hibiscus

I wonder if its a reaction to the embarrassment of a few days ago that has caused Gordon Brown to make his latest Public Relations move?

For those that missed the first story, which was well publicised at the time in the London papers, Gordon Brown somehow endorsed tourist travel to Fiji. Furthermore the picture used and which is still on the Fiji website shows Gordon with a bright red flower behind his ear.

In case any Londoners missed this, it was helpfully projected onto the side of the Houses of Parliament during the week as well by some people protesting about this type of Prime Ministerial endorsement. Neighbouring countries to Fiji, such as Australia and New Zealand are particularly aggrieved because of the military dictatorship currently running Fiji, since the coup in 2006. And of course the PM's Press Office wanted to put the record straight and explained that the sign-off to do this PR endorsement had been done at the wrong level.

So the latest idea by Gordon's office has been to spice up his public relations by the hiring (unpaid) of Jennifer Moses, whose CV includes being a former non executive director of Agent Provocateur, the well known purveyor of fine lingerie.

So whether Gordon will soon be branching out into a variation of Dolly's Diary remains to be seen, although perhaps the practical advice will instead come from Jennifer's prior background with Goldman Sachs (who have other links into Number 10) or the CentreForum think tank which is a critic of Labour policies.
Jennifer's other recent claims to fame include being the court case victim who didn't notice an assistant has siphoned £1m from her bank account. And in other recent news her investment banker husband's company hedge fund just collapsed as a result of sub-prime bets in the USA.

Maybe the new advice will prevent Gordon from any further accidental tie ins with military juntas, although I notice that Dolly from Agent Provocateur has somehow become tied up whilst kneading the dough.

Technorati Tags: rashbre, gordon+brown, brown, fiji, dictator, blooper, parliament, PR, press, fauxpas

brief encounter

A fine evening's entertaiment yesterday. I shall have to write about the Tiger Tiger part separately though. We decided to see the recent adaptation of 'Brief Encounter' which is running in the Cinema in the Haymarket, which is being used as a theatre for this show.

Its one of those immersive events. You walk into the foyer of a 1930's cinema, with uniformed usherettes and tea and cucumbers being served amongst the popcorn. The whole production is a delight, the actors move around in the audience, there's black and white film inserts shown, a superb ensemble band and a kind of relaxed excellence about the whole production.

There's rock cakes, platform refreshments served by a lad, subsidiary romances alongside the main event and all manner of steamy evocations of the era. As a play it balances the action of the main affair between the chiselled faced doctor played by Tristan Sturrock and the desparate housewife of Naomi Frederick who goes shopping via the train every Thursday.

Alongside them are other members of the excellent Kneehigh ensemble who hail from Cornwall and are each multi-talented at acting, movement, singing and general musicianship.

Before it starts formally, with its own special Certficate and the clatter of a 1930's projector, we get tunes and songs from the musicians, and then again in the interval, along with a series of black and white movie advertisements for stain removers and toupees. A few moments of very entertaining front of curtain stage acts decoy us through set changes too.

The cinema effects are used well, including the actors on stage fusing with those on screen such as when the greyness of an unexciting marriage is portrayed.

I found the show very captivating, and the time flew by. There was plenty of applause at the end and a refrain of one of the excellent (mainly Noel Coward penned) songs.

If you get a chance, its one to see. Trailer here

Technorati Tags: rashbre, brief, encounter, brief+encounter, noel+coward, haymarket, london, theatre, kneehigh, tristan+sturrock, naomi+frederick

yellow teeth

They are trapped
somewhere outside;
silently pressed between others in anonymity
suffocating in unwarranted suppression.

They are trapped
yellow teeth with power of fangs
to tear through thought
ripping and cajoling uncomfortable ideas.

They are trapped
by casual throw and subtle collapse
ideals pinned to dead spiders and rotting leaves
preventing 6pm hopscotch and dustbin jinks.

They are trapped
in 60's red with three and a tanner looks
merseyful sounds rioting for exposure
beneath left luggage dereliction.

And then today
an upstart child, a shiny relation
letterbox squeaked then shrieked for touch.
The captive nods release as words noisily escape.


Since a post last week, I've been trying to find the 'The Mersey Sound' poetry book stashed somewhere in the garage. Eventually I gave up but then today a little envelope containing a silver covered copy arrived. Above is my minor attempt to emulate some of the great words.

Technorati Tags: rashbre, poetry, mersey, sound, henri, mcgough, patten, yellow, teeth

more tiping

I use computers a fair bit and am conversant with desktop operating systems like Windows, OS/X and Linux. The last two or three days I've been writing something for work and I've been using a very common word processor that most people use on a very common operating system that probably most people still use.

