I found these pictures the other day and thought I’d put them up. This woman collected bottle tops for years until she had enough to decorate her house and out houses. I’ve started my collections, donations please to the address on my website…now all I need is a house!?
James Joyce is making it big in China according to this Guardian article. Finnegans Wake has been pain stakingly translated and has hit the no.2 best seller spot in shanghai. The book has been split into three segments with the second underway already.
You can read the article here
So Denise has done it again…
She was commissioned by the New York Times to draw two Oscar nominated actors. Here’s a link to the magazine and her drawing of Daniel Day Lewis
She’s also had her drawings turned into notebooks for The Curved House which you can check out on treesforthewoods.
So it’s been a while and I haven’t posted. I’ve neglected my site a little, the portfolio needs updating and my blog needs a good old post…so I found this one.
Playboy landed in my inbox this morning. Mat Dolphin a design group in the UK blogged about the cover images of the magazine and I have to say, though I’m not an avid reader of Playboy, the covers are pretty cool!
They’re from the early addition of the magazine and the handmade, cut out style looks great. I’m not sure the covers are as considered nowadays but sure what would I know, I rarely reach for the top shelf!!
“Ssh Helena, don’t look them in the eye,” Monica whispered as we rolled slowly through Athy.
The mob stood either side, solemn, angry even.
“Go back where ya came from Scum!” a balding man roared from his rolled down window.
What had we done? One hundred strong, two wheeled, Kilkenny cats set off from various parts of our marble county that sunny Saturday morning, with thoughts of Croker and Liam and all things good. We wore black and amber with pride and were greeted with rapturous applause until we crossed the county line. Once in foreign lands, we were a swarm of bees at a picnic.
“I don’t think anyone wants us to win Aine,” I said as we careened through Kilcullen.
“Up Galway!” a wheel chaired woman roared waiting at the traffic lights for the peloton to pass.
“She’s from feckin’ Kildare! Like that’s not even near Galway!?”
“It’s in Leinster,” Sinead smiled.
I shook my helmeted head, Geography was never my strong point.
Naas was no better, though we got the odd smile from a Cat in hiding. The motorway saved our spirits, honking horns of fellow County folk on the way to the big smoke spurred us on and even the lack of a Garda escort, all called out on account of the IRA, couldn’t dampen our spirits.
As we free wheeled down the tree lined streets by Pheonix Park we were alive, like we knew the boys would be on Sunday. The blood pulsed in our worn out veins, we pucked the points, gloried the goals, were there shoulder to shoulder with Shefflin and had Tommy’s back. We were the Cats who’d get the cream.
Sundays sore legs and heads told a different story as we took Kavanagh’s 9.30 to Kilkenny. Galway gave it a shot but when you’re the Man United of hurling (and modesty knows no bounds) it’s hard to feel down, the tails not between the legs yet!
I often play with relocation, sure isn’t variety the spice of life they say. The hassle’s a big thing. Pack everything up, put your life in a box only to take it out in a new place with new people and start again. If only, I’ve often thought, I could just move my house, literally. Tie on a few balloons, they’d add colour maybe even become a garden feature. When the whim took me, I’d let them loose, go where the wind blows. My flatmates of course would come too. I’d fly overnight, leave no room for discussion, limited choices you see lessens the arguments. They’d wake up one morning and step out onto a new street and we’d all be happy til the whim took again.
That’s exactly what Laurent Cherhere has done. He’s floated lots of Parisians house then taken great effort to photograph them. Many have gone missing in the prevailing winds but sure isn’t that part of the adventure. You can view more of Laurent’s work here www.laurentchehere.com
Now all that’s left to do is buy a house, shouldn’t be a problem.
There once was a fellow named Tim,
who was really, put politely, quite dim.
He had a problem with the size of his feet,
wanted them dainty and tidy and neat.
One day, a renowned doctor friend,
told Tim he was headed round the bend.
Wrote a prescription for an incredible shrink,
who was paid to just sit there and think.
He said “um and ah and well…
I see the problem, the solutions quite swell!”
Sitting up from his leathered arm chair,
he fixed poor Tim with a stare.
“Go home and fill up your belly,
with chocolate and doughnuts and jelly.
And bread and potatoes and meat,
’til your belly starts to swallow your feet.”
Tim followed docs orders to a tee,
soon the evidence he could literally see.
His feet being eaten away,
were half their size by the middle of May.
