living life at ease, with bicycle

I was checking the bike with its revised gears and temporary flat pedals today (Cranks Mallets).

I always keep close to base when I first take a bike out that I've adjusted.

Today I had the camera switched on, so come join this extract from my journey around the country lanes and some dedicated cycle track. I've added lightly edited Moody Blues soundtrack, which mysteriously came into my head and seemed to fit the relaxed sunshine.

puzzling traffic

I used to notice them frequently in Moscow, but now we seem to have a few on the London streets as well. Large black SUV cars with blue flashing lights.

I'm not talking about routine plain clothed police cars, which some how still give off an 'official' look, rather more the kind that have American style rectangular flashing lights and are from manufacturers less associated with police business in the UK. SUVs with names like Nissan Navara, for example, which was the one that passed me today.

In Moscow, there was a whole secondary market in fake police car lights to get through the maddening traffic. These so-called migalka were supposed to be for official purposes. I think the going rate to be backhander 'upgraded' to a VIP was about $10,000. The cars with these lights would then also use the wrong side of the road to charge down ongoing traffic in an attempt to get through jams.

Here, in London, I assume that the ones I've seen are official, although there's something that doesn't seem quite right. If it was embassy cars, you'd expect them to have diplomatic plates or at least CD stickers. If it's the Americans, the cars would be Chevrolets or something similar.

I know the police drive a wide variety of incognito vehicles, but there's usually a consistency to their extra lights. It makes these black vehicles stand out as different. I guess they are probably armed response or similar, but it is somehow puzzling.

Speaking of which:

Amanda Palmer at Union Chapel

Tuesday evening and along to Union Chapel, for an Amanda Palmer gig. Despite some attempt at pre-planning, I was late, missing the pre-gig build up and heading upstairs to the often less crowded part of the Chapel.

The show was just underway, although Amanda hadn't yet arrived on stage. This was to turn out to be a well-constructed three hour set, with Amanda and various friends on stage during different parts of the show. It opened with Perhaps Contraption as a riotous band filling the stage, rocking it to the rafters.

When the six-month pregnant Amanda appeared, she started unaccompanied with an Irish folk ballad, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, one that I don't remember hearing her sing before.

Then to work with the grand piano, mixing familiar songs from across her extremely varied catalogue. The show was also being beamed out live to patreon viewers and so there was a strange kind of twitter background as people offered song suggestions from far and wide.

About half way through, Caitlin Moran appeared for a reading and some banter with Amanda. Well-known writer Caitlin chatted humorously and with edge about their combined experiences.

Then more from Amanda, joined later on stage by Whitney Moses who dramatically noticed that Amanda was pregnant before joining her to cover Garfunkel and Oates song 'Pregnant women are smug'.

Three hours blasted past, with a warm and appreciative audience, including a finale with 'Leeds United', and creating the perfect excuse for the rest of her accomplices to rejoin the stage. A fun, raucous and entertaining evening.

in which my cycling creates a spotty dog walk

The realisation that the London to Brighton bike ride is only a couple of weeks away has prompted me to further pedalling action. Tonight, I've slightly creaky legs from cycling. I describe it as the 'Spotty Dog walk' but get mainly mystified stares.

To explain, I decided to find a copy of an ancient episode of The Woodentops, which features Spotty Dog (the biggest spotty dog you ever did see) doing this walk. It's about six minutes into the video, which is like a strange soothing balm from another planet.

Relax with a cup of tea and a Hobnob marine of a biscuit to dunk whilst marvelling at this excerpt from slow television.

Sopranos, the missing FIFA episode?

A fairly easy life-edit is to not bother to follow football/soccer.

I watch the occasional big game (in a half-hearted sort of way), but because I'm not in sales the rest is optional and leaves plenty of space for other things.

Recent events are re-inforcing my view of the racketeering of the whole industry, with the flow of bribes passing from one group of gangsters to the next in an orchestrated series of moves. I seem to remember writing a small item about the low-end of this back in 2006 - 'Bung' I recollect. This is altogether more industrial, with FIFA seemingly able to offer a mafia-like career progression for some of its more influential roles.

