Exotic

Beck was back at work, Katie at a friends until tomorrow and Tom finally got round to some revision for those pesky mocks he's got when he goes back to school next week - I, rather marvellously, have manged to book the whole week off, so I decided to act like I was still on holiday and take in a bit of culture today. Accordingly, I filled the time between my eye-test this morning and this afternoons showing of 'The Innocents' at the Broadway with a latte, a pretzel and a trip to Jeremy Deller's exhibition about the Industrial Revolution, 'Everything That Is Solid Melts Into Air' at the Castle. I'm not fully convinced by the whole 'artist-curator' thing but this was pretty interesting - suggesting less than obvious connections in the way that I suppose was the motivation (stuff about working conditions tying in with the tyranny of time and the development of the leisure industry - Tony Iommi loses the ends of two fingers in a factory accident, tunes down his guitar to stop the strings buzzing and invents heavy metal; the Happy Mondays pose in front of the changing face of Salford whilst demonstrating the unchanging face of working class gang culture...) There was a very good section built around Deller's documentary about the glam wrestler 'Exotic' Adrian Street, whose portrait photo taken in full spandex-and-fur regalia with his miner father at the pit head (more commonly known to those of us who are that way inclined as 'the cover photo of Black Box Recorder's first album) features on the exhibitions posters and - blown-up to massive proportions - on the wall of the Castle stairs. Unfortunately the jukebox wasn't working today... 'The Innocents' was great, of course. I've never seen it on the big screen and I'm presuming this was a new print as it was crisp and beautiful with incredible depth and the most fabulous shadows.

I even managed to get a swim in later on - I suppose I'd better try and do something useful tomorrow...