Thursday 9 February 2017

My Morocco

A light in the church by Fuller's Brewery is on at 815am promising Morning Prayer - but no  - only builders, renovating I guess. A sign on the door says that the church is closed for building work.

There is though a new cafe just opened on Chiswick Mall, empty at this time but looking inviting.

Patti Smith (M Train) creates cafes even when there are none. They're a space for thought  - where the mind can travel. Not so easy for this to happen in a home office.
"We lived in an old stone country house on a canal that emptied in Lake Saint Clair. There were no cafes within walking distance. My one respite was the coffee machine at 7-Eleven. On Saturday morning I would rise early and walk a quarter mile to 7-Eleven and get a large black coffee and a glazed donut. They I would stop at the lot behind the fish-and-tackle store, a simple, whitewashed cement outpost. To me, it looked like Tangier, though I had never  been there. I sat on the ground in the corner surrounded by low white walls, shelving real time, free to rove the smooth bridge connecting past and present. My Morocco."

Love the idea of 'shelving real time'. Real escape.

Reading and watching

  • Foot by Foot to Santiago de Compostela/Judy Foot
  • The Testament of Mary with Fiona Shaw at the Barbican
  • The Testament of Mary/Colm Toibin
  • Schwanengesang/Schubert - Tony Spence
  • Journals/Robert Falcon Scott
  • Fugitive Pieces/Ann Michaels
  • Unless/Carol Shields
  • Faust/Royal Opera House
  • The Art of Travel/Alain de Botton
  • Mad Men Series 6
  • A Week at The Airport/Alain de Botton
  • The Railway Man/Eric Lomax
  • Bright Lights, Big City/Jay McInerney
  • Stones of Venice/John Ruskin
  • The Sea, the Sea/Iris Murdoch
  • Childe Harold/Lord Byron
  • All The Pretty Horses/Cormac McCarthy
  • Extreme Rambling/Mark Thomas
  • Story of my Life/Jay McInerney
  • Venice Observed/Mary McCarthy