We've talked a lot over the years of this blog about ordinary objects suddenly taking on human characteristics. You know the sort of thing: Adolf Hitler in your half eaten toast, Sarah Smart on the bloom of a peach, Andrew Mitchell out of a hastily discarded bicycle chain. Regular visitors to Unmitigated England will also recall that I can never remember the name for it. 'Para' something I think. Anyway, anyway (as Harry & Paul have it) I settled down to paint this year's Christmas Card, having not attempted one for six years or so. I carefully mixed my Designer's Gouache to a suitably custard-like consistency and applied my brush to the paper. All of a sudden my fingers twitched and this apparition appeared before me. Someone looking over my shoulder said "That's you that is". Merry Christmas Everybody!
PS If you want to see a Christmas pudding by a master, take a look at the 'currant' posting on James Russell's blog.
Friday 21 December 2012
Monday 17 December 2012
Down The Cut
On Saturday evening My Neighbour Who Knows What I Like rang. "Get yourself down to Foxton Locks tomorrow. They've drained them and you can go down to the bottom". Youngest Boy and I didn't need any further encouragement, even though it was on our local news. So having breakfasted on smoked mackerels and espressos (well, I did) we set off into the bright cold morning. I'm so glad we made the effort. Superb presentation, the people of the Canal & River Trust, scaffolding and ladders, meant that we were able to stand where no members of the general public have ever stood before. These awe-inspiring brick chambers were constructed between 1810 and 1814, completing the famous staircase of locks at Foxton that lowered traffic down onto the Midland Plain and into the River Trent, or upwards and southwards to Watford. We leant against dripping walls, splashed on the orange brick floor and peered into a deep hole in the lock wall where the water would normally rush in to fill the chamber. I explained how it worked to YB, but I'm afraid the high point for him was discovering a drenched and long lost sock just visible in the gloom.
Friday 14 December 2012
Package Tour
In many ways it was the high spot of the day. After all, it could only go down hill after this lot. We have this annual beano in London that actually takes place in everything but every year, and after being summarily ejected from the Walmer Castle in Ledbury Road because it didn't open until midday (well keep the door locked then) we ended up in Colville Mews at this museum. I'd seen it before, many years ago when it graced an old canal warehouse in Gloucester Docks, but was still totally unprepared for just how utterly brilliant it is. As the Daily Telegraph quite rightly said, this is 'a place of worship'. I had to be restrained from continually dropping to my knees in front of the most superb examples of commercial art to be seen anywhere. If you call yourself a graphic designer (or whatever) and haven't been in, or made a promise to visit the mews as soon as you can, I shall send the Violent Brothers round to your studios in their big black Maybach limo. If you're as old as I am, you may simply enjoy it just for the nostalgia kick, (my pal said he remembered standing on two Watney's Party Seven cans to watch a stripper in a pub), but if you care about the craft of illustration, hand drawn lettering and classic typography, come down here and see just how good it got. All credit to Robert Opie for starting it off with a Munchies wrapper, and credit to the Gold pub in Portobello Road for being there for us at 11.15 with a warm welcome and excellent pints of Harvey's Bitter.
Monday 26 November 2012
Christmas Is Coming
A few weeks ago I promised I'd tell you when the signed and numbered special edition of Preposterous Erections was available. Well, an emptying stack of boxes now sits at the Goldmark Gallery, and you can order a copy here. Or better still ring the gallery on 01572 821424. I'm very pleased with the production of it, everything from the Horton Tower label placed in its recess on the front cover cloth to the contents of the red pocket at the back. This has a sheet of pretend stamps tucked in it showing nine of the towers (Royal Mail Stamps please take note) and a limited edition signed print of my cappriccio painting of seventeen of the towers. Enigmatically complete with a giraffe and an elephant. This particular edition is limited to only 100 copies, and is a non-preposterous £50.
