Sweet

This video has the capacity to cheer people greatly. It is so very sweet. Enjoy.

Paralympics

I was lucky enough to visit the Olympic Park yesterday and, although I didn't visit any actual events, the atmosphere was thrilling. I hadn't really been involved at all before now, but this is definitely something to get excited about. I had to share the love somehow, so here are a couple of photographs. which I took whilst there. I wish I could have recorded the sounds for you as well; the applause, the bickering but happy families, the megaphones, the slightly incongruous brass quartet (or maybe it was a quintet, I didn't actually count). And wow there was a lot of facepaint.

Diary

I found another old diary, and here's a page of it. I thought I'd put it in because there are 'Back to School' signs all over the shops. And here's my short, sweet diary entry about it.

Consequences

I wonder if any of you have played consequences. You probably have. There is also written way of playing, but this is the illustrated version. A group of people plays, and each player is given a pen and paper. At the top of the paper they draw a head. They then fold down the paper, to conceal the head, but to leave two lines (denoting the neck) showing. They then pass their sheet of paper on to the next player, who draws the torso, and so on. When the paper is unfolded, the most hilarious drawings often appear.

Jake and Dinos Chapman used a variation on this game to create their Exquisite Corpse Series. There work takes the humour of the game in a darker direction, with results like the image below.

Bottom image courtesy of http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/chapman-chapman-exquisite-corpse-p78457

Decorative dates

I brought back these deliciously decorative dates from the souks in Morocco. I chose them because of their striking colour palette; the near black of the dates contrasted with the whites and bold orange of the sweet decorations. I thought you might like to have a look before they're all eaten.

          

              Typewriter

Morocco

Whilst in France, I found this postcard at a flea-market. I bought it because I was about to spend the next two weeks in Morocco, and the image on the postcard is that of a Moroccan Souk. Staying in a small, isolated Berber village made me feel both very far from and very near to the basic elements of human society, whilst Marrakech was a typical -exciting- bustling city. In fact it was almost overwhelming; the crowds, the smells, the orange juice and snakes. I tried some haggling in the Souks, but wasn't very good- although one man did offer to buy me for 49,000 camels.