Broken Embraces (Los abrazos rotos)

A decent film, not at all girly as we half suspected it would be, probably as it was told in the European mode and not one that came out of the Hollywood sausage factory. Might prove worth while to follow Penelope Cruz's career.
7.2/10

The Lord Nelson, Brightwell Baldwin, Oxfordshire

The Lord Nelson, Brightwell Baldwin, Oxfordshire
Saturday lunchtime drive with the hood down, Found in Sawday's Pubs & Inns guide which is very consistent and so it proved to be. Decent food, decent garden and an interior I think we will be back for when the colder weather draws in.
This series will start here so no looking back...if I can help it.
However that makes it 3 gastro pubs all within a radius of one mile in different villages...how can they get the custom to keep going?

Colours of Autumn

Colours of Autumn from our garden. The Acer always 'goes' early as does the small Gunnera, which sucks up water at a great rate.

NP. The Test Match, Harmison has taken two on the trot leaving one to go. Does not get the hatrick and it sounds like mayhem from the Oval.
IT IS NOW!!!

Seasons

An Australian scientist says the continent needs five or six seasons to suit its climate.
Could also apply here, Winter does not start to after Christmas when we are already past the winter equinox (dec 21st) and ends mid March. Spring does not end till the end of june, again after the summer soltice, and summer goes through to include September these days with autumn kicking off in October. Leaves are still on the trees in December in Southern England.
So how many new ones? 2 making 6 in total all lasting two months.
Full article.

BBC: The Crown Jewels

Sunday evening
Jam and Jerusalem followed by Rivers

Government, break it up at your peril!

MX5

Our second car is a MX5, bought second hand a couple of years ago for £8000 with only 13,000 miles on the clock. Its a MK2.1 so not the original and certainly not the new Mk3 but a damn fine car and it brings a smile to my face evrytime I drive. It now has 34,000 on the clock but it is faultless.

Jeremy Clarkson in the Sunday Times reviewed the new one today, the DNA is still there, and this is his concluding paragraphs

I said recently that the BMW Z4 is the best of the open sports cars, but after a couple of days with the Mazda I realise I was talking nonsense. The BMW is excellent but the MX-5 demonstrates that its extra speed, extra grip and extra size is all a bit wasteful. In the little Japanese car you get exactly what you need, and exactly the space you need, and nothing more.

I realise that the hairy-chested among you will be scoffing and tutting and heading straight for this column on the internet so you can speak your mind. You will say “girl’s car” and “gay” and all sorts of other things.

Well, that’s fine. You waste your money on a Mustang or a Ferrari. The fact is that if you want a sports car, the MX-5 is perfect. Nothing on the road will give you better value. Nothing will give you so much fun. The only reason I’m giving it five stars is because I can’t give it 14

NP 'Slowness' by Calexico from Carried to Dust

and 'Uncertain Smile' by The The from Soul Mining

Disposable Barbecues

What do you do with them when you have finshed with them and you are outside in the 'wild' so to speak?
Well I walked back to where the car was parked carrying the thing with the aluminuim tray back in the cardboard underbox in the mistaken belief that it would protect my hands from the warm charcoal embers.
Not a bit, the embers started to glow again mainly from the action of the wind and the card underbox began to smolder too. Smolder then flames! Rubbed them out on the grass downland and carried on walking.
Only to repeat the action another hundred metres further on, and then again another hundred or so metres further on.
This with dry downland hillside all around us and the farmers bringing in the hay. Managed to get to the base of the hill, but the cardboard now had half gone....burnt away.
So there was only one thing for it, we pissed on it. It was so hot that all the piss evaporated and I could safely put it in the boot of the car.
Bit silly afterwards because we drove to Dorchester Abbey for a mug of tea and a cake from the good womenfolk of the town(?) and parked up for a good forty minutes...the car could have gone up in flames!

NP 'Recent Walpurgis' by Procul Harum from Secrets of the Hive.
and 'Glass' by Bats for Lashes from Two Suns

Kite flying

Off Castle Hill which is part of the Wittenham Clumps just south of Oxford, good strong breeze gusting. Family picnic with portable/throwaway barbecue, food eaten, wine drunk so time to fly the kite. Well not just any kite, a purple and green wing with an eight foot wing span.
Have not flown it for a good eight years and it it still had the sand from the beach it last flew on when I unfurled it trying to remember how to attach the lines to it.
So 20 minutes later my arms a pulling out of their sockets, legs straining to retain some sembelence of balance on the hillside and I'm
Knackered.

