Oops. That was a long time between updates. Too long, perhaps. Well, have some photos from the Thames Festival. I must admit it didn't seem as full of fun and interesting things as previous years, with smaller stages and less of them (although I only managed to get from Jubilee Gardens to Southwark Bridge, and half of my route was along back streets rather than the river path). Jubilee Gardens seemed particularly empty, with no events on the grass, and a much smaller music stage than usual shoved into a tiny corner and surrounded by high fences rather than the usual open plan of previous years. As a result it was smaller and more cramped with none of the smiling casual openness of people having picnics by the stage, and kids running around. From what I've heard, the other stages felt like that, too.

I suppose it's down to budget cuts — there have been a lot fewer celebratory events since Boris Johnson became mayor, especially compared to the Ken Livingstone era when there seemed to be at least one festival going on in some part of London every weekend from April to October, which was nice. People like festivals. We need more celebrations. It was already sad that the Thames Festival had been switched to a different weekend from The Great River Race and the annual closure of the Thames Barrier, as both these events played a great part in the early days of the festival. With the Thames Barrier closed, it meant there were guaranteed low tides, and lots of lovely activity on the Thames foreshore (champagne picnics! mudlarking! sandcastle art! dancing! you get the picture); and waiting around for the Great River Race to come past can get a bit dull, but was always enlivened by nearby festival activities. It's shame that we've lost both these things as part of the festival, I think. (Although you can still watch the Great River Race this Saturday, if you want to.)

There was a cute and very tiny children's fair at Jubilee Gardens (which included this dramatic sign above, for some reason), but my favourite thing was Les Célestes by Mastoc Production. Dresses filled with light, and suits covered in twinkles, hanging in the trees and draped around bushes. Delightful.

There was the usual scrum around the market stalls selling stuff you'd never give a second glance to usually, and Gabriel's Wharf was filled with marquees promoting Korean tourism, which felt depressingly corporate, instead of the interesting and magical installations that are usually there during the festival. It was pretty disappointing, although I did manage to catch a bit of a Taekwondo display, which I saw from the top floor of the nearby Bargehouse Gallery. It's not every day you get to see a man leap onto another man's head, to kick-break a wooden block being held by a third man standing on a fourth man's shoulders, so that was quite good. (The exhibition at the Bargehouse is a bit hit-and-miss, but I do love it as a venue, because I love scrappy old buildings with uneven floors and paint spatters.)

After stopping to admire a rainbow from Blackfriars Bridge, I went straight to Southwark Bridge for the Feast on the Bridge which is usually one of my favourite parts of the festival. I felt a bit sad being there on my own, though, because it's a place where people celebrate food together (although this hasn't stopped me enjoying myself before) and there was a distinct lack of any live music when I was there, which also felt a little bit sad. But everyone else was having a good time (and I was probably feeling a bit sad due to earlier events in the day when I was supposed to see some friends who were emigrating, and I got there a bit late and they'd left early, and we all missed each other — but not as much as I'm going to miss them now they've left the country for good. But I digress.)

There was also no hay fight, which I'd come to expect as being a Feast on the Bridge tradition, but that may just have been because it had been raining and they'd decided against wet hay being strewn everywhere. The people-watching was still quite fun and there were some nice crafty elements to spot. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get many photos of the crazy homemade hats people were wearing, but some of them were brilliant. The salad/herb hats were pretty nifty, with emphasis on pretty, because they were.

I was debating to myself about whether to get dinner, as the menu at the Forgotten Fish Restaurant looked good, but I didn't have enough cash on me, and then I bumped into a friend, so had a chat with him and ended up deciding to go home for dinner instead. There was another rainbow to greet me as I wandered off the bridge, and some some wonderful skies to stare at as I walked to my bus stop. The skies have been really great to look at lately. Maybe we should have a Cloud Festival. Festivals are good.

More photos, including from previous years, here.

And so many people had brought wine, I ended up polishing off a bottle of rosé on my own.

I didn't feel drunk until I walked home. I ended up dawdling because the sky was just so pretty. At least, that's my excuse, although I think you'd have to agree with me, looking at this evidence.

I took a short detour via the lake, to watch the sun setting over the mosque, under dramatic Turneresque skies and then walked up to Primrose Hill, watching it changing candy colours as I went further up and over Primrose Hill, starting off pale blue with scudding pink clouds, turning delicate purples as I crested the summit, where I discovered the skies were bright orange on the other side. Gorgeous. I'll just let these speak for themselves.

This is Saturday's sunset from my bedroom. Not pictured are the many balloons someone released over the neighbourhood, because sadly they only showed up as tiny black specks on camera. Although it did make me think it would be a good thing to set up to take photos of, if one could guarantee as sunset sky as photogenic as Saturday's was….

