Monthly Archives: September 2007

This is not a time for dreaming…

…is the name of a video we saw this summer at the Beaubourg. It’s on the lower of the two floors, halfway down on the left and was made by Pierre Huyghe, an artist I’ve never come across before. I … Continue reading

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A rose is a rose

Giuseppe made friends with an Italo-French florist fifty yards down the road from the flat we were in, in Boulevard Saint Germain, and managed to scrounge three separate bunches of roses during our two-week stay. They were just the way … Continue reading

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Hausmann rules, but not always

One of the joys of Paris – of central Paris, at least – is the endless variation on the theme of Hausmann; street after street, quartier after quartier, of houses that follow the same essential rules of architecture, yet each … Continue reading

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Burning hills

I wrote about the fires that were devastating the hills around Fondi earlier this summer. You can find what I said here. This photograph was taken a couple of weeks after that, towards the end of July, as we were … Continue reading

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Writing as madness

This summer, I saw a painting I’d never seen before, in the Centre Pompidou. Entitled Peinture (Ecriture rose) and covering a fair-sized chunk of wall (maybe three metres by four), it’s the work of Simon Hantai and was done in … Continue reading

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Penis, Paris

The image is rather ghostly, but you should be able to make out the form of a rather substantial male member on this toilet-paper roll. It’s isn’t remarkable in itself. The penis, after all, is to graffiti in public toilets … Continue reading

Posted in graffiti, paris | 3 Comments

Racist lunatic arrested

Good news from Brussels (and how often do you hear that?), as one of the most laughably despicable figures in Italian politics gets picked up by police after attempting to take part in an illegal demonstration against the ‘islamisation of … Continue reading

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A roof of one’s own all’italiana

Just over six years ago, in late June 2001, work on our house was interrupted by the unexpected visit of a local policeman (vigile). Apparently there’d been a complaint from someone, we weren’t told who, that we were about to … Continue reading

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Something Rich and Strange

Feeling nautical? Maybe you should read Sea Stories, an anthology of, er, stories about the sea, published by the National Maritime Museum to celebrate its seventieth anniversary. The collection contains a story of mine, entitled Something Rich and Strange, as … Continue reading

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The last word on Larry "Wide Stance" Craig?

This comes from Queerty, via Joe.My.God (so you may have seen it already). You may need to click on it to read the fine print.

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