Welcome to me
July 2010
Bonfire of the brands and central heating
There are only three possible explanations of this article.
1. It's parody, to press home a point
2. It's been published by a sniggering editor so that bloggers can press 'Quick Post' and write 'Twat'
3. This narcissistic arsehole and his twunt of an editor think that this is news. For fucks sake, get a life. Buy a brand don't buy a brand. Who gives a shit.
I buy brands sometimes. Sometimes I don't. It's not a lifestyle choice. I don't have a 'lifestyle'. I'm not exactly alone in this. It's just sad twats who call themselves a 'style magazine editor' who need a lifestyle. And their sheeplike disciples. Useless shallow vacuous twat. Right now I'm having a cup of Yorkshire Tea and a Duchy Original biscuit. Are they brands or did I buy them for tried-and-tested quality? If you came round right now, you'd be offered a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit. If you said "What brands are they? Does that fit my lifestyle?" I'd say, "You know where the door is. Use it."
What he's basically saying is that he was too stupid to deconstruct the brainwashing and now he's telling us how stupid he was. But maybe not so stupid. Presumably he's got a nice little fee writing for the BBC. that's a brand, isn't it?
Who are these people who write for the meejah? Is stupidity a prerequisite of the job?
Posted by Gwenda at 08:06 PM |Comments (4) Categories:
Celebrity comments
I have had two comments from someone giving the name Adrian Chiles and an email address (not published) that could potentially be Adrian Chiles. I once had a comment from Peaches Geldof. And Mike T-D once had a comment from a Lithuanian Eurovision entry.
Selina Scott's views on TV were covered in the TV go home, and will be aired on Five tonight.
I tend to agree with her, especially the part about
TV is, to her, ageist and sexist, run by paunchy male executives with a taste for cruelty and a lairy, childish idea of what makes entertainment; a place where reality shows encourage us to ridicule freaks, where everything is sacrificed to football, where news looks like a game show, where soaps have replaced character and warmth with midriffs and addiction, and where the best opportunities available to women in their fifties are to eat cockroaches in the jungle and be thought of as a good sport.
Thing is, though, that sort of TV gets a disproportionately high, if dwindling, share of a dwindling TV audience, and is a surefire winner commercially. People who watch intellectually challenging, iconoclastic and controversial* documentaries or dramas, do so because they want their thoughts to be provoked. This does not make them especially good at absorbing the guff in the adverts, because the adverts want to sell a range of emotions from guilt to envy to self-delusion, without people actually thinking "Will this lotion make me happy, or this food stuff that is packed full of salt make me thin or this leather sofa give me self-esteem?" And while we worry about consumer goods and thinness and not-ageing, and Victoria Beckham's handbag, we don't think about power relations, exploitation and capitalist brainwashing, so we don't have the knowledge or time to question them, thus ensuring that a self-appointed self-perpetuating elite continues to undermine our self-worth and our enjoyment of the things that matter. Add in the airheads in the newspapers who tell us what TV to watch - not because they have the capacity to make a critical judgement but because they lack the integrity to say they've been bribed to puff a show, and it all pays off as the newspapers advertise the TV programmes that hook people into the adverts that are created by white male 'creatives' in advertising agencies with the sole purpose of getting people to spend money on the High Street, money they can ill-afford so they borrow at usurious rates, which keeps the financial institutions happy.
* ie saying things that can be argued with, not just using swear words or revealing usually-covered flesh
Posted by Gwenda at 04:30 PM |Comments (0) Categories: Blogging
Writing the dictionary
- Certain terms have magically appeared in the Urban Dictionary:
- tenorial rolling on the ground
- chest hair fondling
- Furniture Abuse
- Studertroll
Barihunk is pending...
Posted by Gwenda at 12:11 AM |Comments (4) Categories: Language , Opera
August 28, 2010
Blog maintenance
I have been through the archives. I have deleted approximately 650 entries, becoming more savage the further back in time I went. There are 3099, including this one, but when we hit 10,000 comments I'm going to apply a scorched earth policy.
I haven't deleted too many categories, but few entries before 2004 are categorised. And many after, too.
