Spanish Fauna

A photo of some sort of grasshopper, I think it may be a locust.

There were quite a few of them, but this one was the only one that wasn't camera shy.

The pigeons and gulls on the other hand didn't have a care in the world and the pigeons in particular would fly right up to you and land a few feet away in the hope that you'd feed them.

Coffee

Coffee is one of the four major food groups, have you been getting enough?

Puerto de Mazarrón - Sunday Market

Every Sunday there is a large, very busy market in Puerto de Mazarrón, it isn't easy to find if you don't know where it is, but once there it is the hub of activity on a Sunday morning.

There are numerous stalls selling fresh, locally grown fruit and vegetables, local meat products and lot of textile and leather stalls. Between these there are a few jewellery stalls selling trinkets made from sea shells, semiprecious stones, regular polished stones and some metal (they said it was silver, I wasn't convinced).











Legs stall! Almost. There were quite a lot of stalls selling stockings, they must be popular in this part of Spain.



Heavy Metal Tee-shirts. Not locally produced I don't think, but they were selling quite a lot of them, so maybe it is a popular music genre in this region.





I didn't think anyone still used these, but they were selling music on cassette tapes!

Lorca Castle / Fortaleza del Sol

Fortaleza del Sol (the fortress of the sun) is a fortress of Arabic origin which dominates the whole city of Lorca. It dates back to the 13th century, and sits on the top of a large hill.





The Spanish seem to have a different view of conservation than we do in the UK, they repair their ruins without too much effort to hide the repairs. This does have the benefit of allowing you to clearly identify the old from the new, but does somewhat ruin the ambiance of the ruin.









Unfortunately it was very overcast on the day I visited it, but there was a hint of blue sky when I was leaving.

Water

gUiLLeMoTS, EDITORS & R.E.M.

On Saturday I went to Twickenham Stadium to see R.E.M. and the two supporting acts gUiLLeMoTS & EDITORS. It was a surprisingly nice sunny day for a change and so we went early so as to see the supporting acts.

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gUiLLeMoTS got things started and they were good, but not quite my kind of music. I could appreciate the talent, but didn't feel the vibe.

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EDITORS was more to my liking. They could do with improving their stagecraft a bit; particularly interacting with the crowd. As it was they just banged the songs out one after another, almost oblivious to the fact that anyone was there, until the very end of their set.

They may have just banged them out one after the other, but what songs! The sound was well suited to a large venue and sounded good from the very first track.

Okay, (I know now that) some of the subtler aspects of the guitars was lost, but I liked them so much that I bought some overpriced merchandise (a tee-shirt), and have subsequently got both of their albums which I have listed to a few times now.

My favourite tracks of theirs at the moment are "Bones", "The Racing Rats" & "Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors". You can hear some of their songs on their YuckSpace page.

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The headline act was of course R.E.M. and to be honest I'm not really sure what to say about the performance.

The music was for the most part performed very well and I enjoyed the performance as a whole , but, there's always a but, I didn't know any of the first three songs of the performance that they started with and the sound hadn't been sorted out yet, so, they just sounded like noise really. If the concert had ended after the third song I'd have said that they were rubbish.

Luckily it didn't and by the time they had arrive at the fourth song ("What's The Frequency Kenneth") things started improving and the atmosphere completely changed. From that point onwards it was a great performance, full of energy.

Michael Stipe is a great front man and he really does work hard, interacting with the crowd, telling stories, plugging Obama and ripping into the Bush administration. The seriously jerky dancing is very entertaining.

In short it was a very good way to spend a pleasant (if rare these days) summer evening.

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R.E.M.'s Set List (if you are interested)
01. Living Well Is The Best Revenge
02. These Days
03. The Wake-up Bomb
04. What's The Frequency Kenneth
05. Drive
06. Man Sized Wreath
07. Disturbance At The Heron House
08. Ignoreland
09. Walk Unafraid
10. Hollow Man
11. Fall On Me
12. Electrolite
13. The Great Beyond
14. I'm Gonna DJ
15. Exhuming McCarthy
16. The One I Love
17. I've Been High
18. Let Me In
19. Horse To Water
20. Bad Day
21. Orange Crush
22. Imitation of life
23. Supernatural Superserious (Encore)
24. Losing My Religion
25. Perfect Circle
26. It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
27. Man On The Moon

Hurt

I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything

What have I become
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

I wear this crown of thorns
Upon my liar's chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
Beneath the stains of time
The feelings disappear
You are someone else
I am still right here

What have I become
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way - Trent Reznor

Written by Trent Reznor and first performed by Nine Inch Nails on their 1994 Album, 'The Downward Spiral' (which features the rather excellent track, 'A Warm Place').

The Nine INch Nails version doesn't really do much for me, but Johnny Cash's version from his 2002 album 'American IV: The Man Comes Around', which is mostly comprised of covers of other people's songs, is mind-bogglingly good, in a low key, sort of depressing kind of way.

You can listen to it on YouTube by visiting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmVAWKfJ4Go

Solar Eclipse - Tomorrow

I've just come across some info about a solar eclipse that is happening tomorrow.