Learn the ropes as a bagman to the Don, before becoming his replacement. Set up a consigliere as operational fixer to manage decisions via a bunch of caporegime who handle the blocks of votes.

Sound familiar? It could be the Sopranos, or maybe it's the way international football is run nowadays?

The prior FIFA chief João Havelange and now Sepp Blatter appear to have presided over a global ring of money laundering, bribes and other corruption, mainly leveraged from the huge input financial streams of sponsors like Adidas, Sony, Visa, Coca-Cola and other household names.

As a quick check, I counted the recent list of FIFA indictments for some keywords...

• launder = 25 times.
• kickback = 26 times.
• bribe = 116 times.
• conspiracy/conspirator = 393 times
• criminal counts = 47

Approximately, and yet I can't help feeling that this is only a part of the picture.

Back in Havelange's day he officially resigned on grounds of ill health, about the same time that his collapsed ISL company was being investigated for paying CHF 185 million in 'personal commissions' related to the World Cup.

Being a Swiss company, this form of commercial bribe was still legal at the time. It was also prudent to have another company or two like Sicuretta to allegedly skim the odd $50m with Ricardo Teixeira, his then son-in-law, for a rainy day. It was also handy that the ISL proceedings were cut short, although the exchange of a suspected further CHF5.5m to grease this was never proven.

In The Sopranos, there's an early episode when in poker Tony wins access to a 'civilian' buddy's sportsware business. They quickly order everything on credit, take delivery, steal it to sell cheap and then crash the company. These mafia plot-lines are simplistic and low key compared with what appears to be possible on the next rung of the ladder.

So if FIFA knew about Havelange's approach back in 1998, who was his closest man...Yes, you've guessed it. Herr Blatter. That would be the man who was determined to clean up, but perhaps he was speaking colloquially. And after 17 years has just said so again, along with a great Scorsese-esque line: I forgive but I don't forget.

But most of this isn't new news and people like Andrew Jennings have been reporting it for years. I suppose the hit on the wallet to the US IRS might be the reason for the latest attention?

Going back to the nature of an organised -er- crime syndicate, there has to be structure and it has to be constructed in a way to create co-dependencies. Support me or you go down as well.

Of course, I'm referring to The Sopranos here, there'd never be anything like it in FIFA.

Would there?

a sticky continental moment with a bicycle

I swapped the tyres over on the carbon bike. I've moved from 23mm to 25mm, which doesn't sound much of a difference but rather increases the comfort at little expense to the rolling resistance. Yes, the garage was filled with the heady aroma of sticky chilli compound from the Continental Grand Prix SP4000S Mark II. Would it be possible to have a much longer name for a bike tyre?

If I was a better cyclist then maybe the wider profile of this tyre (more rubber in it so heavier) would slow me down, but at my level it just makes the ride smoother.

I've also done some cassette juggling, moving the SRAM Red 11x26 to the Fulcrum Zero wheels which still have 23mm tyres and putting the 25mm tyres on the DT Swiss with the climber's kit 11x32 gearing (Phew!) There...it's like having two bikes for the price of one and a quarter. Swap the wheels and it's a different bike.

I have to mention the brilliant VAR tyre levers, which I've been using. They are easily the best I've ever used and make a sometimes annoying job into something where worrying about the placement of the tyre logo on the rim starts to take precedence over the chore of pinging the tyre into place.

designed to find dreamers: Tomorrowland at the IMAX

I enjoy visiting Disney's parks. There's a sense of optimism that starts from the first moment. Some of it uses uplifting and familiar tunes, other parts are just the way the parks bustle joyfully, encouraging interactions with their happy inhabitants.

So I was intrigued to see Tomorrowland recently. It seemed like a reason to go to the BFI IMAX, on the roundabout by Waterloo.

And after a curious face-to-camera start with George Clooney, we soon dropped into the middle of the World Fair in 1960's New York.

I say that, but it was like wandering around in Disneyworld's Tomorrowland, parts of Epcot and the Magic Kingdom. The right backdrops, the right tunes. The Carousel of Progress playing "It's a great big beautiful tomorrow" and a trip in a water craft accompanied with "It's a small world after all".