NP by 'Broken Butterflies' Lucinda Williams from Essence

Punting

50 minutes of punting from Magdalen Bridge down to the start of the rowing boat island, about 1K at most and back. Punt fully loaded. Knackering.

Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford

Have lived in Oxford for some 25 years now and whilst I have been into the University Museum on Parks Road on many occasions, never ever ventured into the celebrated Pitt Rivers Museum. This is accessed through the University Museum through a door in the rear, and although this door is large, I never found it. (I thought it was in the other side and thats my excuse and I am keeping to it)
Until yesterday.
The weather had already dampened our initial plan was to have a picnic barbecue with the wife's brothers family who were staying with us for the weekend. That changed instead to go punting when the weather was supposed to brighten up later in the afternoon (which it did) but to go into town and have a walk around. I had the bright idea of going to see the Pitt Rivers and so we made our way there around midday.
WHAT AN AMAZING PLACE.
This is a little gem of a museum displaying the contents of various artifacts taken from around the world, built around General Augustus Pitt Rivers's donated collection to the University of Oxford on the condition that a permanent lecturer in anthropology must be appointed. His original donation consisted of approximately 20,000 items, but has now grown to 500,000 items, many of which have been donated by travellers, scholars and missionaries.
We spent 2 hours in there but could easily have been more.

Sea of Tears: Eilen Jewel

Just had my first play and its an excellent cd. Seeing her in October and looking forward to it. 'One Of Those days' and Codeine Arms' stick out on first play as did the cover of 'Shakin All Over' the old Johnny Kidd and the Pirates song, which does suit her guitarist Jerry Milller playing style on his Gretch.
Finally got a cd copy of Peter Gabriel's 'So' through Amazon and it came all the way from Argentina!

Felice Brothers in Oxford (NOT)!!!!!!!

Not anymore, its disappeared from all the listings, still managed to get tickets for the Shepherds Bush Empire, all sold out downstairs so we are up in the circle.

Felice Brothers in Oxford

Jesus Christ, and just down the Cowley Road, I could walk there!
Have to get a ticket (or two, will the wife come?)
And only 3 days after Eilen Jewel, I will be all gigged out.

A small holiday booked

A pretty unremarkable week at least started off brightly enough when I booked a short holiday for the wife and I during the third week in September. We had considered driving down to friends who live an hour or so away from France's south coast nr Montpelier, but with other constraints, like daughter No1 going off to college for the first time the following week and having yet another holiday earlier in the month, I reasoned that I would spend two much time driving down there and back, than having a relaxing break.
I had heard a number of reports that Majorca away from the tourist areas was rather good, so looking at one of our favourite sites for accommodation, Alister Sawday's Special Places found a decent hotel up in the north east of the island for four nights. Get there early on a Monday morning and leave late on Friday on EasyJet and with a car hired we should be well catered for. This all hapened in a space of 15 minutes and it just shows how personal travel has changed with the coming of the internet.
Well this was all right until I read Simon Calder in yesterdays Independent where lack of enough vehicles has meant that holidaymakers are getting to Palma (and other places) to find that the car they had booked was not available, and so faced huge increases to get a car that was available. Hopefully as we are going after all the schools have gone back, then the pressure will be off.

The Barbican (memories)

Booking the Steve Earle concert reminded me of the last time we went to the Barbican was ages ago seeing Antony Sher playing Shylock in an RSC production of Merchant of Venice having seen him earlier as Richard III all hunched up with a black very ragged ended cloak. We were treated to a performance and half from him.
A little search and foung the following on the RSC's site
In 1984, in a feted production of Richard III, Bill Alexander directed Antony Sher in a career-defining performance. The sheer physicality of Sher's acting excited and terrified audiences in equal measure. His athletic use of crutches meant he could scuttle across the stage like a scorpion moving in for the kill. The complexity and cunning of Richard was demonstrated from the very first line of the play. In a vivid description of the power of this scene, Jack Tinker wrote: 'First he surprises us with the unaccustomed sweetness of those opening lines. His crutches and deformity are concealed in an almost lyrical interpretation of the 'glorious summer' he prophesies. Then suddenly two crutches are swung forward and his tiny misshapen humpback body, dressed from neck to toe in shiny clinging black, propels itself forward with the speed of light to the edge of the stage to insist: 'I that am not shaped for sportive tricks. . . '[I.i.14]. Seldom have I seen an actor switch mood with such speed' (The Daily Mail, 21/06/84).

