Call yourself an Elbow fan?

One of the albums of the year, right? [right, Prycer?]

You've bought the cd, it's crossed over into that meal time listening/pile of cd's by the kitchen stereo, where do you go from there? 

Well, you go and see them play what you feel to be one of the gigs of the year. That's what you do..

Then what? From the merch stall you might buy an arty book/tour souvenir? One step ahead of you, chum..

But... Prycer has taken it onto a new Elbow appreciating level....

Boom! How d'ya like them hops?

Oh yeah, you like that don't you

Boomchickawaawaa..

The full reveal...

Many thanks to Prycer. A generous gent.

Going through a Ben Folds phase..

Ben Folds - Brick (Radio Mix)

Latte and a magazine in the Map Centre Cafe...

Flat White and a NZD 20 note. A brief bit of kiwiana at Costa this morning..

Salad, yeah? Stalky stalky bits.

If you ever need cheering up, watch this...




You're welcome.

R.E.M. Galveston

I've been looking for this for ages. I saw this once (and once only) when the tv programme first came out. I had never heard this tune before but just hearing this 30 seconds of it made me seek out the original on vinyl...

[File under 'rampant unchecked nostalgia']

What is a blog?

What is a blog? I am not really sure. Different things to different people. For me, it is something that I don't really think about as something for other people to see. It's primarily a collection of things that interest me, odd things and things that i want to remember. Like a diary i suppose. I was thinking about this the other day. When we moved to NZ I used to keep a journal/diary thing. It wasn't so much written down stuff as it was a blank book that I stuck ticket stubs and photos in to remind me of the things we did.

Clearing out some stuff from home (see earlier blog about football programmes) turned up a few similar items to the things I used to put in the NZ journal. Why have I kept this stuff so long? There's no value to it.    It's not even things that I dwell on for that long when I actually come across them again.

If this blog is just a way of me recording things primarily for my own benefit then wouldn't it make sense to blog these artefacts, and kick them up into the 'cloud'? That way I could chuck out what are actually meaningless bits of paper, but could still retain that brief blast of nostalgia when I come across the photos of the items on old posts from the blog.

And when I get older (if I am still putting random photos on a blog) I can look back on a few decades of random thoughts and random photos of random pictures of random bits of paper. And, providing that Google doesn't go bust and junk all the info from their particular bit of the cloud then these digitised memories will carry on somewhere...forever? 

So for purely selfish nostalgia and for zero interest to anyone else...

Here is, with no particular meaning or relevance...

The contract for my first job, for the local supermarket. £2.20 an hour? Sharks.

Some ticket stubs from when we started to go to the cinema at Basingstoke on a regular basis. 1994. A golden age of cinema. Ace Ventura, Cool Runnings, The Mask. I saw them all. Yes, these can definitely go in the bin now. 17yrs i've had these. [why?] Still, nice depth of field shenanigans going on here..

More to follow..

Well and truly in the Apple cult..

"If I hadn't seen such riches i could live with being poor". Who said that then? James, I think.

Alternatively..

'If I hadn't ever used a macbook i could live with windows vista'. There. I said it. I am a fully paid up Apple cult member. Ah well. 

I received a one off bespoke furniture commission on Saturday. "Do you think you could put up a shelf to fit that gap today?" "What, today, as in 'finish it today'?" "Yup" "What, the day before C's party when we'll be in a stress about getting things ready?" "Yes, it'll be easy!" "Errrm"

So I went away and researched the piece, sent some samples back to the customer and came up with a design. Or rather i measured the space and scribbled the details on a scrap of paper that i scrumpled up and stuffed in my back pocket and off to B&Q I duly went.  Bit of wood bought and cut. Support bits cut and tapered and drilled. Bit of varnishing done... 

Here is the varnished bit compared to an unvarnished bit..

And here is the main plank thing....

And I'd love to say 'bish bosh bash' it is now up on the wall and rocking some paperbacks and photo frames...but...it's not. [And I probably wouldn't say 'bish bosh bash' in any case.]

More updates soon on how it's going... (I know this isn't that interesting but Prycer asked me to put some pictures of the shelf up on the blog)

This is so good.. Agree?