Cultured Football

A happy new year indeed with the sight, observed whilst tuning-in to the BBC's 'Final Score' yesterday afternoon, of the mighty and magnificent Jonathan Meades, whose marvellously idiosyncratic, fiercely intelligent, erudite, opinionated and witty television films, often based on explorations of architectural idioms but expanding to cover a dizzying range of cultural aspects of peoples and places, are the stuff of hero-worship in the parish of TOoT, turning his hand (or more likely foot, under such circumstances) to a spot of goal-scoring during the day's football fixtures. Ah, the delight of inhabiting alternative universes where such occurrences do actually happen...*

Mr Meades, of course, did touch upon the subject of football, and a discerning selection of the small-town names of the Scottish game that exist in the general public consciousness for but a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon when they appear amongst the soccer scores/results lists, during his 2009 series 'Off Kilter', so the association is not too fanciful a one to make, perhaps.

* See 'The (Fictional) Football Alliance', where such possibilities might exist!

Pears #8

Today the opposite of tomato is Accrington Stanley v Crewe Alexandra*

Three again being the magic number, &, in keeping with the sequence of pear drawings thus far, endeavouring with the composition of the objects to achieve some form of positive charge in the spatial intervals between.


graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm

* How fitting that the Friday professional football fixture list should be devoted to none other & nothing but Accrington Stanley versus Crewe Alexandra, one for the old romantics, names with an alternative glamour all their own, redolent of the game's history & local, grassroots appeal: the very antithesis of, & welcome antidote to, the over-hyped excesses of the so-called 'Champions'' League (excepting the wonderful Barcelona, of course) & the self-aggrandizing, money-corrupted fatuousness of the English Premiership, characterized by, for instance, & to name but a random example (ahem), 'Newton Heath' & their branded ilk. Proper football, indeed, & a veritable goal-fest to boot, resulting in a 5-3 victory for the hosts: cockles duly warmed.
On something of a related matter, what a pleasure to read Martin Kelner's fulsome praise for - following the delight of viewing - the third & alas final instalment of Jonathan Meades' aptly titled (far too short) series 'Off-Kilter', that great man's offbeat, opinionated tour of Scotland, featuring on this particular occasion those small towns &/or (merely) names (Cowdenbeath, East Fife, Raith, Albion Rovers, St Mirren, Queen of the South, as evocative as Accrington Stanley & Crewe Alex to an impressionable youth) scattered across the central belt that exist to the world at large, outside of their own communities, for only those few hours on Saturday afternoons when they occur amongst the football results lists & on the pools' coupons: as ever, informing, entertaining & thought-provoking, & taking well-aimed potshots at more than a few sacred cows (contemporary top level footballers not excepted) - essential stuff.

Soundtrack:


Bjork 'Homogenic'