Art and literature

Yesterday, the wonderful wizard behind 330 Words (hi Tom!) published a short story I rustled up the other day and which I will be reading at Bad Language on Wednesday (7.30pm, The Castle - be there; I'll also be treating the audience to a couple of my rather more smutty stories. They are each 69 words long. Don't ask me why; it's a totally arbitrary wordcount, obviously).

Anyway, the 330 word story is rather less smutty, although it is about women withholding sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers (I nicked that phraseology off Wikipedia; more on that in a moment). It's sort of a feminist dystopia. I call women "birds", so that's likely to offend some people. The feedback I've had so far, however, has been very positive and one interesting comment I just heard is that it's not dissimilar to the Greek play Lysistrata by Aristophanes.


I had no idea. I was dragged up on The Wirral, mostly, and know nothing of Greek literature, except that it exists and I hear was quite popular. So Bird Strike, which you can read here, was not my poor attempt to plagiarise a far greater work of fiction. Still, I guess Aristophanes is no longer with us, so he's not going to get me on copyright issues in any case.

Wikipedia tells me that Lysistrata "is notable for its exposé of sexual relations in a male-dominated society and for its use of both double entendre and explicit obscenities". Good old Aristo, I like him already. And he had a bloody top beard.


The black and white illustration of Lysistrata is by Aubrey Beardsley, chum of Oscar Wilde, one of the dudes behind the Art Nouveau movement and exponent of those fabulous posters by the likes of Toulouse-Lautrec (Moulin Rouge - La Goulue pictured) and Mucha for which I have such a penchant. His work, I have learnt, is emphasised by the grotesque, the decadent and the erotic. Good oh.

Automatic writing for the people

Right. So the other day I did this thing called The Reading, as part of the Not Part Of festival. You may have read about it here. You have three hours to write, in a specified slot, in an art gallery and there are 72 writers in total; each one is given the last paragraph of the last person's story to use as "inspiration" to write a completely new story. A bit like a chain letter. (Bastard, I hated chain letters - they were all the fucking rage in the 70s. Not that I wish to divulge my age, or anything of that sort.)

Right, so, it's a sort of automatic writing - y'know like what the Beats did. Or Oulipo. And I took part in this artistic expression experience on Thursday. It was interesting, if a little difficult. Anyway, I thought I would share with you the culmination of my efforts; tell me what you think. If I were to give it a title, I think I'd call it The Plan.

The paragraph that I was left sprung forth from the genius mind of my mate L'il Dave; without further ado, here's David Hartley's final par and then, after the stars, a strange story by me...

She was faced with the end of the world but she wanted no part of it. If this was collective imagination, then the collective could keep it. Half a mile behind her, blades rotating through the past, Ollie's helicopter was waiting. She took one last look at the roaring future, shrugged her shoulders and walked away.

*****************************************************************************

The past, the future: you can keep them. The present, that's where it's at; the here and now. Take each day at a time - you have no idea what it will throw at you. Just react as it happens. Live your life real time. Look at you now. You're live-streaming your thoughts out into the ether. You don't know why: as if anyone even cares, right?

But someone does, somewhere. They look at the words you spew forth every day on those modern-fangled fancypants networks you love so much. You tell them all about the most inane details of your meagre existence on this planet, God's green earth that is slowly suffocating in front of your very eyes. But you don't care, not really. Live in the moment. That's what you say, you think.

Keep plying your audience with the twaddle they seem to love so much. Look: I'm drinking a can of Coca-Cola. It's the full fat stuff: the taste is better, the packaging is a design classic. See: I'm smoking a Gauloise Blonde. Not a Gauloise Blonde Legere as they're not as strong, and I'm trying to portray an image of myself in a certain way. (Also, you can't have Legeres any more - European law, or something.) Watch: I'm eating a packet of Hula Hoops. I'm putting them on the end of my fingers then biting them off enticingly, one by one.

