Sunday 6 April 2008







Sakura Sakura


Time for the entire population of Japan to gaze in wonderment at the Cherry Blossom again. Ahhh how the brief and splendid life of the flower brings to mind that of the brief and splendid life of a samurai. A gust of wind and short down pour and it's all over (until next year).

Saturday 5 April 2008

Det Don Flack from CSI:NY wears too much blusher and lipstick.

Well he does. He looks silly.

I have the body of a 55 year old Japanese woman




Which is made all the more blatantly clear when you decide to strip off and soak in the, not quite kitsch, not quite cheesy, bathing establishment known as Spa World. I drew the short straw this month as the female bath was Asia Zone. Europe Zone is far cooler. Asia Zone is OK but the centre obviously realises its limitations by getting rid of India and replacing it with Dr Spa...unfortunately a failure. OK, so India was indistinguishable from Islam (too ironic for comment) but since replacing the elephant statues and jet bath with some non-descript pools of supposed healing value, the crowd, and pube count has increased. I know that I'm a hairist but I don't want long, black pubes drifting in my direction if you please.

Anyway, what was my point? Oh yes. It's quite depressing to be surrounded by the high of tush and pert of breast as your 35th birthday looms like some ominous cloud (3 days to go) but when you notice that the grannies have got better bods than you the heart does tend to sink somewhat. That and the staring. Yes, I am foreign, yes I have a different body to you lot but do you really think I want to be eagerly viewed in a state of undress? It's one thing to be eyeballed (fully clothed) on the train every bloody day ("Get over it, yes I'm not Asian, but stop focking looking at me!") but to watch as 98.879% of the bathers eyes take in your face and then automatically move down to your nipples (yes, Crickey O'Reilly, they are a different colour to yours) and, not content with metting out that humiliation, descend lower to examine your pubic hair (OK folks! It's brown and wavier than yours but keep your bloody eyes to yourself!)

Only one thing for it:revenge glaring "Look at the brown torpedo teats on that! Cor would you ever! No wonder the cerebrally-challenged gaijin male population refer to your pubic hair as "Muff Fuji" - get a trim why don't you! And as for you Grandma, I can't work out what is droopier, your jawline, flaccid udders or your "amazing how much skin can hang off such a bony thing" arse!

I feel much better now.

Henri Cartier-Lego







I adore his work. He is easily my favourite photographer (predictable maybe - but Martin Parr at number two wouldn't be!) These Lego images by Mike Stimpson are wonderful:the Ebbets one, however, is genius.