Mystery door

This is a rant about couriers, I'm afraid, so apologies to any couriers who deliver things properly. When did vague, blurry, generalised digital photos with no date and time stamp start being used by courier firms as proof that they tried to deliver something?

I can't believe that I was presented with this image twice as evidence of their efforts to deliver a package to me. I have no idea where they were allegedly trying to make this delivery, but it could just as well been 10 Downing Street for all I know. It's just a black front door with no identifying house number on it. It could be any Georgian style house anywhere in England, judging by the railings. Definitely not my door though.

Do couriers just make it up when they can't be bothered to deliver something and write any old rubbish into their web tracking site, accompanied by a stock door photo with no distinguishing marks and a pretty good chance that their customer will have a black front door with a letterbox? I understand that maybe they might they get a bit lost and try a completely different address by mistake, or am I being far too charitable here, in this age of satnav? Or maybe I've just been really deaf for the past two days, not hearing the doorbell, or the entry phone, or either of my phones ringing to tell me they had arrived, and also missing that invisible card that they left me. Oh yeah, make that two invisible cards. Or perhaps I wasn't really in bed with flu, but was somehow 'out' and unable to receive this package at the precise moment the computer says 'we tried to deliver to you, but you were out'.

I couldn't believe the way they tried to wriggle out of it with a load of complete lies when they finally deigned to deliver the bloody parcel and I pointed out how different my front door looked to their photo and that I'd been in for two days as I was ill. They must think customers are really stupid, though I get the feeling he couldn't give a toss anyway. Give me the Royal Mail any day.

Rant over.  I'd forgotten how useful blogs could be for venting one's spleen occasionally.

Chip shop jellyfish

Someone on a forum suggested that people acting in TV adverts who are pretending to have a conversation keep repeating the words 'chip shop jellyfish' over and over again. Apparently it makes them look as if they're having a proper conversation. I'd never thought about it before, but it sounds feasible enough. It's no more weird than saying 'cheese' when you're having a photo taken. I guess you'd have to ask either a tv advert maker, an actor or a lip reader to verify it though.

There's a surprisingly satisfying jigsaw puzzle of SpongeBob SquarePants flying with pink jellyfish if you're feeling in need of a bit of online procrastination. Not as ethereal as the moon jellyfish, but still nice. Ooh, I can't wait until I get rid of this damn flu and stop feeling so intellectually and physically challenged... I haven't even got the dubious satisfaction of knowing whether or not it's the Flu of The Moment either... :-(

Classics

I've been listening to lots of early Animals recently. Their music has been a very good way for me to combat work-related misery and stress, though I am an Eric fan anyway. I bet he would have been a punk if he'd been born two decades later. I like this photo as it's different to the usual pop star fan photos from the sixties. The chairs they are lolling on are well-known modern design classics, the Dax chair designed in 1948-50 in fibreglass by Charles Eames. So that's a classic band and a classic chair design all in one pic - what more could one want! Well, I'd like to know who took the photo actually... if anyone's got the original vinyl album 'Animalization', I'd love to know if there are any more details about it on the cover, they usually have more info on them than relatively miniscule cd covers and suchlike. Anyone...?

A search for the photo using TinEye, a reverse image search engine that lets you upload a pic to it then searches for matches on the internet, showed it was a photo on that album cover. It's odd being able to search using images, the internet suddenly seems much smaller for some reason... You think uploading an image to a blog or something is fairly anonymous and no-one will ever track you down as the internet is such a huge place, you're just a little speck in cyberspace, but oh no, you can be found! Useful if you're an artist or photographer and want to see who's using your work without permission though.

(Links courtesy of the very knowledgeable looker-up of all things digital, thecatsmother.)

A Sword of Damocles situation

The academic year starts properly next week, with existing students back from their summer break and new ones to 'induct'. My teaching starts next week too. I'm looking forward to it, as it's the first time for years I won't have PhD deadlines jostling for time alongside my other work commitments.

Unfortunately, we've also just been told to expect 'grim' cuts in staffing after Christmas, particularly in my area, so we're now working under a cloud of imminent redundancies (voluntary or otherwise), early retirement, frozen posts and non-renewal of contracts. There is a tenuous connection here with the Greek legend about the Sword of Damocles, though I'm relieved to admit I don't have a sword suspended precariously above my head, dangling from a single horse hair. Having said that, there is definitely something nasty hanging over me for the next few months. I don't think I've ever worked anywhere before with so much gloom and foreboding about how this precarious economic situation might pan out in the near future. I know something similar must be happening to many people across the country right now, not just in Higher Education, but it's horrible. Very unsettling.

It probably all seems worse at the moment because lots of stuff has happened in the past week, plus I am really tired from getting those corrected theses in on time. Maybe a restful weekend, doing my teaching preparation and a bit of clothes shopping will help. Well, it can't do any harm as long as I don't spend much, then just wait to see what next week brings and I can think more clearly about what to do for the best. Ah well, tomorrow's another day, as Scarlett o' Hara said at the end of Gone With the Wind, and I agree.

btw I was surprised to find so many Sword of Damocles songs around, from the Rocky Horror Show to Shadow the Hedgehog to Lou Reed, but they are all far too cheerful for today's blogpost, I'm afraid. Yes, even Lou Reed.

