We missed the bridge's birthday. There was a competition, nine billion years ago, to design it, and when the person who wanted to win the most didn't win, he gently suggested the judges reconsider their verdict, then won. Some money might've changed hands. This is either speculation or what happened. I did all my research years ago, in five minutes, on a hungover visit to the bridge's then-new informative shed, consider all this unverified, as per, I never let my conclusions get hoodwinked by the truth. And I'm more of a tunnels man, anyway, but they're much harder to spot, and tend not to celebrate their zero years with explosive flamboyance.
We were fifty corners away hearing the fireworks while watching the people watch the TV. I like watching the people watch the TV. There should be a show where you watch people do the crossword. There should be an advert that if we're going to have to see it four times in an hour is different every time. There should be a publicly-funded broadcaster that doesn't spend all day advertising a Bond film.
Showing posts with label architect. Show all posts
Showing posts with label architect. Show all posts
Microconch
Outside the front of the train station in a place I wasn't expecting to visit, a man walking a hammerhead Labrador asked me if I knew what time it was. I looked behind and above me, having assumed there'd be a big accurate clock there and that we might then have a terrific little chinwag about how we don't look up enough when we're in cities, it's nice to notice the good bits every once a year or so, isn't it, god you're so right, nobody has ever met an architect. After I'd untwisted my neck and looked into his baffled eyes, I took out my phone, and it wasn't displaying any time because the battery'd gone. I looked at the Labrador's two-foot wide head and back at the man and said no. He said thanks for trying.
The Old Sense
That whiskey, there's a woman's face advertising it too. She's got something about love written on her in gold and her photo is black and white so you know she's from the past. I don't know who she is and neither does the internet. The adverts mainly appear in what used to be the chasm of despair but is now quite a nice road. Its buildings were designed by war-drunk architects who thought that the primary effect of all new structures should be to induce a whitewater flood of hopelessness in anyone who lived in, glimpsed, walked past or smelled them. So if they were bombed into chunky dust like their predecessors then nobody would really mind. Then in the nineties the IRA exploded the Manchester Arndale Centre but accidentally got the Corn Exchange too and all these architects got together and said sorry to Mo Mowlam and asked her to do something and she did and that's why things are better today. They didn't bomb this road in Bristol but it was recently niced up by loads of people who can paint massive things and some people who put fabric round trees so it's alright now and people take pictures of it and can even be seen openly enjoying themselves.
Many Thanks
Men queueing for the toilet will talk about men queueing for the toilet. A bright afternoon in the park and we were lining up to squelch into the darkness. The women in the women's queue were not outraged and one crossed over to say here is a taste of the gender-biased amenity-planning medicine we all have to swallow though it's only you who are sick. Banter was muttered.
I shuffled up. The trench was big enough for two and there were three of us at it, harmonising, I thought of previous privacies and noted the lack of phone numbers and appointment times written on the walls. No one washed their hands.
We finished our drinks and went back to Matt's and had more drinks and a curry. Went to the pub over the hill. Music was playing outside and a man on stage was trying to co-ordinate a mathematical hoedown. About twelve people joined in. We sat on a wall drinking gin. The pub began closing and we went to another one down the hill through the tunnel round the corner. We met some people. A woman drinking red wine sold us pills. We talked giddily about things important at the time. We speculated that the only effect the pills would have would be a jagged sense of loss and some unusual bowel mischief the next day. This would turn out to be true. We sat on a bench and drank pints and shots. Upstairs was dancing in a small room with chewy air and doof-doof music. I shook my birthday maraca. Maybe there was some Jagersomething. I had another conversation in the toilets about toilets. I was wearing black and white trainers Leo had found on the street and beginning to wonder if maybe whoever had lost them could be here right now looking and so for the rest of the night I tried to catch people glancing at my feet and made sure never to refer to myself below the knees.
