Summer tales...

Picture - naturally - courtesy of Brian Froud

The end of the month of May and nary a day of full sunshine. Now, in general I do prefer the cooler clime of this olde Albion BUT enough is enough.

I took Sparrow for a run in the park this morning before going to work and I bravely stepped forth without my jacket, thinking that it should not be necessary to wear one. I was wrong. I almost froze my patoolies off. The poor pup got run around the park at landspeed record timing and I was back inside, shrugging into my leather jacket within fifteen minutes.

The sun, please, may we have some sunshine? A week, two weeks even, would do. Just let it be warmer than 15 degrees C. We want to, we NEED to have a bbq. We longingly touched the barbeque packs in Sainsburys this evening, dreaming that misty dream of long remembered times when friends came to visit till late at night, sitting around the fire outside, listening to music, sated and stuffed on the gorgeous grilled meats FG had bbq'd. Och. Those were the days.

To encourage summer, a summery interlude of the literary kind:

And pomp, and feast, and revelry,

With mask, and antique pageantry,

Such sights as youthful poets dream

On summer eves by haunted stream

(Milton - L'Allegro (1631) )

Night of the south winds - night of the large fewstars!

Still nodding night - mad naked summer night.

(Walt Whitman - "Song of Myself," Leaves of Grass (1855) )

Oh, how I laughed...

Reading Cheezy's blog about him retiring trusty old Rusty, his ancient Nokia, had me giggle. We too retired our respective but still quite posh and flash Nokias this past week, having upgraded to a new provider (Orange sucks ass) we got new phones. Small little flicky up things. Here is a picture of mine. I chose the pink as it so me (she laughs, with her sore chest and sore throat, sounding like Vin Diesel OD'ing on Jack Daniels and Texan plains)

Then, I thought I would go visit the Nokia website and go see further info on the little tiddler and almost died of a heart attack. This little phone, by no means the cutest or best one out there, is retailing for £229!!! Holy hell. That is a lot of money for sumat. Sumat which I am bound to scratch the hell out of and no doubt lose.

Okay, so, maybe I see if they have a secure goodie thing for me to store it in. Checks out the accessories section and honestly, this is what came up:

Yes, like those twatts out there who buy the "socks" for their iPods, Nokia has seen it fit to design this little cute "cover/baggie" for the phone, it even comes with beaded accessories to dangle off the phone. For £5.99. Fabulous. You can use your cover/baggie to clean both the camera lens AND the screen.

Shakes head. I don't understand this buying of "clothing" and accessories for items...my bag does not feel lonely without any adornments. In fact, it is just less junk for me to lose. My monstrous MP3 player is quite happy to get 'tude by being scuffed and thrown around said bag, I refuse to buy it a little nappy/condom to keep it safe.

But yes, there you go. If I were that way inclined, I could buy a little pink condom for my phone. Yippee! Fingler clicking, just like Tara and Paris. Tee-hee.

TDVC - The Movie

Braving the torrential thunderous rain and hailstones, we drifted down to the local cinema to go view TDVC. At half ten in the morning on a Saturday.

The highlight was the trailer for Pirates of the Carib - hmmmm, Johnny Depp - sorry, that wasn't the movie, was it?

If you have not read the badly written book, the hyped book, the fictional book, you will still enjoy the movie. You might not "get" it all, but they have dummed it down tremendously for public fare. And it is a loooooong movie - 149 minutes. Most of which you don't really feel. Personally, I think this should have been directed by an English director, or a foreign director, not Ron Howard. It never made me gasp, wonder, or amaze. Or worry. There was no edge to it and it was all very "fluffy." It did however make me jiggle around my seat though as I recognised the places they were shooting the movie in. The sets were lavish - Lee Teabing's villa and study is sumptious. See pic below:

Old man Sir Ian was a tour de force, as usual. He genuinely sparkled and was a much more interesting character than Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) who seemed to stand to the side a lot and watch worriedly and bemusedly as things went rocketing off the rails, dragging him along. Sophie Neveu was beautifully played by Audrey T. And of course, Silas, the albino monk played by Paul Bettany was out of this world - his portrayal as this pawn of bishops and rich men, was outstanding. I genuinely don't think the Opus Dei has anything to worry about in this movie. They make it very clear that there are radical factions within the OD who tend to take things over the top, whereas most of their members are married, with families etc. A cleverly set-up scene on an airplane with the bishop and his aide acting the part of a journalist...cleverly done.

