Back home after our short trip to Scotland. We had a fine time, Falkirk was fun, and Glasgow was grand.

The Falkirk Wheel is quite a thing, if you like concrete, modern sculpture or engineering, you should pay it a visit.

We stayed in an amazing B&B, it was within walking distance of the Town Hall, yet had the feel of a huge house in the country. Amazing garden, leading to plenty of bird watching activity over the breakfast delights.

The gigs were good. On the 1sst night Aberfeldy opened up with a collection of little pop gems. Next up were The Pearlfishers, who I enjoyed rather more than Orynthia did. Lush piano driven singer songwriter stuff from another age, think Jimmy Webb or Burt Bacharach, not at all rock “n” roll, I like d the ambition of it. Finally The Trash Can Sinatras took to the stage and played a lovely set of songs old and new.

The next evening saw us enjoying Malcolm Middleton (of Arab Strap) rather more than we expected to, have to say he dealt very well with some hilarious banter from a very exuberant female member of the audience. Then we enjoyed a majestic set from the mighty Teenage Fanclub. The lads were on top form, and it was great to see them in front of a Scottish audience, who sang along with gusto to many of the songs.

The next day we took the short train journey to Glasgow, a city festooned with men in kilts in a high state of expectation before the Scotland – Belarus football match. Sadly their enthusiasm was misplaced as Belarus managed to secure a 1-0 win.

We missed the football as we were enjoying our iPod tour of the musical highlights of the city. A lot of it was familiar to us, places such as the “School of Art”, “King Tut’s” and the splendid “13th Note”. New to us was the esoteric “Tchai Ovna” a very special café dedicated to tea form around the world and absolutely flippin’ marvellous “Mono”. Mono is a great place, part fantastic records shop (opened with help of many luminaries of the Glasgow music scene), part organic café, part super relaxed bar and also a live venue. I must admit that we spent ages in here on Sunday afternoon to rest our feet after the long walk of Saturday. It’s the perfect place to sit and read, and pick up some top tunes.

Other than that we enjoyed another visit to The Lighthouse, always an interesting place the highlight this time was the Marimekko exhibition.

Well we’ve been back almost 2 weeks now and I’m only just starting to feel as though I’m back in sync. To prove the point I’ve just got around to watching a video of the final day of the amazing ashes series. We won – it’s still hard to believe that England (with the help of a couple of Welshman) have finally managed to beat the Aussies.

Our friend Jon kept me abreast of all the cricket (and football) news with a wonderful supply of ever more frantic text messages whilst we were away. The cricket even made the papers in Germany, surely that’s a first!

Ljubljana is a lovely place. A beautiful old town with a picturesque river, it’s also blessed with some great 20th century building and sculptures as well. Loads of friendly street café’s and bars where a drink never cost more than £1 and some of the best Ice Cream we’ve ever had helped to make it a splendid destination.

Berlin was a massive contrast; huge, busy and fascinating, it’s a marvellous city. We caught lots of awful bands at Popkomm, the music industry festival that was taking place in the city. The honourable exception to the mass of mediocrity was the excellent Jacob Faurholt & Sweetie Pie Wilbur from Denmark. They were great, head and shoulders above anything else we saw.

Whilst we were away I read “Small Island” by Andrea Levy a wonderfully wise and entertaining book about the experience of the melting pot culture of the world in the 1940’s.

What else? Well next week we are off again, not quite so far though this time. We are heading up to Scotland for a few days, firstly to spend a couple of days in Falkirk. Here we will get the chance to see Teenage Fanclub, Trashcan Sinatra’s, Aberfeldy, The Pearlfishers and Malcolm Middleton. Then we have a couple of days in one of our favourite cities in the world – Glasgow.

The other major thing to happen over recent weeks is that Bristol City have started to score goals and even (gulp) win matches! New manager, new era, the smiles were back at Ashton Gate on Tuesday evening. Another home game coming up this weekend, for once I'm looking forward to it.

Well we are back home, had a great time in two wonderful places. Been a bit too busy to write anything here since our return. You can see lot’s of pictures by clicking on the “Our pictures” link on the menu.

More soon.

