Une bonne journée

Today has been a fun day, with a dash of gallic flavour. C’est bonne, ca.

Around midday we headed down to the Secret Cinema at Leake Street, the tunnels underneath Waterloo. As usual with Secret Cinema we had no idea what film was going to be shown, just general instructions on what to wear (50s/60s European with a white scarf) and where to turn up. I knew that Secret Cinema involved re-enactments of the film around seeing the film itself, but not much more than that. So, looking a lot smarter than usual for a Saturday afternoon, we rocked up to Leake Street to find a large queue of people entering, and lots of soldiers herding people along, all talking French. I was ‘lucky’ enough to be singled out by the soldiers, and made to stand with my hands against the wall as my identification documents were confiscated. Then after some minutes myself and the other detainees were taken to a dark room, followed by an indoctrination talk with spotlights in our eyes where we were asked to sign out name as belonging to a terrorist organisation. Even knowing that this was all an act it was pretty unnerving, especially when a planted audience member was taken to one side, beaten and thrown in a prison cell to be tortured. Magnifique!

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Kyoto, May 2010

Click here for more photos of Kyoto

Ah, the sudden flurry of uploading strikes again. This time for the amazing Japanese city of Kyoto, home to geisha and temples, plus it ranks highly on quality of life and when you visit you’ll see why. Unlike nearby Tokyo, Kyoto mostly stays low to the ground, a few stories high. There are fast moving major streets, but people and bikes take priority on the back roads – and even bikes stop to let people and cars past, there’s something you never see in London. All of which combines together to make an enchanting city that is well worth a visit.

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Osaka, May 2010

Pictures from Osaka, Japan 2010

Finally, some pictures from last year’s Japan trip. Osaka was the first town we stayed at in Japan. It wasn’t a planned part of our trip, but due to last year’s major event of this time – the volcanic dust cloud – we ended up in Japan over Golden Week. Sounds pretty doesn’t it, but it’s not a pretty experience for anyone wanting to book a hotel in Japan as Golden week is the one week in Japan where everyone goes on holiday. Literally everyone. So Kyoto had no hotels available and Osaka was the nearest town worth visiting on the way. Such is life.

Footnote: A year ago the volcanic dust cloud seemed like a major disaster in our lives. This year, tens of thousands of people have died in Japan due to the earthquake and tsunami and much of the country is still affected by this tragedy with many still missing. You can donate here if you want to help. In the meantime my thoughts are still with those mourning their loss.

Misty Black Mountain Hop

Weekends round here seem to oscillate between fun adventures outside of town and homebody sessions. This weekend is very much homebody, catching up with errands and geek activities such as installing new computer operating systems, watching the entire extended edition of Lord of the Rings (classic being ill recovery movie) and finding out that Crucial seem to have run out of MacBook Pro memory right now – what with that? Guess my ageing laptop will have to wait for its final upgrade. All this is in stark contract to last weekend, where a group of us headed off to celebrate Miette’s birthday at the lovely Castle Farm in Capel-y-Ffin right in the Black Mountains.

Castle Farm is a lovely location, pretty much in the middle of nowhere, although as we arrived on a windy, almost moon-less night it seemed less than idyllic – no small thanks to Tom suggesting a recently escaped psycho from a local prison and the wind trying to throw everything at our windscreen as we crawled up pitch black, windy country lanes avoiding fallen branches. All this city-folk fear subsided once we were inside the large, but cost house and had a roaring fire lit. Oh, and after a few drinks. A few hours later, everyone else arrived and the weekend’s party began in earnest with many more logs being burnt.

The next morning was still overcast and windy, but we could now see the epic view out the windows. Nestled in a valley between two spurs of the Black Mountains, the farm has a stunning outlook, green fields dotted with windswept trees and sheep. Although it was less than perfect walking conditions we took a ‘brief’ (four hour) constitutional up to Lord Hereford’s Knob where the wind tried its best to blow us off. The hill that is. Mountain scaled we pushed through the wind, back down in the rapidly fading afternoon gloom to the warmth of the fire, where everyone else was enjoying Britain’s Got Talent, pretty much in the same place we’d left them four hours earlier. For some reason they all seemed pretty sure this was the better choice… The evening passed in a haze of good food, cake, board games, possibly some vino and enjoying a roaring fire as the wind howled outside the window. Perfect.

