In the world of teaching you come into contact with many talented people. One such person that I have had the pleasure of working with in the last five years is artist Lynsey Storer. I have just bought this stunning example of postcard art from her which she framed for sale. It’s an antique postcard with an Indian miniature painting from Jaipur.

Lynsey is one of those enviable people who is not only incredibly talented but also goes off on adventures to far off places, art journaling as she goes. I spent a blissful afternoon leafing through her journals yesterday and admiring some of her current projects. You can find out more about Lynsey’s work here. You can follow her Facebook Art Page here.

Park Crescent, Fitzrovia

Yesterday I traipsed round Fitzrovia in the rain for a writing project I’m working on. I used to live just north of the area on Hampstead Road but barely explored it as I was new to London and didn’t really get its cultural/social significance. Below are a few postcards that offer a small insight into the varied views of Fitzrovia, there’s plenty to admire and I even stumbled across a Banksy – you can tell which street art is by Banksy because, generally, the council put them behind glass.

Portland Place, Fitzrovia

Roses, Portland Place

Royal Institute of British Architects building, Portland Place

Architect John Nash, All Souls Church

The BT Tower, lost amongst the cranes

The Fitzroy Tavern, Charlotte Street

Mural, Whitfield Gardens

Banksy, just of Hanson street

The BT Tower, from Fitzroy Square

Electric Press Ghost Sign, Leeds.

After the success of my first non-fiction book: True Love is Like the Loch Ness Monster, I decided that for my next project I wanted a different challenge. As many of you know I am very interested in the history and architecture of cities and in December I was commissioned by The History Press to create a book on Fading Ads of London. The book will primarily serve as a photographic tour of London’s ghost signs but will also offer insight into the history of the brands and the signage itself. 

As suggested by the photograph taken in Leeds above, fading adverts and signs can be found all over the UK, in fact they can be found all over the world. I have previously posted some of my own findings on this blog to offer a flavour of the intricate design and typographical precision that once went into hand-painted brick signs. London is extremely rich in these old signs, so not every single example will be included. Instead I’ll be selecting the most striking exhibits for inclusion, steering readers to the most visually and historically poignant signs.

One of the most exciting elements of this project is that a lot of my own photography will be published in the book – approximately 150 shots –  which is a new avenue for me in print. I will be working on this book for the majority of 2013 and it is likely to be available mid-2014. Wish me luck.

Last weekend I went away for a weekend to Berlin. I’ve been there before, but was surprised at how many more vibrant, offbeat and deliciously unique surprises the city had in store for me. Below are a smattering of the photographs I took over the course of the two days, the most thought-provoking sojourn was definitely our walk out to the Bösebrücke on Bornholmer Straße. The bridge was a key border crossing and the night the Berlin wall fell (9th November 1989) thousands of Berlin’s residents from east and west crowded over the walkway.

Whenever I read about the Berlin wall and all it represented, I have to concentrate really hard on the fact that it is reality; fact. I have to constantly  remind myself that it isn’t some deconstructive work of fiction; that free-thinking citizens lived very literally next door to what might be best described as a Police State. Something about this almost ludicrous juxtaposition sends me reeling every time I think about it.

When I first looked upon the memorial I was very unsure about it. It seemed a little bit too minimal. Once I began walking around the blocks however I came to understand what Eisenman had created a little bit better. It is, in effect, a blank canvas that allows you to project your own thoughts and feelings onto it rather than dictating what you should be thinking and feeling. The labyrinthine nature of the structure allows you to lose yourself in reflection about what this city and indeed Europe has endured in the last 60 years. Unlike the regimes that have dominated Germany and divided Berlin this homage is not oppressive, even in spite of its concrete base, but a modest and fitting reminder of what has gone before.

The image above is part of a mural located a five minute walk away from Checkpoint Charlie in the  Mitte district. There are various segments to the mural all of which display the communist projection of how life was living in East Berlin during the Cold War. Apparently there was a lot of clapping for communism – not wholly convincing given the number of East German citizens that tried to flee to West Germany, over 100 of them dying at the boundary of the Berlin Wall.

