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As promised here is another picture from my recent day trip to London and a good example of a location where i got to play tour guide instead of tourist with Jacklyn as I was able to explain that ‘London’ is really Greater London and that when I was taking this photo we were actually in the City of London, which is itself a part of Greater London.

Why I know this trivia I don’t know - I can only blame it on my time at primary school which left me knowing about all kinds of other stuff as well, including Greek, Norse, Egyptian and Hindi mythology - not bad for a CoE school.

Anyways as another bit of trivia what ‘guards’ the roads into the City of London?

Find out the answer next year!

Yes, I know it looks like a couple of slides, but apparently it is Art (note the capital ‘A’! lol) and better yet is the fact that this isn’t the first time that the Höller has managed to turn an art gallery into a ‘theme park’. (To borrow the words of my friend James who took us to see it.)

Now the artist explains a little about it in an interview with the Tate Modern and here’s an extract:

VH The five slides in the Turbine Hall are quite spectacular, not only because of their scale, but because of the effect they produce on the person sliding. How do you expect visitors to engage with them?

CH The slide is an object that we associate with playgrounds, amusement parks and emergency exits. I’d like to extend the use of the slide: I don’t see any reason why slides should only be used by children and in the case of an emergency. The Turbine Hall installation is called Test Site because it enables visitors to test the functions of differently shaped slides, mainly to see how they are affected by them, to test what it really means to slide. Again, this applies both for those who actively engage in the process of sliding, and those who watch. People coming down the slides have a particular expression on their faces, they’re affected and to some degree ‘changed’. This aspect of my installation is very spectacular, as you said, because the performers become spectators (of their own inner spectacle) while going down the slides, and are being watched at the same time by those outside the slides. I’d like to suggest that using slides on an everyday basis could change us, just as other commodities are changing us. For instance, I’m convinced that the use of cars has changed our perception of time. I could imagine slides having an impact too. The state of mind that you enter when sliding, of simultaneous delight, madness and ‘voluptuous panic’, can’t simply disappear without trace afterwards. In this sense the ‘test site’ isn’t just in the Turbine Hall, but is also, to an extent, in the slider or person watching who’s stimulated by the slides: a site within.

One type of person he forgets to mention however is the person who comes along to see it and decides to have a go and climbs up to the top of the largest slide to ‘have a go’ only to find that it’s tickets only (even if there are free) despite there being no queue in front of me so it’s fine for him to talk about “simultaneous delight, madness and ‘voluptuous panic’”, but what about plain old fashioned disappointment?

Even more disappointing was that this detour was effectively not only wasted due to not getting to have a go on the slides, but it also resulted in me missing my train which would have got me to Chippenham 10 minutes before the bus left for Calne, instead of the next train which got me into Chippenham 10 minutes after that bus had left and 50 minutes before the next one.

Anyways if that’s art, what do you reckon I could get for this?

…But unlike a certain cat I didn’t go to see the Queen.

I went there to see Jacklyn, a friend of mine who I have not seen for about eighteen months - Of course as I took my camera up to London with me it was inevitable that I’d take her photo at some point.

I’ll probably be putting a few photos from my visit to London up over the next few days , as I did manage to take a few* whilst we wandered the streets.

*And by a few I mean about 400.

Now I have never been once to bother with illicit substances in fact I was so boring that I only bought alcohol once underage, but recently I have been tring out something just as addictive as a class A drug but seen as perfectly acceptable by society in general - I am of course talking about World of Warcrack!

