archive for April 09
Sunday, April 26th, 2009
We were up in Flitwick yesterday for Alberto and Victoria’s wedding. Very handy for us, it being up the northern Thameslink line.
The ceremony was in a small cosy catholic church, a modern brick building with chairs instead of pews, and presided over by a very droll and deadpan priest, who conducted the service alternately in English and Italian.
A re-purposed shiny red London Routemaster took us all to the reception, which was in another cosy venue, a modern village hall. We drank lots of London Pride, punch, fizz and wine, mixing more and more indiscriminately as the night went on. The speeches were good fun, in English and Italian, so for the Italian ones I just enjoyed the rhythm and tones of their voices. It’s always nice to take a well earned break from discerning lexical meanings and to attend to the broad emotional outlines instead.
After dinner, we all danced to a ceilidh band, though many of the Italian family members sat on the side wondering why the English are so weird. “We don’t have this kind of dancing in Italy,” as Luca explained to me at one point. The ceilidh band were especially fast. It was more like bluegrass ceilidh, and indeed they occasionally sang snatches of classic American songs like Oh Susanna over the top of whatever ceilidh dance they were playing.
On the train on the way home, a young man got on board at Harlington and announced to us that he’d fallen behind all his mates, his phone had died, and he needed some help because he was a total country yokel. He hailed from a 1000 acre beef farm nearby, to prove it he even showed us his working farmer hands and where his finger had been lopped off in a closing barn door. All he wanted was reassurance that he would be able to cope in the Big Smoke. He needed to get to The Egg nightclub, so we gave him directions from St Pancras, and assured him that the bouncers would let him in.
It made me think of London in a different light – I suppose it is a big city, and could be daunting for some people, even those who live less than an hour’s train ride away.
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
I’ve just come across One & Another, a project based on an idea of Antony Gormley’s for the fourth plinth on Trafalgar Square. The idea is to get 2,400 people from all over the UK to help create a living monument by standing one at a time on the fourth plinth for an hour each, 24 hours a day, for 100 days without a break.
Fabulous! I love big public art projects like this. They add so much to the collective experience of being part of a city. They are little expressions of our much eroded faith in public space.
Remember those heady moments like the glorious Sultan’s Elephant event in May 2006, or the Reclaim the Streets actions in the early noughties, when cars are banished from the roads, there’s an energised crowding and mixing of people, and you can feel the spine tingling potential of a vigorous public realm for the expression of culture and politics.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Sunday, April 19th, 2009
Just four days away from St George’s Day on Thursday, and we’ve gathered a nice load of St George’s mushrooms on Hampstead Heath. Martin and Jo took us around to check out some good spots.
In the old days, only the odd one would pop up on St George’s Day itself, most appeared later in the year in mid-May. Global warming now means they’ve been appearing ever earlier in the year, even before St George’s Day. Many autumn mushrooms are now fruiting twice a year apparently, in spring as well as autumn. Their little mycological minds are baffled by the changing seasons!
We cooked them with butter, garlic and cream. They have a subtle mealy floury flavour. Delicious!
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Thursday, April 16th, 2009
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Sunday, April 12th, 2009
Phil, Jordan and Ben came round, and Matt masterminded an easter crafts session. We had to drill and blow out duck eggs, then paint them!
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Friday, April 10th, 2009
Last day of work this week, I left the office and hopped on the Oxford Espress last night. Opening my laptop I was pleasantly surprised to find that the coach has free internet access on it these days! How cool is that?
Arriving in Oxford I wandered up the high street, enjoying a solitary moment of reflection and fond nostalgia for this town I used to know so well. Then to The Cellar, to see Foxes! and The Hot Toddies near the end of their rock’n'roll two-week UK tour.
It was a splendid gig. I enjoyed listening to The Hot Toddies. They are four sassy girls from Oakland, California who sing lovely doo wop beach rock, with impeccable harmonies, feisty drums and interesting lyrics. They play like they are having a really good time and invite the audience to enjoy themselves too.
And Foxes! were as good as I’ve ever seen them. They’ve been recording their album with Matt producing it, and Matt has come along on tour to boost Kayla, Adam and Alan’s sound. They are loud, confident, powerful and tight at the moment! Properly in control of the music, Kayla’s voice soaring over the top of everything, all of them moving round stage having fun and swapping instruments. I’m full of hope for them!
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Thursday, April 9th, 2009
Matt and I went to see Dog Ate Cake perform their third Victorian farce, ‘Duel in the Dark’, at the Canal Cafe Theatre last night.
It was great! A really good little play for one thing, written by the co-creator of Punch, though it hasn’t been performed since 1852. The three main actors were all excellent and Henry’s production has struck a really good balance between sticking formally to the original play and adapting it with a more ‘modern’ take on the farce genre, so we felt like we all knew and understood the conventions of this dramatic mode, even though this kind of farce is pretty much never seen nowadays.
Much of it felt like it was being improvised, especially the physical comedy, and there was an informality and freshness about it, and a nice unthreatening encouragement of audience participation. Keep on eye on Dog Ate Cake’s future performances – it feels like they are on a roll!
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Thursday, April 9th, 2009
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
Jimmy’s birthday last night. We joined him in Tamarai, a very dark restaurant of the pan-Asian fusion variety. It’s like a cross between a subterranean night club and a restaurant! Good food though.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
Climate Camp in the City of London yesterday! We were paranoid that we wouldn’t be able to get to the site and planned our “swoop” on Bishopsgate at 12:30 with military precision, with maps and plans and back up plans.
But as it was, the police were very hands off for most of the day and the camp got set up, with lovely sunny weather, the public were able to wander in and out, so we got to talk to a few everyday open minded people, not just the dreadlocked hippies, lovely as they are.
We were running a famer’s market, with local food from all over London, setting up right opposite the European Climate Exchange, which is Europe’s leading marketplace for the pointless trade in carbon dioxide emissions. Our job was to tell people about how carbon trading is just putting off real change by hoping “the market” will sort out climate change for us, when really we need to take some hard political decisions and figure out how to keep remaining fossil fuels in the ground while switching to more sustainable lifestyles, hence our market trader’s cry: “farmers’ markets not carbon markets!”
Alex took a nice video of the camp and market. Watch it in nice HQ mode!
I think we were all hoping they wouldn’t but in the end the police got the batons out and started behaving like inexplicable thugs, suddenly shutting everyone – both climate campers and bystanders who had been passing through – into the inevitable kettle at 7pm, blocking both ends of the road. So it all got quite messy, there were way more people than we had enough toilets for, lots of drinking and it began to get cold as the evening wore on. Eventually they started letting people out around 11pm. Always an exhausting way to end these things.
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »