-can-just-about-manage-this-but-there’s-no-way-I’m-going-to-be-able-to-ride-further-than-this. Continue reading »
I’ve been experimenting with saddles. Which will win the honour of supporting my bum for the 1400-plus km of London-Edinburgh-London? Continue reading »
With London-Edinburgh-London coming up in July, I thought I’d repost my long account of the 1997 LEL. This year’s route will be somewhat different—a bit less flat—and the event will be on a much larger scale, but I think this account still gives you a sense of what you can expect. I rode a recumbent trike on this LEL, although nowadays I usually ride a conventional bike on events.
Dave Lewis, an AUK legend who died last week, features in the story, dispensing bonhomie and encouragement, as always. Here he is sampling my trike:
Dave tries my trike
…and keep your eye to the skyline.
Lycanthrope's Pig (Don Van Vliet, 1984)
The mighty Barfko-Swill corporation, which mostly releases old Zappa stuff, has just released the original version of Captain Beefheart’s Bat Chain Puller, long resident in Litigation Hell. Most music that I buy these days is in digital form—and mostly contemporary—but I’m glad I made an exception for this. Sleevenotes by John French and Denny Walley, both scarred veterans of this incarnation of the Magic Band, are funny-sad and shed semi-affectionate light on the old monster. And genius, inconveniently enough.
This article is about my first-ever 600km event, in 1995. The Brimstone, allegedly, was named after a butterfly. Here it is:
This may be one of Shawn the organiser’s little jokes. The permanent version of the Brimstone is called the Hellfire. There is no butterfly called the Hellfire. Now read on… Continue reading »