I have also deleted a number of comments, so the total is now down to 9715, so if we are going to see 10,000, you'd better get commenting. there are some blogs out there that get 80+ comments as a matter of habit. And many get a dozen or more on every entry. Heck I used to get double figures on a regular basis.
I don't wish to be harsh, but this just isn't good enough. It's not difficult; all you have to do is leave a comment. It's slightly more difficult if you want instant publication. Add in an email address, which I will whitelist, and in future, you'll get published instantly. The email address won't be published. I'll just use it for begging letters .The typekey is a bit geeky, don't worry about it if you don't want to.
I have deleted a lot of posts from the past forecasting the future which is now the past, too. I have also got rid of a lot of links, some of them remaindered into delicious (my linky log). And I got rid of a lot of ephermera, even football and political ephemera.
Posted by Gwenda at 11:38 PM |Comments (5) Categories:
More about Tesco
The new Tesco opened locally in a damp squib. One Sunday Jimmy donned his false beard and burqa and ventured in for ready meals and came back empty-handed. Milk is more expensive than in the local, Asian-run, convenience stores. Whenever he or I pass the shop seems deserted of customers. Not that we pass very often; even though we live closer than just about anyone else, it's not a sensible way to get home. Except from the doctors or Post Office. Footfall past is, by my observation of eleven years, minimal.
There is a cash machine, which I have noted, as a cheaper alternative to paying £1.50 in a convenience store or walking to the erstwhile nearest free one.
Turns out that the man who goes to refill the cash machine has been robbed more than once. The Crime Prevention officer has advised Tesco to install CCTV but they can't be bothered. There's a gang who watch the machine. Perhaps they'll also be mugging people who use the cash machine. Or get cash-back in-store. No CCTV, no crime prevention.
Soon, Carphone Warehouse will open. And their customers will be mugged for their brand new phones.
When the rich move into their £300k jerry-built box-size flats in 30 Streatham Place, they'll be easy targets for the scrotey scumbags who have been decanted into the nearby area in order to prey on the superrich residents of Thirty Streatham Place.
The Regeneration Project are furious at the mini crimewave that has been visited upon our area.
Posted by Gwenda at 04:44 PM |Comments (1) Categories: Gwenda's Cottage
Spacial mechanics and long names
A while ago on a course we were requested to write our names on a perspex nameplate. My classmates stared at me as I paused, considering how to do it. Mike and John had taken nano-seconds; I don't suppose it occurred to Norman and Andrew to plan the task ahead.
It's different for me. My proper official name has nine letters. I am nervous of running out of space. I have to visualise the midpoint and know that's where the 'L' must be. This is not helped by my very poor spacial awareness and grasp of spacial mechanics*.
I will readily concede that mine is not the only name with nine letters. Anyone called Elizabeth or Stephanie will confirm this. And I've had this discussion with the wife of a Christopher. Jacqueline also has ten letters.
When crossing into Egypt, I had to fill out cards to apply for a Tourist Visa. It requested one's first name and provided boxes, one box per letter. So I dutifully wrote 'G E R A L D I N E'. The border guard compared this to my passport, which also has my middle name, and said in a business-like manner 'Why not all your name?'. I started to explain, but he wrote quickly 'M A R G A R', then running out of boxes, he looked up at me, gave me a wicked grin and said "I understand..."
I've encountered people with three names adding up to nineteen, and know someone with three names adding up to twenty. She is not known by any of those, so has an additional five for her usual name. But can anyone beat seventeen from two?
* I believe - without being able to demonstrate - that this lowers my IQ by as many as 10 points, regardless of my excellent capacity at verbal and numeric reasoning, logic and memory. I struggled with spacial matters at O-Level Maths; by A-Level I had pulled myself up to O-Level standard. At University I started to grasp the basics of the A-Level syllabus (damn good thing I'm shit hot at algebra and theoretical calculus).
