junge de luxe:: arteries blu

Sunday, June 26

Lazy sunday afternoon chillin at Soho Gardens

Tudor style laziness

Leanne (flatmate)

Film noir

Vibrant colours:: clear blue skies

Love the contrast

Some londoners

Rather tired from all that read

Looking sassy

Liking her texts

Benchers

More of them

Saturday, June 18

Pictures from around Fleet Street ...

... on the way home from work:

Deliverance: (www.deliverance.co.uk) kindly providing our overpriced and overrated dinners

Liking the sky

St Paul's in the background

Sunday, June 12

Sightseeing on the way to Asda - in Hani's car

As Britain's tallest public sculpture, the B of the Bang in Manchester looks extraordinary. The structure has 180 tapered steel spikes emanating from a core 22 metres above ground and is inclined at an angle of 30 degrees (more than the Leaning Tower of Pisa).

And, as with all sculptures, you get lovers and haters (that hideous looking, brown, rusty thing).

Personally, I find it resembles a somewhat skewed sea urchin. It does, however, look very awesome and is a spectacular piece of modern art.

The B of the Bang

Sunday, June 5

The EU treaty - frozen for good?

Saturday, June 4

van Dyking: Turnmills, Farringdon, London, United Kingdom

van Dyk in Turnmills

PVD (www.paulvandyk.de) spun a fabulous and intense set last night at the Turnmills (www.turnmills.co.uk) in Farringdon, a 5 minutes walk from my flat in London. We had a few back home, where I decided to open the Austrian Riesling from the Vienna trip, which turned out (surprisingly) pretty good for something that was bought on a quick whim at the duty-free counter on the way to the boarding lounge. We arrived at the club at about half 1 in the morning, knowing that PVD wouldn't start his set before 2. There was a small queue outside still trying their luck and it was self-satisfying in an unashamedly pathetic way walking past the whole lot and waving the advanced tickets in the face of the bouncer guarding the (until then non-existent) guest queue.

PVD's commercial success ensured that the club was literally overflowing with the conforming type of trance clubbers and it was impossible to dance for long without being interrupted by someone trying to get past. There were few highlights for the night, apart from an annoying group of sad Greek guys with bad hair, minging faces, smelly bodies, and not atypical designer clothing, and a William Hung-look alike who shamelessly stalked about despite our fairly obvious sniggering.

Fortunately, PVD's set saved the night. PVD's music is very much like what I dig in a good cappuccino - strong, frothy and dark, and his set that night was not surprisingly inspiring and well-mixed. Despite remaining frightfully sober throughout the entire set - the bar being rather inconveniently located at the other end of the room meant I simply could not be arsed to squeeze through the whole lot of perspiring and writhing bodies to get through to - I hadn't danced that hard since godknowswhen. The highlight for me all night was Crush, which isn't the strongest track in his arsenal, but is one of my favourite tracks from PVD as it has an amazing sense of dreamy and hazy development which gives very much of a kick at the high points. PVD loves to tease and tease he did throughout the night/morning. He has a legendary knack for building the set into a fucking intense point before unleashing the best part of it at unsuspecting moments.

Leaving the club at half 5 in the morning, we took the tube to Leicester Square and had some supper at 1997 in Wardour Street (Soho), my favourite 24 hour eatery, before strolling home and crashing into bed at 8 in the morning, which felt very pleasant.

Monday, May 30

Highlights from a weekend in Manchester 28/29 May 2005

The new Bollinger La Grande Année 1997 advertisement quotes the novelist Victor Hugo: "As the purse is emptied the heart is filled".

Good advice from Hugo, but I didn't have to spend much this weekend to have a jolly good time in Manchester - apart from buying some champagne to celebrate Hani's finals (always a good reason) and cocktails at Yatra lounge (Old Bank Street, off St Anne's Square: an English version of the original Buddha Bar in Paris, which was rather lush - no prizes for guessing what dominates the walls - but fairly claustrophobic because of its small size. There was good sublime cocktails, relaxing del Mar lounge music, quite a fair number footballers' wives wannabes (reads: lotsa bling bling and shopping bags without the posh accents) and a more subdued cocktail-drinking male crowd) in town which at £6.50 each wasn't much different from London prices. Meeting up old mates for drinks and the simple act of catching up was very nice indeed. It's a shame one can't do this very often. I much regretted not being able to stay for longer, but I suppose there will always be other times.