Sound City

In Liverpool this weekend I happened across a live music festival called Sound City... loads of pubs/ bars/ venues got involved to put on a great 4 day-er of live music, lots of it free!

My favourites were local band The Mono LPs and French synth kids Curry & Coco which I've found a couple of clips of for you to enjoy :) I'm nice like that...







what do you think?

Roadtrip

Recently me and the other half hit the South West for a few days for a roadtrip...

We saw a documentary about the singer Donovan and he raved on about how cool and inspiring St Ives was when he was a young man and it had a very good review from my mum so I decided it had to be my next destination! Its a fair few miles to drive so a bit of a commitment but we arrived on a Monday at 4ish and stayed til Thursday afternoon so worth the effort..

We started in St Ives and were very pleased to happen upon an open mic night full of locals jamming to classic tunes (and a poet who everybody quickly tired of and talked over!) - what a great start to our little holiday, full of cider and cheered by friendly locals... we just about stumbled our way back to the hotel... the next day, after a short walk on Porthminster Beach we enjoyed breakfast overlooking the sea which warmed my soul, a city girl I may be but I was brought up by the river so water really does it for me haha

We went to have a look at the Tate St Ives and the exhibitions were closed for a refurb (of all the days in the year! ruined!) but we were able to have a peek thru doors and watch surfers on Porthmeor Beach from the roof terrace cafe... We made our way back thru the lovely cobbled streets and bought some postcards and fudge then headed off for Land's End and Sennen Cove...

Sennen Cove was a bit windy but beautiful blue and turquoise sea.. fabulous! It didn't occur to me that it was the Atlantic Ocean, but it is! How exotic! Then we stopped off at Land's End Aiport for a cuppa and the skinny on how to fly to the Scilly Isles the following day... The Airbus holds 8 passengers and is that small! We booked in... (more on this later!)

Then we had a look at Land's End, took a trip to Porthcurno Beach and the Minack Theatre and a quick half in a pub at Logan's Rock... for WOW factor definitely recommend Minack Theatre, they have shows from May to Sept too so I'll be going back! A theatre built into a cliff, just beggars belief how they managed it! It's featured in a film too, Love Story, altho they abandoned filming there when the weather got too bad and recreated it in a studio!

Then we found a place to stay in Sennen and ate dinner at the First and Last Inn in England! It had a smugglers tunnel on display and a gruesome story about an old landlady who got left on a pole on the beach and left to drown for being a part of a smuggler's ring! charming!

We flew to Scilly and the man totally bricked it! he isn't a traveller bless him and the plane was so small he clenched his fists the entire 15 minute journey... i did feel for him but i thought his refusal to fly home to the mainland a little over the top, it was only 15 minutes for goodness sake! so we had to swap our ticket for the 2 and a half hour ferry back instead! and i am no sea-woman! haha luckily for him i didn't chunder...

while in Scilly we saw St Agnes and walked almost the entire island! imagine living someplace so small you could walk the circumference of in a few hours... blows my tiny mind! Lol we had a Cornish pasty (well he did, i had a soup thing, very nice too) and a bit of local tipple and then headed back to St Mary's for a few hours before returning to the mainland... we stopped in to say hi to the man who runs Radio Scilly and he gave us all the gossip about the island's differing personalities, very interesting! he also said he only occasionally misses the mainland for a curry but they get them choppered in when there's a big group! how glam is that! curry by helicopter! brilliant!

our ferry arrived at Penzance and our car was at Land's End carpark.. so we eventually got home to our B&B but only had time to repeat visit First & Last for tea which was fine as the other punters (locals and tourists) in there provided lovely company as well as the food being fabulous...

then it was already time to head home again but on the way north we popped into Tintagel to spy their castle and picked up some mead! it is like a very strong honey wine - omg! not good! lol we also discovered a place called Boscastle up the way and popped into their Witchcraft Museum, very interesting! and my boyf bought a wand... gawd help us!

and that's it.. the roadtrip deets in full! a fab week and totally recommend if you haven't been :)

you can see some pics of my trip here

reward motivated

i was in Liverpool recently and went to stay with my dad... he had an orchid that had just flowered, no big news there, but then he told me it hadn't flowered for 5 years! FIVE YEARS! what does that tell you about a person? that they're willing to wait 5 years for a flower?!

as possibly the most impatient person i know i cannot fathom such a quest! i don't think i've ever waited 5 years for anything in my life! what does this say about me? am i lacking as a person? it certainly makes me question how i am motivated.. quick thrills please lol

i had a caller to the radio show recently who when telling me about the best place he ever had breakfast (in Tenerife incidentally) he was with a girl he'd waited 10 years for... swelled my romantic heart! but 10 years?! seriously?! lol i defo couldn't do that!

what's the longest you ever waited for something?

vinyl man

This is my mate Keith, he runs a record shop in Kingston Upon Thames here!

