Padstow's 'Obby 'Oss

The May Day festival in Padstow (also known unaffectionately as Padstein due to Rick Stein's chain of restaurants there) is a centuries-old tradition involving two processions through the fishing port town, each led by a hobby horse or 'Obby 'Oss. It was a wonderful experience when I went a couple of years ago but the sight of the 'Obby 'Oss alarmed me. Reminiscent of a cross between an evil Father Christmas, African tribal masks, Punch & Judy and something from The Wicker Man, the 'Obby 'Oss is an unpredictable beast, charging through crowds of people in the hope of capturing a fair maiden (so I was probably fairly safe then).

As tradition goes, from midnight today (the day before May Day), locals will decorate the town with flags, flowers and the maypole. Then late morning on May Day itself the processions begin, consisting of traditional dancing and singing. Locals are dressed in white with red scarves, some playing musical instruments. The 'Obby 'Osses, one red and one blue, are guided through town by the Teazers, who lead the dance with a club in their hands. Thousands of tourists also litter the narrow, windy streets.

See photos of Cornwall in my Flickr album, including some from the 'Obby 'Oss festival in 2016.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Beauty and the Brutalist exhibition
The Morris Dance Murders movie
Barnflakes goes Cornwall
Celebrating Cornwall's mining heritage
Notes on Cornish fiction

The seven fabled noses of Soho

Not to be sniffed at: three of the seven Soho noses

I followed my nose through the streets, picking my way through the hoards of tourists in the rain, searching for the seven noses of Soho. They were here somewhere, and if I found all seven (which I didn't; I gave up after three) I was promised great wealth. I put my nose to the grindstone but they were hard to find, roughly at shoulder height yet hidden in plain view, and the size of a nose. The rain got heavier, my boon companions found a pub, and I was happy enough with my three (I nose when to give up).

The story goes that in 1997, in protest against the proliferation of CCTV cameras in the UK and inspired by the Situationist movement, artist Rick Buckley anonymously stuck 35 plaster casts of his nose to various buildings in London. Even though he painted them the same colour as the walls he stuck them on, so they would be fairly inconspicuous, most of the protrusions were found and removed. Fourteen years passed until Buckley admitted he was the guerrilla artist responsible for them, by which time the remaining Soho noses had reached mythical proportions, inspiring all kinds of fantastic tales (which you can read about here if you want), including the one about fabulous wealth coming to those who find all seven, a difficult task seeing as at least one is located outside of Soho.

Previously on Barnflakes:
The Chewing Gum Artist Vs The Admen

Top ten films featuring photographers

1. Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1956)
2. Blow Up (Antonioni, 1966)
3. Salvador (Stone, 1986)
4. High Art (Cholodenko, 1998)
5. Uzak, pictured above (Ceylan, 2002)
6. Momento (Nolan, 2000)
7. Proof (Moorhouse, 1991)
8. One Hour Photo (Romanek, 2002)
9. City of God (Meirelles, 2002)
10. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (Stiller, 2013)

See also:
The Bridges of Madison County (Eastwood, 1995)
Kodachrome (Raso, 2017) 

Previously on Barnflakes:
Top ten photographers

I know I'm back in Brixton when...

I'm standing outside the pub for five minutes having a smoke and get offered a carrier bag full of steaks for £10; home-produced music CDs with hand written labels; three people trying to bum cigarettes off me; an elderly, well-spoken old lady asking for 40p to get back to Slough ("You'd have to pay me not to go", quipped my Catalan – "not Spanish!" – companion); and an elderly black woman asking me if I'm having a good evening.

I was actually rather offended not to be offered any drugs. When I was younger, I was constantly being offered them down Cold Harbour Lane. Either Brixton has become too gentrified and the drug dealers have moved away, or I'm just looking too old to score drugs. Maybe a bit of both.

