The Cousins

I haven't seen them for years and there was a good reason.

They were on holiday up the road for a week so dropped by to have lunch and catch up, since the last time we'd seen each other was Grandad's funeral ten years ago. We filled the initial silences with questions about their obscure north - midland's town and how they'd been 'getting on'. And how was Auntie ... ? Where IS the north midlands?? Its not on my mental map. Its like that terra incognita I keep banging on about, but instead of a dragon ready to pull down the venturing ships, or a cherubic face blowing the Westerly's across the ocean, it is a (Lacoste) crocodile (logo) or a Kawasaki ZX-10 exhaust sputtering fumes, cartoon style.

My family is spread wide across England's green and pleasant land. You find us in a range of places. Some would be at gymkhanas in June, riding Bobbet to 3rd prize and a rosette. Other's would be in golf club committee meetings, mulling over the latest outrages by the newly admitted ladies to the saloon bar. Some wear wigs and gowns, and have memberships at the golf courses, but only for the once or twice they can be bothered to play. More would be found marketing, advertising, designing, drinking, dining and getting on, getting... somewhere. Never sure if its 'on' in all its furore, all the thrashing probably means we're standing still. But its in London and all that matters, because to be anywhere else is to be on the periphery, to be a side show. A yokel.

And these particular visiting cousins are found in out of town shopping centres at the weekend, working in factory outlet stores by A46s from 7 every morning, village pubs (now that they do classy red onion and goat's cheese tarts), and now... here. In our living room.

I'd been to see my 93 year old granny earlier that day. She's in a home and hard of hearing now, she's not at all 'with it'. And later, in the living room, the glazed looks were the same as hers as I vivaciously chatted and quipped about my planned summer of trips and diversions, learning through fun and experience, travel and adventure. Anything not to fall into an awkward silence.

And, to my horror, I realise that its not because these hicks, these uneducated slick-backs are stupid that they glaze over, its because I AM BORING them. To tears. Probably like my grandmother, stuck in her room with only me shouting at her to count as company. (She probably wished I'd sod off and let her get on with watching the tennis...)

It's not, maybe, that I am that boring. I hope. Its just that we totally outside each other's frames of reference. When I laughed with my mum after they left about their only available adjectives for what they felt, as things being "nice" - whether it be a sandwich or their daughter's engagement - we marvelled at their lack of self perception. How could you live like that?? But they were looking straight back at me thinking... when will this twat get a proper job and stop fucking around doing cut and paste at poncey university. He's 29, he's at university, and he's not even got a girlfriend. He's probably gay, stupid and lazy. Ha ha...

From Bauhaus to Our House

Tom Wolfe agrees with me... woohoo! I just read his book, and although he wrote it 20 years before I did my journal, I am going to claim that I made my point first... He basically thinks Michael Graves is a twat as far as I can work out, and that Po-Mo is a load of self-congratulatory in-house jokes between up-their-own-arse architects... pretty much what I plonked into my journal. Just have to convince Ellie now I didn't plagiarise it...

Landscape seems to sit ON the architecture in Cornwall, not the other way round

The moss at the bottom is actually just covering a dry stone wall, but the tree growing from the top of it must be 150 years old at least. It roots have strengthened rather than weakened the structure.

The steps worn into the path are actually tree roots, exposed as the loam has been eroded by the passing feet.

Transit of Venus

I think it was the transit of Venus that sent Captain Cook off round the world, at the orders of the Royal Geographic Society - ending up in Tahiti after several years travelling, discovering Australia on the way. I just lent out of a bedroom window at 11pm last night... doesn't quite seem so dramatic does it?

Terra Incognita

I just went to see the Map exhibition at the British Library, a look at how maps have been influenced by, and have influenced themselves art, politics, and the way we look at space (or so says all the blurb).

A bit like studying architecture, everything was western-centric... I think there was only one Chinese map, painted on silk as a perspective - it looked like a piste map from a ski resort. There were a few birds-eye view maps, done in incredible detail, of medieval guild towns, but they end up looking a bit like a cartoon, a Where's-Wally of intricate detail. Almost all the others were of top-down 2-dimensional plan views, a fairly static way of looking at the world since the 1300's Mappa Mundi. Some of them were drawn "upside down" as South used to be the primary direction indicated by compasses, an inversion which gives you a different perspective on the world but is pretty superficial.

And I'm flying to Canada on Tuesday week... into Vancouver and then working my way north from Victoria into the maze of islands in the straits between the Vancouver Island and the mainland. East Thurlow Island doesn't appear on any of the maps in the Exhibition today, and neither does Canada in almost any of them. They appear as 'Terra Incognita', there be dragons, and who knows what's out there?

British Museum Renaissance Drawings exhibition

A sketch by the young Da Vinci looking down on his home town from the hills above Urbino in the middle of summer.