Currency...

After a summer spent computing exchange rates in my head and getting to grips with foreign notes and coins......



(Hong Kong notes: some these appear to have been printed by my bank, which I wouldn't trust to produce anything secure or technical...)



(Australian notes: all of which have a see-thru bit and have gone "polymer" meaning they can be recycled into bins and other stuff at the end of their life...)(not my fingers, by the way...)



(Australian coins: which have kangaroos and koalas and echidnas on the one side, but are reassuringly royal on the other...)



(She looks really grumpy, doesn't she...?)

It seems bizarre to come home and find the money is just as foreign...



2ps and pennies seem to be very prevalent already, but haven't seen the rest yet...



...only in the picture.

If you get asked what's on the front on a ten pence piece, you might hesitate then say "Britannia" or "portcullis" or "lion" or something else really random because we're a bit ignorant about something so common which we handle everyday, yet hardly look at.

Of course, what's really on the front of the ten pence piece is the Queen's head, because that's what's on the front of all the coins (something else most of us forget - the front is really the back and the back is really the front...)

That hasn't changed with the new designs, but the answer to what's on the back of the coins will now always be "a bit of shield...", which might make pub quizzes easier, but surely lacks a bit of variety...

Papering over the crack...

It's not often you get to see an art work destroyed, but here it is....



It's Shibboleth again.

To create the crack, Doris Salcedo had to destroy the floor, so it can't be moved or installed elsewhere. Mending the floor destroys the art work. Destroy to create, create to destroy... It's, like, totally an aesthetic paradox and that....

It does, however, appear as though they are mending it with giant duct tape; which seems to be from the same school of civil engineering as the repair of the Huka Falls footbridge with a tile adhesive gun...

I think it was all a bit too clever for its own good. At least with the slides you were meant to fall down them...

* Thanks to Paul for the photo.

Not all it's Cracked up to be..

Right, I can't claim to understand all modern art, and I'm from the same school of aesthetic criticism as are many people from the Midlands, (chief amongst them my sister and Paul), where we speak as we find. ("Well, in't it just some bits o' metal and teabags?")

But I do try. After all, I have a degree, and so by law I must spend some of my down time being cultural and nodding sagely at stuff.

And so here is Shibboleth in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall, an installation by Doris Salcedo.



It's a big crack in the floor. Quite deep, and running the length of the building, it starts off very thin...



...and widens...



...splits...



...goes off down dead ends, presumably to get that woman's shoes...



...and finally disappears under the wall at the other end.



It's meant to make us think about racism and colonialism. Which it really doesn't, because it's exceptionally easy to step from one side to the other, in precisely the way that I imagine it's not if you're on the receiving end of racism. It was, of course, impossible for anyone in a wheelchair to cross it at certain points, but she doesn't claim it's about that.



Maybe I missed something.

What it was making people think about (me and all the snatched conversations I heard while I was there) was exactly how she did it. Pneumatic drills? Moulds? Poured concrete? Screeds? (and how will they fill it in again afterwards?)

And of course, if it is supposed to say something about modern society, what it really says is "How stupid are people these days that an army of guides has to hand out leaflets telling them not to fall down it?"



And how to get your camera back...

Arbetsmiljoverket

Just as you might be getting your IKEA tea lights out to make Christmas glimma, a foray (for your own good, you understand) into Swedish Health and Safety.

I think this is what the first few mean. Please add comments for the others...


Do not allow your candle to talk to R2-D2 on a sunny day...


Be careful if using your teapot for archery practice...

Don't vomit on your candle before extinguishing it...

Don't use candles as big as your chair, or you may disappear...

Do not allow your child to kiss pets by candlelight...

Paris in a Day (3): Sacré Bleu, Monsieur Langdon...!

Even the celebrated (and made up) cryptologist Sophie Neveu wouldn't have any difficulty solving this Code...



...primarily because she is French anyway, so it wouldn't actually be in code as far as she was concerned. But also because it was translated underneath...



If only Dan Brown had set the book on a Tuesday, it (and the film) would have been mercifully short.

So never go to Paris on a Tuesday either.*

Still managed to get a shot of the famous pyramid though. Built on the mysterious Rose Line and under which are buried the bones of Mary Magdalene...**



*The Rough Guide did actually mention that the Louvre would be shut on Tuesdays, but as with all guide books, they are only useful if you read them.

**All bollocks, of course.

Just "one" thing...

The BBC has spent my licence fee (and 9,125 other people's) on these, so I think I have purchased the right of reply. And that of judgement. Here goes...

Surfers	The best one...	9/10
Bikes	The noisiest one...	8/10
Hippos	The funny CGI one...	8/10
Kites	The far too new age one...	6/10
Windows	The flashy, but still dull one...	5/10
Footballers	The too techno one...	4/10
Petals	The not actually a circle one...	3/10
Moon	The News and Queen dying one...	2/10

...actually, just one more thing...



...wasn't Robin Hood good?!

(although not as good as Robin of Sherwood...)

A Load of Old Baltics...

Three photos from Sunday which might give away where I was...



(It's like a low-bugdet version of the Question of Sport Picture Board - you guess what it's of and then you click on the pictures for a fuller view...)

They are, in order:

• The Sage Gateshead - which is one of those armadillo-esque structures popping up to regenerate cities, viz. Selfridges in Birmingham and the Clyde Auditorium in Glasgow, which is actually called The Armadillo...
• The Angel of the North in Gateshead - by Antony Gormley, which is not as big when you get there as it looks on the photos, and...
• The Gateshead Minnellium Bridge - which is bigger.

They all have to have Gateshead in the title because the town has spent a whole bunch of council tax payers' money on public art and God forbid anyone might think it's all in Newcastle, with which Gateshead has an identity crisis, being separated from it by only 125 metres of the Tyne.

There's also the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Arts...

...which is housed in a fantastic old building - an old flour mill on the banks of the river. It's been cleverly and beautifully restored and is just as imposing as the landmarks above, but has become home to... well, the phrase "contemporary art" probably says all that's needed...

Splatter paintings done with a toothbrush, some careful colouring-in of squares and a sculpture made of metal and tea bags...

Well, who made me an art critic anyway? There were enough people there regarding it all wisely and nodding in a understanding way to make sure my comments don't give any of the artists sleepless nights. Especially as one of them is dead.