Sometimes this blog will be a large oil painting of David Mitchell's face that I found in Alfies Antiques Market.

 Well it calls itself a market, but I'd call "Alfies Antiques" an Emporium if anything, without even looking up what an Emporium is (although I suspect the definition is a building selling wares at least three storeys tall, composed entirely of mezzanines resulting in an uncountable number of floors, and with as many different types of staircase as possible stuck just wherever there's a space – the Barbican does not sell wares so doesn't count). I have no idea why a painting of David Mitchell takes pride of place above this particular shop, but who needs a reason?

 

 Flanked by gigantic prints of Klimt, Alfies Emporium stands immediately opposite the Cockpit Theatre, where this week we have started rehearsing Love Goddess, the Rita Hayworth musical. Tomorrow is the table read, when we're all less nervous. Today we learnt songs and dancing, and I am very new to the latter. Having just the two feet makes it easier though. I'm learning they tend to take turns, and there's only so many places you can put them, and I must now have calves a centaur. We're also doing hat stuff – our choreographer worked with Gwen Verdon I hear – and while it does distract from the feet, I also learnt today what having a top hat land on my balls feels like. It's no trilby. Still, everyone's lovely and I'm trying not to be weird. Come!

 

Unposted Photographs of February in Chronological Order.

 The tree that came down on the second.

 

 When I finally looked over that wall.

  A quieter street towards the canal, where I spotted...

 

 

 

 A myth I didn't recognise. 

 

An orb that looked hard to get to and fun to leave.

 The ice. Remember the ice?

  The hearts up half a month ago.

 A shop window in Belravia.

 A shop window in Farringdon.

 

 The Crick.

 

  Another orb.

 The Barbican Launderette. Remember the Barbican Launderette?

 That moon.

 That second Autumn.

 A taste of Hollywood.

  Children playing "islands" in a drained pond seven hours ago.

 Six and half hours ago.

 Six hours and twenty minutes ago.

 Tonight. 

Barbican Outro: An Eighth of Mozart

 

 This is exactly what it looks like: a tiny, wooden audient. Placed in any architects' model of a concert hall, it predicts the acoustics by listening to sped-up recordings of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony (to ensure the soundwaves are to scale), while you work out what to hang from the ceiling. I'm not making any of this up.

 

 

 Dr. Raphael Orlovsky here might be, however. Perching like this was probably the director's idea; he looks great there, and it makes for a fun pan, but do architects normally clamber over their models, pretending to be giants? Is Orlovsky even the architect? I can't find anything about him online beyond the enchanting experiment performed sixteen minutes into this mixtape...

 

 The visiting musicians are very complimentary about the finished article, but I bristled a bit learning the only way onstage was up some stairs at the front – maybe because I was reminded of the beautiful concert halls we played on the Finnetour, where we had to change trousers in the corridor. That's the difference between real art and showbiz, I suppose: real art doesn't get a backstage. A lot of this footage bristles in fact. I remember very fondly how much Arts Reporting there used to be on television, but forget fifty per cent of it was posh people with microphones asking strangers how much they hated it.

 

  The Barbican's labyrinthine inaccessiblility is actually intentional – a power move – so the pissy reaction is understandable. This wasn't meant to be a place people stumbled upon, and I don't know how I feel about that. It's not a physical inaccessiblity, after all. You can find it if you look for it, and once there, share it with others who found it. So it's a faff, but it's also a pocket. And it's a pocket, but it's also a faff.

 Bringing the week full circle, this is what the Barbican replaced – another City in runes.

I Took Too Many Photos of the Barbican. Monday. 7pm.

 Launderette?

 Launderette?

 Launderette?

 

 Launderette? 

 

Launderette?

 

 Launderette?

 

 Launderette?

 

 Launderette?

 Launderette? 

 

 Launderette?

 

 Launderette?

 

 Launderette?

 

 Launderette! 

 Launderette?

 

 Launderette? 

 Launderette?

 

 Launderette?

 

 Launderette?

 

 Launderette?

 

 Launderette?

 

 Launderette?

 

 Launderette? 

 Launderette! Thanks to Barbican resident Martha for the tip.

Barbican Placeholder

 

 "Can you give us then an assurance that there will be a launderette built here in a few months' time on the estate itself?"

 

 

 "Yes I can give you that assurance yes."

 

 

"And where will it be?"

 

 "That we don't know. If we knew where it was it would be built by now. That has been the problem. To find the site for it."

 

 

 "But have you actually managed to find a site for it yet?"

 

... Sorry to lag. I'm trying to edit a showreel, and my laptop keeps crashing every time I make a change, but the save gets changed, so on we push, and hopefully I'll have licked my way through this diamond before the weekend. If it wasn't eating so much into my time and eyes right now, I'd be posting pictures of the nightwalk I took round the Barbican. I like the estate, but it's unfortunate the provision of a launderette proved so conditional on there not being a massive arts centre, as this hard-hitting piece on the Barbican not having a launderette exposés:

 

  

 Is this what J. G. Ballard's High-Rise was about? The Barbican not having a launderette? TO BE CONTINUED...