Last week there was a launch party for David B's Black Paths, at Clerkenwell Tales, a lovely little bookshop in Exmouth Market. I'd only heard about the launch the previous evening, which meant I was a bit late in getting a place — in fact I didn't get a response until 6:30 that evening, which was exactly when the event started. Oops! As a result, I entirely missed David B being interviewed by Paul Gravett, which was a bit annoying, but at least I got there in time for some free booze, and also a chance to catch up with Dan Lester before he flew off to teach English in South Korea the following day, as well as lots of other people.

I did have a flick through the book, however, and it looks pretty good, with lovely paper stock and full colours throughout. I have to say publisher Self Made Hero really excel at good production values, compared to some other publishers. Having only seen David B's work in black-and-white, where it works so well, it was nice to see that it translates well into colour too (you might think that's a given, but it isn't always). I definitely want to give it a proper read at some point, even though a couple of friends read it over the weekend and said that although it's visually stunning, the story isn't very compelling. I wondered whether this might partly be to do with translating a work from another language, and having read this fascinating post by the book's translator, it seems quite likely. On the other hand, I do remember that, as much as I appreciated the artwork in David B's Epileptic, the story did lose me along the way (although it's been almost 10 years since I read it, so I may feel differently now).

After waiting for friends to get their copies signed, I went to get some food with Woodrow Phoenix, Rob Davis and Glyn Dillon, which I mention only because it gives me a good excuse to plug Nelson again, as I discovered over dinner that even more amazing creators have signed up to participate. It's a shame I can't say who, because I'm sworn to secrecy, and if I told you I'd have to kill you, and there's no easy way to round up a bunch of mostly anonymous readers on the internet and quietly bump them all off, but trust me when I say NELSON IS GOING TO BE AWESOME. Glyn's new book (his first foray into comics publishing since, what, the 90s?), The Nao Of Brown looks likes it's going to be really good, too. If you want more proof than just my word, then have a long browsing session on Glyn's blog, which is chock-fulla-pretties. There's more on Space In Text, too.

Monday saw the launch of Reinhard Kleist's Castro, in the gallery upstairs at Foyles, which had a bit more space than Thursday's bookshop, but wasn't quite as well attended — even though there was the promise of free mojitos! And such promise: this is the pile of mint and limes at the start of the evening. A couple of hours later, the mint was all but gone and there were only about six limes rattling around the basket. The mojitos seemed to get exponentially stronger, too (my third drink was stronger than the first two put together!).

I took a few notes while Reinhard was being interviewed by Paul, which I've tried to knock into some kind of sense rather than the stream of consciousness that my notes read like. I should say to start with that I've not read Kleist's biography of Johnny Cash yet, and I'm not especially fascinated by Fidel Castro, but I am quite interested in the general history of Cuba, as it seems like a interesting country, albeit often romanticised, and in a constant state of some sort of flux (plus, I'll be honest, it is hard to say "no" to free mojitos!)

Kleist himself admitted that he initially had little interest in Cuba — "Cuba was for the old guys" — but he ended up visiting after a German editor asked him if he wanted to go and make a book about another country. This book was Havanna, which doesn't seem to have been translated into English (yet). In Cuba, he sometimes had trouble understanding people because "the Cuban people have horrible Spanish. It sounds very beautiful but they swallow all the syllables" (this made everyone laugh).

Kleist is pretty good at talking in snappy, visual soundbites. Describing some of Castro's early life, he said that "Havana university must have been like a Mafiosi melting pot" and that Castro has a nose "like a Greek statue." He'd wanted the art to look "a little bit more rough" than his art in Cash, but to keep it black-and-white because "you can do so much with black-and-white and create such a strong atmosphere." I'm inclined to agree, but I also think you can create strong atmospheres with colour too. His Greek publisher felt strongly enough that it should be in colour that they showed him a colourised version, but he hated it. (I'm curious about that, because Cuba is so strongly associated with colour in almost all media. Havanna is full colour, though, so maybe that'll get an English translation soon.)

The book was lettered in Photoshop, and Gravett pointed out the speech balloons are more "emphatic" than in Kleist's previous work. Kleist admitted that in earlier work he had tried to "erase" the balloons, but it didn't really work, as he realised that "text is important". This was an interesting point for me, because one of the things that has put me off reading his books are the cluttered-looking speech balloons — which is only exacerbated in something that is filled with pages of long political speeches, but is evident even in earlier work like Havanna (see pic below). I also noticed from looking at some pages displayed on the gallery wall, that, although Castro is lettered with capitals, there is also an inconsistent use of lower-case i's for no apparent reason other than whimsical idiosyncrasy, which doesn't really fit the general theme of the book and therefore irritated me a bit, because it kept distracting me from what was being said. But maybe most other people don't notice stuff like that.

