幾句

Cutty Sark燒了.

就是那艘放在格林威治, 接近泰晤士河的十九世紀商船. 火警原因未明, 但據說有一定可疑. 從新聞片段看到直升機高空拍下來的情況, 老帆船變了像炭堆一樣, 真叫聞者痛心. 尤其像我等人士, 曾在那兒寄居3年, 未知多少日子在那一帶渡過, 怎不留有超過點點情感.

其實帆船老早已泊在陸上, 並且成為博物館. 不幸中之大幸, 最新消息說, 由於Cutty Sark剛巧正在維修更新中, 船身大部份木製外殼經已拆下被移到別處, 大火所造作的損毀亦不如先前所預料的嚴重. 最重要是, 據說船隻可以復原.

說來奇怪, 在那兒住了3年, 居然未曾正式的登上過Cutty Sark看看艙裡究竟如何. 但世事往往都是這樣, 接近自己的, 通常你都不會太在意.

xxx xxx xxx

本地一位英勇的消防員黃家熙在救火時不幸殉職了. 據聞他屬到場撲救的第一梯隊成員, 救火途中遇上閃燃, 是以多人受傷.

願他得以安息. RIP.

xxx xxx xxx

看了'驢皮公主', 看罷竟然想到劉鎮偉的'情癲大聖'! 天啊, 怎會這樣的?

其實挺喜歡這套經典之作(我是指'驢皮'!).

xxx xxx xxx

北京的情況..... 真不知道究竟搞甚麼. 很簡單的事情吧, 怎會變得混亂....

落髮

3年多一把長頭髮, 今天終於剪掉.

還以為依迪芙會將我的頭髮弄得較fancy, 原來卻回歸基本, 自自然然, 順著臉型來剪最是貼服.

完成後, 留在地上的頭髮, 多得連自己也嚇了一跳. 忘記拍照留念, 可惜. 那份量是難以致信的. 當頭髮仍束在頭上, 看來真的不像那麼多, 也不見得濃密.

變回短髮的我, 竟然感到不太慣. 說到底, 3 年多, 總要點時間重新適應.

Isabella Blow 去了, 終年48歲

願她安息.

摘自The Telegraph的Obituary, 寫得真好:

Isabella Blow, who died yesterday aged 48, was a
stylist once described as one of the 20 most important
people in fashion, and was seen by many in that peculiar
industry as a visionary figure; a wider public thought her a
wildly, wilfully eccentric figure, mainly because of her
hats: pheasants, lobsters, and antlers were often perched on
her head.

Isabella Blow was often described as a Muse to
designers; it might be truer to say that she occupied in
fashion a facilitating role similar to that played by Lady
Otteline Morrell in literature or Peggy Guggenheim in the
visual arts. Her primary talent was to identify talent in
others, at which her record was second to none. She was
responsible for discovering the milliner Philip Treacy and
bought the entire graduation collection of the then unknown
Alexander McQueen; she worked with Julien Macdonald as well
as being instrumental in the early careers of photographers
such as Juergen Teller, Alistair Thain and Sean Ellis, and
models such as Sophie Dahl, Stella Tennant and Honor Fraser.

She was born Isabella Delves Broughton on November 19
1958, the eldest daughter of Sir Evelyn Delves Broughton,
12th Bt. She grew up in Cheshire, 34,000 acres of which her
family had owned since the 14th century, until her
grandfather, Sir "Jock" Delves Broughton, sold most of it to
pay off his gambling debts. He then moved to Kenya, where he
was tried for, and acquitted of, the murder of the Earl of
Erroll, and eventually committed suicide. Isabella had an
awkward relationship with her father, who abandoned her
mother Helen, his second wife, and, when he died in 1993,
left Isabella £5,000 while leaving £7 million to his third
wife, Rona.

Izzy was educated at Heathfield, where a report
declared that she "occasionally talks too much but it is
always in a good cause"; she ended up as head of chapel and
formed an ambition to become a nun.

Instead she went to secretarial college, and took a
variety of jobs, in London. "I wore a handkerchief with
knots on the side, and my cousin saw me in the post office
and said, 'What are you doing?' I said, 'What do you think I
look like I'm doing? I'm a cleaner!'" As well as her
two-year cleaning stint, she worked in a scone shop, selling
apricot-studded scones.

In 1979 she went to Columbia University in New York to
study Ancient Chinese Art, and shared a room with the model,
actress and daughter of Princess Jelisaveta of Yugoslavia,
Catherine Oxenburg, who was later best-known for playing
Amanda Carrington in Dynasty. But she chucked her studies
after a year to work for the designer Guy Laroche in west
Texas, before getting her big break in fashion when she met
Anna Wintour, editor of American Vogue, through Bryan and
Lucy Ferry, and was taken on as her assistant.

Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat became her
friends (though the latter refused to speak to her for a
year after she told him his Comme des Garçons duffle coat
was awful) and she took up with many of the city's
avant-garde. She also married, in 1981, an American,
Nicholas Taylor, though the union did not last, and they
were divorced in 1983.

In 1986 Isabella returned to Britain to work with
Michael Roberts, fashion director of both Tatler and The
Sunday Times. She made an immediate impression and by the
next year Mark Boxer had made her style editor at Tatler. In
1988 she met the barrister Detmar Blow at a wedding. They
were engaged within 16 days and married a year later.

