Brothers

These are my two brothers, Tom and Ben. You have to guess which is which.

History

This is the first all-steel boat made in Iceland. It's in the process of being decommissioned. I learnt these facts from a man who saw us looking at the boat and asked us, 'Do you like this boat?' Which makes a change from the traditional question, 'Do you like Iceland?' Also, an easier question to answer. My brother is at the front for purposes of scale.

Sign of the Times

This is an official streetsign. It seems that the owners of the burgerjoint just to the east of it petitioned the authorities for the naming rights. What's wrong with Karlmarksgata, we ask ourselves?

Icelandic Graffiti Redux

I went walking round Reykjavík with my brothers. We found lots of grafitti - the picture in the middle is the most self-effacing. Although the idea of self-effacing grafitti sounds like something town councils have been trying to invent since tagging began.

Monks on the Run

We went up the church tower again to see Reykjavík from on high. With us was a party of Buddhist monks. I speak no Tibetan (Tom says they looked Korean; neither speak I Korean), but it is possible to deduce that they were interested in the church bells. My evidence:
1. 'ding-dong' seems to be a universal piece of onomatopoeia.
2. When the clock started striking, they immediately got out their expensive digital cameras and started recording the resounding two pm.

Ice Cream

A slight hiatus in the posting: my brothers have been out here visiting me.

We went to this ice cream parlour: it had enough neon and shiny packaging to make me imagine I was either in the future or in one of J.G. Ballard's nightmares. The ice cream, sadly, was not great: the range of toppings available was wide, as long as you like chocolated liquorice.

The Antikythera Mechanism

Sounds like a Robert Ludlum thriller, is actually this. Am I right to be extremely excited in a sort of Atlantean way?

Henry Treese

Well, not really Henry Treese. There's a poem by Henry Treese which, I think, starts 'Like the fey goose-girl in the haunted wood', and which I would have liked to quote here, because it goes with the picture. But it's not in the library here, and it's vanishingly unlikely to be in the bookshops in town. It is, if you're interested, included in Edward Germain's Penguin anthology Surrealist Poetry in English. Which is out of print. But, if you have access to a university library (or my bedroom), then you can find it and have someone read you the poem while looking at this picture, which will provide an advanced multi-media experience for those of you who have nothing better to do. It's quite a good poem, by the way.

Europe!

I think this is what they call the global market-place.

Breaking News

O.J. Simpson book reconsidered. So that's alright then.