Art vs Magic

vs

You decide...

What's Great about Yarmouth?

Today I visited Great Yarmouth for the first time! I was very intrigued by the place; a town where industry and tourism seem to collide, resulting in something like a apocolyptic Mad Max scenario.


One thing that messed me up a little was the number of chip stalls around a confined area of the town centre. Within a space of 50 square metres there were at least 7 chip stands, however I have heard reports that there can be up to 13 at any given time.


However, these stands were not generic fast food outlets that sold a selection of fast foods, but instead were soley devoted to the chip and condiment market.


It almost feels like there is a law set in place which gives the freemen of Great Yarmouth the right to sell chips in the town centre. Was this plot in the town centre exempt from the enclosures act enabling free reign to fry?

This chip stall above was closed today! Due to the number of stalls do they rotate the days they are allowed to trade so as to make the chip market more sustainsable. I know this is a system that some towns operate with regards to fast food outlets; allowing several takeaways to operate - which can prevent a monopoly.


Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to try the chips as I did not have time. However, I hope to be back in Yarmouth over the following weeks as I have questions that need answering.

Work and Leisure

I won't stop until I've got a corner group sofa! I will then rest a while before I embark on the building of a square - made out of corner groups.

It won't be until then that I know I have truly made it.

Idea for a film # 1

A psychological, sexual paranoid thriller romance set in and around the Denys Lasdun designed brutalist University of East Anglia campus and Norman Foster's Sainsbury's Centre.

As most students have gone home for the summer vacation, 1st year fine art students Charlie and Lola (played by James Van der Beeke and Katie Holmes respectively and perpetually 19) stay for the remaining summer in their infamous zigurrat halls of residence as vacation wardens. Before they know it they become romantically entangled in a tumultuous love affair that lasts for six heady weeks.

Naive and in love, Jake and Florence think they have found their own utopia, a total space in their desolate institutional hinterland (set on greenbelt land on the cusp of Norwich city centre); their idle summer days spent swimming in the campus lake and seeing the Francis Bacon's at the Sainsbury's centre.

However, when a native American carved effigy mysteriously disappears from the Sainsbury collection, their utopia and romance is soon turned upside down. Will Charlie and Lola make it through their dystopic downfall and descend into postmodern mundanity or have a preservation order put into place to save them.

Think William Egglestone's saturated summer romance meets cold, brutal Kubrick. The film will be incredibly pretentious containing jokes only art scholars will understand. The films underlying message symbolises the death of modernism, a very intentionally average post modern sequel will probably follow featuring cameo roles by Norwich's very own Alan Partridge and Delia Smith.

Very informative

Have you ever been in a rush to catch the last post and you realise you need something quite menial like a ball of string or sellotape for a package and you haven’t got time to go into town to get them from Wilkinson’s (because they are cheap). Well, you now start to pin all hopes on your humble local shop to equip you with the fore mentioned articles. After a short walk of trepidation and thoughts of coming back empty handed you enter the shop. You now start to see the shop anew, like it was the first time; noticing things available for purchase that you've never spotted before!

Sewing kits, measuring tapes, a disparate selection of stationary, a mini screwdriver set and sun bleached pastel toned greetings cards can more often than not be found there (often hooked onto cardboard sheets in extremely awkward places). I find this hinterland of dusty neglected miscellany quite absurd - a sombre yet depressingly optimistic space that relies on the fact that there will always be someone desperate enough to pay over the odds for sundry items that have been there since the last Tory government.

Such an experience can prove somewhat distressing, especially as you frantically search with your imminent last post sweat on. However, the fine people of Crossley Wines in Fenham, Newcastle upon Tyne are trying to counteract such predicaments and have kindly notified their customers and passing trade of new items that they now sell in store; these being stamps, candles and balloons. I really appreciate this combination of goods as well as informative and advertising qualities the poster presents. I don't know whether Crossley Wines saw a market for stamps, balloons and candles in Fenham and were simply advertising their niche, or they had had many enquiries into whether they stocked such goods - and were now reassuring their public.

Whatever the reason, I would rather not know because the enchantment would be lost. However, I am sincerely touched by this poster and its personal undertones. The addition of 'at your Crossley' and a smiley face footer is naively endearing and presents to us a pride and personalised service that is often lacking from many a shopping experience.

This is not some quirky Innocent smoothiesque promotion of 'look at all the good things that are inside of me', or an alienated economies attempt to promote some kind of commercial togetherness. Oh no, this poster is a representation of Crossley Wines duty to the people of Fenham and they are proud of this. Crossley, we salute you.

Float like dumpling...

May the hot air let me rise; floating on in this stew of both good and bad bits.