Cause I believe in lovepower.
Please do not stick Bill Posters Here
No please don’t. Not anywhere else either. I want to be able to walk through London without being stuck.
And when I’m down you breathe life over me
Audio no longer available.
I am taking a little break.
(Update: I’ll be back latest on Monday)
Sale: Some girls buy shoes
If you are bored, you can:
A. Guess which titles they are.
B. Guess which one isn’t supposed to be there.
Goodbye my dear Cafe
The Postcard I
The Postcard II
The Quote: Some of the words written in The Postcard.
The Last Words written at The Table, on Friday the 21st of September, 12.05pm when drinking a last Cup of Tea, The Milky Way.
Goodbye, my dear Cafe.
The double moral about Banksy
Banksy, on the corner of Portobello Road and Acklam Road, taken this morning
Imagine you have just painted the outdoor wall of your house beautifully white this summer. And one morning you wake up and find this huge graffiti on your white wall.
That would piss most people off, unless the graffiti is made by an artist called Banksy. Banksy (wikipedia) is a kind of a legend in London, his stencil art can be found several places in London, but no one knows his identity. Banksy still goes around London (and many other places) leaving his work, but some of his artwork has also been sold on auctions, for prices as high as £288,000.
Which explains why, on the above picture, the people living there chose to cover it with a plastic layer to conserve it, in stead of angrily repainting the wall. I wonder if it raises the value of their house.
Banksy official website
And those people were lucky, it could have been a version with a less fortunate subject …
If you want to look it up, it’s on the corner of Portobello Road and Acklam Road, here it is on a google map.
(And a slightly larger version of the image here)
I quite like his work I have to admit. But what do you think about grafitti?
Paper clips are sociable by nature
I don’t remember where I found this quote but I saved it. I knew that it one day would end up on a postcard. Today is that day.
I reached page 28 today. Which means I am ahead of schedule, and also that I only need to write 2 pages more to reach 30. They are not 28 great pages, but there are some scenes I quite like. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though.
Enough words.
Breakfast and the like
We are going visual the next 7 days. It was either that or a week of silence. My editor thought that having visuals (photos, postcards, whatever) would be better than complete silence. I think he is right. My editor also thought that the post from yesterday (the non black and white one) had to be removed. I think he is right there too. It’s gone, if you caught it, I apologize for the depressing tone. If not – you didn’t miss anything at all.
Visuals because I have problems writing at the moment.
I took this photo in July somewhere. And just to prove that I told the truth: Cheerios and Maltesers (and don’t they float well!).
Don’t make any judgements until you’ve tried it.
the girl on the (new piccadilly) cafe
New Piccadilly Cafe, London
I like this picture so much, I just use it again.
So I did the interview today. I can’t even remember what I said, it might have been utter rubbish. I do recall mentioning Bill Nighy and the movie. I think I also said that it was the first place I felt at home in London. That I always order soup and a coke there, or that I don’t actually have to order it because they just know. That I have enjoyed time there waiting for a film or a theatre play to start. And that it is horrible that it closes and that it makes me absolutely sad. I also recall that I wanted to say a million other things but somehow couldn’t find the words – it’s the camera in my face syndrome, I get nervous.
The Girl and The (New Piccadilly) Cafe
The Cafe In quieter times …
I was visiting my Cafe today – because I still can. Because I like to be there. Because I needed a place to unstress and think. Because I felt like having a bite to eat and a cup of tea. But things are changing. The Cafe has had a lot of attention lately and newspapers writing about its closure have made people go there. New visitors, but also people who have been regulars for years are visiting while they still can. For me it felt a bit like a tourist attraction today. It was crazy busy and people were queueing for a table, which is something I have never seen before. I tried to read in peace and quiet but it was not really possible. When I walked in The Table was free which was great. But after 10 minutes, a man asked if he could sit opposite me.
Of course he could, I moved my soup plate and Parmesan cheese to the side and was about to think that I felt like being in the scene of a film I knew too well. But 5 minutes later his wife stepped in and sat down beside him, I woke up and saw that he didn’t really look like Lawrence either. It was annoying, they were loud and I didn’t really want to have them at my table. So I left quicker than I had planned, had a short chat with The Owner of THE Cafe and left with mixed feelings.
Yesterday I got another email from someone who is making a Documentary about the Cafe. I decided not to participate the last time I got asked because it was being made by people who didn’t even live in London, and I was in doubt about why they wanted to do it. I didn’t feel that the Cafe was more to them than a subject for a documentary.
Apart from that, I hate being filmed.
This time however it seems like a project with a heart for The Cafe. It is made as a thank you to The Cafe and the people working there, a collection of memories from people who came there regularly and who are passionate about the place. That sounded right in my ears so I said yes. It’s not for TV, it’s a documentary that at some point maybe will be used in an exhibition.
If all goes as planned, I will go there tomorrow for a talk. About my The Cafe.
The Girl In The Cafe travels
Firstly, a long due update about the The Girl In The Cafe DVD on tour project.
The Girl DVD is still touring, and currently on her way to Brazil, Germany and New Zealand. People are friendly enough to send the Girl to the next person, but writing reviews seems to have been a bigger problem. The last few weeks some reviews related to the project have been written and you can read them here:
Kate’s smudges (Canada)
Clare / Bookarazzi (UK)
And Richard sent me the following by mail:
This unusual love story has touched me. A love story between a high ranking bureaucrat (Lawrence) and a girl next door, or as you like, a girl next bar (Gina). Somehow it felt hard to believe that such different people could ever met. Well, erm they did. Of course the overall message is clear, as the film rolls out. Lawrence is preparing his part for the summit of the G8. As he tells Gina about the G8, she became more and more outspoken about the upcoming conference. This causes trouble for Lawrence. But she opened eyes for those who couldn’t see…
In the end I wanted to fall in love too. That, to me, is a huge compliment for a film
Richard
A big thank you to all three for taking the time to write.
Do you want to see the The Girl In The Cafe film ? Join the TGITC – on tour project.
The Police – Twickenham, London
If you find your binoculars you can spot them somewhere on stage.
WOW!! That was an awesome trip on memory lane.
I could have danced all night
(Here is a larger picture of Jamie Cullum)
I was going to do a small post about the Jamie Cullum concert yesterday. But I guess you know me by now.
No you can’t have 20%
Believe it or not, this is a post about Life, the Universe and Everything. Silliness guaranteed though.
I put on two kisses
I don’t know why it took me this long, I guess because I all the time hoped that it wouldn’t close. That and because I am shy. So I waited for a quiet moment where there weren’t too many people around.
It’s more than a year ago, I talked about it with him. And suddenly there is only two and a half week left before it’s over and done with THE Cafe.
“Of course. Where do you want me to write?”
Read More
I see monsters
Day 2 was great too of course. It was all big fun until Sam (super teacher extraordinaire) said:
“OK. So the next time we meet, you’ll bring, lets say, minimum 30 pages of your script”.
Whaa, what? Minimum 30 pages ?!? Bloody-hell! What happened to “Let’s start with 5 pages” ??