Steve Earle (Barbican November 4th)

Steve Earle

Googling at lunchtime just to see if I could track down a set list from the Lucinda gig and I came across this excellent site, and there to the side of the page was a note telling me that Steve Earle was playing the Barbican in November. Midweek a bit of a blow as it means an overnight stay to be financed but none the less. Went onto the Barbicans ticket site and it was nearly sold out but managed to get front row tickets to the circle so should be a good view.

Lucinda (finally)

Well, well well. The lady is for rocking!
Lucinda was good but overall I was a tad disappointed with the gig at the Empire.
The sense of disappointment was already on me before she had even started as her backing band, Buick 6 were finishing their warm up set as we entered the packed seatless stalls. No doubting their musicianship, with an absolute soild drummer, but god was it heavy. The portents were not good and so it turned out to be as Lucinda led the group back on stage for her set around 9:10.
A blistering opener followed by a further 5 or 6 songs, where not only did she not crack a smile, but had a go at flashing lighting display, photographers in the pit area and members of the audience taking photographs of her. To my left someone cried out 'keep it simple' when she was struggling to get her 'vibe' together, and another wag said something along the lines that she sounded like an old woman. We were about ten feet right in front from her and it was true, make up to a minimum with heavy eyeliner around her eyes, and she had done something to her hair. Either she had washed the blond dye out of her hair, or had done the opposite and dyed her hair brown keeping the odd blond highlight. Don't know which. but as my wife said to me during the gig, she was showing her age.
The audience were behind her though and with some encouragement from them warming to her obvious predicament, she gradually got going. During this period two songs were started again, one after the opening couple of bars but the second well into the first chorus, which I have never experienced at all before. She started to crack the odd smile, and between songs, apologised to the audience saying there are three places that make her nervous, LA, New York and here in London.
Strangely though that trademark cracking in her voice has missing somewhat only being noticeable on Blue, but then even less so that the rendition captured on Live @ the Filimore. This and a number of the quieter songs you could hear the audience singing along with her, but when it came to what I call the 'hard' songs, they were delivered in such a araul noise that their pain was overdone. Hard songs? well these are the ones that she regales against men in her lives, Joy, Come On, and Name Of This Town.
There was no shortage of songs, although to my surprise I think that only three were taken from 'Little Honey' which was the album that Buick 6 backed her on. Car wheels on a Gravel Road was well represented.
A disappointment of another kind was that I had been anticipating her singing Jailhouse Tears. When the stage was being made ready for her, the roadies prepped a mike on a long lead and had left it close to her song stand. (yes she had her own songbook of words and would glance down at it from time to time as if to remind herself what the next verse was about). Elvis Costello had done the duet with her on Little Honey, but who would turn up here? Well no one as they she did not perform it.
To me the highlights were two songs were the bassist dropped the use of the electric bass (he had two and you could tell the mood of the playing by which one he chose) and donned, if thats the word, an upright bass complete with bow. One of the guitarist played keyboards on one song and mandolin on another and with her acoustic guitar, the sound became magical again. The earlier 'keep it simple' plea being proven correct.
An encore followed, because we all wanted to her more and she was at home by now, but the last song said it all. AC/DC's 'It's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll'.

Yes, she wanted to rock and roll, but what the Cambridge folk Festival audience will think of it by the time she closes out the festival this coming Sunday evening, I can only guess.

Now looking back on this performance, but really remembering the first time we had seen her, same venue only 20 months earlier, I cant help thinking that that first one was so much better. It had light and shade, it had her voice with all its imperfections that we so love about her, and it had backing musicians (and an absolute pearler of a guitarist...so much so that I came away wishing I could play like that...I cant play at all btw) that were in tune with her and her songs. Yes we all move on, but Lucinda has taken a strange path as she gets older, from the early years of Folk and Blues, through into a modern country, onto a uncategorisable genre through to rock, and at times hard rock that would live alongside the Iron Maidens of this world. Who would have thought it!

The Set list

1. Real Love
2. Right in Time
3. I Lost It
4. Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
5. Fruits of My Labor
6. Blue
7. Side of the Road
8. Tears of Joy
9. Pineola
10. Drunken Angel
11. Out of Touch
12. Changed the Locks
13. Real Live Bleeding Fingers & Broken Guitar Strings
14. Come On
15. Honey Bee
16. Joy
17. Righteously

Encore

1. Get Right With God
2. It's A Long Way to the Top if You Want to Rock & Roll