What has been annoying is the number of little buglets in the course of some fairly rudimentary word processing. Some examples include:

- Copying tables from a spreadsheet into the document and getting different formatting results from the same copy and paste operation.
- Having the document suddenly flip into the Greek character set for part of the text
- Having pieces of the text 'lock' so that they cannot be edited
- Deleting a character and watching a whole preceding section reformat itself into a different style
- Adding a line between two existing lines and seeing the text style change in the new insertion

I could go on, but I suppose that is enough. I use these products all the time and pity the more casual user who may not know how to reformat and remove problems.

I'm guessing that the products concerned are deemed 'good enough'. It still seems wrong though, that a fairly basic requirement like formatted typing would have these difficulties. Or am I alone with these problems?

intercalary

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

The first leap day experienced by rashbre central's blog.

Helps make the year 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 12 seconds, or so I'm told.

Technorati Tags: rashbre, leap, year, leapyear

photography

A reflective topic thats 'cropped' up few times lately is the 'colourful' one of whether to mess around with photos after they've been captured.

Here's some of us, London bloggers, earlier in the week and upstairs in the Camel and Artichoke, where the topic of illustration did pop up in a couple of conversations. Many proper photographers explain they will try to get the picture framed fully and then not manipulate the final image more than the barest minimum when its published.

I'm not talking about making starlets look less blemished or having different proportions, just generally cleaning or roughing up an image for whatever use.

For me this creates something of a dilemma. I like the idea of taking properly framed pictures, but I'm afraid much of the time they are 'grabs' taken on the fly, with random devices from mobile phones through to SLRs.

So I suppose I'm a bit too digital to be a proper photographer. I seldom post to this blog without a crop, a bit of fake blur, some saturation, a bipping of the contrast and so forth.

I suppose I see it as part of the process, like correcting my speling and tiping.

Technorati Tags: rashbre, london, bloggers, photography, photoshop, crop,

training

Many Londoners read on trains, which assists to avoid eye contact with other passengers, both in the tube and on the overground.

Today, though, instead of browsing METRO and the Stannit, I thought I'd press my phone to the window and hit 'record' for a short part of this journey. Here's a snippet of a commuter line from the deceptively sunny countryside, via Clapham Junction and into Waterloo.

With the accompaniment of a Dire Straits vs Sex Pistols vs The Hives mashup.

Enjoy?

Technorati Tags: rashbre, london, commute, train, mashup, clapham, waterloo, woking, surrey

standing in the way of control

Oh, Prawns, I'd planned an early night but then I noticed 'Backbeat' on Film4 so I've started watching the mid 90's version of the mop-headed 5 piece Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, Best and Sutcliffe Beatles. I'm semi wondering whether it should have been shot in monochrome.

I'd watch Beatle's stuff (even without any of their songs - presumably because of royalties) over Elvis anytime.

This movie includes Astrid Kirschherr who created many of the early photos (When we was fab), amongst other things.

And then there's the Reeperbahn, Kaiserkeller, Top Ten Club, Seeleute, Rickenbacker geetars, usw.

Einen Eindruck der Zeit viel verursachen.

quaking

I somehow missed the earthquake which was supposed to have shaken the UK yesterday. I've been in proper earthquake zones before, including places like the San Andreas Fault where they give visitors briefings about what to do in the regularly occurring earthquakes.

One time I remember quite vividly was when I was with some friends in a shopping mall somewhere around Seattle. We'd all been er - drinking - and were tucked away at the back of a bar. At some point during the evening there was a series of events a little like a ship turning in a big swell of a sea, but at the time I thought it was more to do with a combination of jet-lag and alcohol. The gang I was with were similarly oblivious.

For whatever reason, we decided to leave the mall, in our own time and fairly undramatically. As we got to the outside, we could see fire engines, police cars and flashing lights. It unfolded that there had been an earthquake of moderate severity and the ship-like effects were the building's way of handling the waves as the earth literally moved.

We had some kind of bus to return us to our hotel and sure enough, the radio was filled with the story. If only we'd all paid more attention when it was happening.

more than twitter

Cutting back across Waterloo station forecourt at around 23:00 last night, where the busy people were transitioning from shopping in Marks and Spencers to the remaining few pie and sandwich bars that were still trading.

I'd been in the diverse mix of the London Bloggers, where I managed to spend a little more time than at the last event. Whereas the last time there were considerable blogging artifacts in evidence, this time most people seemed to be in the moment for a chat and whilst there will no doubt be photos, it didn't feel like one was being overly recorded.

Notable is the diversity amongst the attendees and the broad range of topics covered, including commerce, music, photography, parties, travel, advertising, protests in London, great alleyways of the City and all manner of other chatter.

Organiser Andy has managed to achieve a mix of 'regulars' and a good number of newbies at these events which can also help accelerate one's appreciation of the use of social networking.

where's the camel?

Another meeting of London bloggers tonight.

The regular attendees all seemed to have little MOO cards referencing their blogs last time and several attendees had cameras and even video recorders to capture aspects of the event.

I plan to drop by at some point during the evening.