Lovecraft

was seemingly a writer who liked the use of the word “antediluvian”. I also like this word. Today the torrential downpours across the UK flooded my workplace - my office was an inch deep (2.5cm for those non-imperialists) in rainwater. I got soaked. And I didn’t have a change of clothes, so my feet were decidedly wrinkly by the time I got home and took my shoes and socks off some 7 hours after getting wet. This is the second time this week I have been covered in water of questionable purity.

On Wednesday my neighbour beneath came up to ask whether there was a leak in the kitchen. “No, I don’t think so.” I replied. “I’ll go and take a look”. Fatal mistake.

Beneath the sink four inlets (two plugholes, a washing machine and a dishwasher) all meet in a kind of Spaghetti Junction of white and grey piping). I hadn’t used the dishwasher or washing machine, so I thought it must be the sink(s). I took everything out of the cupboard - why do the British insist on storing the most random things beneath the kitchen sink (paintbrushes, putty, flower pots…) I saw there was some water marking, but this may have been from previous floods with the previous tenants. Then I saw it, a small drip every couple of seconds. OK, I thought. As I’m here, I’ll undo the pipes, give them a rinse in some hot water and put them back together - tighten the dripping one and we’ll all be happy as Larry. Fatal mistake number 2.

As I began to unscrew the dripping joint, it rose to become a veritable arc of slightly dirty water. Fortunately I had placed a bowl beneath the plumbing, so I continued, logically assuming that as the pressure dropped, so the water would gently drain into the bowl. Fatal error number three.

The pressure did drop, but the brown water now poured everywhere. And as I sought to stem the flow, so random jets would build up and shoot out at all angles between my fingers. So I now have a bowl full of dark brown water, a cupboard covered in drops of dark brown water. And me, covered in drops of dark brown water. Fun.

So, one bowl full of water later, and it stops. I can remove the pipe, take out the festering filth that has built up to cause the blockage, clean it, and put it all back together. Only this last part doesn’t quite work. One of the pipes no longer seems ot fit, and drips as water comes down from the sink. So I unscrew it and take a look. And the seal has gone. Which was most likely part of the problem to begin with. So I head down to the local hardware store (yes, we still have one - no Homebase or B&Q here, thank you), get a seal (or should that be washer) and put it all back together.

And so far it has been OK. Touch wood.

Thanks and apologies to Mikhail Zoshchenko.

This week

Terry Eagleton
Marcel Theroux
Jimi Tenor
Nick Drake
Pink Martini
Bjork

Boris Mikhailov

The images of Mr Yeltsin in the late 1980’s on the BBC today led me back to looking at Mikhailov’s photos that document the Soviet Union from the 1970’s to the collapse - he is still active to day, capturing the modern Ukraine, but his earlier works sought to depict the reality behind the facade of the Brezhnev and Gorbachev periods. Unlike many photo-realist artists, however, he did not resort to the use of black and white film stock - all of the photos I’ve seen are in glorious 1970’s style technicolor (no mean feat, given how difficult it must have been to obtain the film and get it processed). And all of his photos gloriously skew the norms of Soviet iconography and propaganda - farmhands sitting on the toilet, the nomenklatura holidaying in the Crimea with Marx and Engels on the wall, and so on. However, he never seems as knowing as other late-Soviet artists - the photos also frequently depict the most banal moments in Soviet life - as above, as well as the homeless, alcoholics, drug addicts.

Sharms

In a Soviet-inspired advertising mood recently, so enjoy….