Posted by Gwenda at 01:32 PM |Comments (9) Categories: Language
August 27, 2010
Carnival Sunday
Just come back from tonight's Prom, which, of course, was held in the Albert Hall. As it was a warm and sunny afternoon with a refreshing breeze, it seemed to make sense to take in a late lunch then sit by the pond in the park. I mean the Serpentine, it's not really a pond, it has ocean-going liners on it.
Always fun to people watch. Little girl, maybe four years old, having a right go at her father "But you said we'd go to a big park, where's the big park?" "Here, here's the big park..." "This isn't a park, I want swings!" I seem to recall that conversation thirty-odd years ago.
A group of five walk past. Four wearing brown tops. Not identical. Two in t-shirts with quite different logos, one in a wrinkly-crinkly girly top, one in a short sleeved top. Speculating, did they agree to wear brown, and why didn't the fifth. Or is it chance and has any of them spotted that four out of five are wearing brown.
Punk woman walks past, shaved head, but long pony tail. "That looks awful", says Jimmy. Doesn't matter I say, when she changes her mind, she can grow it back. It's not like her face and arms are covered with tattoos. They're for life. "I hate it when their bodies are covered with studs and rings," he says. Doesn't matter, I say, when they change their minds, they can take the piercings out and the holes will heal. Not like tattoos, if you're body's covered in tattoos, they're there for life.
A few minutes later a woman walks past with her arms, chest and cleavage covered with a very obvious large tattoo pattern. See, I say, look at that woman. she's only young, and she's going to regret that when she grows up. Oh wait a minute, it's a flesh coloured jumper with a pattern on. Hey, that's ace! It looks like she's covered in tattoos but if she changes her mind, she can take it off tonight. I want one. I want one. How ace is that! They'd be so shocked at work. Oh superb! I want!
Boom boom boom in the distance. Remember that it's Carnival. On the way home, we got the civilised end of the carriage. Quite funny in the Tube Station. Don't these people ever go out? Seemed to be a load of late-teens clueless in how to negotiate a Tube Station. You know the difficult bit, walk towards escalator; walk up or stand on escalator, keep going in a forward direction, use functioning Oyster Card to open ticket barrier.
There was a strange vibe on the bus, edgy, nothing I could put my finger on, except for the four loud smelly obnoxious Roma, who apart form being loud, smelly and obnoxious weren't doing anything wrong.
Walking up the road we see a BMW reverse into a Beetle. It's all very well people who buy big cars to show how macho they are, but they've learnt to drive - and park - in a Vauxhall Nova and they can't handle it.
Then I hear someone trying to start a car. Doesn't sound right. It's not coughing and spluttering. Jimmy says, it looks too decrepit to drive. I think, it's being hot-wired, but I don't know that, I'll sound stupid. The car starts, and roars off at speed, the driver flashing his lights and honking at us. "Oh," said Jimmy. "That's Arthur's son, just come out from ten years inside, lied that he'd reformed, already stolen wheels from a car on his road. No licence, no insurance..."
"Did he hot wire that?" I said.
"Probably. It won't be his.."
I thought, must get onto the police. Then I thought again. What a clever bastard. By waving at us he's letting us know he's seen us, so if we grass him up, we're in shit. It's bound to have his DNA on it, and we can be sure his DNA is in the database.
I'm never quite sure what to do when suspicious. A few months ago I rang up with a description of a man I thought was behaving suspiciously. He had clearly seen us somewhat pissed coming out of the curry house. Every time we paused to chat to acquaintances, he dithered and lurked. When he realised that I scrutinised him closely, he ducked abruptly down a side road, so I gave his description to the police, explaining that I was safe and home and no crime had been committed, but describing him and his behaviour, maybe they'll take a look on CCTV. They never got back to me.
August 25, 2010
Booster seats for pre-teens with attitude
Take your seats
The comments seem to fall into two categories.
1. How dare someone expect me to spend £20 to keep my child safe and who's going to enforce it, anyway? Your child, your decision...Stupid law what about adults under 150cm? Maybe they should consider the risk factors and decide whether, in the light of research, they may wish to use a booster seat. For their own safety. No one's told me Well, I knew and I don't have a child or a car. So go on, who won Big Brother? What's the latest must have 'designer' handbag. Priorities, heh! Poor done-down victim me. Get over it.
