Separated at birth

Lavatoria

I enjoyed Mick Hume's most recent article in spiked. However, I'm left torn over issues such as 'awareness ribbons'. I hate anyone who wears one, or at least I would if I didn't know lots of generally decent people who do wear them, but I find it hard to scoff at the whole concept of 'awareness'. If any positive change is bought about in Darfur by UN intervention then we can thank the medias interest in the region, compared to, say, the Congo which is far harder and more dangerous to get cameras into. Take the Poppy Day phenomenon: I don't wear a poppy because I don't see any particular need to remember the first world war, but I do give money to the collectors more often than I give to any other charity can janglers because I don't want to think that I'm refusing the Poppy for reasons of parsimony. The cause is a good one, and they've pried some money from me which would no doubt have gone on drink, and indirectly the entire Poppy gimmick is to thank for it.

I visited the lavatory of a London pub, and while urinating I noticed a machine selling 'novelty condoms', including what looked in the picture like condoms with clown faces on them. I dread to think what sort of man would look at his equipment and think 'It's good but it could do with being funnier'.


Some artists gain fame by their elusive, boundry-breaking genius, some by their obsessive dedication to the detail. Some, however, are just in the right place at the right time. Case in point: Andrea Della Robia, probably the only Old Master whose work I would pay a gallery owner to take out of my house.

Why we should take the police out of policy

In concert with Hamilton's exposure of Metropolitan idiocy and double standards, I find it objectionable that the police will freely propose new and uncomfortable restrictions on our lives every time they decide they don't like an aspect of their job. Crucially, the post-adolescent years between 18 & 21 are (give or take a cheeky annum) most people's bright college days, in which we live in unfortunate and sometimes electric proximity to the permanent residents of provincial towns and villages. It is important to usher as many of us as possible into pubs and clubs on any given evening, where we can do less damage to ourselves and innocent bystanders. And whatever happens, we will get hold of the stuff - without delay or exception. Anyone who swallows the equation NoHooch'Til21 + ThirstyStudents = AppleJuicesAllRound seriously needs their head examined. Peter Fahy, the Cheshire Chief Constable who has suggested the minimum age be raised, has unwittingly requested much more work. As the situation stands, he only has to police the 2% of 18+year-olds who are actually out of control. If and when he gets his way, he will have to police 100% of the 18-21s who like alcohol - and I imagine that's 100% of them.

Newtballs: "Your life is worth more than a chocolate bar." An insight provided by DCI Cliff Lyons of South-east London.

Barring university students from pubs will undoubtedly make them drink more responsibly!

The chief constable of Cheshire has said that parents of teenagers are 'abdicating responsibility for their children.' He goes on to place the blame for Britain's supposed 'binge culture' squarely at the feet of advertisers and the drinks industry. Abdicating responsibility is a terrible thing, isn't it?

An interview with a futurist

Hamilton: "Mr Ernesto Giacometti Dolcelatte, you are the worlds foremost, and indeed only, Futurist Curator. You curate the Academy of Primitive and Archaic Art in Luxembourg. Your unique attitude to the presentation of painting and sculpture has won you few friends in the Art Establishment. Perhaps you could tell us a little..."

(At this point I was interrupted; the impatient Mr Dolcelatte had noticed my nephew's tricycle lying abandoned on the floor, and clambered onto it. With his knees round his ears, and puffing smoke from his cigarette like a small steamship, he was describing frantic circles on the floor. I tackled him off the bike, and hit him sharply across the face. After a tussle, and then a loud debate, we agreed that he could conduct the interview between laps of the room, and every ten minutes he could go into the garden to let off some firecrackers.)

Mr D: "The thing you must understand is that up to this point all art has been too slow. While it may have other points of interest, it is rendered unpalatable to the Futurist sensibility by its stultifying lack of motion. The APAA was constructed to overcome this difficulty."

Hamilton: "And how do you achieve that?"

Mr D: "Well, initially we employed a number of small devices. Early on in the project we discovered that any small statue, for example a Cellini nymph made out of gold and bronze, could be glued to the blades of a blender. When the machine is switched on the piece becomes high speed, kinetic, Futuristic. If only Cellini had worked in a more durable medium, like cast iron or steel, he could have been a noteworthy artist."

Hamilton: "Where did you go from there?"

"Mr D: We soon realised that we would never be able to truly explore the potential of these pieces as long as people insisted on viewing them as objects, rather than high speed events. We held a Titian week, during which we shot a series of his preparatory sketches out of a cannon at a group of Ukrainians, but ticket sales were surprisingly low and budget issues forced us to stop on the fourth day. However, other schemes have been a great success, for example, where else can you see a piece of Native American woodcarving mounted on a trolley and accelerated down a hallway by magnets, or one of Lucas Cranach's early alter pieces swung from a ceiling rafter by a steel cable?"

Mr Ernesto (left) and Colleague (right) work on their controversial new method of introducing the work of Eric Gill to a potential gallery goer.

Hamilton: "Bold and radical stuff indeed! What does the future hold for the APAA?"

Mr D: "Once sufficient funding has been achieved we will convert the entire gallery into a train which travels from Paris to Shanghai in just eight hours. The dining car will serve ozonised steaks and beetroot from the vacuum still. The front of the train will be fashioned like a gigantic fist, and a number of inbuilt whistles will make the train scream unbearably as it moves through the air."

Hamilton: "Thank you Mr Dolcelatte. It has been a pleasure..."

(I spoke in vain! No sooner were his final words out of his mouth than Ernesto Dolcelatte had vaulted lightly out of the window and into the cockpit of an idling autogyro. As he flew away over my house he dropped an aluminium square on which were printed the words 'Due to it's unnecessarily stationary nature, I am about to knock off your chimney pot'.)

Broad Brushstrokes

From the morass of cynical EU laws and directives has surfaced the clause prohibiting the routine vaccination of animals against Foot and Mouth disease. A more pernicious piece of legislation you could not wish for. As Matthew d'Ancona very properly points out in The Spectator, there is no good reason why animals should not receive the vaccination in view of the large number of antibiotics and medicines with which they are already treated. Of course, the explanation is as simple as it is offensive: this flabby, regressive, jealous, grasping body of protectionist bureauworms cannot bear the idea of denting consumer-confidence in European meat; so naturally, they prefer to enforce measures that are potentially (potential that has the potential soon to have been realised twice in 6 years) catastrophic. From where I'm standing, Euroskepticism has never looked so appealing.

=Dogtooth spent most of the weekend visiting the National Gallery. Far from gaining a new appreciation, I left in something of a hot mood, feeling angry and disappointed with many of the painters who, up until this point, I have revered. It is clear to me now that, in all respects, the late Nineteenth Century was an inferior forty years. For Courbet, Manet, Degas and Cezanne, I have unshakeable admiration. By advancing the cause of portraiture they bore the only worthwhile fruit of that twoscore years. Portraiture: bold and infinitely fascinating! And how feeble and self-indulgent appear the so-called 'experimentations' of Monet's Poplars or Seurat's bloody dots in the shadow of a magnificent Ingres, a Delacroix, a Gericault or a Velazquez. Even Constable's landscapes knock the Impressionist efforts into a gaping macaroon. Go back another few centuries, and you have the likes of Titian, Lippi, Raphael, Masaccio and Caravaggio to contend with - painters who actually strove to represent human bodies and engender action, atmospere and interest, as opposed to few wispy forms shimmering ineffectually among some blurred trees. Who did Monet think he was, sitting in his boat? Claude (-Oscar?) Monet! The macaroon gapes for thee, thrice wider than for other men!