And if you can’t get to the sea, go to the fountain.
A lot of words waiting to be written, waiting for sufficient light to organise their focus.
First Flickr video
Waterloo underground station.
Split shins?
I’m so unfit that I’m stiff as a board and can barely hobble.
After my rather severe shock and general gloom on Friday I decided (after a delightful Saturday and Sunday with various friends) that what Maizy and I needed most in the world was a trip to the seaside. Because we are both, if the truth be known, salty sea dogs bitches and I at least begin to pine if I don’t get salt air in my lungs on a regular basis.
A combination of advice and research led to the chosen destination – train tickets to Seaford are cheap and there’s great walking along the coast towards Eastbourne. We got as far as Birling Gap in the time available – see the map below.
The arrow marks Seaford station, plumb in the middle of a slightly grim seaside town. Not as grim as it would be if infested with amusement arcades, vendors of seaside tat and over-oiled fish and chips but grim in a rather grey down-at-heel way.
But hiding behind that first white cliff on the edge of town is a wonderful, if rather steep in places, walk towards and over the famous Seven Sisters, a series of chalk cliffs.
They start just east of Cuckmere Haven. Which is all well and good – the path runs obediently along the cliffs from Seaford to the aforementioned Haven. But obedience there expires and in order to cross the River Cuckmere, which flows fast and deep into the sea, it is necessary to walk a mile inland along the west bank to Exceat, risk life and limb on the busy-but-single-lane road bridge there and then trudge a mile back down to the coast. Look at it on the map if you don’t believe me.
Since I’d both failed to look at anything other than a google map and had got very distracted on the beach of the west bank by groynes and their protruberances this major detour came as an unwelcome surprise.
Thank goodness I’d packed a large bottle of water and Maizy’s folding bowl.
I’m not quite sure why the cliffs are called the Seven Sisters when there appear to be eight peaks. I’m glad Wikipedia (at the link above) has confirmed this suspicion because I counted them as we went, oh so slowly, up and, slightly faster, down and arrived at a total of eight too. I thought the unaccustomed exertion and heat had addled my brain. This is the view from Short Bottom (the first dip) looking back at Haven Brow (the first Sister) and the coast towards Seaford.
Fortunately there was a bus from Birling Gap back to Seaford and enough time for a huge ice cream before it left.
I dragged my camera and lenses up and down the cliffs and not only did I not change the lens once, I left the settings from its last outing (the nearly pitch-black Joan As Police Woman gig) unchanged. Result? Crap pictures. How stupid can one get? Those I have put up have had to be thoroughly laundered through photoshop elements with the resultant tragic loss of already feeble quality. Still, I hope I shan’t forget to check the ISO setting again.
And today, oh, the stiffness. The ancient, bow-legged gammy hobblingness. Why on earth do we have muscles on the front of our shins anyway? (that’s a rhetorical question, by the way). And to add insult to injury I’m puce with sunburn. But I feel virtuous for getting some exercise, and it was worth it. Maizy appears entirely unaffected and just as bouncy and energetic as usual.
The entire slideshow of the day is here. Split shins are, apparently, more widely known as shin splints. I obviously don’t really have them, merely some rather shocked and horrified muscles.
Iconography, aka poor old Moana Sleaza
Is this mooning Mona a Banksy? I know not. It’s low down and small (seven bricks tall and near ground level) but none the less effective for that:
Merely yards away we have another variant on the let’s-manipulate-Mona theme, larger and more elevated. Plastic-coated ascii Mona looking down askance from a window on a disused building.
It’s enough to make La Gioconda weep.
Devices and desires
Another storming day out with Hg. Unfortunately motherly duties and a new series of the only television programme I watch have combined to prevent further elucidation at this time. However before I retire to bed here is a picture from a previous expedition and two wtfs from today.
So Hg wishes to send a picture or two of the beloved spawn from his phone to mine. (Actually I demand them.) We make ourselves visible, bluetooth-wise, and just look at that list of devices. “Joy and pain”. Who, we wondered, as we surveyed the entirely pain-free-appearance of our fellow drinkers, had labelled their device (or themselves) thus and left it permanently discoverable.
Above is a park railing in Hoxton Square. Affixed to it is a clove of garlic carefully protected by a pad of cotton wool, all held in place with a strip of elastoplast. WTF, you might ask. What indeed. Perhaps the park requires protection from vampires. Or the railing cut itself shaving.
And this is a tree in a park in Shoreditch which, along with several others nearby, has produced an enormous crop of shoefruits. No, I have no idea either.
London really is a most delightful place.
Urban spring
The substrate may not be of the most yielding
but procreation has to happen
and the sun is higher, sooner, giving us all notice of spring’s path.
Lesnes Abbey
Another top photo expedition suggested by Neha which took place on a beautiful sunny day. Many pictures were taken. I find this one, of part of an ancient mulberry tree, entirely unintentionally spooky:
It’s taken me quite some time to sort out the pics, but I’ve had fun messing around with effects in black and white:
I love this one of Neha in typical pose:
The Abbey itself is an ancient, fascinating and extremely well-kept building. I was most interested, however, in the juxtaposition of the old and the new:
The most important part of the day (apart from eating, of course, which happened in a particularly delicious fashion) was the handing over of Neha’s hat.
