Dancing in the street is ALWAYS good

Thank you to all the Kings and Queens of Daftery at Notting Hill Carnival yesterday - here are a few pics of the collective of party people, paraders, police, pranksters and players...god bless you all!

"Playful, eccentric, grotesque, immediate, brilliant: Hirst 1988 - 2012"

In short, I loved it.

Damien Hirst at the Tate Modern. It’s a look back over at his artistic career since the late eighties when he first came to public attention.

This exhibition has been on for a while – I finally got round to going with my sister and my 1 year old nephew. He had a great time too!

I like the directness of his works – in one art critic’s words, “there’s no art bollocks about Damien Hirst.”

There’s his fascination with life cycles, for example, and the fact death will come to us all – sounds gloomy but it’s really not. There’s a whole room in this exhibition with live butterflies flying around - the room has a series of white canvasses on the wall with hundreds of pupae attached to them. It’s as if the butterflies have hatched right out of the paintings on the walls. The butterflies live in this specially humidified and heated room for around a week – and when they die, a Tate Modern staff member told me, they are put in the fridge. The dead butterflies will be recycled by Damien Hirst into another artwork, such as this one….

And there’s Damien Hirst’s “A Thousand Years” – a dead cow’s head, its blood has spilled across the floor. Inside the tank, maggots have hatched into flies. Tens of thousands of flies. They feast and lay their eggs inside the cow’s head. There’s also an Insect-o-cutor inside this tank – will the flies survive in the tank or get sizzled by the zapper? Sounds disgusting and yes it is (there is a trace of the rotting smell as you approach this cabinet) – but it is also fascinating to look at. Life, death, decay. And it’s an uncontrollable artwork, changing before your eyes, every millisecond.

There’s this floating ping pong ball on a hair dryer from his early works whilst at Goldsmiths College in London – daft and funny.

There’s a floating beach ball in the middle of a room with enormous ‘spin paintings’, which were created by Damien Hirst tipping pots of paint from a height on to huge spinning discs. The playfulness of childhood. One of these spin paintings is titled: “Beautiful, childish, expressive, tasteless, not art, over simplistic, throw away, kids’ stuff, lacking in integrity, rotating, nothing but visual candy, celebrating, sensational, inarguably beautiful painting (for over the sofa), 1996”.

There are Hirst’s creatures in formaldehyde vitrines. The sheep. The cow and her calf, sliced in two, “Mother and Child Divided” – you can walk through the middle and study the dissection of this most unusual madonna and child.

There’s the famous shark in formaldehyde – “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living 1991”.

A white dove in flight – with my sister and nephew the other side!

All of Hirst’s creatures are suspended in their vitrines, the surface of which reflects you back as you study their contents. Sometimes the surface of the vitrines curve as you get close up, almost sucking you in. And the world the other side is turned formaldehyde-bluey-green – a reminder of our own life cycle!

Medicine, pathology, pharmacology – all of these themes are explored with humour and directness by Damien Hirst in relation to life and death, in works that are at once very real but also surreal – what’s a life size pharmacy doing in an art gallery, for example? It made me laugh anyway. Hirst says “The Pharmacy” plays with the idea that people put so much faith in medicine but often lack faith in art.

Damien Hirst is on until September 9th at the Tate Modern – definitely worth a visit. (Maybe not if you’re vegetarian!).

Caff of the month: Terry’s Cafe, London SE1

It’s the law…

…that at least one meal a week must be taken in a caff.

In 1877, this law was passed for the preservation of daftness in society and generally slowing down the pace of evolution. If you break this law, it is punishable with six swift clocks across the chops with a frying pan.

The reasons this law came about seem very simple to us at Mastery of Daftery:

Reason 1: A good caff is always about taking a step away from all that is grown-up, professional, serious and sensible. You can slop your tea in a caff with no fear of shame or scorn from fellows.

Reason 2: A good caff is about eating some solid grub and drinking several mugs of very strong tea – poured from a giant metal teapot.

