Sunday July 24 - Windermere air show
There is a sadness in recording these wonderful moments a while after the event. Because a month later the Red Arrows suffered the tragic loss of 'Red 4', Jon 'Eggman' Egging. But this afternoon they lifted everyone's hearts and made us gasp at their prowess. That'll be how he is remembered. You can visit the trust set up in his name by Jon's wife Emma, to help disadvantaged young people, here.
| | | |
| | |
Saturday May 28 - Whitby, North Yorkshire
I love seeing new things in old familiar places. And somehow, during a lifetime of visiting Whitby, this is the first time I have ever seen the shoreline feeding frenzy for Herring Gulls. A spectacle that spells carnage for all the soft-shelled crabs left stranded by high tide. It's an amazing thing to be around. As long as you're not a crab. Another new experience is the Magpie Cafe. For years I've wondered why people queue to get into a mere cafe. We decide to try it, taking advantage of a rare queueless moment. And now I know why they do.
| | | |
| | |
Sunday May 15 - a wander from Eyam
Sometimes there's magic in the air. It's not dramatic scenery. It's not high. It's not remote. There's a pub Sunday roast involved. It's a bit misty and drizzly. There's a spooky old industrial site that's like something like the village in Resident Evil 4. But there's a quality to this walk I haven't experienced for a while. Where you see and hear things you don't normally see and hear. Some of the things you see aren't really there. Like the monkey that turns out to be a wood sprite. Some of the things you hear are there but you never see them. Like the cuckoo that follows us through a valley. It's like that on this walk.
| | | |
| | |
Japan soundtracked my university years. I loved their journey from dirty, glam and slightly kitsch rockers, with a New York Dolls kind of vibe, all the way through to the beautiful experimental music they somehow managed to get into the charts. A new Japan album was always exciting because you knew it would be different from the last one. Of late, I have been listening a lot to Japan again. And remembering how, in the years of their creative peak, Mick Karn's fretless bass was a signature sound. He was a perfect 80s poster boy, with deep talent, and one who became massively influential among his peers. He had everything ... until cancer took him yesterday, aged 52.
He's here but hidden, sitting on the drum riser behind a guesting Ryuichi Sakamoto, in one of my favourite YouTube clips ... one I revisit regularly. It always makes my spine tingle. And all the more now, for the loss of one of its creators.
Mick Karn picture stolen from here
| | | |
| | |
New Year
My cousin Mickey & his wife Annie don't do things by halves. Their New Year party lasts 48 hours. It begins with a 'Gala Dinner' for 7, with masks, faux french names and roles allocated to each guest. I am 'Michel du Mirchamp' and my role is 'The Raconteur'. My party piece is to tell 3 versions of a recent and personally traumatic real life event, only one of which is 'the truth'. The guests have to guess which one. I'm in my storytelling element. Probably helped by a mixture of Budweiser, wine and champagne-brandy cocktails. This means the men and even one of the women all falling for a hilariously improbable and entirely spurious version. None of us has a clue where the hours between midnight and 4am disappear to.
New Year's Day begins at the crack of 10:30am with the hangover from hell. And discovery of the hangover cure from heaven. Scrambled eggs, champagne and a bath. I can't recommend it enough.
| | | |
| | |
Just sometimes, just when it matters, you get just what you need. A lovely hideaway, in brilliant company, with memorable weather and spectacular views straight from the doorstep. Parachuted straight into this place you could mistake it in parts for Arctic Tundra, not Lindisfarne.
| | | |
| | |
Spectacular sunrises, cloaks of sea mist, goose and duck eggs for breakfast, eagles soaring overhead ... a cockerel you could happily strangle at 5:30am .... I love those times when 'life' doesn't get in the way. But that is the experience of a holidaymaker. The community gives the impression of clinging on by its fingertips to a way of life that no longer fits into the world. I wonder if they will be crofting in another 10 years. I hope they are ...
| | | |
| | |
Wednesday June 9 - Supergrass, Manchester Academy
For 17 years they gave us music with style, balls, melody, humour and charm. They wrote some of the best songs I can think of from the past two decades. Live they were unpretentious, tight, loud, authentic and sometimes as exciting as anyone I ever saw. On reflection, my memories of Supergrass are incredibly fond and rich with variety. Reading Festival, 1997, when I was first blown away by them on a warm, sunshine evening. A night at the old style music hall City Varieties in Leeds when they transformed the stage into a comfy front room, replete with standard lamps and sofas, to run through a lovely semi-acoustic set for a seated audience. The wonderful night of their one-off small venue Christmas gig at Plug in Sheffield two years ago. The quirky night at Leeds Cockpit for Gaz & Danny's side covers project The Hot Rats. And all the other times I saw them, when it was just a straight ahead good rock n' roll show to promote a latest album.
Tonight is goodbye. Supergrass-style. So they've put together a complete retrospective of their glittering career. A selection of songs from each album, performed like lots of little gigs interspersed with film projections from their relevant life & times. More than two hours of pure quality, devoid of mawkish sentimentality and a brilliant audience who sing along with every word.
It's a gig I will still be talking about when I'm too old to join a sweaty rock throng.
They were the 'Grass, they rocked and I loved them.
| | | |
| | |