I've noticed that Disney plays around with its opening logo credits and the version for this movie didn't have Cinderella's castle at all. Instead there was a series of other tall and often spiked buildings.

And kerpow, we were soon in and amongst them in a swirling and revolving multi dimensional world. We might have needed a vacuum-cleaner powered jet-pack to get there, but it all made sense in this story of an optimist and a pessimist.

Can we change the probability of outcomes? That is the question. Why revel in dystopian future outlooks, when a change of spirit could lead to a more attractive self-fulfilling prophesy?

We all know that old mantra 'every day in every way I am getting better and better...', so why make 'Death Planet IV: the revenge of Undead', and such similar narratives?

I don't generally watch the Marvel Comic type movies which rely upon goody vs baddy both vested with general purpose extensible super-powers. Tomorrowland has some of that going on, with a classic overlord portrayed by Hugh Laurie touting his British accent, idioms and sticky-up collars on his uniform.

There's plenty of gadgets, starting with the homely inventions of the 1960s and moving towards probability gauges that would go well in Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy. Actually at one point a robot in a store is wearing a tee-shirt with a partially concealed "Don't Panic" motif.

There's a predictability about the main good versus evil theme playing out and proper female role for Britt Robertson, playing Casey Newton. There's an added sparkle of the robot girl Athena (played by Raffey Cassidy), who acted as a sort of recruiter for optimists.

Being a Disney movie, there's a worked out tidy conclusion, which also provides some circle of life type moments. There wasn't really any political engagement with the projected futures, nor any real 'get out of Dodge' solutions towards 'save the world'. Probably way too much to expect from this kind of story telling, which has more of a 'like to teach the world to sing' kind of ending.

My slight niggle was that the end didn't some how return to the theme park, although we can spot little elements of it (like Space Mountain on the left here) in the future.

So, sing along with the Carousel of Progress, or watch the teaser below:

So there's a great big beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of every day
There's a great big beautiful tomorrow
Just a dream away

Royal Academy Summer Preview

The way in to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is past the statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds. On this occasion his paintbrush appears to conduct Conrad Shawcross' metallic tetrahedrons entitled The Dappled Light of the Sun. You need to walk right underneath this mighty work to sense its true effect.

The exhibition has run annually since 1769 and this time opens properly on Monday, but I had an invitation to the preview, which had a bit of a party atmosphere. I'm not sure, but I don't think they have alcohol flowing on the normal days, but I could be wrong?

Anyway, it's the show where well-known artists and regular members of the public have a chance to show work together. This year I think 12,000 submissions were sliced down into 1,200 exhibited works.
They've gone for impact this year, with strident colours right from the entry staircase and amongst the enormous variety of works displayed in the various rooms. Altogether, there's about ten rooms containing the artwork, with each room individually curated.

There's a small guide book listing every piece, but I prefer to get the bigger catalogue, which doesn't have everything neatly arranged by number, but gives more of a sense of the whole show.

Even for the preview, it could get a little busy at times, although when it opens fully, there may well be lines along Piccadilly for the first few days, like in the RA publicity picture.

I like this exhibition and enjoyed wandering around.

There's plenty to look at, a few personal treasures to spot, a chance for some people spotting and *tsk* some good conversations to overhear.

I've decided to show a few of the pieces that caught my eye. You'll have to excuse that I took their pictures on my phone, to escape too much attention.

If you'd like a wider view, there's a gallery of some of the other early visitors, standing by various artworks here.

In my case, sometimes it's the smaller items like this woodcut from Eileen Cooper. It's called 'Crazy'. Judging from the little dots already on it, it would seem to be a popular piece. Eileen's exhibiting another lovely piece too, called Dancing and Solitude.

Then this one above, which, for me has a sort of London vibe, with the umbrella business and all. Looks like the City, on a windy and rainy evening. I need to check the catalogue though, because there doesn't seem to be any red in the painting, so it might be abroad somewhere?

Or how about something bigger? As ye sow shall ye reap: An allegory, by Prof Michael Sandle. This one below needs a ten minute pause to get ones head around...

