british boys

There's something special coming out of Bristol right now, the fantastic Marmalade Sky. With their memorable anthemic songs and mod style they blast everyone else off stage at the moment. As Dan ambitiously declared at the start of their Louisiana gig last night 'We are the Future!'

You know I'm good at tipping bands and if you'd taken my advice over the last few years you'd have got to see Plan B, Enter Shikari and Mumm-ra well before they got, respectively, too bland, too big and broken up ...

The Louie is probably my favourite venue. In all my years in bands I've never played anywhere so small. I've been in bigger living rooms! Last night was fun but too many people missed it!

Their next gig is at the Cooler in Park Street on Good Friday. You will really doing yourself a big favour if you get to see them whilst you still can. But be careful, if you're a bit delicate or wimpy keep out of the moshing area!

hope

Well, Obama's in. His inauguration speech wasn't bad at all. He painted a fairly bleak but realistic picture of where the USA currently stands. I suspect the economic picture is worse than any of us feared. In the UK they are projecting 3.4 million unemployed by 2010 - even arch socialist Thatcher couldn't manage that, though I'm sure she tried.

Highlight for me? Yo Yo Ma playing the cello.

I met Yo Yo back in about 1979, on a train from Littlehampton to Chichester. I'd never heard of him, and didn't at the time have much truck with anything other than Joy Division, but at his invitation I did pop along to Chichester cathedral (yes, you read that right! I used to be far less anti-christian) and listened to him play. He was excellent!

What does the new presidency mean? Well, he touched on energy in his speech, and a lot of other things. He certainly didn't proclaim, even in code, that the American Way of Life was not up for Negotiation, quite the opposite. He didn't mention 'growth' once, but he did touch on many non-economic aspects of life. I think this is what we need to hear.

I love business and money, to me the market is king and no better system than capitalism has been, or will ever be, devised. But there's far more to life than making money (which is dead easy) - family, friends, relationships, community, health, culture (not so easy).

We now hear that all 50 states in the US have Transition groups. This is fantastic news, though shouldn't be a surprise. That's part of the process of creating a new USA, a USA that wll lead the world on Climate Change, social justice and energy security, that will send socialism running to the caves of Pakistan, the conservative clubs of middle England and the ghettoes of Gaza.

More than anything Barack is a symbol that racism is finally dead, that you can emerge from any background to high office, and that the world really has changed. Now let's gid rid of Brown - what a joke he now seems!

busy and wild weekend

Bristol in the middle of Saturday night's storm


The Fleece on saturday night


Jungi at the zoo on Sunday.

We've had a really busy weekend!

We rejoined the gym on Saturday, then went off to a gig on Saturday night, at the Fleece, a new venue for me. Not a bad location at all with loads of character.

To the zoo on Sunday then, amazingly, to the gym on the way back.

All the activity practically killed me off. We're getting in practice for the summer, when we'll be totally redoing the garden and getting Transition fit!

the last embers of 2008

Bristol tonight - first shot is of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra leaving the stage after finishing on a stirring Radetsky March in this year's Strauss New Year's Eve concert.

The rest are from the walk back to the car through a frigid and consequently quiet Bristol.

Now for a bottle of 1990 Tokaji Aszu to see the new year in.

socialist hell

(Geneva 5.12.2008)

Poor Manchester. I always thought it was a pretty cool place, providing us with The Smiths, The Passage, Inspiral Carpets, The Stone Roses and, above all others, Joy Division.

Now they've let us all down. The Guardian-denier-hippy-tory-lefty sheep have voted AGAINST (yes, AGAINST!!) the congestion charge!! Why would anyone vote FOR congestion??

So the loser sheep will have a few more years of ridiculous traffic jams until common sense and right wing ideas take root again and the charge is brought in and the profits used to build TRAMWAYS.

I shake my head sometimes. It looks like the whole world's gone red ...

french lessons

The festival at Lizio. Breton music and other treats - and very chilled out.


Ploermel station. How long before the tracks return?


Josselin - lively as always.


I think this is the old railway (which continues to Ploermel and beyond) but still not sure!

A week in Brittany again. A great time despite raging sinusitis!

It still amazes me how far in advance of us France is. They will cope well with Peak Oil, though not so well with Climate Change. 80% of their power is generated by nuclear, though how long uranium will last is anyone's guess. There were plenty of wind turbines, and the roads were almost empty. Towns and villages still retain local shops, although the supermarkets are useful too! The French have invested heavily in some of their railways, the TGV in particular. Even smaller cities have brand new state of the art tramways. And their closed railways are generally protected as rights of way with reinstatement much easier than in the UK. And in many towns and villages council services have switched from internal combustion to horse and cart. Even the weather's better ...