Lake of plenty

I found this man hiding somewhere in the depths of my photofiles.


The reason he first caught my eye is, I guess, pretty obvious to even the most casual reader.


He's not exactly pretty -- though nor is he ugly.


He isn't buffed or manicured or overly muscled (though obviously I would rather he wasn't so viciously trimmed).


He's just what I like: someone who looks fresh and natural.


And happens to be graced with a perfectly formed winkie.

What's not to like?

Pants

Can I introduce this lovely-looking chap? Luke Bontius, apparently:


I always think the lot of an underwear model must be rather wearing, but Luke seems to be bearing up with dignity.


Incidentally, most (or possibly all) of these images come from fantasticsmag, to whom grateful thanks are due.


Luke has an easy charm about him.


A graceful suppleness combined with a manly dignity.


Which is a hard act to pull off, when you're just standing around in your pants.


Um... for my American readers, in English English "pants" is short for "underpants". What you call "pants" we call "trousers". Or, if you're particularly unstylish, "slacks".


Anyway, as I was saying Luke has an easy way with him, standing about half-clothed (or do I mean half-unclothed?), looking gorgeous yet purposeful.


My only regret is the obvious one: why fantasticsmag did not insist that for the piece de resistance he whip off his kecks to show us his doubtless lovely-looking package.


Or -- and this thought really is unbearable -- maybe they did indeed do that, but they're just keeping the photos to themselves.

Bastards.

Cross? I was furious

The new(-ish) Government has, much to everyone's surprised, committed themselves to completing Crossrail, the new east-west cross-London railway currently under construction.


This is a vastly expensive project -- roughly £16 billion (€19 billion/US$24.5 billion) -- designed to provide capacity for 24 full-length trains every hour in both directions, increasing London's public transport capacity by 10% at an expensive stroke.


Crossrail will come from Heathrow and Maidenhead (or, more likely, Reading) in the west via Paddington and Farringdon (where it connects to the north-south Thameslink) to Liverpool Street and then Shenfield/Abbey Wood. 118km in length, more than 20 of which is in full-sized railway tunnels bored under central London.


On the way it passes through Whitechapel, and the reconstruction of Whitechapel station to accommodate Crossrail is shown in these images.


Whitechapel station already serves Underground and Overground lines: Crossrail will introduce a whole order of magnitude of connectivity (and complexity).


It's scheduled to open in 2017, financial crises permitting, and, although I expect to see a bit of trimming of some of the more extravagant elements in the scheme, it still promises to be something worth looking out for.

Where am I?

Thought you might like to see a map of the locations of my readers (or do I mean "viewers"?) at one random moment in time.


Makes you feel all joined-up and snuggly, doesn't it?

Massaged to fit

If you've been paying close attention over the last few months you'll know how much I adore massage.


Or, rather, being massaged.


Although, as it happens, I also do rather like touching and stroking.


I don't write about it very much.


But that doesn't mean I don't enjoy it.


And it's just that it's such a physical, visceral sort of thing, I find it difficult to articulate.


Words seem like the antithesis of the primal sensation of touch.


There's even a distant bat-squeak of it in this picture sequence.


Don't get me wrong: I'm not pretending that this isn't porn, that it is instead something very noble and primal.


But just as porn can be a simulacrum of our intimate wishes, so this sequence can stand in for my feelings.


As it happens, I think this is rather a wonderful sequence.


The men are not too pretty or absurdly over-manicured.


In fact, they're close enough to flesh and blood, breathing humans for me to believe in them.


The setting is simple and neutral, and doesn't intrude -- which is as it should be (for me, massage is about being focused inwards, not outwards).


It's all about the touch, of course.


Our heroes now go beyond the boundaries of conventional commercial massage.


But it doesn't feel to me like they've gone too far.


I have to say, I don't think I've ever had a massage -- no matter who was doing it, man or woman, beautiful or not -- without feeling closer to that person in an almost sexual way.


Maybe massage is at the weird intersection, between sexual intimacy and intimate grooming touch.


It seems -- for me -- to unlock something ancient and very real.


I suppose the way most professional (non-sexual) massage therapists surround themselves with the trappings of medical paraphernalia is an attempt to insert some distance between themselves and their clients.


But I wonder if that's not denying what this really is: an extraordinary connection between two humans.


A connection that grows out of a core physicality yet somehow transcends it to become something altogether more spiritual and meaningful.

It's art, Jim, but...

Anthony Gormley's sculptures all seemed to have a massive solidity to them.


All the human forms are based on his own body: he uses casts and then increases or decreases size according to context.


Though I suspect he might have engaged in a little, er, careful addition to his most famous series...

Things now seem to have changed. Perhaps he was inspired by an electricity pylon:


Certainly, there's something about the structure which is intriguing -- an odd mix of strength and lightness:


And that's exactly what he's used in his newest work, Eruption:


Otherwise known as the Crouching Man (or, sometimes, the Shitting Man), this, like Angel, is another truly vast sculpture:


Scaled up from his own body (of course), the sculpture sits in the flat wetlands of the Dutch landscape. The engineering is exactly the same as that used for those pylons:


I haven't yet seen this in the flesh (or, as I suppose I should write, the metal):


It looks like a truly fascinating piece of work, playing games with scale and perception, with what is there and what is not, all while crouched in this utterly manmade landscape.