You're sending out messages. You're not all that sure why, but it's a way of connecting with them out there. Sometimes you even tap out stuff that only certain people will understand. It seems a bit pointless, but you want them to know you're thinking of them perhaps, even if you're only doing this by the power of describing your clothes, the contents of your bag, the book you've taken it upon yourself to try and read. What about Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451? You like a bit of dystopia. Breakfast Of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, maybe? It has a good title.

People relate to that kind of stuff. Stuff. Like the coke, the cigarettes, the crisps. People understand, and those understanding people are the ones who are also living in the moment, like you. Who cares about the past? It's done and dusted, you can't change it, move on. Who cares about the future? You can plan and plan and plan, but it doesn't mean that everything is going to go according to that plan. There'll always be something: a spanner in the works, a fly in the ointment.

Take things as they present themselves. This could be an opportunity. It could be an adventure. It could be a disappointment, it could be a disaster. You can still be prepared - it helps to carry an umbrella in a rainy city, for example. And where would you be without that knife in your pocket, that condom in your wallet, that safety pin clipped to the hem of your trousers? Life-savers are handy when you have a life that needs saving.

And your life now - this life you're living one moment at a time, not making plans, going with the flow - is this life worth saving? Of course: it's fun, isn't it? Yes, but it's dangerous. Yes, but that's exciting. Yes. And people want to hear about it, remember? They're waiting to hear about it. You can't let them down now; you have a responsibility to Your Readers. They need you; perhaps they need to live through you.

Listen: I'm at the art gallery. I'm looking at art. I don't get the art that I'm looking at. Oh, I shouldn't admit that I don't get the art that I'm looking at. But I don't. It's dumb. Who the fuck funds this stuff, anyway? Why don't they give the money to me: I'm a living art experiment, aren't I? Living in the moment and all that. I could use the cash to keep up my body of work, extend my oeuvre, explore new forms of expressing these experiences everyone wants a piece of.

There's your application, right there. Copy and paste it into the online form, quick, before you forget, before something comes along to distract you: a phone call, an important email that Needs Answering Right Now, a meteor smashing into the polar icecaps and setting us all in a tailspin towards the sun, a gigantic spaceship hovering about Manchester Town Hall, demanding an audience with Richard Leese.

But that's not going to happen, is it? You, I and they all know that the aliens only ever put a humungous shadow over New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Johannesburg, Paris and London, at a push. Plus humungous isn't even a word. Probably gigantic isn't either; you can't remember and the dictionary has everything in it these days, colloquial, made up, everything.

You should know, you spend enough time flicking through the good book at work where you edit report after boring report and pretend to be looking up things like "data" (plural? Singular? Does anyone give a toss?) but actually what you're really doing is trying to find as many rude words as possible and testing your own encyclopaedic knowledge of swears against Roget. You usually win; the man has no sense of imagination. You couldn't if you came up with such a complicated cross-referencing system.

So, yeah, live in the moment. Get that funding bid off. Then get on with your next project idea: the one where you catalogue all your favourite naughty phrases using library coding parameters stored on microfiche and displayed on a light box in a darkened room that adds to the suggestive atmosphere. Or you could do a series of Venn diagrams: male bits intersecting with female bits, so to speak; the subset of shared bits including nipples, arses, hard, panting. And then there's the bedtime stories stroke of genius: two writers sat in a bed telling tales of titillation, like the Yoko and John of the literary world. The arts lot'd love that; they'd put on their special voices and extol the talents of the great minds who came up with such a brainwave.

But you're living in the moment, remember? These projects are plans. You don't have a plan. God, it's stressful, not having a plan. Why hadn't you noticed this before? You were trying so desperately to fly by the seat of your pants and cram in as many events and experiences and emotions and other things beginning with e that you've started to lose your way.

So let's make a plan, you and I. Maybe I'll make the plan and I won't let you in on it. Would that work? But then I'd be in control and wouldn't that be like playing God? That's twice now he's cropped up. But I don't believe in God, only extraterrestrials, because there's got to be something out there, right? Just not an old bloke with a beard sat on a cloud surrounded by cherubs playing lutes or lyres or whatever the damn things are.

