At least, I think it’s water.

Gloucester Road tube station has gone all hippy on us. One whole wall, stretching the full length of a platform, has been painted up in psychedelic multi-coloured circles and lit from below. It’s the work of Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes, and all quite impressive, particularly as your train sweeps in alongside it.

Even the name is hippy: Peace and Love.

What I don’t get, though, is the farty promo on the Underground site, which explains how ‘this monumental commission … creates a visual dialogue with both the architecture and the constant movement of trains and travellers within … The work, like the station, has its own rhythm. The images run across the arches, creating their own momentum and mirroring the movement of the passengers and the trains inside the station’.

What is a visual dialogue? How can it have a momentum that mirrors the movement of the largely static passengers, standing there slack-jawed as they wait for a train?

‘The vibrant colour and exuberant shapes within the work keep the viewer

Michael Rosen turned out to be a slightly older jumper-wearing Radio 4 man, not the sex photographer Google turns up as hit number one, which I’m sure was a relief to us all.

I’d been slotted in for a 4pm interview, five minutes walk from the office, so wandered slowly up through the wind-blasted streets to the Sound Gallery, a little complex of studios not far from Broadcasting House. It was a very funky place – lots of vivid colours, flowers with lights inside them, and the kind of big twisty handles on the studio doors that you’d get on a Smeg fridge.

Fortunately I’d done a lot of revising, so I was well clued up so the chat went well, and as with all of these things it was over in a zip.

We were talking about symbols and iconography, and I’d been digging around on line to come up with some interesting examples. Of them all, my favourite has to be the interrobang. It’s effectively a question mark and an exclamation mark, which is most often written as ?! or !?. This is ugly, though, so ad guru Martin K Speckter proposed they be overlaid as a single character ? in the copy his scribes wrote, as it looked a lot neater and more professional.

Remmington picked up on it in 1968 and produced a typewriter that had it on one of the keys, but that didn’t stop it falling into obscurity. It can still be found in the depths of the Arial and Wingdings fonts, though.

The show – Word of Mouth – goes out next week, I think. I’ll keep an eye on the schedules and find out.

They also got me to read some of this blog for another show, but I’m not sure when they’re using that one. Looks like I’ll have to listen to the whole series.

It’s the last Sunday of the month, so it’s cooking day. This week: shortbread.

Ingredients

200g (7oz) plain flour
30g (1oz) rice flour or ground rice
60g (2oz) sugar
140g (5oz) of butter
a pinch of salt

Mix together the dry ingredients and then rub in the butter until it forms fine breadcrumbs. If using a mixer, you can instead throw it all in together and whiz it around for a while until the breadcrumbs form.

Knead the crumbs until it forms a smooth ball and then turn out onto a worksurface covered with sugar so that it doesn’t stick. Shape into a square or circle, depending on preference, and then roll out until about a centimetre deep.

Place on a greased baking tray, mark into portions and prick with a fork to ensure it cooks through evenly. Bake at 140 celcius for 50 – 60 minute until lightly golden.

Remove from the oven, cut into pieces along the score marks, scatter with a generous helping of sugar and leave on the tray until completely cooled.

I had a call from Radio 4 yesterday. They wanted to book me in for an interview on Monday afternoon with Michael Rosen. It’s a pre-record for one of those intelligent arty programmes on a Sunday afternoon.

While I knew the name, though, I knew nothing about Martin Rosen, so I Googled him at work. I’m guessing it’s this man, not this one (not safe for work), which is the first hit Google turns up.

…and I’m all partied out. That’s not how the weekend should start.

So, let’s rewind to Wednesday. That was the night of the S____ party at the Cuckoo Club, through a rope and down some steps on a side road off Regent’s Street where, the Richmond and Twickenham Times reliably informs us Paris Hilton was pelted with flour for hanging around with a fur-using fashion designer.

Fortunately there were nether Hilton heiresses nor flour-hurling protesters in sight, but the entertainment was a rather bizarre ‘human beatboxer’. He looked like such a geek I’d assumed he was an overclocking tech hack, but it turns out he could do highly unnatural things with a microphone, turned up loud enough to make my hair shake.

Spent most of the night chatting to Karen H and Vinnie, whose party it was, and who made sure that we were well-plied with vegaquarium food and drinks, so that by the time I stumbled out the freezing streets were gently swaying.

Thursday, it was a mothers’ day party from which all mothers were banned. Quite why they settled on that, I don’t know, but the motherly extent of it stretched only to a few pictures of older women pasted to the walls of the bar. The food was also slim pickings. ‘We thought you’d all prefer more drink,’ said one of the PRs. ‘So I’m afraid the food’s going to be a bit crap.’

That was refreshingly honest, so I spent most of the rest of the evening talking to her. Unfortunately, when some food did turn up it was nachos, a little bit of which got stuck in my teeth and eventually worked its way free in the middle of a particularly energetic gesticulation, flying out of my mouth and landing neatly on her hand. She stared, I stared. I tried to brush it away, but it slid down and stuck to her finger.

Oh, the shame.

She did promise me much worse had happened in her 15 years on the job, but that didn’t stop her bringing it up again when she next got back from the bar with fresh drinks.

I didn’t eat any more that night.

Keith brought probably the most environmentally-unfriendly sweets ever created into the office today. Not only did they come in a big crinkly plastic bag, but each one was individually sealed inside a small plastic burger box. There was, quite literally, more packaging than sweet.

Plus they were hard to get into and tasted nasty.

It’s years since I last went bowling, so I didn’t have a clue how good (or how bad) I’d be when the whole team headed out for a MacUser/Computer Buyer/Photo studio bowling night in Finsbury Park.

Breakfast this morning was at Harvey Nichols. Pre-opening, on someone else’s bill. V posh, needless to say.

And yet, at the same time, at least 50% disappointing, perhaps because I’d been expecting too much. The venue was nice, of course; we were in the restaurant and bar out back, which is a bit like the inside of a particularly bright armadillo and suffers from poor views. The food, too, was nice, although in all honesty I actually only got to look at a lot of it because they were crap at catering for vegetarians. If you couldn’t eat the ham-stuffed croissants or the sausage and bacon they brought just a small pile of scrambled egg on an aerobie sized plate.

But it was good egg. Extremely good egg. Clearly mixed with cream, not just milk, and with fresh chives chopped in to give it a bit of colour and some extra flavour.
Overall, though, a poor showing for somewhere so glorified in the trendy press.

The grapefruit juice tasted of lavendar.

Ugh.

We have a fake moustache in the office.