tasting the tactical nuclear penguin

Somewhere along the way we decided to drop into the fairly new Brewdog bar. I'd spotted it a couple of days ago and wondered whether they'd sell tactical nuclear penguin.

My accomplices were not familiar with this particular beverage, nor indeed with the more modest 'Tokyo*' which was actually available in pint glasses.

We decided to order the TNP and also some 'Sink the Bismarck', which was a slightly stronger ale. It was the result of a competition between the breweries, where Brewdog produced TNP at 32.5% and then a German company upped the game with some kind of ice-pilsner. That led to the 41% Sink the Bismarck.

A later beer called 'End of History' was also produced at 57%, but only 12 bottles were ever made.

So what does Tactical Nuclear Penguin taste like?

Imagine a treacle mining expedition towards the centre of the earth, perhaps with a peat smoke wafting through the bore holes. You get the idea.

I was in the minority in our group in sort of preferring the Penguin to the ship, which had an even more intense flavour but for which the extra 9% alcohol didn't seem to advance the cause more than to beat the other brewery.

Interestingly, neither the Penguin nor the Bismarck were displayed on the wall behind the bar and we had to furtively ask for them.

*Tokyo is around 18% ABV

Trashed Organ Fringe: Rob Heron and Tea Pad Orchestra

Sunday saw us along at the Cumberland Arms, which was running its ten year birthday celebration. A packed and lively scene, which included a wide range of musicians performing.

Here's Rob Heron and the Tea Pad Orchestra, although we've cheated slightly and included a number from their set at Trashed Organ.

Trashed Organ Fringe : Lizzie Whyman

A short extract from Lizzie's set, from the Trashed Organ 'We're all mad here' readings at the Central.

You'll see from the video that Lizzie also has a book 'Touchpiece' published and available on Amazon here

I visit Elizabeth Price - Here

Friday's weather changed as I moved from upstairs to downstairs, to the extent that I changed my plan as I walked through the revolving doors.

Instead of left, along the river, I flâneured straight ahead and soon found myself in the gallery where one of the Turner candidates has a show.

It's Elizabeth Price's show called 'Here' and the entrance was completely dark, leading into various large rooms of shadowy figures.

Elizabeth's work is immersive large format video, mainly featuring objects, sharp soundtracks and an overlaid textual narrative.

I watched three - one about the car transporter that sank bearing its cargo of 2500 Volvo cars. Another was called 'Choir' and referenced the area of a church, the singing ensemble and the quire of paper. And third was a piece entitled 'User Group Disco', which described taxonomies for consumer artifacts, with often kitsch qualities.

I came in on Choir, which in its first sequences featured a percussive handclap as a soundscape accompanying fast cut images and slower messages. This worked well and introduced some of the secular and bawdy aspects of church carvings. There was a section describing the three dimensional geometry of church spaces, which also played to my disorientation in the dark space I'd entered. The piece later developed into curves and linked hand gestures, then via lo-fi re-filmed singing from the Shangri Las and then towards a major store fire that occurred in Manchester but where the same gestures could be seen.

Something that worked well was the way the very dark space was lit by the often dark high resolution images. A kind of HAL/Alien/Silent Running space freighter image flicked through my mind for two of the exhibits.

The final image of Choir was of burning furniture. As I left to enter another space I found myself testing the gallery boundary with outstretched hands in case I was crossing via a barrier of glass or netting.

The User Group Disco used a lot of 'Business PowerPoint talk' about core mechanisms, strategic imperatives and flows. Words we all know and can assemble into clever diagrams but still need to write down to remember the models. We were being talked to through the images and text, like a sort of machine communication. It talked in the 'We' and 'You' format. Another reflection of a HAL, maybe? I wondered who the 'We' was that was creating these messages. I mused whether the text should have been reversed so that we could actually be inside the head of the mechanism projecting to us - a sort of play on the 'Here', but maybe people would just think the projector was malfunctioning.

The accompanying visuals were moodily shot artifacts from a kind of 'Ideal Home Show' living supplement. Banana racks, egg whisks and other shiny shiny gadgets.

But we were also told that the museum holding these items still contained monsters.

Maybe my space freighter thoughts were right after all?

Trashed Organ Fringe : Ged Robinson & Degna Stone with Adam James Cooper

An extract from the Trashed Organ Fringe collaborations - "I don't think we've met?" - this time with poet Degna and musicians Ged and Adam collaborating.

Trashed Organ plays right to the curfew

A short jazzy extract from Day Four of Trashed Organ's brilliant Fringe NCLA Festival of Belonging. Thursday's theme was "I don't think we've met" and all of the pieces were collaborations.