2. If it has been found to be a risk, what on earth are the car manufacturers doing about it? Bugger all it seems. Greedy grasping capitalist bastards. With their adverts for safety and 'family' cars.
Posted by Gwenda at 06:50 PM |Comments (1) Categories: Transport
A matter of weight
The 34-stone teenager really makes me think. I cannot begin to imagine 34 stone.
Supposedly I am two and a half stone overweight (about 15 kilos or 35 pounds). If I lost that amount you'd be able to see my ribs, at least according to people with whom I share that fact. When I was cycling all over the place, including up the hills on campus, or when I was at the gym/swimming pool four times a week, and was toned and without wobble I was a more than a stone overweight. But I could not imagine being twice my supposed 'target' weight.
I have seen people's weight balloon, often as a result of childbirth or medication eg steroids, or physical injury or depression. And indeed this article makes reference to the death of her grandmother being the obvious cause. To which my immediate reaction is 'many teenagers lose grandparents, indeed I know loads of people who lost parents in their teens, get over it'.
But that's unfair. It may have only been a trigger for a deep seated psychological problem. I can only assume as well that there were psychological problems within the family. She's not tubby, plump or even a lard arse. She was three times the weight of most of her contemporaries. I guess there comes a point in obesity where the effort involved to exercise, any exercise, is too much. When even walking down the road is impossible. If someone is a shut-in, living alone, it is so easy for the problem to go unnoticed.
It appears to me that her family did nothing. If she attended school, why didn't the school do something? If she stayed away from school, why didn't the Truancy Officer do something? Or her GP. Maybe her family couldn't cope "I'd throw a tantrum if mum didn't give me extra food" So presumably Mum gave her extra food. So the tantrums worked. That is not the way to parent. Not for nothing is it called 'spoiling the child'.
I can imagine how awful school PE must have been for her. I hated it. Well, actually, I liked hockey, badminton and tennis, but all the rest, netball and bloody volleyball, both designed to give a crick in the neck. And athletics, gym and rounders. Hateful hateful stuff. But not as bad as the torture that was cross-country through John Leigh Park. I am simply not designed to be good at sport. Bad hand and eye co-ordination. A doctor once told me I have floppy joints. I don't think it's a serious medical condition.
But if I had had a serious health- or life-threatening weight problem, I am sure that somebody would have tried to find some exercise I liked and helped me to do it. Swimming, football, dancing, walking, cycling. Even hockey or tennis. Most of the time I just couldn't be bothered. Still can't, mainly.
But because I don't have my umbilical cord attached to a car and because of my nervous energy 'too much, calm down' it has been said, more than once, I get by. PE was so geared towards glory, being competitive, glory for the school, boosting self esteem for those that couldn't hack it academically, in music or drama, or in community works. Nothing actually about fitness, or how to exercise correctly. No connection with nutrition lessons - which in any case were only for the third or so who did Home Economics at O-Level. And I suspect that my school was far better than most at that time, and our PE teachers were splendid human beings, shame about the subject.
Posted by Gwenda at 04:37 PM |Comments (2) Categories:
August 24, 2010
Confusing Mahler
I am currently watching tonight's Prom on BBC4.
A transformed programme. Dawn Upshaw's cancellation meant that Osvaldo Golijov's Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra was replaced by Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3. A bit bizarre, it would seem, but that soloist and that orchestra are performing it tomorrow night in Edinburgh, so it makes logistical if not musical sense.
Now we have Mahler 5. An amazing symphony with a palpable sense of romanticism. Apologies to those for whom I have promised to flag up nice easy listening non-vocal music. Should have mentioned this one. It starts in a blaze of glory and hen gets wishy washy, before breaking into the most gorgeous lyrical passage of sostenuto increasing in volume and passion. I admit I had to consult the radio times, what are they doing after the Mahler Five - a bit of Brahms, a bit of Classic FM 'we'll give you a short extract out of context because you're stupid and we want to patronise you". This is also part of Mahler 5.
