I am beautiful and clean

These beautiful, and beautifully wrapped, objects arrived in a parcel from Singapore this morning. From Vice and Vanity. I love the witty little skeletal arm on the perspex necklace, and the uncompromising uniqueness of the golden half-moon. Objects to display as well as wear.

A day to remember

Kirsten Owen 2000, by Corinne Day, 1962-2010

The Furniture

To things we are ghosts, soft shapes
in their blindness that push and pull,
a warm touch tugging on a stuck drawer,
a face glancing by in a mirror
like a pebble skipped across a passive pond.

They hear rumors of us, things, in their own rumble,
and notice they are not where they were in the last century,
and feel, perhaps, themselves lifted by tides
of desire, of coveting; a certain moisture
mildews their surfaces, and they guess that we have passed.

They decay, of course, but so slowly; a vase
or mug survives a thousand uses. Our successive
ownerships slip from them, our fury
flickers at their reverie’s dimmest edge.
Their numb solidity sleeps through our screams.

Daguerrotypes Victorian travellers
produced of tombs and temples still intact
contain, sometimes, a camel driver, or beggar: a brown
man in a galabia who moved his head, his life
a blur, a dark smear on the unchanging stone.

John Updike

Vigorous anonymity

The Healing of a Lunatic Boy (1986), Stephen Conroy

The first time I think I felt really excited about art was at an exhibition at the then newly-opened Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Belford Road, Edinburgh, in 1987. Entitled The Vigorous Imagination, it was a showcase for contemporary Scottish artists, many of them painters such as Stephen Conroy, John Bellany, Adrian Wizniewski, Ken Currie and Peter Howson. I was particularly taken with Stephen Conroy, whose painting above was used for the poster, which I had a precious copy of for years. I remember feeling such a sense of amazement, walking round the new, expansive space, taking in ideas, that I could hardly breathe. Before then, paintings and sculpture and installations had never really spoken to me, even though I grew up in a house where art was all around me; I had an appreciation of it that fell short of real engagement. The mystery and majesty of Conroy's paintings, as well as his undeniable skill, had a profound impact on me. I longed to own one.

The lone sands stretch far away

My first view of Dubai was from the window of an airport taxi at 8pm local time, with the oven turned down to 39°C. During the day I stayed in the hotel; it's Ramadan, Muslims are fasting between sunrise and sunset, and may not observe anyone else eating; so if you want to eat or drink, even water, it has to be behind closed doors and almost exclusively in hotels, which have solid doors, no windows and heavy, dark curtains screening off the restaurant areas.

Towards sundown I took a taxi through the city with my colleague. Through a slight haze the sun was a perfect burning orange disc over a flat landscape; the architecture outside the centre is anodyne and the streets were deserted. The taxi driver raced along pristine freeways at 120 kmph, still being passed at much greater speeds by dusty SUVs and sports cars with heavily tinted windows. From very far away the stalagmite shape of Burj al Khalifa, still, for the moment, the world's tallest building, can be seen, but other interesting buildings, bulbous and squat, sail-like or funnel-shaped, cluster around it. There's distance between buildings, unlike Hong Kong, where people's lives are crammed together, and a curiously bland feel to everything.

At Madinat Jumeirah (shown here by day) we walked through an entirely ersatz souk of about 5 years' pedigree, filled with brass lions, lanterns, tea glasses and other trinkets, to a Persian restaurant alongside a manmade creek along which wooden abra transport sightseers. The surroundings have the attractive, though inauthentic, feel of a luxury hotel complex (which part of it is). Heat gentle enough to sit outside, lights strung in the palm trees, a salad of walnuts, mint and goat's cheese, slow roasted chicken, peppermint tea, and the loud insistent sound of a waterpump as a constant, droning accompaniment to the meal.

So long Marianne

Poster for Marianne Breslauer exhibition at the Berlinische Galerie, showing the Swiss photographer, journalist and androgyne Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1932): "She was neither a man nor a woman, but an angel, an archangel".