The interview also touched on some other aspects, such as Cuba's ongoing political situation, and whether the state of the country was doing good for people or getting more corrupted. "Everything raised more questions." There were some comparisons made with China, and Kleist said "we might have a Chinese edition, but I don't know if we'll be allowed to print it." He also mentioned once being asked to sign a copy of Castro "to Fidel" and then learning that it was actually for Castro himself, and that Castro already owned a copy of Havanna, which was a bit nervewracking to discover.

The story itself is a fictionalised biography of Castro, using the character of a young idealistic journalist from Germany, whose look was based on a young French journalist that Kleist saw at an event in Cuba. (I don't know if the young man ever learned how he'd been immortalised), and of course other characters like Che Guevara appear in it as well. According to Kleist, in soundbite mode again, "the main point of the story is how to deal with your ideals" because "there is always another position and you have to show both if you want to be objective". With that in mind, I am quite interested in reading the book now. I quite like his artwork, which in moments reminded me of such disparate artists as Jose Muñoz, Hugo Pratt, Scott Morse and even a touch of Paul Pope in the brushier panels. Overall, it was a pretty interesting evening — and I'm not just saying that because of the free cocktails! Thanks once again to Self Made Hero for the invitations.

(sorry the picture quality isn't great)

They also had a couple of pieces of original artwork. I don't know who did this one:

Elsewhere, I spotted this fantastic bit of packaging. I love the hand-drawn lettering. So fun!

More Margate photos here.

Last bank holiday Monday some friends and I went to "the original seaside", as Margate is now billing itself, to see the new Turner Contemporary. It looks a bit shed-like when you exit the station, but because it's the same height as the other buildings around it, it doesn't seem intrusive (it actually looks lower than it does in my photo, which is zoomed and cropped).

It's a rather nice space inside, not very big, but light and cool. Charles Holland has written a good review of it here, which saves me having to say much else.

The day we were there the seafront was heaving with bikers there for the Margate Meltdown, with lots of stalls, and pub rock bands, and gawkers. It was the most crowded I'd seen the place (but then again I've never been there in the height of the season before).

There were lots of bikes parked outside the gallery, framed here by Daniel Buren's already iconic stripes. (The huge windows overlooking the sea are fantastic.)

After visiting the Turner, I dragged my friends off to the Shell Grotto (no visit to Margate is complete without it), where I was temporarily adopted by the very friendly Grotto Cat.

And then a stroll around town, where we discovered that Limbo is situated between a Burton shop and a KFC.

And there was plenty of bunting. Bunting is definitely the "in" thing this year. I'd like to blame That Wedding, but it was popping up all over the place long before that. The high street was full of bright fluttering flags, which couldn't hide the fact that so many of the shops have closed down (but on the plus side, there were some new, independent ones which had opened up since I was there last year). I liked the two-tone chequered bunting outside the mod shop, and the orange-and-black bunting along the route of the bikefest, as well.

A day at the seaside requires ice cream, so we headed off to get some at Carter's Steam Fair, which was set up in the Dreamland car park. Unfortunately, it started raining as soon as we walked in through the gates, so we didn't stay long, and the rain only got harder when we left. With a bit of time before the next train back to London, we took shelter in a cafe in Buenos Ayres.

(It wasn't as nice as the cafe we had lunch in, a proper classic caff with red leatherette booths called Kalli's, where a cup of tea, scrambled egg, proper crispy bacon and mushrooms on toast came to the princely sum of three quid. Brilliant.)

Then back to the train station, with barely enough time to admire the lovely station ceiling, and on to the fast train home to London in the rain.

It wouldn't have been a proper Whitsun bank holiday without some rain, I suppose. And speaking of bank holidays, I was amused and interesting to read this piece on Margate and bank holidays a couple of days later.

More photos from the day (with more to come) here. All my Margate photos are here. You can read about previous visits to Margate here and here.

I was at Conway Hall for about the last 15 minutes of the (International) Alternative Press Fair on Sunday, and after browsing tables in the very cramped aisles, I found myself taking photos of the lovely interior (I do rather love this building!)

I didn't have enough time to buy much, but I highly recommend Onion Soup by Dan Berry (buy it here), and The End of The Line by Woodrow Phoenix (not sure where you can buy that one from).

And on Monday I saw lots of things in Margate but I haven't been through all of my photos yet (I actually used my camera for some of those, rather than just my phone)

Here's something that looks a bit like a cooling tower, taken for the Cooling Tower Appreciation Society.

And here are some pylons.

I am fully aware that most people go to MCMExpo to take photos of the cosplayers. I don't care. Pylons are beautiful. And they were on my mind that day, due to several articles being posted and discussed: pylon design competition; design appreciation; these elegant ones; these ugly ones; this; also this. OK, I'll shut up now.

And here's Warwick Johnson Cadwell framed by some marvellous clouds (the skies have been fabulous lately).

And, um, that's it from MCMExpo this time. (here's last year's reports from MCMEXPO: part 1, part 2)

Friday night at The Miller.