a story about an angel

there is in fact an actual written story about the angel, just not yet published, along with other stories....

types of london day job scenario's

being in a tree

Diagram of a brain

going to the place.

conspiracy theory huh?

here are my feet

TODAY HERE ARE MY FEET

collecting pictures

collectING Drawing Books for various purposes.

There are Acorns falling through the SKyyyyy....

picture of the day Carpe Diem

Carpe Diem - Used as an admonition to seize the pleasures of the moment without concern for the future

SAVE THE GIRL...... picture for today

to wear a dress or not to wear a dresss

attempt to commercialise

this is a first attempt at a business card. the cell phone number is defunct now.
and other things.

semi-old things vs. new things debate

DOODLE OF THE DAY

JACKSON HLUNGWANI - A TRUE OUTSIDER ARTIST, IT COULD BE SAID

JACKSON HLUNGWANI - #A WELCOME HERO for South Africans, and other people.

along with (not in order) Mandela, Nadine Gordimar, Alan Paton, Helen Suzman, Bishop Tutu, Bronwen Findlay, Mark Shuttleworth, Tito Mboweni, Trevor Manuel, and a lot more, which I will add another time..




It is difficult to describe Jackson Hlungwani and his world - in a short space of time and writing. and to give him and his work justice.
and also in the context of sitting in an office on the 7th floor in Holborn London in 2006.

Jackson has been honored with the title of 'living treasure' by the National Arts Council - South Africa. He lives in a village called Mbokote in Limpopo. (originally part of Venda - one of the notorious 'homelands' created within South Africa under the Apartheid regime)

He is essentially a self taught artist (sculptor), and has been referred to as a charismatic leader, healer, soothsayer, shaman, eccentric. He could be described as a true outsider artist, based on some popular analogies of what an outsider artist is.. (another up for debate type of chocolate)

- read or be aware of history of apartheid to understand the concept of being a 'non-European' in South Africa prior to 1994.

To put this into context. eg, it is unlikely that Jackson even had basic schooling, or that he had every been into a gallery or seen a book of art when he started carving. It is also unlikely that he even had electricity for most of his life, or that he ever left the province/homeland he lived in -

see this article for a bit of context The identity question:focus on Black South African Expressionism - in terms of identity and appropriation relating to art, culture and society in SA

There is no actual website for Jackson that I am aware of. However, this site is about as comprehensive in terms of info as I have been able to find today: http://www.mukondeni.com/html/Jackson%20Hlungwani.htm

Perhaps his most famous work, which he has since deconstructed, was called 'New Jerusalem' which was in fact an entire village built ontop of a hill, an old iron age site. described in above link. Unfortunately I''ve been unable to find any pictures of this.

Here is a sculpture of his 'Adam and the birth of Eve' 1985:
http://www.artthrob.co.za/05may/images/hlungwani01a.jpg

It is important to know about Jackson Hlungwani.

December IT Report for the client

We had a very good month this month in the IT Department.

We had 798 network failures and we fixed this by buying 4 and a half thousand new kvm switches and 2nd desktops for the 4 and a half thousand users so that they can access both domains.

We had 100 instances of failed anti virus updates which is up from last month's one failure.
To fix this we are thinking of buying 7 new types of free-ware anti virus software which we will install free of charge. The engineers have agreed to do this in their holidays as we don't have a lot of staff at the moment.

We had a major increase of calls logged to the Help Desk, and purchased another 5million phones to accomodate the increase. We have also diverted many of the helpdesk phones to the staff's home phones (at night, when they have left the office) so that they can get more practice in taking calls. They dont mind at all. We hope to provide some information in the future as to why there has been an increase in calls to the helpdesk.

We have noticed that the administration levels for the 12 new reporting systems we put in last month have increased significantly (see last months report) and so we have decided to increase our management team by 100 people. This will be easy to accomplish as they dont need any experience or qualifications, as long as they can use email.

We have decided to buy all 100+ managers a blackberry so that they can get their emails while they are on holiday or paternity leave. Blackberry's are useful for managers that sit next to each other, as it gives them another method of communicating with each other. they also look good as an accessory on the tube.

We have managed to carry out a major head cutting excercise in our delivery teams, this means that, for example, our one network engineer who supports the network across 40 London buildings will have improved career progression and will be the single point of contact for the client. He doesnt mind updating all 12 reporting systems with everything he is doing all day. He also doesnt mind being on call every night.
We are thinking of giving him a laptop as he says he needs this to troubleshoot the network.
If this proves succesful, we may give laptops to some of our other engineers. We have approximately 8 engineers now. This will be phased as it is more important to give laptops to the 100+ managers so that they can communicate with each other and logon from home.

A team meeting has been arranged for the 24th of December 2007. We are providing this information early as there may be a slight dip in service on that day due to staff being in the meeting. We will provide a contingency plan closer to the time. We may hire one contractor for that day.