I'll be your mirror

It's a colour photograph of a young woman, in her early twenties. Her name is Anne. She has a bright, intelligent face and long brown hair, parted fractionally to the right and slightly messily gathered in a bunch at the back of her neck. She is wearing a chunky black poloneck and what appears to be a graduation gown with a white collar. It might just have been a slightly fancy late 1970s/early 1980s dress with an embroidered neckline, but I can see someone in the background wearing something similar and both of them are holding red rolls, the cardboard tubes containing degree certificates. There are people in the background: over her right shoulder, a blurred group of four, including the other girl in her graduation gown, are looking her way, with smiles on their faces. Something caught their eye; maybe the person who's taking the photo was saying something loud or funny to Anne which is why she's half smiling, slightly ruefully, slightly knowingly. She has a peculiar look on her face which suggests things unsaid to the person behind the camera. Over her left shoulder, there are three men in brown suits, also blurred, with their backs to us. Anne's right hand is in motion because she's putting what looks like a light blue blanket, but is probably a good winter coat, over her left arm. Her pale left hand appears under the coat, holding the red roll: a strong, thin hand. In the far background, grey sandstone tenements; I think the street is cobbled. It's unmistakeably Edinburgh. Anne is unmistakeably Scottish.

I know some things about Anne: she died when she was young, probably not long after the photo was taken, in a car crash on the A9, on her way home. She was from Wick. From this and the evidence in the photo, I deduce that the photo was taken at her graduation from Edinburgh University, somewhere near St Giles' Church in the High Street, at the latest in the very early 1980s.

A friend posted Anne's picture on Facebook and I've been returning to it without knowing why. I find it poignant that he's tagged her in the photograph, but there will never be anything for her name to link to in that prosaic, often uninvited Facebook way: pictures of her life, friends, marriage, children, laughing in the sunshine in the garden, raising a wine glass in an ironic toast, emerging grinning from the sea after a swim. It seems mawkish yet irresistible to conclude, from the expression on her face, that she somehow knew what was going to happen to her at that moment and transmitted the yearning for her lost life into the lens. This might be the only picture of her on the internet. And she's looking out of her short life and telling me to be happy.


Photograph courtesy of David Heavenor.

Kiss this thing goodbye

In my teens I used to proclaim (somewhat smugly, I think) that "nostalgia is the enemy of the future". Although most of the records of my teenage years (during the 1980s) are available on iTunes I've generally avoided revisiting them, with a few notable exceptions (Searching for the Young Soul Rebels, Scary Monsters, Sulk). This might be a reflection, cynics would suggest, of the generally ephemeral quality of much of the music I was passionate about in the 1980s, a lot of which now sounds amazingly dated (The Brilliant Corners? The Bodines? The Close Lobsters? The Woodentops?), but I also have a sense that there is more than enough interesting new music around without the need for retrospection.

In a conscious departure from usual practice (which in a strange way actually made me feel a little ashamed) I recently downloaded del Amitri's eponymous first album. Recorded in more innocent times (1985, to be precise), before they embraced Americana as many Scottish bands do, it still holds up fairly well: many of the lyrics are obvious juvenilia (the definition of "irony" in the lyric to "Former Owner" is as inaccurate as Alanis Morrissette's), but much of it still sounds as fresh, clean-cut, and passionate as Justin Currie used to be.

At the time, I was obsessed with the record; even now I can recite the lyrics by heart despite a gap of at least 20 years since I last listened to it. I wrote to them and got nice letters in reply. My sister and I went to see del Amitri in a club in Tollcross, Edinburgh, not long after the album came out. There were only a handful of people there and we stood slightly awkwardly on the dancefloor watching. Afterwards, leaving, we met the band packing their van for the return trip to Glasgow. They offered us a lift; we declined. They weren't looking for groupies; they just thought, being the nice boys they were, that we might need a lift home.

I moved to Glasgow in 1987. After the success of their subsequent records on the back of their second album "Waking Hours" (1989), which I of course snubbed, due in part to their massive popularity - no longer a minority taste to be proud of - and also to what I saw as their capitulation to the mores of mainstream success by embracing a much more laconic, lazily rockin', American, and accordingly less distinctive sound, I used to see Justin Currie loping along the streets with his pointy cowboy boots, skinny jeans and massive sideburns. I also met him a few times at the Cul de Sac in Ashton Lane, Glasgow, near the university. I told him how much I'd loved their first record and he smiled ruefully and said he loved it too. And listening to it now reminds me of things which are worth remembering.

From a distance

Being awake much too early with work preoccupations has its advantages. The view from my window towards the goddess of mercy at Kwan Yan Temple and Stanley Bay beyond, just after 6.30am.