Weekend’s away, whether in Britain or abroad, are always so much fun – and though I’m sitting here somewhat wishing we had a roaring fire to enjoy, or a new place to explore, it’s the contrast of the two states that really make things pop in my mind. Every weekend enjoying the comforts of home can become deathy dull, conversely spending every weekend somewhere new is rapidly over-whelming so it becomes hard to fully appreciate the new wonders in front of you. Creating your own perfect preferred blend of experience and reflection is arguably part of what life’s all about. Or maybe just having an open fire everywhere you go. Mmmm… burny.

The New York Glow

Another marathon session of going through photos clearing the backlog. Always fun to look at photos you took over three years ago to work out which are ‘good’. When I filter photos I’ve just taken I always find it really hard to abstract my emotions from the event as opposed to what’s there in the photo. As Terry Gilliam says, if it’s not on the screen it’s not on the screen. Given the number of photos still to go through I should be pretty good at it sometime soon – or at least I’ll be more brutal about it.

In Memoriam.

A Space Invader Memory from 2010

This cute little Space Invader used to live near Hoxton Square, alas no more. He’s gone along with pretty much every other recent invader in this area in something that, if tweeted, would likely be called #shoreditchspaceinvadermageddon. Or maybe something shorter. This trend of disappearing Invaders seems to be rapidly spreading across London, no idea the cause is ‘art lovers’ or Council officials ‘cleaning’ but either way it’s a sad loss to the modern landscape. So make sure you get out and find your local invader before it’s too late.

Why Hullo There, 2011. You’re Looking Mighty Fine.

Yes, for those of you who haven’t slept through the start of this year (thanks, iPhone) a big Happy New Year to you all! Just got back from a few days up in Edinburgh, enjoying my first ever Scottish Hogmanay celebration. Good fun, and I highly recommend a hike up Arthur’s Seat on New Years Day as a way to shift a hangover. Other key tips – bugger all happens on the Royal Mile at midnight, it’s all in the ticketed parties that happen on the streets below the castle. So a very very very big thank you to the lovely gentleman who just strolled over and gave us his tickets. You, sir are a true gentleman.

Before I move onto thoughts for 2011, the traditional review of 2010 is in order. Highlight of the year was likely the trip to Japan and Korea – an amazing whirlwind two weeks that gave a taste of two beautiful countries that has only whetted my appetite for more. Following quickly on from that was an unexpected visit to Israel. Most of this was spent in Jerusalem, a stunning city of amazing contrasts and well worth a visit – though you may want to avoid August heatwave season. Just a thought. Outside of travel 2010 has had some splendid gigs, from Flight of the Conchords, through Tom Jones and Robert Plant, to Charlotte Gainsbourg and Interpol. Union Chapel in Islington has become one of my new favourite venues, although the fixed up Garage in the same neighbourhood is really quite splendid too. According to my Lightroom I’ve taken roughly 20,000 pictures over this last year.. Flickr would disagree with that, having hardly seen any uploads in that same time for which I apologise and promise to do better this year. Honest. Other than that have been some lovely times with friends and family with many a good chat over a bottle or two of vin rouge. Oh, and I also grew a beard for the first time. I quite like it, so it’ll be around a while.

So onto 2011, what do I see for the year ahead? Fear not, this isn’t going to be a long list of resolutions, mainly because I’ll just look at my list for last year and then get stressed out about how many I’ve yet to do. Basically this is going to be a year of having fun, spending more time with friends and just getting on with stuff. There may also be a smidgin of more specific goals in there, such as right now I’m trying to go a month without wheat, but I just think there is just so much amazing stuff out there to try, learn, do and sometimes fail epically, as well as people to meet that there’s no time to lose. In summary, less telly. Well, at least until the new season of Mad Men comes on…

Merry Boxing Day!

In traditional fashion my post wishing you all a very Happy Christmas is a bit late… So Merry Boxing Day everyone! Hope you all had a splendid Chrimbo full of fun, family and food.

