taxing day

Busy, blurred day crunching through a few tasks, although some of the items were 'important' rather than 'interesting'.

Just items that needed doing and won't go away.

We all have days like that, I'm sure, and I look forward to the rest of the week being more upbeat.

Yawn.

romeo and juliet

Supper yesterday in Covent Garden, at the Royal Opera House before enjoying the ballet Romeo and Juliet. This is one of London's venues for a proper occasion. We dined before the show in the lofty Auditorium Restaurant and arranged courses to fit with the ballet acts which we watched throughout the evening.

Our good fortune was to enjoy a box for this performance and we had a delightful and comfortable view of the excellent dancing, returning to the champagne bar for the first interval and briefly to the restaurant at the end of Act Two.
This was the Royal Ballet performing the 20th century Kenneth McMillan flowingly choreographed version of Prokoviev's score to Shakespeare's story, so we had plenty of greatness to enjoy. Renaissance Italy, the chance meeting between the couple amidst the bloody feud of Montagues and Capulets, sword fighting, bravado, flamboyant dressy formal ballroom scenes, intimate pas de deux, amazing and dramatic dancing, the first rate orchestra powering the score, superb silken, flowing costumes, a strong and moody set and dramatic lighting. Frankly a flawless performance with great set pieces of ballet and scenes which would make beautiful paintings.

Okay - and the score includes the Alan Sugar theme from the Apprentice(!)

fleet foxes

WIth my manic rushing yesterday, I had to jump into the car in the afternoon to dash some work related material somewhere. I hurriedly grabbed the new Fleet Foxes CD to listen to in my travels. From the opening, it broke into my conscious like an early start to a peaceful weekend.

Strong, harmonious vocals and crisp instrumentation. A kind of chilled american folk style (not country & western) which emanates from Seattle (a favourite place of mine) and delights throughout the album.

In the little piece of paper that dropped out of the sleeve, it said they had recorded a lot of the tracks in various people's homes and that they'd done the recording as much for their own pleasure as anyone else's.

I found it a highly entertaining listen, my criticism being more one of my mindset at the time of playing, when I was in a mad, driven work mode and the guiles of this music had a possibility of slowing down my internal bpm more than I needed. But thats more about me than them.

Its quite difficult to categorize their musical style which is quite varied within folk-based roots, harmonies, gospel like interludes, some quite baroque moments across a wide variety of instruments. I'm reminded of a favourite band of mine, the Decemberists, for their range, albeit a somewhat different form of story telling. And I like bands that can play and sing well and want to cut their own rather unique path.

I see they are playing the meltdown on the South Bank in a couple of weeks; I assume they will get some UK publicity at this time and its good to see some new and interesting folk bands on the scene.

line

Awake 4am trying to dream sleep formulae.
Still hope, still open for business.
A wash of moments flittering,
tugging clock hands,
drifting ever closer to deadline.
Not stopping as reverse
calculations become necessary.
Minutes brush away hours.
Small devices contrive to add delay.
No toner. More paper.
Bright red cut drips onto everything.
Others demand. Norway next Friday. Hotel Monday.
Laura in a church.
Make a neat bundle and a second one.
Large print on white covering.
Car keys. Apply business look.
Start out whilst everyone else
winds down.
Take the second exit at the roundabout and continue to follow the A33.
Felt mountain on M4.
Wobbling Vaux. Two cops outside.
Gates, barrier, rotating lights.
Reflective jacket.
Package. Done.

cheesy post

Here's a picture I took a few days ago...

This is one of those weeks where I'm just about keeping my head above water. I think its a feature of short weeks (courtesy of Bank Holidays) and single days off (Tuesday).

The rest of the week becomes compressed as a consequence of the missing days. So by Friday, when this post should bip its way into the blogosphere, I'm hoping that I'll be back on top of whatever it is I'm doing.

I don't very often pre-post, but can't resist experimenting with blogger's post-dated function, hence creating this on Wednesday whilst sipping tea before diving back into the maelstrom.

If I really had time to drop into the Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street on Friday evening then I'd be making progress, but I'll have to leave it for the inquisitive tourists. It'll still be there the next time I'm passing, judging by its heritage.

white out

Working hard to reduce the panic attacks.

an eco-friendly recycled post

gone fishing...

...well not really, I don't think I'd have the patience.

But I'm probably going to be rather busy for the next few days and that may impact my attempts to string words together for blogging.

I don't have any 'backup' entries at the moment so anything that appears until the weekend will be even more opportunistic than usual.

East coast

Today's part of the extended Bank Holiday involved a trip to the seaside. We picked a particular location over leisurely breakfast as a casual, last minute change of plan.

Arriving, the sun had forgotten to shine and the place was rather more 'atmospheric' as a result. We wandered about looking at the sea and the deserted beaches before seeking a point for refreshment.

Cutting through an alley back to the small high street, we were greeted by voices from behind us and without any prior discussion, there was Ray the Sax and Val, who'd made completely independent plans to visit the same place.

I think I'd only ever been to the small town maybe once or twice before, never talked about it and only selected it on a whim this morning. Ray and Val had planned to visit another place which had a power outage thus moving along the coast, creating this tiny frame of co-incidence.

music 2.0?

We are still away at a country retreat, last night listening to midnight owls and today watching more rain sweep across the Bank Holiday countryside.

The chillout time has also given me a chance to make lazy but satisfying progress on one of my sundry non-work projects, of which there will be more later, as they say.

Aside from that project, I've also said I'll help with some sound mixing but that also requires a block of time and my next few weekends already seem to be getting rather busy. So I'm interested in the sparse information about the new Music 2.0 format just announced which uses a new format called MT9, where the individual instruments in an mp3 like stream can be volume adjusted. Like knocking out the vocals or the lead guitar. Karaoke City.

The specifications are in Chinese at the moment, so I've struggled a bit to follow it, but it seems to include mastering, distribution and licencing models.

I can't imagine most people will want to fiddle with the individual track levels, so I guess it has a specialised audience, and if its driven from an mp3 like format then I wonder if it would be good enough for anyone 'serious' about mixing?

We shall see.

wet

Away for this rainy weekend, which has created some changes of plan.

I can watch the rain hitting the table outside and take solace that the weather is no better for the Grand Prix in Monaco where they keep changing tyres and (less understandably) nose-cones.

Quite a contrast from yesterday's Pimms outdoors whilst watching the swans guarding their cygnets.

long weekend

Made the most of the Saturday sunshine, because, true to form, I'm told that the rest of the weekend will be damp. So here's some water, in the right place, in a scenic hole in the ground, seen during today's wanderings.

stacked

Earning one's bread in the City has its share of occupational hazards, like the occasional lunch, business related drink or inevitable meeting in a coffee shop somewhere. Each of these little events can generate new ideas and things to do, so that by the end of a week like this one, I've still got a stack of 'to dos' to get 'done' before I can settle into the weekend.

Sometimes, like now when I'm sitting in Paternoster Square quietly eating a sandwich from M&S, I can clear my head for a few minutes before the next item appears in the hopper. It may seem slightly anti-social, sitting here alone, but its curiously refreshing.

Shoo, pigeons, its mine.