Death and dying programmes on BBC

There are two TV programmes about death and dying from a cultural perspective on BBC2 and BBC4 next week, produced in conjunction with the Open University. The programmes are apparently available to an international audience for a week after transmission via BBC iPlayer online. Here's the blurb:

Richard Wilson: Two Feet in the Grave
Tuesday 29 September, 10:35-11:35pm, BBC ONE (England), 11.15pm-00.15am (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland)

Richard Wilson sets out to uncover just what happens to our bodies when we die and the very different ways people deal with death and grief. Richard meets some of the army of people whose jobs bring them into daily contact with dead people, including pathologists, mortuary technicians, embalmers, and crematorium operatives. He explores the role of memorial photography through history with Professor Glennys Howarth and considers new rituals like roadside memorials and ‘ghostbikes’, as well as grave reclamation and garden burial.

The Art of Dying
Wednesday 30 September, 9:00-10:00pm, BBC FOUR

Art historian Dan Cruickshank confronts the unavoidable issue of his own certain death. Reliving his own family losses, he explores how death has been dealt with through the ages: from the epic depiction of "Doom" paintings that show the day of judgement to the fashion for death masks and death bed paintings; from the art of the obituary writer to the incredible wartime memorial of Kathe Kollwitz; from the medieval tomb of an archbishop of Canterbury to his own death mask. Along the way he reflects on his own obituary and meets art historian and contemplative, Sister Wendy to quiz her on the helpfulness of art in the face of death; painter Maggi Hambling who portrayed her deceased mother; and Jamie McCartney who took a plaster cast of his own dead father.

* Further details on the Open University website.
* Image by Jansku in London of Banksy's Ozone's Angel, in memorium to a dead graffiti artist.

Why oh why...?

I'm in corrections hell this weekend, having left my amendments and reformatting the darned thesis to the last possible block of time available. Why oh why haven't I changed and learned from my submission experience to NOT leave things to the last minute??????

Maybe a leopard can't change its spots, but surely one can modify one's carefully honed procrastination techniques a little, to reduce the inevitable stress a bit???? It's not as if there's a special procrastination gene that makes me biologically inclined to put things off.... or is there? Maybe it's the academic equivalent of bungee jumping, though the prospect of an impending deadline doesn't really get my adrenaline going in a terribly positive way. PhD deadline as daredevil bookish equivalent of extreme sport? Or possibly not.

I watched a small child having a tantrum in the supermarket checkout queue the other day, screaming till his little red, shiny, tear-stained face was all contorted with hysterical anguish, though he was just sitting in his buggy and there was no obvious reason for his sudden and very short-lived outburst. "Mummy mummy mummy, I don't want to....!!!!" he moaned. I thought yeah, I know how you feel mate, try doing a PhD.

I haven't had a tantrum btw, or enlisted my mum's help either. I've just holed myself up for a few days in self-imposed isolation to get my work finished. I'd better get on with it then, and stop reading my spam, watching youtube, playing music, cleaning the bathroom, making cups of tea, reading my horoscope, wondering what's happening with our jobs, thinking about firework night.... oh, there are so many things to do when you've got things to do.

And before I finally logout, here's a pic of Joan Collins circa 1958 with a nice leopard print backdrop. She's always very glamorous, whatever the decade.

Death in Dulwich

I went to the Dulwich Picture Gallery yesterday, not expecting too much as I'm not usually mad about old masters' paintings, but I was pleasantly surprised.

They've got The Judde Memorial (above), which I've seen before in books about the art of death, so it was really good to see the original. It's a 16th century memento mori painting, allowing the viewer to reflect on one's mortality through the use of a variety of typical symbols of death in use by artists at that time. The video by the director of the gallery on their website is a good overview of what's in the painting.

There is a small mausoleum built into the gallery, to house the remains of three of the founders. It was apparently bombed during the last world war and rebuilt as accurately as possible, but some of the features are slightly curious. The hefty, solid-looking pillars look like dark stone, but are made of wood, which you can tell if you tap them. The stained glass seemed a bit odd, as it was a couple of panels of small bright orange glass rectangles. I thought it looked a bit '60's and slightly incongruous alongside the 'stone' pillars, eternal serpents and the casket-shaped receptacles with human remains inside. I'll have to find out more about it.

I was impressed by the labels for the Best of British exhibits. I think it's the first time I've actually found labels memorable - I usually look at the work, read the label, look again at the work and move on. These labels included short quotes or anecdotes about the people in the portraits from writers who were around at the same time, such as Samuel Pepys (diarist) and Fanny Burney (novelist). It seemed to make the portraits come to life more for me by using snippets about someone being thought a blockhead for not getting his hair cut, or being embarrassingly vulgar in polite company, or knowing that the artist had been kind in his portrayal by not painting an old woman toothless, as she was in reality by then, and including unreal curly youthful hair. It gave a sense of the person in the portrait, knowing what others thought of them at that time, whether it was flattering or not. These quotes of text enhanced the portraits by not being just little strings of dry facts about the painting or the artist which for a non- afficionado can be rather dull sometimes.

Apologies to the label writer for not remembering better examples more accurately. I didn't realise I'd still be thinking about labels the next day, but it was an unexpectedly interesting visit, albeit short because of my dad's new knees being tired. I can't think why I've never been there before.