What a crock

I seem to be obsessing about kitchenware at the moment, so let's just go with it.


This delightful object is a piece of Cornishware, a traditional English design invented at the TG Green factory in Derbyshire in the 1920s. I bought this cup and saucer to use at my desk in my first "proper" job -- a typical gay attempt to mark territory in the absence of the traditional device of a photo of my wife (not that I've ever had a wife. Er...).


Cornishware became a huge success, and I doubt there were many houses in Britain between the 1920s and the 1980s that didn't have at least a couple of pieces of it -- often storage jars or jugs.


It's made on a wheel by cutting through a blue slip to reveal the cream clay underneath. Traditionally it has three stripes on upright objects, and two rings on flatware like plates and saucers.


The traditional family pottery of TG Green went the way of most British manufacturing, and the factory closed in 2007.


Tragedy was averted, however, when the designs and brand were sold to a Cornishware enthusiast, who has set up a new company to produce a range of traditional and modern shapes in the distinctive blue and cream design (though it's now manufactured in China, alas, like everything else).


Cornishware by TG Green was relaunched last year, and as well as the traditional mid-blue it now comes in a range of rather fine 1920s colours.


Traditionalists like me only really approve of mid-blue, though...


The new company packs their crockery in some of the loveliest boxes I've seen for a long while -- great design:


But it's the crockery itself which I find irresistible.


It feels to me like outside eating ware or breakfast ware. There's something al fresco about it, which is maybe one of the reasons why it makes me feel happy.


It was named by a TG Green employee way back in the day when, on seeing it, he rather poetically observed that it was the colours of the blue sky and the white-crested waves of Cornwall.

Hello, sailor

I can't believe my luck at the moment, in coming across these delightful amateur photo series of exhibitionists.


This chap is a remarkably lucky find.


Sometimes I find professional poses such as he's adopting to be a bit arch or theatrical -- too stagey.


But this delightful man has the confidence to carry them off.


With a white shirt and a table, he makes the best use of these simple props.


And let's finish with that traditional favourite, the sailor suit.


Well, part of it, anyway. I think he carries that look off. Really.

Sally Forth

I know I risk raising the ire of my friend Pod, but I can't help giving a nod to Colin Firth who (deservedly) won a BAFTA last night.


I hadn't realised that Firth had never before won anything. I think that's something of a travesty.


But to win for A Single Man is a good result -- playing one of those extraordinarily emotionally constipated Englishmen in which he specialises.


Firth became (almost) every teenage girl's crush object when playing Mr Darcy.


I never found him particularly titivating in that role, but who am I to judge other people's desires?


I was captivated by him in Another Country, but I was utterly won over by his sociopathic movie geek Adrian LeDuc in unforgettable film Apartment Zero.


Author Blake Morrison was lucky enough to have Firth play him in And When Did You Last See Your Father?, opposite the great Jim Broadbent. I'd quite like to have Firth play me in the biopic of my staggeringly successful life.


Yes, I can see that now.

Pool boy

I think it must have been posting about new film Dare which made me susceptible to this sequence featuring a pool-boy.


He has one of the tiniest todgers I've recently seen on a porn star.


This is very exciting news indeed!


Perhaps it means the tide is turning, that my campaign to have all sizes of winkle celebrated in gay porno world is, at last, bearing fruit!


Then again, his hair style looks a little, er, 80s.


And he has waaaay more lovely springy pubey goodness than is currently the fashion.


Maybe he's just a recycled porno star, from those more innocent days.


Days where a gay porn star's desirability was not directly related to the size of his dick -- nothing more, nothing less.


To a kinder, gentler time, where overall loveliness was the key factor to be taken into consideration.


Damn it! I was really hoping we were making progress.


Ah well -- I will have to take consolation from quiet contemplation of this lovely boy's charms.

Not so fishy

I've put off watching Fish Tank for a long time. Garlanded with praise, it felt to me like another of those tiresomely wretched British dramas that is fixated with the dull, pointless lives of the underclasses, painting them as being as stereotypically depressing and amoral as all us good middle-class people believe them to be.


And so, largely, it turned out to be, except it was lit by the passion of a couple of the central performances, and by a chilling section of child abduction that was as gripping as it was horrific.


One of the central performances was Katie Jarvis, rightly praised for an astonishing debut, seen above in the bleak badlands where impoverished east London bleeds into the flatlands of Thames-side Essex.


The other outstanding performance was by Michael Fassbender, fast becoming the star of choice in a wide range of fascinating (if not always successful) projects -- here in Inglourious Basterds:


And in 300:


And, perhaps most successfully, in Hunger:


Fassbender is a chameleon, able to parlay himself into roles requiring very different styles and emotions:


In Fish Tank, he exudes a cheap but potent charm, offering a simulacrum of warmth to a girl-woman who has been starved of gentleness, kindness and consistency. Unsurprisingly, she utterly falls for it.


As do we.

Sorted

It may surprise you to learn that LeDuc's night-time routine, when it doesn't involve passionate encounters and chandeliers, is almost unvarying in its OCD-related regularity. Central to it is a glass of water placed close at hand for night-time thirst-related incidents.


Imagine my horror one fateful night when, in a scene reminiscent of something from Silence of the Lambs, I went to drink some water only to find the corpse of a drowned moth floating inside it.


Having been a rather unworldy teenager, I first encountered the idea of a jug cover when, during my first "proper" job, I was admitted to the inner sanctum of the civic pomp that was Southampton City Council.


There in the great chamber, ready for a meeting of the great and the good...


...the tables had been laid out with water jugs each of which was covered by what looked like a small linen hankie, the corners of which were weighted with beads -- a less fancy version of this:


While this would have solved the moth-in-the-water nightmare, I couldn't imagine having something so unbearably twee in my life.


Now, it may also surprise you to learn that I am not an impulse shopper. When I go shopping I usually have a very clear idea in mind as to what I want; and that is what I get.

But, having banged on the other day about my exciting new glassware purchases, I am now willing to confess that I also engaged in a little impulse shopping, too.


This is the Alba Carafe and Tumbler (I got mine from the David Mellor cook-shop, but for slightly more cash you can get it from Amazon).

The tumbler forms the stopper in the mouth of the carafe, preventing the ingress of flying pests or pieces of ceiling. Your water is as pure when you go to drink it as when you first poured it into the carafe.


This piece of design is very simple, very pleasing in its weight, and is not in the slightest "designery". I love it. No more moth-related nightmares for me!