And then there's something smaller but prismatically eye-catching. A sculpture in resin from Anish Kapoor. He of the big squiggly red Orbit at the Olympic Park.

I'd be looking out for something triangular, too. This fits the bill, although I can't help thinking it would be better in orange? But that's just me. Sorry, Alan Charlton (but I like it anyway).

There's a piece from Grayson Perry too, another of his rich tapestries. This one riffs off a quiet Essex theme, notice the detailing in the woman's charm bracelet. The three Essex seax are there, looking like scimitars. You can see the quiet sadness in the eye of the man, too.

And, there is so much more, but I'll have to stop.

Just these few items make a show in itself. If I return for another visit after it quietens down in 2-3 weeks, then I'm sure I'll have a whole other view point.

And meantime, here's a video with a few snips from the preview party. Spot the celebrities, who were out in force.

Summer Exhibition Preview Party 2015 from Royal Academy of Arts on Vimeo.

Waiting for the #edfringe programme to arrive

Today sees the publication of the Edinburgh Fringe programme, and one should be winging its way to rashbre central right now. Until then, I have to look at this picture of a stack of them on the floor in Edinburgh.

Of course, its possible to download a copy from here as well as to get the App, but the full experience really requires all 440 pages in the hand and a highlighter pen.

To make things slightly simpler, there's an excellent show on page 141.

But I would say that, wouldn't I?

...and UPDATE
It's arrived!

I check into a preview of Heartbreak Hotel at The Jetty

Yesterday I tried out a new venue (to me at any rate), The Jetty, which is set along the River Thames, near North Greenwich tube, a five minute walk from the Dome.

Heartbreak Hotel is immersively set in a hotel, and after getting our check-in rooms (mine was 101), we made our way into the hotel lobby complete with bar and an area for snacks. Some of tables have telephones and it is possible to chatter to hotel staff on these house phones.

Then, at the appointed time, along with others, I was shown to my room, whose number 101 didn't escape me. Others left for another area and room 666.

Being a heartbreak hotel, we were led along a dingy corridor, before meeting an inspirational leader from A.C.H.E. who explained to us that whatever our problems were, we'd come out of the experience feeling better. I looked at the peeling wallpaper in the corridor and smiled as a second inspirationalist started talking to us from a jittery recording on a small television monitor, before about ten of us were led into one of the dimly-lit rooms.

It was one of those hotel-rooms that would do in an emergency, if you were, say, escaping from the law, or had all your money stolen. Although, it's fair to say that there were a couple of champagne flutes on one of the shelves.

And so the action started, as a couple entered the room, with the woman taking a similarly negative view of this rather over-used location. They were the first of some partly lost souls we met during the evening, whose all-too-human narratives and experiences overlapped in various ways.

I won't describe plot, except to say that I discovered we were on a sort of Möbius loop of a storyline, which played out across the various rooms we visited.

This was the first performance night for the show, and there were a few unintentionally rough edges. There was some clever atmosphere, with ghosts in the walls and a point where the connection from one room to another was via the wardrobes (although it should be said it was a simpler process than a Punchdrunk wardrobe in similar circumstances).

In some immersive productions, the audience can self select their routes around the environment. For Heartbreak Hotel, there was a predefined 'run on rails' routing from scene to scene, so once through the wardrobe, for example, there was no going back.

Oh yes, and being a hotel, with lots of bedrooms, one has to expect that there might be all manner of things occurring behind the closed doors. Oh yes. The trailer gives a few clues.

Being the preview, we witnessed a couple of glitches. In one scene a bed collapsed. Whilst dramatic, judging from the sound of breaking timber, I'm not sure that it was supposed to and the returning guest seemed to use superhuman effort to attempt to push it back together for the next version of that scene.

In another area, the sequencing stalled. We were in a large, dilapidated, communal tiled bathroom and had watched a variety of scenes including one where cocaine was chopped as two of the guests swapped remarks about their lives. Unfortunately, our extraction from this particular segment didn't occur and we watched it all again, except that the fella with the coke couldn't find it the second time causing some slightly ragged sequencing.