In 1989 she first came across the young milliner
Philip Treacy, who had sent a green felt hat - "like
crocodile teeth" - to the Tatler offices.

She installed him in her mother-in-law's basement at
Elizabeth Street, near Victoria, where he worked in the
shed, with water dripping down the walls, turning out ever
more adventurous hats for her - though some of them were
more like eyepieces or feathered headdresses - as he
established his career. "If I am feeling really low, I go
and see Philip, cover my face and feel fantastic."

She bought all the pieces in Alexander McQueen's
graduation show at St Martin's for £5,000, paid off at £100
a week; they were delivered in a binbag. McQueen and Treacy
began collaborating; soon other designers, such as Macdonald
and Hussein Chalayan, were taken into Isabella Blow's
circle. In the early 1990s she joined British Vogue, where
she spent four years, before going back to The Sunday Times
as fashion director of its Style magazine. She also took on
consultancy work for DuPont fabrics and Swarovski crystals.

Her last role was back at Tatler, as fashion director,
by which point her contribution to the industry was widely
acknowledged: in 2002 she and Treacy were the subject of an
exhibition at the Design Museum. Two years later she had a
cameo in the film The Life Aquatic. Recently, she had been
suffering from cancer and was injured in a bad fall.

Isabella Blow and her husband lived at Hilles, the
Gloucestershire Arts and Crafts house designed by his
grandfather, also Detmar Blow. She was a member of the Rare
Breeds Society.

終於找到了

在星光行的商務, 終於找到了'潮騷'. 台灣木馬文化的譯本, 唐月梅譯.

電影節時段往那兒看也沒有, 今天看見, 二話不說就找那孤本拿到手裡付款. 老實說, 迄今仍難以相信, 三島最平易近人之作, 竟然那麼難尋. 也許人們要他的, 始終還是比較極端的東西.

再看'黑色名冊', 依然精彩非常. Caprice van Houten真的前無可限量, 雖然有點懷疑她會否再有機會找著如此度身訂造的角色. 很可能, 那經已是她的performance of a lifetime.

找不到'潮騷'

這個多星期, 斷斷續續逛了城裡約20間書店, 卻依然找不到三島由紀夫的'潮騷'.

這本名著, 當然老早擁有, 但近日心血來潮, 欲多買一冊贈予友人, 卻無奈尋遍不穫, 我甚至懷疑全香港沒一所書店有存貨. 據知政府圖書館有好幾本藏書, 但那是另一回事.

究竟是三島今天不再流行, 沒有市場價值了, 還是本地人實在不愛讀書, 是以太多本來應該輕易找得著的書藉都變得難見天日? 面對這樣的情況, 老實說, 心裡不是味兒.....

醉意

周末, 哉詩大醉. 傳來的sms訊息, 全然語無倫次, 回覆她問她搞甚麼, 原來醉得鬼爛. 我亦有點酒意, 跟哈文電話裡談了幾句, 得出的結論是我實在理不了那麼多. 如我當時所說, 真的不關我的事啊.

那 知後來竟會對自己說了那句話後悔整夜. 總覺得那樣說, 有點過份. 那本來有點衝口而出的一句, 吐出後偏卻像咒語一樣, 纏繞心裡牽扯不清. 是夜沒酒不歡, 於阿賓私竇聽罷鬼他們玩藍調後, 再到Sense時老早有點醉, 及後在那裡不知不覺喝著玩著皮鼓, 快樂不知時日過, 卻不曉得, 原來哉詩又再傳了幾個sms來.

已記不清那幾個訊息說些甚麼. 意外地, 被刪去了. 但因為這樣, 醉得沒利剩下太多記憶的我, 又再回覆了她. 印象中, 她不快樂, 似很傷心.

回家, 倒在床上呼呼大睡; 醒來發現她又留下訊息, 早上十一時許傳送的. 帶著宿醉, 努力試圖重拾昨夜的記憶. 那實在不太容易. 總敵不過要將頭皮撕裂的劇痛, 不曉得躲到那個角落的零碎片段, 缺乏水份了造成的半夢半醒狀態. 沒辦法, 只好暫且擱置不理.

晚飯時哉詩終於來電. 說的都是胡厘胡塗的話, 我盡量以自己當時僅餘的清醒將一切簡短撮要地弄清楚, 沒事的, 只不過又一個周末. 酒醒酒醉後, 星期天休養過後, 另一星期的來臨日子依然如舊的過.

對嗎?

再造人之戀

因為坊間接近一致劣評, 差點錯過了....

老實說, 真覺得不錯, 當然, 問題不是沒有, 瑕疵亦存在, 造作也肯定的, 但還覺得比金子要好. 甚至比起JSA安全地帶還要完整. 片子亦帶點Terry Gilliam的味道. 當然, 若沒有tune對了channel, 對影片確實會毫不理解, 更莫說是欣賞.

林秀晶又一趟演譯精神問題者, 同樣出色動人.

但其結局是曖昧地失敗的, 相信朴導演尚未大膽至在結尾暴露出二人戀愛的結果, 只在彩虹(橋)底下的一個細小影象, 其欲言又止其實比尷尬還不堪. 又還是本來拍了大膽的結局, 後來被監製納令撤換了? 挺耐人尋味....