Uncontained enthusiasm

My lovely friend A. expressed a desire to build a summer pavilion from shipping containers.


I was reminded of this by a walk around the desolation that is the Olympic building site near Stratford.


There, in shiny yellow, is a delightful public viewing tower, giving views over the site.


The ground floor has a cafe and toilets, the upper floor is mostly a classroom for school trips, and a large viewing balcony.


Disappointingly, the campanile tower is just for services -- water tank and lift shaft machinery.


The aesthetic throughout is simple, durable and rugged, as befits the site and the functions. Oh, and I forgot to mention that in the third photo you can just about see to the right a covered walkway, open all along one side, parallel to the approach to the building. All made from containers.


I have to say, this is one of the jolliest pieces of architecture I've seen in this area, vastly more intelligent and appropriate than most of the hideous blocks of offices, flats and service centres that have infected east London.


I rather hope A. goes ahead with his Grand Projet.

Zulu

This being the season of epic films on telly, I treated myself to a rewatching of Zulu.


From the extraordinary opening sequence showing the aftermath of a battle, the field strewn with bloody corpses, we know this is not going to be a typical "boy's own" heroic tale of derring-do.


We're introduced to our main characters early on -- Michael Caine, in his first major role, playing against what later became his type, as the extremely posh, upper class officer; and Stanley Baker, the officer of engineers, sent to build a bridge and finding himself officer commanding at a desperate post.


This is, of course, primarily a boys film but a woman is shoe-horned into the script for lusting purposes. She is soon sent on her way, so the men can concentrate on the manly action that is to come.


And there is no shortage of action.


The action is not gratuitous, in the way of most modern films: here, it is earned, through blood and sweat and tense anticipation, and through getting to know some of the characters who will be forced to act -- they become real humans rather than being unknown ciphers.


Nigel Green's magnificently composed Colour-Sergeant Bourne, seen there with Stanley Baker's Lt Chard, is a calm centre for the film (and was the father figure I always wanted).


Michael Caine's Lt Bromhead is credibly transformed during the film from someone we despised into someone for whom we are rooting. The one flaw in the magnificent Blu-ray release of this film (and it is a truly staggering Blu-ray) is that his eye-shadow seems a tad, well, gay, actually.


It was made in 1964 so, of course, we don't get to see the Zulu warriors as individual human characters: but there is a dignity in their treatment, and they are shown as extraordinarily brave and skillful warriors, and men who have nothing but respect for their opponents. And all that makes the death of so many of them seem even more appallingly wasteful.


Even an anti-imperialist like me finds it impossible to resist tears forming as the small band of survivors of this Welsh regiment sing out Men of Harlech when faced with overwhelming odds; at the fortuitous intervention of a herd of cattle; and at the stirring, horrifying sequence where three ranks of soldiers fire in volleys at the advancing charge of the overwhelming force of Zulus, both sides defiant in the face of death.

This is no time to question what they were doing in Africa: this is a film to stir the heart.

Hairy thoughts

A kind reader sent me a wodge of photos of this cutie going about his ablutions.


His name (the model's, I mean, not the reader's) is, allegedly, "Scott".


"Scott" doesn't have the angelic face of many models, but he has other attributes.


Hairy, manly attributes, in fact.


There's something about water running through body hair that I find utterly irresistible.


And in the face of that fact, "Scott's" own face ceases to have much importance.


I wonder how it makes him feel, to be thusly reduced to a secondary sexual characteristic?

Rambling on housing

I've been guilty of a lot of modern architecture-bashing on here recently, which in no way reflects my own avowedly modernist tastes. So I'd been meaning to make it up when a glimpse out of a train window set my brain meandering.


These simple blocks of flats reminded me of Mies van der Rohe's work at the IIT campus in Chicago. I might have been spending too much time in Muji recently, but their very simplicity (and the neatly-tended garden setting) appealed to me.


Turns out it's a development called Hawthorn Crescent, on the outskirts of Portsmouth, which is, apparently, the most crime-riddled part of the city.


