!!!

I just found a sketchbook that's over 20 years old. It's the one I took to London in 1980 - though the only Actual Tourist Sketch[TM] is of the big mofo Blue Whale in the Natural History Museum in Kensington. (I wonder if it's still there. The whale, I mean, not the Museum. Or Kensington.)

The weird thing is, it's in watercolor. I was sharing a dorm room in Richmond College (8 St Alban's Grove) with a 16-year-old aspiring alcoholic who enjoyed cleaning her contact lenses in her mouth, and I have no memory of bringing along a watercolor kit, or buying one, or painting with it. I do remember hearing "Fame" on my tiny transistor radio more times than any human being should ever have to endure.

There are also some unbelievably crude super-hero drawings (this was the summer after Jean Grey snuffed it), which will likely be introduced to the office paper shredder tomorrow, and a handy list of useful Farsi phrases for Americans travelling to or in Iran: "It is very kind of you to allow me to travel in the trunk of your vehicle." "It is with the greatest pleasure that I sign this confession." Ah, the heady nostalgia of cultural xenophobia.