If I make a plan, The Plan, would that be even more stressful? We're right back at the plans not going according to plan. That was the whole point of this discussion. Perhaps we shouldn't have these philosophical existential theological mental chats in our frame of mind. It's tricky, that's for sure. A proper dilemma. I can't make The Plan - surely that's for the Fates to decide. Leave it up to destiny, eh? But then you have to believe in the Fates and destiny to begin with, I suppose, and I don't believe in anything. Except extraterrestrials, of course. Remember?

But say we did have a plan. Just say. For argument's sake. Work with me here. What would The Plan involve? I can't see into the future, but I want one; the life worth saving, all that. You too, right? The life worth saving, I mean. Trouble is, my idea of the future would probably not be the same as your idea of the future, if you'd for just one minute think about the future and stop selfishly pretending you don't need a plan. Living in the moment, indeed. What kind of student anarchy thinking is that?

So we're getting nowhere with this. I want a plan, you don't want a plan. I don't want a plan, you want a plan. What, you've changed your mind now, have you? That complicates matters. Maybe that's the spanner in the works, the fly in the ointment: you've been pretending you don't want a plan, but actually secretly, all along, you've been squirrelling away thoughts of things that might happen in the future. I bet you've got tons of these thoughts hidden in the recesses of your great mind.

It's probably like one of those books you used to order off the back of cereal packets in the 80s, the ones where you get to the end of a chapter and are faced with a number of options, each one leading to a new set of circumstances. Like a tax return, only with princesses and monsters and pirates and monkeys. There were probably monkeys. So you got to the end of a chapter and had to decide your own fate.

a) Rescue the princess from the monsters and pirates and gallop off on a white monkey into the sunset where you'll get married and live happily ever after. Go to Chapter 2.
b) Don't rescue the princess from the monsters and pirates and save yourself from a loveless marriage and a lifetime of nagging. No one finds out what happens to the monkeys. Go to Chapter 3.
c) Rescue the monsters and pirates; leave the princess to set up a monkey sanctuary and die an old maid but she's content because at least she's put something back into society and you're content because you've got a whole gang of monsters and pirates to hang out with; ain't nobody gonna mess with you now, dawg. Go to Chapter 4.

So we need to think of the options in your head. I guess they're: carry on as is; don't carry on as is; carry on but this time with a plan. Oh, we're back here; I think this is a sticking point. If only we had some monkeys. They'd distract us if nothing else. We'd get caught up in training them to do party tricks; fetch and carry; make cups of tea. We'd be the talk of the town with our troupe of dancing simians throwing down rose petals for us to walk over. Now, that's a plan. (Note to self: look into monkey adoption.)

But let's not lose sight of the important details. The important details are The Readers. We'd kind of forgotten about them, but we'd be nothing if it weren't for The Readers. We need to keep them in new material, you know what they're like. So demanding. If we don't keep feeding them the snippets of information on the minutiae of our life, they'll get all sluggish and slow and eventually stop, like a Furby or a Tamagotchi. Discarded in the corner of the room, staring at the point where the two white walls meet, staring with dead eyes and no purpose in life.

We're the life-savers, after all. We thought it was our lives we were supposed to be saving, but really it's theirs. So let's get on with it; give them what they want, what they need. Words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, books, libraries. That's why we're here. What else did you think?

Thirties something

Another day, another play; this time Noel Coward's Private Lives at the Royal Exchange. I'm not much of an authority on Coward, but the Exchange's production of Blithe Spirit just over a year ago was so full of frivolity and flapper dresses (for which I have something of a weakness) that I immediately wanted to see this when I heard it was going to be on.

I wasn't disappointed. As ever at this theatre, the sets were fantastic, with an almost authentic ornamental garden laid out for the first act and a plush 1930s Parisian apartment, complete with grand piano (that is played live - oh, the talent!), for the second. The costumes and accessories too were beautiful, from the men's suits and smoking jackets to the ladies' travelling clothes and floaty evening gowns.

It's an excellent text, full of witty repartee and clever wordplay ("Don't quibble, Sibyl", etc). Even the bits in French are funny, and, while you might need to parler un petit peu to fully understand, the actress playing the maid (Rose Johnson) gets the point across with some comedy gestures and fabulous hamminess.

