My Welcome Back Foyles Book Haul

Soooooo…since I lasted posted in August about my sailing course, a number of things have happened: I went to Scotland and avoided spontaneously combusting (read the last post if you don't get that), started school again, realised that despite the hype Year 8 is really not that different to Year 7, turned thirteen and went up the Shard (for all you non-Londoners, this is a skyscraper and one of the tallest buildings in Europe) to celebrate, also went to India in October (and unfortunately had to do holiday homework there so couldn't blog) to revel in tuk-tuks and ancient forts, and also spent a lot of potential blogging time on either Instagram or writing/practising songs for my YouTube channel (I don't mean to be a billboard in disguise of a blog but do take the time to look at that.). Sorry about that, I'll try to divide time more equally in the future. But anyway, those are all tales I'll probably fondly recap in the future because they'll bear an inch or two of relevance to the post I'll be writing. Now though, I'll celebrate my return with a post theme we all love in the blogging circles: a book haul.

My mum and I were Christmas shopping in the Covent Garden/Tottenham Court Road area today, a place which automatically drags me to the Foyles book store. Handy, especially when you have nearly £50 worth of book tokens like me. And no, I'm not a book hoarder who actually buys book tokens FOR THEIR OWN USE. I actually acquired that many as prizes for being in the winning team of the UK National Final of the Kids' Lit Quiz. Those of you who've followed my blog for a long time will also know that my school and I did this international quiz on childrens' books last year, were North London champions but failed at the national hurdle. 

But enough rambling, onto the books I bought…

More Than This by Patrick Ness

Yay, I got a signed first edition! When and if this book becomes famous in fifty years time, I can show off that I have a first edition! But about the actual book, Ness's award-winning last book A Monster Calls about a boy haunted by a monster while his mother dies of cancer, was both haunting and moving without being overloaded on either, not to mention the equally amazing, roughly sketched illustrations, so I don't need to spell out why I wanted to read this one. Also, this book is based around a recently dead boy exploring life after death, and seems as I enjoy similarly themed books such as White Crow by Marcus Sedgwick, this appealed.

Liar & Spy by Rebecca Stead

As with Patrick Ness, I'd previously been slightly obsessed by Rebecca Stead's previous book When You Reach Me, so much that just the author's name now jumps out to me as an essential buy. And with the unique premise of a spy organisation made up of two twelve-year-olds, and if it weren't for my school's Christmas reading challenge of five dull books of the school's choosing, this would be high on my holiday reading list.

A World Between Us by Lydia Syson

They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but this vintage-style cover is beautiful and will draw any book store browser immediately in. Aside from that, while I haven't heardof this book or author before, and while the love-in-wartime theme seems clichéd, the Spanish Civil War is a period relatively undocumented in YA literature, so I'd be willing to give this a go.

Ink by Amanda Sun

Another beautiful cover here. As the style of the cover might suggest, this book is set in Japan, more specifically about a girl moving there and befriending a tough and aloof artist. All sounds fairly unoriginal, until his drawings come to life. A premise which I think could make a very visually attractive film, but I suppose all those thoughts depend on whether I like the book…

Dash & Lily's Book Of Dares by Rachael Cohn & David Levithan

I know what you're thinking. More than one author = trashy. And quite possibly this book is, but again I was hopelessly intrigued by a premise. Girl leaves notebook full of dares in a book store, boy finds it and participates in the dares, each time he does one the girl refreshes the notebook with a new one, they fall in love in this bizarre, old-fashioned form of communication. The kind of flukey situation everyone dreams of, and I'm sure I'll soon be looking in every book store for a dare notebook.

Every Day by David Levithan

Another book by one half of the above writing duo, and I bet you also assume this book will be trashy too. But I still think looks can be deceiving, and this in fact seems to have quite a unique premise: a boy wakes up as a different person every morning, an arrangement he is fine with, until he falls in love with a girl he will never see again from the next morning on. One of those bizarre ideas us normal people would never think up, but I'm interested to see how the author writes this without it seeming fantastical.

Once I read these (which probably won't be for a while thanks to that irritating reading challenge), I'll review them as soon as I can. It should be interesting comparing what I think when I read them to what I thought when I wrote this post. But for now, sorry for the long posting break, and thanks to all of you for not giving up on me returning! 

-DP :)

The Hidden Gem Of London Sailing Courses

When I announced to a family friend that I was attending a two-day sailing course in Pimlico, his response was sceptical. 

"But what body of water would that be in? It can't be the Thames, that would be too busy and you'd probably catch Weil's Disease!"