Reason 3: A good caff is about a blast of banter from caff staff and regulars. It’s about tabloid newspaper indulgence and sweeping statements about everything from football to tax-dodging rich folk.

Reason 4: A good caff has its very own style of service – they’re always there with their little paper pad and pen, your food turns up sharpish – but at the same time, one thing is very clear. They are not at all bothered about impressing you.

That’s why from this moment forward there will be a Caff of the Month slot on Mastery of Daftery…

…to celebrate the best caffs discovered in this daft stumble that is life.

I happened upon Terry’s Café this week in Southwark…

Started up in 1982 by, yes, a bloke called Terry – Terry’s Café is about a very decent sausage with some fat chips. It’s about steak sandwiches, English brekkies, omelettes, sandwiches – all served up on tables with chequered table cloths – nothing out of the ordinary there.

But Terry’s Café is also about 1920s to 1950s jazz music (which makes a nice change to Kiss FM). It helps you take that step away from the real world while you have your lunch.

It’s about old photos of the area covering all available wall space. And boxing gloves. And old-fashioned clocks.

It’s about an overdose of patriotism – from the Union Jacks through to the royal celebration plates, which feature Her Royal Daftness at various stages of her diamond-studded command.

Terry’s son, Austin, now runs the show there. I did ask Austin to give me a smile for this photo, to which he put his hands on his hips and said ‘I’m known for being miserable.'

Austin tells me the secret to a good caff is very simple. Good food for a good price with good service. And I can vouch for them delivering on this at Terry’s Café – my food arrived quickly, the sausage was blimmin’ delicious and it set me back just £3.80.

Here are Austin and his Dad, Terry, modelling their stripy aprons in two different yet fashionable styles.

And here’s my empty plate at Terry’s café. Job done.

Terry’s Café can be found at 158 Great Suffolk St, London SE1. Trading hours are Monday to Friday: 7am to 2pm; Saturday 7.30am to midday; Sunday closed.

Scoot scoot, coffee coffee, cake cake

Take one scooter nut.

Add coffee and cake.

Throw in a tabby cat.

And, what do you get?

Why, the Scootercaffe, of course. It's just a whisker and a toot from London Waterloo.

With several lumps of sweet and mellow daftery in here, I managed to lose 5 hours eating lemon drizzle cake and Portuguese custard tarts and drinking cups of nicely brewed coffee. (I'm told the hot chocolate is delicious too).

The house cat Stanley put in a few appearances, in between napping on empty chairs and guarding the spiral staircase to the basement - where it's always 12:40 on the Bakerloo line.

I appreciated the wonky details at the Scootercaffe.

The blue china ducks with gold beaks.

The kitsch paraphernalia.

And there was even a light made from one of those old hairdryers you sit underneath.

I remember my Mum had one of them in the eighties.

She used to sit in her rollers underneath the space-age head capsule.

And I used to wonder what on earth she was doing.

Scootercaffe, 132 Lower Marsh, Waterloo, London, SE1 7AE - click for map.

Slip into a world of Daftery at the Zetter

This is no ordinary pussy cat. This is a stuffed pussy cat in a blue dress with lace trim. She is sporting a dainty parasol.

"Look into my eyes, look into my big orange eyes," she says, "and feed me fishcake."

This is no ordinary kangaroo. This is a tobacco-chewing, tap-dancing kangaroo. He's friendly in the morning if you give him a tot of rum. But he'll box you on the chin for bad manners at the dinner table.

The pussy cat and the kangaroo live at the Zetter Townhouse in Clerkenwell, London - top marks to them for their very evident mastery of daftery.

You can book into the Zetter Townhouse cocktail lounge and sink into their world of comfy armchairs and sofas, an open fire place, great service and luscious low lighting at night time.

All of this helps set the tone for this left of centre experience, with a large jugful of English eccentricity.

And if you are lucky enough to stay at the Zetter Townhouse, you can also climb the news-papered staircase, where Winston Churchill and Marilyn Monroe preside.

Check out these cheeky bedrooms on the Zetter Townhouse website.

"Something for the weekend, Mr Cockatoo?" ;-)