The remaining characters are Elyot and Sibyl Chase and Victor and Amanda Prynne; a pair of honeymooning couples, two of whom (Elyot and Amanda) were previously married - obviously with hilarious consequences. Simon Robson is wonderfully caddish as Elyot; Joanna Page (of Gavin and Stacey fame, I suddenly realise) has some lovely histrionics (and kiss curls) as Sibyl; Clive Hayward plays the puffed-up stick-in-the-mud Victor incredibly well - but it's Imogen Stubbs as Amanda who steals the show. She's cute and coquettish, cheeky and charming - and brilliant at tango and charleston. And she gets all the best lines:

Elyot: "It doesn't suit women to be promiscuous."
Amanda: "It doesn't suit men for women to be promiscuous!"

I think I want to be her.


Simon Robson as Elyot Chase and Imogen Stubbs as Amanda Prynne. Photo by Jonathan Keenan.

Private Lives continues until 9 April. See the Royal Exchange website for full details.

Altered images

Yesterday evening saw the pretty much packed launch of new art show Reflexive Landscapes & Cutting Machines by Bruce Thompson at the Beggars Bush bar on Beech Road in Chorlton. Before we go any further, I'd better come clean: Bruce is my friend and lodger. He feeds my cats and I don't want to get on the wrong side of him.

Nonetheless, I show no bias when I advise you to check out the exhibition over the next month or so. Treat yourself to a drink while you're there. Go on. Here's the exhibition poster, influenced by Bruce's interest in decorative screens:


The works on display, however, are each an image in themselves and the show encompasses two series Bruce has been working on over the last few years. I was already familiar with Reflexive Landscapes, a colourful, dynamic oeuvre (did I just say "oeuvre"? Ha!), with more than a few sci-fi threads. The pieces from the Cutting Machines series, however, were new to me, and I really enjoyed their pared-down compositions, subtle cream and garlic pink shades, and rich textures.

Bruce has studied both art and architecture, and was working on very fine airbrush automatic abstract paintings when I first met him a number of years ago. In his latest work, he reconsiders these spontaneous pieces by rendering them using a computer-based 3D modelling package, and adding more colour, light and depth. This second stage is then further transformed by manipulating points of view and fragmenting and recombining elements of the original canvas to produce a totally new image.

Says Bruce: "This body of work is concerned with the unconscious mind in relation to space and perception, expressed through art and architecture. The work can be viewed as a departure point from painting and a move towards a cybernetic, pataphysical and alchemical world."

Unsure what pataphysics are, I consulted Wikipedia and discovered that it's a pseudophilosophy that parodies modern science often through the use of nonsensical language. Well, if it's good enough for Bruce and French author Raymond Queneau, it's good enough for me...

New story

Here we go, Glasshouses, what I read out last night.

Science fiction

Last night I went to see Fritz Lang's 1927 crazy futuristic sci-fi silent movie Metropolis at the Cornerhouse. I was very excited about this as: a) I haven't seen the film for nearly 20 years as it never seems to get shown (that first time was in no less than the hugely imposing Palais de Chaillot, opposite the Eiffel Tower, yes in Paris, in a special bunker-like screening room; something, I think, to do with La Cinémathèque française); 2) I thought I'd missed it this time as when I was due to go last week I was feeling poorly and pathetic, and I thought it was only going to be on during Manchester Science Festival (23-31 October); iii) it's a scrubbed-up print with new footage they (whoever "they" are) found in Buenos Aires, of all places. Then I got very very excited because I noticed on the ticket while chowing down on my scrummy three-bean and preserved lemon tagine that it was on Screen 1. Oh man.


It didn't disappoint. Dystopia. Modernism. Maschinenmensch (great word; love German). Flappers. Art Deco. Brave New World meets The Great Gatsby tipping a wink to Alphaville and 1984 mixed with Bladerunner and The Fifth Element sprinkled with Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom and even Back To The Future. Oh, and let's not forget Frankenstein and even a bit of scary shadowplay à la Nosferatu.


