Friday 31 October 2008

2000 Trees Festival

Waaay back in July, just before we ran the gauntlet of the music festival in Spain, we went in for a slightly different type of music festival experience. Benicassim involved a lot of ceaseless sunshine, beer by the litre, scantily-clad punters, and big names in music (Morrissey, Siouxsie, Gnarls Barkley, Leonard Cohen, Hot Chip). The 2000 Trees Festival on the other hand... well, there was some sunshine, lots of organic cider, wellington boots and anoraks (the garment, not the people) and a lot of, shall I say, up and comers in the music business.

To be fair, 2000 Trees is a completely different festival (even without the climatic differences betweem Benicassim and Gloucestershire). Firstly, its primary focus is social and environmental responsibility - so there's lots of earnest pleas on the website not to drive (we did, and in a BMW 4WD - but not ours, so don't hate us) and information all over the farm site it's held on about environmental conservation projects and new energy technology (along with the more usual stalls selling candles, leather sandals, herbal mood enhancers etc). Secondly, the lineup is a deliberately lesser known and younger collection of artists. To give you an idea there were about 60 bands on the bill and The Boyfriend, who is a long-time voracious consumer of all types of music media, had heard of exactly one of them.

And then there was the weather, appropriately (this being my blog about living in England and all). About 20% of the day, the main (and only) stage looked pleasantly similar to this:



Then suddenly, with little or no warning, the rain would pound down from gathering clouds, sodden music fans would scurry away from the stage for cover, and it would look more like this:

Which meant that by about midday, the rest of the festival site looked pretty much like this:


But the English were more than used to this, mud being the primary feature of just about everyone of the hundreds of summer musical festivals in the United Kingdom, so everyone seemed to be armed with protective clothing and a sense of humour about it all.


Frankly, we were a bit bored by the end of the day. There's only so many times you can listen to a few bands, go to the bar, browse around the stalls, head back to the camp site for a sit down, and wander back to the stage. We probably could have tried a bit harder - there were organised country walks and things going on - but I think we were more used to the sort of music festival that beats you around the head with new things all day until you can't think straight. But the end of the day came with a gorgeous sunset, which was nice.




It also brought closer the headline act - the one band we'd heard of, Art Brut, who were extremely good despite having to start about half an hour later than scheduled because all the water had shorted out the power supply to the stage. The very entertaing lead singer, Eddie Argos, was forced to come out and juggle things under backup lighting while the problem was fixed. Another artist might have failed to keep the audience on side for so long, but he managed to win everyone over. The poor guy ended up sculling from a winebag thrown to him by the crowd in a desperate attempt to keep the crowd's impatient shouting at a manageable level.


After that we found our way back through the dark fields to our camp site. However, our unfortunate camping companions found that their newly-purchased air mattress had holes in it. They were packed and ready to go at 5am after spending an unpleasant night trying to sleep through our rowdy neighbours inane conversations while battling the steadily deflating mattress. I didn't blame them for wanting to see the back of 2000 Trees.

Maybe it was some sort of karmic punishment for driving a BMW 4WD?

Lots more photos on flickr soon here.

Wednesday 29 October 2008

Scenes from King's Cross, about 9.30 last night




[Edited to clarify for the confused that this is snow, not rain!]

Tuesday 28 October 2008

Incongruous

I'm on hold with American Express at the moment. The hold music is the theme to For Your Eyes Only (the Bond film). Weird.

I'm calling them because for the third freaking time British Airways has double-charged our credit card for flights. The ridiculous thing is every time we ring up AmEx about this, at first they argue and insist there's no problem. Then I have to point out that our available credit is less than it should be. And then they admit that there's been a "double exposure" for the BA flights and agree to refund us (in 5-10 working days). The first time it happened the guy actually said that it happens all the time. So AmEx know it happens, and presumably BA know it happens, but no one does anything about it.

It's actually a little bit suspect, as the extra charge doesn't appear on the statement - we only noticed it because our available credit and the balance didn't match up. I wonder how many people never notice it and end up paying twice as much to BA without realising it?

Ooh, now it's Live and Let Die by Paul McCartney & Wings! At least it's not Idiot Radio FM. Or Celine Dion.

