On the Beat

I spent several days down south this month – in London and Oxford. On two different visits – so I am concatenating them

The first was a very good, though very emotional, visit.

For starters, I was met at King’s Cross by frankie_ecap, which was very good indeed.

After dropping my stuff off at the hotel, we decided to pay a visit to the Natural History Museum – or, if the last time you visited was in a professional capacity in the mid-1980s (to talk about ferns, if you are interested), the British Museum (Natural History). It is the same place, anyway.

( Lots of pictures and words behind the cut... )

In the last week, I have had a great time. I have also been a little, weirdly, ill.

I…

• drove down to Bristol, rushing down the A701 through hills and heather, to get caught in a long traffic jam on the M6
  
• lost all adequate sense of balance, whilst sober, leading me to collapse to the right
  
• spent an evening and a morning in bed, lest I fall over
  
• spent a good couple of days in the company of old friends
  
• visited two cathedrals – one in Bristol, one in Oxford
  
• went to the Tudor House and Bristol City Museum, where I looked at glass and silver and dinosaurs and pianos (all at the same time!)
  
• wandered through the stones of Avebury, my heart breaking
  
• found some old, fascinating family history
  
• had dinner at All Souls with A. and lunch at Blackwell’s with white_hart (a bit dangerous, I thought, meeting in a bookshop…)
  
• finally saw the Killing Machine, “a theatrical meditation on capital punishment, inspired by Franz Kafka’s In the Penal Colony”, which wasn’t working the last three times I tried to see it
  
• drove up the east coast back to Edinburgh
  
• sopped off for a few hours at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, where I have meant to visit for many, many years; it was brilliant, wonderful, and I had a really good time. Lunch was good, too…

I took 325 photographs; so over the next few weeks, I may even write about all this a little bit more.

Over the past couple of days, death seems to have featured. Not my death, I am pleased to say, but in my thoughts, and in the media.

Of course I went to see And When Did You Last See Your Father? last night, where death did seem to feature rather prominently.

( Cut for rambling stories. )

I learnt this morning that Richard Cook died last week.

( Read more... )

I was in a quandry this evening. I was very close to finishing the book I have been reading for the past day or so - the very brilliant Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. I think it is a work of genius - truly - a very powerful, affecting book, that has had me laughing and crying.

But it is also - well, kind of traumatic. I shall write more about it later, but take it from me, brilliant though it might be, it is isn't light.

And here I was close to finishing it, knowing that I would have a whole lot more reading time this evening in between concerts and on the tube and stuff, and I was wondering how to fill it.

So I went into Foyles on the South Bank, since that was where I happened to be. I wanted somethnig fun, light - frothy even. A quick kind of throwaway book, something to make me smile, not too deep.

I looked for the humour section. There wasn't one. I looked for the table of three-for-two offers - usually full of that kind of stuff. Not a sign.

I trawled the fiction section - and could see nothing that grabbed. Many non-funny, serious, even suicidal volumes; these were jumping out at me, but no! Not for me, not tonight.

f4f3 and white_hart have both been raving about the Princess Bride, in both celluloid and print versions; I asked at the desk, but they didn't have it. (And the woman behind the desk raved about it, too.)

Someone was going on about Terry Pratchett - but they didn't Small Gods, which seems to be the usual recommendation. I even looked at the Neil Gaiman, but again, none of the books they had were ones people had tried to get me to read.

I settled on a book about Italy by Tim Parks - and so far it is just what I wanted.

All this took me a lot longer than I had expected; such that the time I was looking to fill had been filled, and I had to go to my concert. So I needn't have bought a book anyway...

I am generally ambivalent about buying poppies for Rememberance Sunday. Whilst I know that it is rememberance of people who died to protect the country and others, and thus it expresses solidarity with those who suffered; but I can't help but believe that somehow it glorifies war. Usually I give some money and don't wear a poppy.

But this morning on 5Live, they were debating the current hoo-hah of "poppy fascism" - the need to be seen wearing a poppy.

Some caller came on the line saying that he didn't wear a poppy because he didn't believe in the wars. We shouldn't have fought in WW2, because it wasn't our war - we should have kept out of it. And when the presenter said "What about the holocaust?", this *rsehole said that was absolutely nothing to do with Britain at all.

So I am now the proud possessor of a poppy; and I gave them more money than I would otherwise have done. In rememberance of that c*nt's ignorance.

I am unaccountably happy today.

Well, it isn't unaccountable: I had a fascinating meeting this morning (which I'll probably write about. Sometime); and it is a truly glorious sunny day - there was an amazing, intense blue sky; and I wandered around strange parts of town (to me, at least), taking photographs of shadows.

I used to have my answerphone message suited to the season. At Christmas, it would play a rather cheesy Charlie Parker recording of “White Christmas”; spring would be Clifford Brown’s “Joy Spring”; then Basie’s version of “April in Paris”, and several month’s of the Miles Davis/Gil Evans’ “Summertime”.

( Read more... )

Perhaps it is just that summer has clearly turned to autumn; perhaps it is something else.

But I have a real feeling of melancholy today.

Something is missing.

I'm listening to the radio right now and they're playing the Verve's Bitter Sweet Symphony.

It is one of the many songs that make me stand up and move. (This makes it very hard to type; the typing is interrupted).

It is all down to the drums; well, the drums, and the infamous Stones' string sample.

I have a very strong memory associated with this song: a hotel in Harrogate, one winter's evening - November or February, perhaps eight years ago; I had driven down from Edinburgh in the dark.

It was a large hotel room; and it had a large, very Victorian bathroom. I ran a bath.

And Bitter Sweet Symphony came on the radio. I turned the volume right up, and danced slowly around the room.

I felt very free.

No change, I can't change, I can't change, I can't change.