For some it’s a game but some experts reckon that it’s a lot more than that for a whole lot of people and claim that up to 40% of Warcrack players may be addicted.  Now that may or may not be accurate, after all addition is a strong word - but here are a few words from a self confessed addict:

You see…weekends allow for game play times of 10+ hours straight! I have been known to do this and have also been known to forget to eat because of it. Yeah. I often suffer from the “five more minutes….I just need to kill 3 more” syndrome. Well sometimes I don’t miss just one meal…I sometimes may miss 2 and on a couple of rare occasions I have missed 3. Remember when I said that I am considered pretty inactive? Scary huh? Thank god I have a wife that keeps me in line (I only miss meals when I’m home alone)

And this is from somebody who just a few sentances earlier wrote:

I spend maybe 5-15 hours a week in the game. Seem like a lot to you? Well, I’m considered an almost non-active member in my guild. There are people I know that spend almost all their time at home playing these games…sometimes more than 40 hours a week!

Warcrack certainly earns it’s name as I can attest.  I have a brother and sister who both play it and my brother certainly seems to play it a lot and will openly admit that he has spent days where playing Warcrack is th only thing he has done.

I have at least one friend who won’t play it, because they now what they are like when it comes to this sort of stuff and besides they already have an addiction to the Sims to feed.

I have played RPGs before, and even a couple of MMORPGs (Massively-Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games for the uninitiated) but up until now I have steered clear of Warcrack mainly due to the fact I have had no time for any games playing at all (except for Battleships on my mobile phone whilst at work). when I have time I will play them however and I can rememebr a couple of weekends in germany when due to lack of money, but plenty of time I chose to waste it doing marathons of anime watching or playing games like Cal To Power, Civilisation or Baldur’s Gate - all games that you can (and I did) play for hours on end so whilst I am not addicted to games playing I know I can certainly play games for hours.

Now cut back three days to when I had my first go at Warcrack and for those interested I chose to be a Tauren Druid named Thraciaus and I am now currently level 15 and mopping up a load of quests and making poitions as I go along.

Now I am not addictted as I know when I go back to work I will go back to work and I won’t skive off to play Warcrack, but I have to admit that the classic “I’ll be five minutes I just have to find/kill another (insert name of  something or other here), ok?” has begun to kick in as it does with any involved game. Just as I like to keep my DVDs alphabetical I like to break off from a game at the end of a quest - Of course the makersof Warcrack know how to keep you hooked, by making sure that your quest list is never empty and so there is always something that you just have to finish off.

That or there’s always the professions where you have a taster or what you can do at higher levels as you can see the ingredients, but untill you get another 10 or so skill points you can’t pick them and of course getting those skill points means wandering round until you’ve gained those (and another few quests to complete).

So in conclusion I am not addicted I am just enjoying a well-crafted game!

But I will only play it as long as I have the tme spare to do so, honest!

Due to having so long off I have been seeing my bed a lot more than I am used to and spending a lot of time in “my”* room.where currently a lot of my worldly good are stored (not all as there are a few boxes up in the loft as well).

Now I like all people have my own system of organisation for example I have to keep all of my films in alphabetical order, with TV series kept at the back of the folder (again in alphabetical order) except for TV mini series which are counted as films.

It’s the same with my bookshelves:

Now to the untrained eye it may look disorganised, but like the universe there is actually a deeper order to the chaos For example to the left is fiction and the right is non fiction, with subjects and series grouped together (such as the Bible being next to the Aeneid and Odessey and the books I am currently reading piled together.

Then on the edges of shelves are various electronic things on charge or just needing a place to stay put due to it being the only shelving in the room along with a few items that are waiting for proper homes to be found for them either on the shelves or at the charity shop.

This is just a sample though as there are another 3 shelves pack like this (and I will be buying another bookcase as soon as I have room to put it somewhere**) and for those of you that suspect it is indicative of the rest of my room currently yes you’d be right - but like the bookcase it’s a case of a few minutes work to make it look uncluttered and a few hours to work out where everything is now that it’s “organised”.
*The room I inhabit currently at my Dad’s house is a lot more appropriate.

** i.e. As soon as I have moved back out!

After the sucess of yesterday’s original piece of art work, I found myself making another today for another small group of my stepmother’s offspring.

There should have been four people in it, however the third and eldest of the children was to vain to let me warp their face with my camera, unlike the girls who once they could see what it could do loved having their faces warped.