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Select: A Night with Mark Titchner was part of this Friday’s Late at Tate Britain night. The theme of the presentation was “the psychology of excess, control and altered states.” - sounds like a pretty normal Friday night, then.

You can read about Mark Titchner here and here.

This is an example of his work:

I thoroughly enjoyed the films he’d gathered together, so for the benefit of those of you who missed the event, I’ve put together a list of all the video clips he used, with links to the actual video where possible. Enjoy

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It’s been a busy weekend. I’ve been out for each of the last four nights and each of those nights has involved loud music and staying out late.

This picture is from Friday’s Mobile Clubbing event which was held at Tate Modern.

Mobile Clubbing is a bizarre experience which involves turning up at a pre-arranged time and place (pre-arranged via the internet, of course!) and dancing to your personal stereo, along with a horde of strangers. The Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern was a perfect venue for this. Even the artwork currently on display conveniently allows plenty of room for people to dance around in the open space.

And speaking of the “artwork” … I guess it is pretty much obligatory for me to offer my comment. Being fair, the hall was very busy when I got there, so I couldn’t really take in the awesome wonder of a hole in the ground all at once. Being realistic, though, it is a hole in the ground. Neat idea with the name, though - Shibboleth. Only this time I think the Shibboleth is meant to flush out pretentious art critics and not the Ephraimites.

And that was just the start of the weekend clubbing experience …

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Sometimes it seems like you just can’t keep me away from Thorpe Park. You can read about previous visits here and here.

First off, here’s the obligatory rollercoaster picture:

Flying Fish isn’t the wildest ride in the park, so I was able to get a couple of on-ride shots like this taken at arm’s length. It isn’t the best picture in the world, but I include it for historic reasons. It is the first picture of me for a couple of years where I don’t have a moustache. Haven’t decided if I’m going to stay that way yet.

This trip to Thorpe Park was a bit of an experiment…

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Had a great weekend, doing all sorts of things, finishing with an impressive fireworks display at the Thames River Festival.

OK, so photography isn’t my main area of expertise …

I really like this festival. It has a friendly fun atmosphere that I find totally lacking at the Notting Hill Carnival. Because it is on a smaller scale you can get much closer to the action. If you’re really keen you can get right into the action, in fact. Whether it is experience that means I know where to stand, or if it is just the way things work, it is possible to get a perfect view from the kerb as the night procession goes past right under your nose.

So, what else did I get up to this weekend?

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Happy Memories! My friend Eva took me to see Brett Anderson, former lead singer of Suede performing live at Shepherd’s Bush Empire.

For me, Suede’s highpoint was the album Dog Man Star which was released in 2002. So, not exactly a bang up to the minute band, then.

Read on to find out how Brett has fared since then …

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Ooops! Another long delay since my last blog entry. And it isn’t like there’s not been anything happening in my life to write about. More like a lack of time to write about it. To start with, here’s a picture I took on a recent trip to London Zoo.

It is a shade blurry due to my poor photography efforts, but what you see there is exactly how they look at the zoo. The monkeys are kept in a special enclosure which visitors can walk through without any fences between them and the monkeys. That’s not a big monkey. It’s a tiny cute little one right up close.

I probably wouldn’t have dreamt up the idea of going to the zoo by myself, so thanks to Clare for inviting me along to help out on her Meet at Last Sunday Serendipity outing. My duties were to take the group photograph, and that was pretty much it.

So, what else have I been up to?

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Earlier this week I went to a Laughter Party arranged by my friend Carrie. I guess normally when we think about laughter we think of comedians and joke telling. Well, that’s not what this is about. This is about laughing for the sake of it. For no good reason other than the fact it feels good to laugh.

This picture was drawn by a young lady who introduced herself as Sparrow. For our first “exercise” we were instructed to find a partner and draw a picture of them. Left-handed. I told her I’d frame it and put it on my living room wall. I hope she won’t be too disappointed to find out that it made it as far as this website and won’t get much further than the recycling bin. Sorry!

Is there any point to this?

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Time flies when you’re having fun and I haven’t updated my blog for ages. Here’s a picture of me to start the year off with. That’s as smart as you’re likely to see me in 2007.

This picture was taken just before I went to my friend Eva’s Titanic Themed New Years Eve party. The party was thorougly entertaining and included video showings of “A Night To Remember”, a string quartet to welcome us, and of course no Titanic party could be complete without …

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My friend Paul’s rudely named band, “Gloryhole”, claim to be the biggest band in the world. I can’t find anyone to contradict them - even The Polyphonic Spree only come in close at “about 29 members, we sort of lost count”.

Gloryhole’s “32ish” is a bit of a cheat ‘cos they don’t all play at the same time. Still, it is quite an achievement getting that number of people together to put on a gig. And it’s the quality that counts.

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If you were quick enough, you may have read the entry on here for “Friday Late at the V&A”.
If you weren’t, then I’ll just say we had a great time.

My internet service provider would like to apologise for the fact that they destroyed the last week’s worth of entries on my website, including the Friday Late at the V&A entry. No, actually, that’s a lie. They didn’t want to apologise. In fact they didn’t even want to own up to it.

Their response was, in fact, to send me an email offering to sell me a service whereby they backup my website. Funny, that - my double glazing business sells a similar service, where for just a small fee we don’t come around your house and break all your windows.

No free link here to a dodgy service provider that doesn’t deserve it, but their name’s eUKHost if you want to know who to stay away from.

Wonder how long this entry will last before there’s another “accident”.

Anyway, to make up for the disappointment you have undoubtably suffered, here’s a bonus picture of me looking silly. This is me wearing the measuring equipment for the fun fair ride mentioned in the Dana Centre article.