back in the smoke

Back to London today. After a 650 mile round trip by road across a fog covered Britain, I'm back in 'The Smoke' although, as can be seen from my picture, the air is surprisingly clear.

It's also several degrees warmer. 'Up North' there was a need for scarves, but 'Down South' I even put on shorts today when I took the bike for a spin.

I'm well past the 4,000 mile mark from cycling this year, against my original target of 1,800 miles. With my travelling over the last two or three weeks, the cycling rate has had to diminish and I'm currently around 4,600 miles year to date.

The remainder of the year's labyrinthine calendar of events means it won't be possible to click over 5,000 miles, although that could be an interesting target for 2013.

Trashed Organ Broken Christmas Cabaret

The Broken Christmas Cabaret was a fabulously trashy success. The piano had been drinking, the fairy lights were on the blink and we were gently sozzled on the bright green cocktails.

We'd been in the Broad Chare immediately before things at Live kicked off. What followed was a continuous succession of edgy alternatives to the normal festive celebrations.

The cuckoos had advice on everything from what not to do at office parties to ways to redevelop the 12 days song.

Noize Choir whirled luminous tubes whilst harmoniously singing entire carols backwards.

We all had bubbles and small incendiary devices to detonate. Secret Santa had also taken a perverse turn with his present selections. I found myself on the naughty list.

Tim Turnbull let us into the secrets of a somewhat off-beat dinner party before bringing in some Dionysian parallels to keep us all thinking. Then Paddy Campbell reminded us that even last resort help desks have seasonal moments. Monkey Junk plugged in and slid some excellent foot-stomping blues.

Just time for a top-up of wine and some head in bucket singing before Mary appeared, ably represented by Alison Carr, who auditioned the part (very) completely.

Kate Fox featured a range of poems before adding an accompanying ukelele and a rather adapted form of Hallelujah. Like many of us, she admitted she really quite liked this season.

And to wrap the performed part of the evening we had Matt Stalker and Fable, who played their own songs plus one from Bon Iver before moving to a festive finale.

John and Melanie, Gez and Rosie then recited their way through the Trashed Laureate compilation and the final trashed port of the year was awarded.

A brilliant set of performances and, as luck would have it, the bar was also still running, so now it was time to move on to the less structured section of the evening and - er - morning.

seasonal party dressing tips

This site doesn't publish direct fashion tips for the upcoming season very often, but tonight we'll make an exception.

With the trashy broken Christmas cabaret about to take place, it's important to know the type of look required.

It's kind of après-party wear. I think it's called 'dress to depress'. The kind of thing that looks right later on in the evening.

There's a few serving suggestions here.

Prepare the fir tree shaped cookies drizzled in marmite.

shopping

Although it is Wednesday, it felt quite like a weekend being out around the shops today.

There were so many people gathering presents as if everyone had simultaneously decided to go shopping midweek in order to avoid the weekend rush.

polychromatic brick and wrought iron finials

A strange co-incidence that I received this card the day after standing at the exact spot it depicts.

The person that sent the card wouldn't have known about us hanging around St Pancras, nor sipping fancy cocktails in the Gilbert Scott bar.

The picture is from an earlier time though. You can see that the red buses have poles on them, which dates them as trolley buses from no later than 1962, which was when they were finally withdrawn.

That would be about the same era as when the poet John Betjamin was campaigning to stop the destruction of the original St Pancras train station. Fortunately he was successful in preserving the magnificent structure, which now houses the main train line link to Europe.

far down the shining lines

Another week of travelling up and down the UK. It'll be the third week in a row.

Last week it was to the North West, this time it's the North East.

And the time before that it was kind of 'middle' rather than top.

I've been using the car instead of planes and trains, although I still seem to spend time at train stations and on tube trains bound for Heathrow.

This time I must ship a few extras along; spare sets of tree lights, feather wings and pints of customised beer.

It's all good though, and means I'm reducing the contents of the over-occupied garage.

