Hadrian's Wall and the Lake District - Day 1

Thursday, 27 August

Got up at 6:30 (yuck!) and caught a train to Newcastle from King's Cross. Spent 3 hours trying to find a spoon so I could eat my breakfast, as well as trying to ignore the noisy child sitting nearby. Went to pick up the car in Newcastle, then had to run around the sitting trying to print out some proof of address that they suddenly needed. Holidays eh? Who needs 'em!

Drove to Durham, and walked up to the castle, which was unfortunately closed for a wedding. Made do with a one hour tour of the Cathedral that was quite interesting. We learned that women (even Queens) were not allowed in the cathedral, so had their own chapel in the rear; that St Cuthbert is buried here, with a King's dismembered head; and that there is a colony of Pipistrelle bats in the cloisters (we saw one doing laps). They also had some interesting modern sculptures, and a painting of an elderly lady who was described as looking as if she had "had a difficult paper route".

Afterwards we drove on to the villgage of Barnard Castle (via another village with the amusing name of Staindrop), where we had a room booked in an eerie old building. (We later learned that our room was a ghosty one, and that there is an ancient well in the basement that has a subterranean reservoir that can be explored in a diving suit!) Had a grand old walk around the town, visiting the ruins of the namesake castle, the river, churchyard, nearby fields, and the grounds of the Bowes Museum, where they were finishing filming of an episode of Antique's Roadshow!

Had a fish pie and ale before turning in.

August round-up

Yahoo! team offsite

Kew Gardens

Social Saturday - JRA / Wes & Mon

Filmstuff - managed to attend some exciting film events this month. My friend Lovinia from work scored some tickets to a screening of 15 mins of footage from James Cameron's up-coming 3D opus Avatar. I also picked up some tickets for a subsequent screening at the IMAX. This film is going to be awesome, though I still have my doubts about those damned 3D glasses... We also went to a special screening of Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, with a Q&A with her and writer Mark Boal. I got copy of Strange Days signed. Last but not least, we saw an interview with Terry Gilliam, and I met him afterwards and gave him a copy of my short film, plus got a signed copy of Brazil. Yay for London!

Regent's Canal - we did a several hours walk from King's Cross, through Camden, alongside Regent's Park and the Zoo, and ending up in "Little Venice", which doesn't really live up to the name I'm afraid!

James and Georgia's wedding

National Portrait Gallery

Guildhall Art Gallery (painting by Millais)

London Amphitheatre

Museum of London

Not really Anna's cup of tea, but she was kind enough to let me drag her off to the Museum of London for a few hours.

Located just up the road from us, and part of the striking Barbican complex, the museum documents the history of our adopted city from the prehistoric to the present, with detailed stop-overs illustrating the Roman occupation, and the Great Fire of London, among others.

It even overlooks the remains of the original Roman city wall, and contains artefacts from the Temple of Mithras that we have walked past late at night many times, such as the altarpiece above. A great place to visit!

Portsmouth

Despite typically sub-par weather (Rain? Here?), we had a splendid day trip to Portsmouth, England's major naval port and dry dock - and actually England's only island city.

Most of Portsmouth's tourism relates to its naval history, and we visited:

• the HMS Victory, Lord Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar

• the remains of Henry VIII 's Mary Rose, raised from the seabed in 1982 and still undergoing preservation work to this day

• Naval museum

• the D-Day museum, home to the Overlord embroidery, a modern counterpart to the Bayeux tapestry
• Southsea Castle (well, we circumnavigated it anyway!)

Sonisphere (Knebworth Park) 02/08/09

Bands:

Killing Joke
Lamb of God
Mastodon
Limp BizkitFour Losers And A Clown
Nine Inch Nails
Linkin Park
Metallica

Nine Inch Nails setlist:
The Way Out is Through
Wish
I Do Not Want This
Something I Can Never Have
Gone, Still
The Frail
The Wretched
Non-Entity
Lights In The Sky
The Downward Spiral
Hurt

So assuming Trent doesn't change his mind after a few years of chilling out with his dog and noodling about in the studio, then I was front and centre for Nine Inch Nails' last ever performance in the United Kingdom. And what an unusual little thing it was. Given that it was a heavy metal festival, I was expecting a "last hurrah" kind of gig and was all pumped up for an hour of hardcore moshing and violence. Imagine my surprise when the several-minute-long piano and ambients track Something I Can Never Have showed up fourth in the setlist, instead of its usual place as a concert coda.

