white kitten intermission conference call wait video

Am I the only one that sometimes watches these videos when I'm waiting for a conference call to start?

if you know what I mean

Just refreshing my iPod (yes old school) ready for some time away. I think Cults need to be on the playlist.

They've come up through the bandcamp route (a few online tracks preceding success). I know its all a bit retro, but it's certainly not twee, if you know what I mean. Edgy twee, maybe.

If you've not heard them but want to decide on a new band for some great listening this weekend, then here's a track, complete with the listening comments. If you know what I mean.

Cults - You Know What I Mean by cultscultscults

prepared, for once

It's slightly unusual to be prepared to travel several days in advance. It's usually the night before, chucking a few items into a well used bag with wheels.

This time there's already a little heap of clothes and bits ready for tomorrow's departure and I may even put some into the car tonight to save time in the morning.

But for now, it's work.

more marmite

This was in the adjacent cupboard.

You can sort of sense the gloopyness.

marmite moment

I've always liked the advertising for Marmite, along the lines "we don't care whether you like it or not" and the subsequent quotes around "its like Marmite, some do, some don't".

There's always been the Marmite Love and Marmite Hate sites - both with links from Marmite's home site.

It's reached a whole new level now that a whole country has banned it.

The guilty secret cupboard at rashbre central now has a stash of substance that's illegal in Denmark.

a Grimsvötn's gonna fall

I've been sniffing the air to try to detect this year's Icelandic volcano dust heading my way.

Last year's one did create a sort of brown smear in the air but at the moment it's all clear blue up above.

We do already get those mystery days when the car has a sudden layer of glittery dust on it, although I usually put it down to sand storms in a distant desert.

And I'd have thought that planes flying around in Arizona or parts of the Middle East or Africa would also have to filter away various kinds of dust particle?

I suppose its like the British railways with 'wrong kind of snow', where this would be 'wrong kind of grit'?

Anyway, now we've got the Cobra committee deciding what to do as the days tick nervously towards a long weekend when I intend to use my passport.

Well on Dylan's birthday Grimsvötn's 'grim waters' do indeed become a hard rain that's gonna fall.

Quaglino's

We found ourselves in St James at Quaglino's. There's a few traditional London haunts that one goes back to like le Gavroche any time, Langham's for lunch and Quag's in the evening.

All three have secrets for a Londoner, so when we booked Quag's we decided to opt for the Champagne Menu.

This may sound counter-intuitive but actually the whole three courses with bubbly can be enjoyed for a very reasonable all-inclusive amount.

Quaglino's is something of a London institution, tucked away just around the corner from the Ritz and other bits of the high-life.

Along the years its had updates and revisions but continues to feature the upstairs bar, complete with a jazz band from quite early in the evening, and then down the marble sweeping staircase to the buzzy restaurant.

The food is brasserie style and well-prepared. There's plenty of waiters around and good attention although my blur-vision picture above may not do it much justice. And that was just on the berry smash fruit cocktail.

The team style service worked well and we had an enjoyable evening. It was obvious that the people around us were also enjoying themselves and overall there was that pleasant uplifted happy-vibe from the tables.

A place to be a part of the scene and to watch others similarly engaged.

Cheers.

flare path

After my Isle of Wight post referencing Sienna Miller at Steephill Cove, the least we could do was return the favour and visit her in her current West-End show at the Haymarket.

It's Terence Rattigan's wartime story of a Bomber Command airbase in Lincolnshire and the to-ings and fro-ings based in the adjacent hotel. Rattigan himself was a tail-gunner on bombers, so there's some direct realism to parts of the plotline as well as the central story of the actress played by Sienna.

The main plot is a love triangle handled with 1940's embarrassed manners and massive use of understatement, except for moments when the stress of bottled up emotions are allowed to run riot.

We get a spectrum of English class portrayed within the confines of the hotel suite with riotous off-stage bawdiness in the adjacent lounge bar.

The story's backdrop revolves around the air-crew spending time in the hotel between missions. To the front is the playing out of the scenes between Sienna, her movie-star lover and her bomber pilot husband from a whirlwind wartime romance.

Throw in a perilous overnight mission and there's a full and engaging story for the characters.

A very enjoyable production, a warm-hearted ending and some insights into a very different world of some 70 years ago.

all watched over by machines of loving grace

There's a show on during the week about the rise of the machines. Adam Curtis splices together footage and commentary to build a picture of global cybernetics.

I've only seen the trailer, but I know the pre-internet 60's Brautigan poem.

I've always liked the idea of quiet technology - "It just works" - rather than "edit the Registry, touch your nose and re-boot three times/anyone know how to get a picture?" type technology.

But there's a downside to the stillness too. More integration means the machines start to put things together. Miles and miles of files, Links, Connections, Co-incidences. This could be good, but the machine isn't judgemental.

That's where the power and the money switch in.

postcards from the cove

Today was a 'good breakfast' day. Weekday breakfasts are usually hurried and even when I was away in a hotel for part of this week it was still improvisation over style.

So I was in mid-preparation when a newspaper arrived. It fell open in the travel section and lo and behold, there was a full page picture of Steephill Cove.

It's a small beach area we go to on the Isle of Wight and indeed were there a few weeks ago (over the Royal Wedding weekend - I even posted a picture of the view).

You really need to know about it and there isn't really a proper access for vehicles, so it can be kind of secluded.

The little boathouse in the picture is a restaurant - mainly seafood - and rather a sought after spot. The cafe next door serves a decent cuppa and ice cream too.

Steephill is around a twenty minute dawdle along the collapsing cliff edge from Ventnor, which is a kind of rashbre southern. And don't look too closely at neighbours around the Cove. They could include Sienna Miller, Robert Pattinson and Kate Moss.

Here's an aerial shot from our balcony in Ventnor, past the Spyglass Inn and showing the route to Steephill. You can just see the Cove's white Lighthouse structure in the background.

Yikes - It feels as if I'm sending Postcards...

I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow

Watching the old Scorsese documentary of Bob Dylan on playback late in the evening.

It's Dylan's 70th birthday on Tuesday and it was interesting to see the footage of him right back at the beginning.

It's a birthday month around rashbre central too, with new beginnings in the extended family. Emma May is a pretty addition at the current age of zero.

And Saturday we're celebrating Julie's birthday whilst noting card shops doing brisk business for others having birthdays at plus or minus a couple of days from now.

The Dylan documentary starts with observations of those already performing and the way that Dylan picked up his trade. Then the Bleecker Street set commenting on Dylan carrying forward the message from the beat generation. Distilling ideas by observation, literally how the chords were formed and the music plucked. Even I watched his thumb making chords on the E -string.

A little different now, with the virtualisation of much culture for many. There's plenty of tabs of 'e-everything' on Safari, but eMusic, eBooks and eThought are not as direct as Performance.

swagger

The screeching and screeing from the garden was particularly loud this evening as a commotion of newbie starlings more or less tumbled from the bush where they've been keeping a nest.

The birds are already the same size as their parents although they'll use maximum volume to get fed without doing any work themselves.

London is usually associated with pigeons which I regard as the bird for the tourists. A little bit slow and gawking but well suited to photo opportunities.

By comparison the starlings always fly around like formation jet fighters and have a commuter-like sense of purpose.

They hit the ground with a swagger and get right on with whatever they're doing.