no trumpets allowed

my plan to play "let's get lost" at the presidential

palace last week was thwarted at an early stage...

it was their loss.

last iphone pics

ok, i'm nearly there. nearly on top of my editing and normal blogging

with proper photos should resume tomorrow.

but for today, let me bore you with the remaining iphone shots i took

last week in shanghai, nanjing, hangzhou and... heathrow.

1

i love hotel corridors.

( in fact i think i just love corridors )

2

i also love packaging. i like good packaging and labels but i especially like

seeing how companies outside of the uk package up ordinary things.

this is just a cheap-ass bottle of water, but it's a really nice label isn't it ?

3

a sign in a public bathroom in hangzhou

4

phew !

5

er...

6

self-portrait in a lift at the puli hotel.

this was heading down to the 2nd floor at my favourite time of day...

... breakfast time.

7

the breakfast coffee at the puli was the one let-down.

still, i always had a good view of people in the park doing tai chi

at 6.30am, plus there was a nespresso machine in my room so i

can't complain

8

i would get my 5-a-day in one hit at breakfast time.

1. a ham and cheese omelette with hash browns ( not pictured )

2. pineapple

3. orange

4. raspberry danish

5. custard filled doughnut

9

this is the scene after a team lunch.

is it just me or is it easy to tell where i sat ?

10

it's a long story, and one i'll tell next week with proper photos, but i was given 

a pair of the new nike af-1 year of the dragon editions a day before they officially

released. i have to thank rocky for these and i'll do that properly next week too.

11

it was time to pack my bags to fly home.

here are a few bags i had to leave behind.

12

and here's how my luggage looked at 1.30am when i finally finished packing.

13

at 1.45am it was time for a relaxing bath overlooking shanghai, listening to

a jay and silent bob get old podcast while drinking beer and eating crisps.

14

getting the bullet train to shanghai's airport was pretty much like getting the train to heathrow or gatwick...

... ok, maybe this train went a little bit faster.

15

we landed a bit early at t5, whizzed through passport control, my bags were almost

the first on the belt, then i got a call that my sherbert was going to be 30 minutes late.

only one thing for it... to kill the time i bowled it straight to costa and 

treated myself to a flat white.

the end.

normal service will resume tomorrow !

next day iphone pics

normal blogging will be resumed next week.

all i have time to offer you today are some iphone shots from my 

second day in china last week.

1

i had 20 minutes to grab some breakfast and i absolutely filled my boots.

what you're looking at here is a ham and cheese omelette with a side portion of

hash browns.

i followed it up with a blueberry smoothie, raspberry danish and a doughnut...

what ?

2

it was a hot and humid day. i teamed up some green bape camo cargo shorts

with a lightweight stüssy x hanes tee.

3

looking out of the window of the team bus as we crawled through the shanghai

traffic, i was pleased to see a familiar face looking out at me.

4

more familiar faces on the pepsi bottles in a motorway service station.

did i bring some of these home with me ?

what do you think ?

5

i shot this through the bus window too. fair play to this bloke

working away in the heat.

6

i won't lie.

i didn't have much to eat at lunchtime.

7

"chef" my back seat companion on the tour bus wasted no time in catching some

z's on the 3 and a half hour drive back to shanghai from the day's shoot.

this photo really needs audio to accompany it !

8

it was a long day. i think we left the hotel at 7am

( this was after sleeping for only 3 hours the night before )

we spent over 7 hours in the team bus and spent the rest of the time

shooting in crazy heat. i think it was about 11pm when we got back to the hotel.

there was only one thing on my mind when food was mentioned...

room service !

it's a bad angle for the burger, it was a really big, chunky thing and absolutely

hit the spot. the chips were decent too but i've no idea what the story was with

the little bowl of green things.

9

there was complimentary beer in my mini-bar.

good night !

day 1 in shanghai ( iphone pics )

once again, just one post today and excuse the quality... they are all iphone pics.

1

i took this sitting down out of the way while the adults checked the team

 in at the puli hotel shanghai.

2

waiting for the hotel worker to struggle with my burton bag, i took this 

snap of the entry hall part of my room.

3

i only shoot black and white pics with the front camera on my iphone.

this is me going down to the lobby 30 minutes after checking in.

i was happy with the clothes i took over with me, but not with the hair

product. my barnet had a nightmare the whole time i was in china.

grrr !

4

my starbucks boycott is still going strong. i reckon it was july 2010

that i last gave them some of my money.

well... having said that, i do occasionally turn a blind eye to my boycott

when i'm out of the country. i definitely had a starbucks at bangkok

airport in january and also i think in koh samui a year or so ago.

hmmm...

on this occasion the team walked straight past starbucks, shunning it for...

5

no, we didn't go into the happy lemon i'm afraid...

we actually settled down for coffee at costa !

it was the worst coffee i'd had in a preston guild !

moral of the story is ( i reckon ) when you're out of the country, try a local

place rather than sticking to places we have in england.