Only one more day to go before our holiday!


On Saturday we head off to Berlin, later in the week we go down to Ljubljana the capital of Slovenia for about a week. Then it’s back to Berlin for a few more days before heading home.

We are writing down lists of things to take, the weather is looking good, which always helps with the packing.

See you soon.

So the last bank holiday weekend of the summer has almost come to an end. It’s been a gently social weekend for us, we’ve also been unusually vegetarian. On Friday Bob and Karen and Pete and Maggie came over, as 75% of them prefer their life without meat, Orynthia cooked up a lovely veggie couscous with corn bread and salad.

Whenever I have couscous my mind goes back to the outrageously over sized couscous meal we had near the Bastille opera house in Paris many years ago. We sat at an average sized table for two, watching in amazement as side dish after side dish, was placed upon it. Eventually the table was full, we assumed that we were clear to start eating. Just as we were about to tuck in, a member of staff produced another table, which he attached to ours, before adding yet more dishes. We are basically polite people, and they had gone to all the trouble of cooking the food, it seamed that we really had to try our best to clear the mass of dishes before us. When we finally left the place, we were considerably heavier and less nimble on our feet.

Saturday saw another gathering. This time we made the short walk to St Andrews to see Vikki and Simon. It was Vikki’s birthday, so Orynthia baked a cake. In addition to the cake, we worked our way through a lovely fish pie and several bottles of wine in the company of Jude, Russ & Becky and Heather. During the course of the evening, there was quite a lot talking of the supposed delights of camping. We needed to keep our wits about us as the camping fans tried ever more devious ways of trying to tempt us to join in the outdoor fun. Heather and Spider have gone for the happy medium of buying a camper van, which makes the prospect of spending time in the country almost appealing. At least you have a proper bed to sleep in. Tents are just rubbish, you can never find anything, it’s always too hot or too cold and as for getting dressed….!

Whilst in the house we’ve spent quite a bit of time listening to the splendid BBC Radio 7. Lot’s of great old comedy stuff, including “Vinyl Café”, which is good but so like Garrison Keillor as to be virtually a sample in musical terms.

A rather strange week of football fixtures has seen 3 home games for Bristol City this week. We still have one of those to go, with tomorrows game against the nomadic MK Dons, the first two games saw 12 goals being scored, with an even 6-6 split.

It all started so well last Saturday against Port Vale when we went 4-0 up after about 30 minutes. Since then it's gone downhill somewhat. We managed to hang on for a 4-2 win that day, before losing 4-2 to Barnet on Tuesday evening. It's not what we were hoping for at the start of the season and the pressure is already starting to build on our manager.

Oddly, they are home again the following Saturday, but I won't be around to see that one. We will be heading for our 2 week holiday. Initially we going to Berlin for 5 days, then we head down to Slovenia for a week, before heading back to Berlin for a few more days.

Having visited Berlin last year, we have a pretty good idea about what we plan to do there. Slovenia is however an unknown quantity, so we've been spending lot's of time reading about the place. It looks fab and we are expecting a similar holiday to our previous trips to Prague and Vilnius.

We have also been thinking about going to Valencia at the start of November. We were hoping combine a tip to a very exciting looking city with a chance to Teenage Fanclub playing with the Go-Betweens. We can fly pretty cheaply to Valencia from Bristol, so that's no problem, however hotel availability and costs are proving to be a bit of a problem. For some reason the end of the first week in November appears to show a sharp decline in the amount of affordable hotel rooms that are around.

I guess that there could be some sort of trade fair going on, or maybe those two bands have started a huge rush on trips to Valencia.

So sad to hear the news about Mo Mowlem today. She was that rare thing a politician who made a difference and was loved.

After a bit of a delay, thanks to the amazing cricket over recent weeks, last night I finished reading “The History of Love” by Nicole Krauss. It’s a wonderfully poignant and understated book about the subtle connections which change our lives. It’s well worth your time.

Next up will be Small Island by Andrea Levy, although I may hold off starting that one until we go on holiday in a couple of weeks time. Between now and then I’ll be spending some quality time with the New Yorker; in fact today I read a great piece by Jonathan Franzen about the traumas of being a bird watcher. It’s something which Orynthia and I have become involved in over recent years, with the encouragement of my old boss Mark, and whilst in New York our friends Bill and Doreen.

