Wednesday, October 31, 2007

A Friendly Intervention


Blimey. Tickets for the 2008 Green Man Festival are available. I’m very tempted but shall keep my powder dry until the new year when I shall start lobbying S and persuade him that his threatened festival retirement might be too early. Part of me wants to apply for tickets to Glastonbury next year, not for the commercial Razorlight nonsense that dominates the main stage but for all the smaller venues where nuggets might lurk lurkily.

The fellow who puts the Yo! into Yorkshire, M, has heralded a new favourite album. I was hurt and worried when he suggested that this recording had replaced in his affections the varied long players released by the young prince of music, Sufjan Stevens, but we’ve talked it through. I now have a copy of Poses by Rufus Wainwright and, out of loyalty to Stevens, I’ve tried very hard to dislike it but have failed abysmally. After three or four listens, I have grown to admire the textured songwriting skills of Wainwright and I am greatly enjoying some very beautiful numbers. I publicly express my gratitude. As a symbolic act to remind myself who is still number one chez Cole, I did listen to the second half of Illinoise this evening while I let my evening meal, heavy in carbohydrates, settle.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Please her, please him, buy totebags


According to the Iron & Wine web presence, Sunday’s purchase is not a shopping bag but a totebag. This is a new word for me. I doubt it has anything to do with the gambling emporium. I can’t imagine Sam Beam putting a fiver each-way on the 5.15 at Kempton Park. Here’s a picture of the official Iron & Wine totebag to render all readers of these humble pages green with envy.

I have been having enormous fun here. You can create your own Bob Dylan Subterranean Homesick Blues message which you then email to a comrade. You surely know the ‘video’ to that song; the boy Dylan peels off page after page of lyrics as the ditty plays. He doesn’t mime or anything as uncool as that. You can merrily view the original here. Anyway, the clever website permits you to choose what goes on the sheets. This allowed me to send J an unusual thank you letter for driving me to Bristol on Sunday night; S, D and A should have received a list of my favourite Gloucester rugby players from yesteryear surreally revealed by the folk genius/hepcat.

Monday, October 29, 2007

Made To Realise


The dainty surroundings of Bristol’s beatific Saint George’s Hall gently and tastefully hosted Iron & Wine last evening. From my vaguely uncomfortable seat, three rows back, I appreciated the fine and studied musicianship of Sam Beam and his comrades (including, if I’m correct, the slide-guitarist from the mighty and splendid Calexico) and, at times, marvelled at the sumptuous soundscapes the eight-piece, underpinned by a splendid percussion collective, mustered. The songs were tender and gently melancholic but a tad one-paced for my liking; the folksy tones and whispered vocals remained pleasant enough throughout but the mighty and near orchestral clamour that soared through the aisles when the band really hit top gear came not often enough. I bought an Iron & Wine shopping bag afterwards; My Bloody Valentine never used to offer punters such a product.

I’ve suffered a migraine today, the first since the summer.

I do relish political memoirs written either from the perspective of the politician or the journalist and I am racing through Jon Snow’s account of a fascinating career at the moment. Shooting History has, thus far, taught me plenty about various episodes that I was either too young or, I’m ashamed to confess, too ambivalent to engage with at the time. His account of the varied conflicts within Central America during the Reagan era has proved fascinating while the sections examining the role of the papacy on world politics (and vice versa) are truly disturbing but not in the least surprising. His love affair with Africa and, in particular, Uganda is vibrantly described. The book is written with a moving emotionality; the author is often witnessing history behind tear-filled eyes and it is obvious that much that he has reported continues to influence, affect and haunt him. It’s a compelling read. I would place it alongside John Simpson’s Strange Places, Questionable People as a benchmark for quality writing about foreign news. John Sergeant’s Give Me Ten Seconds is my favoured tome that focuses mainly on domestic matters.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

It's not the sort of job I'd do myself, but then I'm not him...


A cataclysmic mix-up involving the hasty texting of a Wedding Present song title to a comrade has dominated the weekend. I meant well. The fall-out may eclipse even the notorious Bryan Adams/Ryan Adams confusion of 2006 that rocked the very fabric of society and still haunts me. The Beth Orton/Beth Gibbons misunderstanding between me and S of four or five years ago came close. Now, that was embarrassing. Ouch.


