London Olympics Handover Stage

Cutting through from Pimlico towards the West End, I spotted the Olympics Stage being assembled for the handover ceremony on Sunday. Actually we were running for a taxi when I took this.

I'll be at a barbecue whilst the ceremony is happening, but there's been various London rehearsals and soundchecks throughout Friday to get things ready.

I'm amused to see that one of the songs in the handover will be "I can see clearly now".

The stage is at an angle right outside Buckingham Palace and I'm sure the positioining is partly for televisual convenience. The Mall was already closed to traffic from Thursday. I assume there will be repeater screens for the crowds on the Mall to watch what is happening, because I don't think too many will be able to get close to the stage area for this one.

Avenue Q

Starting the day with Eggs Benedict for a breakfast meeting at the Wolseley in Piccadilly, then across to Canary Wharf, back to Chelsea and onward to -er- Avenue Q for some smutty puppetry.

Avenue Q has been running in London for about two or three years and has been 'on the list' to see all the while. With muppets now in their twenties, it opens with a song about being 22, unemployed with a degree in English Lit. and moves through the trials and tribulations of living in apartments. The material is presented in a Sesame Street style linked with adult themes. Great, well paced show, slick acting and plenty of laughs. Checkout the third option below for a taste...

to control playback use right click

brown box

This could have been a wordless Wednesday. I was certainly speechless.

I arrived at tonight's hotel and was booked into a tiny can't swing cat room with an aircon stood with its hose sticking out of the window. The tired array of furniture along the edge of the bed was such that the only way to the desk was by climbing over things. I decided to tell them that I was unhappy, but it was then that I noticed there was no phone in the room.

So I called reception on my cellphone. They were suitably apologetic about everything and offered me a range of people to come to fix everything or a change of room. At 23:00, I really didn't want lots of interruptions and changes because it was already late and I had a 05:45 start the next morning. They must rely on weary business travellers to get any custom at this well known hotel and i can't imagine how they can claim a 'four star deluxe' rating.

packing density

Back to Norway for a couple of days. Car at Heathrow with clothes ready for my next trip, allowing me to operate at the hand luggage level for the rest of the week. For some reason Stavanger downtown is full, so I'm staying at an airport hotel. I call it white-boxing when I go from hotels to meeting rooms to hotels. That's me for the next few days.

batteried

A short time ago, my day to day watch battery ran down, so I put it in the pile with all of the other watches with flat batteries. "I really must get it fixed", I was thinking as I wound a trusty analogue watch as a replacement.

The previous time, I ended up buying an inexpensive watch because I was stranded somewhere 'in transit' and when I did eventually get it fixed, the jewellers wanted to charge me a large number of guineas.

So this time I spotted the rack in a store with the tiny batteries. "Easy", I thought, as I looked at all the bubble packs with little pictures of watches on them. But at £1.29, I decided to take a few different sizes of Golden Power Super Silver Oxide, thinking I'd get one to fix my watch and if I was really lucky I'd also be able use the surplus in other defunct watches.

One Swiss Army knife later I'd opened the silent watch and did manage to locate a battery half the thickness of the dead one, which has made the watch go again. But none of the other four will actually fit any of the other broken watches. I'm still 'quids in' compared with the cufflinkeried jewellers, but also slightly annoyed that there's so many different sizes. And that's before I noticed that Amazon sell ten watch batteries for £1.99.

sawdust haze is all around, don't know if I am up or down

Arty shot today by breathing on the glass before I took the picture. I'm trying to recreate the sawdust and paint haze which is still permeating the area where the wardrobe is under construction.

By the time its finished, most of the interior will be hidden by clothes and hopefully by new sliding doors.

Don't breathe in.

Nikon D90 and D3x preview

From time to time rashbre central has spun off other sites; the short term 'rashbre unhinged' which is still around but most of the content has been hidden under a lumpy rug. Then there was 'Dylan Moran for Doctor Who', the collaboration with Christina (temporarily stalled) and even the rather dubious rashbre1.

But now...just when you thought it was safe to get back onto the internet...rashbre snapped. Naturally this is a photographic site self-evident from the title and I'll hope to use it to muse - occasionally- on things photographic.

This site - rashbre central - will continue to be my ten minutes a day blog and the other one will be more like a journal around my fledgling attempts to take snaps whilst holding the camera the right way around.

I'm respectful of the chymical ways of photography, but really want to think about what works well now, in the world of digital, alongside the works of master photographers from the past and the great work of blogging companions who today turn in some fine results.

At this stage it feels like I've just sprocketed up a spool of blank film over on the other site. It will be interesting to see how it eventually develops!

p.s. proper nikon rumours here

therapy

Television this evening, as I've been busy till late all week and the sawdust from the recent wardrobe reconstruction has somehow tripped my hay fever symptoms suggesting a quiet evening with antihistamines.

Anyway, I was filtering advertisements whilst waiting for the excellent Scottish vignette 'Emo' play about a Uni burnout turned furniture store salesman, complete with Clare Grogan and dues paid to Gregory's Girl.

And spotted the SEAT car ad with its rip of 'this boy needs therapy'. Nowadays I wonder if the real originators of these ideas (in this case, the Avalanches) get any reward whilst the often Dutch reproduction houses can legally copy anything for a fee? Yet perhaps this is even more of a conundrum because the Avalanches sampled widely to make their original recording.

But the other advertisement I noticed was for a supermarket chain and fronted by the short car crash one from Top Gear. Well scripted storyline, but if I hadn't concentrated at the end, I don't think I would have known which chain it was promoting.

Whereas the NTSC redubbed Chevrolet 'unicorn' SUV fantasy ad works well and even helps me remember the brand, but doesn't move me any closer to wanting to buy one.

Have it all.



this boy needs therapy here - please admire 'Frontier Psychiatrist'

getting a buzz

I finished around 2 am last night instead of three and have been slaving away today as well. The only 'non phone' company I've had today was when a couple of inquisitive wasps showed up to smell the coffee. I've noticed before that they seem particularly partial to freshly ground columbian and first they were buzzing around outside the opened window and then snuck in for a look. A third one was hovering around outside doing that fast 'U' shaped flight pattern.

Somebody will know why wasps like the smell of 'real' coffee; I know its something that seems to attract them (or at least the ones around here). After they had a good walk around the mug, I eventually tipped the last of the coffee away and within a couple of minutes they'd both headed back to the window and off into the sky.

(reconstruction): you'll have to imagine the wasp inside the mug

not beijing olympic results service, just wordless wednesday

Working till 3am. Need to listen to some of this

sliding

Some noise today whilst the above space begins its transformation into a wardrobe.

After the lounge sofa adventure last year, when the brown sofa from Italy arrived but was giallo (yellow), and 10 weeks later the replacement arrived but was the wrong shape, then perhaps this episode would all run smoothly.

Indeed, the first part proceeded well until the measuring for the doors took place.

Er.


They are the wrong size.
Van trip required.

Short term airy space until the adjusted doors are ready.

Its almost exactly a year since the yellow sofa was finally replaced.

About time for another domestic furnishings drama.

confiture

Sometimes life is a bowl of cherries and at other times it has to be a single strawberry wrapped in milk and white chocolate decorated to look like a tuxedo.

At the moment I'm imagining the latter as an offset to various worldly complexities.