After the second playing of the segment (which also featured others passing through the room, including a mysterious and slightly panicked looking bell-hop), we were fast-forwarded through another distorted room, along a beach and up a stairway to what became outdoors at the end of the jetty.

Here we heard about the impact of the programme we'd been experiencing, its personal tailoring and a few words from a rebellious hotel-maid who had made it through the all of the steps.

What did I think of it? I wanted it to work, and willed it to be successful, but at the moment there are teething problems. Most of this is a matter of tightening the bolts on what I assume is still a preview.

I'll constructively mention a few things here, because it may help the production.

• The hotel-like greeting at the ticketing works well and starts the mood.
• The wind whipping against the structure of the Jetty creates a fairly unique ambience ideally suited to a Heartbreak Hotel.
• The bar area needs sorting out. Not taking cash was a strange situation, even for a heartbreak hotel. The payment card machines were also erratic, and not in a good way.
• The waiting time at the beginning could be made into more of the immersion. A few simple actions built into the pre-start could re-inforce the experience. Guests flamboyantly arriving, business with baggage, use of the phones. Some corny customer protocols like a hotel would improve this too and could ice-break the guests.
• The confidence and assertion of the minor characters leading people around needs to be stronger. The guests are intentionally confused anyway, when being marshalled into 'blocks' to be moved into rooms and this could be slicker.
• There needs to be some way to check that groups of guests don't get stranded (like we were) and effectively see the same long segment twice. Easiest is perhaps to ensure one group has entirely left before another one enters.
• Scenes need a recovery mode, so that if something goes wrong, there is a way to reset. Maybe that just comes with time and practice of the scene?
• Voice projection. Mostly this worked well, although there were a couple of times after things had apparently failed, when the voices became quiet, more as if the characters were unsure of their lines rather than as something done for dramatic effect. This can lose the energy of the production.

I realise that some of the above list could come across as negative. It's not intended to be; in the spirit of the show, as I said earlier, I'm willing it to be successful.

It takes a courage and ingenuity to try something as logistically challenging and I wish the cast, crew and staff every success as they hone this run, which lasts until August, I believe.

wristband season is upon us #mixtape @ukmixtape #edfringe

It's about time for the first set of Mixtape wristbands to be modelled.

Early indications are that they will be a sell-out, so move fast to get one!

Like all good festival items, these will be in hot demand. We'll even have a close up picture when we can find the other camera.

For now, we'll have to simply remind everyone that Mixtape will be at the Underbelly, Cowgate, throughout the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August.

So click below to get Mixtape's unmissable tickets, including a few special offer days in the first week of the Fringe.

And in the meantime, @FollowTheCow to #mixitup with @ukmixtape at #edfringe.

Yeah.

clouds of Sils Maria

I watched The Clouds of Sils Maria a couple of weeks ago, but it somehow slipped through my blogging notes. I was reminded by a small and unexpected advertisement for the hotel used in the movie, which turned up in the Economist. Talk about niche advertising.

The movie is about an actress (played by Juliette Binoche) who is at the peak of her career. She is asked to perform a revival of a play where she'd been the young challenge Sigrid to an older woman Helena, but this time to take the role of the older woman.

In international star show-biz terms she has Kristen Stewart (from Twilight) as her phone and blackberry juggling personal assistant and they take a train to the beautiful Swiss Engadin mountains and onward to the remote Sils Maria to rehearse.

Then we get the excellent interactions between Binoche's character and Stewart and the arrival of scandal laden Chloë Grace Moretz, who is to take the role of the younger Sigrid to Binoche's Helena.

The interplay is fascinating, with dialogue that twists and could be from the play being rehearsed, or maybe it is their real-life dialogue. There's a slow cloudiness that take hold in the woven relationships.

The layers are complex, and can include Binoche playing a version of herself, then presenting as the international star, as the rehearsing actress, as well as elements of the younger Sigrid and the older Helena.

Altogether an interesting character study of Binoche's 'Maria Enders'.

As a movie, it runs quite like a mainly two and occasional three-hander play, albeit set in a luscious and sweeping backdrop of the Alps.