Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 412

At It Like Cats & Dogs

This epic battle in from pal Graham Humphreys. I'd like to think that no animals were hurt in its production, but I have my doubts.

Spam Attack

It took me sixteen tries to log this entry – I feel like a mariner making a last note in his ship's journal before entering unchartered territory. I'll try to keep going until my designer is back from holiday and can rebuild the site, but as each entry involves several stages, each now to the [...]

The Name Of The Rose

Further down this column Hellen Martin comments that the Abbey at Melk is mentioned in The Name Of The Rose – indeed it is, and one can see the hidden library door in amongst the bookcases of an astonishing collection of rare volumes that stretch to the very ceiling. The church itself is eye-wateringly [...]

Culture Shock

So, I leave the Viennese countryside, with its culture, grace and manicured wealthy neatness, and return to London. I alight from London Bridge because, surprise, the trains still aren't running across the city at the weekends, and nor is the tube, and nor are the taxis because they've closed the rank, and it's raining and [...]

One Design Ethic

Here are two shots I took in Vienna. One is a tube station, and the other is the interior of the Modern Art Museum. The B&W one is the museum, but one ethic unites both buildings – a cohesive design aesthetic both unforgiving and thrilling.

Under Attack

Posts will be a little slower for two weeks when the site will have to be largely rebuilt due to a massive Spam attack apparently coming from the US. Over ten thousand Spams a day are pouring in, and the loading of new information is now a long hit-or-miss process – bear with me.

Viennese Whirl 3

The temperature is more suited to Barcelona, the streets are all but deserted – this is a great time to visit Austria. Having survived the grimmest British summer in three decades, which actually saw us putting on the central heating in August, I hadn't packed for a scorching heatwave in a central European city, so [...]

Viennese Whirl 2

I was fully ready to recommend the Griechenbeisl, a traditional Viennese Beisl restaurant, for its food (liver-noodle broth, apricot ice cream in dumplings) its antiquity (since 1530) its decor (Beethoven, Mozart and Wagner have signed the walls) and its quirkiness (many small rooms piled on top of each other, some with pianos or outside walkways) [...]

Viennese Whirl

Due to a bit of a misunderstanding, I seem to be in Vienna.

I was supposed to take my friend Sally to Lausanne in Switzerland, but somehow we got our wires crossed and I ended up in a bus station in Austria with bratwurst juice all over my back. It's weirdly hot here, all the stores [...]

Very Sixties

I'm busy working on 'Film Freak', the sequel-of-sorts to 'Paperboy'. It's about working in films and advertising in the arse-end of the 1970s, and I'm trying to watch old films from the period immediately before the setting.

One of the movies I vaguely remember seeing was 'Every Home Should Have One', a satire in which [...]