There were a few clever scenes - instead of Robert Langdon going off to a library to find a clue, they accost a young chap on one of the busses and use his mobile phone to access the internet and do a search. As a saddo, I recognised an in-joke in this scene. The authors Lynn Picknet and her co-author Timothy Freke were on the bus, behind Tom and Audrey. They were the ones who did a lot of research way back in the day into the Magdalene story, Da Vinci and the Jesus Mysteries. Dan Brown refers to Lynn's books in TDVC and cites it as one of the books in his bibliography. Yes, I know. I am sad. In Lee Teabing's house, as he explains to Audrey about the sacred feminine, he is holding one of Lynn's books in his hand. This made me giggle and I sniggered to hubby: "We have those books."

Ahem. There are a lot fo shortcuts in the movie - there has to be. Like in LOTR you just could not put it all in. I think though that they managed to stay true to the book - you get the gist of it. All, except for the ending....where they discover a hidden room underneath Roslyn Chapel (what about all the excavations which the St Clair family have allowed in the church a couple of years ago...the excavations where they had found nothing...do the Americans think NO ONE has ever paid any attention to Roslyn before Dan Brown came along?) and Sophie manages to locate a whole bunch and scrolls and pipes up "Oh look, scrolls from the Library at Alexandria". At that point I burst out laughing. Even if they were scrolls from the great library, they would be in temperature controlled cabinets, behind lock and key and not jumbled together on an open shelf for insects, dust, bacteria and marauders to eat or destroy. Americans! Throw reality to the wind to make it look like the library at Minas Tirith, just because it looks authentic like that and it makes you want to go dig around ancient temples and churches.

I'll pack cynical-Liz away now and say that for all the obvious ploys used in the movie, it worked. Like the book it will bring in millions to the publishers, the author and the movie makers. I just pity old Dan Brown now that he has sold the rights to his character - it is going to be very difficult to set him up to do controversial things now. The movie world owns him now!

Rodrigo y Gabriela

I happened across Rodrigo Y Gabriela via an email newsletter I have somehow managed to subscribe to - not that I can remember doing it - and the write up about their music intrigued me, which led me to investigate them via their website. And, if you believe in synchronicity, this will blow your hair back: I fell asleep infront of the tv the other night and woke up to a special on the duo! How freaky is that?

Needless to say, they were googled, their My Space website and their standalone website had been found. All I can say is: wow. Their music is fiery, full of passion, they are amazing artists and I love Gabriela as she is funny, fast talking and swears like a trooper. Go check them out. They are playing a gig in June here in London and I am pretty damn sure we will be going.

http://www.myspace.com/rodrigoygabriela

http://www.rodgab.com/index.htm

And what swayed me even more is the fact that they got the greatest gypsy violinist in the world, my personal hero - Roby Lakatos - to play on their new album. Well, what else can I say?

Viva Rodrigo y Gabriela!

Brought low...

Shyte. Is only one of the words I can use to describe how I am currently feeling. Along with that some other terms I can use: raw nosed, bleary eyed, sore throated, painful chest-ted...

Yep, the dreaded lurgy has me in its grips.

For over a year or more, I have managed to stay out of its way. I have had a bit of sniffles, yes, but who hasn't but now, yesterday and today, it decided to pounce on me and pummel me mercilessly into the pavement. Needless to say I spread the germs liberally all over work - not because I wanted to but because no one wanted to send me home. Plus, I entertained clients by sounding like Brian Blessed imitating Vin Diesel.

Plus, I had to come in for my salary review. Which was not as bad as I had feared. £50 more than I what I earn at the moment for a month is better than nothing, right? Gets a glimmer in her eye. That is at least four books from Waterstones...

Off I go to have a bath, take drugs, liberally mixed with whisky, and to pass out.

