A homage to loading screens.
In which it’s time to go home
I’m always sad when a holiday’s over; when it’s time to pack up the tent and drive home again, leaving nothing but a little patch of yellow-white grass behind.
And then back to the office, where little has changed* and I have a big pile of work waiting for me.
* except for the Office Gossip’s resignation
Or, checking in from Devon
Right now I’m sitting on a quayside in Plymouth, in front of some white fluffy clouds, lots of yachts, various “rustic” harbourside buildings, and an Apple Mac. The Mac is nearly as much a holiday as the rest of it: I keep forgetting that British Macs have American-style keyboards, with the ” and @ keys the wrong way around.*
Next week I’m going to be back in the office again, but for now, I’m making the most of the sunshine (by burning slightly) and the free time (by doing nothing much of any importance). Lots of photos when I get back – I really should start using my Flickr account properly.
* to say nothing of §, ~ and |
In which we talk about a classic artist
A few months back, I saw, on a friend’s bookshelf, art books about members of the Robinson family: Charles Robinson and his better-known brother William Heath Robinson; and I resolved to write about them here. It’s taken me a while.
The wonderful thing about Heath Robinson’s work – apart from the army of identikit men who keep his machines running – is that everything looks entirely workable, in a certain sense. Everything looks as if it should fit together and run smoothly, especially with his little arrows and dashed lines to show that this moves that way, that cog turns like so, and the lever over on that side swings round to hit the golf ball over here.
The first place I came across Heath Robinson, though, I found him slightly unsatisfactory. In the 1930s he illustrated two children’s books by writer Norman Hunter, about an absent-minded inventor called Professor Branestawm, a creator of amazing, fantastical, physically impossible inventions. Robinson’s illustrations were just too possible—although they may well have worked, they could never have done everything described in the story. I was, as a child, disappointed. I much preferred his 1970s illustrator—but I’ll tell you about him another time.
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