I sincerely love eating and drinking. I’m probably not going to stop liking it either. I’m a strong believer in the idea that a food and drink lover’s worst enemy is convenience. That’s probably the main reason that I have been thoroughly enjoying the route that feastingneverstops.com is taking me at the moment.

I noticed this blog via the cargo collective some time ago and keep dipping into the archive for more. I really like the way that Naz, a  Brooklyn-based graphic designer and cook has chosen to expose food and drink in its naked glory. It’s full of time-honoured folklore and tradition all tangled up with subtle design references and provocative  photography. The dynamic little quotes and excerpts that bind each post together are simple and potent. What’s nice about them is that when I tried turning off images in my browser for a few minutes, the content still held its own.

This site embodies the incredible network of skill, fervour and passion that humans put into one of our most basic pleasures and I’m glad it’s out there. Hmm, this has put me in the mood for quick fig roll before bed.

I have recently bottled up my annual scrumpy and it’s now quietly purring in a corner of my kitchen. I stood there looking thirstily at the honey-coloured bottles and it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t made any new labels. What followed was a dreary hour of shunting the elements of my old ‘ unicorn’ device around the screen with some tedious political debate on the radio for inspiration.

That wouldn’t stand. So a couple of nights ago I reworked the logo for my home-brewing (mis-ad)ventures with a more permanent auspice in mind. I used the same theme: A rampant unicorn with a mane like a banshee’s eye lashes. Only this time I left behind the  previous design’s heavy Victorian typographic styling and went for a cleaner, flat-colour print effect. I drew heavily on the graphics from Camembert wrappers of Northern France and also from old tobacco tins from my Grandad’s shed (nice collection of examples here). This is what came out. Any thoughts?

We had some well-needed rain recently and although the sun was in full view today, it reminded me that Summer is on the wane and I soon must turn again to my beloved bookshelf for cold-weather comfort.  I was gleefully encouraged by a terrific lost Ladybird Book that found itself to the top of a pile and reminded me that there was plenty to look forward to when the mercury drops.

This one is pure graphic luxury. It’s a regal voyage into the backstreets of pomp and the no-man’s land of nostalgic design. According to the inside cover, my copy of Learning about Heraldry was first published in 1974. The illustrations and facts still give off the notion that children might need to know the component parts of the Royal Standard or how to tell the Eton Crest from a Rugby one. It’s got a charming pre-silver jubilee feel to it and as with all Ladybird books, the history and facts are surprisingly enthralling to adults.

Contemporary Graphic design is full of crests, shields arms and borrowed elements of heraldry. Businesses like to play on the sense of tradition and reputation that heraldic devices emanate. What at first seemed like a faded and musty art to me, suddenly presented itself to me as having much greater credence for industry. The symbolism and protocols of the graphic designers of the middle-ages are still very much recognisable to this day.

Whilst stumbling through a host of sites promising to etch my family name onto a pathetic looking shield to hang above my Kitchen door, I found an odd site on the Civic heraldry of  England and Wales. There is a huge and well researched list of ancient town council heraldic devices. Some of them are actually quite mental.

Anything can happen in films these days. Floating worlds with blue people, city-stomping robots, Victorian London recreated etc… CGI has gone beyond trying to look real, its designers and technicians have opened the envelope and created the ‘hypereal’. CGI has to be especially crap for us to even notice it these days. Indeed, much of the modern science fiction we are exposed to has attained a certain level of nonchalance. Our ‘other worlds’ have become our ‘own worlds’ and the imagination is rarely tasked with anything harder than trying to keep up with a frame rate. Because CGI artists can make anything, they often make everything. Nothing is left to the imagination.

One chap who has always left plenty to the imagination is British fantasy artist and designer, Roger Dean. I was first exposed to his trademark organic shapes and stark landscapes via the teeth grindingly difficult Shadow of the Beast computer game series (and other Psygnosis titles) for the Commodore Amiga. His sparse worlds where nature and its forces rule are both alien and an extension of the extremes of our own planet.

Dean’s other work on album covers for bands like Yes, Rick Wakeman, Asia and the Gun stand as a testament to his versatility but also as an ode to the sublime Sci-Fi novel cover art of the 1960′s and 1970′s. There is a primal, almost hostile feeling to the environments that he creates – giving off the feeling that man is always the ‘guest’ in the lands he portrays.

I can’t help feeling that he has influenced illustrators like Dan McPharlin to a degree – have a peek at one of my earlier posts to see what I’m talking about. Here’s an interesting article on IO9.com about how Dean’s work contributed to some of the concept behind Avatar’s world with a whole raft of his artwork to see.

I recall being tipsily slumped on my sofa on a wet winter night in January this year. I was trying to entertain myself by reading a vintage book on British hauntings and mysterious places. Sutton Hoo came up again and again and as I had already heard of the strange circumstances surrounding  its discovery, I decided to investigate it further. So when July came around and I found myself camping in the area, I decided to pop by for a quick look.

Sutton Hoo is an Anglo-Saxon burial site in the gentle fields of South-East of Suffolk. It is characterised by its group of visible ‘barrows’ and it was allegedly first exhumed when the owner of the estate land (Mrs Edith Pretty) and friends had claimed to have seen apparitions of figures around the site. Local folklore had also hinted at a cache of Saxon-Gold in the barrows. Whichever reason was the true driver, she hired a local man to excavate the site and in 1939 the British Museum got wind of the dig and came along to help. They discovered undisturbed burial chambers and the Saxon burial ship of a high nobleman/king. The incredible death mask they found is still on show in the British Museum.

