Archives 2002: First year in mas camp

You would not believe it. Talibah, the Calypso singer who I talked to that fateful day I heard about the Yaa Asantewaa centre, saw me today and commented "Hey whenever I see you son, you've always got a HUGE smile on your face. Keep it up!" and she wasn't wrong I can tell you. This is the best time i have had for fucking ages, living my lifelong ambition of being on a float and taking part in the carnival - it's a shame that for a second I actually put money first. What a fool I've been!

:: Yeah I had been scraping around unhappily for money until then, trying to please everyone but myself. Then it hit me. And the rest of the summer was amazing ::
Today for instance, I spent the first half of the day working upstairs in the theatre with two rastafarian actors who were rehearsing their lines for a play about slavery. I just sat in the background making the Bat wings for the bat costume which I spent 10 hours on yesterday - it looks absolutely amazing! I got out of the centre at 1 yesterday and home at 2:30am!

In the afternoon of today I carried on making the wings but relocated downstairs into the main hall, where I saw the kids doing their summer theatre production "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" yesterday. Today though, they were testing all the sound systems for the float and I think it's safe to say that the verified that they ARE loud! It was an absolutely brilliant atmosphere as the sounds of calypso, soul and rnb thumped out and filled the hall, rattling the rafters and all the people were hard at work but smiliing in the sun. This is the life! And I was worried about money!!!! Ha!
So there you have it, life is a blissful sea of colour and sound, rastafarians, french and spanish all blended in with the smell of incense and weed and puncuated by the sounds of the caribean. Life is good.

Anthony, a workmate from RBS last year, cooked me dinner and I met his wife and their beautiful kids including the newborn girl. It has been a truly great couple of days.

Archives 2002: A whole day at the theatre

I've just got in from the Stoppard Trilogy "The Coast of Utopia" at the
National Theatre. It's 3 plays in series (they can be seen self contained as
well). Each one is about 3 hours long and it is set in Russia in the 19th
century and revolves around the philosopher and radical thinker Hertzen
through 30 years of his life.

Now the best bit about this whole thing though is thus...

We had to stand for 11 hours!

We both had this day on the books for weeks now but thought no bugger was
gonna do the whole thing on a gorgeous summers day like today. So we left
the tickets to the door and what do you know - it was sold out. But the
geezer at the till says "I can give you boys standing tickets at the back
for 6 quid a show"

A look flashed between us and we both groaned "Oh shit..."

"No worries, it's only 12 hours anyway" I says before buying the wodge of
tickets and (We did save about 12 quid too) heading upstairs. To stand for
one and a half intervals. SIX TIMES.

The first play, Voyage, was great, very deeply philosphical. Much of it went
right over my head but Tarik loved it. I got the gist of it but was wrapped
up in the sumptuos beauty of the sets and the extravagant scene changes. It
was awesome! The legs killed and at the half time interval Tal summed up the
feelings we both had by saying "We are one sixth of the way through..." I
was absolutely mortified!

The second play, Shipwreck, despite the name, was my least favourite but
still you could revel in the exquisite production and some fine
performances. My legs ached like hell and I sat down (thus missing the
visuals) a bit.

The third was great and after 12 hours (there was an hour break between
each) we came out triumphant, pats on the back and feeling absolutely
satisfied. It was a monumental accomplishment and a baptism by fire to two
young amateur theatre goers. The actors done really well too. And we topped
it off with noodles at the legendary china china. What a day.

I went home with the boadest grin on my face on the night bus, knowing that
I've got Match of the Day to look forward to when I wake up at 9:30 (It's
3.00 now) then at 11 I'll go and make costumes until the early hours of the
morning. Summer in London keeps getting better and with 3 carnival days to
look forward to it's possible that we may even see 3 days of 10 points in a
row.

Also that week I went to See Dick Dale at the Garage in Highbury, spoke to some really interesting homeless guys, saw a dance production called Shinla, which fused Japanese martial arts with dance and done the Hackney Mardi Gras in full costume with Yaa. We came second, behind Masquerade 2002, whose "Gold" theme was absolutely stunning and deserved to win. Ba went and saw it too which was great for her to see me in full gear. She was so proud! Fight Night at the Prince Charles too, Kung Fu on the big screen. Wicked week!

Not much really happened after that(!) Well it did, but mainly cos i had to organise to go to the States, so the diary is pretty jammed, but not with interestin stuff. Done my first venturer weekend as a facilitator which was very cool. Got very muddy. Pics to be posted soon, kepp yer eyes on the photos link.

So that's it. The maddest summer on record. Keep your eyes peeled for next summer though kids...

