Champion Pumpkins With a Capital C!

Once in a while we all need a day off from thinking work and last Friday I had my monthly day. It was another pleasant day in London and the opportunity to sample the simple joys of the capital was very rewarding. Halloween craziness was everywhere of course, it’s not a celebration I like but one of the best parts for me, and the only part I really enjoyed when my own kids were small were the pumpkin heads. As I’m not the techie guy in our organisation you’d have noticed a sad lack of photos on the blogs since I started doing them myself. Now I have some assistance I couldn’t resist putting up the pictures of my top pumpkins from the weekend. They’re in reverse order – see if you agree. Apart from sampling lots of delights, I took the opportunity to wander through the Tate Modern. Now I’m no art specialist but I know what I like and it has to be said that a lot of what is in that place (and has probably cost us taxpayers big style) I wouldn’t over give house space to. Look at the so called impressionist works from the Tate and then compare them to the work of ISSA that I have on my lounge wall. For me there is no contest, for anyone wanting proper art at an affordable price go to www.west-african-art.com and bag yourself a bargain before this guys work is only available at art gallery prices. Why buy on ISA with so little return when you can buy an ISSA which can only go up in value whilst you can enjoy looking at it every single day. Friends of mine had their house broken into recently, several thousands of pounds worth of damage was caused to their beautiful conservatory breaking in and getting out again. They stole all the usual electrical things like TV, XBOX, at least another three thousand quid’s worth which they would probably sell for a hundred or two. So intelligent were the perpetrators of this master crime that they left a few small items like the remote controllers and some very nice paintings on the walls worth well over fifty grand, just goes to show how little regard people have for art. Back to the Tate and the big display at the moment is Ai WeiWei work Sunflower Seeds. Take a look at the photos and get an idea of how many seeds there are. Each one hand made out of porcelain and painted individually. As it was school holidays the security were having no joy in keeping back the grasping hands of children and I’m sure the display will go back minus several hundred.

I’m not really sure what it’s supposed to represent other than a total waste of time. The futility of people making millions of porcelain seeds to cover a large area seems to me as though those people could perhaps be employed more constructively, however, if you’ve ever travelled to China you’ll know exactly how so many people have so much time to do anything and everything. There’s plenty more to tourist London than the Tate with The Global just up the road certainly worth seeing if you have an hour to spare. St Pauls is not looking its best these days and the fumes from all those buses seem to be taking their toll. Up in Manchester we have whole fleets of electrical hybrid buses hitting the streets this year, they’re certainly newer, cleaner, quieter and every bit as fast as the old ones. I bet they cost a pretty penny to buy even though they don’t seem any more expensive to ride on. By the time all the tramlines are finished the new buses will render them too expensive to use and they’ll never be as versatile. Most of the afternoon was spent around Camden and if I’d had any sense I’d have done all my Christmas shopping but instead I just enjoyed looking at the people, all the curios available there and the variety of foods. All in all it was a lovely day and for a change my phone wasn’t ringing off the hook either which made it all the more refreshing. The weekend of course was consumed by the Northern Entrepreneurs Super Conference which was very good but had a disappointingly low turnout. As regards networking these sort of events are a must for anyone who wants to do deals because no matter how hard the going gets there’s always somebody with money if you know how to ask them. It was a bit different than normal with speakers giving spiritual guidance as well as the usual stuff. It’s a shame they weren’t giving artistic guidance, I know who could use that. Endeavour to network to succeed……. always happy to help.