Such great heights

The view from the CitySpace bar at the top of Swissotel the Stamford, Singapore, at sunset, with two apple martinis waiting to be devoured (in this instance, one by me, and one by my colleague from the UK office). Every time I go there I remind myself how lucky I am. And not just because of the apple martinis, although they are the best I've ever tasted.

Detailed

Coleman Street, Singapore. A whole "fox" tail, with a texture suspiciously like real fur, dyed in the style pretentiously known as "ombre", attached to a bag by means of a little gold hook, and all for no apparent reason and to slightly disturbing effect.

Scotland

It was a day peculiar to this piece of the planet,
when larks rose on long thin strings of singing
and the air shifted with the shimmer of actual angels.
Greenness entered the body. The grasses
shivered with presences, and sunlight
stayed like a halo on hair and heather and hills.
Walking into town, I saw, in a radiant raincoat,
the woman from the fish-shop. 'What a day it is!'
cried I, like a sunstruck madman.
And what did she have to say for it?
Her brow grew bleak, her ancestors raged in their graves
as she spoke with their ancient misery:
'We'll pay for it, we'll pay for it, we'll pay for it!'

Alastair Reid

Go with the flow

Beautiful, and possibly unwearable, unless you happen to be entirely lacking the key characteristics of the female form (curves, dimples, cellulite). Roksanda Ilincic, from Net-a-Porter.

By the neck

In a shop in Stamford Place, an old building in Singapore (which hosts the hilariously outdated Singapore Walk of Fame which boasts, amongst other where-are-they-nows, Debbie Gibson's handprints on a concrete plaque), I saw an amazing jewellery collection by local Singaporean designers Vice and Vanity. There's a handful of little shops running along one side of the building, with old-fashioned grey-painted exteriors: interesting-looking, one-off boutiques, a nice contrast to the shopping centre Raffles the Plaza opposite, with its worldwide identikit stores (Ralph Lauren et al) and perpetual sales. On my recent trip, caught in a heavy downpour, I sought the shop out again but it had closed - I'd been thinking about their striking necklaces ever since and wishing I'd bought one. I didn't even know the name of the designers, but their style is so unmistakable that when I saw a necklace by Vice & Vanity in a copy of Singapore ELLE, I knew it was by the same designers.

What I like about these necklaces, aside from the fact that they're so incredibly striking and unusual, is this combination of industrial design with iconography that seems almost primitive (the ancient Egyptians spring to mind), but is actually very modern both in its execution and in its materials (perspex, spage age lightweight metals, and plastic).

Saying stop your sericulture

Male silkworm moth, picture by Kevin Wanner, an entomologist at the University of Illinois.

China accounts for 70% of global silk production, but according to the Financial Times the price of silk has doubled since the start of 2009 and now stands at its highest level in more than 15 years. The China Cocoon and Silk Exchange said that the price of silk cocoons reached RMB92,700(US$13,570) per tonne in mid-April. Those poor little silkworms only eat mulberry leaves, and the breakneck urbanisation of the key silk-producing region around Shanghai has reduced available land for mulberry trees.

Output has declined 15% to 84,000 tonnes last year, and the drought that began in late 2009 has exacerbated a slide in production. Prices are forecast to rise further, but it's also suspected that Chinese investors are squeezing the market by hoarding silk in the hope of increasing demand and therefore price.

Lanvin green silk draped dress. What an amazing creature is the silkworm!

Five leaves left

A banana leaf lunch at the Royal Selangor Club in KL. We began with an ice-cold lassi. The banana leaf is loaded up with savoury condiments (chopped cucumber in yogurt, mango, deep-fried chilli pods, spicy cabbage) and steamed rice ("with extra vitamin B", said our host). A choice of sauces is ladled on top of the rice - I chose curried daal and then took this picture. Then a sequence of little dishes are passed around - mutton, chicken, beef, and fish - and with the right hand, you scrape up a collection of different flavours and eat. When you're finished, the banana leaf is folded over and removed. A highly efficient way of eating and so tasty that, urged on by everyone around me, I ate much more than I was hungry for as our host and his friends talked Malaysian politics, corruption, legal gossip and compared blood sugar levels (really).

