Ahhh I’ve gotten a life all of a sudden

I’m not quite sure how that happened, it’s weird. I’m probably going to this – if I can find it anyway – this evening, which should be interesting. I was trying to figure out how on earth you could feasibly keep something like that in a collection, takes up a lot of room…but how nice would that be to have a room just full of that? And then this on Monday (I know where that is), would have been more useful earlier this semester but hey ho. And then I’m doing a Japanese woodblock course tomorrow and Sunday… I can’t quite decide what I’ll print, maybe drawings or maybe morse code, because that’s nice in colour and I could probably manage layers for that. Which is all very nice and art-y, so to ruin that I did something student-y (which is probably more impressive than arty things) and went to a different pub and drank horrible wine out of tea cups and watched Monty Python early in the morning. Not on my own I’d like to point out (…not this time…).

Although all of that is probably ruined by the fact that I sit in the library for fun.

Getting behind on days again, there hasn’t really been anything good for a while. I think there’s some good ones in June though. I didn’t do the 19th (frog jumping jubilee day), partly because I forgot and I have no idea what I would have done anyway. The 20th was pick strawberries day - hard given that I don’t have a garden, let alone strawberry plants – and be a millionaire day, for which I looked at useless things I’d probably buy if I could. Including a tent that looks like a huge book. 21st was endangered species day, so here’s a very very long list. 22nd was buy a musical instrument day - which I didn’t do, but I did sell a musical instrument, technically…although how musical a 30p whistle thing is I don’t know. Yesterday was world turtle day, so cute pictures of turtles… Today is tiara day. I don’t own one, and I refuse to wear one. Best of all, tomorrow is towel day, do you know where your towel is? (Also – don’t panic, but grades come out soon aaggggghhhhhh)

I got my books eventually, CHANCE is nice. Really nice. I finished Has Modernism Failed?, but I don’t have the notes for that with me so I can’t really go on about it. Imagine that I did instead.

We got sent some stuff for the Highcross thing, things to look at. So voila – The £100 Shop, the vacuum cleaner and a list of things using hair (I could always go back to the weird hair fetish thing…perhaps not).

Whisky + books

Possibly the best combination of things ever…seeing as it’s world whisky day and it’s not like I need an excuse for books. I found a Talisker about as old as I am, which is odd in a way, and tasty sounding lip balm. I got bored being in my flat so went wandering to the main library (despite the large quantities of rain), I even managed to find the book I wanted (unheard of), but gained several I didn’t intend on getting (not unheard of). I bought another few as well which haven’t been delivered yet – a copy of Ulysses because even though reading a PDF is easier in some ways it’s not as nice and I can’t write over or mark nice things or anything and this, I’ve been meaning to look at them for ages. Might be useful given that my boredom-induced searching of the portal (I have no idea how I’ve only sort of recently found the search thingy on the portal so I can find all sorts of stuff) revealed lots of visual culture-y things, and an assessment based on that series of books.

Evidently I’m in a theory-ish mood rather than drawing, so I’m reading Has Modernism Failed? (which I was meant to do ages ago) and I’ve got Six Years (there was an exhibition about Lippard/Six Years on at the Brooklyn Museum when we were in New York) and something I only picked for the title to read too. Should keep me quiet for a while. I’ve packed up my books, except for…some, so my shelves are sad and empty. I don’t like packing at all, hence starting very very early. As for whisky, Laphroaig because that’s all I’ve got (not that that’s a bad thing at all).

 

There’s very little to add really, I just wanted to share the whisky happiness. Yesterday I wore a graduation gown that someone had left on a bus and finally managed to get the card machine right, I got called hen a lot. And met a man from Alaska who makes stained glass and bought a fish knife. I’m trusting his judgement that it was a fish knife, because it’s not like I have any idea about knives, or fish for that matter. I can finally do the tagging gun thing right now as well – instead of either wasting a lot of tags trying to do it or stabbing my fingers. No real excitement, there’s a talk next week with the nice-spice-thingy-guy (what is his name?) which I might go to, and I’ve got woodblock printing next weekend. And then the weekend after that I think is looking-at-degree-show-ing.

Today I declared my love for a tree

Which is entirely appropriate, given that it’s love a tree day, I haven’t completely lost the plot. I hope it appreciated it. Today is also wear purple for peace day, which I did as best as I could. I hope my purple DMs, and one sock will inspire peace… But here’s the lucky tree anyway.

I will not admit to dancing like a chicken for the 14th (dance like a chicken day), but I did manage to sell a straw hat on straw hat day (yesterday). Saturday will be easy enough - whisky day.