CONVERSATION with a hairdresser

Her: Hello, would you like some tea?
Me: No thanks, I'm ok
Her: Please come this way to have your hair washed
Me: Ok sure.
Her: Is the temperature ok?
Me: Yes, thankyou
Her: Would you like conditioner in your hair?
Me: Yes, thankyou.
some time goes by
Her: Please sit up so that I can dry your hair
Me: sit up so that she can dry hair
Her: Please come over here and have a seat
Me: go over there and have a seat with lots of big layers of plastic all over me 'Thankyou'
Her: Soooo, what can we do with your hair today?
Me: Well, can you please cut it so that it is short on the one side and long on the other. (show picture from magazine)
Her: Glances furtively at picture and moves hair around in different directions and says ' When last did you get your hair cut?'
Me: About 6 months ago.
Her: Have you been here before?
Me: No, I havent, actually.
Her: Which way does your parting usually go?
Me: This way (point)
Her: Your hair is very dry, should we take half an inch off?
Me: Well, please can you take about an inch off on the one sid. As its so dry, and about 5 inches off on the other side, similar to the picture and please can you make sure its quite sort of messy
Her: So you dont want it to be too styalised?
Me: No, not really, thanks.
Her: ok, are you sure you wouldnt like some tea?
Me: no, I'm ok thanks
Her: would you like a magazine to read?
Me: no, thanks.
Her: gets scissors and cuts hair for about 10 minutes and says ' where are you from?'
Me: I'm from South Africa, where are you from?
Her: I'm from England.
Me: Where in Englad are you from originally?
Her: well, I'm from Coventry in the midlands
Me: Coventry is a beautiful town, do you go home much?
Her: Sometimes. I'm going home for christmas. How long have you been here?
Me: about 7 years
Her: Will you go back one day?
Me: no, I love England
Her: Yes, there are a lot of South Africans here. I worked with a South African in my last job.
Hair dresser picks up mirror and shows hair at the back and says: 'have you thought of getting highlights?'
Me: yes I did once, but my hair is going grey so i dye my hair.
Her: oh yes, I can see you do it yourself
Me: Ja, I do
Her: There we goooowww, how does that look?
Me: that's nice, thankyou.
Her: ruffles hair and says: ' all you need to do is put some gel in your hair in the morning'
(puts a handfull of green stuff into my hair, and my head feels instantly a lot heavier and strangely detached)
Me: yes, thanks.
Her: takes off all layers of plastic stuff from shoulders and lets hair sprinkle onto the floor.
Walks to till.
Me: give plastic card to hair dresser
Her: rings uknown amount into the till and gives paper to sign
Me: sign and add tip and say 'thankyou'
Her: Bye then, have a lovely day.
Me: thanks, you too. bye.

my growing brother collection

so, i have 4 brothers, in case you didnt know.
they are all taller than each other.

this is a little bit about my brothers.

Stewy is my big brother, he's actually the tallest.
He takes after our gentle grandfather.
then there is Glenn, he is 2 years younger than me and much much bigger than me.
then there is Jum, he's 4 years younger than me and lives in Edinburgh
then, (NEWS FLASH!) Bruce Charles,
- the extreme youngest,
is leaving the shores of sunny africa next month to come to the island of England.
Yay. He is 18.

there were 2 songs that kind of especially stand out, from when we were kids.

the earlier one, this one, is about brothers,
but, my sister and me were honourary brothers so we were allowed to like it too.

There is something sort of strangely, or peacefully unifying about shared sibling memories like songs. its like a shelter you can carry around and take out when you feel like it. and you can give it to other people to use too, which is kind ov cool.

so this is the song:

TWO LITTLE BOYS
Lyrics by Edward Madden
Music by Theodore F. Morse

Two little boys
Had two little toys,
Each had a wooden horse;
Gaily they played Each summer's day
- Warriors both of course.
One little chap
Then had a mishap,
Broke off his horse's head;
Cried for his toy,
Then cried for joy
As his young playmate said:

"Did you think I would leave you crying
When there's room on my horse for two?
Climb up here, Jack.
we'll soon be flying;
I can go just as fast with two.
When we grow up we'll both be soldiers,
And our horses will not be toys;
And I wonder if we'll remember
When we were two little boys."

Long years passed,
War came so fast;
Bravely they marched away.
Cannons roared loud
And in the mad crowd
Wounded and dying lay.
Up went a shout -
A horse dashes out,
Out from the ranks so blue,
Galloped away
To where Joe lay
And then came a voice he knew:

"Did you think I would leave you dying
When there's room on my horse for two?
Climb up here, Joe,
we'll soon be flying
Back to the ranks so blue.
Do you know, Joe,
I'm all a-tremble,
Perhaps it's the battle's noise;
But I think it's that I remember
When we were two little boys."

Then the other song, was a bit later, by Madness.
This song turned out to be strangely sort of prescient, if thats the right word.. have only included some verses, cos the rest is repetitious
OUR HOUSE

Father wears his Sunday best
Mother's tired she needs a rest
The kids are playing up downstairs
Sister's sighing in her sleep
Brother's got a date to keep
He can't hang around

Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our ...