We drank more and talked a bit louder and then went home to our houses, why can we say home to our houses but not house to our homes, there was no one to ask. Another thing Leo found on the street was the blue security-style jumper I was wearing which smelled quite remarkable which was good for keeping people away but I worried if maybe the shoulder patch things were a bit flamboyant for two thirty in the morning in St. Paul's and coupled with the long hair which is always a physical weakness I began hoping I'd make it back to the couch without being killed with a hammer, and I didn't see any people or hammers and when I lay down my teeth were heavy.
I woke up tremendous and bought a pastry full of fat magic and ate it walking and no one asked me for any money.
I shuffled up. The trench was big enough for two and there were three of us at it, harmonising, I thought of previous privacies and noted the lack of phone numbers and appointment times written on the walls. No one washed their hands.
We finished our drinks and went back to Matt's and had more drinks and a curry. Went to the pub over the hill. Music was playing outside and a man on stage was trying to co-ordinate a mathematical hoedown. About twelve people joined in. We sat on a wall drinking gin. The pub began closing and we went to another one down the hill through the tunnel round the corner. We met some people. A woman drinking red wine sold us pills. We talked giddily about things important at the time. We speculated that the only effect the pills would have would be a jagged sense of loss and some unusual bowel mischief the next day. This would turn out to be true. We sat on a bench and drank pints and shots. Upstairs was dancing in a small room with chewy air and doof-doof music. I shook my birthday maraca. Maybe there was some Jagersomething. I had another conversation in the toilets about toilets. I was wearing black and white trainers Leo had found on the street and beginning to wonder if maybe whoever had lost them could be here right now looking and so for the rest of the night I tried to catch people glancing at my feet and made sure never to refer to myself below the knees.
We drank more and talked a bit louder and then went home to our houses, why can we say home to our houses but not house to our homes, there was no one to ask. Another thing Leo found on the street was the blue security-style jumper I was wearing which smelled quite remarkable which was good for keeping people away but I worried if maybe the shoulder patch things were a bit flamboyant for two thirty in the morning in St. Paul's and coupled with the long hair which is always a physical weakness I began hoping I'd make it back to the couch without being killed with a hammer, and I didn't see any people or hammers and when I lay down my teeth were heavy.
I woke up tremendous and bought a pastry full of fat magic and ate it walking and no one asked me for any money.
Three Days Under A Bush
With the pine-needle carpet. Twenty feet away there was a twenty foot drop to the sea.
I heard seagulls only once.
There was a shop round the corner, a church down the hill, sunrise to the left, sunset to the right. I ate salami, drank water, started reading Moby Dick. I wanted something putdownable.
It was a different bush every night, plenty to choose from and no need to get complacent.
Joggers went back and forth on the cliffs. Cruise ships came out of Marseille, went to the right, turned into shoeboxes.
One night after the sun'd gone but the light remained someone played acoustic guitar for an hour.
A woman said be very careful with your papers.
To describe someone traveling alone they say arsehole. A seul. It's something to think about.
I phoned a farm. They said when can you get here. I said about a week. I went to Aix-en-Provence.
Architecture was everywhere. It was unstoppable. Cobblestones and fountains too, exploding. Most of the walls were a shade of yellow.
Art history used to live there. If you were a fan of Cézanne you'd be bouncing. I went to the Matisse exhibition.
Perpignan was giddy and had hot wafts of bin-stink creeping round it. Plenty of narrow roads uphill with tall houses either side and white litter circling. Palm trees on the main roads, men on the corners. It's Catalonia. Signs in two languages. The paper said someone's set fire to an apartment block again.
I stayed in a hotel that would've been dilapidated but they'd painted flowers and leaves all over the walls and furniture. They'd painted a cat halfway up the stairs and painted tiles around the bathroom mirror.
Near the uni were two men, one with an acoustic guitar and one with a keyboard set to piano and turned up to distortion. He used all the keys, it was a rushing ascending noise, it followed me round corners, you couldn't hear what the guitarist was doing.
I heard seagulls only once.
There was a shop round the corner, a church down the hill, sunrise to the left, sunset to the right. I ate salami, drank water, started reading Moby Dick. I wanted something putdownable.