The site has been maintained and run by the National Trust for a while now. As usual with National Trust properties, there is the obligatory tea room, small museum, jobsworth employees and a shop selling a plethora of historical tack. The site itself is not very inspiring on first look either and it takes a little reflection to understand what you are actually experiencing. Generally, I support what the NT do, but it feels here as if they have gone too far somehow. Especially when you can’t even see the treasures that the barrows hold in their rightful place. Saying that, there is a general unnerving aura that sits over the site and some of the stories surrounding the finds there are not as simple as they seem at first glance.

Ovedrall, I was a bit disappointed, but on the way out I saw some rather attractively carved way-marker posts with Saxon helmets on them, which made it all worthwhile. Sort of.

Well, what better way to celebrate the Colourschool 2nd birthday than with a few vintage British postcards?! These have been sitting in a massive unordered pile in our sideboard for quite some time. They occasionally see the light of day when I fancy sending a someone a ‘thank-you’, but I really should get a proper look at them before they all go. You can literally pick up wads of this sort of classic travel ephemera very cheaply on eBay. Although some of the postcards are so special that they will probably never get used, there are always plenty that can be bear your kind words to someone. Afterall, that’s what they were made for and let’s be honest, it’s a good feeling to get a postcard isn’t it?

What’s lovely about these vintage postcards is that they represent a time of travel in this country before the package holiday arrived and when the motorcar/train trip was one of the highlights of the Summer. The destinations are glamourously flaunted with insane colour saturation and a brain aching contrast level that makes the National Parks and Coastal Resorts of Britain look like an acid drenched Eden – Indeed, some of them are in there own way.

I love the idea that people exchange these postcards as a kind of hallmark of attendance, but also as a visual statement or momento. Somehow, the bleached sickly blandness of a botanical garden in high summer or a thatched cottage in Statford Upon Avon becomes a viable excursion through these postcards. Flickr user ‘Postcard Farm’ has a cracking set of postcards to peruse if you have a moment of internet peace to yourself.

I have just seen the new short film that Nick Livesy has produced for well-groomed cycling barons, Rapha. The film is an evocative but gritty take on the personal sacrifices of Johan Museeuw, twists, turns and history of one of the cycling calendar’s toughest races, the Paris Roubaix.

Ridley Scott Associates have clearly had a profound impact on the film’s visual tone and some of the colouring, lighting and camera work separates this piece from the commercial identity carnival that usually comes through with the bigger sports brands in film or TV work. The film is full of intelligent references and simple but thoughtful ideas to represent the race and all the ‘mis-en-scene’ that comes with it. I was particularly enamoured by the the shots of the veteran rider plaques in the showers, the sublime way in which the race-route being imposed along a gnarly tree stem or the harsh grimy scenes of the battered rider’s legs after the cobbles. In a kind of homage to the ghosts of the cobbled roads themselves, Nick Livesy has worked some wonderfully shot flashbacks into the film that highlight the cold, unforgiving history behind them. I also really like the references the folklore, tradition and superstition that flow in and out of the narrative.

This is an encouraging venture for Rapha and Nick Livesy and it reinforces the growing enthusiasm for cycling in the UK. My only gripe (and it’s a small one), is that are some obviously glaring references to sponsorship (Fila, Perrier etc…) that really have no place in the film. But that said, it certainly doesn’t detract from the composure, beauty and concept of the film. I think Rapha have some very skilled marketing folk on their team and I hope they can maintain their dignified position. The full film is available to watch (and make sure you choose HD) on the  Rapha site…

Sunday was occupied by a trip to Greenham Common with some friends. It was close with a typically warm August sun poking between the  tumbling clouds. A menagerie of Crickets, insects and floating seeds made the thick air vibrate and  even though the sounds of light aircraft and grazing cattle mingled with all this, it seemed to me that a strange silence has draped over the Common. It’s a feeling I have felt before in disused sites where nature has reclaimed what was once hers. There seems to be an ‘event echo’. A sort of psychological quietness so silent it can be felt, rather than heard.

The site was once an important RAF base during the WW2, but the USAF continued to utilise the site in joint operation with the RAF throughout the Cold War. It was then that the site was re-purposed to function as a nuclear weapons launch-site and an alarming number of warheads were kept in huge concrete silos here ready to be fired at which ever Eastern Bloc country was causing the bother.  It was this factor which prompted tens of thousands of women to protest at the site (and other sites too) in the 1980′s by setting up peace camps and impressive human-chains around the site perimeters that stretched for Kilometeres. The last missiles left the site in 1991 to be decommissioned.

Now nature has taken back the land and most of the concrete buildings and runways have disappeared leaving fading scars. Cattle and horses amble around the gorse and heather looking rather morose. The ‘Fire Plane’ is a rusted mess seeming as though it never really impressed anyone anyway and a boarded-up control tower cuts a lonely shape where it sits bewildered at the edge of the Common car-park. Three rows of fencing and a strange patrolling security van still protect the silos from visitors. But they seem ancient now, like tombs. Not aggressive or mysterious, just wasteful and perhaps even embarrassing. The Common doesn’t give away many secrets, but it’s hard not to be aware of the fact that not so long ago, two forces met here head-on and the greater good won out.

The nearest Train Station is Thatcham, but the Common is about another 1-2 miles away. The Swan pub will cater for thirsty folk who make the walk back. The exposed heathland of the common offers little shade and my forehead was looking rather pink when I returned home, so if you do go in Summer, make sure you pack a hat.