Week 24

Boomshanka team!
So last night I had just fallen asleep then who should run into my room but 4 actors and a young man shouting about hating Somalie Jews because they spend all day eating pop corn and stealing clementines. I then made them pasta in a kitchen that was so cold you could see your own breathe and thought 'you just couldn't make this shit up.'
Hope your week has been equally absurd.



Can't wait to wear this to lectures. Email in if you also fancy some double glances in the street.


This week we love...




As I'm sure you're aware, London has an unwritten rule that you do not, under any circumstances, talk to your neighbours. You can slip their mail under their door, leave suggestive notes around the hallway about not leaving with fucking front door open all the time an call the cops on their anniversary party but bar that and the occasional sideways glance, you do not interact with these people. Because of our hippie upbringing however, we like to think of ourselves as free spirits, open minded and able to transcend these ridiculous social conventions, so last night I payed a visit to Tony.
Tony is my neighbour. He lives downstairs from us in the ground floor flat and while all I knew about him was that he had a red bike he never used and long white hair, I rang his doorbell under the pretext of being locked out and needing a wee. Before I begin a description of what lay behind that ply wood door I think it's important to give you an idea of what Tony looks like. It seemed too impertinent to ask for a photo so I hope my A-level English will do him justice. Here we go.
Tony is about 6 foot 2, willowy without looking hungry and a little hunched over. He has shoulder length white hair cut into a sort of mullet which is receding quite dramatically, exaggerating his beetle-brow. He has blue eyes their hard to notice because of how much he squints, exposing only tiny little slivers unless he gets particularly excited about something and widens them for an instant. His face looks about 60 but his hands look weirdly young, like a 30 year old who hasn't done much manual labour and although the rest of him is pretty grubby if not derelict, his hands are immaculately clean. At this moment he is wearing mid rise blue jeans and a red plaid shirt.
Just as the Queen belongs in Buckingham Palace, Tony belongs in his flat. The moment I step in the door I trip on a red sequinned sombrero and stumble into what I suppose is his bedroom but looks like the inside of a schizophrenics trolley, you know the ones that spend their days collecting impossible amounts of shit. After much apologising for the state of the place Tony guides me down the hallway, squeezing past a clothes rack of old suits and costumes to the toilet which, as it happens, doesn't have a light. Peeing in the dark never seemed like a good idea but a quick once over with the light of my Nokia confirmed suspicions that pitch black revealed the bathroom in its best light. The kitchen I'm afraid to say wasn't much better but what Tony lacked in basic hygiene he more than made up for in hospitality. An absolute gent, he offered me the seat next to the radiator and made me a cup of tea in a pretty little teacup, saucer and all.
After the basic introductions 'where are you studying', 'how long have you been in London' and the like, my host begins to tell me a little bit about himself and while I can't convey his mix of awkward mannerisms and eloquent speech, I can share a little bit of information about his life.
Tony is an actor/musician. He hasn't been playing as much as he'd like to recently although he did do a couple of gigs around Camden earlier on in the year (points at three stringed guitar hanging above the sink). If his musical career may be suffering he's flourishing as an actor, having just finished working as an extra in the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie where he played 4 different parts. Although none of them where the suave French pirate type he was hoping for (does swish sword movement in the air), he still feels pretty happy with the experience.
When I ask Tony where he's from he explains that his dad was in the RAF so he spent the first 6 years of his life in the German countryside which he describes as 'Grimm's fairytale land', but other than that it's always been London. While he lived in a massive house in Germany, enjoying all the perks of a senior officer's lifestyle, it was a hard crash with reality when they moved back to England, their real home being a poky flat in Clapham Common. He says he remembers driving up to this beautiful Georgian house and being completely taken back when he pushed open the front door: the hallway was dark and brown and a little boy was poking his head through another door. He asked his dad what this little boy was doing in their house and couldn't understand that the house was divided into flats, and didn't belong to them.
So it's been London from then on but while he seems to know every single street in the city, when I ask him what his favourite places are he doesn't really know what to say. He went to Spain recently to look after his long term partner but she died, and he hasn't really known what to do with himself since coming back. They'd been together since 1972 and when she moved back to Spain to look after her mum, they still talked for half an hour every night and she sent him packages all the time, so when he came back to snowy London this winter it was all a bit sad.
Still, they're stocking his favourite German Christmas cake in Lidl this year, and at 1.99 a loaf, he reckons it's a sign that things are looking up.
Tony is definitely getting a Christmas card this year.

Crystal Fighters- Star of Love

Fuck Crystal Castles, here's a bunch of whacked up hippies with crazy dance moves. Time Out said that they were "offering saved up folktronica and minimal electro pop and veering between Fisherspooner-style euphoria and Animal Collective delicacy" but I clearly don't know enough about music to decide whether or not I agree with that. What I do know is the one of the singers found her dead grandaddy's diary where he'd written the skeleton of an opera, decided to see his vision through by pulling together a band and came up with a load of crazy dance music. Favourite has to be 'Swallow' although the film clip for 'I love London' is amazing. Check it out now.


Another Year- Mike Leigh

Funny how films in which the least happens can be the most unsettling. This one follows the year in the life of Tom and Gerri, a contented old couple who plod on through the four seasons assisting their friends and family in dealing with varying degrees of unhappiness. There's work, drinks, a barbecue and a funeral and while not much else happens it made me feel very sad. I think it might be because when you're used to Hollywood films with all emotions times 100 and murders and machine guns being part of a basic plot line, it really hits you to recognise characters that you know in real life. Aunties or teachers or even your best friend whose dysfunctions seem normal in day to day life suddenly become extremely depressing on the big screen. Not to say that Mike Leigh's new film os all doom and gloom, it's certainly not 'Happy Go Lucky' but there are some lovely moments and some of the characters are just wonderful, namely Tom (played by Jim Broadbent) who is pretty much what every man should aspire to be like at 50 something. Not one for when you're feeling fragile but it does make you appreciate the little things.


The Hunterian Museum- 35-43 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PE

Hidden inside The Royal College of Surgeons and spread over just two floors The Hunterian Museum gives The British Museum a run for its money. Ok, there aren't any egyptian mummies or pictures by Davinci but while this curiosity cabinet doesn't advocate the raping and pillaging of the four corners of the Earth, it does show that medicine is fucking cool. Neatly lined up in the display cabinets you'll find the brain of some forgotten genius, the entire face of a child with smallpox, a chicken with four legs and the skeleton of an Irish giant. There's also a monkey's head in a jar, a couple of elephant skulls and pictures of some of the world's first examples of plastic surgery, so if you're not too queazy you should go have a gander. Oh and it's absolutely free and the gift shop is rubbish so you won't be tempted to spend any money.

Also...



Definitely not into the idea of using a blog as a billboard for pretty but pointless pictures but just thought she was great.
Would just love to play pictionary with her, I imagine she'd be pretty good.