Well, this was it, the Westminster Boating Base.

*this image isn't mine

Well, to be precise, we didn't sail right next to the Houses of Parliament; we were closer to Battersea Power Station and Grosvenor Bridge. But that's not really my point. My point is that we were sailing on the Thames! I, a beginner who'd only ever sailed in a shoebox on a dreary reservoir in Essex, sailed on a major thoroughfare yesterday and lived to tell the tale! Yup, no Weil's Disease (the Thames is apparently the cleanest metropolitan river in the world, according to our instructors) or being run over by ferries (almost all the larger boats we spotted were moored). I survived.

In many ways, it's strange that this place 1) has such minimal advertising and 2) is so unheard of! Why am I probably the first blogger in the world ever to rave about it on the World Wide Web? Don't other people see that there's nowhere else like it in London, or maybe even all the riverside cities in the world (correct me if I'm wrong; I haven't researched this "fact")? But I guess there is a good side to this in the lack of crowds (our group had only eight people, with two or three on each boat). To further prove this point, I also tried a popular kayaking centre in the Docklands, which had all the fancy websites and gushing admirers, but realistically, it's just packed with about seventy kids waiting around, half of whom end up without their desired place on the course. So maybe a small centre like WBB could do fine without any publicity. But I still think the location deserves it.

Anyway, enough of the publicity debate. Now onto what we actually did when we got out onto the water. Well, the format was actually a lot better and more educational than my previous sailing course, with everyone on the boat given about half an hour each to sail independently and get individual pointers from the instructor (who was on the boat, a fact which, although technically for safety reasons, I think was an improvement on the shoebox sailing course, where we were all thrust out onto a lake alone without a clue what to do). And the instruction itself was actually some of the most friendly and helpful I've ever received from these activity centre-type places, and that's probably a result of the lack of crowds meaning these often-long-suffering people aren't tormented by difficult kids day-in-day-out. Or maybe that's just me being cynical, and they're all actually genuinely nice people. We shall never know.

So I can now proudly say I achieved my RYA Stage 1 just downstream from Battersea Power Station. And I can cleat a halyard. The latter which, to my layman level of expertise, sounds a lot more impressive than the former.

-DP :)

PS We're going up to Scotland for a week in a couple of days, and the presence or absence of Wi-Fi is so far unconfirmed. But I haven't spontaneously combusted if I don't post for a week or so :).

Two Of My Favourite Singers: Defaced!

Last Friday, I was wandering the streets of London without a care in the world. Well, that makes it sound a bit too random and whimsical, I was actually walking home from an exhibition at Whitechapel Art Gallery (was intending to do a post today on it, but haven't really got much time, so I'm doing a less serious one). And on the billboard that usually displays festival bills with bands called things like Horsemeat Disco, I happened to glance at two of my favourite singers' tour posters displayed next to each other! What joy! The union of glorious musicians! However, there was a twist...

GRAFFITI!!!

Yup, someone with a hundred tons of imagination and zero of environmental respect has gone and defaced RiRi and T-Swizzle, putting my love of music and graffiti head to head. But which do I love more?

DEFACEMENT #1: RIHANNA

Imaginative Street Art Rating: 

The sheep is a bit random here, not quite sure what it's supposed to be symbolising, if anything. It's just like someone's doodle, that can be done elsewhere than Rihanna's head. But the "Art Is Trash" slogan is a different story. At first, it obviously seems like hate against Rihanna's music, but it seems to me as though, because it's Ri's own speech bubble, it's HER rebelling against conventional art and doing her own thing. Relevant, truthful and most importantly, not hateful. Overall, I give the art 7/10, with marks deducted for the  probably mean and profane thing previously stuck over Rihanna's face.

Disrespect To Music Rating (N.B. The higher the mark, the more disrespectful to music):
If you look at the white sticky marks around Rihanna's face, it's obvious that there's been some poster there before. Maybe it was an ode to Rihanna, or maybe it was condemning here for life, or maybe it was totally irrelevant like the sheep. Either way, it was stuck over Rihanna's face, which loses marks, but the artist had the respect to take it down, which adds them. The slogan will add marks, and the sheep will lose them, and that brings the disrespect total to round about 6/10.


DEFACEMENT #2: Taylor Swift

Imaginative Street Art Rating:

Less interesting, this one. Just some band wanting to advertise by sticking their poster over Taylor's face (I made the picture a bit bigger to show exactly what the poster was). There's so much more you could do with this poster: dip-dying Taylor's hair pink, drawing murals on the fence in the image. Just sticking a picture over a fellow artist's face because your band doesn't want to pay for an ad slot is NOT funny, NOT clever and most importantly NOT imaginative. I'm generous, I'll give it 2/10.