Thursday 23 October 2008

Who killed Amanda Palmer?*

One freezing Friday night a few weeks ago we ventured up to the famous Camden for an evening of live entertainment - a solo show by Amanda Palmer (of Dresden Dolls fame). For those of you unfamiliar with the Dresden Dolls oeuvre (ha! I can't believe I used that word) it's described by Wikipedia and other sources as "Brechtian punk cabaret". Amanda's new solo album, which she apparently co-produced with Ben Folds, leans more to the cabaret angle if the show was anything to go by (we haven't actually listened to the album, yet).

Amanda is clearly a committed and talented performer, not least because she did the entire show in just a bra without ever showing a hint of self-consciousness. Well, she was probably wearing something on her lower half but we were too far back to confirm. After walking up to Camden from town and enjoying some massive pizzas (and a bottle of pinot grigio) at a nearby restaurant we ended up right at the back of the venue, which sadly, always makes it a bit harder to get really involved in the performance. But her excellence was not lost on us completely.

Speaking of the venue though, it is one of my favourites in London so far although it has a terrible name - Koko. Reading up on it this morning I discovered it has been variously known as the Camden Theatre (upon opening in 1900), the Camden Hippodrome (when Chaplin was on the bill!!), The Music Machine, Camden Palace as well as being a BBC radio theatre during the 1940s - 1970s and hosting such landmark programs as The Goon Show.

Being inside Koko is sort of like getting lost in a 1980s avant garde film clip. Everything is dimly lit, but all red and gold, and ornately decorated. There are actually about six floors of audience space with a warren of staircases and landings and half floors in between, so whenever you walk down a corridor you have no idea where you'll end up. Last time we came, to see the now-defunct Electrelane, the band wasn't all that good, so we amused ourselves by wandering between floors and watching all the emo girls dancing. Moving back and forth between the levels into dark, red corridors echoing with muffled beats and then emerging back into the glow of the stage and the loud music certainly adds something to the live music experience.

I was disappointed to read today that the over-the-top classical decor is not genuine - when it was the Camden Palace apparently it had an industrial-themed decoration scheme, so I guess the red and gold is all new-ish. Unless they reinstated it. Or copied the original design. Who knows. It still looks pretty.

Koko interiors



Amanda and lighting effect


Some imaginative folk sprinking white rose petals over the crowd during a slow song:

This was the best I could do from the back row.

This is Neil Gaiman delivering some lyrics he wrote for the album. If you don't know who he is you probably don't care anyway, but he's this sort of literary goth hero in the graphic novel world.

The Boyfriend - a literary goth hero in his own world?



*That's the name of Amanda's album, so I can't claim any credit for "adapting" it from Twin Peaks - that was all Amanda herself.

Monday 20 October 2008

Clerkenwell

Sometimes, when I can talk myself into it, I go for a wander around the London streets at lunchtime. When I do go, I always discover loads of new things and have to tear myself away to get back to work in time. It's just that I spend so much time sitting at this desk it's sometimes hard to build up the energy to leave, when I could just eat my lunch right here in front of the computer like a depressing lump.

Anyway, recently I did manage to haul myself up and out, and this time my wanderings took me around Clerkenwell. I work in the Holborn/St Paul's area of London, and when I first started working here, I was disappointed with what seemed to be a heavy traffic area lined with dull, post-war office buildings, Tescos and Subway sandwich shops. This wasn't what I moved to London for! I wanted Victorian architecture, tiny alleys filled with cosy pubs, and history and meaning bursting from every doorway.

After a while I discovered that there are a lot of those things all around this area. I just had to take myself off the main thoroughfares and find them. After a bit of research I realised that I was in one of the oldest parts of London - populated since before it was even called London - the site of the Great Fire of London, close to St Paul's Cathedral and countless churches and cathedrals, St Bartholomew's Hospital (founded in 1123, people!), Postman's Park, the diamond district, The Old Bailey, the Inns of Court, and the list goes on. And even more interestingly, there are countless dark alleys and unexpected lanes that look completely uninviting until you walk down and find a six-hundred year old tavern, and next door a record store, and next to that a shop selling only doorknobs. No Tesco or Topshop in sight.

It also seems to have been the site of a disproportionately large number of London's most notorious jails over the years - if you believe Wikipedia.