Can I just say that despite the ubiquity of this passage on all "Classic FM Mood Music for Dusting and Floor Mopping"-type compilation CDs, it is ace music. And so weird to have a Prom without a singer.
Ah well, it's repeated at 1.40 am. And will be on Listen Again for a week.
I have the same problem. Something kept coming up on non-random on my mp3 player. I assumed it was a light operetta. Eventually I peered at the screen and realised it was Das Lied Von der Erde.
Mahler is on my list of composers I want to get to know better. But he's queued behind Britten, Mendelssohn, and Haydn.
But I'm trying to make myself watch all the Proms regardless of what's on. After all, it's free. And I might learn something.
Posted by Gwenda at 09:40 PM |Comments (0) Categories: Classical
What humans do to humans
Police sorry for inquiry 'hurt'
A senior Scotland Yard officer apologised to the family for "any hurt" caused by the earlier inquiry...Labour MP for Poplar and Canning Town Jim Fitzpatrick said "When there is a violent attack, such as has been reported on Mr Woodhams in January, one would have hoped that steps would have been taken to make sure there wasn't a repetition".
Apologising for 'any hurt'. Isn't that the standard response for when feelings have been offended? I know the IPCC are investigating. I know that police have to prioritise but I can think of fairly few offences that should have a higher priority than a life-threatening violent attack by strangers.
People are sick and tired of the intimidation by these gangs of pointless aggressive teenage boys, posturing with their imagined masculinity and demanding 'respec', lacking actual role models from their absent fathers and taking their model of masculinity from the shit in low rent telly.
And then an extraordinary story from Austria: Austrian girl 'found' after years. Unbelievable. Imagine the overwhelming emotions her family must be feeling. The indescribable joy that she has returned. And yet the fear at the psychological damage. Scared to ask her what happened, knowing that she will be a desperately changed person, grief at the lost years. Knowing that healing will take eight years again, at least. But above all, irrespective of the qualms about the future, can there be a happier family anywhere tonight?
Posted by Gwenda at 06:56 PM |Comments (0) Categories:
Duck and tree
Another in the occasional series of photos dredged up from the archives
Duck and tree
An unseasonably warm March day in 2003. Brockwell Park, Brixton. Old camera. A bit over-exposed.
Posted by Gwenda at 01:32 PM |Comments (3) Categories: Photography
Pain management
Long term readers will have been regaled over the years with varying details of my mystery illness*. More recent ones will be aware of the clinical drug trial I am currently undertaking.
The illness has two main manifestations, pain and tiredness, which exacerbate each other.
The two factors are particularly severe around the time of my period. To the extent that anybody keeping track of my sick absences would be forced to comment on how regular my cycle is**.
Having survived more than twenty years with little or no premenstrual pain, having even sat through exams and thought 'ow, that's a bit uncomfortable, now where was I?' it has been extra galling to experience debilitating pain so frequently. Admittedly, some of this is the ageing process, but the problems have been particularly acute in the past two or three years.
I don't get paid when I'm off sick. I am in the process of applying for 'pay at pension rate'. If this is only £10 a day it should wipe out my overdraft. So I don't want to take time off.
Yesterday, as expected, I felt the first grumblings of pain. I decided, and said to manager "I'm not feeling great, I'm good enough now but will be worse tomorrow. With your permission, I shall work at home. I don't know how much I shall do, Thursday and Friday, but if it's only five hours, that will be reflected in my time-sheet." I outlined the tasks I could reasonably do at home (like, writing three reports). He endorsed my decision without prying or querying or arguing (his attitude encourages me to be honest; partly because he has a unique insight into my condition and partly because he's a decent human being).
Bizarrely I don't feel too bad today, and know I will feel better tomorrow. I have not resorted to painkillers, although a warm bath has been welcome. And I shall take an afternoon nap. Because I can. But unless you have suffered the pain I have for the past two years or so, you will have no idea how good it feels to have a mild niggly pain rather than a doubling up in tear-filled agony overdosing on Nurofen Plus.
Is this the effect of the secret code-named drug? Or is it merely the psychological belief that it's making a difference? I don't know. That's why they have statistically valid double-blinds. But the evidence from the US and Japan is that it works. And I am inclined to think there is evidence from Brixton Hill Clapham Park that it works.
