cathedral

A festive weekend. Cathedral. Carols. A reading from Dylan Thomas about Christmas. Even some machine generated snow as we left the Cathedral.

...Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving of a moon to light the flying streets.

At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them? Hark the Herald?"

"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew.

We stood close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen . . . And then a small, dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry, eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.

"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said. "Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.

"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that...

full

All my recent blog pix seem to be night-time.

I shall leave London full of tourist shoppers this weekend and head for somewhere with daylight, space on the pavement and carols.

xmas party games

Survivors of rashbre central's previous seasonal festivities will know that there's a certain point when the silly hats and party games make an appearance.

Not the Nintendo / X-Box360 / Playstation variety, but games involving old wrapping paper, sticky tape, fruit and the like. For the convenience of others, here's a few sure fire winners, which can be played at everything from amateur through to full Pro standard.

Required items: Wrapping paper, sticky tape, magazines, newspapers, highlighter pen, pins

1) Guess the name : Yes - simply providing the guests with paper hats or pin on labels which they can't see with the name of a sleb (celebrity) on it. They have to guess with the Yes/No answers. Classed as an icebreaker. Marilyn Monroe, George Bush, Frankenstein, Albert Einstein, Babe Ruth, Jason Bourne, 007, Mickey Mouse, Madonna, Britney Spears, Beyonce. You get the idea.
2) Dress the person : Kinetic Game, two teams: 2-5 minutes. Select someone to be dressed using either old wrapping paper or a couple of recent magazines or newspapers.
3) Kipper racing : multiple teams. needs a long clear indoor space. cut or tear a largish fish shape from a sheet of wrapping paper or anything similar to hand. Add detail such as a hole for the eye, maybe a dorsal fin. Lie them flat on the floor and give other team members further sheets of paper/magazines to use to create air currents to propel the fish from a start line to a distant improvised finishing line.
4) Tell a tale : Pre select some groups of 7 unusual words from a magazine or newspaper article. Hand them to each team and and ask each team member in turn to tell a story using the seven words. Other teams have to try to guess the words.
(Example words from random article today : luckier; heterosexual; chevrolet; banana; promoted; quitter; eggs. and from another page: emissions; cruise; leisurely; overcome; scoop; howling; endurance...you get the idea.)
5) Pass the orange : Why wait until after the dinner has finished to play this game? goes great with coffee.
6) Pictionary: drawing fast pictures based upon words. The boxed set is best for this one.
7) GrEEn GlaSS dOOr : The person in charge suggests playing this and that everyone else can try to be selected to go through the green glass door by suggesting appropriate pairs of things. Things that get in are a pOOl but no water; glaSS but no picture; MiRRor but no reflection (ie the first thing needs a double letter in it.. Play till last person gets it)
8) GGD variants : Play GGD (7) where instead of double letters, each sentence said by the next person has to start with a vowel "...and blah blah bla; ...or blah blah blah ...obviously" and another variant vowel/then consonant and another variant is start with next letter of alphabet.
9) Alphabet Game : Choose topic (Animals, Cars, Candy Bars, Popstars, Drinks). Start at A and round robin through to Z.
10) Stirring the Mush : Announce you are stirring the mush and (eg stand up, sit down, scratch your ear etc). Then start stirring the mush by any hand/body gesture you like. The invite someone to copy. the trick is thay have to do what you did BEFORE you started stirring the mush (eg scratch ear etc). Tell them whether they have passed or not then select next 'victim'. Repeat until all have worked it out.
11) Erect-a-pup : More newspaper for this two in -oner. Part one. Teams. who can make the longest tube in 2 minutes from rolled up paper? Sounds easy. Just watch what happens. Part Two. Now, in another three minutes make a model life sized puppy out of tubes of newspaper. Warning that some puppies will have 3, 5 legs at the end of this.

I think thats enough to get started. No animals harmed in the testing of these entertainments. You'll have to email me for the (ahem) rules of the frying pan and wooden spoon game...and don't forget charades!

Technorati Tags: rashbre, Xmas, party, games, party+games, icebreakers, holiday, christmas, festive, silly, crackers, seasonal, fun, charades, party+animals, erect-a-pup, stir, mush

not my part of town

Yesterday's venue involved some complex logistics known only to me.

I'd had enough lemsib to ward off the worst of my colb and we'd assembled into a moderately noisy group before heading through traffic to a predetermined restaurant.

I'd managed to park rather close to the venue, but there was apparently some problem with the quality of the yellow lines, so I had to move after I'd dropped my car-full in an adjacent dark Gotham-style alley.

I drove to the end of the dark walled road expecting to find a way out but instead there were locked gates. A long reverse between bollards and crazily parked cars and I was back onto a main street and sucked into a vortex of local road systems which somehow took me vast distances from the restaurant.

I eventually found what I thought was the restaurant road again, but was actually another similar looking stretch in another part of town. I parked the car and started the interesting and lengthy walk back to where everyone was sipping their drinks.

