A Donkey on the Edge

On Saturday (31 May) little Clementine was one year old. I can't believe how quickly this year has spun by, seems just yesterday Nick and I were holed up in a room at the Royal Free, me trying to give her good news as I watched Clem's head come in and out of sight.

I got all blubbery this morning--Clemmie is going to nursery so Nick can go back to work and I'm beginning to feel like I'll never see my little girl again. I've just moved out of the house and into an office in Clerkenwell so I won't have much time in the morning or evenings to be with her. That said, I'll probably still be making her food and bathing and putting her to bed a couple of nights a week so I guess it's not too bad. If only Nick were able to earn enough to support the three of us, I'm pretty sure I'd be happier chucking my job and being a full-time dad. Of course I say that because Nick has really done most of the work until now and I'm pretty sure I would struggle to keep up all day every day, but still, being with the little flea is magic:-)

Have just moved Pumpernickle into desk space at an architecture practice called muf. Their web site has this to say about them:

muf is a collaborative practice of art and architecture committed to public realm projects which embed enduring and unexpected interventions in the physical and social fabric of the urban environment.

The office is very cool and makes a welcome change to some of the other nasty places Pumpernickle has lay its hat. In particular, the workers seem to happily coexist in a superficially chaotic environment and there is little emphasis placed on computers--nice to be someplace where people stay up late cutting, pasting and gluing bits of paper.

I quote the muf 'mission statement' above as I find that--curiously--it resonates nicely with what Pumpernickle would like to be doing, where the 'architecture' is 'digital production'. In a sense, the Lecturelist project that we are currently developing for Billy aims to be an "unexpected intervention" into a virtual urban lifestyle--an attempt to trigger some change of pattern in the behaviour of the urban millions (it's a cool project, check out lecturelist.org) and thus make a lasting impression on the cultural environment.

Now all James and I need to do is find some lovely government lolly to fund the next couple of big not-for-profit ideas ;-)

Got this interesting comment in the post today re the Sony shock and awe story from outlaw.com

hi dug--re your post on sony withdrawing application for 'shock & awe' line--what i find offensive is that a modern-day president would use such a flippant, sensationalist, rabble-rousing phrase about his plans to invade another country. And that's whether you agree with the war or not - let's have a little decency and respect for the soldiers & civilians on both sides, eh, and treat the subject with the solemnity that is due?

sony using it? i have no problem with. it's the kind of phrase I would expect from a company making games. shame the media didn't focus on the original use of it, rather than the rehash.

catherine.

I couldn't agree more. I had started writing a post about the Salam Pax article in The Guardian but found myself getting all frothed up again so decided to stop. In a nutshell, the interesting point of the article isn't so much that Salam is gay, or middle-class or even a geek--the beauty of the piece (and by extension his blog) is that it reminds us that Iraq is a proper country with decent, ordinary people who care about the same things we do and go about their lives in a broadly similar way to us. We invaded a sovereign nation, and there just isn't any way around that. Finally (as I've drifted a bit here) I just wanted to add that Catherine/05/not agree with me here and it isn't my intention to speak for her--her point was about the behaviour of the US executive, not the right-or-wrong of the war itself...

Catherine has also reminded me that I need to fix the picture-uploader as I have no recent pics of Clementine in the scrapbook--Thanks Catherine:-)

You know, I've been so busy today that I totally forgot that it's the 6th of June. I spent a lot of time on the Normandy beaches as a child with my family (I grew up in France) collecting shrapnel, bits of cartridge casings and so on. It's a testimony to the intensity of the combat that metal artifacts were still on the ground thirty years later...

I've often spent time imagining what it would have been like to have to get out of one of those landing crafts, and am grateful for the people who did. I think it's worth remembering if possible. The Guardian has had a couple of good articles on the subject recently, in particular a piece on June 1 about Company A, 116th Infantry landing at Omaha--very very few survived that first wave.

Today's piece is an Obituary of Doon Campbell, the first allied war reporter ashore on D-day who died on/05/26.

Not only was Doon, who has died aged 83, the first war reporter of any allied nation to make it ashore that day, at the age of 24 he was also the youngest. One-armed from birth, he struggled out of the water and across "a sandy cemetery of the unburied dead, where bodies lay scattered with arms or legs severed", and dived into a gash in the earth to begin a dispatch famously datelined: "A ditch 200 yards inside Normandy". Doon's reports were rushed back across the Channel by navy dispatch boat, and from that time his determination to be first with the news started to make him something of a legend at Reuters.

Got this lovely note yesterday (I know, I know. I need to enable comments--I've just been too busy. I should have Donkey on Moveable Type soon)

Just wanted to drop a line to let you know I really appreciated your blog entry today on your website. My grandpa was a young US Army private in the Normandy invasion. There was nothing I loved more as a child than to sit and listen to him recount tales of World War Two (he was also at the Battle of the Bulge). Your entry today brought back lots of really fantastic memories and again leant appreciation for the efforts of the free world on that fateful day.
Damon

Moments I'll remember forever--16:00 sitting on a bench in the courtyard of the Royal Academy having just taken Clementine to see the Summer Show, her on my left knee seriously focusing on the bottle of milk I'm holding for her, the late afternoon sun peeking through the gaps in the plastic awning we're under, and people walking past and smiling, men in particular, me humming my little milk-drinking mantra...

And after that she bought me a latte and played with the fire and water sculpture further out in the courtyard.

On the whole, Clemmie reckons that the show was ok as it had a lot of pictures of cats and one or two good ones of dogs, mostly hung at a good height for her to see clearly (you take her to art galleries and she squeals aloud when she sees a picture of a cat--v. cute) as well as lots of kids playing on the floor (the RA supplies craft kits for kids, a wonderful idea) and finally a lot of large and amusing 'animals' like a chicken with human fingers as wings.

She can confirm that the skyscraper expo was rubish as she couldn't play with any of the models even though she lunged as hard as she could towards them (v. delicate). I wanted to spend more time reading about the individual projects in the darkened East West room but that would have been a pause too far for a little girl, so/05/have to return to expo at a later date...

Have just spent the morning hanging a twenty-thousand-dollar sound meter off the edge of a top floor balcony at the Docklands Hilton. Not exactly "fun" but definitely interesting--I was helping my mate Ben who is in town record the noise of a Eurocopter ec145 (as it landed on top of the Docklands café society). In the end, it was surprisingly quiet, not that I'd want a heliport in my neighbourhood...

Just thought I'd share with the world that I am about to be fucked up the arse by Stelios Haji-Ioannou.

I'm feeling fairly outraged having just had a very circular conversation with the duty manager at their call centre. Basically, Easycar isn't easy and it certainly isn't cheap. So my advice would be read the terms and conditions very carefully (as they will be quoted back to you when you complain). Right, am off to write the ombudsman if I can find one.

more warm feelings about netsol at http://www.publicfiles.com/--I particulary like the sound loop;-)