Previously on Barnflakes:

Diversity deficit

Fire

Random Netflix TV Reviews

Lost in Space
Many years ago my brother and I used to watch the original black and white TV series from the 1960s and find the professor, Dr. Zachary Smith, very amusing. Then there was the dull, forgettable 1998 film with William Hurt, Matt LeBlanc and Gary Oldman. Now comes – and I feel like I've been bombarded with ads about it online, on the radio, in print and on billboards – the Netflix 2018 reboot. And you know what? It's so bad it's unwatchable. We couldn't get through episode two.
– 1/5
  
Stranger Things

What's so risible about Charlie Kessler suing the Doobie Brothers, I mean the Dust Brothers, no – I mean the Duffer Brothers for plagiarising his idea for Stranger Things is that's there's not more people doing the same thing. Such as John Carpenter, Steven King and Steven Spielberg (and that's just for the credit sequence!). Oh, I get it – it's a homage, not a rip off. Nevertheless, if you're of a certain age, i.e. you were a child of the 1970s/80s, it's hard not to feel like you've seen Stranger Things many times before, from the typeface of the titles, to the music, the characters and the plot. I'm thinking, like, The Goonies, Stand by Me, E.T., Carrie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Indiana Jones, The Evil Dead, Poltergeist and even Pretty in Pink, to name just a few (here's an entire A-Z of films referenced in the series). It's not even just films from that era: I thought the sequences where Eleven ('El') goes into the black 'void' were uncannily similar to scenes from Jonathan Glazer's extraordinary Under the Skin (2013).

Now, I don't mind film or TV directors being influenced by previous films or filmmakers: from the French New Wave directors affection for Hitchcock and Hawks, to the ultimate film geek Quentin Tarentino being influenced by, erm, virtually all cinema, there's a fine tradition of directors wearing their influences on their sleeves; doffing their caps, if you will. But when every frame of the series is a mash-up of Spielberg, Carpenter, De Palma, John Hughes et al, and drenched in clichéd, retro nostalgia for the 1980s, it's quite hard to take anything else from it.

It's like the difference between recent films Super 8 (2011) and It Follows (2014). Like with Stranger Things, Super 8 is set in the same period (1979 to be exact), is a mash up between films such as The Goonies, Stand By Me and E.T., but adds absolutely nothing to them or the genre. On the other hand, It Follows, whilst quite obviously influenced by John Carpenter, only takes his films as a starting point, and ends up with something stunningly original, and terrifying. Another 1980s-set film, Donnie Darko (2011), uses the trope of the American high school and music of the time, but to original effect, exploring diverse themes such as time travel and mental illness.

If you're a child, however, watching Stranger Things for the first time and thinking it's great, scary and original, that's fine. But if the first time you hear The Clash, Joy Division or New Order is on the soundtrack, I don't know, there's something wrong about that (Guardians of the Galaxy is another one retreading old retro ground with a mixtape of 1970s songs – featured previously in other films such as Reservoir Dogs and Boogie Nights – and storylines out of Star Wars). It's like – and this is just a shot-in-the-dark theory – they're purposely trying to hook in both children and adults alike. Nothing wrong with that of course, but it's the clichéd, unoriginal, cynical way they go about it that gets my goat.
– 3/5

Recent Barngains

Bookbinding: The Complete Guide to Folding, Sewing & Binding by Franziska Morlok and Miriam Waszelewski
Crystal Palace charity shop, £3, sealed (RRP: £30)
'Bookbinding is a unique and essential reference guide for designers, explaining industrial bookbinding techniques with a focus on the design and conception of print products', so says the Amazon blurb. It also says the book isn't actually released for another week or so.

The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog, typeface memory game
Sydenham charity shop, £2 (RRP: £13.95)
Yes, I know how to have fun.

Read This if You Want to Take Great Photographs 
by Henry Carroll
Clapham Junction charity shop, 50p (RRP: £8)
Handy, simply-explained guide for taking photos using an DSLR, something I've never quite mastered.

The BARNGAINS page of this blog (just below the masthead at the top of the page) has had a recent, much-needed redesign and update, and now contains a list of select barngains from 2007 to the present day.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Barngains
London Through Its Charity Shops

We're all pretentious now

There was a time, many years ago, when we'd laugh and scoff at pretentious descriptions of wine that contained, say, 'aromas of rich dark currants, nectarine skins, gushing blackberry, but lots of fragrant tobacco, rich soil, white flowers, smashed minerals and metal' (actual review). Now that such descriptions are commonplace, meaningless and we ignore them completely, other products have got on the bandwagon. Nothing can be just what it is any more – it has to stand for something else, something more, something usually pretentious.

