Concrete and Clay

So finally, after being a slacker for a very long time, here is the first of my contributions. This one is the first in a series of a random collection of soundbites at the pre-school I work in (in San Francisco). All the quoted characters (apart from myself) are 3 - 5 year-olds. Here goes today's dialogue:

Violet: My mum won't let me have a Barbie.

Me: Well, I don't really like 'em that much.

Violet: Me neither. It's just plastic. And what can you do with plastic?

Gillian: Well, if you put fire on it, it will melt.

Summer re-launch party this Sunday May 1st

Terrace Guest DJ: Mr C (The End)

Terrace Residents: Giles Smith & James Priestley

Inside Bar: Earl Gateshead (Trojan Sound System)

The Poet, 9 Folgate St, E1, London – 2pm to 10:30pm (please arrive early)

This is funny as shit: Pussy Music.

I have been tired in my time, usually after a long term's work and the endless cycle of meetings, reports and marking, but this morning was like walking through some heavy duty treacle. I guess that the excesses of Friday night (big up to the Fabric posse) took out rather more than anticipated. The problem with kids is that they have no sympathy for the raging hangover or the depths of exhaustion - too bloody young to appreciate them! Still when you've clocked up over a decade of winging it you can get through the tightest patches.

The morning over I took a group of teens to a "hustings" organised by the good people at Operation Black Vote in Westbourne Grove. Paul Boateng was the A lister the rest strictly C grade especially the Tory whose name I can't even remember. The boys did me proud as usual asking a string of classy questions, before I popped one myself - you can't let them have all the fun!

This year I have decided to vote in the English general election, but who for?

I'm no psychoanalyst but there must be some serious fuckedupness about someone who wants to burn down a building with 200 people inside at any given time. Are they just "having a laugh"? Are they just after a quick adrenaline buzz? Are they angry and want to rail against the system, world, etc.? I can't say that I am too chuffed about having the window frame downstairs from my office go up in flames. Any suggestions of what to do about the junior firestarter to ensure that he doesn't graduate?

Music is fun.

Its like Mathematics but with an entertainment aspect. I like to react to music. Its fun that way.

Modern art is not fun like that.

I love music.

I guess there is something about an anniversary that gets an old historian a bit excited, but I can hardly contain myself at the moment, I think I need a mayday about VE Day. Tomorrow, me and the boys will be chatting to a vet and he's got nothing to do with animals. Then in a few weeks time the bloomin Mayor of Hammersmith is going to be on stage with me Parkinson stylie blathering about his time in the bell bottomed British navy. I've hit Ebay with a vengeance and got a load of tat to put on display. You have to question why someone has kept a box of matches from 1944 and even more so why someone would buy it. Well I'm sure they will come in useful if the lights go down. If you want to know what the world and his dog are planning for VE plus 60 then check out WW2 People's War. You know you want to.

Open Wound: Chechnya 1994-2003 photographs by Stanley Greene / Trolley Gallery, Redchurch Street, London E2.

At school I dropped geography for art, then chemistry for photography... Today I wish I could fully comprehend the effects and importance of geographical classifications and divides throughout history and the huge impacts and conflicts land has and does play in the super heightened political world we live in. Communication and technology can allow a voice of an occupied or silenced land or party to be heard, but it can also smother it.

Stanley Greene's photographs expel the air from my lungs, beautifully high contrast images of human spirit and the continuation of life shot in a uber stylised way; you would almost expect to see "CALVIN KLEIN ETERNITY" at the bottom of some of his portraiture. His subjects, in life and death, truly are models of the effects of Westernisation.