Anyway, my trip into Clerkenwell (and bits of Farringdon and Barbican) went well. Some shots are below, and the rest are in the Around London set on flickr.
Legitimately old looking brick buildings


Ever so cool students congregating in the sun outside some college - perhaps the London College of Communication, whatever that is Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, Back Hill


Stairs to viaduct (possibly) Rosebery Avenue bridge in Clerkenwell


Queuing for fresh Ghanaian food in Exmouth Market


The absolute highlight was finding somewhere (in Exmouth Market) to buy a flat white. For the un-enlightened, a flat white is an espresso with a moderate to small amount of milk, without foam. It's a cafe standard in Australia but much rarer in latte-obsessed England. I hate the enormous, milky coffees you get from the coffee chains here so finding somewhere that sells a flat white was very exciting. It's about 1.2km from work, so not quite close enough to dash off to every morning, but at least a flat white is no longer entirely out of the question.

It was about time for me to get back to work, and following my newly-cultivated habit of heading down dark alleyways, I headed down here:

And was greeted with this.

Standing in busy Exmouth Market, there is no clue that a peaceful green space is less than 50m away from you. This happens to me all the time in London. It's such a muddle of lanes and building add-ons and overpasses that I'm constantly finding something lovely like a park or courtyard or overgrown cemetery completely by accident. That's something I'll miss when I go back to the familiar grid system in Brisbane.

Friday 17 October 2008

Chaplin

Early in October we took in some old Charlie Chaplin movies at BFI Southbank cinemas . We saw The Champion, A Night Out and His New Job - all from 1916 during his period with Essanay.

It's strange to watch them now - what was comedic genius then sometimes looks like a bunch of repetitive pratfalls when you're used to all that self-referential wordiness we apparently like in comedies. But there is something special about Chaplin himself, especially in scenes where it's just the camera and Charlie, mesmerising you with his graceful movements and wide-eyed mischief. There was a live piano player providing the music as well, so the whole experience was very pleasant - although the cinema was so warm and comfortable it was hard to stay awake. Too hard, in The Boyfriend's case.

It put me in the mood to watch one of my favourite movies, Chaplin. But I think The Boyfriend declared himself to be Chaplin-ed out and we watched Happy-Go-Lucky instead. I definitely enjoyed it, and am baffled about how Sally Hawkins managed to make her character Poppy so charming, when she was so potentially annoying. I've never met anyone so ceaselessly optimistic and chatty in real life but I suspect I'd find it exhausting at best.

It's also really interesting to watch movies set in London now that I have more of a handle on the geography and can impress myself by recognising landmarks and areas without being specifically informed by the movie where they are. Although (other than noting Regent's Park) the best I could do with Happy-Go-Lucky was identify the area Poppy lived in as "north London". That's a pretty big area.

The movie also involves a driving instructor who goes more than slightly off the rails. This reminded me a little of the time my driving instructor decided that the best time to convert me to born-again Christianity would be the drive home after failing my test for the second time. He must have sensed I was in a moment of vulnerability. After that the driving school sent in their director to see what was wrong with me. I think the only new tip she gave me was to release the handbrake as I engaged it so as not to wear the mechanism out, or something.

Thursday 16 October 2008

Oh lord, won't you buy me a pound of beef mince and some sausages

This story, about a singing butcher under threat from cranky neighbours, really struck a chord with me this morning. As Londonist puts it:

"It would seem that a former resident of the flat above Brian’s Meat Market had complained about the early morning chopping noises and sing-songs. And so Barking and Dagenham council have asked Brian to desist, and to sound-proof his ceiling to stop the sound rising.

We say that a) anyone who moves above a butchers’ shop should expect to move with the larks – night owls should find themselves a flat above a restaurant, and b) what the devilled kidneys is wrong with singing at work? How fantabulous to find someone happy enough in his work to express himself thus!
"

I couldn't have described it better myself. Seriously, people who move into accommodation in full knowledge of the characteristics of the area - the downstairs butcher for instance, or many popular (and noisy) music venues like in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley - should not be able to decide that it doesn't suit them after all and they'd like everyone else to change their longstanding behaviour, please. Even worse, the cranky upstairs tenant has apparently moved out anyway.

I would like to know what his repertoire is though. If he's belting out Celine Dion ballads at 6am I might feel differently. I like to think he does jaunty Irish folk songs and maybe the occasional show tune.

Poor old Mr Singing Butcher. I hope he prevails.

Tuesday 14 October 2008

London Zoo

The Zoo was sort of a mixed experience for me, so I've summarised in handy pro/con form below. The rest of my shots are up on flickr at the link to the right.

Pro: generally, enjoyable way to see animals other than cats and dogs.
Con: it costs £17 to get in.

Pro: there was an extremely broad range of different species and it was hard to tear myself away from some of them.
Con: I only left myself about 2.5 hours of opening time to see the place, so I found myself rushing past the less "entertaining" animals in favour of the toucans, gorillas, penguins etc.