I have to say that I’m extremely impressed by her choice of colour. It suits her most excellently.
Have I mentioned how much I love knitting things for people? There’s currently another pair of socks for my father underway and I’m so happy to have a picture of their construction!
Joan As Police Woman – the gig
Well I’m very glad I went. I got there at just the right moment, I reckon, when it wasn’t so crowded that I couldn’t get a spot right in front of the stage but not so early that there were hours to wait.
I took up my position feeling like I was doing a very good impersonation of a pro. Looked at the position of the singer’s mic, the lighting, set various important-seeming settings on the camera. Of course I’d forgotten that she (Joan) divides her time between keyboards and guitar so I ended up on the wrong side of the stage and therefore not in the best position at all.
She wore a hat. She told us it had been a bit of a last-minute decision. She took it off later and apologised for her hair being such a terrible mess. I found the effect anything but unpleasant.
Here’s another one of bassist Rainy Orteca. Is it as good as the one I put up yesterday? I dunno. Slightly out of focus, no smile, but I’m not sure I don’t prefer it.
The drummer, Parker Kindred (what a great name it is, now that I’ve discovered it), spent a lot of the time with his brow furrowed in a worried-looking fashion like an emaciated bloodhound. In this picture he looks somewhat more sanguine.
I love watching musicians. The intense inward concentration, the expressions sometimes bordering on agony; it reminds me of people enjoying really good sex.
I’m sure it’s a comparison Joan would appreciate. She explained that the song (from the forthcoming album To Survive) Hard White Wall was a song about lust and the consummation thereof against the eponymous structure.
So, as TG pointed out on the previous post, enough with the visuals already, what was the music like? I am sorry to have to report that the sound balance was so appalling that I can’t really give any meaningful appraisal. Maybe it was my position at the front of the stage, but I really can’t imagine that I should not have been able to hear the vocals above the keyboards.
The opening song was To Be Loved which is lined up to be the first single from the new album. She was nervous, visibly and audibly nervous, but warmed up quickly.
The set mixed new material with the three tracks from Real Life which had been released as singles – Flushed Chest, Christable and, as the encore, Eternal Flame. Of the forthcoming release I’m already familiar with To Be Lonely, Start Of My Heart and Furious from the video of the concert she gave at Amsterdam’s Paradiso which appears no longer to be online.
For all these tracks it was just about ok that the overall sound quality was rubbish and the balance appalling, I was singing along anyway. But when it came the stuff I hadn’t already heard it was extremely frustrating.
Worst of all was right at the end. After the encore drummer and bassist left the stage leaving Joan alone at the keyboard. And every sound she made produced a rattling noise akin to the sound of stage thunder from the speaker. It sounded to me like an open mic over the drum kit picking up some kind of resonance off one of the skins. Or maybe by then the speakers themselves were ashamed of the noise they were having to pump out and were giving up the will to sound.
So the finale of the evening, the title track of the album, To Survive, was for me entirely ruined by the accompaniment of the rattling of dried chickpeas in a large tin trunk.
But if I had to draw a conclusion I would say that the new album looks to be as powerful as the debut with a mix of haunting, intimate songs and the harder, faster and syncopated beats of Hard White Wall and spitting power of Furious. As a performer she is protean in her ability to move from tender to ferocious, she’s witty and charming as she riffs with the audience while retuning her guitar. Oh, and her footwear is always worth drooling over. I shall definitely buy the album when it comes out, and would love to see her again live, with the added and as yet unachieved advantage of being able to hear her properly as well.
(Gig on 17 April 2008 at the Roundhouse FREEDM Studio [“the square room in the round building”])
The gig and the battery
My battery’s running low and that of my camera totally died during the Joan As Police Woman gig. I’d expected this, charged up the spare (actually it was the spare in the camera, cheap, short life, swift death and generally not very satisfactory) but then rushed out leaving the reliable one still on the charger.
Can you imagine how frustrating it was to have merely to look at the beautiful images moving one after another in front of my eyes without being able to attempt to capture them? Well, it was difficult that’s for sure.
Too tired to process all the pics tonight, and still got yesterday’s trip with Neha to sort through, so here is a teaser to be going on with. Sort of head to toe without the head.
Those shoes are so utterly wonderful. I want several pairs in various colours. And the painless acquisition of the ability to walk in them.
JAPW is a trio. The bassist was introduced as the “enigmatic” Rainy Orteca (or was it “mysterious”?)
And this is the drummer whose name I’ve forgotten and will find out tomorrow.
I’m really very pleased with some of the pictures.
Small but very determined
A huge hen pheasant had the temerity to waddle across the garden. Maizy, who becomes incensed at small insects daring to occupy her territory, was enraged. She can jump four feet from a standing start under normal circumstances. She was positively flying in her efforts to make the glass between her and the bird disappear. And of course grarking (a mixed growl and bark) loudly the while.
Eventually I let her out. A hen pheasant laid a clutch of more than 20 eggs in my father’s garden right by the front door last year causing much inconvenience as it was decided that she and her nest should not be disturbed. He suspects it’s the same one back again, casing the joint, and doesn’t want a repeat performance this year. She did appear very full of eggs. She managed, just, to elude the slathering hound let loose on her and lumbered away after a long, scrambling take-off and disappeared over the fence.
frizzyLogic 