Picked up this morning outside the Highbury & Islington tube:
Intriguing! In other news, off to Australia House to vote [with a slight feeling of depression] for Julia today.
Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category
Mr Omar
Monday, August 9th, 2010Leaving on a jet plane…
Thursday, August 5th, 2010…tomorrow at 6am. Will fulfil my voterly duties at Australia House sometime during the week next week.
Until I get my act sorted out, it will be a bit quiet here – even more quiet than usual. Anyway, for the sake of all of us here’s hoping that a miracle occurs and issues that matter take centre stage before this election campaign is through.
Heading back…
Thursday, July 1st, 2010
… into the economic gloom. Will there be work? We shall find out.
South Island, New Zealand
Sunday, January 10th, 2010
Lupins aplenty
Lake Tekapo, sunset
Mount Cook (Aoraki), New Zealand’s highest peak
Lake Wanaka, New Years Day
Leaving Milford Sound for Te Anau, a journey Ian McKellen has probably justifiably described as ‘the most beautiful drive in the world’.
Some demon’s land
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009The “demon” (or rather, “diemen”) certainly has a good sense of aesthetics but a questionable control over the weather.
On South African chicken chains and fallen leaders
Monday, September 8th, 2008I think it’s far from a bad thing for businesses to engage in a bit of political humor from time to time, so personally I welcome this from Nandos (from the otherwise bin-worthy Sunday Telegraph):
Some quick Nandos trivia; in the United Kingdom, Nandos effectively functions as a restaurant chain rather than a run-of-the-mill burger chain as in Australia. I have a few fond London memories of sitting down with people and devouring whole chickens, chilli sauce being of course obligatory.
Hydro Connect Festival 2008
Saturday, September 6th, 2008I’m back in Sydney now after a long and thoroughly enjoyable month of travel throughout August. I am not too sure what is going on with the weather at the moment, but the London-like conditions in Sydney are quite frankly unacceptable.
One of the things that I did manage to get along to during August was the Hydro Connect Festival, which was held over the last weekend of the month at Inveraray in Western Scotland. The weather there was not much chop either, but to be honest the rain did not really ensue during the performances of most of the headline acts, so all was well that ended well. Despite gumboots becoming obligatory by the second day of the festival due to the rain and 20,000 people tromping across the grounds, it was certainly the best festival I have ever had the pleasure of attending.
The festival highlights for me were performances from Mercury Rev, Bloc Party and the inimitable Sigur Ros, whose bombast knows no equal. I also managed to catch Ladytron, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Noah & The Whale, the Manic Street Preachers, Gomez, Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band, Spiritualised, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Grinderman, Goldfrapp, Elbow and Franz Ferdinand over the course of the long weekend. Needless to say, it was great!
Some pictures below:
Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks. Had never seen Malkmus before live so this was a treat. They played a solid set, although nothing I was familiar with. I have his self-titled album, but none of his albums recorded with the Jicks.
Mercury Rev closed out the Friday night of the festival for us and they were excellent, as usual. The band really has a flair for theatrics and know how to make an impact visually and sonically live.
Nick Cave heads Grinderman, his “rock” outfit with which he has recorded an album and is in the midst of recording a second. Warren Ellis was free to cut sick to an even greater extent than usual as Nick;s right-hand man, and the band had the audience in thrall.
Bloc Party closed out Saturday night and were awesome – probably the pick of the festival for me. All the band’s best tracks were played along with two encores (the second quite unexpected), and track Flux off A Weekend In The City was accompanied by a very cool laser show.
Sigur Ros as always put on a great show on Sunday night before the headliners – including a horn section in Scottish apparel.
Sigur Ros.
Franz Ferdinand closed out the night and the festival with a pretty tight set. They probably suffered a bit by comparison with Sigur Ros’ immediately preceding epic set, but of course the predominantly Scottish crowd went nuts. A number of tracks from the band’s forthcoming third album were given a run, getting something of a mixed reception.
Hiatus
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008This blog is somewhat involuntarily being put into hibernation. This coming weekend I am moving out of my apartment in London, and for the majority of August I will be abroad seeing as much of Europe as I can before returning home in early September. My access to the Internet will be itinerant and is unlikely to result in a discernable degree of productivity here. I may post the odd photo if I can.
I will be back with a vengeance online here and down under sometime in September. As much as it will be sad to leave London, it will be excellent to be back home. It is something like returning to the old life that I left behind; it really does feel a bit as though I have been living someone else’s life for the past year. In short, it has been a mesmerising experience!
Needless to say, the last year I have spent over here has been fantastic both from both a career perspective and a travel perspective; or should I say, an educational perspective. I have seen a whole bunch of places that ten years ago, I honestly never would have dreamed that I would ever visit. Cities like Rome or Stockholm are no longer just abstract concepts that I read about in the news or glance at idly on world maps. Great Britain, as it happens, amounts to more than just a useless cricket team, an idiosyncratic monarchy and a gaggle of perennial sporting underachievers. The world is truly alive for me now in a way that it never was before, and I am glad that I will be carrying some of the most special parts of it with me in my mind’s eye, whatever happens from here on in.
Museum of Communism, Prague
Thursday, July 17th, 2008One of the delicious ironies of the fairly scathing Museum of Communism in Prague is that it is located above a McDonalds Restaurant, and on the same floor as a casino. To enter the museum you actually have to walk through a door embossed with the casino logo.
It’s hard to say if folks Vladimir Lenin would have appreciated the irony. I don’t suppose when I visit Russia in August I am going to encounter the same kind of irony, in any case.
Fascinating, and well worth the visit if you happen to be in Prague (it will probably take you around an hour). It’s probably worth noting that the Soviets did at least leave the capital of the Czech Republic with an excellent metro system, as some sort of consolation. I am sure to many (very likely most), that isn’t really any consolation at all.
Laura Norder in London
Saturday, July 5th, 2008In recent months the British capital has been preoccupied with the issue of knife crime, and after several recent high profile attacks, this form of disgustingly petty crime has even superceded terrorism as Scotland Yard’s top law and order priority. It is tragic considering the circumstances, but also interesting that the global security bug-bear of the past five years has been so swiftly and so unceremoniously relegated to the backseat. One wonders if the global strategists and commentators who have gone dined out in recent years on the challenges posed by Islamic fundamentalism and Al’Qaeda will now turn their hands and minds to crime of a more conventional variety.
Although admittedly I have been lucky to have scarce exposure to it myself, recently I have been provided with direct cause for concern about crime levels in London. Walking home from work the other day I arrived on a street corner in just enough time to see a tall, muscular African man strike a woman with full-force in the face, knocking her to the ground. The man fled the scene with a companion, and myself and a group of startled onlookers approached the woman and called the police. It was unclear what the reason for the assault was, but the woman’s glasses had been shattered by the force of the man’s blow, sending shards of glass into the face and one of her eyes. Fortunately it was not too long before the police and an ambulance arrived, and we believe the attackers were apprehended.
It was a strange experience because it was both shocking and yet, scratching a little deeper, not too surprising. We all see the stories on the nightly news, and read about them in newspapers and magazines. When we are reminded that these stories are real and play havoc with real people’s lives, it disturbs us and provides some food for thought about the real state of society today. In the developed world at least, we may well be living in more civilised societies than ever before, but I sincerely doubt that thought provides any comfort to the random victims of modern society’s vices – who, let’s not kid ourselves – are still out there and all around us. Realistically, only lady luck excludes us from being part of the main story.