Coffee is the new wine. My pack of Taylors of Harrogate ground coffee, Rare Blossom Ethiopia, is a 'dazzling riot of honeysuckle, mango, blossom, whisky and spice' (what, no 'echoes of a Bach fugue in the background'?). It's been some years since I've been able to go into a coffee shop and ask for something as simple as a white coffee (it doesn't seem to exist any more); it would be easier asking for an Austrian goat milk double-half-caf-half-decaf-soy milk cappuccino – extra hot – with a dash of Madagascar cinnamon and half a tablespoon of caramel-latte-frappa-mocha.

A list of 'guest beans' on a coffee shop menu (handwritten chalk on blackboard, obvs) includes those from Brazil, Papua New Guinea, Guatemala, Colombia and 'Coeur D'Afrique' (a place or a state of mind? The name evokes Conrad's anti-imperialist Hearts of Darkness, set in the Congo; despite being a slightly dangerous place to hunt for speciality beans right now, the Democratic Republic of Congo is the 'future of coffee', according to the NY Times. The aforementioned Coeur D'Afrique bean contains huckleberry, violet and sugar cane, but might as well also give off a whiff of, say, earth freshly dug up by Fairtrade slaves). The list of exotic (yet poor, obvs) countries conjures up colonial images of seventeenth century explorers returning from the New World with plundered treasures such as gold, tobacco, spices, chocolate and, indeed, coffee.

If coffee is the new wine, chocolate is the new coffee. In the 1980s, Ferrero Rossier and After Eights were the ultimate pretentious chocolate but that's nothing compared to the new breed of brands where 'lemon, poppy seed and baobab' is an actual flavour. Chocolate from Ecuador is apparently 'flowery and fruity'; from Madagascar it's 'intense red fruit with cherry notes', whilst Southeast Asia has 'smoky and earthy flavors'.

(When it comes to hot beverages and chocolate, sorry, but I'm so happy with a Sainsbury's Red Label cup of tea and regular Kit Kat I can't even put it into words.)

If products such as wine and perfume were the precursors of this pretentious parade, nowadays many other once-average and taken-for-granted items such as coffee, chocolate, craft beer, vinyl records and bikes are revitalised as specialised and authentic, artisan products with the intention of making the buying public feel like connoisseurs. Niche has become mainstream. I mainly blame advertising and hipsters.

What's the next product to get the pretentious treatment? Speciality industrial-strength bleach sourced from uranium mines in Namibia? With shades of deadly nightshade, aromas of Agent Orange and the soundtrack to Apocalypse Now in the distance...

Previously on Barnflakes:
The agony of choice
Now serving flat white
Not for all the tea in China
Proud to serve

In St Pancras Old Churchyard

Supposedly one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in Europe, dating back to the fourth century, St Pancras Old Church is located five minutes away from St Pancras train station in Somers Town on Pancras Road. The churchyard is a curious place, part park and dotted with ancient trees and interesting tombs with fascinating stories.

The most striking aspect of the churchyard is the famous Hardy tree (pictured, top) – named after the Wessex writer Thomas Hardy – where hundreds of gravestones are piled around an ash tree in a circular pattern with the tree roots intertwined around them. As a young man, Hardy trained as an architect in London, and one of his unenviable tasks was to dig up and relocate body remains in the churchyard to Finchley to make way for the expansion of St Pancras train station. With the remaining gravestones, the young Hardy made a rather artful arrangement of them around a tree in the churchyard.

Also in the churchyard is architect Sir John Soane's mausoleum (pictured, bottom) for himself and his wife, Eliza, who died, according to Soane, after the shock of discovering their son's negative reviews of his father's work. Soane never forgave his son, and never got over the death of his wife. If the design of the tomb looks familiar, that's because it was supposedly the inspiration for architect Giles Gilbert Scott's iconic red phone box.

Though her body has been moved (to Bournemouth), the tomb of Mary Wollstonecraft, feminist and author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, remains. When her daughter, Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, was planning an elopement with poet Percy Shelley, they used to meet at night to discuss their plans at her mother's grave.