Something tells you that you've got to get away from it
Father gets up late for work
Mother has to iron his shirt
Then she sends the kids to school
Sees them off with a small kiss
She's the one they're going to miss
In lots of ways

Our house, in the middle of our street...

I remember way back then when everything was true and when
We would have such a very good time such a fine time
Such a happy time
And I remember how we'd play simply waste the day away
Then we'd say nothing would come between us two dreamers

Our house, in the middle of our street....

Our house, was our castle and our keep
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, that was where we used to sleep
Our house, in the middle of our street

the end.

a do-it-yourself poem...

here is a poem, it works for all people that do day jobs, so you can just change the company name to be the company that you work for and it will all be true . straight away.

I think it should be called: we pledge our lives to lcmg

if you work for lcmg it means you are clever

if you work for lcmg it means you are probably very good looking

if you work for lcmg it means you were well brought up and come from a good background

if you work for lcmg it means you have an afinity for communication skills and you are mostly very altruistic

if you work for lcmg it means you will be very popular and the leader of the gang and you get to be first in the tuckshop queue

if you work for lcmg it generally means that you will like every christmas present and birthday present you get no matter which relative or person gives it to you

if you work for lcmg and you are a boy you dont need to go to gym because you will automatically have big muscles, and if you are a girl you will automatically be acceptably skinny and blond and not too tall

if you work for lcmg you will always find that any clothes you want to buy will be on sale when you go to the shop and will always fit perfectly

if you work for lcmg then you will always get on really well with all your siblings and they will be like your friends

if you work for lcmg then when you go and watch a movie it will always be excellent even if the review is bad, and you'll never be sitting next to a hoodied adolescent who eats macdonalds with its mouth open

if you work for lcmg then you wont have to ever save your money because a pension worth double your salary will just arrive in your bank account every month from an anonamis doner who wont ask for anything in return

if you work for lcmg you will always get a seat on the tube and there will never be signal failures and if there are tubestrikes then you can just stay at home and watch films and get paid your sallery



the end.
but because blogs have lots of space you can easily add as much as you want to it

national story telling week

It's nearly national story telling week. cool. check.

http://www.sfs.org.uk/

also, John Allison does awesome t-shirts (and other stuff), i might have to purchase one or more.

http://scarygoround.com/shop.php, found him via Natalie Dee's site linking to other stuff, and finally to his site. he's in Manchester.

and of course other current fave site

www.themanwhofellasleep.com

he likes stories too.

PUPPETS from Prague and Stories

now it's about quite a few days after Prague, a week in fact.
I liked the marionetts the most - the hand made (non churned-out ones, or the ones of Harry Potter, errr, like not quite related to Prague) that Czech artists make, they are beautiful and made me want to read lots of stories, so I got a book on Czech folk stories, which I've almost finished. I'm saving the last bit.

The best puppets are in a little shop almost under the Charles Bridge, on the other side. its pretty cool cos you can take photo's of them. At the back of the shop is a little elven workshop where the puppet makers make puppets and restore puppets. this is a picture of one of the puppets for sale, its about 60cm tall and made of hand carved hand painted wood. most of the puppets are derived from Czech myths. Maybe more on Prague another day. there is a lot.

today i got three books for 6 squids, pretty awesome, from a little bookshop near Holborn on Lambs Conduit passage, where there is also a great little gallery, who's name I cant remember.
so , these are the books I got :
The Sun's Babies - a book of stories, was printed in 1915 and written by Edith Howes It has wonderful little sort of random marks on the pages which are all sort of yellowish because its so old and there is a poem in the front, which goes like this:

THE SUN-MAN'S BABIES
The Moon-Man sent his stars to bed,
And turned a pitying eye
To where the Sun-Man sailed alone,
Across the eastern sky.

"Poor thing!" he said. "How sad to have
No children round your knee.
A thousand thousand stars are mine
How lonely you must be!"

The Sun-Man laughed a jolly laugh.
He pointed far below,
To where the shiny busy earth
Swung golden in his glow

"A million million babes are mine,"
He said, "on yonder earth;
My sunbeams wrap them all the day,
To me they owe their birth.

"A million million babes smile up
From dawn till day is done.
And when I say my last good-night
I kiss them every one"

And then I got a book called 'The Minnipins' by Carol Kendall, which was printed in 1959.
This is the poem at the beginning of the book

In the long far off
Of the land Outside
Brave Minnipins lived
And some of them died.

Lost are their treasures, buried deep.

Till the Dry Time came
And the world was sand -
Then Minnipins fled
T a wetter land.

Lost are their treasures; in the ground they sleep.

And nobody knew
That the Minnipins went
To the land of the River,
Where they live content.

Lost are their treasures, and the secret they keep.
------ Gummy, Scribbles (Collected Works)

and I'll divulge the 3rd book tomorrow....

Really its pretty cool to read history and stories. it would be good for humanity if all kids had a subject in school called 'history and stories' , that way perhaps we'd understand each other better and the world would be more accomodating orrrrr / and more grounded, sort of thing.

ADIOS. oh ja, and it would be easier for kids to remember history if it was more like a story, and there could be pictures too.