An immediate conclusion you can draw from looking at this page is that I spent most of my time in Tel Aviv at night. Sunset is early now, as in England, but bizarrely the weather is gloriously sunny and hot in the days rather than grey and shitty. Short days and beach weather sit oddly in my mind.

Tel Aviv is a great city, especially for nightlife. So the more night, the more fun. It is a young place. It is new, proud, and vibrant like a lusty teenager raging his way through a pack of fags. It is not the easiest city on the eye for sure – the buildings are messy and shambolic, and most of the oft lauded Bauhaus architecture is quite frankly in need of rehab. The clean lines and smooth stucco frontage of the style loses all its harmony when it is cracked and dropping off. Abrasive, humid sea air has taken its toll on the plaster facades. There are some beautiful examples though, but it is no urban ideal of european modernism. To say so would be a bit like extolling the grace of Dagenham because there is a particularly intriguing Regency cottage somewhere amongst the public toilets and mangrove swamps. Not that Tel Aviv is anything like Dagenham, mind.

However, I would really recommend Tel Aviv as a place to go for a party. The residents are liberal, interesting and sternly independent. They have a reputation for being somewhat gruff, but I have always found that they are very fun and nice, and really just not up for bullshitting. A good illustration of the typical service culture: I was in a bar last night and the waitress bringing our drinks alerted me to her presence by bumping me in the shoulder with her bum. Well, her hands were full weren’t they?

Blueberry pancakes, Benedicts, Ben Yehuda. The best pancakes I have ever had: thick and light, delicious blueberry reduction, and high grade maple syrup

Typical weird shit in Tel Aviv shop window

Window in Neveh Tzedek

Gordon Beach: Novemeber, 5:30 pm, 20 degrees

One of the epic, aesthetically challeng ed/ing beachfront hotel skyscrapers

You see these escort calling cards EVERYWHERE scattered on pavements by crossings. At first I thought that Israeli pimps must be very messy, then I realized that this littering must be intentional – everyone looks down at their feet when they walk!

Bridal manequin with a typically Israeli expression

Graffiti, Neveh Tzedek

Israeli ice cream

Weird flyposts

Beachfront: big bellies / beautiful babes

Ai WeiWei’ s exhibit in the turbine hall is a vast carpet of porcelain replica sunflower seeds. He explains in the supplementary film that he wants people to interact with the exhibit as they walk over the seeds, to have new questions about the encounter provoked. He says he wants people to pick the seeds up and even put them in their mouths to see if they are really artificial. And he (and an army of chinese porcelain workers) have clearly gone to great pains to produce the millions of handmade, hand-painted replica seeds.

Today I was disappointed. It was quite shitty to find that the whole exhibit has been cordoned off. Apparently it is a health and safety concern about dust which was being ground up in to the air. Probably there were fears of [sorry I could not think of any justifiable safety concern. Please email any suggestions].

I intend to organize a protest march over the seeds. I always knew my life would amount to something.

To be honest, I have given this post its title only to see if someone will google that phrase. It will probably happy one rainy morning in 2015, and whoever it is will probably be bitterly disappointed he has not found the weird fetish porn for which he was searching.