catfunt: the site they should have silenced

Tesco: this one's for Adam

I've decided to boycott Tesco. We've toyed with the idea of not shopping at supermarkets at all for ages now but all we really did was stop going to Asda (which was extremely rare anyway) and cut down on the rest. This has improved the quality of our lives enormously. But having read this piece in The Guardian I've decided that the only way to respond to these Walmart-like tactics is a total boycott. I'll be burning my loyalty card on Victoria Street at lunchtime if anyone wants to join me.

My Summer of Love: not just hot lesbo action

I finally went to see My Summer of Love, the film that my friend Chris worked on and I'd been hearing all about from friends who said it was fantastic. Probably the best new film I've seen in the last six months, at times funny, poetic, moving without being overly sentimental but still maintaining meaningful connections to the whole coming of age genre. Emily Blunt and Natalie Press are excellent as the two leads with what the Guardian described as "very English nouvelle vague attitude." And Paddy Considine is never less than highly watchable (whatever that means). Go and see it.

Next Tsunami

Walking along Victoria Street on the way to work today I noticed that various shops had signs saying that they'd be observing the 3 minutes silence for the Tsunami Disaster at 12 O'clock. They were all fairly matter of fact except for the nicely laid out and typographically thought-out one in Next's window. They'd used a small caps serif face which gave the whole thing a memorial-type look, but more than that it said "Next invite you to join us at midday in observing a Three Minute Silence in rememberance of the victims of the Tsunami Disaster." Maybe the powers that be should have found a corporate sponsor for the silence, after all the TV will need some pictures to go with the sound of silence.

Personally I find the colllective silence thing overly mawkish. In this country I think that we're close to hopeless in dealing with personal tragedy, death, illness and are poor at supporting grieving friends which is why we're so good when opportunities for collective grieving come along. As Boris Johnson pointed out on the Today programme the EU revising the punitive trade tariffs on the import of Sri Lankan textiles to Europe would do a whole lot more good for the long term recovery of that country.

Hoppy Noo Year

Tomorrow I return like a whining cur to my part-time job. I've always admired my ability to see the bad side of things - having manoeuvred myself into a position where I can hang out at my small damp cold studio on a regular basis making bad art I have to find something else to whinge about. (The excellent Apu here isn't done by me but some talented kid who came to the workshops last year.) So what else have I done over the Christmas break? I went out to eat last night at a Strada which was pretty good for a chain, completed the best part of my tax return online (now that the Revenue have reinstated support for Macs), bought underpants and swimming trunks in the sales (you never know what'll happen next) and generally had a nice time. Now about that private income you mentioned...