Outdoor Ice Skating

Yesterday we took Charlie ice skating to the outdoor temporary rink, situated outside Swinton Town Hall. Skating In Salford is apparently twice the size of last year's white elephant, which means last years was pretty tiny. we paid £6 for adults and £4 for the child booked online through Quay Tickets (no booking fee either which was a bonus), which includes skate hire - despite what is advertised on the council website, the sessions were an hour each, not 45 mins, although if you spend as long as we did putting the skates on you could easily lose 15 minutes. There is a small snack bar type places serving hot drinks etc..

It's been a good 14 years before I was last on ice skates, so it took a bit of getting used to, especially with the fabulously uncomfortable plastic hire skates which left my foot arches in agony. But a fun time was had by all, Charlie managed to not fall over at all (compared to the 8 times on a previous trip with school a few days earlier). There were staff on hand at all times to keep the kids/teenagers in check, which they handled very well in between picking people up off the ice.

We chose to go at 5pm just as it was getting dark and the area looked very festive with all the lights from the town hall, there are also several firs surrounding the rink with lights.
I have to say it feels very weird to be skating outdoors in the town centre with the buses pulling up every five minutes at the side, but it was a very enjoyable evening out.

Gig Time

The past few weeks have seen us take in not one but three gigs! Which certainly ended the dry spell for us. The first was local band The Whip, guitar based electro style music at the Academy 2. I can't remember the last time I went to a gig there that was so packed, with such a friendly vibe. The crowd seemed to be mainly students (maybe the £7 ticket price had something to do with it), and it was impossible to stand for more than a minute without someone pushing past to/from bar/toilets/wherever! Having seen The Whip only once before at D:percussion 18 months previously, I knew they sounded good live, but I was still pleasantly surprised. The album just doesn't do them justice IMO, the music sounded much more upbeat and danceable than it does via CD (or maybe you just need to play it really loud?) and they had cool lighting and the obligatory smoke machine to add to a club type atmosphere. I can't remember the entire set lit ut particular highlights were Sister Siam, Save My Soul, Dubsex and of course Trash.
The only complaint of the night (which was shared by several other fans) was the 'limited edition USB wrist bands' - gone are the days of having a live CD to buy 20 minutes after the gig, it's all gone digital now - like a lot of people at the gig, I bought mine before the gig - standard tickets were £7, ticket and wristband £20 - making the wristband £13 - the price of a CD in a high street music store. These were marketed as something you had to buy in advance, but on taking a trip to the merch stall it turns out you could pay for them on the night - for £9! I heard a lot of fans complaining to the poor merch guy that night, but that aside, a very fun night out.

A Place to Bury Strangers at the Roadhouse - have to admit, I'd never heard of them until about 4 weeks before hand, we went for Steven's birthday and it was a nice surprise to find that for an £8 ticket, there were actually several bands on all night. I wont even pretend to remember their names or recall any song titles, all I can recall was an eclectic crowd and a variety of guitar based bands that generally got the crowd going, although APTBS were the highlight and obviously the band most people came to see - worth checking out a few tracks via their myspace page (above).

Indie Darlings Glasvegas were our final gig of the year - I had mixed feelings about whether they could live up to the hype and my own expectations for a live gig. Whenever I think of Glasvegas it's their very raw and unpolished Home Tapes that springs to mind, so whilst I was anticipating a similar rawness, I was secretly hoping something a little more 'we're past recording in our bedroom' sound.
And I was not disappointed, at all.
Every tune was an anthem to sing along to, and sing along we all did, it was one of the most uplifting gigs ever. Like when you see 20,000 people singing along with Oasis for Wonderwall on TV - it was like that for every song, but with only a few hundred other people, very intimate and James' voice was outstanding. Favourite songs for me were Daddy's Gone and the grand finale of Geraldine.
My gig of the year.

London part 2

On our second day in London, we got up slightly hung over and headed into central London, first stop Oxford Street. With the credit crunch and recession looming it was sale central. We stopped off at Debenhams to browse their sale with up to 25% off, we got loads of bargains and did a fair bit of Christmas shopping. After that it was off to Russell Square to check out the Babylon exhibition at the British Museum in the pouring rain, unfortunately it was sold out for the day, so we dried off by browsing the permanent collections and realised that interspersed with the very old was the very new in the form of Statuephila - Contemporary British Sculpture including Damien Hirst's painted skulls, Antony Gormley's Case for an Angel 1 and my favourite Ron Mueck's mask II - which along with the easter island statue fell foul to the "crushing your head" thing