It was good. And it made me think of that show at the Whitworth Art Gallery a year ago, The American Scene: Prints From Hopper To Pollock. Compare the lithograph New York by Louis Lozowick from 1925, below, to the stills and poster from Metropolis, above. Credit for the film artwork and sets goes to Erich Kettelhut, who was apparently art director, set designer, trick photography (special effects), painting effects (visual effects) and technical consultant. But still, similar, non?

Ask Ben & Clare. No, really

Hullo. Remember me telling you about the, like, way awesome new collaboration I'm involved in, called Ask Ben & Clare? Yes, you do; stop messing. I've been dropping enough giant, neon-signed hints. Here's our Graham with a quick reminder.

My inimitable co-collaborateur and most deserving Manchester Blog Awards 2010 shortlistee (in not one but two categories - vote for him here before 5pm on Tuesday!) Ben says, in his very own pages: "Those of you who are still all trousers and a large champagne cocktail on a Friday night will have already seen that there is a cool new blog on the undeniably hip medium of blogs. In fact I’ll go further, I’d argue that if Ask Ben & Clare was any closer to the cultural zeitgeist it would be opening up its own bar in Chorlton while celebrating the fact that its new single [...] has gone straight to number one by having a good laugh about how cupcakes are so late last year."


Quite so. And the enterprise is now well and truly open for business, as you'll see if you happen to shimmy on over, and we're looking for new customers (the photograph is, uh, ironic). Yes, we want you to get involved, and, we're telling you, you want to get involved, you really do.

So send us a question, please. Do it now, while you're in a mid-Friday afternoon lull and staring blankly at your screen pretending (quite well, it has to be said) to look useful and an asset to your secretly-but-everyone-knows-it-planning-on-downsizing company. Email it to askbenandclare@gmail.com and we will endeavour to answer it both succinctly and wittily (and hopefully usefully). You can choose to remain anonymous by utilising a nom de plume if you so wish, either to keep your identity a secret from your adoring public or to protect the innocent. We don't mind. We don't ask questions; you do.

It's all about me

Last week, some survey by some person somewhere revealed that Manchester is the third biggest European user of Twitter. We come after London and Paris, so we're in good company. It goes without saying, but I will anyway, that I have lived in all three of these hip'n'happening cities and no other conurbation (unless you count Liverpool which I inhabited for perhaps as long as a month).

Anyway, as if to prove the Rainy City's position of social media status, yesterday was a busy old day in Manchester's interweb.

First off, some bloke from The Guardian did some live Tweeting travel feature thing: "armed only with a mobile phone – and ready to go wherever the best of your tweets take him". He was called Benji Lanyado and it was called the TwiTrip. Yawn. Still, somehow me, along with many of the other regular Manc Twitterers, got sucked into the whole thing and started blatantly self-promoting and showboating, and desperately bigging up places for this bloke to go in a "my suggestion's better than yours" kind of way. I was finally namechecked at about 7pm, along with my Chorlton mate Gill: "@benjilanyado: Instalations at the Cornerhouse, thanks to @Wordsnfixtures @Gillmphoto & @popisthis http://flic.kr/p/8tt24N". If you're remotely arsed, you can see the TwiTrip to Manchester in its entirety here.

Secondly and very bizarrely, @wordsnfixtures starting trending on Twitter. WTF? This is what the Tweet said: "@TrendsManc: Sarah-Clare Conlon, @wordsnfixtures is now trending in #Manchester http://trendsmap.com/gb/manchester". My colleague Josh (aka @technicalfault) loudhailed this announcement across the office (which was rather embarrasing as it does probably mean that I'd spent more of the day dicking about on Twitter than doing any actual work. And we all know that such a thing would never happen, right? RIGHT?). He then showed me how to do a screengrab, for proof, like. Look, I'm right at the top, above that Benji bloke:



Thirdly, the first-ever South Manchester Tweet-up chugged back some ciders and shimmied into its sparkle boob tube for a night out in Didsbury Village. Such a glamourpuss, this latest social media mover and shaker has not one, but two hashtags: #southmcrtweetup and #southmanchestertweetup. Organised by Tom Mason (@totmac) and Nicola Cooper-Abbs (@ncooperabbs), the get-together went swimmingly with quite a gaggle of creatives, SEOs, PRs, developers, local business reps and even some "normal" folk, and lovely Laura from Airy Fairy Cupcakes put on a spread of sweet treats. Didsbury Life's Helen (who I didn't recognise because I am a complete dunce, although, in my defence, it has been a while) is going to do a write-up about it, so look out for all the action shots down on the DL blog. Rumour has it the next SMTU might be in Chorlton. Hold on to your hats, kids, I'll be able to crawl home!

