A couple of photosets of yesterdays’ wanderings. Mine, all taken with Hipstamatic on the iPhone, are mostly documents of the colleges that open their doors to the public.
Meanwhile, the last four pics in TLC’s ongoing Oxford set show some of the folk dancing that you always see in town on May Day.
And for completeness, a little video of the two styles in evidence that we came across.
Yesterday, we cycled down bridle paths, skirting jewel green fields and dozing livestock, to Mapledurham House in the heart of West Berkshire. It’s the home of the oldest working watermill in the country, and you can buy flour ground on the premises. It makes excellent loaves, and they will also sell you miller’s bran which adds a beautifully nutty crunch to your morning cereal. We bought herbs and ate good pork sausages and venison for lunch, washed down with a pint of Hoppit from the Loddon brewery, about ten miles away. Then we sat and ate ice cream, sitting amongst daisies by the side of the mill pond in the sunshine.
Today, we took the train to Oxford. It’s May Day, and traditionally the students are up all night carousing before gathering on Magdalen Bridge to hear the college choir sing at sunrise. There are morris dancers, and an air of springtime festivity spices the air. We had a pint of Lunchtime Bitter from the West Berkshire Brewery at the Turf Tavern, a well-kept secret tucked in a maze of alleyways. Deer cantered in the grounds of Magdalen, and the freshly refurbished quad at New College sparkled in the clean air.
I have never felt so proud and happy to be English this weekend, and it had nothing to do with the dog-and-pony show laid on for the tourists over That London way. This country is filled with delights that everyone can enjoy, regardless of your family connections or who you get to marry. My England is a long way from airless pomp and pageantry. In the fields of Mapledurham, on the bridges of Oxford, my England blooms.
TLC gives us two visions of The Greenman on her blog, which just keeps getting better. And an excellent choice of soundtrack, too!
In the catacombs that spread like cancer beneath the big house at the bottom of The Mall, the lizards stir. They are by nature nocturnal, but have trained themselves to emulate the primates they have learned to impersonate so convincingly. Night hunts are saved for very special occasions. After sunset tonight, the lizards will be at their dreadful sport in the streets of London, celebrating their final, long-sought victory.
This is The Shard, a gigantic new building going up in South London that will dwarf just about everything else in the capital. Seeing it for the first time was a bit of a shock, as to my eyes the thing looks like a giant Soviet booster rocket going up in plain sight. As if the Soyuz program had relocated in space and time to sunny Southwark.
As if a Bond villain had hidden his doomsday weapon in plain sight, and one day it would flower open with a bass-drone of hydraulics to reveal a laser weapon or warhead.
Our architecture correspondent Rich Betts writes about The Shard on his website – and comes up with another comparison that I hadn’t seen.
It’s time to put my cards on the table, to put up or shut up, to stick my money where my mouth is. It’s time to make a stand, stake my claim, state my position.
Yeah, the headline kind of gave it away, but with just over a week to go, it’s time to add my voice to the debate, and explain why X&HT supports the Alternative Vote.
An interesting discussion on the Frightfest forums about the nature of the genre – and more specifically, when is a horror film not a horror film – led me into a bit of a muse last night. Frightfest was one of the first venues in the country to show The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. A strange but somehow logical place to show a film about a woman-hating serial killer. The curators have frequently shown movies that stretch the bounds of what you or I would call horror.
Which films, I thought, would be out of bounds to most horror festivals? I’ve come up with a list of five films that I reckon really wouldn’t fit the bill. You might not agree, but that’s part of the exercise. I’d love to know if you think I’m wrong, or which films you’d put on instead.
Continue reading Five Horror Films You’ll Never See In A Horror Festival
Easter Monday. Traditionally in England, the last day of a four day jolly-off-work, in which people can no longer stand being indoors with their relatives and rush to the shops for a dose of that old-tyme retail therapy.
In Poland and some other Central European countries, it’s called Dyngus Day. It’s a commingling of Christian tradition with other, more ancient pagan rites, especially relating to fertility. Think for a minute about the eggs and rabbit imagery plastered all over our Easter celebrations. This time of year is about birth and growth – and the happy funtime activities involved in getting that process started.
Dyngus Day seems to have that idea a little mixed up, though. Traditionally, it mashes up aspects of purification and baptism – the splashing of water, scouring with reeds – with a courting ritual. Therefore, on Dyngus day, young male Poles and Czechs sneak into the bedroom of the girl they wish to wed, sling buckets of water over her, and thrash her about the legs with reeds. Often with the parents’ consent. Throughout the day, girls find themselves targets of soakings and reed-beatings. To be spared this fate labels a young woman as unmarryable or unattractive. I wish I was making this up.
Imagine trying this on someone you have your heart set on. How well do you think it would work? I’m pleased to note that in these enlightened times the practice has become co-ed, and girls will attack their paramours with equal viciousness. Somehow, though, I can’t see a bucket of water to the face and a thrashing taking over from a nice Hotel Chocolat egg any time soon. Or maybe I’m just an old softy.
I do not concern myself with gods and spirits either good or evil nor do I serve any.
For a large proportion of the world’s population, today is a day of special significance, of worship and celebration. For many, it’s an excuse to eat chocolate. For everyone else, it’s just another day. I, like master Lao, choose not to ally myself to any deity or higher ruling power (prayers to the Gods of the London Orbital for safe passage not withstanding). This makes me no more or less right than those of you who will be in church today, or facing east, or lighting insence.
Faith is an essential part of the lives of hundreds of millions of people across the planet, and it would be churlish of me to sneer at them for their beliefs. If worship gives your life structure, a sense of significance and meaning, then so be it. Religion can give explanation, community, and comfort. I fully understand that. All I would ask is that you treat my worldset with the same respect. It’s an unfortunate fact that the simple inability of one religious group to respect the bounds and traditions of another has caused more strife and bloodshed then any other factor in the history of conflict on our angry little planet. That should not be the case.
The right to choose how you worship should never be subject to another’s opprobrium. If you choose not to be bound to any particular god, that too is a choice that is yours, yours alone, and one that should be universally respected. We live in a world too filled with wonders to be bogged down in petty disputes over liturgy, ritual or methods of prayer.
However you’re spending this glorious April day, may your gods be with you.
Spotify changed my life. I listen to more music now, from a wider range of artists than at any other point in my life. Everything from brand new releases to obscure back catalogue jazz and spookytronica, Norwegian death metal to Arvo Part. I even use it to play my iTunes library – the clean, simple interface is quicker to load and easier to use than Apple’s own bloated monster. I’m not alone. Over a million people across Europe use the service. It’s a serious alternative to piracy, and one that puts a pay-to-play model in place that is of direct (if, as some would have it, limited) benefit to the artists.
But clearly, Spotify need to expand. America is the place to be for this expansion, and in order to do that Spotify needs to play nice with the big American labels. This is always a bad move. The big American labels think nice is a type of biscuit. Compromises have had to be made, and Spotify have ended up honking off a significant chunk of their core audience – the listeners that use Spotify Free, the ad-supported service.
Continue reading Free Fallin’ – Spotify And The End Of The Free Era
Round the back of Carnaby Street in the swingingest part of London. The secret power source of all things groovy. If it’s ever unplugged, we’ll be back to trad jazz and spam fritters for tea before you can say Alma Cogan.
EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 