a message from seville

guess what ? i'm in seville !

a week later than planned the whitfield family are in andalucia.

bit of a schoolboy error though, i forgot to bring the cable that lets me download
photos from my camera to this laptop so blogging is more or less over until jan 2nd.


i will try to post a few pics from my iphone, but you know how i feel about the iphone's camera.


please keep checking for seville nonsense, but serious blogging will resume on january 2nd 2011.








here are some of seville's most famous residents...

here is my breakfast this morning...

a bit of cathedral...

and some more naranjas...

hasta luego.

thank you all ( post 1000 )

as my first year of blogging comes to a close, i'd like to say a big thank-you

to everybody out there who has looked in to see what i've been up to.

i guess a few of you out there know me but i'd like to say a special

thank-you to all the people out there who don't know me, in countries 

i've never been to, and in some cases never heard of !

i started using a program in july to let me see how my blog is doing.

below is the map showing visitors for the second half of the year.

it's interesting to know i have a bit of a following in canada and the usa, 

and i am intrigued that i have people looking at me on a regular basis in places such as
 iran, sudan, azerbaijan, estonia, bulgaria, latvia, peru, barbados, china, uzbekistan,
macau, vietnam, south korea, lithuania, serbia, ukraine, chile, sri lanka, thailand,

mexico, philippines, brasil, hong kong, taiwan, malaysia, finland, japan,

singapore and of course... wales.

nos da !

boxing day

boxing day started well enough.

for breakfast i had this bad boy...

an olive oil and mandarin orange macaroon.

it was incredible. a bit like something willy wonka would make.

coffee turned up within minutes so i helped myself to another

i know it looks like a little beefburger but it was actually salted butter caramel.

mmmm...

boxing day took a turn for the worse when jess's little friend ribena turned up

i thought i'd given our security people strict instructions not to let her in...

but in the spirit of christmas we put up with her for an hour or so and listened to her 

talking. at one point she paused for breath and one of us got a word in.

perhaps it was ribena's xmas present to us ?

as if seeing ribena wasn't bad enough, we were booked in to the boxing day

trip of shame... the family get together in longfield, kent.

it turned out to be nowhere near as bad as i'd imagined, for one thing the 

johanson's are most excellent hosts and we got there early enough so that i could 

choose my favourite seat... the gangster chair, right in the corner. from that position

i could see the entire room and could keep my eye on the front door.

sure, i was open to a possible sniper positioned in the garden, but i was assured

that the patio doors were bullet-proof.

i settled down in the corner and after convincing everybody that we should

"start eating before the higgs family turn up" gezza set to work in the kitchen.

after a short time she presented with me with a plate to keep me happy...

boom !

i wanted to pose for an official boxing day portrait, but

i couldn't see myself posing with many of the characters who would be attending

the get-together. also things were guaranteed to get nasty later on as the traditional

boxing day family quiz of shame would descend into a bad tempered

shouting match ( as it does every year )

so i figured if i was going to be photographed at all, i should do the simple thing

and just pose up with my loved ones. so that's what i did...

fantastic !

i was very happy in the corner with a plate of hot meat. i also insisted that an

offensive looking bowl of salad was placed on the corner of the table furthest

away from me... next to a vegetarian family member. it was all going well.

i pointed out to gezza that there was a space on the table for a bowl of chips

and bless her she said, "oh... would you like some chips mark ?" 

quick as a flash i replied " yes please, but make them quickly so we can eat them 

before the higgs family arrive"

it was good stuff, i heard somebody in the kitchen asking gezza about the chips

and she said " i'm making them now so we can eat them before the higgs family

turn up " ( yesssss ! my catch phrase was catching on )

well pretty soon i had this big bowl in my hands...

and i also persuaded gezza to knock up some gravy.

it was a good day to be honest.

we did eat before the higgs family turned up.

we did have a family quiz.

it did descend into a shouting match.

many thanks to gezza and el tel for being such great hosts.

to r-shack and mickey two-shoes, see you for a pub quiz soon.

to the rest of the family, see you next xmas !

more stüssy iphone pics

i know... it's a cheap post but i wanted to show you these pics.

i now have no problem in recommending the stüssy iphone app

to you. it's a bit fiddly, but it is a good little effort.

have a look at this photo i took on my first visit to new york

the stüssy typeface is great isn't it ?

i know i have shown these pics before, but silly as they are, you could almost

 imagine them being from a stüssy campaign.

how about this pic of my friend sakiko ?