After all of its former grief Berlin could be easily forgiven for feeling sorry for itself but quite the opposite is true. The people are open and friendly. The city, which is built for double the amount of people that actually live there, is spacious, relatively clean and free from the madding crowds (that is unless you’re queueing to get into the Reichstag) you find in other large cities. It is developing its own personality, culture and sub-culture. Berlin officials spend a great deal of their annual budget on cleaning the city streets of graffiti but have still failed to keep ever-innovative and flourishing street artists from making their mark. One of the highlights of my time in Berlin was taking a tour of the local street art which offered a certain sense of just how free-thinking and expressive Berlin really is even though it doesn’t get anywhere near the same amount of press as New York, Paris or London.

There’re two last things I want to mention and, at the risk of making this sound like a bad episode of Sesame Street, they both begin with the letter A: architecture and Ampleman. Berlin boasts a pretty heady mish-mash of embellished domes and pillars in the Bebel Platz, staunch constructions of the Cold War period in the vicinity of Karl-Marx-Allee and aliens-have-landed-esque post-modernism with the TV Tower in Alexander Platz. I was truly struck by the range of architecture I found there and how pertinently it reflected the city’s history. Ampleman was a slightly less profound and a slightly more humorous cultural discovery. It is the name given to the green man who graces the crossing signs in Berlin. He differs from other green men across the world because he wears a hat and because he looks either like he’s doing the robot or that he has a large erection. My friends and I thought it was nothing more than yet another cake-fuelled, giddy aside on our part but actually Ampleman is something of an institution and has his own shop. I could have spent a lot of money there but managed to restrain myself to a set of rub-on Ampleman tattoos for my boyfriend. I’m sure you’ll agree it’s an essential accessory for any right-minded individual.

I’m not sure what possessed me but I asked the woman guarding the stall if they were for sale (I did at one point suspect that they were just badly kept pets). She assured me that everything was for sale and that I could have the turtles for $15 each.

I watched the two of them desperately trying to clamber out of their synthetic cage. I felt a little bit like the dad out of Gremlins when he goes into that old Chinese guy’s shop. Should I rescue the turtles as he had rescued the Mogwai? What if they mutated into some crude, ugly-looking monsters and terrorised Manhattan? I didn’t really fancy being responsible for something like that. Seeing these creatures so in need of relief from the heat however, I knew in that moment that I couldn’t leave them there and I’d have to assume they wouldn’t transform into blood-thirsty killers. Then again, I didn’t exactly like the idea of the street merchant profiting $30 from animal cruelty.

“I’ll have to think about it,” I muttered none-too confidently.

“$15 for both,” came the reply “and I throw in their food.”

Before I knew it I was sat on the uptown subway with two baby turtles on my lap. Only one question remained: now what the bloody hell do I do? US customs were cagey about you taking dairy produce over their borders let alone exotic pets. Besides all this I had nowhere to keep them and even if I could have smuggled them onto my next stop, Miami, I very much doubted that they’d survive the rough and tumble of flight time.

There was only one vaguely sane soloution stalking the back streets of my mind. On my last visit to New York I’d seen turtles swimming in the Central Park lake. The best thing was probably to release them into the “wild”. Although they were only babies there were lots of other turtles there to look after them (check out the girl who fast fowards the brutal segments of nature programmes) and for the others to live there, there had to be a natural food source of some kind.

I couldn’t guarantee that my new half-shelled friends would be able to make it but I was giving them a chance which right then was the best I could offer.

So I hiked my way to the lake in Central Park (I stand by my use of the word “hiked” Central Park is a lot bigger than it looks on the tourist maps you know) where I’d seen the turtles last time and sure enough they were all still there. Some were sunbathing on logs and others were wallowing in the cool but murky waters.

I looked at my two little turtles and decided I would name them before letting them go. One had red scaling around his face, I called him Michaelangelo and one had yellow scaling around his face – I called him Donatello (on telling this story down the pub I was told, somewhat haughtily, I’d got the colours matched with the wrong names but..whatever. You get the idea).

Anyway, I gave them a mini-pep talk in the hopes it would increase their chances of survival and I also reassured them that if I had been able to give them a home I would have. I then set them free and they immediately started wriggling their little limbs, in what I hope was delight and not abject fear. Burying themselves in the bed of leaves just below the surface.

Michaelangelo came up to the surface one last time for a final goodbye before gliding under a rock. I sprinkled as much of the food as possible into the lake. There were signs everywhere warning people not to feed the wildlife so I had to be quite surreptitious about it…although I’m sure the NYC authorities caught my every move on CCTV. I didn’t want to cause any trouble but I did also want to give my boys the best chance of growing old enough to learn martial arts from an over-sized rat.