And then followed many more low key and introspective numbers, as parts of the crowd (no doubt the Metallica fans) grew more and more impatient. Fortunately the kick in the nuts that is The Downward Sprial put an end to the less-polite catcalls, while audience favourite Hurt appropriately closed the show to raucous applause.

Trent actually commented on this in the NIN.com forums:

We played a purposely quiet, intimate set. I figured it would either enrage or baffle the metal audience... but to our amazement it went over great!
Really fun set to play in that environment.

What a trickster! Personally, as a life-long and moderate-to-highly obsessed fan, I'm sorry to say that I was a little underwhelmed by this swansong setlist. Certainly the NIN.com forums disagree with me, so I'm glad everyone else felt the magic. I certainly had the wrong expectations, which didn't help, and the songs - though tailored to fans - just didn't fit the festival's atmosphere.

I've often wondered about Trent's song choices (I guess his favourite NIN songs and mine are very different - Non-Entity? Really!?), but every NIN fan knows that it's fruitless to hope for a specific song. So with that in mind, and given that I totally respect his choice as an artist to decide what says "goodbye" for him, I guess this really was a fitting farewell. I'm curious to know what's going to go down at the final few intimate-scaled US shows yet to come!

July round-up

Had an action-packed end of month with two trips to the theatre, Phantom of the Opera for Anna's birthday, and Priscilla: Queen of the Desert (with Jason Donovan) with Megan and her friends. They certainly know how to put on a good show in London, with some great stage designs and song and dance routines.

I managed to catch a special screening of Skin, a movie about a white South African family who had a biological black daughter, during the apartheid regime. Very interesting, with a Q&A with the director afterwards. I also took Anna to Bug, a monthly round-up of music videos at the BFI, hosted by Radio DJ Adam Buxton.

Anna also spent a couple of days at a motivational course at Earl's Court (though it sounds like a cult recruitment affair), and we had a picnic in Battersea Park with Darren and Lily. We've been nearby, but never into the park, so it was great to have a look around - and there are lots of interesting sights like a small zoo, and the large Buddhist "Peace Pagoda".

Black Box Recorder (Queen Elizabeth Hall) 23/07/09

Setlist:
It's Only The End Of The World
Brutality
Girl Singing In The Wreckage
English Motorway System
British Racing Green
Hated Sunday
Wonderful Life
Facts Of Life
Factory Radio
Straight Life
Child Psychology
Start As You Mean To Go On
I C One Female
Do You Believe In God?
Keep It In The Family
The Art Of Driving
England Made Me

Encore:
Ideal Home
The New Diana
Goodnight Kiss
When Britain Refused To Sing
I Ran All The Way Home

Second encore:
Lord Lucan Is Missing

Clint Mansell and the Sonus Quartet (Union Chapel) 20/07/09

What an incredible gig this was. Clint Mansell, with an exquisite band, performing his transcendental scores in an intimate chapel, before a rapturous and receptive crowd of music and film lovers. And as if that wasn't enough, film-maker Darren Aronofsky turned up to introduce the evening!

Some great highlights, but Requiem's "Meltdown" was a hair-raising, heart-quickening tour de force, and easily my pick for best of the evening, despite other songs being my personal favourites...

Setlist:
Pour l'amour de la mere
Beginnings
England's Dreaming
Stay With Me (from The Fountain)
Death is the Road to Awe (from The Fountain)
Together We Will Live Forever (from The Fountain)
I Can Feel You Slipping Away
Welcome to Lunar Industries (from Moon)

Sacrifice (from Moon)

Welcome to Lunar Industries (Three Year Stretch...) (from Moon)

The Ten Commandments

The Beginning of the End / Meltdown (from Requiem for a Dream)
Lux Aeterna (from Requiem for a Dream)
2πr (from π)
Medley (from The Wrestler)

Random picture 5

Surprised Anna with a little trip to the Shoreditch Festival, thinking we could eat some nice 'world food' and listen to some bands, etc. In the end, the biggest draw was the dog show (winner pictured above) which we spent a few hours watching...

