at the consulate

The old German Consulate made an excellent and friendly evening stopover.

By now we were in Port Townsend, an area which seems to have selected elements from prior eras and created its own unique mashup of the results.

The whole character could change quickly from sunshine with everyone spilling out along the sidewalks, to a kind of mystery novel air of quiet, punctuated by a few ravens or crows screeching into the air.

I don't know, it kind of reminded me of an old movie or two...?

timber alert

I have a feeling we will be seeing more of the logger truck warning signs as we move further into the forests around here.

For the moment we are staying by the coastline, and detoured to this little town of Port Gamble, which is like something preserved from the end of the 1800s.

With all those trees around it's not surprising that most of the buildings are made of timber. And down by the water there's the remaining part of a timber transportation facility.

Across Puget Sound

We decided to take a boat from Seattle. Instead of the busy freeways, we could watch the scenery and change gear from urban to a more relaxed style.

We could now watch the Space Needle, Elliott's on the Bay and many other places we'd visited slip away as we headed across Puget Sound further to the North West.

Our plan was to make for the Olympic National Park. So as Mount Ranier bid us a distant farewell, we could see the early ranges of the largely uninhabited million acre park appearing before us.

you can hear happiness staggering on down the street, footprints dress in red

We didn't just look at the flying fishes in Seattle. Along the way we stopped off at the inscrutably named EMP, the centre created by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

With Bill Gates, they sold the original DOS operating system for PCs to IBM (and then bought QDOS because their own wasn't written). Paul did okay from it and along with the sports teams and yacht with two onboard helicopters, he set up the music and media centre.

I'd previously thought it was called the Jimi Hendrix museum, but although it features Hendrix, there's also Nirvana and a range of other musical experiences including many 'try it yourself' displays.

The guitar at the top of the post is a remnant from the famous flambéed Stratocaster at Monterey, and the albums on the wall are from Hendrix's own record collection.

The picture below is one of the famous London ones, outside Montagu Place. Hendrix rented number 24 from Ringo Starr. Paul McCartney had already installed recording gear there and its where Hendrix penned The Wind Cries Mary. After Ringo evicted Hendrix, John and Yoko moved in for a while. It's an English Heritage site nowadays, complete with blue plaque.

Oh, okay. Here's Hendrix playing a chilled Wind Cries Mary, at Monterey, on a black upside-down Stratocaster.

watch out for flying fish

I said we'd get to the place where the fish fly around.

I think the first time I visited Pike Place was before there were any Starbuck's in the UK. I remember that point tangentially because at the time it was commonplace (to my European palate) to find generally weak coffee in America.

Seattle coffee houses seemed to be running a single handed campaign to produce something tastier than the prevalent thin glass beaker coffee types.

Even then, the fish were flying, with waves of tourists outside the famous Pike Place Fish Market. This time, I managed to snap a fish in mid flight as we walked past, although it's something of a 'spot the fish' competition to actually see it.

And just along the way, the original Starbucks is still doing fine, with almost comedy length queues of people outside.

hey baby, I hear the blues a-callin' tossed salads and scrambled eggs...

Time to hit the trail for some road tripping. I've a tee-shirt that says 'Pacific One Hwy' and I think that is the basis of the plan. Along the West Coast of USA. North to South.

We're in Seattle now, after a rather pleasant flight with BA in the comfortable middle part of the plane. We had a sort of mini cabin, with those seats that turn into lie-flat beds.

There was a bit of a technical delay at take-off, but the accommodation was so enjoyable that it really didn't matter.

And then, once in Seattle, we arrived at the hotel to be greeted by those magic words..."Would you like a complementary upgrade?"

Well, what could we say? And that was before they added the rest of the sentence...

"To the Presidential Suite?"

Let's say we now have a grand piano in the room and yesterday evening we dined at the in-room banquet table.

But now it's time to go watch some fishes being thrown around.

night moves

We were on our way to the restaurant through the packed streets of Soho.

Brewer Street rammed with its mix of clubbers waiting in straggly lines, drinkers spilling across the pavement from the numerous pubs and cafes mixing with high density foot traffic,

We detoured away from the crowds onto a quieter street, just a road back from the main drag. A few taxis and rickshaws drifted through the area, famously overcrowded with its sightseeing pedestrians.

We'd left enough time, our table wasn't until 10:30pm, we could arrive as creatures of the night.

Saint Etienne London Trilogy - the eternal magnet attracting our dreams

I've recently enjoyed watching a trilogy of Saint Etienne videos about London. They been recently re-released as a single DVD collection by the British Film Institute. I popped into the BFI on the way to a meeting to get the DVD.

The first, Finisterre, shows more or less a 24 hour look from sunrise to sunrise of the capital going about its way. From sleepy pigeons, markets, commuters, tourists, nightlife, afters and the quiet streets of 4am.

The film was made in 2003, but seems to come from an older place. Occasionally something will show up that looks strikingly modern as a reminder. Yet the gherkin is still being built, there's not an iPhone in sight and tickets are being fed into slots at the tube.

It's a good example of how things change subtly and how a contemporary environment looks unexpectedly different - an example of wide change.

The film-makers had a budget originally to spend on a 3 minute promotional video (£20k a pop in those days) and decided to instead create something of a love poem to London. I gather the original money was stopped after they'd used the first promo video funds to create the pilot instead of a pop video, but they'd also bought the camera by this point, so carried on anyway.