Franzen captures brilliantly the strange addiction of waiting for the next sighting and the huge disappointment heading out with binoculars and books and have nothing to see. The only unsatisfactory thing about our trip to Lithuania a few years ago was the marked lack of any sort of feathered activity, lots of lovely countryside, not a bird to be seen!

Musically I’m still very taken with “Picaresque by “The Decemberists”. Also loving the latest Sufjan Stevens masterpiece “Illinois”. Other than those “I Trawl the Megahertz” by Paddy McAloon has been a constant partner this summer. It’s unlike anything he has done under the Prefab Spout name, more of a classical record than a pop one; it’s the perfect film score, for a film yet to be made. Put it on and let your head fill with a thousand stunning images – genius.

We spent some time last night watching BBC4's 10th anniversary of Britpop coverage. It's quite amusing now to look back on the events of 1994. Whilst watching an interview with Louise Wener of Sleeper, we started chatting about the time that we saw Sleeper supporting Blur at the Anson Rooms in Bristol. At the time neither of us particular fans of Blur, going along out of a sense of curiosity more than expectation.

It was an amazing gig. Sleeper were OK - Blur were just fantastic, one of those times when you catch a band absolutely on the top of their form. The audience caught the mood and responded in kind, giving us a night of exuberance and exhilaration when band and crowd became one.

Towards the end of the show Damon Albarn disappeared into the throng for a bit of crowd surfing, emerging a while later minus his shoes. Interesting then to hear Ms Wiener talking about the madness that surrounded that tour, and we both chuckled when she mentioned that people were chanting "Jesus" to Damon and pinching his shoes when he went into the crowd.

Obviously the scene fizzled out in the end, as too many drugs and an inability to change scuppered the long term plans for most of the bands. Yet it was fun for a while, what a treat it was to see bands like Teenage Fanclub, Pulp and Boo Radleys make it into the charts, if only briefly.

My replacement iPod arrived at the end of last week – and it works!

Oh I forgot to say how wonderful the new album from The Decemberists – “Picaresque” is. In the past I’ve thought that their was bit too much of the sea shanty about them. Well the new album finds them sprinkled with more than a dash of lovely indie pop sheen. Songs such as “The Sporting Life” and “On the Bus Mall” are gorgeous. Lyrically inventive, the whole album is a joy. Intelligent, articulate, able to switch between the sombre and playful with consummate ease, it really is a fine piece of work.

Friday night was strange, after eating lots of yummy Burmese food with Orynthia’s family, we rushed down to Trinity for the Devendra Banhart gig. A very strange night it was. After a dreadful opening act, whose name escapes me (which is a worry as we may accidentally see her again), Espers took the stage. They had a modicum of interest within their desperate 60’s / 70’s prog folk sound, but really this whole obsession with bad folk music is threatening to get out of hand!

Things were so bad that I was fully expecting to last only 20 or 30 mins of Mr Banhart’s set, so miserable had the musical entertainment been. However our fears were swept away, as his band and him remembered that tunes really do matter. There were a few cringe worthy moments when the hippy influence came to the fore, but overall he really was very entertaining.

Saturday morning saw of waking up rather earlier than anticipated, when I was woken by the sound of a hot air balloon going over the house at around 7:30am. It was soon followed by another one, which I managed to get a few snaps of.

Bristol City are off to a dismal start to the season, 3 games played, no goals scored, only 1 point = bottom of the league. The only way is up. Isn’t it?

As ever we’ve been stupidly busy of late, Sunday being a case in point. Over the course of the day, we met up with Orynthia’s family for a huge Chinese Dim sum brunch, went to the Fleece to see the ever improving Wilma, had a nice stroll round the docks, have a light meal in Café Havana, then went to Mr Wolfs noodle bar to help one of the Bryan Munich boys turn 40.

I forgot to say that we managed to go our lovely local cinema The Orpheus last week to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – wonderful, just wonderful. Burton and Depp at their best, I was lost in their magical world.

