The WIP #9: Viennese Whirlwind
The Week in Photos (24 February-1 March 2024)
I’ve been wanting to visit my old friend Antony in Central Europe for years. With Laura in Tenerife, I finally made the trip to Vienna last Friday.
It is a glorious city—immaculate and ornate—with far too much to do for a long weekend.
On Saturday I spent the day flitting between museums, exhausting myself, and having a run-in with officials. Check out my photo-essay from the weekend:
On Sunday, Antony got us tickets to a local derby: Rapid Vienna vs Austria Vienna. It was a entertaining match, with a boisterous crowd who belied the gentility of the Viennese.
I arrived back exhausted from the trip and decompressed in the West End. Popped into Voltaire & Rousseau and emerged £6 lighter with books by Robert Musil, Thomas Browne, and James Kelman. Secondhand bookshops are not much subject to inflation— imagine having to rub out all those pencilled-in prices—but alas the bargain room is now £2 a book rather than a pound.
It was great to see Simon Murray and Amanda Thomson in a seminar about ruins. They talked about them from the perspective of art, as a zone of opportunity, and as a negotiation with nature. Thomson’s description of nature walks in the wastelands of Ravenscraig steelworks were particularly illuminating.
On Thursday, Stewart Home returned to Queen’s Park Railway Club for the launch of the new edition of Pure Mania, his classic debut novel about eco-terrorists. Home gave a presentation of his teenage influences: from Marc Bolan to Bruce Lee and beyond. As well as a reading, there was auto-destructive book shredding that turned the book into art.
Support came from the exuberant Anna Secret Poet. Check out the hit of the night, Bonus Sausage.