Charles Dickens used to wander around the churchyard, and it's mentioned in A Tale of Two Cities. It also features on William Blake's mythical map of London. Somewhat later, in 1968, The Beatles posed for publicity photos in the porch of the church whilst promoting their White Album.

Previously on Barnflakes:
William Blake's vision of angels in Peckham
Notes on Gilbert George Scott

Cautionary advice for female graphic designers

Don't just be yourself

Previously on Barnflakes:
Book cover: The anatomy of human destructiveness
Class should be dictated by taste
Dream job is an oxymoron
Barnacles

Random Animal Animated Film Reviews: Paddington 2 and Isle of Dogs

Paddington 2
Dir: Paul King | UK | 2017 | 103mins.

Paddington 2 has had the best reviews of any film ever. It's had a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes (their highest ever), five stars in all the papers including the Guardian, with even the usual cynical and sarcastic comments section reduced to mushy praise of the film.

I thought it was dire, natch. Reuniting two of the cast members of the equally offensive Notting Hill – Hugh Grant and Hugh Bonneville, whilst tossing in other TV-friendly actors such as Peter Capaldi, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent and Joanna Lumley – and also being set in Notting Hill, it has the feel of a Richard Curtis film; it peddles a vision of London full of nostalgia (which presumably never existed) and friendly neighbours. The one good scene – a fun choreographed dance number in a prison with Hugh Grant – is unfortunately not revealed until over the end credits. A recent Guardian article compares Paddington 2 to the films of Wes Anderson. I can't quite see it myself.

– 1/5 

Isle of Dogs
Dir: Wes Anderson | USA | 2018 | 101mins.

First things first: Isle of Dogs is not set in London's East End, but 'twenty years in the future' (from when?) in Japan. I wasn't that bothered about the film until I queued for an hour in the rain (listening to the young Brazilians behind me, talking of being first ADs on the latest Spielberg film) with my daughter to see a wonderful exhibition of the original film sets and puppets. My daughter, aged 11, definitely hadn't wanted to see Paddington 2, and I had to physically drag her to see Isle of Dogs.

It was well worth it, both charming and moving* – more emotional, in fact, that Wes Anderson's live action films. Anderson is everywhere right now (and perhaps always has been), as the Guardian will be the first to tell us. All of Instagram is a tribute to the filmmaker's formal and colourful compositions, with Accidentally Wes Anderson being the most obvious paean (helpfully, pretty much anything can be Accidentally Wes Anderson – phone box, park, train station, hotel, lighthouse).

Wes Anderson making films is like a baby boy playing with his posh dolls house in the attic of his parent's house. Apparently the epitome of an American auteur, he makes what films he wants on his own terms within the Hollywood system, casting which actors he wants (usually Bill Murray and Owen Wilson but also the likes of Bruce Willis and Harvey Keitel). But actors are like pawns in his game. I don't mind deadpan acting – in the films of Aki Kaurismaki and Yorgos Lanthimos, for example, it's used to great effect. But compare the emotional intensity of Killing of a Sacred Deer to, say, the lack of any emotion in Moonlight Kingdom.

It seems – though not on purpose – that I've seen all the films of Wes Anderson. I also come to own three of the soundtracks to his films on CD. But I'm not his biggest fan (my favourite would probably be The Grand Budapest Hotel, a souffle of a movie, mainly due to Ralph Fiennes' performance). His formality and quirkiness, his contrived fastidiousness (reminding me slightly of Kubrick), those flat, symmetrical compositions – all leave me cold, and usually bored. Wes Anderson is the success of form over content.

The techniques that he's used in his live action films – those flat compositions, those 'overhead tableaux' shots – but mainly the complete control he obviously craves from every frame of a film, means animation is probably his forte (or adverts). Though he's only made two – Fantastic Mr Fox along with Isle of Dogs – with those he's able to control every element of the production, from the weather to the actors.

–4/5

*I know, I know, I feel your frustration. You came here looking for a proper film review, only to get half a dozen bland words about the actual film.

A bevy of Bs