The Chalybeate

Monday 25 February 2008

Duffy

More music.
Last Thursday we listened to Duffy play at the Thekla.
Initially we were quite resentful of the gig, because the doors were opened late so we were forced to stand in the cold wind for forty minutes before we gained entrance to the venue. Then, of course, the queue at the bar was so long that it wasn't worth getting one. On the debit side, that meant that Moonface and I managed to get close to the stage - only about five rows back.

But the music cured our grumps.
Duffy is tiny, thin, square-jawed and blonde; but she can sing blues like I've not heard for years. Imagine Petula Clarke and Dusty Springfield rolled together with a Welsh accent, and an almost shy, grateful attitude to her audience. Duffy held us, gave us a short but magnificent recital, and left us wanting more. "Rockferry", the single, is a sweet ballad. The chorus of " Stepping Stone" was so catchy that after the first verse, many of the audience were joining in with her. Oh, it was great. We'll buy the album.


:o)
:o)

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Sunday 24 February 2008

Birds



(This picture is nothing to do with me. Moonface went down to Somerset to watch the starlings wheel and flock before they roost in the evening. There are millions of them, and their aerobatics are awe-inspiring. Next year, perhaps. I love the way in which the shape of the flock mimics that of Glastonbury Tor in the distance)


Is it Spring, or is it me? I seem to notice birds in the garden more than I used to; perhaps it's just that there are more birds to notice, now that our fat cat is unable to stalk and jump as well as she used to.

After wondering for years why we didn't see robins in the back garden, one appeared the other day and is sticking around. That and the bluetits in the front garden make going outside a pleasure. And as I awoke in the early hours the last few days, I heard a thrush singing strongly just outside our bedroom window. It was music.

Yesterday, when Moonface and I were returning home through Clifton with a couple of friends, a pair of tiny dull green birds flew within an arm's length of my face, fluttering and twittering at each other. One returned to perch on a branch just above us - a goldcrest. It's the forst time that I have ever knowingly seen one, and it was so close. At it swayed upon its perch, we could clearly see the flash of gold-orange upon its head giving it a rakishly punk appearance. We felt happily pleased by the unusual sight.


:o)

Monday 18 February 2008

Oaf

Idiocy doesn't always pay.

Between our house and our neighbours' lie two paths to our respective front doors, separated by a brick wall which is ranges from a couple of feet to about four feet high on our side, plus a fair bit more on the Tibb's side, reflecting the slope and fall of the original hillside.

As I'm a yob at heart, when I'm in the right mood I enjoy jumping upon the wall and walking its length to the road as I set out for a walk or drive. Today, I missed, and I hurt.

As I leapt upon the wall, both feet together, my right toe caught the edge of the wall, plonking me face-down and falling across it, and I thought that I was about to plant myself head-first onto our neighbours' path. I experienced a dreadful, "Oh shit" moment, but somehow managed to catch hold of the wall with both hands stretched out behind me, and twist my legs over my head and body in a caricature of a gate-vault, landing gracelessly but safely upon my feet. The only damage was a pair of scraped hands, a bruised tummy and a loss of dignity. I need to be more careful at my age, or at least wear more sensible shoes for jumping on walls.


;-)

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Amy Macdonald


Moonface and I went to listen to Amy Macdonald play at the Anson Rooms on Thursday night, the third gig I'd been to in a fortnight. She's a rising star, only twenty but with a loud and confident style that sounds as if she's been on the road for most of her life. Her ebullient style reminds me most of Bruce Springsteen in his earlier years: rousing songs with choruses to get the audience on her side and to keep them there. Although it's a big hall and she only had four musicians in her band apart from her own electro-acoustic guitar, she filled it well with music. I reckon that she would make a wonderful stadium rocker, and could support a "big-name" band any time, and beat them hollow.

She's good with lyrics, too, bringing in real emotions and twists that belie the poppy nature of her songs. Although there is a consistently optimistic tone to her music, the words are often dark.

Listen: http://www.myspace.com/amymacdonald



:)

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Thursday 14 February 2008

Brel

I watched a TV programme about Jacques Brel a few months ago, which still sticks in my mind because of its insights into a complex man and the songs he wrote & sang. I think that it was the recognition of so many conflicting emotions in a single person and the way in which these were reflected in his music, that swayed it for me. He didn't just sing "love songs": they had twists which made them darker, with less surface appeal but more meat beneath the skin. He could start a verse upright and with a poker face, move to mania, sadness and despair within three minutes, taking the audience with him.

"Le Moribond" is perhaps the example which has stayed with me. I've known the song in English translation for years, as sung in the mid-'70's as "Seasons in the Sun". The English version is upbeat, remembering only the good things in life with a jauntiness that belies the death at the heart of the song; but Brel's French original is so hard, so despairing, so believably human that there is no comparison. At the heart of the song is the enduring question of life: "What is it, to be a man?"