Mostly drawings, and then some fun history stuff about Leicester and dead people and heretics. I went for a wander, I was only meant to be going to find a tree but got distracted drawing and reading, which isn’t so bad really seeing as it didn’t really rain today (I got so soaked yesterday walking home). Starting with the bench I always sit on at the top of the canal. I’ve given up on reality, well drawing it anyway. I can’t do accurate (at all, ever, for anything), so it may as well be deliberately un-real. Easier to do lines all over the place (and tends to look better than if I try for real-ish).

For reasons unknown – people. Well, no. Not unknown. When I was in the shop on Saturday afternoon there was three of us in, all students, talking about our degrees when it got quiet. I think I won for best degree ever – no exams (so much love for that at the moment) and I can get away with drawing stick people (compared to maths – lots of exams – and chemistry – even more exams and lab time). Except I realised I haven’t drawn stick people. So I did some stick people. Really really quick, just as they were walking past me. Except some were running, so they got drawn sort of in two positions, so if you could tell one from another they’d look pretty mutant.

And then onto the Meadows in search of a tree to love.

And then the main library, because I happened to be walking that way and was lacking anywhere else to go. No library-ing though, just coffee and reading history books. I can’t find anything in that library at all and I’ve got more than enough to be reading at the moment. Some less stick-like people too. It’s hard to draw people without looking like you’re obviously drawing people.

More words too, I had to wait for ages to get much for the canal or the meadows.

 

I’ve come up with a sort-of map to help with the history bits, because I don’t know street names in Leicester, except obvious ones like where the house is. And High St. And it’s unbelievably hard trying to get my map of Leicester in my head to fit with an actual map, I’m not sure I could get round Leicester with a map, I’ve never done that, whereas I know my way round Edinburgh from maps, at least I know how things join up here. I’ve got no idea in Leicester, I just appear in places having walked there somehow. The purple dot is where the space is (roughly), the red line is the high street. St Peter’s Square is the kind of open bit between a lot of buildings, it’s where the Christmas tree goes, or one of them – is there still one by the clock tower? I don’t know… The colour coding should make sense in a sec.

 

I’ve not finished the book yet, so there’s probably more to come back and add another time, and the book is from the excavations in the 80s, so possibly out of date. But it’ll do for now. Focusing on St Peter’s church for now, because that’s interesting.

The first direct reference to St Peter’s Church was round abouts 1200 (as the parish between All Saints and St Martin’s), although it was probably one of the six parishes recorded in the 1086 Domesday Survey of Leicester. They’ve only seem to have found one wall of the church, which is around St Peter’s Lane (name might give it away…). It’s possible the cemetery was near Freeschool Lane (yellow), seeing as that used to be Dead Lane. Most of this bit of the city seems to have been gardens and orchards for several centuries, in 1804 the area around St Peter’s Lane (green) and East Bond St (blue) was described as having a bowling green and tea gardens anyway. It’s guessed the church fell into decay at some point during the sixteenth century – in 1587 High St and E. Bond St were ‘in decay’ and a particularly bad plague epidemic of 1593 meant Leicester was sealed off. In 1599 the Mayor wrote that in over 2000 years Leicester was ‘never as poor as today’.

Stone from the church was used to build a number of things, including the old grammar school on High Cross St (pink). In 1892 a portion of the west wall and lower part of a tower were exposed along St Peter’s Lane and E. Bond St, in 1920 a font (or rather pieces of) was supposedly recovered, although it’s not entirely clear where from. Jumping back a bit…on Christmas Eve 1306 a clerk (‘Simon the Welshman’) was stabbed in the head by the vicar for being late to come ring the bells, he lived for two days, and throughout the 14th century there seems to have been a fair few heretics, one (either Matilda or Maud, no one seems quite sure) lived in the churchyard. I think that’ll do (meaning I’ve run out of interesting notes). Apart from the Earl of Huntingdon lodged Mary Queen of Scots (amongst others) in his town house on the high street (or what was once the swine market).

Not many stories to add either.

13.5.13

“Bringing your boyfriends into the shop now, are you?”

 

I apparently still hate music. Which is entirely justified given that he decided to play a truly terrible selection of the ‘best dance music ever’ (CD 6). I have to turn it off once this comes on. I go for the safe option of Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash.

 

“Aren’t you a bit young to be having hot flushes?” Everyone else is permanently cold and insist on having the heater on. It’s not cold in there!

 

15.5.13

I get a snazzy t-shirt to wear for a photo on Friday. Lothian buses are coming to take pictures of us, because we get all their lost property. Lots of umbrellas.