The Night Watch

February 3rd, 2006

Last night I went to the launch party for Sarah Waters’ new book, The Night Watch. Yes, strictly speaking, that has nothing to do with my comic strip. But it has something to do with lesbian culture, so I don’t think I’m going too far afield to mention it here. It was cool to see ads for the book in the Tube.

The novel takes place during and just after World War Two, so the launch was a costume party, “forties attire optional.” People wore amazing things. Old WAC and RAF uniforms, vintage dresses and suits and hats.

Sarah’s book is stunning, even more gripping, in my most humble opinion, than Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, or Fingersmith, which is saying quite a lot. You should read it as soon as possible.

This is my girlfriend Amy Rubin with Sarah Waters and our pal Helen Sandler.

These women were kids during the war, and advised Sarah as she was writing the book.

This is my girlfriend, me, and our friend Jane Hoy, looking very queenlike.

The book launch was held in the Cabinet War Rooms at the Churchill Museum in London, the nerve center from which Churchill directed the war. That’s why there are all those important looking gauges and levers and things in the background.

London in black and white

February 3rd, 2006

The south side of St. Paul’s is being repaired, so they’ve got this massive tarp up that’s printed with an antique drawing or etching of the building, for a sort of trompe l’oeil effect. It’s weirdly cartoony.

Here’s a self-portrait I took of me looking at a Franz Kline painting in the Tate Modern, before I was accosted by a guard and told to stop taking photographs. I’ve never been big on painting, but I love Franz Kline’s black-on-white stuff because it looks like ink on paper.

There’s an installation up in the Tate Modern’s vast turbine hall called “Embankment.” It’s stacks and stacks of these translucent plastic boxes. That’s me on the left looking up at the biggest pile.