We are trying to have a quieter week; in fact we have 2 consecutive nights when we are both at home. On Friday we are off to Trinity to see Devendra Banhart, I really hope that it won’t be too hippy drippy folksy. All these new fangled folk types are starting to worry me, I don’t want to hear about pixies, elves and hey nonny nonny thank you very much. I will not wear a smock and grow a beard for anyone; in fact maybe I should wear a suit that might be interesting!

Last night was a sad night for lovers of music and traditional pubs in Bristol. After a painful 18 months of waiting for the axe to fall, The Albert Inn in Bedminster finally closed it’s doors for the last time.

Over the previous 20 years this small and simple pub played host to scores of fantastic musicians from the world of jazz and folk. For many years it punched way above it’s weight when it came to booking bands, because of the way the landlords Ian and Lorraine looked after and encouraged the performers.

It was not unusual to hear that some one who was playing one of the legendary Sunday night sessions at The Albert for a £5 admission fee, would be playing somewhere else in the country for 2 or 3 times that price the next night.

Sadly all that came to an end 18 months ago, when news of the impending sale of the building came to light. No time scale was given so no further gigs could be booked. The pub stoically limped on until last night. Now the people who own the building (who are of course based in London) are going to have flats built on the site, bringing to an end years of history in the process.

Even when the music stopped, it was still a great little pub to pass the time in. You could spend hours looking at the highly individual wall coverings, and those classic 70’s lampshades without fear of being rushed along.

Bristol has lost a very special place.

Well we had a great few days away. Saw some interesting architecture in Birmingham, before heading further north for the delights of Liverpool. Well actually we spent most of Friday afternoon and evening in Crosby. The sculptor Anthony Gormley has created a strange installation on the beach there.

It consists of 100 life size metal body figures, buried in the sand along 3km of beach. When we arrived the weather was murky yet warm, which suited the earie nature of the work perfectly. You can see lots of pictures of it on my flickr site.

The next day was spent mainly around the Albert Dock area of Liverpool and in the Tate in particular. The current exhibition is a huge collection of psychedila related artefacts from the 1960’s. Now Orynthia and I are not as taken with the whole psychedlia thing as some of our friends so it was not really the best thing for us to see. There were however, some fantastic photos, which made the visit worthwhile for me.

That evening we went back to the west midlands to stay in a truly wonderful old hotel (more pictures at Flickr). One of the nicest places we have stayed in, it was a lovely treat. Sunday saw a gentle journey home including stops in Ironbridge and Shrewsbury.

I’ve started reading The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, it’s really rather splendid.

On the beach

Hello Norway!

Over the past few days this site has had a lot of visits from Norway, not really sure why. If you happen to be from Norway, maybe you could leave a comment to say what bought you here.

Talking of far off lands, this evening we are heading off for a few days. Nowhere as exotic as Norway, just a quick trip around England, Tonight we head off to Birmingham to catch up with some old friends and to take a look at some of the new buildings in the centre of the town.

Friday evening will see us heading further north; in fact we will be staying overnight in Widnes before heading into Liverpool on Saturday. We are aiming to have a look at the Tate and anything else which takes our fancy.

Saturday evening will see us back in the midlands, when we stay just outside Telford. On Sunday we may go to Shrewsbury or we may not. We’ll just see how we feel.

Finished the new Banana Yoshimoto book the other day. It actually consists of two short stories, “Hardboiled” and “Hard Luck”. The first is a gently spooky story of woman being revisited by her past. The second is a very affecting tale of loss, coupled with attraction for the wrong person at the wrong time. As ever with Yoshimoto it’s a beautiful and deceptively simple piece of writing. I just wish we had more published work from her in England.

Other than that we had a very frustrating time with our iPod. Endless hours have been spent watching attempting to load songs and then locking up, leaving us with a blank player. At least all the tunes are still on iTunes and we have Orynthia’s iPod shuffle to keep us going.

Had a bit of a book buying splurge the other day. Went out to pick up a copy of the new Banana Yoshimoto book. Actually let's stop there for a moment, the problem is that word "new". Looking inside the front cover I noticed the original publication date in Japan was 1999.

