Well, I have decided, the only thing to do is to go nuclear. Buy a gift, certainly, (it would be suicide not to), but let’s break a few rules shall we? I’m getting my mother a power drill this year.

She is 78, and quite infirm, and frankly doesn’t do much now, bless her, apart from watch the shopping channel and make lists of tasks to put unnecessary strain on my father’s dodgy knees. However, if he does keel over, I think a Black & Decker will be very handy if she needs to open her bottles of pills herself, and she can stir her cocoa with it before bed. A Cath Kidston floral pinny, which many of you will be considering for your loved one, although more conventional, will be of no use at all. She no longer cooks, (my mother, not Cath Kidston) and anyway, she hasn’t, to my knowledge, worn any of the 24 aprons purchased by me over the last 25 years. (I forgot in 1990, boy was that a mistake).

Where was I? Yes, power tools. Don’t follow my lead, whatever you do. I shall plough a lonely furrow for you, as the lead member of the awkward squad advance party. You can adopt a watered down approach, but still buy your Mother something vaguely masculine this year. It will show her you’re not set in your ways, and are still capable of original thinking, which will impress her. How about this, a very fine limited edition print by Ed Lee, of this Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato, lovingly recreated locally in Desmond Smail’s workshop. The car is sold, but it will live on in an exhibition of Ed’s photographs, at ICETWICE, over the next month or so. Your mother may love it, and even if she doesn’t, she can earmark it for you in her will, so it’s very nearly a win-win situation.

Now I don’t know your mother well, but there is always the chance that she has never been one for internal combustion engines. These women do exist, I am told. In that doomsday scenario, a book on fishing will be just the thing. This one is excellent.

May I go off-piste at this point? I realise we weren’t talking about skiing, but I just like using the term off-piste. I may? Thank you.

Inspired by this, ‘The British Seaside Holiday’, I have made representations to the council. No, that’s wrong. I’m ABOUT to do so. What we need in Olney, is a beach. For the summer, I mean, not now. Like the Paris Plage, but a bit smaller, obviously. I’m thinking the Market Place, or possibly about half the High Street north of there. We could have whelk stalls, and deckchair attendants, and a Punch & Judy man, and pedaloes on the river, and all manner of seaside paraphernalia. It would attract tourists. Wilson’s could do a roaring trade in buckets and spades and fishing nets on bamboo poles, and Much Ado could sell organic candy floss, and toffee apples, if there are no European directives outlawing toffee apples on Health & Safety grounds. My mother could come and stay, and supervise operations from her wheelchair, which has been specially adapted for sand (she lives by the seaside), and I think she’d let the workmen borrow her power drill to put the finishing touches to the beach huts. Am I getting carried away now? Surely not. I think Olney-sur-Mer has a ring to it.

Porsche Icons – Collector’s Edition NEW!
Limited Edition of 50 Copies
Edited by Frank Orel & Elmar Brümmer

This museum-quality volume showcases the influence and history of the Type 64, one of the most mysterious—yet influential—car designs ever. The special format allows readers to appreciate exactly how this archetypal sports car influenced Porsche’s later high-performance machines. Both homage and historical record, this book captures the magic of automobile design at its very finest.

160 pp., Hardcover with jacket, clamshell box (15 x 18 1/2 x 3 in.)
portfolio with a signed and numbered lithographic print (c. 17 3/4 x 14 1/4 in.) 79 color and 11 b/w photographs
Text in English, German and French
Pre-publication price until March 1, 2010: £ 1.300. After: £ 1.500
ISBN: 978-3-8327-9392-0
Format: 12 3/4 x 8 1/4 in.

CALL THE ICETWICE PORSCHE HOTLINE 01234 714499 TO RESERVE YOUR COPY! ONLY 50 IN THE ENTIRE WORLD!

Best Dressed Chicken In Town…Dr Alimantado
Marquee Moon…Television
Someone Great…LCD Soundsystem
A Horse With No Name…America
No Fun…The Sex Pistols
Kashmir…Led Zeppelin
EuroTrash Girl…Chicks On Speed
Down By The Water…PJ Harvey

Book….Three Men In A Boat…Jerome K Jerome
Luxury…A 7′ x 5′ Mirror

As it turned out, I did the right thing. Apparently, the only person who visited Olney during the first half of the month was Milton Keynes Council’s intrepid Planning Enforcement Officer, who, it is reported, was out and about, monitoring the icy pavements for ‘A’ boards that might trip up speed-skaters. I didn’t see him myself, but I have spies everywhere, and although they’d been on the barley wine at The Swan to keep warm, I believe them.