Pro: the animals were all interesting in their own unique ways - cute, rare, characterful, sometimes beautiful.
Con: the animals on the other side of the railings were more irritating and badly behaved than any of the zoo captives I saw. Including the hyenas.

The behaviour of my fellow spectators was really appalling. Despite the prominent signage about not feeding or disturbing the animals, and asking for quiet around nocturnal and more fragile species, the adults and children I saw in almost every section of the Zoo were loud, rude, pushy and basically just freaking annoying. Two of the worst incidents (among many) was the father encouraging his children to knock on the glass of a nocturnal marsupial in full view of about six signs asking for quiet - to make it do something other than sleep or hide, I guess - and the bevy of idiotic women who let out a chorus of screams when two okapi (similar to zebras) tried to "get busy". Of course the okapi were startled and immediately erm, disengaged and ran away. I could just imagine the animal keepers smacking their foreheads and lamenting the months they'd spent trying to make the okapi breed.

Then there was the gorilla house, where crowds of people had gathered to rap on the glass and squeal with delight at the charismatic gorillas and their wacky antics. A keeper actually had to come out and tell them all to be quiet because the female gorilla they were focused on had started running at the glass because she felt so threatened.

Still, the quieter parts of the zoo - with the less popular animals I guess - were lovely, and generally the animals seemed to have lots of space and be well cared for. And seriously, I don't blame them for charging 17 quid to get in or flogging merchandise at every turn if it means they can keep the animals well, and run education programs and breeding programs. Maybe the Saturday afternoon zoo crowd could do with some of those education programs; like ones that demonstrate how to be a good example for your kids and not to treat an animal park like a fun fair.

End self-righteous pontificating. Brandon Walsh would be proud.

These hyenas were desperately trying to get to something, presumably edible, that was hiding in the logs. They were whining and digging furiously, but no one looking on seemed to know what was under there.

The giraffes were surprisingly beautiful. I've never really thought too much about them before but they were graceful and gangly all at once, strolling about calmly together in polite indifference to the crowds of squawking people.
Meerkat doing its thing
Man draws gorilla
More gorillas
Pygmy hippo
Finally, the llama.

Sunday 12 October 2008

Regent's Park

Out of all the great things about London, I'd have to say the parks are my favourite. There are so many different kinds - tiny ones sandwiched between office buildings (filled with office workers clutching Pret sandwiches and huddling together against the cold), huge open spaces populated by joggers and dogwalkers, unkempt but charming ones like Gunnersbury Park, suburban playgrounds, etc etc.

London (and probably England) is especially good at my favourite kind of park - one with lots of different parts, hidden nooks and coves to discover, cool green pathways, and maybe a few sculptures. A good rose garden also doesn't go astray. Big open commons have their place, but it's not quite as interesting as finding a new lake or grove or roman-style refuge everytime you turn a corner.

While The Boyfriend was celebrating nothing in particular with one of his more debaucherous mates one Saturday not long ago, I took myself on an excursion to Regent's Park (and London Zoo, see next post). I'm quite annoyed with myself for not going sooner, because now we have less than five months left in this town, and I've only just found my favourite London park.







Even more magical was the trip back through the park at dusk on the way to the tube from the Zoo. This section of the park (part of Queen Mary's Gardens) has a vibe of maintained wilderness, in contrast the part I was in earler in the day. Instead of meticulously groomed lawns and avenues of carefully colour-coordinated blooms, there are paths meandering through small forests, mysterious hideouts, a waterfall and a series of lakes and ponds. Something new each time you turn a corner. There was also a Japanese-style garden hiding behind some pine trees, and a huge fragrant rose garden. The rose garden was hosting an Indian (I think) post-wedding reception so it was filled with excited children chasing each other around the place in white taffeta, women in beautiful saris, and besuited men conversing seriously while surveying the proceedings.






And the place is so immense I didn't even get to things like the open air theatre or the boating lake before I was chased back to the tube by the darkness.

I don't mean for this blog to sound like a Pollyanna tourist guide of London all the time. But Regent's Park was truly lovely, particularly because I'd forgotten what it was like (since visiting quickly once about eight years ago) and therefore was pleasantly surprised while discovering it again. Perhaps I need to start writing some cranky, sarcastic rants to balance things out. If I sit here and relive my experiences on the tube this week, or battling the crowds in Oxford Street last Saturday, or of the appalling service I got at Ping Pong in Soho recently, I'm sure I could come up with something.

