Showing posts with label March. Show all posts
Showing posts with label March. Show all posts

Sunday 31 March 2019

An Interlude With Bobzilla


Today while have a wander round the Tyne Bridge and High Level Bridge with Scott we dropped into Arch 16 and we were well impressed by the latest avian based artwork on display. You can see it here on my Instagram feed , I also had to use the loo and was very impressed with the repurposed vinyl single display on the wall (see here).

We had a cafe latte and the guy serving us told us this was all his work and he goes under the name Bobzilla, and apart from being a talented artist (you can see more by visiting his "I Am Bobzilla" site) , he makes a great cup of coffee and is remarkably engaging to talk too. Among other things he is also a DJ and had some excellent sounds playing while we were these. It was so pleasant we had another coffee before departing back across the High Level Bridge to Newcastle.

So you get art , cake , coffee , tea , good sounds and good vibes, a thoroughly excellent half an hour, worth visiting for a coll and chilled atmosphere in which to eat cake and drink coffee.

So it's the day before April Fool's day but it has been a most excellent final day of March , chatting with Bobzilla and enjoying his art and sounds, so continuing with the art theme I've included my slideshow of the Armageddon themes paintings of the North East's greatest artist John Martin. I've just found that the book of his work I have is going for up to £200 on Amazon, like my Handy Wah! compilation on the last post but one.

Anyway hope you have a wonderful week.

Wednesday 27 February 2019

Februarying


Tomorrow is the last day of the month, and I have completed my steps with and it's now just doing a bit extra. The weather is obviously a lot milder even though it's only February. The guy at the back has actually mowed his lawn, though I am putting that off until at least the second day in March.

I look back at some of my old posts and they will be shorter than the first paragraph here. As I keep saying , I like to write a couple of hundred words and I am sure that at school we did 100 word essays, though maybe it was 500 words or a thousand words because one hundred words is about what I have keyed in here so far. How could you write an essay with that little fabric, although as school you could get very creative with very little if it meant more time to play or do what you actually wanted to.

When I am writing technical documents I am a great fan of white space because it draws people in to actually read what you have written. If you present people with dense blocks of text their mind will generally shut off and rail against the amount of words to read. Talking of reading I just downloaded the W. Somerset Maugham Collection from Amazon for a mere 99p. It has a few of his books including "The Magician" (inspired by Aleister Crowley) , "The Moon and Sixpence" (Gauguin), "Of Human Bondage" and more.

So what should we play, what about "Mondo Bondage" by The Tubes......

Saturday 31 March 2018

March Final

It's after ten and this is my last post for March 2018. The weather has been miserable and I couldn't do that much walking although I hit my target for March.

I'm fifty page from completing "The Catcher In The Rye" by JD Salinger an have decided it is worth the effort of completing it, but it's a bit like cleaning gutters or unblocking a drain. It's not pleasant but has to be done. The protagonist is not pleasant. If he were in the UK today he would read the Daily Mail and vote Tory without being articulate eno0ugh to give a reason why. He always finds a reason to despise people especially if they are not well off. He himself is provided for by well to do parents that he is still, for want of a better word, a git. This book makes you think of how to deal with annoyances like Holden Caulfield, a privileged nobody who believes the world owes him whatever he wants. I haven't finished the book so I may be completely wrong in my evaluation, but if you take this book on don't expect to feel better after reading it.

Yesterd I took deliver of "Suffice To Say: The Complete Yachts Collection" on Cherry Red Records  masterminded by Henry Priestman the music behing The Christians. I've moaned that The Yachts had never appeared in digital format apart from the odd track on compilations, but now that has been rectified and I ordered it from the excellent Action Records in Preston, and it really is an excellent set.

It's funny that I was thinking twent quid for three CDs is expensive but it really isn't. In 1975 (I think) I was on the dole and my JSA was £3.25 a week (it was subsidised by undeclared lump work so I could actually live) . Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" came out  and was priced at £3.25. So if albums had kept in line with JSA we'd be paying £80 for an album.

So I will leave you with "Yachting Types" and you can buy the albums mentioned below.

Thursday 1 February 2018

February


I've vaguely wondered why February is so short. We have seven 31 day month , four 30 day months and February which has 28 days (29 in Leap Years). Surely we could have five 31 day months and seven 30 day months (February hitting 21 in a Leap Year). I was thinking maybe it's a sort of apology because people tend to be paid earlier in December and then Janauray seems an awfully long month although you don't get the small benefit of the four week February until March. Basically The Romans were to blame (what did they ever do for us?) and originally Februay was the last month of the year, but with various calendrical reorganizations January became the first month of the year (which is odd because the God Janus had a face at the front and back of his head so he could look backwards and forwards so you would expect that to be the first or last month of the year). Anyway here's some links about February:

Wiki
Why it is short

I recently found some John Niven books I was unaware of "Coma", "Old School:Roman" and "Enfant Terrible". "Old School:Roman" dropped through my letter box and I unwrapped it and looked inside and thought my eyes were not reading properly then realised it was a German edition. I checked the orlder (which had been desptched from Germany and the language is listed as German. C'est La Vie I thought, I'll find the English copy but every copy I found was German. John Niven is Scottish. I checked "Coma" - German. "Enfant Terrible" - French.  It turns out these are retitled versions of existing novels, "Coma" is "The Amateurs", "Old School:Roman" is "The Sunshine Cruise Company", "Enfant Terrible" is "Straight White Male". While "Enfant Terrible" is French it has found it;s way into the English language, but why have the German translations got English titles apart from to maybe catch people out.  Luckily I have German friends so it can find a good home but if I were German if I saw an English title I wouldn;t expect it to be a German language book.

Anyway the last of the bands that have covered "Happy" by The Rolling Stones and I'm going for Spirit's "Animal Zoo" from "The Twelve Dreams of Dr Sardonicus" and classic album from Spirit in their first incarnation.

Enjoy the first day of February 2018, the last time it will ever happen my friends.

Friday 3 March 2017

Marching On

This is my first March post and obviously the month name gives me lots of opportunity to play on words.

Yesterday was Wold Book Day which I thought was a good idea until I found out it was mainly about kids going to school dressed as TV characters. I am shocked by the number of people who simply do not read books and state it as though it's a positive thing. My friend Katie posted on Facebook the questions "What do you prefer music or books?", I answered neither as I love moth and often listen to music while reading a book. I am a slow reader but I certainly feel the benefit of reading.

World Book Night this year have changed their model and I think it's becoming more corporate, so this year is the first year that I won't be involved. It was nice being able to give a "World Book Night" sleeved book but now you have to do it on behalf of an organisation or just give away your own books, which I do on a continual basis anyway.

So it's the first Friday in March , the weekend is here, and it's time to have a great time.

Not sure what song to have so we'll go with The KLF's "America: What Time Is Love?"

Have a good one my friend.