If you happen to live in Siberia you'll be lucky enough to see a full solar eclipse but if you are in North America, most of Europe or Asia, you should still be able to see a partial eclipse.

If, like me, you are in London you should be able to see a partial eclipse at around 10:18 according to this site.

Remember to take care when looking at the sun and use appropriate equipment to avoid retinal damage. Happy sungazing.

Brandi Carlile @ Arts Theatre London

I've just arrived at home after seeing Brandi Carlile at the Arts Theatre London. It was awesome! AWESOME!

Before I say any more I have to thank Ellie for saving my sanity and arranging tickets for me when I thought all hope was lost. I also have to thank Kate for restoring my faith in human kindness by offering me a pair of tickets today. Bless you both.

This was my first visit to the Arts Theatre and I have to say that it is a really nice venue for a gig. It looked like there were about 300 seats in a nice compact, yet comfortable space. Every seat was filled, and there were enough people to create a great atmosphere, but the venue is small enough for everyone to be close to the artists. I understand that tonight's performance will be the last concert at the Arts Theatre. This is a shame.

Phil Campbell opened up, and I have to say he was very, very good. I haven't heard of him or any of his songs before, but I was very impressed.

His voice is much larger than he is (he bumped into me on the way out), and his songwriting is quite accomplished. The only thing I could fault him on (and only a little) was his stage craft.

He didn't really connect with the audience. Still there's nothing wrong with his singing or his songwriting, and I'm thinking of going to see him perform again, soon.

Now, Brandi Carlile.

Did I say awesome? Oh, I did. Hmmm; thesaurus time... how about, great, incredible, fabulous, amazing, astounding, fantastic, superb or outstanding? Take your pick, they all apply in bucket loads.

From the very first song, all the way through to the end of the performance, she (and to be fair, the rest of the band also) had a great stage presence. The kind of interaction with the audience that make the audience feel part of the performance and makes a gig worth going to.

That alone would have made it a good gig, but what elevated it to awesome status was the the face that each song was wonderfully and in many cases, energetically performed.

Add the fact that she has a great voice and talent for songwriting and you get an awesome gig. It's a simple recipe really.

There was old stuff, new stuff from the next album, covers of 'Creep' by Radiohead & Jeff Buckley's version of 'Hallelulah' (which happens to be one of my favorite songs) to close the set.

Every song was played just about perfectly and the only real disappointment was the lighting engineer's foray into random psuedo-psychadellic lighting on one song, relatively early in the set, which thankfully wasn't repeated.

After a bit of reflection I'd have to say that the gig was at least as good as the Willie Nelson concert I went to at the Apollo in May (but not as long, he may be old, but he can go on for hours). It was almost as good as seeing the Boss at the Emirates Stadium. I can't give her any higher praise than that.

So there you have it, I'm a fan. I even bought a T-shirt!

I'm torn about posting this. The more people that are aware of Brandi's great voice, lyrics and performances, the harder it will be to get tickets. With a bit of luck she'll be performing in London again before too long.

Whenever it is, I'll definitely be trying to buy a few tickets.

Flowers at Hampton Court Flower Show 2008

A few photographs (mostly of flowers) that I took at the Hampton Court Flower Show a few Sundays ago.

Hampton Court Flower Show 2008

I went to the Hampton Court Flower Show a few Sundays ago. I go every year or two, but this year it was just too busy to be much fun.

I used to go to the Chelsea Flower Show but stopped going because of the large number of people in the small space. Hampton Court used to be a good alternative, the exhibitors are more of less the same.

The show gardens are different, and not as splendid as at Chelsea; but much of the plants and exhibits are the same. Above all the atmosphere at Hampton Court used to be quite a bit more relaxed.

This year there were just too many people at Hampton Court for it to be pleasant. I couldn't stand anywhere to appreciate anything, or take a photo, for more than a few seconds before someone crashed into me. It generally wasn't any body's fault in particular, just a side effect of having too many people for the available space.

I did manage to take a few photos. As it was so busy I used the 'f8 and be there' principle or using what you've got. I had aset of close up filters with me and decided to try taking some macro-esque photos.

Bearing in mind that the close up filters do reduce the quality of the images somewhat, and the fact that the light wasn't bright in the tents, I ended up with some blurry close up photos of small flowers.

Outside wasn't much better as to get the depth of field required to show any detail at all I was shooting at about f16 upwards, which again resulted in some blurry images due to diffraction and camera shake.

All the same I ended up with about half a dozen shots which I thought were quite pleasing (which I will post later when I have some time).

I'm not sure I'll be going back to the Hampton Court Flower Show next year. I may give Chelsea another try. I haven't been to a Chelsea flower show in four years so maybe things have improved.

Graffiti in London

There is an underpass in London near Waterloo station where the management has decided to allow Grafitti artists to express themselves.

There was recently a grafitti event, I think it was called the 'Cans Festival Graffiti in Waterloo 2008', and it was arranged by two quite well known graffiti artists Blek Le Rat & Bansky.

The art has been there for a while and unfortunately by the time I got to taking photos and a lot of secondary tagging had already taken place, but there is a lot of very cool art in there and as it is evolving over time it is the kind of place that you can visit time after time.