After grabbing a bite to eat in the nearby Museum Street, we headed off towards the Barbican as we had tickets for the snappy titled This Is War! Robert Capa at Work, Gerda Taro On the Subject of War. it was a very interesting photographic exhibition, concentrating a lot on Capa & Toro's coverage of the Spanish Civil War, but also down stairs included photos and video pieces based on more recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I thought maybe the upstairs section (Capa & Toro) could've been better laid out, it wasn't clear where the exhibition started and finished, and there were several shots that were displayed twice for reasons unknown. But if you're in London, definitely worth a visit. We also managed to visit the Curve Gallery on the ground floor of the Barbican which was hosting Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Frequency & Volume which is a large scale installation piece contains radios (that seem to double as projectors)that you walk past, depending on the size and strength of your shadow on the wall, the projectors tune to various radio frequencies, displayed on the walls. It's quite surreal listening to a mish mash of local, pirate and national radio stations mixed in with emergency services radio frequencies etc... a lot of fun to be had though - great for kids.

It was getting on for after 6pm at this point, so we took the tube a couple of stops to Brick Lane, in my old neighbourhood of Whitechapel to meet with Julia and Carly who I hadn't seen for well over 2 years! We had a couple of drinks in the Archers pub and then went for a curry. Sorry can't remember the name of the curry house, but as usual the standard was high whilst being less that £10 a head including drinks.

Monday was our day home but we still had the morning to kill, so we checked out the Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life, 1990–2005 exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, just off Trafalgar Square. I was really looking forward to this and it didn't disappoint as one of my favourite Leibovitch photos of the White Stripes was on display

it also contained a variety of "famous" images and faces along side personal photos of the late Susan Sontag. Again, this is definitely worth checking out if you have £12 to spare.

After this there was not much time to do anything except grab a quick bite to eat anc head back to St Pancras for what turned out to be a rather uneventful train journey home.

London part 1

Made a visit down south a couple of weeks ago to visit my best friend Jen, and of course to do some shopping and sights. I'm honestly not going to mention the farce that is East Midlands Rail Replacement service - just that it should be avoided like the plague.
First stop was Tate Modern, we got off the tube at St Paul's to walk over the bridge and I was amazed at how gleaming white the building is now after all the cleaning work that has gone on (there are some parts still left to do)

Once we got to the Tate, I called up my friend Julia who works there and we got to see a couple of exhibitions gratis. First up was Cildo Meireles who created some quite bizarre and intriguing installations that you walk through - including a floor made of cracked panels of glass that crunched under foot with various other materials on top including barbed wire, metal chains, and scrunched up plastic.
Another installation consisted of a white room with the walls covered in clocks

with thousands of rulers hanging down in circles clacking as you couldn't avoid touching them as you walked through.
Also included was a what looked like a tree on a field of coins with bones for leaves but turned out to be something completely different "Mission/Missions(How to Build Cathedrals)"

"the work comments on the human cost of missionary work and its connection with the exploitation of wealth in the colonies: the ceiling is composed of
2,000 bones, while the floor comprises 600,000 coins. Symbolically joining these two elements is a column of 800 communion wafers."
After this we also briefly checked out the Rothko exhibition but weren't that impressed in all honesty.
Then feeling rather tired we headed back to Kilburn stopping off at Papa John's for pizza, which was nice.

Photographic Portrait Prize 2007 - The Lowry

I went to the Lowry Centre today to catch the Photographic Portrait exhibition, which closes this weekend. And whilst I found it quite enjoyable I do have mixed feelings over whether I enjoyed the exhibition or not, maybe it was my own fault for expecting something slightly grittier than what I saw, my preconceptions being led in particular by this photograph

Portrait Prize winner Joseline Ingabire with her daughter Leah Batamuliza, Rwanda, from the series Intended Consequences: Mothers of Genocide, Children of Rape, by Jonathan Torgovnik © the artist.
I suppose I was expecting portraits that told a story about the subject, but I found many were simply portraits of children who were in some way related to the photographer, that appeared to have been used for the photo as they were readily available.. or again, maybe I read too much/too little from the snippet of information on the descriptions.
The photos I did find very striking included Alex Hurricane Higgins by Michael Donald (albeit displayed in a rather odd position in the gallery) and Alice & Fish By David Stewart. A small sample of the finalists can be found on the National Portrait Gallery website.

