Wolf Photo Is A Fake

Oh no, I am very disappointed to see that José Luis Rodriguez has been stripped of the prize he won for these fantastic wild wolf photos. They are wonderful shots alright, but I suppose with hindsight there are one or two clues that it might not have been a really wild woolluf...

Artist of the Week!

Wow, this is cool. My brother-in-law Jez is the artist of the week in the Guardian! Check out the story - and there's more on his own website if you're interested. I'm ashamed to say that modern art makes very little sense to me (it's like an in-joke I'm not in on) so I find a lot of what he writes incomprehensible, but he certainly makes some beautiful images and objects.

My favourite Jez story is about the Ballard interview mentioned briefly in the Grauniad piece. JG Ballard is famously reclusive so for Jez to get a long interview with him was quite a feat, and apparently it went incredibly well. Ballard talked at length about his life and work. It was solid gold! To safeguard this precious treasure he made a copy of the tape before sending it to be transcribed. But horrors, the transcriber told him the tape was blank! His copy turned out to be blank too. He had accidentally copied the blank one over the the interview rather than the other way around, wiping the interview forever. The two blanks eventually became an artwork themselves, his Erased Ballard Interview. Neat.

It's Cold!

Oh dear, no posts for six weeks? I really am not much of a blogger! I had planned a few updates over Xmas but ended up with no internet for more than a fortnight as a result of the big freeze. We were in Northern Ireland, in the glens of Antrim, which was stunning in the snow that fell on our first night and didn't go for the whole fortnight. I tried to get the car out after a couple of days, but ended up stuck and had to be pulled out of a snowdrift by a tractor. We were staying up a steep lane in Glenshesk that remained impassable (for our car at least) for more than a week. Made it to Cushendall on Xmas eve to collect a goose, but had to leave the car at the bottom of the hill and carry all the shopping home by hand. It was all quite an adventure.

We did manage to see a few sights in the second week - the giant's causeway, Dunluce Castle, a sheep with a pink mohawk. The usual tourist stuff! The causeway was ace. The road down to it was polished ice. We climbed down the grassy bank instead, watching people on the road sliding down on their arses. One woman slid for at least 50 yards on her back, spinning around and laughing hysterically. It was worth the effort though - a truly amazing spectacle. What a place! The sky was so clear you could see the paps of Jura.

Now we're back in Preston, and it's even colder. Preston rarely gets snow - it's too near the sea - but there's plenty out there today. So now I have to walk into work...