Just the usual, thanks



Manly Takeaways is our local fish n' chip shop whenever we are up at the family beach house on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula, just north of Auckland. The beach house was built in 1959 I believe, and almost all flat surfaces are covered in Formica, my grandfather was a Formica salesman. (I am not entirely sure about these facts, family members may correct me).
I have been going to the beach house ever since I was a baby, and I therefore assume eating fish n' chips from Manly Takeaways since then too. At the beach house I do the same things I have always done - swim for hours, go boating, eat large amounts of plums from the trees in the garden, do puzzles, read low-brow detective stories and do numerous sketches of Kotanui, the island that lies in the centre of Matakatia Bay, where our house is, always from the same angle. It has a misleading appearance: from the front, it is like a witch's hat settled on the water, but from the side is more like a rather prominent nose protruding from the sea.
Beach house holidays are a time for doing the same things I have always done. The menu boards at Manly Takeaways do nothing but add to the dingy 70's charm of the place, as I always always order the same thing - a fish, a hot dog (in the NZ fashion - a battered sausage on a stick doused in sauce) and a helping of chips. Actually, I think my entire family still all order the same things they did ten, fifteen years ago.

The map is one of two aerial photos which hang in the fish n' chip shop. Here it shows Matakatia Bay around the early 1960's, with the beginnings of the reef which stretches out to the island. Every time we get fisn n' chips, I make a point of spotting the beach house in the photo. Ritualistic, almost, just like everything else about my weeks spent up there.


Fantasy Island (part I)



Multiple views of Isola Bella, a fantasy island full of intricate Italianate gardens, laconic leucistic peacocks and housing the Palazzo Borromeo. Grandiose isolation, as all isolation should be. 

The 1986 travel photo of well-dressed pensive-looking man in front of Isola Bella could easily be mistaken for being 25 years later, I'm sure. Sometimes attire is not indicative of a time period at all.

Circle


Pildammsparken, Malmö, with Tallriken (the plate), the circular area of grass, surrounded by woods and hedges of trees drawing one in.

Behind the Silver Screen


aerial views of a quintessential fictitious american town, and a plywood and papier mache Tara in disrepair.

"40 Acres", the back lot of RKO Studios from 1927-1976. It was Atlanta and 'Tara' in Gone with the Wind, the town of Mayberry in The Andy Griffiths Show, a jungle for Tarzan, the backdrop for episodes of The Adventures of Superman and Star Trek.

"Nothing in Hollywood is permanent. Once photographed, life here is ended. It is almost symbolic of Hollywood. Tara had no rooms inside. It was just a façade. So much of Hollywood is a façade." - David O. Selznick.

Thinking about an embroidered and fabricated 40 Acres facade, to accompany Sherlock Holmes' abode, The Village, and the Overlook Hotel Maze. Also, about an overhead projector in the second hand shop around the corner.