Truly Asia

I'm in Kuala Lumpur, probably for the last time in a while. It's a city quite a few people I know profess to dislike. My first ever visit here seven years ago got off to a shaky start when my overeager taxi driver started telling me his wife didn't understand him and asked me to come and sit next to him in the front seat as we sped in his battered Mercedes along a near-deserted highway from the airport, surrounded by jungle as far as the eye could see. As we raced past an exit ramp clearly marked "Kuala Lumpur", I clutched my mobile phone, which had run out of battery, nervously.

The cityscape here is quite different from other Asian locations such as Hong Kong and Singapore. As Malaysia more or less successfully keeps its inherent racial, ethnic and religious tensions under control, the architecture reflects the mix of cultures and the exigencies of the climate, albeit with a relentless mall-creep which is typical of Asia's successful cities. The extraordinary, gleaming Petronas Towers rise boldly above the city, visible from miles around and startlingly illuminated at night.

There are plenty of flaws: the religious police, the corruption, the terrible traffic, a constant prurient interest in western women on their own; but I always feel a sense of wonder, curiosity and interest here. The lack of uniformity in the buildings means there's constantly some new and interesting conjunction to observe of Islamic minarets, multi-inclined Imperial Chinese roofs, shiny shopping malls, colonial turrets, ancient shop rows and dirty shacks.

Divided by a common language

Because I work for an American company I'm often subjected to the newest corporate newspeak, either directly from source or after it's been adopted with alacrity by my more eager-to-please UK colleagues. The most irksome ones, with the only sensible response in brackets thereafter:

Reach out. Sample usage: "I will reach out to her about it." (Er, no, surely it would be quicker and easier just to email?)
Around, as in "have we made a decision around this?" (No, but we have made a decision about it.)
Sunset. "Corporate have decided to sunset this product". (Does that mean it will come up again tomorrow morning?)

Can someone please explain to me how any of these tiresome augmentations of the language advance the use of it in any way?

National velvet

I bought the new record by The National, High Violet, in HMV yesterday. I listen to music sitting at my computer, with headphones on (which means I can't hear the phone ringing), which can be unsatisfying as I'm distracted by what I'm reading, the news about peculiar apparent murderer Joran van der Sloot (how can someone who was born in 1987 be a peculiar apparent murderer already?) or looking at fractal patterns or an exposition of geometry in nature, or going on some other internet odyssey or down a blind alley in search of something I can't quite remember.

Listening to this, though, I'm closing my eyes just to take it in. Matt Berninger's voice is deep and resonant, if sometimes world-weary, the arrangements are lush, the lyrics are intriguing ("You'll find commiseration in everyone's eyes/The storm'll suck the pretty girls into the skies" (Little Faith)), and every song draws you into itself in a different way, even though that's often with a kind of graceful bleakness. The first two tracks, Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks and England, are both haunting and absolutely beautiful. The latter, in particular, builds to an incredible, wounding climactic chorus and then dies away in contemplation. The sound is brooding and intelligent; at its best, this is an incredible record.

On the cover of a magazine

Me and my sister used to read a magazine called Jackie (1964-1993), published by D.C. Thomson in Dundee. In my mind's eye, Jackie has Leslie Ash (wearing a checked shirt) on the cover and a special pullout centrefold of Leif Garrett (wearing a checked shirt) inside. Jackie had a splendid, mordant advice column, called Cathy and Claire, true life photo stories featuring true life (ie boyfriend) dilemmas, and fashion and make-up tips, many of which inserted themselves in my brain so thoroughly that I will never forget them.

never pluck a hair out of a mole
don't brush your hair when it's wet
apply foundation with a sponge
don't wear clashing patterns
horizontal stripes make you look fat
chocolate gives you spots

I was recently invited to an event where the trichologist Philip Kingsley was going to share his wisdom about hair. I wasn't able to go, but I was longing to be able to ask him about the veracity of some of those Jackie legends: wash your hair as infrequently as possible (apparently he says the opposite)? Use the hottest water you can bear? These things are modern superstitions. I'll never forget them, but over time I might have worked out that some of them are subject to challenge. Over time I've also added some of my own (from, gasp, other sources):

blot hair with a towel before blow-drying
only condition the ends of your hair, not the roots
dark chocolate contains anti-oxidants and is good for your skin
tomato ketchup contains lycopene (thanks, Men's Health) which ditto
reading a broadsheet newspaper every day is good for your vocabulary (thanks, Mr Campbell)
only floss the teeth you want to keep