Disrespect To Music Rating (N.B. The higher the mark, the more disrespectful to music):

Where do I start? Hate against Taylor, superiority, it's all here. Not least zero respect for Taylor's personal desire to display her face. Maybe they could've stuck it on the fence or the grass or something, but the face? It deserves 10, but I'll give it 9/10.

So overall, what were the ratings?

ISA: 4.5/10

DTM: 7.5/10

Apparently, my love of music prevails over that of graffiti...

-DP :)

A Few Laugh Out Loud Things I'd Like To Share

Hi, today's post is going to be slightly miscellaneous and unstructured, because there are a couple of unrelated little gems I saw on my wanderings around London yesterday...

Firstly, there's this little import from Africa who's somehow strolled into Liverpool St. Station...

Yep, this is what you think it is. It's a gorilla advertising Norwich tourism. My fantastical brain instinctively conjurs up a real gorilla captured from the Ugandan jungle, orphaned and employed by the Norwich Tourist Board, and painted in such cruel fashions, designs including the Norwich coat of arms, Stephen Fry (not visible here – his photo was on the side) and some blue skies that frankly belong anywhere but East Anglia. And then nailed to a podium in a bustling London station, never to escape or see the lights of day again.

Other than the shameless exploitation of wild animals, there's another obvious problem with this nonsensical mess of an ad campaign: what exactly do gorillas have to do with Norwich?  Not exactly a city icon. The last time I saw them there was in a safari park, but please do correct me, Norwicheans (?), if you've seen some lounging in Thetford Forest trees.


The second hilarious thing I have to entertain you on this fine Saturday evening came about when some unsuspecting tourists, a boy about thirteenish and his mum, talked just too loud on a bus approaching this...

*this image isn't mine

 
So we were coming up to Trafalgar Square and, I being a skilled eavesdropper, overheard this priceless conversation. You couldn't make it up.

Mum: Look ahead at that pillar.

Boy: Who's that on top?

Mum: Napoleon.

Boy: But wasn't he French?

Mum: Yes. He was defeated at the Battle of Trafalgar.

Boy: But we're in England? Why do they have a statue of a French leader?

Mum: Because he was the loser. He lost to the English.

Boy: But if he lost, why put him on a big pillar like that?

Mum: Because he was defeated, so they hoisted him up so the world could know he failed. To show him up.

I like the idea of making a big, famous statue of the loser in a battle. When the media write features on celebrities doing embarrassing or mean things, it's sort of like hoisting the failure onto a column, and if the former's convention, why can't the latter? Perhaps if my blog ever goes viral, the people who manage Trafalgar Square and Nelson's Column could rebuild it with Napoleon on, and then the tourists on the bus (and probably me as well) would go down in history for changing one of London's key monuments with a single conversation.

I'm joking, of course. Nelson up there is just fine. However, I'm seriously starting to wonder what guidebooks the tourists read before visiting our city to not know that he's the one on the column. What London guidebooks don't mention Trafalgar Square? And which guidebook that does mention it, doesn't mention Nelson's Column?? And even if you have a ridiculously "concise" guide, you might still know the main opponents in the Battle of Trafalgar. And then it's just logic to work out which one's on the column. To me, with the fame the statue has, the guidebooks and history to go by, it seems a hard fact not to know.


Anyway, so my Friday was spent collecting little nuggets of laughter like these! But of course there were other purposes to the day, but they went rather unfulfilled: the Pompeii exhibit at the British Museum (tickets were still available, but we had to wait two hours so eventually bailed out), the latest Saatchi gallery art exhibition (we got in, but it only had a couple of rooms so didn't exactly take the time expected) and shopping at John Lewis and the nearby charity shops (didn't buy a single thing).

However, the purpose of finding blogworthy items was easily fulfilled, and I hope I've made you laugh and brightened up your weekend!
-DP :)

 

10 Day Photo Challenge Day 3 – Food

Back to the 10 Day Photo Challenge today, but I'm going to have to make it quick. So quick in fact, that I've decided to leave some lengthy writing posts for the weekend or tomorrow, when I have a bit more time. I'll keep the topics secret, but I'm at least giving you guys something to look forward to :).