The rest of my photos of the day, including of London Zoo, are up on Flickr here.

Wednesday 8 October 2008

Her Majesty

Last week we met some friends for a Sunday drink on the Queen Mary, a floating bar/restaurant on the Thames with views of Westminster, the London Eye, etc. Apparently it used to be some sort of social institution but with the recent smoking ban, and an inexplicable decision to stop serving food on the deck (forcing you to eat in the gloomy, stale-smelling internal area, whatever you call that part of a ship), it's lost some of its charms. Fortunately the day was beautiful - clear and almost brutally sunny - so we enjoyed our beers on the deck, and then headed into town for lunch.

I spent some time staring directly into the sun while trying to take some shots of the view. I couldn't really see what I was producing at the time due to the glare, but this one is a pretty accurate representation.


This is The Boyfriend and friend. Maybe it was more than "a" drink.

Clare Bowditch (solo!)

A few weeks ago I did a solo trek into north London (well, only King's Cross) to the London Scala to see Australia's Clare Bowditch and Australia's Gotye perform live. Clare was very entertaining to watch - doing almost a stand-up comedy routine in between her breathtaking songs (although she seemed to struggle a bit with her new guitar, and some of the songs are just not quite the same with the full band). When she played an acoustic version of The Moon Looked On, she happened to look right at me (the dork looking on earnestly in the front row) and I was almost overcome with some sort of emotion... a positive one anyway. This is the album version of the song:



It also happened to be Clare's birthday, so the producer/sound girl/whatever she was put a surprise on the stage for Clare before the performance.




Here are some shots of the lady on stage. She managed to be both beautiful and graceful despite coming out in a crumpled sort of dress thing, a sticker on her arm, and tatty cowboy boots, which she proceeded to take off early on because they were uncomfortable.




It was interesting to see her in London, because she's basically unknown here, whereas in Australia she's been around the music traps for years and last year won the ARIA (like an Australian Grammy, sort of) for best female artist. Here she was supporting Gotye, who as far as I'm concerned has a lower profile than Clare in Australia. So very few of the audience seemed to know the songs and sometimes it seemed awfully quiet in the room; like we were seeing a classical quartet instead of a pop singer.

This is her finale piece de resistance - playing a teapot.



After all that, I didn't have the stamina to stay for Gotye. It was a weeknight!!

Tuesday 7 October 2008

World in turmoil, or something

Fortunately for me, I'm in a position (so far) to be self-righteous and judgemental about all the financial doom and gloom being peddled by everything from the Times to the free Metro paper on the morning tube. Sure, lawyers are starting to be made redundant in London, but there's not the constant likelihood of my firm actually ceasing to exist overnight which would plague me if I worked in a bank or as a trader. The risk of me ever becoming one of those things is also ridiculously low. Sometimes I fail to understand how I even ended up as a lawyer, given the amount of space in my head that's devoted to trivia on 1990s American television rather than what constitutes a binding contract or how the court system is structured.

Anyway, for no particular good reason - just a hunch, and a favourable Australian dollar conversion at the time* - we closed our savings account with the English arm of Icelandic bank Landsbanki a few weeks ago. Today the news broke that all the Icelandic government has had to take over Landsbanki (see the Guardian article). There's not really any concrete word on when account holders will be able to access their money, although I think a certain amount of loss is guaranteed between the UK and Icelandic governments. Once you've gone through probably frustrating and lengthy compensation application processes. So as I said, we closed our account before all this happened, which is excellent and also lucky for us. I feel sorry for the Icelanders though. Although at least they live in a fantastic country. Perhaps that softens the blow a bit? Perhaps not.

I've tried to get by being deliberately oblivious to how markets work in terms of my personal finances but maybe I will have to start paying attention now.

*I'm now told we did it for a very good reason, which is that The Boyfriend knew this was about to happen. I'm glad someone did.

Monday 6 October 2008

Stand by

I've been meaning to post again soon but we managed to spill coffee on the poor old iBook this weekend, which put the mousepad and keyboard temporarily out of action. They seem to be OK now that the sugary-y coffee grounds have solidified but who knows how long they'll hold up. I always prefer not to know how disgusting my keyboard has gotten below the primary surface and being forced to prise the keyboard off and take a look was not an enjoyable experience.

So anyway, more words soon, provided the computer holds up.