Saturday, 27 June 2009


NEIL YOUNG MAKES YOU WANT TO STAY ALIVE. 
Just seen the bits the muppets at the BBC allowed us to see at Glastonbury. Glastonbury I would usually consider an kind of Nurnburg Rally of arsholes, but my GOD. He takes the place apart. My heart rises, we need more drinks, and Julie's heard from Ed Ruscha in LA and he loves her book 'Some Las Vegas Strip Clubs'. Whatever happens; KEEP ON ROCKIN IN THE FREE WORLD!
KEEP ON ROCKIN IN THE FREE WORLD BLAAAASAAACRASSH BANNGMEOOOWTWANGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRBAMMMM, and my ambition is to LOOK LIKE Neil Young or any or his prehistoric Crazy Horse.
The book is available via www.juliecookphotography.com

Thursday, 25 June 2009



Went down to the Flicker of Hope for a breakfast beer and to stroke the cat, Patch. Patch was entirely indifferent. It is the day after exams. Exams are never pleasant because you are forced to confront people who appear to have totally opposite opinions to you. Ideologies are in combat and a microcosm of global conflict situates itself across a table. There is a certain calm the day after.
More exciting was the postman, who for once I caught, who delivered my package- THE FIRST PORN MAG I EVER BOUGHT. Admittedly it was probably for twenty pence of my school friend who thought he was Keith Richards, but, thirty and more years on, I travel back in time, a second pristine copy to frame on the wall. The first was a document of incendiary potential, to be carefully hidden in a box of Cluedo.  How things change. How things don't. A completely ephemeral thing, somehow preserved, isn't it brilliant!  The internet has facilitated this, it is enabling us to travel in time, Kurt Vonnegut style (Slaughterhouse 5). 
The contents are kind of irrelevant, but never the less a historical time capsule; adverts for reel to reel tape recorders, scotch, MG's, hair transplants, and 'male chauvenist pig' ties, big muffs, girls from the farm, nice girls from Cheltenham Ladies College in frilly knickers. It is a genuinely strange encounter, for today I see a world of butt plugs and gaping holes. People seem surprised I could remember the item, even more that I should pursue it to join the collection of artifacts that make up our home.  But I'm as bemused by these people just as I am bemused at the screams for tomorrow that are still regurgitated by the architectural profession without thinking. There is too much action; Too little thinking. I imagine my own personal demonstration of thousands with placards saying 'What Do We Want? - LESS' 'When do we want it?- WHENEVER!

Wednesday, 17 June 2009

It's exam time, so I'm not blogging. So I'll just let you l know of my appearances on a couple of films. People seem very excited about my role in 'Hangover'. I appear looking rather good on the sides of many London buses, if a little younger. That's a about my misadventures in Las Vegas of course. I'm also a melancholic 'Ghost Writer' in Roman Polanski's new film played by Ewan McGreggor which is not out yet. Always enjoyed Ewan's bearded look from 'Long Way Round' where we all loved him but not his mate (the intricacies of favour in the fame game made tragically clear). We had to forward all sorts of details of our little life for Ewan to assume; favourite glass, coat, chair, god knows what- like a specification. Can't wait to buy copies of both from the obliging Mr Wu in 'The Trench'. 
Well and truly in 'The Trench' now as it's exam time. 
I'm glad beards are catching on once more. Saw the stuff from the Isle of White Festival when I wasn't in bed and it was clear no contemporary band was without a full beard. We loved the fact that we hadn't heard of anybody except Neil Young, who by the way you'd expect to be bearded but isn't, who I stayed up late to see, and then just got 'absence of Neil Young' (like 'Erased De Kooning') cos he'd just said 'Fuck it' for one reason or another and left the stage early so they just showed a field full of rubbish and re-runs of the fucking Stereophonics. Good reason to become a pop icon, to say 'Fuck it I'm off' and still get paid.
Have started my second novel; 'Not Long Till Lunch' (the follow up to 'Waking up is Hard to Do' which will be available in September).