Gloucester 18 - Newcastle 18

I forlornly meandered to the rugby on my own yesterday and found myself, completely sans self-consciousness, leaping about like a crazed tapir as, ten minutes into injury time, the young prince they call ‘Simpson-Daniel’ scampered cheerfully over for a try that tied the match for the Gloucester club of Gloucester. The EDF Cup fixture against Newcastle ended in an 18-all draw and I would suggest that the home side would feel more satisfied with a result that flatters a lacklustre display. It was, nonetheless, a thrilling ending to a match especially as the Cherries found themselves 18-3 down with less than a quarter of the match remaining. The brave and bloody-minded fight back proffered a rare positive on a day where little else gave cheer. Karl Pryce has surely played his last match for the noble club; the colossal winger lacked pace, positional sense and, seemingly, any tangible clue as to what his job required. He conveniently limped off after thirty minutes and was replaced by the lively and sharp James Bailey but had the coaches dragged him off after ten, I would not have complained nor experienced a modicum of surprise. The line-out was shocking but I suppose that fielding a hooker who was residing in a different hemisphere until midweek helped not. The introduction of the waspish Titterrell after the break improved matters to an extent but this is an area that requires urgent action. There were positives though. Chris Paterson enjoyed his first start in the ten shirt and produced a no-frills display of sharp and considered passing and intelligent kicking. He should remain first choice with the steady Walker as back-up; the youngster Lamb has produced a series of fairly interesting cameos but has failed to really ‘boss’ a match for a good while. The fabulous match against Wasps where his prodigious skills lit up Kingsholm took place the season before last; since then this scribe has felt rather underwhelmed by the fellow. The mature Paterson is a class above and I felt authentic relief that now we actually have a stand-off who can dominate matches and bring out the best in the massive talent that surrounds him. Elsewhere I enjoyed Balshaw’s skill and confidence at full back and some of his work with the incredible Simpson-Daniel was electrifying. Lines-out aside, the pack produced a fairly no-nonsense performance but we miss the terrier Hazell badly; the Fijian Qera produced a couple of scintillating runs but, possibly, didn’t do as much of the dirty work that ‘Haze’ gets down to with such unselfishness. I think the team needs to improve a great deal to do itself justice in the Heineken Cup and the addition to the matchday 22 of such luminaries as Tindall, Morgan, Nieto, Buxton and Azam will help.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Bob Dylan/Pineapple Upside-Down Cake


I completed Bob Dylan’s Chronicles: Volume One this morning. Any dude wanting a chronological account of this hipcat’s life will be disappointed as the book focuses on just a few periods. The height of Dylan’s fame – the mid sixties, I guess – is not mentioned and other important events (his motorcycle crash, his relationship with Joan Baez) are skirted over in a sentence or two. Much of the book features the pre-fame years, his burgeoning musicianship, the folk clubs in Minneapolis and New York and how varied influences (notably Woody Guthrie, Bertolt Brecht and Robert Johnson) combined to create his sound. The book ends as Dylan signs to Columbia and hooks up with manager Albert Grossman. In between, a couple of weighty sections dwell on the making of 1970’s New Morning (an album I confess I’d never really heard of) and 1989’s Oh Mercy! (which I’d heard of but not heard but now want to) and go into immense detail about the formation of individual songs and sounds. It’s a fabulous read, not just for the mesmerizing subject matter but because of the slightly rambling, conversational tone in which it is written. I could almost imagine the great man whispering his confessions in my ear as I turned the pages. I don’t class myself as a massive Bob Dylan fan although I really appreciate a lot of his stuff: I played Bringing It All Back Home over breakfast and am listening to Modern Times as I pen these words. I’m now keen to acquaint myself with Oh Mercy! and maybe one or two other albums that have passed me by (Time Out Of Mind, Love And Theft, Desire etc.)

I baked a marvellous pineapple upside-down cake earlier this week. This was the first cake I have cooked in my life and, by all accounts, proved a minor triumph. It was a very sweet item, packed with sugar both to sweeten the sponge and to caramelise the pineapple. It was devoured more like a pudding than a cake with cream adding to the overall scene. It gave me a touch of heartburn but it was worth it. I might make another soon. My card modelling and bakery experiments haven’t changed my life but I’ve enjoyed trying out new things. What next? Patchwork quilting? To be frank, I wouldn’t mind learning to knit or crotchet.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Tall, tall, tall, I want to be tall, tall, tall



I have no real excuse for not keeping this thing going but I apologise for my slovenly ways. I have been busy and distracted.

This weekend, in between watching the World Cup Final and the mighty Gloucester lose to a ramshackle London Irish outfit at rugby football union, I have, with my son, been constructing a model Empire State Building that came free with Saturday’s Guardian. Card modelling is not something I’ve ever really attempted before with any glee but, as the top photograph demonstrates, we were both sufficiently overwhelmed with fierce concentration that we failed to notice the picture being taken. It took us eight man hours all together. The finished model is not perfect. A few of the sections veer slightly away from the perpendicular and gluey fingers have made a few marks on the extremities. I’m very pleased with it though and feel a quiet sense of achievement for having kept going when it proved really fiddly and difficult. I wouldn’t mind attempting another similar model and am encouraged to find plenty of websites that deal in the trade of card modelling kits. I prefer the architectural offerings I have noticed (the Brooklyn Bridge proffered by one company is especially fine) and shall endeavour to avoid those packs that celebrate combat and conflict. War is stupid and people are stupid (and love means nothing in some strange quarters).