Who'd have thunk these apparently well looked-after flats would be such unpleasant places to live?


In turn, this reminded me of a recent experience in King's Lynn: there, huge numbers of people lived in "yards" -- tiny 1-up/1-down or 2-up/2-down houses grouped in pedestrianised alleys and courtyards off the main streets.


Most of these have long-since disappeared, in slum clearances of the 1920s and 30s.


But one or two still remain (including part of a local history museum) to give you a flavour of what an entire district was once like.


They really were tiny -- especially for the extended families that would have lived in many -- although some of these photos appear to show at least some of them being well-kept (but without sanitation, the gutters in the street would be used to dispose of urine and all sorts of other unpleasantnesses).


It often seems that richer people can more easily live in crowded, cramped developments (see the Barbican in the City of London, for instance), but that pressured or unhappy communities quickly turn on them.


An aside to illustrate my point: Whitening Yard, seen above, was in 1882 the scene of the brutal killing of a 19 year old, James Stannard, by the family who lived next door: the teenager had asked his neighbours not to let their children bully his younger siblings, and they set upon him.

This architecture then reminded me of Japanese architect Tadao Ando's exquisite but tiny house in Osaka.


Built of the most brutal materials -- concrete and glass -- this tiny, tiny house (did I emphasise just how tiny it is?) turns in on itself, like many historic houses (traditional Roman villas, for instance).


In Ando's house the outside world is presented with an almost blank facade of shuttered concrete...


...while the four main rooms are grouped around a central light-well which also houses the (external) staircase.


I'm not sure I'd be disciplined enough to live in somewhere like this, but Ando's architecture can be much more generous.


Even though he always uses the same apparently limited palette of materials (and colours), his buildings are living sculptures that often seem to express an exuberant joy at their place in the landscape, seeming almost to flex and breathe as the light around them changes.


Smallness isn't necessarily unpopular in the marketplace: tiny mews houses in Kensington & Chelsea can go for £1 million and up.


These houses look, to me, as quasi-industrial as Ando's Japanese row house -- but just with a patina of age.


Many mews houses have been refurbished with a more contemporary feel to them -- things like this are not at all uncommon:


But designing them from new is less usual -- here's a delightful set in Dublin:


Maybe Tadao Ando's approach is not so alien, after all.

Random round-up of tiny (ie, normal) winkies

There's been an unforgivable shortage of small cock on here recently, so you get a random roundup to make things right.


I love this next shot. Have you noticed how naked men in verite shots in public places are almost always a tiny fraction of the size of gay porn models?:


Part of that may be due to anxiety- or fear-induced shrivel, but not necessarily:


And not all porn models are [always] so massive:


When they're relaxed and focussed on something else, men's winkies assume their natural state:


I'm particularly fond of this next chap's chap:


And just to prove that not all of these men are "growers", either:


While all of them have been delightful, I have saved the best until last:


He's lovely, he is.

Er... nothing else to report here.

"Idiots... all of them"

Clapham Junction is an extremely difficult station to use, and I imagine operating it is no picnic, either. But millions have been spent trying to improve the user experience, largely in vain as a result of the ineptitude of a few morons. Here's an information display on Platorm 2 last night:


So... on a "one train in steam" shuttle service, the 1748 is going to arrive before the 1725?

The sign was obviously wrong, although that wouldn't help anyone but a train geek (and in the end the 1725 turned up at, er, 1725).

More bizarrely, why isn't a self-contained branch (Clapham Jct-Shepherd's Bush, the rest of the line closed for engineering) being operated as an even-interval clock-face service? Why do you have to wait 23 minutes in one part of the hour, and 37 minutes in the other?

Any excuse

Another slug of naked goodness from my favourite pornographer (who must be very busy):


His models all have a sense of realism about them.


Imperfections and all, they are very sexy men -- potent, three-dimensional.


They exhibit many of the common flaws of our era -- over-plucking/shaving and odd tattoos.


But we have to take the rough with the, er, smooth, after all...


I'd better shut up now.

More soon.