The clocks go forward and the crime is solved

To bed after watching the final episodes of the superb Danish thriller 'The Killing' on the thrice-blessed BBC iPlayer.
With twenty convoluted episodes that gripped all right-thinking viewers – and a uniformly excellent cast headed by Sofie Gråbøl as Detective Sarah Lund – this never failed to provide compelling and compassionate drama. Serial storytelling of the highest quality, in short.
It's been a worthy successor to the Swedish version of Henning Mankell's 'Wallander' (starring the beautifully hang-dog Krister Henrikkson in the title role).

I will miss it.
RIP Nanna Birk Larson.

It would be illogical not to celebrate the fact.

Meanwhile, on September 30th 2010, it's late morning at Otter Lake, New Hampshire:

. . . but not as we know it.

It's Life, Jim. . .

Sweet, bright, chill Saturday

An away day.

The city unfolding, endless under tire of bus and foot of leg.

Mette and I head to see Dieter Roth's 'Reykjavik Slides (31,035) Every View of a City' at Hauser & Wirth in Mayfair. Dark space. . . click, whirring of multiple projectors filling the walls with slides of another, curiously, quietly different place. Away across the cold Northern seas.
. . . Past the building the Beatles played upon, putting out the sounds that awoke a decade one last time in another London of mini skirts and bowler hats. Through Soho streets so familiar they're hard-wired into my memory (days of storyboards and Soho House meetings, fresh pastas and Japanese supermarkets, New Piccadilly Cafe omelette and chips, looking out across night-time rooftops with Karen, then the same under the purple-peach light of an eclipse a few years after that). FOPP for cheap riches - in book and on film. Chris Morris' 'Four Lions' included. . .
East, through a chaos of sluggish traffic, roadworks and fellow weekend wanderers. Bump into Mette's old St. Martins pal Adam, but conversation feels forced and empty - no surprise this, given the sudden social collision of our two storylines, and none of us having seen a script for this sudden Pink Page in our day.
To The Museum of London, and 'London Street Photography'. Really very interesting indeed - even if only grazing the surface of the experience of living in this odd, maddening place that is at once all cities, but so very much its own peculiar distinctive self.
To love and to hate. . .
Back to N16; Mette finding knitting treasures for her niece that inevitably remind me of my own Auntie Jean, who I dreamed of again last night. . . and that old Church Street we have walked a thousand times. A gentle light brushes the upper floors of the buildings, hinting at a Spring which sort of really should be here already.
Then a much-needed repast at The Rose and Crown: beer-battered fish, chips and posh mushy peas. With Adnams Stout.

Talk and talk and talk – feeling hopeful, and a bit sad, too. But mostly hopeful.

And anyway, in the 2007 Doctor Who story 'Blink' (by writer Steven Moffat) Sally Sparrow (played by the luminous Carey Mulligan), said that sad was 'happy for deep people' and if you recognized the truth of that, well then we agree.

Two people - one thing - Saturday 19th March 2011.

RIP BOB GREAVES: 1934 - 2011

As with my recent post on the points on my Northern compass, Granada Television and Manchester. . . Sad today to hear of the death of a splendid everyman face from local news show 'Granada Reports' of yesteryear.

Mister Greaves, as ever, you didn't miss your cue.

Perhaps he and Tony 'Anthony H.' Wilson are catching up over a pint, wearing suits with flared trousers, in a Mancunian dream of the Afterlife?

"And now, over to Mandy with the weather. . . "

Set sights for The North

Just a reminder to those many, many followers who I know will want to make suitable arrangements to attend. . .
This Friday 11th and Saturday 12th March sees The 2011 International Contemporary Artists' Book Fair (details attached alongside a ruggedly handsome line drawing that seems somehow familiar).
Mette-Sofie D. Ambeck (see her own new blog www.ambeckdesign.blogspot.com) and I will be showing latest work – including my own latest 'A Month of Sundays' edition (see recent posts).
It would be a grand thing to see any friendly faces.
Have a good weekend either way.
M

A Month of Sundays - the cover!

The new edition on the block - click on the image and it gets bigger.
I'm so proud.
M

IT'S A BOOK! A Month of Sundays – Final Day 4: 28/2/11

And so - after four productive and enjoyable Sundays across February, the new edition is now complete and ready for duplication this very day.
'A Month of Sundays' has gone with the flow of events across four modest days in my life that encapsulate a particular month.
It was a very simple premise that has proven to be just the tonic to motivate pencil (then pen) to paper and not only that but allow me to articulate things that are very close to my heart and mind. The image here, completed on the final day of production, reveals the vinegary wind of enforced change that's now imposed on us all by the latest Clowns of Downing Street.

'A little bit of politics', as Ben Elton used to say. Wait til you see my poster for 'The Big Society' - squirm, you political worms!

There are also some lovely drawings that I'm really pleased with, some deep thoughts and played words and my very first drawing of a Robin.

Available at Leeds and BABE book events, or drop me a line to ladnicholson@yahoo.co.uk