Thursday 4 March 2010

Roman Wall Blues ... And Lots Of Other Colours

On March the 13th , 2010 , I will be one of a thousand points of light illuminating Hadrian's Wall from Segedunum in the East to Carlisle in the West. The website for the project "Illuminating Hadrian's Wall" is here. Described as a "line of light from coast to coast", this is going to involve lot's of people playing with fire , once it goes dark to illuminate what is probably the largest pre 1066 man made construction in the British Isles.

Needless to same I'll be packing my camera and following up this post with some decent phoptographs and what actually happened on the day!

Below is a video, mainly featuring Vindolanda, soundtracked by Alex Harvey singing the only song I know about the wall, "Roman Wall Blues" an adaptation of a WH Auden poem. You can get the song here on his final album "Soldier On The Wall".



Roman Wall Blues
by
WH Auden


Over the heather the wet wind blows,
I've lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose.

The rain comes pattering out of the sky,
I'm a Wall soldier, I don't know why.

The mist creeps over the hard grey stone,
My girl's in Tungria; I sleep alone.

Aulus goes hanging around her place,
I don't like his manners, I don't like his face.

Piso's a Christian, he worships a fish;
There'd be no kissing if he had his wish.

She gave me a ring but I diced it away;
I want my girl and I want my pay.

When I'm a veteran with only one eye
I shall do nothing but look at the sky.


Tuesday 2 March 2010

Whitby and La Rosa Have Their Knockers!

Just back from a long weekend in Whitby, staying at the most excellent La Rosa in the "Sacre Couer" room . All the rooms in La Rosa have their own distinctive knockers . Such as the Horseshoe / Horses Head for Saloon.







I don't know if this is normal , but we noticed that Whitby seemed to have a vast selection of knockers on display (the door type) which echoes the selection in La Rosa. La Rosa itself has a distictive ship knocker, a theme repeated throughout Whitby , not surprising given it's nautical history.

While we were there discovered two excellent pubs , The Elsinore (excellent pickled eggs apparently) and The Broad.

Charlie Brooker: Danger Man!






Just coming home I noticed a human derelict on the steps of our local William Hills drinking from what looked like a 2 litre bottle of Strongbow and bumming cigarettes from anyone entering or leaving the establishment , which , for a change , today wasn't me (entering the establishment that is not being the human derelict!). I mention this only as an aside and for the fact that the titular Mr Brooker would have undoubtedly written a decent article based on the situation.

I'm currently working my way through "Screen Burn" and this is a dangerous thing to do in a public place. Before you read Charlie Brooker it helps to have a good dose of misanthropy and disdain for the scum that seem to impinge on our daily lives, and if TV and Charlie Brooker are to be believed make up about 95% of the population. TV is his target , which he hits as unnerringly as Kevin Costner in the undiscarded takes of Robin Hood:Prince of Thieves.

Anyway if you read him in public the people near you are going to thing you are mad as you continually burst out laughing , you have become the loony on the bus, YOU are the one they don't want to sit next to. I managed to sidestep this by warning the person I sit next to that I'm going to be laughing for the next half hour at a very funny book , so at least they are warned.

In the book Brooker admits he's an arachnophobe and no amount of "They're more scared of you than you are of them" will sway him. Charlie , this is the thing with spiders:
  • They keep the insect population from getting out of control
  • Any creature that's smaller than us and has more legs than us that we can't kill frightens us
That's it!!




Another thing Charlie Brooker hypothesises the Joe McElderry / Rage Against The Machine situation , suggesting that we buy "Ace Of Spades" by Motorhead and make it the Christmas Number One. At the time the competition was from Popstars and Fame Academy. It's a though and you could do worse than downloading it here!

Thursday 25 February 2010

The Greatest Punk Album In The World Ever...






Mention the word punk to most people and it conjures images of the Ramones, Sex Pistols , The Clash and 1977. What I loved about the ethos is that anything you heard YOU could play , wheter you could play an instrument or not. Yesterday I took delivery of the album on the right , Live at The Roxy WC2 1977 . This contains no music by any of the bands above , the only ones still performing being The Buzzcocks and Wire , but it's rough and exciting and makes anyone either turn off or think "I can do that" which is why I think it is THE essential punk album.

It also contains Eater's rewrite of Alice Cooper's "18" as "15" . It's the sort of album that would annoy your parents and anyone brought up on a diet of the "Now" series , though we do know at some point they will release "Now That's What I Call Punk 21"!! featuring Blondie , Sex Pistols , The Damned and anyone else they can license. Really , if you like punk, you need The Roxy album!!

Fairport Invention and Coincidence





Last night saw Fairport Convention again , this time at The Sage in Gateshead coutesy of Properganda , supported by the excellent Keith Donnelly & Flossie Malavialle, collectively known as "Dark Horses".

The first coincidence is that Flossie originates from Nimes, but has spent the last seven years in Darlington (where I work) to purportedly learn English!! In her own words "That's knackered it". According to Jasper Carrot, Keith could make a sheep laugh , and he was funny as well as an excellent guitarist. They played seelction from their current album before beiing joined on stage for a "French Song" , namely "Si Tu Dois Partir" which had been played on the Brian Matthews show on Saturday , with Flossie in excellent voice.

The first set contained a lot of familiar material such as "Rising For The Moon" with all members of the band in fine form. At some point they all got out their ukuleles for "Ukulele Central" which was great fun, here's them performing it:



The second set contained more selections from Fairport's "Babbacombe" Lee concept album similar to last year's Tyne Theatre gig, with Ric Sanders going heavy of fiddle and effects during the "Dream Sequence". "Matty Groves" was brilliant , before the band were rejoined by Keith and Flossie for "Meet On The Ledge" before the lights came up.

Thus ended a day that had started at 4 am but well worth it .

Must get Cropredy sorted....

Sunday 21 February 2010

Blu Rayed and HD'd

Following the demise of our old CRT TV on our return from Dublin , we replaced with a new HD Samsung model , upgrading to a Virgin HD box and getting a Panasonic Blu Ray Media Centre, see here.

While HD is hardly a quantum leap in quality , the Blu Ray player has impressed me as it handles DVD upscaling, DIVX , Music and internet access in it's stride . Most Blu Ray players are in fact media centres which makes watching and sharing stuff extremely easy.

Tuesday 16 February 2010

How Good Are British Rail?

How goodat planning are British Rail. They show a complete lack of faith in their customers by installing ticket barriers at Darlington and Newcastle. Each time I come to them usually half are out of service , and the others either have staff or clueless customers blocking them , and even when you get someone who can use them properly often the tickets don't work.

Added to that all the cash ,achines on Newcastle station are inside the barrier , tough if you want to buy a ticket and dont have a debit or credit card , or just needed some cash as you were passing by. Also the pastie and sandwich stalls are inside the barriers so they must be really pleased at their loss of trade!!


Then there's Darlington , where the cash machines are outside the barrieres , but the barriers are situated at the far end of the station giving you an unneccessary extract five hundred yards to walk to catch the train going north, capped off by the idiot placement of one of the barriers right in front of a canopy supporting pillar rendering the barrier unusable!!

Yuu'd be better off taking the bus!!