Night Soil

A week at work without students has created a horrible inertia in me. It is a strange sort of torture being trapped in a grey empty building waiting for something to happen. It is a cliché to suggest one’s workplace is prison like but the architects do seem to have drawn more than a little influence from Alcatraz. At home the bins are still creating problems. The orange sacks we were promised have not yet arrived. Also now without my regular ministrations our downstairs neighbour’s bins (not our bins, we have no bins) lurk un-emptied. They sit like vomiting toads waiting to engulf us as we edge past. I have been working a little on future projects. and a little on “career administration”. I was glad and a little perplexed to recieve an email from Saison Video in Lille saying that I had been recommended to them and could I send a dvd so they could review my work. I did wonder if they had lost the last one (sent unsuccessfully a few years ago at the same request). Or that perhaps they needed a new coffee mat. Nevertheless I dutifully burnt a massive dvd and posted it off to them. In the studio work has been fitful and has largely involved ruining existing pieces. I have painted what can only be described as “backgrounds” and made some tentative photographic experiments involving airplanes. Though I feel I may be treading over old ground something may come of it. Otherwise I have finally got down to writing my multi-million pound Arts Council Grant, a precis of which I shall publish in the next post.