Now he walks tall, full of pride,
not behind leather nor canvas will he hide.
His rapidly vanishing feet,
now dainty and tidy and neat.
One last problem he took to the shrink,
paid him again to just sit there and think.
“I have it,” doc said his eyes shut,
“don’t get that fine hair of yours cut.”
“It’ll grow right into your eyes,
chopping that belly to half it’s fine size!”
To you and me it’s just a banana, an egg, a cup of tea, some spilt milk. To them, its their home, work, school, where they let their children play. Imagine if everyday was a struggle to survive, because of our ignorance and stupidity for these forgotten people it is.
A dish cloth used to soak up a liquid mess can suffocate a family on holidays. A cup of tea drank in haste can drown an unsuspecting swimmer, icing devoured greedily can rob parents of a child enjoying his first taste of snow. It’s carelessness, cruelty and down right ignorance that’s wiping this little known race from our planet and what are we doing about it…Nothing!
Look down people, you are squashing a world at your feet!
Click here to check out Christopher Boffoli’s Big Appetites project where he’s captured this hidden world.
I’m looking out on a Cork summers day, thinking about a Kerry one. I couldn’t write this post yesterday, it wasn’t possible to sit at my desk you see, my arse just wouldn’t allow it!
In fairness I had pushed its cushioning to the last having spent most of Saturday cycling the Ring of Kerry. AMAZING was my repeated word of the day because, apart from the complaints of a blistered bottom, the cycle exceeded anything I had imagined.
The adventure started on Friday night, I got to the hostel late and checked in with an angry Kerry woman.
“You’re in the Penguin Suite,” she snarled.
I thought she was joking until I searched out my room. Kangaroo, Buffalo, Guinea Pig, Lizard, Snake, Giraffe…ah ha Penguin. I pushed in the door and was greeted by an Arctic welcome.
“You’re late!” Dee my cycling partner snapped (she didn’t really say that but Arctic and penguin go together so I’m taking artistic license!)
After a quick snoop of the dorm to assess our fellow sleepers…
“Oh I bet they’re taking part.”
“Look at size of their pump! I’d say they’re fellas.”
“Imagine if they were gorgeous!!”
…we headed down to get our bikes. Then it was bed for the night, our plan to go early, Enda Kenny was heading out at 7.30 and we couldn’t let him beat us.
The next morning, sleep still sticking my eyes, I was in Killarney race course without a notion of how I got there. We found our numbers, I took my first Instagram and we were off, out under the start line to join the mayhem. And it was mayhem and madness and all good words like that. The roads were filled with cyclists, most wearing luminous yellow jackets, like a brigade of pedalling council workers.
Chatting easily, we meandered back roads through breath taking spots, I haven’t seen the whole world but I imagine there’s not much to surpass Kerry’s offering. I had been nervous about the day. Would I be fit enough? (a pointless question when I hadn’t trained, training for events is a downfall of mine, it takes away the surprise!) Would the place be full of Armstrongs in lycra, syncing gps to rps to mps and muttering about splits as they careened round hair pin bends?
But it wasn’t like this. All sorts of people sat ontop all sorts of bikes. I passed a man with one leg as he persuaded his steal replacement to take on a steep hill, another for charity rode a bike with no gears and no brakes, I presume he got home. I played cat and mouse with another man well in his 70’s, he wore knee high wool socks, brown brogs and an aran jumper and would easily fit on the front of any postcard. At every stop there was music and banter, a festival feeling, even the sun made the odd appearance.
At the finish, bikes and cyclists covered the Gleneagle lawns. The atmosphere seeped into town and that night Killarney was packed with tales of the road. The best I heard was the line of male cyclists following a woman up Molls Gap.
“Sure she was wearing a thong. Surely she knew her pants were see through!”
“She must have been out for the ride.”
“Jasus it worked though, a line of us, I’d say at least 50, what do ya think lads, followed her up that gap. I didn’t feel the hill at all!”
It felt as though everyone was on the road that day, all in it together, pedaling hard for Killarney. And it didn’t matter when or how we got there, whether we struggled up the hills or pulled on brakes the whole way down, it just mattered that we got there. It was the experience, the people, the craic and the countryside.
I’d do it again, without question. Next time I might even wear see through shorts and a thong!
I’ve been employed to sell the devils work. I’ve branded him, not with irons, the pen is more permanent and now I’m illustrating his tale (and tail, either word works!)
It’s a recession, an appropriate time to sell my soul!