6

this is a still from a video i shot with my iphone.

a panoramic sweep across the shanghai skyline.

i was on the balcony of a restaurant here.

the restaurant was called "mr and mrs bund" and the food the team had

there was off the scale.

having not slept at all on the 12 hour flight, then gone straight to work 

30 minutes after checking in at the hotel. shooting all day then going out for 

an evening meal, i was absolutely shattered. 

i should have slept like a log.

instead, after maybe 2 hours sleep, i woke up wide awake. it was 2.45am.

i switched on the telly and...

7

started watching england v ukraine.

it was a pretty shoddy game eh ?

the only talking point was...

8

taking a break from his busy off the field schedule,

all round good guy john terry made a great goal-line clearance.

9

the chinese soccer experts had a good old laugh about it after the game.

10

they found it more amusing than the ukraine team did anyway.

you'd think that after watching such a dreary 90 minutes of football i would have

slept like a baby...

... wrong !

iphone photos before i left for shanghai

i think that it's probably going to be iphone pics for the next few days.

probably just one post per day too.

here are a few from just before i left for shanghai.

1

two days before my flight, i started to think about what kicks to take.

i felt i should go with some chinese year of... af-1's.

2

in the end, i decided against taking my year of the rabbit af-1's

and opted for these bad boys... the year of the dog.

3

the day before i left, i picked up this must-have from bape.

it would have been a schoolboy error to put this in my camera bag.

you know, with my carry-on luggage... i've lost a couple of swiss army knives

in the past that way, so this little fella stayed in n7.

4

after the success at bape, i sneaked over to foxcroft and ginger for a flat white.

it's controversial serving a flat white in a teacup, but i think it works.

5

this is how i packed. my burton snowboarding bag looks pretty full, 

yet somehow i managed to come home a week later with two extra pairs

of kicks in there, one of them still boxed.

6

waiting for my sherbert to turn up at whitfield towers.

7

my last decent drink and bite to eat before a 12 hour flight.

a flat white and a breakfast pot at eat, terminal 5.

shanghai time

i'm all out of spare blog posts. 

they were used to cover for me when i was in china last week.

i got back to n7 late on saturday night and to be honest, even now on monday morning, i still feel like i'm on shanghai time.

now there's untold editing to do now, which let's be honest... 

i should really make a start on before i get back to blogging.

so for today, all i can show you is my watch.

as you can see. i set the second time zone to shanghai time.

hopefully i'll have a post or two for you tomorrow 

oh and by the way... shanghai is magic !

roadstas

i have two pairs of bapestas which i think i've shown already on my blog.

one pair is purple / grey / green

the others are white / brown / yellow.

today let me show you my two pairs of roadstas.

1

i bought these after i retired my kaws x bapestas which were in the same colourway.

they are very, very comfortable and a few years ago i wore these while i was in new york

and i walked for miles and miles in them. my dogs didn't bark once.

2

these i bought to replace a pair of fake bapestas la niña brought me back from 

her school trip to china a few years ago, which were in the same colourway.

i have only worn these twice. when i tried them on to take this photo it was like

stepping into a warm bath after a long run... these are sooooo comfortable.

right, that does it... i'm going to put my bape shoes on rotation now.

i need comfort as well as heat.

bringing heat to the streets of n7

heat ?

fire !

nike lunar flyknit htm nrg

a few days after the marc jacobs x vans sk8r hi's turned up at whitfield towers.

( which was a few days after the tom sachs mars yard shoes )

this box arrived.

what the what ?!

that's three pairs on the bounce that haven't been af-1's

coincidentally, the little sticker on the box...

... has exactly the same facial expression as me when i saw the state of the queue

for yeezy wristbands outside 1948 the other week !

grrr !

ok, the reveal

don't panic. there's another shoe in there somewhere.

there you go

these are funny to be honest. like the tom sachs yard shoes you really

have to see these in real life to appreciate the genius of them.

you also need to feel them in your hands... they are probably the lightest

sneaks in my crate. possibly even lighter than my mayflys.

the soles are hi-vis yellow

and are made out of a really lightweight material.

brs 1000 ?

i've no idea

i just checked and brs 1000 is a special material designed by nike.

a rubber with a high carbon content to improve durability.

the flyknit construction is pretty amazing

the whole shoe is made out of one piece of material.

as the name suggests, it's a knitted material... a bit like something my nan

would have made if she worked for nike instead of making cardigans

which didn't fit me properly.

the swoosh is just painted on i guess

no metal eyelets or anything extra that would add weight to these bad boys.

seriously, when the box arrived and i picked it up, i thought i'd been stitched

up and been sold an empty shoe box !

they do have little heel tab things

which have a 3m coating on them, which is good for when i'm

running at night time...

what ?

nothing special with the insoles

though surely the ink used on that logo has added a little unnecessary weight

to the shoes ?

the htm in the title of the shoes ?

htm are the initials of the three designers of the shoe.

hiroshi fujiwara, tinker hatfield and mark parker.

only 100 pairs of these were made. 100 world wide !
only 14 pairs were released in the uk.

hmmm...

if you want to know more, why not take a little look at this short video

which explains about the flyknits properly.

and if you're really interested, type 'nike flyknit' into ebay !