Spitalfields City Farm and Brick Lane

For the poor folk who grow up in the London metropolis and never get a chance to visit the countryside, there's the delightful "City Farm". They're a little moth-eaten, certainly, but there are lots of nice animals like pigs, horses, goats, chickens, and even guinea pigs!

Since we don't have any pets, this was a nice opportunity for us to recharge our animal batteries. Afterwards we walked back into Spitalfields for a bagel, passing the shoe tree...

Lots of local graffiti...

And an interesting piece of performance art in one of the many Brick Lane art galleries (a man wearing watermelons)...

Nine Inch Nails / Mew / Jane's Addiction (The O2) 15/07/09

That's not the order they played in, but it's the order in which I love them! Poor, wonderful Mew only got a 20 minute or so set, but they sure made the most of it - throwing out some awesome new tracks, and great versions of old favourites.

Mew setlist:
New Terrain
Introducing Palace Players
Repeaterbeater
Special
The Zookeeper's Boy
Am I Wry? No
156

Jane's Addiction setlist:
Three Days
Whores
Ain’t No Right
Then She Did…
Mountain Song
Been Caught Stealing
Ted, Just Admit It
Oceansize
Stop!
Jane Says

Nine Inch Nails setlist:
Now I’m Nothing
Terrible Lie
1,000,000
Heresy
March Of The Pigs
Reptile
The Becoming
I’m Afraid Of Americans [David Bowie cover]
Burn
Gave Up
La Mer
The Fragile
Non Entity
The Big Come Down
The Downward Spiral
Wish
Survivalism
Down In It
Metal [Gary Numan cover] with Gary Numan
Cars [Gary Numan cover] with Gary Numan
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like A Hole
Hurt

Enjoying the heat

Well, we were the last couple of weeks anyway. This week has been thunder, lightning and even a few seconds of hail.

June round-up

It's all becoming a blur since I started doing video commissions for the Babelgum website. I work all day at Yahoo!, and either go out and film afterwards, or come home and edit into the wee hours. This process has so far yielded two videos, one about The Great Cake Escape, and another about the London Street Pianos (Anna has a cameo in this one).

In between, I saw an interview with Nick Cave (of the Bad Seeds) at the BFI; completely forgot about and missed an interview with the cast of Torchwood (though I did catch a glimpse of the exquisite Eve Myles afterwards...); attended an interview with author A.S.Byatt at The Guardian headquarters, in which she spoke about Possession, her Booker prize-winning masterpiece, plus I spoke to her afterwards and got her signature on a first edition copy of The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye; submitted my film Cut-out to the London and Venice film fests; dressed up my friend Darren in a Mozart outfit and wandered around City of London at night to play the piano outside outside the Royal Exchange buildings; Anna and I visited The Southerner, a Speights pub near the Royal Courts of Justice that was set up as part of last year's promotion (there was a whole pub shipped from New Zealand by sea, alas this is not it as the Council shut down the original); went to the original Twinings shop on The Strand, opened in 1706 and now the oldest trading premises in the City of Westminster, and bought some Irish Breakfast tea; and last night Anna and I attended a dress up party to celebrate July 4th - US Independence Day...

Update: Just met director Mike Figgis! I was down in Trafalgar Square to film the opening of the new artwork for the "Fourth Plinth", and he was there filming too. Neat! Also filmed Mayor Boris Johnson and artist Anthony Gormley.

Tracy Chapman (The Roundhouse) 25/06/09

Setlist:
America
Sing For You
Baby Can I Hold You
Something To See
Say Hallelujah
Smoke and Ashes
Another Sun
Save Us All
Lovesong
I Did It All
The Promise > Save a Place for Me
Fast Car
Our Bright Future
Telling Stories
Give Me One Reason
Talkin’ Bout A Revoloution

Encore:
She’s Got Her Ticket
Behind The Wall
Subcity