Now this confused me somewhat, although she is not a household name in this country or America, I'm sure that she has a reasonable fan base on both sides of the Atlantic. Enough anyway to justify a rather quicker translation than we have seen here. It does raise the question of how many more untranslated works are lurking in Japan by the likes of Yoshimoto, Haruki Murakami and Ryu Murakami.  Occasional sniffing on the web has unearthed a few short stories from these authors from various magazines and it's great to be able to print them off and read them, but I'd hate to think of novels which are lost to us.

The other books were Small Island by Andrea Levy and A History of Love by Nicole Krauss. Small Island is a book I've almost bought on several occasions, the praise directed at the book has been unanimous, and a line from the back of the book has caught my imagination. The line question talks about the disapproving looks and comments caused by the addition of a black lodger into a white household in post 2nd world war England.

Back in the late 1950's, my mum and dad were trying to produce a sibling for my older sister to play with but nothing much was happening. Eventually mum decided to using her training to do some nanny work in the hope that in some subliminal way her reproductive organs would relax. She looked after a young Nigerian boy called Michael, the sight of my very white mother pushing around a pram with a very black baby apparently caused a deal of consternation in Bristol.

Soon enough Michael and his family were on their way back to Nigeria and seeds of my birth were sown. I often wonder about Michael, it strange but maybe I owe my life to him.

Ashton our sometime house guest over recent weeks, went back home today following his recent heart problems. I think that he's looking pretty good. So is Orynthia, then again she always does.

So I’m feeling a bit like a naughty schoolboy today. We have decided for the first time since the very early 1980’s we are not going to the Ashton Court festival. All weekend I’m going to have that bunking off school feeling, expecting someone to come up behind me, tap me on the shoulder and say, “shouldn’t you be somewhere else?”

Last night Orynthia finally nailed a phrase to justify my lack of enthusiasm for A.C. this year. She said that she doesn’t really begrudge the £6 entrance fee on it’s own, but she is annoyed that this money is being used to help the festival become something she no longer likes and when that is coupled the all the publicity which Orange get from the festival it leaves a nasty taste.

Of course it’s probably just us getting old and grumpy. There is no way to return the festival to those lovely days when around 30,000 people would turn up, allowing you to wander around with ease, get in and out of any of the marquees without having to push your way past lot’s of other people trying to do the same thing. The whole thing has just outgrown itself.

After work yesterday I nipped into town to meet up with Orynthia, Ashton and Jane at The Olive Shed for a quick drink and a few nibbles in the sunshine (delighted that the temperature has dropped to more comfortable levels). When a wonderful place it is, the perfect example a great little idea. I particularly like the fact that when the chief needs fresh herbs, he just wanders round to the enormous barrow in front of the place and plucks them as they grow, that’s what you call fresh.

I was delighted to find that the shop at the top of the road has started to stock Plan B, not they really knew what it was. I did have to do a quick run through about the magazine with the manager. It’s great to read something that feels like it’s written out of a need to write, rather than a need to hit a deadline. Talking of music journalism, we caught the excellent BBC 4 documentary on the NME last week. Ah those glorious days when the NME was like taking an Open University course in politics, history, philosophy, literature and little bit of music as well.

Also saw the BBC 3 documentary on local drum and bass legend Roni Size. I dip in and out of the world of the hard beat, but Roni and his gang have provided some fantastic musical moments over the years. The thing that I loved about the programme was the lovely almost simplistic enthusiasm, which Roni has for music and for Bristol. I’ve only spoken to him a couple of times and he was exactly the same then. It’s so nice when the good guys come out on top.

It is too hot, I know that everyone says that but it’s true. Because of the heat I can’t sleep, because I can’t sleep I can’t stay awake…..and so it goes on.

What else? Well I’m starting to really enjoy “Coin Locker Babies” by Ryu Murakami. Also liking the new Sufjan Stevens album, talking about music this week it’s time for the Ashton Court festival here in Bristol. For the first time in years we may not go up for both days, a mixture of the need for time for ourselves and the feeling that the festival may have moved too far away from it’s roots is making us think that we may just give it a miss.

Other than that it’s still too hot.

A quiet night in (2).