The corners of my mind

Happy Birthday to my brother Kenny who is... erm... something today. I can't remember. What age is he? I've completely lost track. Wait a minute, there's two years between each of us which would presumably mean he is 27. I think. I hit the grand old age of 31 this year so he must be 27, Lynsey in the middle being 29... ah, but he was born in 1983 so he must be 26. This is worrying. Not only are my siblings getting scarily old around me but I am suffering early memory decline and dementia. It's not the first time I've had this moment of realisation. A few weeks ago I was prompted to remember something that happened way back in primary school and I realised I could barely remember anything that happened in Art School, never mind High School and Primary. Is this normal? If not, I'm in trouble. Friends from school and college have often started a conversation with 'Remember when...?' and I embarrassingly have to pretend I remember, hoping they're not making some crazy, ridiculous occurence up in order to catch me out. Worryingly I've found myself in, and quite often caused, quite a lot of crazy, ridiculous situations so it's a pretty safe bet nodding my head and agreeing with some fake laughter. Kenny probably has more than a few of his own embarrassing memories of me kept instore for his best man's speech. Memories which will no doubt be used to laugh at me rather than with me. Primary school has to be the hardest of all the memory centres to dip into. The occasional funny moment springs to mind such as the Tambourini paper towel eating incident and other such wonders like the eating of sock elastic and pulling it back out through the nostril (something, I hasten to add, I did not take part in). Chaz's leap to sickening freedom, Colin's mass saying, playing Blinds Man Buff with a blind person, acting out Star Wars scenes in the schoolgrounds and the footie game in which I got belted in the balls with a Mitre Delta. Okay, I'm now remembering more of the stupid stuff rather than the stuff that actually matters such as my best grades, my timestables and my brother's age (though being hit in the groinal region should probably matter to some extent to any bloke - no matter the age). Perhaps I'm also exaggerating about the timestables. I do remember most of them and even sing them sometimes in my head, in the strange, ritualistic way we were taught (sometimes it takes ages to work something out when your standing in the middle of a supermarket). Primary school was torture a great deal of the time so this would perhaps account for the lack of memories. Perhaps I've deliberately shoved all the bad memories to the back of my head, under a psychological rug. A particularly heavy psychological rug which is rarely moved to hoover under for fear of the memories being set free and running wild in the brain. Perhaps some other memories have been mistakenly swept under the rug and in order to find the one you need you have to trawl your way through all the bad memories. In order to solve the Kenny's age problem I'll just use the most obvious solution and ask him. He won't mind. He barely remembers anyone's birthday and he's only... what... 27?

A Hirst for money

111 million pounds. No, not the amount the government made today on fuel tax but the amount Damian Hirst has made over two days selling his artwork, produced over the past two years, making him the King of Contemporary British Art. Cutting out the dealers and selling straight to the open market ensured Hirst of a serious amount of cash that he would not normally have seen. Some of his usual dealers were doing some of the bidding - White Cube being one who managed to purchase 'Here Today, gone Tomorrow'.
When Hirst first emerged in the early to mid nineties I remember not being that impressed by his work thinking it to be over hyped, ripped off and unimpressive... then I went to Art School and a visit to the Tate Modern in London, 1997 changed my mind. His piece, Pharmacy, a life size recreation of a Chemist shop had been installed at the time. It was then I realised how wrong I had been! His work, is intelligent, daring, emotive and largely quite dark in it's themes. Something I appreciate now in his work more than ever. The audacity of the things he does just scuppers everyone else. From cutting animals in half and preserving them in formaldehyde to covering a human skull in 8,601 diamonds. Each piece very different but each about life, death, it's riches and shortcomings.
Contrastingly, the winner of the Jerwood Drawing Prize was announced today as Warren Baldwin for his 'Study for Portrait' pencil and charcoal piece. A slightly more traditional piece than anything cut open and preserved in formaldehyde but just as worthy for any prize... obviously just not 111 million. Some would say it should be worth more than the mere six thousand pounds it did win.

"Messy, isn't it?"

Richard Brautigan! That was him. The poet I was writing about last night that I had done a project on in Art School. Richard Brautigan. After a while of googling various phrases including mayonnaise with poetry, I finally found him. It's all coming back to me now. By the looks of things he had a bit of a tough life and as a result was slightly disturbed in the head (a nutter). He was an alcoholic, paranoid schizophrenic brought up by abusive, alcoholic parents and then put through a number of years of electroconvulsive treatment in his twenties. His biggest seller was called 'Trout Fishing in America' and that's where all my ideas of mayonnaise jars in libraries stemmed from. It's a book about American society and Brautigan's personal take on it at the time of writing in the sixties. My final project involved setting up a small library in his name and using old style library cards, the kind printed on easily worn out brown card that used to slot into each other. Brautigan commited suicide in 1984 at the age of 49 by shooting himself in the head with a .44 Magnum and it was a good few months till anyone found his body. His suicide note simply said "Messy, isn't it?".

One flamin' headless chicken please

Woke up at two minutes past ten this morning. I started work at ten... or rather was supposed to. Dived out of bed, jumped into the shower, brushed the old Hampstead Heath, flew down the old apples and pears (why am I talking in the cockney rhyming slang?) and into the car. Got to work at twenty five past only to find Felix was in a meeting so I think I managed to get away with it. I did stay later than everyone else though so I did make up for it. Don't you just hate it when you wake up late though? Rushing about the place like a flamin' headless chicken! A flamin' headless chicken... I bet they serve them in KFC. "One flamin' headless chicken please. Don't hold back with the cleaver now!" I've never had a KFC before but I suspect their chickens are headless most of the time but the flamin' part would be interesting. Straight off the grill, or the BBQ, or the spit then depending on what sauce you put on it the flames either extinguish or get worse. A good, spicey HP sauce to make the flames go higher or a creamy mayonnaise type stuff to put the flames out. Hate mayonnaise. Can't stand the stuff. I remember a project I worked on in art school that involved taking lots of photographs of jars of mayonnaise dotted about the Art school's library propping up books. Gawd knows why. Must have been another gawd awful art school project. It did not involve chickens though. Thinking back I remember it also involved coffee cups with plants growing out of them?! My daily dose of caffeine had obviously been exceeded that day. I think the project was based on some American poet... I'll need to look that up as it's annoying me now. American poet, mayonnaise, bookends... Talking of books I'm off to get back to my current perusal. Michael Palin's 'Sahara'. Yes, I know that was back in 2002 but I've still not read it. After meeting him at the end of last year and getting him to sign his latest - 'New Europe' - I thought I'd better read Sahara first before I go reading the latest. Ease my guilt for having not paid enough attention before! Long Way Round is also being repeated on the tv at the moment so I've been watching that again after having just finished McGregor and Boorman's 'Long Way Down', their own record of their trip from John O'Groats to Cape Town on their trusty motorbikes. I did watch 'Long Way Round' the first time round but it was such a great programme and journey it's easy to get caught up in it all over again. Fantastic. They were up against the clock on their travels too just like I was this morning except I wasn't going to Cape Town, I was going to Blantyre and I wasn't on a motor bike, I was in a wee clio, and I didn't leave from John O'Groats...etc