The next film of a paperboy round was dramatised to appear shot on 7 July 05, when both the Olympic result for London was announced and four tube and bus bombs exploded in the densely populated areas of the capital.

It's a quiet look at the pre-Olympic version of the Lea Valley, which many would have known as The Wick, before its massive makeover. 150 years of history along this river, with the towering Bryant and May site of the Annie Bessant led match girl strikes, the invention of early plastic, and even the first refining of petroleum among the almost forgotten credits of the area. I know parts of the run-down areas shown in the film, much of which has gone since the Olympics ploughed through the area.

And finally, the modern looking update of the area around the Festival Hall. Part of the South Bank and an immensely successful exercise in branding too.

So much that the other riverbank of the Thames around The Strand/Villiers Street is right now considering how to brand itself as 'Northbank'. Confusingly, the area is already well known as 'The Strand' and some of it is already cross branded as 'Theatreland' although most people don't spot this. Also with South Bank being two words, they've chosen to make Northbank one word. Oh well.

I should mention the music in the three films too. A blend of Saint Etienne songs and their other synth-inspired pieces. Some of their songs get right inside.

Here's my ancient video from my own commuting soundtracked by Saint Etienne, when I lived in the Temporary Apartment in Copenhagen.

if a single leaf holds the eye

This time we'd been out somewhere after a spell of that Zen navigation. The one where you reach a destination by travelling in ever decreasing circles. Even the white bear by the Russian road sign couldn't help us, although by the third circuit we were almost as well-known as the landmark.

It was on the way back using a straighter route, that we decided to take another small detour. This time along a gravelled track. Not ex-railway, it was far too switchy for that, but still laid purposefully in a way that gave us easy access to an area of woodland.

Now a week or so ago, we were in some trees when someone asked, "What's that type of tree, then?" Luckily it was an oak tree, so easy to answer. A few more easy ones and then one which we had to say was, well - a tree.

There was a similar sense as we headed through areas of wild blackberries (not yet ripe) some hazelnuts (still green) and further oaks and sycamores.

We compiled a modest dossier of a few in the sheets of a notepad. We knew most of them (even the slightly tricker white willow) although we now have doubts about the one on the far right. It is much easier to identify them whilst still attached.

those vital few seconds

I've been commuting partly by tube this week and it's been interesting to notice my speed of reversion to full-on commuter mode.

There's all the subtle conventions that one gets used to but then notices afresh after a gap.

It starts on the main line trains in the silent carriages with the almost complete move to digital. Far fewer people carry newspapers and many more have iSomethings to read or entertain.

There's the people who bagsy the big tables and sprawl laptops connected to headphones. They may look as if they are working, but they are mainly watching DVDs. Everyone has a phone to study emails, or, by the look of it, to be playing some sort of clicky game. Either that, or they set it all up and then fall asleep.

With at least two Christmas and Birthday cycles, many folk have iPads to view all manner of infotainment. In fairness, I was next to someone reviewing a set of Very Important Confidential business slides on their iPad at one point.

Personally I use my small footprint Kindle, which is more or less a reading device. It does carry a daily copy of the newspaper and is immune to loss of signal once the paper is downloaded. It can also carry plenty of books and even the odd business read which I can send to it via the personal secret email address, which automatically converts whatever I send into an eDocument.

But it was on the tube I realised that in a mere couple of days I'd reverted to commuter mentality.

I showed up on a platform just as a train was pulling out. I glanced to the indicator sign. Drat. I would now have to wait a WHOLE THREE MINUTES for the next one.

How inconvenient.

an alternative guide to the universe

I've been meaning to visit this show for some time. I came close once, a few weeks ago, but it was closed.

Fortunately, I had a break between a couple of meetings today and was able to drop in.

'An alternative guide to the universe' at 'the museum of everything' sounds like a bold promise. Inside are a range of ideas by all manner of visionaries and inventors. These were mainly non scientists who had worked out their ideas often single handedly. In some cases the work had not been shown before and could be considered the private work of the artist.

Whether it was someone inventing whole town designs, creating alternate views of space travel or building robots, there was plenty to see. One set of exhibits featured re-imagined buildings and structures, another turned the letters of the alphabet into a sort of flying space fleet.

It was fascinating because of the thoroughness of most of the visionaries' work. Sometimes quite obsessional, whether in the calculations of an alternative physics, a reworking of the periodic tables using a Circlon nuclear stability model, or the draftsmanship in discovering patterns in magic squares of numbers.

I found a youtube description of Emery Blagden's Healing Machines which was one of the exhibits. It's not directly from the 'Do NOT Photograph' of the exhibition, but gives a sense of the ideas in just one of the myriad of exhibits.

french kissing/french cuisine in the yellow car

Well, this time we wound up in the back of a yellow car.

French kissing/French cuisine creating a mixed theme of mouth pleasures.

This was part of Heather Phillipson's BALTIC "Yes, Surprising is Existence in the Post-Vegetal Cosmorama".

Take a guided tour of the area accompanied by Heather's iphone explanations and wind up in the gallery.

Poetry and powerboats floating on conceptualised Turkish bottled water.

Or, if you feel like it, take the full Cardiovascular Vernacular tour of Gateshead and Newcastle, provided here as a 53 minute guided stroll. If you know this area you must do this tour.

Possibly bananas, certainly fun. And no flopping around.