Merry Crumble!

Here we are gathered round the festive twig. Had a nice day out yesterday in Liverpool despite the gloomy weather. Good to see the Alice In Wonderland exhibition at the Tate although we felt it could have been a bit more fun - for the kids. A nice maze or a Mad Hatter's Tea Party or something. It was all a bit too serious and celebral despite the inclusion of Bill Woodrow and Peter Blake. Lots of stuff that really shouldn't have been in it. Also popped in the Walker to see the Matisse books but as Hazel said the gallery lacked that spark - felt a bit isolated and empty. Some terrible pretentious twaddle on at the other gallery I always forget the name of. No festive joy there. We had lunch in the Hole In The Wall which was a mistake as it was very busy and we waited ages for our egg on toast which turned out to be an egg toasted sandwich with a side salad. Which we didnt mind too much as it turned out cheaper. A lot of noise though from rowdy diners.

Didn't do much shopping as it was so incredibly crowded with queues forming outside some trinket shops - so obvious still lots of money about.
Popped into the Oxfam and the Comic shop and found some books we liked but not the price. I've done most of my Xmas shopping anyway. Just some chestnuts and puff pastry to get and we shall be almost there!

Psycerbolics

A blast from Christmas pasts here , 1968/9 maybe , under the influence of something I'm sure though probably nothing more than Thrimpton's Old Perculier.

My earliest memory of Xmas was going to a big department store in London and having a ride of Santa's submarine to his fishy smelling grotto under the North Pole. Elves with fins and flippers? I can't quite remember that clearly but seem to remember the fishes and penguins swimming magically past the port holes ( canvas strips on pulleys being cranked along ) as we chugged along and then lead out through another door to where a red coated plump Neptune of a Santa was waiting to ho ho ho and give out presents. It may have been a tin of water colour paints in the gaily wrapped parcel or that may have been another time.

Another vivid memory must have been around Xmas time - a snowball fight in Corringham in Essex where we lived just after we moved from London. It was a pokey first floor flat in a row of delapidated houses. We accessed our flat up some rickety wooden stairs to a balcony and the kitchen door. A tin bath hung on the wall outside. Gas mantles and the radio worked with a big car battery on the side board. Anyway, I was throwing snowballs down from the balcony to passing urchins and they in turn threw them back. I had not realised the door to the flat was open and snowballs that missed me found their way into the kitchen and made quite a mess. Mum wasn't very pleased when she found them half melted on the lino floor.

Who Ate All The Pies?

Weird dream just before I woke up about finding collaged soggy boxes of old gramophone needles in a fly tipping area by a bus stop. I was telling the people at the bus stop how awful all this fly tipping was and secretly thinking " heh heh, I have the gramophone needles though". The collages on the boxes were old ladies cooking pies but they were infact all mechanical inside like robots seen in section.

I looked through my collage archive on Flickr and found this one I did a few years ago. It's about the nearest the dream gets though pretty sure the collages in the dream were in black and white.