Tuesday, 9 June 2009

I'm thinking of writing a story about a man who every time he turns on the television sees Steven Fry: Steven Fry hosting quiz shows, Steven Fry visiting far off places via tricycle, Steven Fry in comfortably English but rather dull situation comedies in the tradition of Dad's Army, Steven Fry making over celebrity hamsters on crack, Steven Fry the enthusiastic political analyst on crack, Steven Fry training for space, Steven Fry playing the mandolin for Metallica. Steven Fry's Grand Designs.
He sees nothing but the man until gradually and inevitably Steven Fry becomes the sole representative of mankind on earth, and everybody knows that Steven Fry is sometimes very depressed, and so therefore all earthlings are sometimes very depressed. Earthlings are sometimes very depressed because they can't help it because of how awful they are. Life would be considerably more bearable as a fucking squirrel they mutter to each other while pondering the bargain packs of Steven Fry Sausage Sensations for £1 in Iceland.
Unfortunately Steven Fry has no place left to run off to when he gets suddenly very depressed, so they have to make programs about that too, and creatures from other planets look on aghast at how awful earthlings are, since had long ago learned to behave otherwise. Then they decide to make Steven Fry the villain in their astoundingly successful intergallactic multi media entertainments based on dedicated studies of Star Trek and Galaxy Quest and then they laugh for centuries.
What happens if Britain goes bust?

Saturday, 6 June 2009

There is a restaurant on the upper floor of the brand new Thessaloniki/Macedonia airport thoughtfully and unfortunately and amusingly called the 'Goodbye Cafe'. Students of semiotics stand to attention. Thessaloniki, or Thessalonika, or Macedonia or call it whatever the fuck you like, was one place we were pleased to leave, a cross between Beverley Hills and St Albans in dust which even my Australian hairdresser (yes I do have one- just went there to tidy myself up- recommended- she's called Tegan- next to Coach and Horses Soho- £5 place but please tip heavy) mused as being 'run by the mafia- guys with moustaches'. It's a big place, and makes you want to run a mile to get out of it once you've been scared to death by your taxi driver getting in to it. Where one glass of wine and a beer in a crap bar was ten euro, where the food in the Ohhh Sooo cosmofuckingpolitan 'Bar Kitchen' on the old pier was unspeakable and fifty Euro, where you had to stare at complacent playboys and watch girls on TV twittering seriously about (I assumed) being 'SEXY', like dolls, where on your way out to the airport to escape, you pass mile after mile of kitchen stores and Mercedes dealerships. Made you think that if this is success, we are doomed. We are doomed. And I expect my own stiletto in the back. 
This of course, after the complications of life and death in hospital and the simplicity of fabulous food and hospitality in Volos. Made us re-think Big is Bad, Big is Worse. Should we not encourage a Gordon Ramsay in architecture? We need to get back to good stuff, to simple stuff done well, for people preferably, saying FUCK OFF to every deluded, wannabe fashionable architecture student in London? Oh well, just as well the exam season looms next week. 

Tuesday, 2 June 2009

I seem to have been barred from the hospital. Most unfortunate, since I've never been barred from anywhere else before. Of course I'm not sure I am really barred, we could put it down to a mere 'clash of cultures'. Anyway I scooted off back to the hotel. I now sit opposite a wheel shop - any kind of wheel or roller you might like, but passed other curiosities- a shop full of very shiny suits for instance, but spent 'lunch' in the pretty cool beach bar. I have never paid as much for a whisky in my life except at Zurich airport. We stayed there for ages as they buggered about with Pete in the hospital up the hill. We inhabit a form of zombie existence. The bar was good because the furnishings were well chosen, the hollow steel sections of it's structure and servicing articulate, and the music perfectly chilled Ibiza, it had air con, and nobody was there apart from three dogs. I like the beach dogs. We just stared out to sea and drank. I never thought I could find the passing of a boat so absorbing, but the Greeks have no problem with it. The Greeks do have a problem with styling however, even though I'm less than sartorial myself. The ladies inhabit a form of eighties fashion disaster and the blokes wear tee shirts with 'Hollywood VIP Decadence' printed on them.
Pete appears to be improving. We will be home on Thursday. At least that is the plan.