Ting Tings, Manchester Academy 3rd October 2008

Went to see the Ting Tings on Friday at Manchester Academy. We met with friends in Jabez Clegg before hand as it's usually cheaper than the academy one, but for some reason 2 pints cost me over £6, which seems a bit extortionate for a student place, might as well go to Kro next door and get a decent pint for that sort of money. Although we did get given a free drink each from the Jim Beam representative in there, shame the only one of us who likes it was driving that night! But on the up side we're all apparently going to receive an email invitation to a survey about Jim Beam which if we complete we'll receive a £10 Amazon voucher...
Anyway, onto the gig, we walked across the road to the academy around 9pm, and it was still busy with people going in, this was my first time since the academy has been fully refurbished - the last time I was there, the toilets were still portable units outside the building. The first thing I noticed was that they hadn't learnt from the last time - the toilets were back to being the same - over flowing, poor layout/design, and they had put the bar back in the old position meaning that there was a huge bottle neck upon entering the venue, although adding an upstairs bit was a nice surprise I suppose (but their was a massive queue to go up there as well). Despite the new lay out there was still minimal bar space, so getting a drink took a good 15 minutes once we got into the venue, and of course we were paying around £3.50 for a can of beer. I think we pretty much missed the support act Fight Like Apes, as they were finishing as we were queueing for the bar.
The ting tings came on stage around half nine, I can't actually remember the first song they played, just that the crowd went wild jumping, dancing and singing along, which set the tone for the rest of the evening. They played the hit singles: that's not my name, great dj, shut up and dance, along with fruit machine, be the one and a couple more off the album, they also played a couple of songs I didn't recognise, so I don't know whether they are new tracks off the much anticipated second album or not, I hope so. It's great when you can see the band really throwing all their energy into the performance and that's what we got with the ting tings, at times they reminded me of blondie, with katie's 80's punky movement.
The crowd was very eclectic and friendly. really good gig in all, shame their next tour is going to be at the apollo though, as it's one of my least favourite venues and the hiked ticket price is making it a no go.

The Kite Runner

I've just finished reading The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, such a beautifully written book, I really don't think I could do it justice. The basic premise of the book can be found in the link above. I don't think I've ever been so torn between not wanting to know what comes next and being unable to put a book down, hoping that everything will turn out ok but knowing that my hope for a happy ending is pretty futile and the story is going to have a lot more emotional turmoil, it actually had me holding back the tears in several parts. Not sure whether I will be able to sit through the film when it comes out, but I will definitely be looking out for Hosseini's next book A Thousand Splendid Suns on my next trip into Manchester. But for tonight, my next book is Reading Lolita In Tehran which is a memoir by Azar Nafisi.

BBC Manchester Tour

Today we went to the BBC building on Oxford Road for one of their free tours. The tour guide lady (sorry didn't catch her name, but she had one of those faces, where you think you know someone) was really good, we had ample time to ask questions and take photos. The first stop was Studio A, which has been used for lots of famous tv shows (that I can't remember the names of), it was emtpy so not much to look at really. Then we went to look at another studio where the BBC philharmonic orchestra practise, now this was impressive, it had all these odd features to improve the sound which included these things hanging from the roof that looked almost like the wings on early planes and box types shapes stuck to the walls.


Next was a radio drama studio, where actors record radio shows - it had 3 types of flooring, a set of steps that were park wood, part carpet and part concrete for any scenario you might need, not to mention a fully stocked 'kitchen' with numerous props - it was a nice insight into how radio dramas are put together.
We also got to visit the radio studios where BBC radio Manchester is broadcast from, and watched on a small monitor the news lady - although she is situated near the front of the building to be near the news... or something like that.


The real highlight of the trip was up next - the Northwest Tonight Studio. A part time presenter (sorry can't remember the name) was there and showed us how he worked the autocue, how to switch cameras and other tricks of the trade, they don't have sheets of paper these days, but a Pc & monitor set underneath the glass desk. Visitors then had the option to have a go at reading the news or sit on the sofa they use for light pieces. We then went to the room where the directors and producers sit during the show with the various mixing desks and computers.

The final stop of the tour was in the BBC interactive suite, where if you should choose (we didn't) you could read the weather, the same way the weather lady does (with no prompts or scripts), and then have it played back. We were also shown a promotional film about the new Media City opening at Salford Quays where BBC Manchester will relocate to in 2011.

Then we finished with a quick questionaire about the tour and were given a goody bag which was quite unexpected, and contained pens, a keyring, lots of leafets & info about BBC stuff and a DVD.

All in all a very nice afternoon out, the tour lasted about and hour and a half with plenty of time to photograph, ask questions and 'have a go'.

Well I got the name sorted for now, blogbeat inspired by Cressboy, a witty take on my flickr sn of breakbeat. Clever huh?
Well I've spent the evening processing, editing and uploading more holiday photos to my flickr page including this wee fella

Taken at the Bardo Museum in Tunisia.
If naked statues with body parts missing are your thing then check out the rest of the set here

Back in the game

Back to blogging. New blog. New because it replaces several older ones I have just scrapped, I seem make one every couple of years, start off with good intentions, then it peters off to nothing. Maybe this one will be different, maybe not. I will confess to being partly inspired by my friend Jon's blog at TdM Photography... I suppose I shall go work on making this thing pretty now.