* diagnosed alternatively as CFS or fibromyalgia
** or else make an idiotic observation "Suspicious how she seems to go off sick on a four weekly basis. Must be malinger."
Posted by Gwenda at 01:09 PM |Comments (1) Categories: Health
United United Top of the League
Played 2 Won 2 Points 6 Goal Difference 7
and Chelsea
Played 2 Won 1 Drawn 0 Lost 1 Points 3 Goal Difference 2
United have already scored eight goals this season....
Saha, Fulham og, Rooney, Ronaldo, Rooney, Fletcher, Saha, Solskjaer.
Solskjaer? Woot yay! I don't care if he only comes on in the 82nd minute if he scores in the 89th!
Ole
Posted by Gwenda at 12:41 AM |Comments (0) Categories: Football
August 22, 2010
About me, again...
Gorgeous Expert Readily Administering Lustful Delights and Intense, Naughty Embraces
or
Goddess Exchanging Rapturous Touches
via
Your turn...
Posted by Gwenda at 08:55 PM |Comments (0) Categories: Online quizzes
Me, the ex-Minister and the Blue Rubber Gloves
It continued being exciting throughout the day as the two helicopters continued to hover. Being that I was in work mode, I thought "how long can a helicopter stay up just hovering without refuelling" and ...wait for it..."what is the marginal and full economic cost of having two of them do that?"
And that was how exciting it got, which, for an accountant, is very exciting.
Midway through the afternoon, I noticed a van being treated suspiciously. It had been parked there a long time, it was a grey van, like a white van, but grey, with two or three rolls of plastic on the roof, longer than the van. The passenger window was wound down, and a police car had drawn up alongside. Two officious looking chaps from a nearby government department stood and watched as a uniformed officer probed around the front passenger seat wearing blue rubber gloves. I was rather disappointed they didn't produce a mirror-on-a-stick. That's how we used to fight terrorism in the old days, with mirrors on sticks.
Clearly, in the current climate, with a high security, high profile trial of ipod-and-vodka bombers happening just yards away, one can't be too careful, and, indeed another police car arrived and parked randomly, in a "we're attending an important incident, don't expect us to parallel park" sort of way. A crowd gathered, as tends to happen round suspect packages, vans &c. I gazed earnestly on, thinking, "David Cameron has served his purpose, I no longer need him as my muse" when, 'pon my word, Frank Field walked past. It must be gratifying when you are an obscure former minister of state for welfare reform to encounter a political junkie in the street gazing at a possibly-soon-to explode plumbers' van.
So that's the story of the ex-Minister, the Blue Rubber Gloves and me.
I returned to my post, and announced the exciting developments to my colleagues. I glanced out of the window and saw the van being driven off. "The person driving it's got white shirt sleeves, that'll be the police...". M'colleagues all gave me a strange look.
Posted by Gwenda at 06:51 PM |Comments (0) Categories:
All a bit exciting
As I walked from river to coffee shop, the hovering helicopter and the photographers hanging round on street corners provided a clue.
It's always a guessing game. Last week, it was fascinating to watch the convoy delivering the German minister to our building for an Emergency EU meeting. "What cars were they were in - Mercs or BMWs?" asked a colleague. "Black." I said. I'm a girl.
Just a few weeks ago Tony Blair was convoyed along the road just past the postbox where moments earlier I had deposited two items of post. Sometimes it's royalty or heads of state from home or abroad. Not quite as exciting as when we were almost adjacent to the Palace.
I emerged from coffee shop and walked my normal backstreet route to the office. Often, one has to pause a moment or two for the prison vans to manouvre into place before depositing the culprits. This morning was different. A second helicopter was hovering overhead. Police vans and cars were almost outnumbered by TV satellite vans. Serious photographers with macho fuck-off equipment. And the public, poised with mobile phones, desperate for the moment of audience-generated-content fame for the photo they capture with Nokia 1234 that a pro can't capture with three grands of serious Canon and Fuji equipment.