Uncreative times, Story #1

As promised, the first of three ramblings generated in a Paper Planes creative writing workshop at the weekend. The starting point for this one is the line "attached to the earth by a thread", which was selected at random by Happy Accidents workshop organiser Anthony Sides from his co-coordinator Steve Waling's poetry collection Travelator.

Attached to the earth by a thread, I look down on a verdant blanket dotted with multitudinous multicoloured jewels. It's funny how the flowers return every spring at the mere glimpse of the sun, once the bright white fields of snow have ebbed to nothing. The light is still dazzling up here in the thin air, but in a different way in this summer-filled mountainscape. A gentle breeze tumbles down the slope I'm climbing up, but dangling above. The chairlift swings slowly to a special rhythm all its own... (89 words)

Duomo, 2010, David Wightman
acrylic on wallpaper and linen
83 x 99 cms

Lots of the people in the class wrote about balloons, either traditional kids' ones like in Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge (a weirdly interesting film set in Paris and starring the fabulous Juliette Binoche) or the ones full of hot air. That did cross my mind, but I thought (obviously correctly) that it was a bit of a cliche, so I went with the Alpine story instead, inspired partly by my sister-in-law going through the process of ski lodge puchasing in the French Alps and partly by artist and new online friend David Wightman concurrently and coincidentally creating some new works of Swiss chalets.

Exchanging glances

If you have never before wandered the ringing marbled halls of Manchester's Royal Exchange theatre, it is worth going merely to peruse the building. Watching a play here is even better: until 8 May, I can recommend The Comedy Of Errors by some bloke called William Shakespeare. The usual high standard of costumes and props (although the Perspex box is still perplexing me) is combined with some fantastic acting; so much so the olde worlde language and those darn rhyming couplets really don't detract after the first scene is out of the way.

But back to the structure, which has a fascinating past. Starting life as a bustling commodities exchange at the height of Manchester's industrial prowess, the Levitt Bernstein-designed seven-sided in-the-round internal auditorium you see today was completed in 1976, after the shell had lain empty between 1968 and 1973, when a bunch of thespians took up residence. At this juncture I'd very much like to utter the word "juxtaposition", but I'm guilty of using it too much, so I'll let this picture do the talking.


My dad tells me he saw old happy-clappy campaign singer'n'banjo player Pete Seeger in concert here back in the day; I can't stand Little Boxes, it affected me deeply as a child, but his final gig was apparently played with Arlo Guthrie, who I love (I was introduced to him by a Frenchman with a glass eye via The Story of Reuben Clamzo & His Strange Daughter in the Key of A, and I absolutely dig the ditty Alice's Restaurant Massacree), so I guess I have to let him off.

Anyway, that's by the by, and I don't even know if my dad is remembering the right place as I can't find no reference to it on the interweb and he's [whisper] getting on a bit, y'know? (You sure it weren't the Free Trade Hall there now, Paw?) Back to the building, and I learnt recently, while researching a bit of work I did for an upcoming online tourist attraction, that it took a direct hit in the Blitz, with further damage being inflicted when the IRA bomb thankfully took the hideous whirlwind that was Shambles Square out of our lives forever in 1996. Following renovation to the beautiful glass and ironwork dome (one of a few round these parts), which actually moved as well as shattered, the theatre flung open its doors once again in 1998. Phew!