Anyway, enough of that, important matters now. I have an announcement. A Gerald Sparrow sign will have been attached to our building by the time you read this, and you will probably see it and ask yourself the question, what’s going on there then? I shall tell you. Gerald is a commercial property agent, a nice chap actually, who, like all commercial property agents, runs his business very successfully by mobile phone from a golf course. I’m kidding Gerald. Anyway, the object of this exercise is relocation, within Olney. We’re not closing. Stop cheering at the back. We’re RELOCATING, all of the bookstore, and the jewellery, and some of the gallery. I’ve had an offer to move the rest of the gallery to London, which makes sense, mainly because it’s outside the remit of the MKC Planning Enforcement Officer, but also I’m told there are hordes of bankers, flush with wheelbarrows of cash, roaming the pavements in the hope they will find piles of contemporary art to purchase for their fourth home in Zurich.

Why am I confiding in you? Well, generally speaking, two plus two erroneously makes five in small places like Olney, so, you now have it from the horse’s mouth’s official spokesperson, me, first, and it’s still four. This means that we shall still be shovelling good stuff under your noses, in the time-honoured ICETWICE way, until Tony Blair holds his hands up and admits the Iraq war was a rotten scheme, which will coincide with hell freezing over.

Now, pay attention, because this is the sales pitch bit, which you knew all along was what I was really leading up to. We’re having a major clear out in February. Regular visitors to ICETWICE will know that there’s an awful lot of original art upstairs, and frankly, because I haven’t made time over the past four years to keep tabs on it all, it would be sheer folly to attempt to pack it and return it to all the individual artists, even if I knew who they were or could track them down. I’m not good at keeping their phone numbers to hand, and they’ve gone awol anyway, presumably because they’re in a love nest with their life models.

The gist of what I’m saying is this, February is THE PERFECT MONTH for you lot to pop in and grab a SERIOUS art bargain. It’s also, fortuitously, a very good time of year for you to do your spring-cleaning, to make room for your purchase. That’s a domino effect isn’t it? We have a clear out, so you have one too, to make room for the stuff you buy from us. Simple really. I like life when it all works out for everyone.

DODGEM LOGIC ~ chuckling and stroking a white cat for a better tomorrow.

ORDER through ICETWICE now. Collector’s Items of the future!

These ten principles defined Dieter Rams’ approach to “good design”. Each of the hundreds of products he developed during forty years with Braun, was unerringly elegant and supremely versatile. Units were made in modular sizes to be stacked vertically or horizontally. Buttons, switches and dials were reduced to a minimum and arranged in an orderly manner. Rams even devised a system of colour coding for Braun’s products, which were made in white and grey. The only splash of colour was the switches and dials.

Rams’ objective was to design useful products which would be easy to operate. Yet he achieved much more by dint of the formal elegance and technical virtuosity of his work. Rams’ designs always looked effortless with an exquisite simplicity borne from rigorous tests and experiments with new materials and an obsessive attention to detail to ensure that each piece appeared flawlessly coherent. Dieter Rams remains an enduring inspiration for younger designers, notably Jonathan Ive and Jasper Morrison, who have acknowledged his influence in their work at Apple and Rowenta respectively.

Now, it occurred to me, in a daydreamy moment yesterday, that Dieter’s principles can be applied to all sorts of things.

I think it’s quite a good game. Try this for example. Replace the word ‘design’ with the word ‘government’, and then swap ‘a product’ for ‘legislation’. Like so:

Good government is innovative.
Good government makes legislation useful.
Good government is aesthetic.
Good government makes legislation understandable.
Good government is unobtrusive.
Good government is honest.
Good government is long-lasting.
Good government is thorough down to the last detail.
Good government is environmentally friendly.
Good government is as little government as possible.

See?

Now ask yourself, according to Dieter, who clearly knows a thing or two, do we have good government and good legislation?

Thought you’d say that. I agree.

UPDATE 22ND DECEMBER. The petition site is currently closed to new petitions over the Christmas holidays. Why are you closed Gordon? Your taxpayers are still working!!!!!!!!

UPDATE 29TH DECEMBER. One week later. Many taxpayers are back at work, but not Gordon’s team. They’re still on holiday.

“As you face another Christmas sacrificing time with loved ones to serve others, let me also pay tribute to the incredibly long hours you have put in this year”.


UPDATE 31st DECEMBER. Yawn. Gordon’s team STILL on hols.

It’s awards time of year…and the winner of the ICETWICE 2009 award for ‘Most Bizarre Stocking Filler’ goes to…

‘Happy Kitty Bunny Pony’ or ‘Fluffy Humpy Poopy Puppy”.

Yes, it’s deadlock. Our celebrity panel can’t decide, so it’s up to you, our glorious public, to vote, with your wallets.

March in to ICETWICE and buy the one YOU prefer, and then we can tell the world, in a very loud deep voice, that the victor is, in no particular order, well, which will it be?

Pop along and cast your cash into our till-shaped ballot box.

9 Days Left! Hurry along now.

ICETWICE…….Stocking Filler Central.
info@icetwice.com
01234 714499

The winner is …..Gordon Brown.

Smile Gordon. Global recogntion at last. Oh, I forgot, you can’t, sorry.

FULL BBC COVERAGE OF THIS STORY HERE

STOP PRESS….GORDON’S AT IT AGAIN!