Labels:
Bibliophiles,
Campaniles,
Elephants,
Eyecatchers,
Giraffes,
Stamps,
Towers
Friday 23 November 2012
Unexpected Alphabet No 20
I've been reading Ian Nairn's incomparable Nairn's London recently, and mused over his phrase, used a couple of times, of places being 'plugged into the big city'. Well yesterday I found the perfect example of what he meant. I was in conversation with the good folks at Daniel Lewis & Sons on Hackney Road. For 215 years they have supplied London with metals of all shapes and sizes, and much more besides. I was there discussing a pallet of thin aluminium sheets being printed on by the Goldmark Atelier for the inimitable Nelly Duff gallery, coincidentally just round the corner in another fascinating city enclave, Columbia Road. "They're doing what with them?" they said at Lewis's. "And who's the Goldmark 'otel anyway?". So it went on, until I noticed the afternoon sun highlighting this enormous wooden coat-of-arms on the wall. And then, as we ended up out on the pavement, I saw this beautifully lettered vitreous enamel sign, presumably denoting a previous encumbent. With that comma hinting at another sign now missing from the next bay down. And I just had this overwhelming feeling of London life going on for so long in this terrace of businesses, stretching back over the years. The shouts and arguments, the clanking of iron and steel and trains whistling and rumbling over the nearby railway bridge in and out of Cambridge Heath station. Somebody came in and asked for 24 big rubber wheeled castors- "With or without brakes?"- and a pretty girl poked her nose in through the door, thought about saying something and decided not to. All of us plugged into the big city.
Monday 15 October 2012
Lamport in Diapers
Lamport is a small estate village roughly halfway between Market Harborough and Northampton. On the main road you can see a pair of magnificent swans rearing up on the gate posts to the mid seventeenth century Lamport Hall, and turning into the village one notices
the charming juxtaposition of the Hall to All Saints church. The village street runs inbetween them without visual hindrance from the Hall, and it's down here that we will find the polychrome brickwork of the 1854 estate cottages. We often seeing decorative brickwork like this, but on this scale? It's as though someone read the plan wrong, as in Spinal Tap's miniature Stonehenge. We call it 'diaper', meaning an ornamented pattern, a word also used by our friends across the Atlantic for nappy. Quite how that happened is a mystery, unless it's to do with criss-cross patterning being water and whatever-else-proof. My second photograph above (doesn't England look good at this time of year?) is of another Lamport estate house positioned deliberately, one imagines, a little bit away from the madding crowd.
Wednesday 10 October 2012
A Bouquet for Cheltenham
Well. A very big thankyou to those of you who found me in Gloucestershire yesterday for The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed myself so much in a tent. It was quite extraordinary, and thankyou so much to my new friends who so generously looked after myself and Only Daughter. Even Frankie Dettori managed a smile over his crustless cucumber sandwich. Coming up soon: Diapers in Lamport.
Labels:
Lighting,
Monitors,
Pretty Girls in Abundance,
Remote Mikes,
Stages
Tuesday 18 September 2012
Preposterous
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS5ubFaxrSfyjvkWElLMzJqRdUmBDwevNx9DQamEppJkpD3NvPAXzt95h_O_v3OL6xWQdpSl5dPsGzWSUVpglE3Ek0euuRmply7ODFbMwzdwBfrt6JNUwuWzgCWIQDDqT8p-VLvnxdDMij/s400/Preposterous+Trade+Scan.jpg)
If all this wasn't enough, in a few weeks time the Goldmark Gallery are issuing a limited edition hardback. I'll be posting about it soon, but there'll be only 500 hardback copies, of which 100 will have a pocket containing a set of tower stamps and a signed Preposterous Erections cappricio print containing seventeen of the towers. After all this I shall need to go and lie down. Preferably on top of a tower somewhere with suitable company.
Friday 14 September 2012
Seeing Red
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQkNeHQGq0oyQoM5UctYRJpvPd0DNYjld8h_BoY9vcdVZBl0AumlLUtHouVpbd48BquXrLYlT1jr_lBr4BEjeEMTOVgCk08WT7-MtKz0wpuBQd749IJMTGJuoc5ir602F5rdgbKWJUkf8_/s400/Red+Poster.jpg)
Labels:
Lyle's Black Treacle Tin,
Magic Markers,
Maltesers,
Old Spice
Monday 10 September 2012
Brighton Rocks
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![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBjEdM2MRFaBf35JPYGM3b8S74McU0fQr4mHUhyphenhyphenVOiWw6Wylg2DXpclH_edagQqLuGaKlmoJ2slRLJ1pcSWO5gA_vN88PufEi6Ff2lfm0SZUpagSgW4VBrqxwJ0_G8GWnoimAfPMYnHuTA/s400/Blog+Brighton+Polka+Dot.jpg)
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And so to Brighton. Well, Hove, actually. Although you never really go to one without the other. We turned up on Hove Lawns at 8.30 in the morning, for a reason that I'm sure will be expounded upon soon by the inestimable Wartime Housewife. For the first time in years I was able to just relax and take it all in. Being so early meant the light was just right for snapping Nash & Georgie's Holiday Pavilion. And oh what light. This time of the year means the sun's lower, perfect for photographing all those extravagant terraces and squares by father and son architects Amon and Amon Henry Wilds, and for picking out the details in shop windows in The Lanes. I chatted to a bloke who was doing the music for a film on Cezanne (only in Brighton), and he was revisiting the town after having lived here for ten years or so. "You have to watch it", he said, "It gets very seductive". I know what he means. It's any number of towns for me. The Brighton of Graham Greene's novel and the 1947 film Brighton Rock still showing through, the Brighton of the Len Deighton-scripted film of Oh! What a Lovely War that one uses to put back the vandalised West Pier. Piper aquatints, Southdown buses. The air, the light, the people. And that so pertinent quotation by Keith Waterhouse: "Brighton always looks like it's helping the police with their enquiries".