Anyway, sorry to say that I don't really have much excuse for a late in the evening, quickly written post, other than watching The Apprentice AND its after-show (taking up a total of an hour and a half) and before that reading the last 50 or so pages of Noughts & Crosses (as good as the critics say. How I haven't read it in the last three years while everyone in primary school was raving about it, I honestly don't know). But this long preamble is sort of contradictory to the quick posting agenda for today, so I'll get on with the photography...


The Paint Palette Of The Food World

This is a spectacular representation of my favourite food: sushi. Apart from the obvious reason of the conflicting flavours of the sweet rice, sumptuous fish and delicious seaweed (or nori if you want to be authentic), I love the rainbow of reds, oranges, greens, purples and whites that make up sushi. I know that sounds like such a clichéd, made-up-for-the-sake-of-sounding-pretentious kind of reason, but I think a lot of sushi's growing appeal is down to the aesthetics. It's a good seller, looking better in the window that a lot of its competitors. The reddy pink of the tuna maguro and the neon orange of the salmon sake, make us, the ridiculously shallow general public, leap straight at them. Bright colours mean good taste, right? In this case, definitely.

This specific platter is the product of Tsuru, a small but lovely little London sushi chain of about three joints (their name means "crane" in Japanese, so they have little origami cranes hanging in the windows, which I like to imagine the chefs made themselves). Tsuru is small and not very famous, but it has some of the best sushi I've ever tasted, a step above big chains like Yo! Sushi, Wasabi and Itsu. Here you've got the usual favourites like maguro, sake and salmon California roll, but also twists like tuna California rolls and several variants of prawn maki (the Japanese word for rolled up sushi). But the best thing has to be 50% off all sushi after 5:30, which is perfect for dinner after school! (Although I'm often there late, so all that's left are boxes of tasteless tuna rolls)

And if you're wondering, the platter was not bought just for the picture, my mum and I did eat it afterwards. Sorry to make you envious :p.
-DP :)

This Proves Graffiti Can Be Awesome

Street art has been a large part of the atmosphere of my neighbourhood for a long while now, but it isn't the usual kind of graffiti. This graffiti is more than just somebody's signature and a few love hearts, this takes art to a whole new, accessible level. In my twelve  years of staring out of the kitchen and walking through painted alleyways to gleaming skyscrapers on my way to school, I have realised that this is more than vandalism. Anyone can see talented spraycanning without having to pay a penny.

From the scenes from mythology on the wall next to Pizza Express to the frequent Banksy rats (my favourite was the line of rats on the red carpet, sadly painted over a few years back. R.I.P.), and the evocative local motto "Let's Adore And Endure Each Other", everything painted here has a certain shine to it. It's the kind of shine that backfires a bit, because it gives a notorious and offputting feel to the place (just look at all those swearwords), but the actual images have a certain symbolism and neighbourhood pride. The time when someone changed a cynical rat saying "London doesn't work"'s speech bubble to "I Love London" made me finally see the pride.

Anyway, all the artworks I've mentioned are old now. However, we have one of the strangest, funniest and DramatisPersonaryest just released in the area. And I thought, because I snapped while I could (the artworks sure go away quickly), I'd share with you guys. 

I'd love to know what on Earth this three-toothed thing (not sure what else to call it really) is, or whether he'll be a charitable or terrorising addition to the neighbourhood now he's FRESH IN TOWN. I suspect the latter. Anyway, he'll be a hopefully good friend to the model cockroach below.
-DP :) 

Snow Day Alert!!!

Hello everyone, and yes, as the title of this post suggests, today London was blanketed in snow so we had only a half day of school! Yeah! 

This is also a particularly special blog post for me, because the weather was exactly the same just under a year ago when I buckled down and finally started to write this blog you are reading. I don't know if you remember but I also wrote about snow, speculating about some very large animal footprints in the white stuff. Whoa, it seems like a long time ago now :).

Anyway, I'm getting off topic. So, like last year, the mighty snow demons didn't let it snow until mid-January, but at least there was some. And today has had all the elements of a snow day, from snowball fights (:)), to slipping onto my side in black ice while being watched by a film crew (:(), and even a very bizarre snow angel-type-thing on our school playing field that looked like a cross between an apple and a floppy-eared rabbit. Perhaps a UFO...shame I didn't have my camera!

Anyway, here are my spectacular snow shots (note my alliteration)...

This is a restaurant near my house that had one of the best snow coverings I've seen today. No one's going to want the umbrellas out now, hey?!

And here's a great photo (although I say so myself) of a little alley leading down to a yoga and pilates place. I'm surprised it got this much snow because it's so closed up, but do I know anything?

- DP :)