Badaude

En Greve Toujours? Souvenirs of the Strike

Looks like, despite the strikes and protests of recent months, Sarkozy has won the battle over French pension reforms.

Heading North from Montparnasse on the bus one recent strike Saturday, a fur-coated pensioner sitting in the easy-access seats at the front grabbed my arm:Ce bus termine a Chatalet a cause d'un manifestation des etudiants ou quelque chose comme ca.*

I was getting off before we crossed the Seine but I felt I had to engage in coversation in return for the personal concern she showed for my possible inability to continue my journey.

Oh merci. Je vais decendre a St Michel mais thank you for the information. I'm sure it will be difficult for other passengers and it's very kind of you to...

Turns out I didn't need to bother. At the next stop she watched eagerly as a few more passengers got on then got hold of the the boarder nearest to her and hissed,Vous savez que ce bus termine a Chatalet? C'est un manif...

 
 

* This bus stops at Chatelet because of a student demonstration or something like that.

*overturned cars

Back at Eurostar

A last glimpse of Fashion Week. Next time I travel it'll be back to the regular mix of pinstripe suits and multipocketed 'holiday' garments. Bye-bye real Prada bags and extraordinary shoes and 3-hour hairdos and cashmere and tinsel: see you again in February...

 

Model or Germanopratin?

Can you tell? I often can't. And during Paris Fashion week when Saint Germain's population is swollen by models, editors and photographers, it can get even more difficult.

I'm posting sketches from last week's Paris fashion week every day this week so tune in tomorrow for more.

The Bomb

What's almost good as being asked to draw on the walls of immortal bookshop, Shakespeare & Company? Maybe being interviewed about it by immortal arts mag, Bomb.

I was flattered to be questioned by the human embodiment of the digital arm of the 28-year-old publication that artist Betsy Sussler founded asking, "Wouldn't it be great if we started a magazine where we talked about the artwork the way we talk about it among ourselves?"

Bomb's Digital Editor, Paul Morris, took some photos and asked me questions such as:

 

Paul Morris: Your illustrations are an interesting fusion of image and text. How does your experience as an artist inform your appreciation for literature in general, and for literary figures in particular?

and

PM: What kind of research did you have to do in selecting your subjects? And when you finally had your list of writers sorted out, what was your approach to locating the right archival image of to use as source material?

and

Paul Morris: BOMB readers are most interested in the creative process: how artists and writers think and talk about their own work is of primary concern to us. What can you tell us about your own process, and your progress, as your style has evolved?

Want to know what I answered?

read on at Bomb...

The Oxford Murders

A month ago I was at a party in Paris when I first met Todd Zuniga of Opium Magazine who also runs Literary Death Match. Being English, I made the unguarded comment, 'You should do that in Oxford. Everyone there's a writer.' Being American, he replied, terrifyingly, 'Sure - how about the first week in November?'.

Luckily I know Xander Cansell, Oxford's literary Mr Fix. Despite a slow start persuading people to be involved (might have been something to do with the word 'death' in the title*?) we ended up with a fine line-up including judges: multi-award winning poet and writer, Kate Clanchy; Idler editor, Dan Kieran and last-minute (I mean literarlly 30 minutes before) replacement for Tom Greeves, Ben Walker, who was not only lanconically hilarious but improvised on his guitar to order.

Reading were the fabulous Jake Wallis-Simons, Miranda Ward, Megan Kerr and LDM champion, George Chopping ('the love child of Hugh Grant and John Hegley' - Kate Clanchy). Here he is:

The pen is mightier than the sword. Those who live by the pen, die by the pen (or perhaps by a particularly savage game of musical chairs...).

Oh yes, and I did some live drawing...

 
  
 
(Poster and bad photo by me. Good photos by Garrett Coakley)

*No living authors were harmed during the making of this event.

Chic, la Rentrée!

(I feel it really should have a capital letter).

OK, it's now some time after the Rentrée officially started, but I've been moving around throughout September and it's still tough coming back to Paris after a summer in the provinces and elsewhere...

click on the image to make it bigger: click again to enlarge further.

SDF

Fivedials magazine asked me to do a kind of 'illustration-essay' (like a photo-essay, but with drawings). I decided to document something I see all-too-often around Paris, and which lookss subtly different from the same problem in the UK. I'll be posting my original sketches during the next week, and you can also see them in a slightly different version at http://fivedials.com.

Fivedials

is a London publication, but for the current issue, it's in Paris. 

The magazine asked me to do a kind of 'illustration-essay' (like a photo-essay, but with drawings). I decided to document something I see all-too-often around Paris, and which lookss subtly different from the same problem in the UK. I'll be posting my original sketches here all this week, and you can also see them in a slightly different version at http://fivedials.com.    

Two Nations

Over the last week in Devon, I've gone surfer blonde (I'm considering bleaching it to complete the Warhol effect: thoughts?) and bought my first wetsuit. As a fan of funny clothes with tricky fastenings, I can't tell you how much I like it. It's even better than my first fencing jacket.

I bought mine - the wetsuit, that is - from a marine shop in Kingsbridge where they lower a sail into the window of the boat showroom to act as a cubicle. I peeled myself in and out of rubber corsets in this tiny swaying tent, completely unable to believe they should actually be that tight. "They should be", said the male teenage assistant who leant in to zip me up, exposing me to passing yacht-fanciers. "In fact I think you should get one even tighter." I tried a boy's suit on by mistake and found out how, interestingly, men really are different before buying a version that hit above the knee and whose rubber breastplate compressed my bosom into a squarish mono-mamo. It made me feel completely heroic and just a bit like Xena Warrior Princess.

This lasted for a couple of minutes. Wearing a wetsuit on shore soon had me feeling like a boil-in-the-bag turkey but the effect in the sea was extraordinary. Having bought the knee-length version I still experienced the wash over my toes so freezing I could feel every bone in my feet; the same icy slash of surf against the shins, the knees... but, wading a little deeper, I waited for the killer frozen crash to the crotch and... IT JUST DIDN'T HAPPEN. This is a beach revolution.

The beach is divided in two: swimmers with wetsuits can stay in the sea for about an hour (this is the UK, folks) and swimmers without, about 50 seconds.

 

TAGS: BANTHAM, BIGBURY BAY, DEVON, SAINT IVES, CORNWALL, 1950S RETRO BIKINI, PING-PONG, BEACH TENNIS, HILLS, CARROTS

As you can tell...

... I'm still a little sore about this.

 

TAGS: Musée de la Vie Romantique, George Sand, cigarette stubs and coffee...

*jardin des mégots - cigarette butt garden/ashtray