Boxing Day is always a bit of a strange one to me. Being British I’ve grown up with having two days off around Christmas, but having lived a good few years in New York I came to realise this was just us and our more friendly colonies (I’m thinking about you, Canada). Then again in the American world the very phrase ‘Merry Christmas’ is loaded with potential insult and hence the non-religious form ‘Happy Holidays’ is normally used. This bland greeting insults everyone in equal measure, no one group gets a big bee in their bonnet and everyone can continue with the business of loving one another and/or getting rich as appropriate. In America the only two day holiday is the non-religious Thanksgiving, sensibly always placed on a Thursday and Friday thus guaranteeing a long weekend for all. If only baby Jesus had had such forethought, but I digress.

Back to Boxing day and in Britain and there seems to be no real hard and fast agreement on what this is or how it came about. Even the ever useful Wikipedia shakes its head, asks for some more money like a disreputable Uncle and then deftly points us towards Snopes. At Snopes various possibilities are laid out, mostly involving some levelling of wealth between people of different strata of society – nominally from lords to serfs. So perhaps we should consider Boxing day like the Robin Hood of bank holidays, or to be more up to date a sort of ‘Tobin Tax’.

Suffice to say Boxing Day is the day after Christmas and it’s another day off. That sounds good enough to me. In our family it’s a day for eating cold turkey, sampling festive spirits that may or may not be presents from the year before, and taking a long constitutional along the cold Norfolk coastline looking at baby seals. This year the seals were particularly cute and abundant at Sea Palling, and I believe my youngest nephew won the seal spotting contest with his, as yet unverified, claim of ‘a gazillion’ seals. Perhaps he’s angling for a job in the Treasury…

16 Shopping Days to Christmas

I’m old enough to remember the time when working out how many shopping days it was till Christmas required some thought. Now it’s just a case of how many days till Christmas Eve, unless Amazon starts doing Christmas morning deliveries of course. Would that ever happen? One would hope not, but then Sunday’s sacrosanct, shopping free self went the way of the Dodo many years ago and though I do love a Sunday shop, there’s part of me that wishes we still had that day of rest – albeit not for religious reasons. We spend so much time rushing about getting things done these days that forced rest and family/friend time sounds like a good idea to me. Plus it would be a positive step towards a global four day work week, something I’m very much in favour of.

On the subject of weekends, this one bought an early ‘Christmas’ present – a new fridge freezer. It always amazes me how over excited I get with every new domestic purchase these days. The tabletop dishwasher is still an object of adoration, small and perfectly formed. As soon as the new chill cabinet had settled down from its move from St Albans (two days of waiting) it was switched on and every near finished condiment from the the tiny fridge was transferred with loving consideration of where it would live in the new fridge equivalent of a luxury high rise. So much space! Having a proper freezer is the biggest excitement, with the thought of making food and freezing it rather than having to eat it the next day something of exotic wonder right now. Who knows what other joys await… perhaps a new mop?

And of course what post today could be written without acknowledging the sad loss of John Lennon thirty years ago. To commemorate this tragic event I struggled onto the HMV website to try and get tickets to see one of his last remaining band mates at the Apollo. No joy unfortunately, so it looks increasingly unlikely that I’ll see any Beatle in action before they all pass into history. Ah well.

Not all bad news on the band front though. Monday night say the splendid Autolux at the re-vamped Garage, now ‘Relentless Garage’ in Islington. This was courtesy of the ever lovely Amy who was over on a flying visit from LA with the band. The venue was hardly recognisable from my previous visit years back to see Sir Real hit the decks. Back then it was literally a black box, with low ceilings and chronic acoustics. Now, a new arched ceiling and splendid sound system has transformed the place – apparently the new owners found the ceiling hidden behind the low suspended ceiling when they took over the place and had to repair the roof. Good job! Then last night we saw perennial favourites Interpol at Brixton Academy, a smoke machine filled night full of dark indie rock and low lights. A highly enjoyable night, even with the epic chill of the bus ride home afterwards.

Wait. Does that mean I didn’t quite get through a whole post without mentioning how flipping cold it is over here for a change? Yep, England is finally having a proper winter, -2c across London for a few days and right down to -20c in other parts of the country. To be honest I’m loving it. Cold, brisk days are much preferable to the usual British damp. Now if only we could manage some of the glorious, sharp winter sunshine that makes New York winters so magical.