Wednesday 29 August 2012
Atten-SHUN!
This is especially for those of you still out there. (Distant chorus: "No we're not!) A good workman never blames his tools, as they say, but I do find the new way of having to do things on Blogger a real nuisance. It was all so simple and straightforward in the olden days. Anyway:
London never ceases to amaze me. I found myself yesterday in Wilton Row, which is basically the mews for Wilton Crescent in Belgravia. And found this, The Grenadier pub, complete with what looks like a genuine sentry box outside. Very useful for propping-up over subscribers I should think. By my reckoning this must be the nearest pub to Hyde Park Corner, but the usual London hub-hub seemed very distant. All was quiet, literally just the sound of my pint of London Pride being pulled. (Four quid- of course.) I could have stayed some considerable time had my business in an adjacent mews house not beckoned me. But it will still be here, as it has been since 1720 when it was built as the Officers Mess for the First Royal Regiment of Footguards. It became a pub proper in 1818, named The Guardsman. The roping off, reminiscent of the barriers at film premieres, is to corral customers onto the pub pavement, presumably to stop them straying into the very exclusive hinterland. And yes, it's every bit as good inside.
Saturday 21 July 2012
On The Road Again
Back in the mists of time, well, 2009 to be precise, I drew attention to the paucity of design and marketing skills that had gone into the replacement Walls Ice Cream 'identity'. Never again, I thought, would we see the bountiful blue swirling letters on a cream background, still doing their job on a fine summer's day. Imagine my joy then, to come up behind this on the road between Caldecott and Uppingham in Rutland. Any minute now, I thought, a Foden petrol tanker will come the other way with 'Regent' on the side.
Labels:
Classic Scripts,
Cornets,
Ice Cream,
Stop Me And Buy One,
Wafers
Wednesday 4 July 2012
Tuesday 5 June 2012
Fired Up
A truly unforgettable experience, as I'm sure it was for thousands who climbed their nearest high point to ignite Diamond Jubilee beacons. We had gathered in the gardens of a house in the village to eat, drink and be merry whilst Youngest Boy spent four hours somersaulting down a bouncy castle. And then, at ten o'clock we convened in the dark road outside (our village has no street lighting thank goodness) and followed an enormous English flag up to the top of whale-backed Slawston Hill. As we ascended we pointed out flaring lights on the surrounding high points to each other, and then our own blaze sent fire, smoke and flying embers up into the sky as if competing with the big full moon that came out of a wisp of cloud at exactly the right moment. I stared out into the black distances, thinking of those in neighbouring villages gathered around their beacons, looking over to ours. Youngest Boy was simply awestruck, running about with his mate trying to catch flying spots of fire in the air until we gradually drifted off down the hill and back into the village street, saying 'goodnight' to our fellows in the darkness like Thomas Hardy characters coming home.
Saturday 2 June 2012
A Wiltshire Summer Morning
What to do for the Jubilee I thought. Polish up the Coronation Oxo tin? Yet again scan the 'Our Queen' transfer book? Too obvious. Too Unmitigated perhaps. But then I remembered. I had my own personal portrait of Our Queen. In 2008 I was suddenly thrust into taking pictures at a garden party at the Royal Artillery's Larkhill barracks in Wiltshire. I expected just to get shots of Chelsea Pensioners tucking into cream cakes, or, if I was lucky enough, detailed close-ups of tanks in battle-ready positions. I got all of that, but beforehand I found myself almost alone behind the press pack barrier, right opposite the Guest of Honour as she was about to unveil a new stone sign for the barracks. Happy Diamond Jubilee Your Majesty.