All this ruckus had caused quite a stir amongst the other turtles and as I walked away I noticed a few of them swimming towards the babies. I felt a bit more confident that Don and Mikey would be happy with their new family and their new home. I watched the waters for just a little while longer before making my way back downtown for a civilised stroll along the Brooklyn Bridge.

My alarm sounded at 4:15am. The alarm on my phone plays a very bizarre, somewhat discordant song that sounds as though it was once the theme tune to a tragic 1980’s game show that was axed before it ever began. Sadly because I chose a contract mobile phone that is more intelligent than I am, I don’t know how to change it to something less caustic to the ear. The plus side is, it makes you get out of bed to turn the damn thing off, which when you’re due to be at King’s Cross for the first train in to Paris is a very good thing.

After getting dressed in the dark, and leaving my flat looking like I had, and enduring a thirty minute tube journey with a strange assortment of North London characters (the odd breed who get up before sunrise on a regular basis) I arrived at St Pancras. The lighting there is not kind at the best of times, but with my tiredness and bleariness its bright bulbs were enough to make my eyes water and make my mind wonder what I was doing out of bed so early. Thankfully my travelling companion had had the foresight to buy me a small cuddly toy as a belated birthday present. I perked up a bit after that.

The unique thrill of chunneling my way to the continent was sadly lost on me as I used the train journey as an opportunity to take a much needed power nap. I was however greeted with a beautiful French dawn when I did eventually prise my eyes open to see the vast wintery landscape collaged beautifully through the window.

Once in Paris we headed straight to Montmatre. Domicile de Amelie Poulin and the Sacre-Coeur: a Roman Catholic church dedicated as the name would suggest to the sacred heart of the saviour. Now I’m not exactly big on Christianity but as a piece of architecture the Sacre-Coeur is breathtaking – for me quite literally. We decided to visit the very top of the structure and unfortunately for me this meant climbing a series of very tight and winding staircases. I think I had to stop three times before we reached the top to catch my breath, but in my defence I hadn’t had any breakfast and I work in an office job where I never leave my seat all day. Of course I’m out of shape.

This said, the rigorous work out and high anxiety were well worth the amazing perspective when we got to the top. We marvelled at the beauty of the early morning Parisian cityscape, at the buildings palid in a sun that was still stretching from it’s sleep and at the Eifel Tower which stood proudly in the distance piercing a sky of the clearest blue.

The descent was easier on my lungs but considerably more dizzying than going up and I think my friend sensed that if we didn’t have breakfast soon I was likely to pass out. We chose a table at a small cafe and were greeted by a waiter who didn’t look all that French.

“You want eggs” he said, as a statement rather than a question.
“Croissants?” I ventured.
“Croissants finished,” he replied. “You want eggs.”

We had eggs. To his credit, they were very nice eggs and I soon managed to get over the disappointment that the waiter didn’t seem to have a penchant for stripy T shirts or wearing berets at a jaunty angle (I think I watched Eurotrip one too many times – Scotty doesn’t know!).

Sadly for my friend having breakfast resulted in me slipping into a rather hyperactive mood fuelled by my sudden sense of being overwhelmed by the romanticism of Paris…and admittedly a little bit of sleep deprivation left over from the night before. From our breakfast table we roamed the city from end to end and I never missed a beat. I just couldn’t help myself. Everytime bells rang I insisted on wailing “the bells, the bells” in my best Quasimodo voice. Everytime we passed a McDonalds I would reconstruct the car scene from Pulp Fiction declaring the words “Royale with Cheese” with enough tongue-in-cheek vigour to make Samuel L Jackson himself very proud. And everytime we passed anything of iconic status I would insist on taking pictures of my new cuddly toy next to said landmark a la Amelie and the gnome.

This caused a great deal of amusement and we could no doubt be heard cackling from far away at Pont Neuf, The Notre Dame and The Eifel Tower. Other tourists weren’t quite sure about my affinity for toy photography overlooking the Seine and passed by looking somewhat bemused before letting a little snigger slip out once they felt they had reached a safe enough distance. What can I say? Regardless of where I go I always like to leave a lasting impression. Besides, people should know better than to let me loose in a strange city equipped with a cuddly toy and a digital camera. It’s just asking for trouble.