My Current Favourite Sentence

'But if there are things saying wrong about Sam Allardyce believe you me, I will be fighting them.'

Andrés Kolbeinsson

Andrés Kolbeinsson is a documentary photographer from Iceland. He is at the moment the subject of a retrospective show (an yfirlitssyning - the last 'y' should have an acute accent on it, but this computer ain't doin' what I want it to at the moment) at the Reykjavík Museum of Photography. He's most well-known (according to the retrospective) for his photographs of a) cultural figures in Reykjavík during the 1950s and 1960s, b) evidence of the Icelandic economic boom - lots of photos of cement works and herring-processing plants, c) family life. He's very good. There is one great photo (used as the lead image for the yfirlitssyning) of an artist friend of his in the cafeteria of one of the cinemas in Reykjavík. She's eating skyr, a sort of healthy low-fat Icelandic yoghurt made from cream and sugar, and looks as if she has a naturally ironic personality. I particularly like the HP sauce bottle on the left-hand-side of the image. And the conical light-fittings.

You can find a link to lots of his photos at this site.

Famous first words

I passed the first hurdle of living in a foreign country yesterday. I went into a pub and managed to order a drink in the local language. And get what I ordered. Admittedly, the phrase 'Eitt Viking' requires knowledge of only one word of Icelandic, but you have to start somewhere. And people here are so willing to and adept at using English that you has to take your opportunities where you finds them.

The next hurdle is to start eating and enjoying the local specialities. I have had a good stab at salted liquorice gums, and have even choked down a piece of the famous hákarl, or rotten shark. But whether or not I have started enjoying them is a different question. Give me time.

Invocation to the Earth Gods

This is a technologically advanced version of The Wicker Man. All we need now is to have an unwilling victim to go joy-riding. The car (or as I prefer to think of it, mobile temple) is parked outside the Town Hall - whatever this thing means, it goes all the way to the top.

Icelandic Faces 2

These were all punters at the Icelandic National Symphony Orchestra. Malcolm Arnold Symphony No. 5; Interval to sneak photos of unsuspecting Icelanders; Dmitri Shostakovich Symphony No. 12.

Bucolic

Constable would have had - ha ha - a field-day.

Icelandic Faces 1

The Icelandic gene pool is well-known for being small and easily studiable. However, people don't seem to be as obviously Icelandic as Russians, for example, are Russian. But this small child is fairly obviously an Icelandic small child. She is covering her ears not because she is cold, but because she is in the bell-tower of the Hallgrímskirkja and the clock is rigorously striking four forty-five.

And then I went to Iceland...

...by myself, which wasn't as nice as it would have been to have gone with my wife. I've been here a week, and am a) homesick, b) confused, c) learning Icelandic intensively.

And we had a honeymoon...

...in St. Alban's, which had a large duckpond, as well as the pagan cathedral and the Roman ruins.

So, I got married...

...which was nice.