Labels:
Diamond Jubilees,
Gold Braid,
Pink,
Polished Bentleys
Monday 28 May 2012
Cig Lit.
I've been away for so long Blogger have gone and changed the format for writing posts. Anyway, grovelling apologies for such a prolonged absence. Much is happening in Unmitigated England, but amongst many good things is that today a friend appeared clutching The Cigarette Papers in his hand. "Sign this" he said. It wasn't supposed to be out until early June, but here it is. If there's anyone still out there reading this, you'll remember that this book has been in gestation for at least five years. It's my eulogy for the cigarette packet, when they were beautifully executed pieces of design and without hectoring government notices and lurid photographs plastered all over them. It's full of still life photographs and galleries of packs and cigarette cards, accompanied by my stories, anecdotes and extracts from literature- Gauloises being lit up by Len Deighton's nameless hero, that sort of thing.
I've had such fun putting it together: having ideas, choosing locations, discovering sentences in odd places like a Gold Flake packet appearing in John Cowper Powys' A Glastonbury Romance. An evening at a workbench in an isolated Northamptonshire shed, an afternoon amongst roadside dandelions, and a memorable morning on a Cumbrian beach waiting for the sun, whilst my glamorous assistant impatiently stood by waiting to ripple a rock pool with a stick. A really big thankyou to all of you who helped. I enjoyed it all immensely, I hope you will too.
I've had such fun putting it together: having ideas, choosing locations, discovering sentences in odd places like a Gold Flake packet appearing in John Cowper Powys' A Glastonbury Romance. An evening at a workbench in an isolated Northamptonshire shed, an afternoon amongst roadside dandelions, and a memorable morning on a Cumbrian beach waiting for the sun, whilst my glamorous assistant impatiently stood by waiting to ripple a rock pool with a stick. A really big thankyou to all of you who helped. I enjoyed it all immensely, I hope you will too.
Labels:
Gauloises,
Gitanes,
Gold Flake,
Kensitas,
Passing Clouds,
Players,
Senior Service,
Woodbine
Monday 2 April 2012
Off We Go
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Monday 19 March 2012
Woolly Thoughts
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Tuesday 21 February 2012
Boots On Parade
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcZLKvtWdz-6O8eBXi5jb-DjOlymXUNVleIZ83ZMhnhj379DE95Fx5vY4PoNLXFLmTedzc4MxKMx4PDWallrPTFQaCqMRpMtscCR1JFvKKfSYZP1yomWG41pRdli477R7nvuRdOTbXwCf3/s400/Blog+Boots.jpg)
Tuesday 14 February 2012
Wooden Heart
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrB3I9pvD3XDZIv7S_VnHt1CYnc0ABgJ4jveO9C3g1QgT8WqtsynzBzOReZ1pyoPxHe3rE_Dv1RJBTOxbKcomz1oxbfK2pdm7q4plrEHMItYXUYd0WaP3Ar5gNqNC_c1hyphenhyphenlnpeJNLgM-fE/s400/Love+In+A+Wood.jpg)
Tuesday 24 January 2012
Essential England
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2vqpH5bIrRKXDQ0d-1VWCGpvMdiQ0UMq3fKULeD7S5g3eDwRCo8IO9s5kloBFqHv85zR22QtUkgGb2eV33ro4pty3jEPXVzoAjoxwG4PRhQvPzfG-_WyJcs-W-rauXa47Ko83WC1UWa3m/s400/Blog+Picture+Map.jpg)
Labels:
Bare Essentials,
Holidays,
Picture Maps,
Postcards
Thursday 12 January 2012
Wooden Top
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSClBn0-ECwIwwBTkr8zw8wFYUSC8bs85GzHJTRf1WcV1zPGjv7CDb0bfDyCYDtAqckj9MA0f7VypqXxbX0vH8Y-q8ATXLQYcffkKUcRwDWgnv7TDcNhzpOmJhYQFSAAi7fE9guzTD4Tss/s400/Chilterns+Figurehead.jpg)
Wednesday 4 January 2012
Unexpected Alphabet No 19
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGs8Mh_mh443L6K2iIA8g1-yggB61Mkn5aIK6iYxk9cZQIMkK3ACDs16u3LQJJzhd98MwyiFaSSjxtAgkzbNResrjf_8rTBj6Id5s0dkwXBZAHkCdc6oOcg0QocleYqA5GM1GrnGNamtUu/s400/Blog+Towers.jpg)
Sunday 1 January 2012
Numero Uno
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