Franzi I

Franzi is a visual artist, tattooer and a warm and wonderful human. She tattoos at KInk in Peckham or at Sydenham Ink and you can reach her through either of those places, on Instagram, or on Facebook. 

She also recently appeared in an ad for Rimmel London's new Ink Me range of stamps and temporary tattoos, doesn't she look glam!

For the rest of this extremely occasional series, click here...

The wabi-sabi of the yellow sticker special

Cut flowers are expensive and I only really buy them when they're on sale (anyone else refer to sale items as yellow sticker specials?) This means, of course, that often they're wilting, rotting, or dried out. Shedding petals, these bronze and lilac lovelies were somehow even prettier for it, clinging to the damp cellophane wrapper as I brought them home on New Year's Day.

If photographing flowers is basic, I don't want to be extra.

Oh, and if you've ever wondered what happens behind the scenes at Leedale Towers, it's a lot of this beast getting up in my face / camera / grill...

A couple of ways of looking at a journey

It is Boxing Day. My mum is driving us to her house from family in Oxford. Outside, it is more or less sleeting. Inside, I am more or less asleep with my eyes open. Lights swing by, arcing and parting in sodium-tinted shades of mustard, mint, ultraviolet, scarlet; some woman on the radio selects bossanova tracks, smooth songs crackling as we pass through high hills that disrupt the signal. In an hour or two I will be in that middle bedroom with its magic, mystic properties of bestowing upon all its guests the best rest. For now we carry on along this somatic tube of road, tarmac thrumming to keep us on the edge of wakefulness.

Another way of looking is to listen. Click the image below or here to hear.

...and a Happy New Year

This picture hasn't got anything to do with anything really, except that my aim for 2018 is to be reaching upwards with as much quiet joy as this cow parsley, with all the sculptural beauty...but less dead.