An odd connection to coal and its cultural decline. Louis Vuitton have filled their windows with solar panels.
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This Week
Matt seems to be saying I invented weeknotes. Yay me. (Or maybe I incepted* them)
Probably means I should write some.
And Phil made a good point somewhere, that I can't now find, suggesting it's a good way to make blogging easier - bundling your week up so it amounts to something bloggable. I like that.
So, this week:
I had a week off so we started in a cabin in Wales. Well, on the border. It was lovely but the bed was way too small so we migrated to a fancy hotel in Bristol.
Then to Weston Super Mare and a brilliant cafe
Thursday night we had an Old Fitzrovian's game. It was excellent though my knee begs to differ. I'm so broken down that even Walking Football is too much for me now.
And then, on Thursday night, it finally rained
Blessed relief
*Remember when people said that?
Coal
I used to be in a band that practised several nights a week above a pub in Coalville. Coalville was a mining town, the clue's in the name. It was built by the National Coal Board and they had huge facilities there. There's not much coal stuff there now.
Myself, I'm from Derby, a long way from coal fields. Derby in the 70s and 80s was all about Rolls Royce and British Rail. I only really thought about mining during the strike. Miners raising funds. The Communards. The Style Council. The extra attention the police paid to lads in vans as we drove around the East Midlands going to gigs.
But perhaps that slightly distant relationship is why I was so intrigued by this range of gear from Garbstore. Intrigued enough to buy some.
Obviously you can see how they got there; workwear is everywhere, they don't just want to do US workwear so they're investigating British industrial heritage. And they end up with the NCB.
Random thoughts:
I'm old. This is more evidence. Stuff I remember is now being resold to us as heritage.
This must be odd to see if you're actually from a mining town. Those hard, hard jobs, central to the life and livelihood of your community turned into a hip, nostalgia graphic like an old chocolate logo or a forgotten baseball team. Is it somehow inappropriate? How would you feel wearing this stuff in Coalville? I guess it's fairly minor compared to the heart being ripped out of your town.
Though, of course, it's a good logo. Stark. Brutal. Appropriate. Though I'd be surprised if anyone's working on a Unit Editions, er, edition, of the graphic work of the NCB.
And, as someone with an interest in the future of energy, I like how this underlines the fact that coal is not the future. If you were making an Adam Curtis documentary about the decline of coal you'd have shots of these shirts around the beginning of the third act - as an eerie foreshadowing of the irrelevance to come.
('Cultural' irrelevance only, of course, we're still burning a hell of a lot of it, we're just making non-British people dig ours up)
Anyway.
World cups and euros
RSS readers will be glad to see the end of the World Cup and my annoying habit of taking pictures of me watching / listening to all the games. I don't know why I do it but I do. I think it started in 2004 when I was on sabbatical during the Euros. Watched / listened to every game.
I like looking back at previous entries. It's a like a core slice through domesticity, focused on the radios and TVs we've owned.
This one's still around, though the laptop's gone:
Phone cameras were well bad back then
Not sure where this one's gone:
And then in 2012 there was a lot of mucking about with projectors:
Phone cameras were well bad back then.
Anyway.
