I went to an event in the basement of Waterstone’s, Piccadilly in which Sean Scully read from a recently published volume of his ‘Collected Writings and Selected Interviews’, published by Hatje Cantz under the title Inner last year.   He claimed not to have read a book until he was sixteen, which may, or may not, be true, but is an indication that he was not taught to be a wordsmith, but writes, as he paints, with atavistic energy and records what he thinks relentlessly.   He described his method in the introduction to a lecture that he gave at Oxford in 1995: ‘The way I talk is, I don’t work from notes, so I tend to search for words.   It probably isn’t a good deal for you, but it is more interesting for me.   It’s like my work – I try to make it somewhat experimental’.   The results are linguistically raw, pugnacious and experimental.

I was going to post a photograph of Old Town’s anniversary pamphlet, with its cranky agricultural graphics on a wooden background, pictures of men with beards and women who look like the Director of the Geffrye Museum, when I discovered that my Samsung 7 had imploded, overheating frantically and its camera kaput, so I am now posting the photograph on my tablet, together with photographs of Old Town’s most recent London pop-up shop:-

A pamphlet has arrived – as always beautifully designed – celebrating twenty five years of my favourite clothing store, which was originally established twenty five years ago at 49, Bull Street, Norwich, selling feather dusters.   They must quite quickly have moved into clothing because I acquired my first double-breasted, wide-lapelled, brown corduroy suit with bronze tin buttons, still going strong apart from the loss of one or two fly buttons, not long afterwards.   It is nearly all done by post.   Once Miss. Willey has your measurements, all you have to do is telephone for a replacement garment to appear boxed up in the post.   As a long-term admirer of Miss. Willey, her husband, Will, their shop now in Bull Street, Holt, and their suits, I salute their first twenty five years and recommend them (www.old-town.co.uk).

We went to the exhibition about Japanese post-war housing at the Barbican:  good in many ways, but demonstrates the way that the history of housing is too often written through a small number of highly idiosyncratic architects’ houses, rather than an analysis of broader patterns of housing or houses not lived in by architects.   I liked one of the early concrete models:-

And the Barbican in the sun:-

I have been recuperating after the trip to Israel, blogless after an intellectual and sensory overload, consoled only by the monster tulips in the garden:-