In addition to the individual performances, the evening featured Fiona's Jazz Express, who are seen playing here right up to the performance curfew.

We've oodles of other videos and dozens of lovely pictures from Jonathan Parker's Spurious Nonsense, so expect a few more postings about the event over the next few days.

Unless I get trapped in an Italian restaurant or another bar full of musicians or even a play about a Geordie Sinatra (for example).

Kalagora at the Festival of Belonging

Kalagora arrives in New York and is given a hard time by Homeland Security. We latch into a fast moving story which flashes back to the whirling colours of Mumbai. Drama in a cigarette purchase for a wide eyed out of towner.

Then later and past the immigration officials to hedonistic living large in New York. Made up social security numbers and different type of spin surviving not as homeless, but maybe as an experimental lifestyle.

Before time in the cultural mix of London's east end. Hackney, Mile End, Shoreditch, Whitechapel, Bethnal Green.

It's an energy packed show, written and performed by Siddharta Bose and this time in The Central, where we'd tried to create the slightly makeshift impression of a hybrid of Mumbai, Manhattan and Brick Lane.

This was a tight script. Fast paced, bursting with ideas, with rich impressions and still telling a roller-coaster story. I was there. This was a conversation.

Ingenious and unforgettable.

Check out Jonathan Parker's beautiful pictures from the event at Trashed Organ.

flâneur a while with the trashed

It's a few days of sensory overload at the moment, with the Trashed Organ Fringe event in full swing. It was also mentioned in the Guardian on Tuesday, where it features as part of the wider Festival of Belonging.

I arrived on Monday evening and it was one of those high speed hotel turn arounds where I had eight minutes from arriving in the room to the point where I had to meet outside a certain theatre at a designated time.

I made it, but the bag wasn't unpacked.

Then it was full on until about one o'clock in the morning and a similar process repeated on Tuesday.

We even managed to get back to the local Chinese take away after it had closed. Almost unheard of.

When I get a few more moments I will post something about the event. Suffice to say it's getting well received critiques from most attendees and some have already been back for extra helpings the next evening.

Monday was 'We're all mad here' - not a stretch for some of us and then Tuesday was a relatively sober themed and enthralling evening encompassing 'Castles, Collieries and Coastlines' mixed with some flâneur.

Today I took off for a while to wander myself both through the city and also the rugged areas described in yesterday's sessions, including the deserted shipyards, a busy North Sea cable plant, part of Hadrian's wall, the fish quay area of North Shields and the lighthouse at St Mary's Island.

And in another hour or so the next evening starts, with us preparing for Siddhartha Bose's Kalagora which is about journeying from the street surrealism of Mumbai to London’s East End via Manhattan. That's at 7pm, ahead of the Trashed Organ event.

Tonight its "Anywhere I lay my head" - a Tom Waits reference, and entirely appropriate.

OM-D arrives and is instant good fun

Keeping this blog running requires a fairly steady stream of pictures and some will know I dabble with photography alongside my various other interests.

The pictures that make it to the blog are from a mixture of sources from fancy DSLRs, an occasional film shot, some iPhone (the London shots this week are from the iPhone) and various point and shoot clickers.

I suppose my real preference is still cameras with viewfinders, having learned to take pictures using an Olympus film camera and even to develop the snaps in a dark room with smelly chemicals and contact strips.

So when the renaissance of the Olympus OM series was announced a short time ago, I thought I'd better take a look. It's obviously not as highly specified as the latest Nikons and Canons, with its smaller sensor and so on, but for a lot of purposes that misses the point.

What is great about it is that it provides a small form factor DSLR like experience, even if it doesn't have a proper mirror system inside - instead using electronics to create the viewfinder image.

I've not had time to have a proper play yet, but I'm already intrigued with the possibilities. It comes with a pretty reasonable 12-50mm lens (which is 24-100mm in 35mm speak). The lens is also light weight but well built, achieved by keeping the aperture in the range f3.5-f6.3).

I haven't even set up the 'RAW' mode yet, so here's a quick 'through the window' shot as a test.

The fun is also to be able to use my other micro 4/3 lenses with it - which are from my Lumix camera and give me some tiny but wide aperture primes - a 14mm f2.5 and a 20mm f1.8.

And then there's the little adapter I have which lets me clip old-school Olympus OM Zuiko lenses onto the camera as well.

Because of the 2:1 ratio of their focal length on a 4/3, I wondered if this would be very useful, but I can already say it is. The old lenses are generally quite small (thats the Olympus way) but open up some interesting options, like my old 55mm f1.2 and my £10 50mm f1.8. I have quite a few of these lenses and the camera breathes new life into them.

A quick few tests with some of them has shown some interesting factors.

