Oh, Copenhagen
Oh, Copenhagen. How I do not really miss thee but then again I do.
Recently I found Copenhagen Street Style - a Danish blog trying to capture all the hip young things gracing the streets of Copenhagen. Copenhagen is peculiar in the sense that you tend to see muted colours everywhere - black, beige, brown and the occasional daring navy - so I actually do applaud CSS's decision to feature people who dare break away from the safe colours.
It is just a shame that the featured fashion victims dare-devils haven't got a clue what they are doing. I get the idea of deconstructing fashion - actually, I also get how deconstructing fashion is circa 1998. I also get the idea of anti-fashion in the sense of reclaiming fashion and style from the hegemony of big bad cooperations and leading fashion editors. But anti-fashion is as much about knowing the semiotics of fashion as it is about rejecting tokenism. And, judging by the majority of the photos on CSS, these so-called fashionistas really do not have a clue. They are concerned about looking 'cool' (which in its own right is embracing the idea of fashion as the idea of 'cool' changes rapidly) and 'edgy'. Sadly they just end up looking like prats who are groping in the dark, to quote a well-known poet (or, in the case of the people pictured, like sad fans of the Reynolds Girls).
For your amusement (or horror, depending upon your sensibilities), I also would like to draw your attention to:
- when layering goes evil
- patterned mistakes
- the fashion version of burnt porridge
- the Danish ned
- the girl with no neck
- why skinny jeans should actually fit you
- someone likes a Flock of Seagulls (and should lose the bag and find a yellow belt that's not an homage to Karate Kid)
- pregnancy clothes r us if we lived in 1982 and in rural Denmark and only ate oatmeal
- and a random German guy in shorts
- yo! MTV raps but unfortunately on a skinny Dane
- words absolutely fail me except to say, 'poor girl'
I almost miss muted colours now.
The Clare McLean Shortlist
AL Kennedy, the recent winner of the Costa Book Award, has been nominated for the brand-new Scottish literary award, the Clare McLean Award. She is joined on the shortlist by Ali Smith and Alasdair Gray for "Girl Meets Boy" and "Old Men In Love" respectively.
(Oh, did I mention that I have a first edition of "Old Men in Love" signed personally by Gray "To Karie says Alasdair"..? I just thought I'd slip that one in.)
I'm a touch excited by this. I should also get around to reading Gray's latest novel - but I'm slightly anxious that I might defile my lovely copy somehow. Oh.
Me & QWERTY = <3
We went to the hospital today. I am going to have my brain-waves measured next week which is terribly exciting. I hope I do emit brain-waves and that they'll be interesting enough to result in a diagnosis.
Right, let's move on to something a bit more interesting:
+ Fun Facts about the QWERTY Keyboard
+ The QWERTY keyboard and how it was adapted in Russia/The Soviet Union
+ Why the QWERTY keyboard got its layout
+ The QWERTY Myth
Dodge Vs Lodge
Ah, the first of many possible author showdowns: David Dodge versus David Lodge. Popular culture author versus acclaimed literary critic and author. Is there really any competition here? Won't Lodge just throw Dodge to the floor?
Ah, but to quote Øystein at the I <3 Books messageboard: "Well, Dodge has a packmule and a one-eyed goth-trannie; Lodge has a tilde-spewing factory and a cricket bat-shaped woman. Really, Lodge had no chance here, poor fellow."
Also, I'd like to remind you, dear reader, that David Dodge wrote To Catch a Thief (the book). When did you last see Cary Grant or Grace Kelly in a David Lodge-based film?
Bitten By the Bug
If you look at the "Now Reading" bit in the sidebar, you can see that I'm tearing through the novels at the moment. Five novels thus far this month and that is not even counting Douglas Coupland's jPod which I finished just around the 2007-2008 shift. I'll be honest with you: I do not have much else to do at the moment than gulp down books.
Currently I am signed off work by my doctor because I keep having blackouts followed by muscle spasms. It's been like that for, oh, five weeks? On good days I can make it across the road to Tesco (and have a wee three-hour nap afterwards). On bad days I have to stay in bed and do as little as I can possibly manage. So I read.
I attempted reading Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle early this month but it was too absurd for someone whose life has become increasingly surreal these past few weeks. Instead I snuggled up with Sarah Waters' The Night Watch which seemed soothing - except the themes haunted my mind for ages afterwards. A read which crept up on me. My boyfriend bought me Susanna Clarke's mammoth Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell which I had attempted to read years before. This time I relaxed into its deliberately slow pace and savoured every sentence.
And then I realised I had been bitten by the reading bug once more. A fantastic feeling after having finished three books in the past six months.
Lucy Eyre's If Minds Had Toes and Margaret Atwood's Surfacing followed in quick succession. And today I finished Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones (and what an ace read that was!). I have a long list of books I'd love to read and a parcel of amazon.co.uk is making its way as we speak.
Don't get me wrong. I don't like being ill. But I dread to think how I'd manage the Current Situation if I didn't read. What would I do? Watch paint dry or - even worse - UK daytime TV?
NHS Delivers!
I'm seeing a neurologist on Wednesday which is great news. I've been waiting almost a month for this appointment. Stupid me for falling ill during the holiday season.
Joan Eardley
One of my biggest regrets about falling ill right now is that I have missed out on an exhibition of Joan Eardley's work. She is probably my favourite Scottish painter and I had been looking forward to the National Gallery of Scotland's first major Eardley exhibition. Before Christmas I was too busy to find time to make the trek to Edinburgh (and to be honest, the prospect of travelling anywhere near the middle of Edinburgh at the height of the shopping season scared me profoundly), but I had promised myself that post-Christmas I'd have a few weeks to catch up. As it turned out, I did not. Grrr.
But Eardley is wonderful. The painting I posted above ("Two Children") can be seen at Glasgow's Kelvingrove museum. The piece is big, powerful and almost overwhelming. It feels out of time - very modern, very traditional and very much of its time .. all at once. The Eardley paintings I have been fortunate to see all share this strange quality; they also share a quiet anger, an air of resigned melancholy. Her famous depictions of children have an odd, almost urban art feel to them coupled with a traditional motif (- and I cannot resist her almost nonchalant use of lettering). Eardley's later landscapes are almost abstract by comparison.
In unrelated news, I'm halfway through Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. I tried reading it a few years ago but gave up after 45 pages or so. This time I'm mostly confined to my bed and am enjoying taking my time with the book. Sometimes you have to be in the right frame of mind for a book to find you.
Apologies to WCW
This is just to say
that amazon.co.uk is
running a couple of promotions
which end on Sunday.
I just placed an order worth
roughly £18 for some fiction
that would've set me back far more.
Forgive me but the books were
so delicious
so sweet
and so cheap.