The great uncloched

There's a house I sometimes wander past Whalley Range way, and come winter I am always delighted to see that the green-fingered soul who lives there protects his or her alpines with a number of cloches. The rockery looks like a mini Moonbase Alpha and it never fails to make me smile. (This garden cloche, or bell jar, as they call it - although I would argue that's something taller and usually involves taxidermy or Sylvia Plath - is available at Hippy Shopper, BTW. I would presume you have to grow the courgettes yourself, however.)


I'm quite a fan of cloches, actually. I don't have any in my garden (perhaps that's why there have been a number of fatalities out there this year; not least a rare pale pink fuchsia grown by my mum from a cutting she pinched off a plant at Powys Castle or some such fancy-pants place), although I do have a mini greenhouse of which I'm quite proud (I put it together myself from an Ikea flatpack, and even varnished it to protect the dowling from the elements).


Cloches seem quite attractive in their simplicity and old-fashionedness. I also like cloches over food - they always manage to make cakes look even nicer, if that were at all possible. I've got a big blue wire cloche-type bit of kitchen paraphernalia to keep bluebottles and black cats at bay. It's quite successful, if a little cumbersome.


Cloche hats are another favourite of mine, being a big fan of 1920s style (I have a bob, don't I? Just because I don't dress the whole flapper hog every day makes me no less of a fan). I once went to a party as Coco Chanel and wore a cloche hat. Looked a treat, although I'm not sure Gabrielle accessorised with a can of Red Stripe.

The word "cloche" (pronounced closh) comes from the French for bell. More cloche definitions are available here.

Cheerio-ho-ho for 2009!

Words & Fixtures is taking a short break for the holiday season, but would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone everywhere a fantastic festive foray.

To see you through the snow and baubles, here's a suitably Christmas-related picture; La Vierge et l'Enfant (Madonna and Child) by kitsch French artists Pierre et Gilles. (When we were stuck in Lyon last year waiting for the waters to subside, we found a really great little cafe where the barman took a shine to us and proudly showed off a portrait done of him and his husband by P et G. On another occasion, we stumbled across an establishment where everyone was absolutely ratted and screeching along to Edith Piaf. I like Lyon. Or Lyons.)


Anyway, this Pierre et Gilles installation - which features French actress Hafsia Herzi as Mary, decked out in a frock by Christian Lacroix, and which could probably be construed as virgin (sorry) on the inappropriate or controversial - was on show earlier this year in l'Eglise St Eustache in Paris. Me and the Exquisite Corpse gang mentioned earlier this week used to walk past this Chatelet church (it's the one with the giant head and hand sculpture outside) to get to Le Chat Noir, complete with a traditional zinc horseshoe bar and Turkish toilet for true French authenticity, then later in the evening ran back again to catch the last RER home.

Pierre et Gilles, La Vierge et l’Enfant, 2008-2009. Modèles : Hafsia Herzi et Loric, Robe : Christian Lacroix. Tirage pigment sur toile, 200 x 134 cm. Coproduction Centre national des arts plastiques et les artistes. Courtesy galerie Jérôme de Noirmont.

Taking a philosophical viewpoint

I was flicking through the Guardian Review at the weekend and saw this great picture of Simone de Beauvoir. It's even better on the website, all saturated colour, so I thought I'd share it with you.


The piece it accompanies is all about women's writing: it's 50 years since de Beauvoir's famous "feminist" tome The Second Sex was published. I've not read this book, and I don't know if I ever will. I studied "women's literature" as a subsidiary course at university and, if I'm honest, it put me off the genre somewhat. I'm not much of a feminist, and I don't see why women's literature should be marked out when men's literature is not. It doesn't seem very equal or fair.

The other thing is that I've read three of de Beauvoir's works, and two I didn't like. It took me most of last summer to wade my way through The Mandarins (1954); it took part of this to decipher Une Mort Tres Douce (A Very Easy Death, 1964). Neither was all that enjoyable, although I loved Les Belles Images (1966), so you never can tell.

I can't give up on SDB just yet, as I'm constantly intrigued by her relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre, her position as a figurehead of French intellectualism and her importance in shaping the Existentialism movement (check this out for more on the far-reaching influences of that). Plus that is some very sharp coordination of lipstick to jacket going on there. Oh dear, what's a girl to do?