Firstly, they each look good through the viewfinder. The aperture controls work, but instead of the view getting darker as I stop down, the electronic viewfinder compensates, so the brightness of the view is maintained - its so good I initially thought the stop down aperture was broken.

Then the focal lengths of these old lenses could create wobble. However, they all get an instant upgrade when used on the OM-D, because it has in-camera stabilisation. I'm sure a tripod could help, but it's fun to use these old lenses at wide apertures and let the camera's 'insane for film' type ASA take some of the strain.

And there's a sort of 'look' with the pictures from some of the lenses, which is still somehow analogue in the world of high definition electronically operated lenses. They are still manual focus and manual aperture, but it somehow brings the camera back to the basics.

But don't get me wrong, there's a lot of technology in the little OM-D. It's one of the few occasions where I've thought I might actually need to read the manual. I've even downloaded it, because the one in the box is only the starter guide.

So that might be my suggestion to Olympus for the next model. Perhaps they should have an 'analogue shooter' mode that is very simple alongside all of the fancy touch screen spot focusing stuff?

I know this camera isn't as well specified as the new D800 from Nikon, for example, but it certainly has the potential to be a lot of fun.

I'll try it out properly next week when I'm on the road.

dunking a hobnob (chocolate)

Something's puzzling me today.

I almost ate two Hobnobs whilst I was trying to work it out.

A few of us are trying to win a Dunking Mug. The offer says that there's a million of them. That would be one for every sixty people in the UK.

It's pretty easy really, you have to type the special code from a packet of biscuits into a special website. It's a bit like a lottery.

The second way to get a Dunking Mug is to collect the requisite 35 points. Each time you type in one of the codes you get some points towards the total.

We're up to 34 points at the moment.

So I had a quick look at the almost attainable Dunking Mug.

Then I noticed the small print. Only 234 left.

Does that mean the other 999,766 have already been won?

It got me thinking whilst I nibbled the Hobnob.

The thing is, I'm not really eating biscuits at the moment.

And any fule kno its impossible to eat more than two chocolate Hobnobs in one go anyway.

hey now baby, get into my big fat car

Never mind what difference a day makes, it's almost been minute by minute today, with my London meetings in alternate sunshine and deluges.

Similarly with the unfolding of politics and intrigue today as the Leveson inquiry continues to sound like a really good novel.

We can go right back to a meeting in New York by Hunt ahead of a secret television channel takeover bid being prepared by Murdoch. Murdoch's support for Cameron in the last UK election. Cameron's election to power and a rapid set of decisions resulting in the BBC losing some of its commercial powers and not increasing the licence fee. I'm not suggesting any direct links, of course.

Then there's the actual Murdoch bid for BSkyB which led to Cabinet Minister Cable being replaced by Hunt. Allegations about whether there was a secret 'back channel' from the office of Hunt, to the Murdoch camp. The George Club meeting of Murdoch and Cameron and then the Cameron/Brooks/Murdoch Chipping Norton set Christmas tipples at both of which it would have been improper to discuss the bid.

That just warms it up. Then there's the Murdoch company phone tapping discoveries which led to the rapid demise of the BSkyB bid. The establishment of the investigation by Leveson, which also led to the removal of a few policemen who had been inappropriately supplying information.

Now Hunt's special advisor has resigned after 168 pages of emails, texts and similar have been exposed, which were not part of the original Hunt team submission. Hunt claims the moral high ground so he clearly cannot have known what his special advisor was doing.

There's that old phrase in politics about plausible deniability. 'Hands off' - like the way the big cheeses do things in gangster movies.

No need for deniability, of course, because everyone in the witness box is telling the whole truth.

adjusted reality

It's still subtle as different areas of London are receiving quiet makeovers ready for the Olympics. Of course, there's the main Olympic Park and surrounding area which has looked fairly complete for quite a long time.

Now we are seeing more of the central areas that are getting re-paved and adjusted, along with the increasing number of transport posters suggesting the need to find other ways to get around town.

There's still another 94 days until everything starts, but with the Marathon last weekend, a few more try-out events, including a three day security rehearsal, the upcoming Jubilee celebrations and then the actual Olympics, there's plenty of indications that preparations are under way.

I wasn't sure about the degree of predicted Central London impact, because the games are over to the East, but the recently published maps give a clue. The first one here is a 'before' showing typical London road loading on an average day. It's always busy, but there's none of the special lanes switched on.

Then to a 'during' picture, which shows a few of the central London designated Olympic routes as red lines, plus a heat map of the expected extra traffic where yellow represents 'very busy' and red is 'wooah, maybe I won't go there'.

Maybe it's time to start paying attention to the adverts about finding alternative routes.