If you are ever in the neighbourhood, pop in and tell him I sent ya! I'm not on commission but I do love a record shop and think people like Keith are keeping them alive!

There is something so seductive about the smell of old vinyl... and don't get me started on the crackle! Just rediscovered this via a recording and it gave me goosebumps. One of the great reasons I love that I am a child of the 70s is that I can appreciate vinyl and all its crackling joy. Kids today etc etc ;)

My first shop job was in a record shop in Liverpool on Matthew Street called Backtracks... I was 16/17 and soon also had a cloakroom job in a nightclub called The Buzz... ah good times! I loved working listening to music all day.. hence my radio bug methinks!

Later when I moved to Basingstoke I got a Saturday job at the brand new HMV and met my first love...

So here's to record shops, long may they live on street corners, full of indie kids, soul divas, metal heads and all the rest!

a whiff of the past?

my mum has long been a fan of the bacon sarnie... and i know she isn't alone in this... bacon sizzling on the grill is probs one of the most popular whiffs when people are asked their favourites...

but hear this! i, being the vegetarian of many years that i am, am perplexed by something that happened last week while on holiday in Cornwall...

walking down by the seafront early one morning i got a whiff of this cooking bacon and was surprised to feel myself enjoying the smell! my finding the smell of bacon cooking pleasant in any way is at odds with my moral belief that it is inhumane to eat animals... and yet something biological maybe was saying 'mmm, dinner!'

in these situations it's best to blame your parents! lol

my mum tried to be a veggie in the 80s but the bacon buttie proved too tempting a mistress and she had sneaky meat treats when out of the house she shared with her then veggie husband (my dad) on more than one occasion... which must've somehow made an impression on me haha, the bacon sandwich forever cast as forbidden fruit!

i must say i had/ have no desire to actually eat a bacon sarnie, the idea of chewing on flesh after more years than i care to count is actually abhorrent to me.. i love to remind people that Einstein said humans would have to evolve to be vegetarians*, it all comes down to simple economics! i'm the cheapest date! lol so no chance of my being corrupt into an omnivore again any time soon.. but i have always wondered how i would cope if i got pregnant and had a meat craving! the social pressure to give my baby/ body what it 'needed' would be massive, what a horror!

so i'm guessing that pre-13 i enjoyed a bacon sarnie with my mum on more than one occasion and enjoyed her enjoyment of said snack so much that the smell of it makes me smile...



*and they love to remind me that Hitler was a vegetarian... which by all accounts may just be a bit of propaganda anyway! how rude! i never ask people why they eat meat and i am always asked why i don't.. i know it's the norm to eat meat in western society but surely now we're 1 in 10, people can get over it? i suppose it's like when you don't drink, people want to know why because it reflects badly on them somehow... ah the world is a strange and beautiful place...

hungover on a sunny day

today is very sunny and the weather reports assure me it's going to be lovely and warm too. but i am hungover and unable to a) get dressed b) open the curtains - my tiny eyes couldn't cope!

i am glad to report that i have a couple of unidentified drunken bruises. why is it that you always come home from a night of vodka with bruises?

i've been drinking vodka a long time now and let me tell you* it never ceases to amaze me when i wake up with a sore head. i take this as proof that vodka is no good for the memory!






*this is my new fave phrase courtesy of Dave...

dream a little dream

I've had a few odd dreams recently... maybe you can tell me what they mean (if anything)

in the first one i was driving in my car in the rain. then it cut to my looking for my parked car ahead of the rain coming. couldn't remember where i had parked it and was very worried about it!

in the next dream i was driving my car along a treacherous winding road through a woody area, that seemed high up, in possibly a foreign country. i was concerned about driving along this road and the journey ahead...

the last dream of a driving theme saw me driving but unable to make my rear view mirror sit in the right position. that is to say it would sit too high or too low but not where i wanted it to. the boyf says this represents my not being able to see clearly where i've been!

so what is it? a lot of driving... a lot of uncertainty and anxiety... maybe that's it, just anxiety dreams... what do you think?!

Flattery will get you everywhere...

So today I was asked for ID at the supermarket when buying some alcoholic ginger beer*...

THIS IS THE BEST THING THAT'S HAPPENED ALL YEAR! Lol

I know she was wearing glasses haha, but she was so amazed at my senior years that she told her till buddy who had a customer who chipped in! they all agreed I looked 21! good work girls! way to cheer a lass up for a tired Friday arvo!

This summer I'm going to 20/15 haha - that is 20 years since I was 15! WTF?! haha I can remember so well what I got up to that summer... how time flies... and you know you're old when you say stuff like that!

But as your body inevitably decays and your memory fades why is it that we still 'feel' so young? i guess it's a cruel trick of the mind to make us keep going!



*i know! i've been meaning to trying it for ages! and i will report the results of my taste test asap!

Happy St Patrick's Day

May your stout be creamy and your fiddle be merry!