‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ by the Boomtown Rats is one of all my all-time favourite songs. That swirling piano intro, the yell-along chorus and the brilliant lyrics that I memorised back in 1979 thanks to Smash Hits magazine. Of course this was back in the day when gun wielding students had the decency not to shoot themselves after going on a killing spree and at least Brenda Ann Spencer had some excuse for it. I accept that not liking Mondays isn’t really the best defence, but who hasn’t occasionally harboured a few murderous thoughts on a Monday morning?
And there’s something about Bob Geldof that gets me going a bit. Even before he swore on live TV during Live Aid and cured famine. There was the whole punk rebel thing and the Irish accent and the very tight trousers. My mother once described him as unsavoury. I bet he’s a pretty cool dad. If I was his daughter I’d be hanging out at Bungalow 8, dressed all quirky but in a way that people would think was totally fashion forward – you know, stripey tights with a fisherman’s vest, Doc Martens and a fur jacket worn back to front. Of course puberty would have been awkward, all that masturbating to photos of my dad.
I went to Hobby Lobby yesterday. It’s the kind of store where people who do ‘craft projects’ go. Big with the scrapbookers I believe. However, there is no ‘lobby’. That word was merely chosen for it’s rhyming quality and tenuous connection to a form of place. I would have gone with Scrap Heap, it may not rhyme but it describes both the store’s main appeal and the general sense you get as you wander around.
I went with the purpose of buying some materials for my upcoming show. Specifically, some fake white roses and some floral bouquets for the publicity photo. I was pleased with the white roses with their almost too natural feel and the fact they were 50% off. But the real find was the bouquet. I was originally planning to buy fresh flowers and then keep them a couple of days before the photoshoot so they’d look a bit stale and past their best. But no need, because Hobby Lobby had fake bouquets of red roses that were deliberately modeled on fading blooms. The photo below doesn’t do it justice sadly. Hopefully the publicity shot will show it better.
I wonder what prompted the fake floral bouquet designer to go with the dead rose look. And who would want them? Unless your interior designer has some Miss Haversham/Great Expectations fantasy. Which based on our experience with interior designers wouldn’t be that unusual.
Happy new year.
