commercial road

Lunchtime in Commercial Road, in the East End of London. This is an area well known for Indian shops and many wholesalers. Its between the City of London (global banks) and Canary Wharf (skyscraper corporates).

The only logical choice lunch was to meet at an Indian restaurant - we'd been in the City, Docklands and I came in by train. The choice of food was delicious and refreshing in the current hot London summer.

Tonight I'm in Dublin.

Tag: london, Commercial Road, city

piper at the gates of dawn

Our Sunday musical interlude opened with the Pink Floyd set playing 'Shine on you crazy diamond' - referencing the recently departed founder member of Pink Floyd - Syd Barrett.

Its difficult now to contextualise the early psychedelia of Floyd with Interstellar Overdrive, Astronomy Domine and later 'Set the controls for the heart of the sun'. The Floyd's first album was named after Syd's favorite chapter from "Wind in the Willows". The much later "dark side of the moon" references the madness which dragged Syd away from the band.

Well you wore out your welcome
With random precision,
Rode on the steel breeze.
Come on you raver, you seer of visions,
Come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!

as the song says.

Tag: Syd Barrett, music, Pink Floyd

shake it up, baby now

This evening we wandered along to Wellington Country Park to see the Beatles, Pink Floyd and T-Rex. Well replicas of them anyway. From around six o'clock in the afternoon we found a pleasant spot of grass and chilled to firstly Pink Floyd, then Marc Bolan and finally by late evening we twisted and shouted to the Beatles. This was a well organised concert with slick changeovers between the acts and some very strong performances. The Pink Floyd numbers were great sunny afternoon music as we lazed upon the grass. Then T-Rex's songs got us cosmically rocking. Finally, the Beatles songs were played with great energy and with some good Beatle-like repartee.

A fun evening. So here's my enlargeable snaps of Paul, George and John. Ringo was hiding in the background, but should come out when I upload the video from my phone.

Paul (playing right handed!)

George with a weeping guitar

John wanting some peace, shoo be doo wah

Tag: beatles, music, live music

twin post

I'm proud to say that for this weekend only, rashbre central is twinned with holyhoses. Twinned you say? Yes, we have decided to adopt the same process as a twin town and post and collect comments together on a single topic.

And the topic is...Donuts!


So, the burning question...Are donuts better with a hole in the middle, or with jam? and what type of coating?
Please play along...
a) add your blog below
b) make a comment
c) visit our twin!

Show you have visited below!


UPDATE:
Well between holyhoses and rashbre central we seem to have around 40 comments and a superbly high quality list of esteemed visitors. If you've missed out on this, its not too late to comment and join this select band - go on - you know you want to!

Tag: rashbre, holyhoses, blogging, twin blog, twlogging, experiment

topless

This afternoon we'd decided to get a large group together run a treasure hunt followed by a pub quiz. We headed off towards a nearby stately home and in teams of four we tried to solve many difficult questions.

Some were about the gardens and some were about the inside of the house. Our team found some very helpful ladies who were visiting to properly study the plants and knew rather a lot of the answers to our complicated questions.

Then, inside the house, a helpful guide took us to look at the areas where we would be most able to solve some more of the clues.

After this, we headed from the house to another nearby spot (an old long hall called the Refectory) and here we enjoyed refreshments and a supper along with the answers to our quiz. My team didn't win anything but it was still a lot of fun. And further fun was that I'd had to borrow the little convertible coupe you see in the picture.

Tag: sunshine, surrey, convertible

grad

jam today

Today - my M6 Motorway traffic jam - UK @ 35 degrees Centigrade

Tag: Wordless Wednesday, England, traffic

pocket full of kryptonite

I've just seen "Superman returns" which has some great visual moments and those rumble effects that make the whole cinema shake. However, I found the film dutiful rather than exhilarating.

In the Reeves movies there were some moments of crackle, like when Lois was killed and Superman had to mess with time to replay the scene and rescue her.

This film has its share of action moments and whizzy visuals, but somehow doesn't have the heart of some of the previous films. I suppose I was hoping for something new, but this is essentially a paraphrase of the first Superman movie, but somehow managing to capture less plotline in more elapsed time. Some of the camerawork is really quite stunning and technically accomplished, but a langorous edit, poor pacing and some wooden acting made me think at the end of the film that I'd rather watch the first Reeves movie again.

cycling on a sunday afternoon

I've just been out for a bicycle ride. Only a few miles, but beautiful sunshine and a chance to head off along some country lanes, finishing in Hartley Wintney, Hampshire.

There were a couple of adjustments to the bike along the way but nothing that the all-in-one bicycle tool couldn't handle.

And everywhere was quiet, with only a few cars, but when closer to houses it was more sounds of barbecues, plates being moved around and generally of people taking advantage of a lazy sunny Sunday.

the sun machine

I've just watched the Glastonbury music festival documentary on the television. Glastonbury has been running with the occasional year off for 35 years!

Last year there were 300,000 people there and I featured the event in my early attempts at blogging!

a scanner darkly

Another part of last week involved me taking some psychometric tests. You know the sort, answer a lot of seemingly unrelated questions and get classified as a certain type of person. I did a Jungian variant here at rashbre central once before with the Briggs Myers result ENFJ (just redid the test and still ENFJ!)

The one I did during the week was about core behaviour and adapted behaviour. To reduce stress its always best to operate as much as possible from core behaviour rather than adapted behaviour (pretending to be different). So don't sniff any Substance D or you might find your left and right cortexes going autonomous.

Be yourself.

a bit of a week

I havn't been blogging as much this week because I have been quite busy. Last weekend was Priddy, with around 40 bands and singers playing at a fine series of gigs in sunny Somerset. A relaxed weekend with a combination of friends, music, sunshine and cider.
Then back home on Sunday evening, a rapid pit stop and away to a hotel where I was hosting a gathering of people from around the world. We had that calm moment whilst we waited for the first people to arrive and the stories of their varied travels.
One evening we had a great barbecue in the pleasant evening sunshine and on another day we hired coaches to travel to a nearby riverside restaurant where we could eat well whilst watching the sun set over Windsor Castle and the river Thames.
A friend in the restaurant was on his way back to his family in Lebanon. They normally live in Denmark. Next day he arrived at Beirut airport one hour before it was bombed. We have been texting as he finds his family and drives a rental car out of the country.
An event like the one I describe has its share of late evenings and I'm afraid I was starting at 07:00 each morning with various breakfast sessions but finishing at around 02:00 or even 03:30 one memorable and somewhat riotous evening.

And then for the end of the week I've been with an American friend as we plan some new ideas before he comes to live in the UK. He has been figuring out schools and houses and this weekend plans to hire a British car for the first time.

And me, I shall be taking it easy this weekend.