It was a different bush every night, plenty to choose from and no need to get complacent.
Joggers went back and forth on the cliffs. Cruise ships came out of Marseille, went to the right, turned into shoeboxes.
One night after the sun'd gone but the light remained someone played acoustic guitar for an hour.
A woman said be very careful with your papers.
To describe someone traveling alone they say arsehole. A seul. It's something to think about.
I phoned a farm. They said when can you get here. I said about a week. I went to Aix-en-Provence.
Architecture was everywhere. It was unstoppable. Cobblestones and fountains too, exploding. Most of the walls were a shade of yellow.
Art history used to live there. If you were a fan of Cézanne you'd be bouncing. I went to the Matisse exhibition.
Perpignan was giddy and had hot wafts of bin-stink creeping round it. Plenty of narrow roads uphill with tall houses either side and white litter circling. Palm trees on the main roads, men on the corners. It's Catalonia. Signs in two languages. The paper said someone's set fire to an apartment block again.
I stayed in a hotel that would've been dilapidated but they'd painted flowers and leaves all over the walls and furniture. They'd painted a cat halfway up the stairs and painted tiles around the bathroom mirror.
Near the uni were two men, one with an acoustic guitar and one with a keyboard set to piano and turned up to distortion. He used all the keys, it was a rushing ascending noise, it followed me round corners, you couldn't hear what the guitarist was doing.
Brain Seasoning
Recently there was a request for some writing. It said:
Do us a line to go in an architect's christmas card. You know, instead of Merry Christmas. He's going to send it out to all his clients.
I will illustrate it.
About eight words perhaps.
Cheers.
It came from the Inkymole office, in the form of an email. Whenever an email arrives from an address ending in inkymole.com, my computer starts to sweat and makes a very loud clanging noise like the bells from News at Ten, and I put down my cupcake and inject myself with magic capability juice, a gallon of which I have on permanent standby, and get straight down to five or six consecutive minutes of brain-work, to figure out what the email wants. After this I know what I am required to do and can Guinness myself unconscious for a few days in preparation for what I like to call Actually Doing What I Know I Have To Do, an activity which I find is most exciting when the deadline is within sleeping distance.
In this case, I had to distil all the feelings of Christmas into eight or less words that also evoked the history, controversy and enchantment of the entire discipline of Architecture while making the clients, Axon-Beckett, seem like reasonable people, whom you might not shy away from consulting next time you were wondering how much it would cost to build an upside-down underground pyramid to house your family in when the end finally comes.
So I wrote down a page of Christmas words, then a page of Architect words, and looked at one, then at the other, and so on, for a day. And nothing happened. Then I put a page in front of either eye and tried to look through them, in the hopes the solution might drift in like a ghost. It didn't. I was disappointed. Especially because I was doing this in the pub, at the bar, and no one would even talk to me, let alone offer any assistance.
Then I looked up every quote from every architect ever and tried to think of an uber-quote-with-jingle-bells-on. I texted 118118 and asked what do architects say to each other at Christmas? But there was only a reply saying you haven't been charged.
So I walked slowly round Manchester, which is mainly made of buildings, many of which were designed by architects. While looking at the buildings I stroked my chin with a miniature Christmas tree and waited for words to engulf my brain like a swarm of something nice.
But nothing happened, so I dipped the miniature Christmas tree in red paint, thinking I'll go and write on the wall of a building, there can't be a better way to combine all the elements of the brief.
Then, just as I was about to start writing "Wots Ur Xmasterplan?" on the side of the Hilton Hotel, the five words above popped into my noggin, and I scuttled home to email them off.
And while I was typing them out I thought goshyplops, these words are terrible. Terrible. They will make me join the Writer's Register, just so they can strike me off. But the deadline is here. The deadline has been here for a while, actually, and I haven't even offered it a glass of water. I've been too busy producing nothing. I wonder if it will be generous enough to interpret doing nothing as striving. Hm.
But it turned out it was acceptable for everyone involved.
The end.
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