Ever so slowly.

green day

I know, it looks like a typical day in the office.

Actually, we'd decided to go along to the Hammersmith Apollo to see that Green Day show. I think of Green Day as a sort of guilty pleasure of a band. Slews of power chords and nearly everything set to maximum, we'd decided it wasn't going to be a quiet affair.

The musical is the fourth re-incarnation of the American Idiot album (after the live gig CD called Bullet in a Bible and the live DVD from, yes, Milton Keynes).

The musical is an excuse to play all of the American Idiot tracks back to back (and a few extra ones) with a thin story-line of three bored teenagers making their way from the post 9/11 'burbs. One becomes a father, one goes to war and the third does drugs.

Add in full-on Green Day tunes at express train speed. By the end of the first half we were wondering if there could be many more songs left from that album, but sure enough, the second half didn't disappoint.

There's a rage throughout the storyline which has a kind of deliberately chaotic manner and a jagged ending (pre-encore) to an entertaining evening.

Santa - early sighting

Snapped passing rashbre central. I think he was in a hurry. Collecting up the notes from the good children. Reindeer nose was red.

twinkly humbugs

This picture of the bah humbug tree will have to suffice until Aperture finishes its mammoth vault backup.

Eventually I will be able to show a picture of the first of the lights outside rashbre central. This year we have selected a sort of yellow-white rather than pure white or blue-white.

It seems to match the themes of the surrounding houses. Of course, the timer has broken since last year, so I will need to go hunting for a new one.

At least I have managed to untangle the lights and to my surprise they all seem to work. I am less confident of the lights for the tree.

All in good time.

Price Turner Pebbles Talulah, Gosh

One of the bonkers weeks where it's been very busy every day. So many topics.

I'll go arty today and mention the Turner Prize winner - Elizabeth Price, with the exhibition that I blogged about back in May. I experienced it at the Baltic but a part of it is moving to the Tate Modern now.

It's one of those exhibits that creates a lasting impression, using an immersive mix of media and sound in very dark spaces.

The piece that has got the most press is the one called Choir, which is more complexly themed than some of it's press descriptions that I've seen.

But gosh, Turner Prizes are often controversial. I happen to think this one was a good choice.

what is the mince pie cycling mileage equivalence?

There's a cute little shop that I pass sometimes when I'm cutting through the back-doubles around Waterloo.

There's also some adjoining windows where you can see people busily cooking and baking.

The place is called Konditor and Cook and they have a range of secret weapons which they deploy at this time of year.

One harmless looking item is the Mince Pie.

They manage to make them look oh-so-innocent and home-made. When you get some, loosely packed in a box they still don't give the game away.

A mere nibble is enough to confirm their brilliance. Buttery pastry with just the right amount of crumblage. Aroma-packed filling that doesn't need to resort to being over-doused in cooking brandy.

I suggest these are the real deal although I'd hazard a guess that they are up around 8 miles of cycling per unit consumed.


Time for a bike ride, I think.

Update: I've just cycled around 3 mince pies worth of distance.

Hvad hedder det på dansk?

What with the #strictlysweepstake, early evening Saturday television is pre-allocated and, yes, my assigned celeb is still doing okay.

It's a conveniently early show, leaving the rest of the evening open. There's also the final series III of 'The Killing', which I've been recording.

My Danish serial watching is a tad behind. I'm still only half way through episode 4 with still another two from this evening to watch.

I'm suitably hooked and have even found myself studying certain scenes and making mental notes of who is where at which time to rule out possible perpetrators. It's twistier than a twisted very twisty thing that's been extra twisted for good measure. That's before the rødt sild/vildspor/red herrings have been thrown into the mix. I might need to bring my own notepad along for the next episode.

This series also has more daytime scenes around Copenhagen, so it's fun for me to try to spot some of the areas where I've worked.

But as I'm away again next week, it may be some time before I can catch up with the latest dark rooms and powerful Danish compact flashlights.