Sirens began to scream, the sound of cars being driven at speed. I panicked, I have roads to cross, I need to get to work. I began to tremble, scared. In my hands I have a grande latte semi-skinned extra shot, a fag, and an mp3 player (hence no photos taken for purposes of blog). I did not want to be swept up in a media scrum. Cones were placed as roadblocks. A London Buses van acted suspiciously, clearly commandeered for covert surveillance. Three traffic wardens wandered the streets seemingly uninterested in issuing parking tickets. "Something massive is happening at the Magistrates Court,". I had a guess. For a moment or two I felt myself caught up in a global news story.
Is Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke the same person who used to be head of Brixton Police and still owes me a response to a Members' Enquiry from over a decade ago.
Posted by Gwenda at 11:32 AM |Comments (2) Categories:
August 20, 2010
Steve Reich Prom
This review is well over due. So long overdue that it's gone right off the Listen again radar.
Excuses - it was a Late night one so I didn't get home until one, then the next day I ended up doing stuff. Just stuff, you know.
And I seem to have lost the ability to write.
It was bloody good! Is that a review?
Earlier in the evening I met up with Carla and Caro in Carluccio's Cafe at South Ken (try saying that pissed, fortunately I wasn't, for a very enjoyable meal and natter. That's what the internet does, brings together people who are wondering how to pass the time before the Late Night Prom.
There's a special atmosphere in a LNP quite quite different from the mainstream ones. Some of the best Proms I have been to rival football matches for fevered atmosphere. The very few LNP I have attended are mellow and chilled. Perhaps the music is deliberately chosen that way.
The programme was:
Clapping Music (5 mins)
Nagoya Marimbas (5 mins)
Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices, and Organ (19 mins)
Drumming (45 mins)
Programme notes
Actually Caro and I arrived moments late and were not allowed in. I was about to protest that we ought to be allowed on while the audience is still applauding, then I realised it was 'Clapping Music'.
I find Steve Reich mesmerising and fascinating. I was first introduced to his music back in my school days, by my percussion teacher, and instantly fell in love with it. This programme was very dominated by percussion; even when voices and a piccolo joined in, they weren't there to provide pretty melodies. I can't imagine Steve Reich getting much airplay on Classic FM with its safe, smug middle-England agenda. I explained it to somebody the next day as Classical meets Rock meets World, but that is an oversimplification of the fusion. On the Tube, Chemical Brothers' Hey Boy Hey Girl came up on shuffle and I developed a goofy grin as I recognised the musical links. I dont know very much about the Chemical Brothers, except for liking their music, despite its genre, so I wouldn't know if they are Reich influenced. They must be, I reckon.
His music isn't for everybody. I'm afraid I can't sit here writing deep intellectual twaddle about the psychological effect of the music, because I actually don't think there is any. It's about how rhythm is constructed, how rhythm dominates, and how a tune emerges out of the seeming lack of linear melody. And it draws you in relentlessly. No room for sloppiness from the players, it is very structured. You kind of want to dance, indeed some of the players were following the urge to dance, or at least to bop rhythmically.
Good fun. but thankfully, not fun that was headlined with great big banners saying "Recommended by Classic FM" or "I'm Titchmarsh and I'm going to assume you know nothing about music and talk down making irrelevant unfunny quips". It was about the fun being in the music and in the listener.
Posted by Gwenda at 10:58 PM |Comments (0) Categories: Proms 2010
Categories
I've been messing about with my blog and it strikes me that I use a great deal of server space with categorised archives, which only duplicate what is already there in monthly or individual archives.
I have deleted a few already, and am likely to delete a few more. I am toying with elimintaing categories altogether, although there are some that I find useful.
It would be interesting to know which, if any, categories I should keep.
Posted by Gwenda at 03:56 PM |Comments (9) Categories:
August 19, 2010
Blog slightly in a mess
I deleted the entire blog, and I re-imported it, and that was relatively painless. But the categories are in a bit of a mess, so please bear with me while I manually unmess them!
not one swear word has been issued...!
Posted by Gwenda at 07:00 PM |Comments (0) Categories