Archives 2002: mischief's soap opera life

Not sure if any of you have ever heard of Sylvester Williams. He's famous you know. He was once on some sort of TV program. Dunno if any of you have ever heard of it.

It's called Eastenders.

I taught him how to use a computer :-)

Today definitely scores 10 out of 10 for sheer surprise value and the fact that I am grinning insanely like the proverbial "cheshire cat". There was me thinking that life was effectively over for a year and that all that lay in store was the mundane recuperation of funds, when what do you know - I end up working in showbiz!

It was a really strange way to find out. You know me, I have no idea who is famous unless they are people with real talent like Michael Jackson. The cast of Eastenders could all be standing next to me in a bus queue and I wouldn't even know. So there I was in the afro-caribean food place having just stepped out of his BMW and ordered Curried Goat with Rice and Beans. Lookin around at all the signed photos and seeing my new boss on the wall was a shock! Anyway we had a damn good laugh about it and he was pleasantly surprised that I had never seen Eastenders.

I got a bit famous myself actually this week. I was in all the local papers in Paddington last week while making my costume for Notting Hill. It was a full colour picture with my name on it and everything in the Paddington Times, Kilburn Chronicle and some other one

:: All this time, the Cowparade was in town, a public art exhibition featuring a load of fibreglass cows. London in the summer was a great place to be. ::
Thought I'd take the day off, seeing as my work at Raleigh is almost complete anyway. My weekend exhaustion collapse coupled with a free ticket on any southwest train that they sent me to be used any time in July led me to a fairly simple conclusion: The beach!

Anyway I thought I'd jump on a train and go to the Isle of Wight via Portsmouth Harbour but when I got to Portsmouth and found out that the ferry costs 8 quid I decided to just chill in the Harbour instead. And that I did to the max. Lunch and a few pints by the sea and I feel ready to take on the world all over again although this time I might think about taking it easy once in a while especially as this heatwave is making me a lot slower than usual.

Sight of the day: An old toaster that had been thrown away in a roadworks in the middle of Oxford street. How the fuck did it get there!?! We shall never know...

:: And this was made even more exciting by Fopp opening up in Covent Garden. I was the first person through the doors, having waited religiously outside the doors for 3 days. It was worth it just for the T-shirt, especially if Uy ever gets round to giving it back to me. Matt was in San Francisco at the time ::
Matt

I implore you don't come back to London. Stay where you are.

London is now SERIOUSLY dangerous for your wallet.

Fopp has opened in Covent Garden.

I waited outside there intermitently for 3 days for it to open and was the first customer to walk through the doors. I am truly honoured and I've even got a Fopp T-shirt now that I wear with pride. But that place is going to bankrupt me. Stay where you are and you will be safe.

:: I didn't at this point realise I was gonna be taking off for the states myself and almost pre-emptively I started getting hungry for world affairs ::

Went to the Library and got out some books in the morning - Librarys are great places because books are fantastic anyway and free books are even better. Anyway I got my books out and was absolutely certain that the lady at the counter gave me a funny look. Anyway it all fell into place when i got home and realised that I'd borrowed two books back to back and she had put them through one after the next. The first one was "Bin Laden - The man who declared war on America" by Yossef Bodansky and the next was "How to Live and work in America" and I think she may have rung the police after I left. D'oh!

Interesting stuff that's put a smile on my face today have been mainly printed in newspapers and coming through my letterbox. I've just opened a letter , probably from a cult or some sort of ripoff merchant advertising a "new course that teaches everything"(!) Well fuck me why did I bother to do a degree when a course like this exists! It gets funnier as you read the blurb that follows..."Would you like boundless energy? Interested in transforming your appearance? Keen to lose that excess weight permanently? This is the programme for you!" And as you can guess the answer to all of those questions from me is a resounding "No". Brilliant.

Just as funny is the claim on the radio that I've just hear: Apparently there is a swimming Pool in Greece which sells itself on the claim that if you swim around it 3 times you will get your virginity back. hmmmmm....

The shock value publication was found inside my copy of TNT. You may or may not be familiar with this magazine, it's free on the high streets of Town where it is in one of those pickup booth things alongside Ms London and Girl About Town Magazine. Anyway I was innocently reading my copy of TNT, the Aussie publication which is printed for the express purpose of instructing aussies over here where to go to take all our jobs, and a copy of "The Sensi Seed bank catalogue" www.sensiseeds.com for more info on what I'm talking about here. I couldn't believe it - they were selling weed seeds, full growing kits and full instructions - not in some specialist magazine for smokers but in a pickup magazine for australian temps! I always thought those aussies seemed a little too chilled out...

Cows around town include my new findings, "I love moo" and "the cash cow" (actual names) but my joint fave is still "eurostar" and "no 36 bus" (probably not their real names)