I suppose it's appropriate that I write this on Valentine's night, as "Le Moribond" hinges upon the interplaying themes of love, infidelity, friendship and death so harshly.


:(

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Thursday 7 February 2008

Fowl

There's something very satisfyingly frugal about cooking whole birds. As I write, there is the remains of two pheasants being rendered down in the pressure cooker in our kitchen, for the third stage of eating a bird. Usually, of course, it's a chicken. We're lucky that Moonface occasionally has the chance to get pheasants from a game-keeping colleague, and we rarely eat a duck as well.

The meals go like this. First, mostly on Sundays, we have the bird roasted in the traditional way: with roast potatoes, vegetables and (frequently) stuffing and sauce. The next day we will eat the pickings of the flesh in a curry, stir-fry, risotto or similar dish.

The carcase will then be pressure-cooked to produce a stock, and I'll often pick it over for the last shreds of meat to throw in. This stock will in turn be used as the basis for a lentil or bean casserole for a third meal, together with any gravies or other leftovers in the fridge. We eat well, but not richly. Are we too mean, or is this just being careful? But I do like a good lentil stew.


:-)

Wednesday 6 February 2008

SS Great Britain





As museums go, the SS Great Britain is probably the best I have seen for years. After buying tickets and having a brief poke around when an old school friend visited Bristol a month or so ago, we decided to look around properly the weekend before last.

It's magnificent, and makes one proud to live in Bristol. It's the hulk of the 1839-built vessel, fully restored to a passenger vessel, with working (model) engines and many details restored or replaced. She's nearly 200 years old, now: the first modern ship, built of iron and driven by steam and screws. To think that for three years I lived in a house overlooking her without a true appreciation of her place in history. The masts are as thick as I am, the plates of her sides 2cm thick but rusted through to air in many places where the restorers haven't worked.

The passenger accommodation is also restored, from the bijou "staterooms" with just two bunks and a basin plus two feet of floor-space, to the steerage dormitories where the plebs packed themselves in; they are all seemingly authentic. But the bunks are so small! Not only are they short, too short for even an average size chap like me, but they are narrow, too. I don't think that my shoulders would fit between the barge-boards that stopped the passengers from rolling out in heavy weather.

Then there's the galley, the animal houses, the latrines, the engine room, the staterooms........

I can't say more than this - just go to see her.


:-)

Tuesday 5 February 2008

Shrove Tuesday

For some reason, I felt that I had to write something about today, as it's been full of little incidents and accidents and quite satisfying in a minor way. So, what's it been about?

The plethora of pigeons and doves visible from my office window in the morning? The sound of the tits piping when I walked into the garden?

Was it the satisfaction of clearing away ivy from the boundary wall between our garden and our neighbours' to measure the degree of lean that the wall is developing after 110 years? (Too much, is the answer. It's moved by another inch or so out of true in the last four years. This means that in another fifteen, it might fall unless we prevent it from doing so)

Finding the source of the horrible leak in our bedroom bay, which means that our carpet and floorboards become sodden in heavy rain, if the wind is from the south?

Switching on my phone to receive a text from Kaa, who has cut me off completely? Then realising it probably wasn't meant for me and starting to reply, but checking the message origins and discovering that it had originally been sent to me in October 2006 (!) and must have been caught in a database error somewhere in hyperspace? Strange. I'd been complaining about her to someone else only minutes before.

Or was it the perfection of the pancakes which I had cooked for our evening meal: the first time I had cooked standard flour-egg-milk crepes for a couple of years?

Or was it deciding that spring is coming early, as were the toads we discovered copulating upon Tyne Path as Moonface and I walked out to see a band in the evening? After having done the same ourselves.

Or was it the fun of seeing a young band playing in a sweaty noisy bar, and listening to teenage girls screaming at them, in a way that we haven't heard since the '70's ?

Whatever, it was a decent day, and I enjoyed even the bad bits.


:-)

Saturday 2 February 2008

Walk to the Welly

We drank with friends in the Wellington last night. The pub's good enough in its own right, but one of the main reasons for our choosing to meet there, is that the walk is pleasant. Yes, we go through streets, but there are lots of snickets and paths en route, and a walk across Horfield Common. it's quiet, green and just the right distance for one to feel that a drink is deserved upon arrival, and similarly feel that the effects of the drink will be ameliorated by the long stroll home.

And there are plenty of others who have walked that route. We turn left out of our garden path, left again, then walk past, firstly, the house where Paul Dirac was born and raised. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1933. He went to the same school as our children did, and at which Indira Gandhi spent a few months in '37. After that, we walk behind the prison in which various notorious villains have been incarcerated, across the common and past Cary Grant's home. Our daughter was in the same class as his great-niece, who is the last member of his family to share his surname.

So we have a scientist, a great politican and a famous actor to act as guides. I'm a nonentity, but happy with it. I'll probably stay that way.


:-)