PS: All of this before my interview on Thursday with well known publishers. I am praying for my voice to at least be gone so I can sign at them in a creative way OR for me to find my voice again and all I have to do to convince them that I can do the job sounding like Vin D after he has gargled with turps, smoked fifty fags with no filters and shouted mercilessly at weak ninnies to keep up as he goes off to save the world.

Welcome to the wide world!

Welcome to the world, little Ashleigh W.

She was born yesterday morning and she weighs 6lb (2.76kg) and is 47cm tall.

Congratulations to proud parents Phil and Michelle W.

Car Porn!

Hat tipped to car porn enthusiast, Tincan!

You know, sometimes it is nice working in London. Ambling to work this morning, I took a detour via St James’s Square and came across around thirty lovely flash sports cars parked outside the Square. All of them were on their way to Silverstone….hmmmm. Now, seriously, I am not a car freak but this was just porn, sheer and utter porn. So I sent the office graduate out with our team camera to go and take some pictures.

Very nice indeed.

Bush Hall - Shepherds Bush

It was Saturday night and we were actually going somewhere. That somewhere was Bush Hall to go and see Susy Thomas, Vince Freeman and of course, Never the Bride.

The venue was fantastic – intimate and unassuming from the outside until you go in and there is this hall slightly reminiscent of older times, high ceilings and chandeliers. Beautiful plaster mouldings – it had the sort of faded glamour look of an old Hollywood film set.

Up stepped Susy with her acoustic backing band. I think that a lot of the people that were there that night didn’t know Susy or had not heard of her before, most of them I think were NtB fans. She started her set and with her genuinely sweet jocular way had their attention within the first few seconds into her first song. The audience quietened down quite a bit and everyone sort of turned to listen to this pretty girl up there on the stage who suddenly demanded so much attention, not just because of her amazing voice but because of the genuineness of her music and lyrics. I echo Nikki’s words here and say: she is going to be big. Watch out KT Tunstall and Norah Jones! Her album is out shortly! Plug, plug…plug!

Next up was the charismatic and sweet Vince Freeman. Nikki introduced him as the next Bruce Springsteen. I beg to differ. Vince has his own style and he an enjoyable voice. He had the audience bopping along to some of his songs – I couldn’t help but think that he was such a huge contrast to these manufactured crappy boy and girl bands you see making it “big”. With his two man backing band he wowed the crowd, doing a bit of singing, a lot of playing and seemingly to be having a lot of fun up there. I have personally never heard of him but will no doubt get a copy of one of his two cd’s.

Then Nikki and Been bounced onstage, looking spectacular and seriously cool as the ultimate in cool - rock chicks! With them they had a different drummer (I couldn’t figure out his name, a bit of an ear infection happening) but they had their guitarists Murray Gould and Greg Harewood with them and you know what…I don’t have enough descriptive phrases for the sheer power that this band emanates. Admittedly Nikki was having problems with feedback from her earphones and mike and speakers, but honestly, I couldn’t care less. They made a fantastic noise – they veered from heartwrenchingly beautiful lyrics of the Living Tree to Loser in Love to Kiss Kiss and a whole bunch of others I can’t even remember. They were consummate professionals, getting over the problems with the feedback, bouncing around and giving it their all. It was brilliant and such a good evening. I danced till I gasped, laughed out loud, shouted, hollered and generally misbehaved (well, for me anyway) and had a fantastic time.

There is nothing quite like a live gig, is there?

Lyrics from the Living Tree as sung by Nikki and as has been recorded by Dame Shirley Bassey

THE LIVING TREE
Let me breathe
Cause I'm drowning in your shadow
Let me leave
Respect me
do not follow me
believe I can make me own tomorrow
Let me breathe
Does it make
You feel good cause you own me
Does it take Your puppet strings to hold me
How I ache
As you're trying to control me
Let me breathe
Let me dance 'till my shoes cry
Let me laugh
let me be
Let me dance
Let me choose my life
Let me climb the living tree
Picture this
When you wake up in the morning
And I kiss Your sorry ass goodbye
What will I miss
There's nothing I can think of as I leave
Let me dance 'till my shoes cry
Let me laugh
let me be
Let me dance
Let me choose my life
Let me climb the living tree