The trick was to sidle in nonchalantly as if everything was as I'd planned it. As I reached for my coca cola, they still asked the inevitable "Where have you been?"

zattoo

Keeping yesterday's television theme running, zattoo provides UK freesat and a few euro channels direct to the Mac (or PC). Quite good quality and free at the moment.

Streams live television (after a few ads for gambling etc).

Worth a play.

betamaxmas retro telly

Warning.

This is addictive.

US Television from 1988 on an analogue signal, complete with snow and bad reception.

All the favorites in color (of sorts- NTSC - Never Twice the Same Color).

There's a TV remote and a guide to the channels, as well as a good sprinkling of 1988 advertising.

Click thru at your peril.

Or enjoy.

hallelujah midi karaoke backing track

Since X Factor, I've been getting hits over the last few days for "Hallelujah midi". I don't have such a thing.

or didn't.

Here's a pub casio karaoke style midi hack of the tune for anyone who wants to mess around with it in Garageband or similar and the above screenshot shows my suggested revised instrument settings.

Budding guitarists would want to mute the sunburst telecaster which I have currently set to stun. I've also added some glittery pads to the end part for further amusement.

Here's my Garage Band rendering of the tune. Jeff Buckley's version need not fear.
hallelujah backing track

beware of tricky pigeons

Vicious pigeons intercept Matthew Robins' flyboy in a dream.
Not the twisted Barbican episode, but it needs to be shared.

blue and white lights

Switched on modest outdoor lights this afternoon. Low energy LED still give the impression of an impromptu helicopter landing zone. I hope Santa will find it okay. We've already had two reconnaissance runs with different sleighs around this area.

The tree looks a little like a hostage at the moment, still in its nylon netting.

I know better than to attempt to trim it my way.

dirty party playlists

At this time of the year, there's some need for music compilations for the festive season. Its a lot easier now with playlists, party mode and genius lookups, but there's still a need to seed some tracks to start things.

So when Dirty Classics Vol 2 turned up on Saturday, I thought this would help things along nicely. You'll gather that rashbre central doesn't really do Slade and Wizard, except in a family music quiz interlude, so this little French compilation makes a useful starter mix.

The parisienne track re-editors of Pilooski and friends use unusual sources and seem to go for a clear bassline and a lot of gaps in the sound stage whist delivering easy floor filling. Its very party listenable and sometimes a track or two from this genre gets referenced here or more likely over at Christina Nott's.

This comp album appears to be fully legal with barcodes and everything and uses dusty vinyl to make some interesting and clicky dance funk. Hear JJ Cale's cajun swamp music go disco. Ride my High.

my sweetheart the drunk

Interesting to observe the twittering during X Factor this evening. Many regular sources seemed to become a collective commentary on who should be kicked out and bizarrely which cover of the Leonard Cohen song should be the winning entry.

It reminded me of Jeff Buckley's versions of 'Hallelujah' which are the ones I prefer.

The Simon Cowell based X factor is more about shipping 'units' than anything to do with creativity in music, hence the Christmas release dates of the backing track based family popular singles and 'safe present' CD compilations. In fairness, Alexandra, the winner seemed a pleasant enough person; it will be interesting to see how she handles the pop machine.

Meanwhile, I've been happily listening to Jeff Buckley recordings since the TV-programme finished. Or Jeff Buckley's video here (6 million views + 12,000 comments)

creatures of the night

Our arrangements to meet in Chalk Farm Road, by the tube exit, were imploding as the evening commenced. Andrea and Cliff were running late, John was mopping up the afternoon's excesses as part of an office party and we were the wrong side of town.

So a handful of us met and made our way into the Roundhouse for the evening's gig. Quite a few well known people spotted around the bars and corridors. Remarkably we found Andrea and Cliff in the same bar that we'd selected and a Becks Vier later made our way to seats, with Mel arranging to meet John at the front of the stage in the standing area.

Great gig and then time to move on.

As we were leaving we spotted Lily Allen, Agyness Deyn, Henry Holland and a string of others snaking their way to a different exit for some sort of after show event. We'd already decided to grab a bit to eat; My last meal had been late morning at Ned's Noodles in Westminster and Cliff and Andrea had shared a mid afternoon sandwich and three Jaffa cakes.

Amazingly, John had located Mel and they'd been centre front for the show, and now, despite copious libations, were advising on Camden restaurants at 10:30 in the evening. We'd already thought this might be dicey, what with Christmas celebrations and all, so instead we decided to head back into Soho to the Jazz Cafe on Dean Street. Good plan because there are also plenty of other places nearby, although we managed to get a nice big table without any trauma.

Two or three hours of banter and it was time to head off, into the bustle of the central area, which was in full swing. By this time the public transport had disintegrated and taxis with yellow signs were a vanquished species. So we took a stroll across the centre and back to base by around two o'clock, watching the night unfolding all around us.