Sunday 27 September 2009

Tiny Manu #66



Just thinking about, if Tiny Manu should ever be published, what the first few strips would be like...

Saturday 26 September 2009

Sunday 20 September 2009

It's the cat's meow #89

Torino: passion lives here




While walking across a bridge in Turin, I noticed that someone had attached some padlocks to the railings. On closer inspection, they had initials written on them in marker pen.

Before too long I worked out that these were signs of affection - a long-lasting declaration of love that will remain until the bridge falls down or the local council decides to go out of their way to remove them. A bit sentimental, but I liked it.

EDIT: I've since learnt that this practice is based on a book (or the film of the book) and it first appeared in Rome. So there you go. Rome: passion lives there, too.

Saturday 19 September 2009

Tiny Manu #65

Torino: looking up

So, I’m back from a week in Turin, or Torino (call it what you want: they’ll just be happy that someone mentioned them) and when I was there I was more determined to treat it like a tourist, rather than as someone who used to live there. To that end, I decided to look up more often, like tourists do. In doing so, I noticed a lot of fake or bricked in windows I hadn’t seen before. I found this quite peculiar, so I used my crappy mobile phone to take some pictures.






This mixture of real window frame and lintel and fake window kind of sums up Torino. Famous for its industrial output more than any cultural reasons, and kind of dismissed by other Italians as grey and unfriendly, but it definitely warrants a closer look, since it seems like there’s always something that you missed at first glance and there’s another story around every corner.

I told my friend about me looking up more as we were walking through town, and she took me to a nearby church, where it is said if you look up, you can see the face of the devil staring down at you.



Makes a change, I suppose...

Sunday 13 September 2009

Saturday 12 September 2009

Sunday 6 September 2009

Saturday 5 September 2009

Tuesday 1 September 2009

Google Night View

Well, it’s all gone a bit Twin Peaks on Google Street View, with this night-time trip down several country roads in Alaska. The fact that it’s fragmented – one bit here, one bit there - gives it a weird accidental feel as if they didn’t mean this to be here. Perhaps the driver kept nudging the camera on and off as they drove home. Why this should be uploaded, I’ve no idea, but I’m glad that it has. It has a certain claustrophobic beauty. As you move along the road, you do get the feeling that you’re about to go past a parked pick-up truck with all the lights on, but no one inside.

Edit: nope, they've replaced it with some ordinary daytime views. How dull.




View Larger Map

Or you can muck about in Google Maps here.

Edit again: thanks to Google Maps new history option, it's back if you click on the clock icon in the top left hand corner. This is what it looked (looks) like.