or my top assistant g-fog

here are a few i did of my favourite subject... me !

check me out at the famous pedestrian crossings in shibuya tokyo.

and on the beach in wales

here i am in the criterion, london w1 in my usual pose

and finally a few pics i put through the stüssy app with no real plan

using the speech bubble and whatever came into my head.

pigs on a beach which i spotted in tonga a few years ago

germans on a beach in spain

a bird i saw in koh samui thailand last year

and a building i photographed on xmas day a few years ago in san diego

eat more chips... don't let salad win.

xmas day walks in regents park

here are a few pics of me and jess over the years taken on xmas day.

they were all taken on the same path in regents park.

i'm not sure which year this was

but i'm wearing a yellow chipie corduroy jacket underneath a red chipie kagoul
and calvin klein jeans. hmmm... nice tartan stüssy cap though

i'm not sure of the year here either

no... they're not my pyjamas. they were mambo beach trousers.

mambo jacket and fleece too. same timberlands by the look of it.

after a fair few christmases spent in new york, san francisco and san diego

we were back to good old london

hmmm... bathing ape cashmere beanie, bape reversible jacket,

maharishi combat tousers, paul smith gloves and adidas superstars

i reckon this was xmas day 2008

maharishi jacket, colette / penfield gillet, levis and madfoot kicks

no problems with my memory for this photo... it was yesterday !

maharishi jacket, colette / penfield gillet, stüssy mittens, evisu jeans

and eddie cruz nike air force 1's

regents park on xmas day

it has become a bit of a tradition for the whitfields to take a trip to regents park

on xmas day. 

it is the first year i can remember there being snow in the park on xmas day

so my choice of footwear was very important. i went with these...

the eddie cruz eastern pack nike air force 1's in purple snakeskin

with patent yellow swoosh and sticky red outsole. boom !

mrs w was well wrapped up against the cold

this was not the xmas day in seville she had planned, but it was a great day.

she sat on a bench and watched as the wildlife in the park approached her for food.

not the best shot i'll grant you, but this little chap approached and i fed him

some dairy milk chocolate

this creature would not be fobbed off with a chunk of chocolate

and we ended up having to feed her roast turkey, potatoes, stuffing and some sort of vegetables. she even hung around for xmas pudding !

xmas presents

what does father christmas bring for the man who has everything ?

well, this little lot turned up with my name on it...

bingo !

my favourite smelly stuff.

i also received this little pile...

interesting... very interesting

can you guess what this is ?

it features illustrations of three of my favourite things...

1. a flirty woman with a fan

2. a man wearing tight purple trousers

3. a dead bull

on the other side it has these photos...

only the spanish could come up with something like this

well, if you didn't know already, here it is opened up slightly...

a big-ass book of matches... perfect !

also from spain... seville infact...

an orange krink paint marker... once again, perfect !

a badge featuring my favourite animal...

the gentleman fox

and this...

it's all about the packaging and the smell really.

fantastic old school illustration and typeface, plus it has my second favourite smell

after acqua di parma...

that's right, it smells like a magic tree !

( supposedly it's vanilla flavoured sugar, but to me it's magic tree crystals in a packet )

finally, satisfying my love of foreign packaging and porridge...

i had to salute when this bad boy fell out of salma heyek's boobs !

a packet of instant porridge from russia

many thanks to father christmas and the whitfields.

it was a very happy christmas at the towers

xmas day in the morning

xmas day morning... coffee-time

with a sneaky cinnamon biscuit. good start.

jess made some mini smoked salmon bagels

salmon bagels are not really my thing

but this passing meerkat thought they looked ok

while the ladies tucked into the bagles, i started on these

absolutely genius macaroons, curtesy of m.l.o and o. ( thank-you )

jess then treated us to her impression of javier bardem

while i tried on my new contact lenses

time to open a few presents. first thing i opened up was this...

a scary santa dunny which was from o and o. ( thank-you )

mrs w received a scarf with a built-in hole

it wraps around the neck and one end of the scarf passes through the hole to fasten.

could this be the end for the curse of the whitfields ?

like a little kiddie, i was fascinated as much by the wrapping paper 

as i was by the presents

jess came up trumps with genius wrapping paper as usual !

what the what ?!

i like the way the magazine point out that the bloke is ogling salma hayek's front.

then again... where was he supposed to look ?

after spending a good 45 minutes looking at salma hayek it was time for another coffee

this time accompanied by a mince pie.

more xmas day fun to follow...