This came up on random play today:
God said to Abraham “Kill me a son”
Abe said “Man you must be puttin’ me on”
God said “No”
Abe said “What?”
God said “You can do what you want Abe
but the next time you see me coming
you better run”
Well Abe said “Where you want this killing done?”
God said “Out on Highway 61”.
Bob Dylan either knows nothing about theology, or a great deal. I can never decide which.
Today I went out cycling with a group from the local bike shop. The rest of the group all looked a whole lot more professional than me, and it turned out they were. But not quite all of them. I ended up third from last most of the time, which I was happy enough with. Just happy not to be last! In my defence, myself and second last were the only ones riding the shop’s cheaper alloy road bikes, while all the others were riding flashy carbon jobs.
But unfortunately I forgot to start runkeeper, so I have no track of it. And the bike computer was set for the wrong wheel size, so I didn’t even have that. But from the other guys, we did 52 miles, in 3 and a quarter hours.
I then took some advice, and had a dip in the hotel pool.
And then ignored the rest of the advice, and spent the afternoon lying on a sun bed and reading Stieg Larsson’s “The girl who played with fire”, the sequel to the famous “The girl with the dragon tattoo”. It’s quite a read, as I finished it in 2 days. I’m not sure it’s just as good as the first one mind you. My major disappointment is the character of Ronald Niemann, who seems like a James Bond villain unexpectedly dropped into the wrong book. Maybe I am being picky, but I thought that this character kind of cheapened the book. But having said that, I enjoyed it, and I’m looking forward to reading the next one, and I suppose that’s the best sign of a good book.
I’m still on holiday in Majorca. Here are some more holiday thoughts.
I’m still on holiday, in Majorca. One day, as I aimlessly wandered around exploring the resort, I came upon a poster advertising the Pollensa Music Festival. And unexpectedly, I recognised one of the groups performing – the Swingle Singers.
Although you may not know the name, their work is heard in many an odd place, for example in Glee. singing all the a capella bits. They’ve also been heard in the odd advert and pop tune. Their sound is quite distinctive – a capella means they use no musical instruments at all, and even their drum sounds are done by beatboxing. I think it’s a great sound.
So I managed to get myself a ticket, and then managed to get myself to the venue (no thanks to the local bus company). And what a great night!
The concert was in the Convert of Santa Domingo, in an open courtyard – a splendid venue on a warm summer night. And the group were, as expected, brilliant. I’ll admit that sometimes the harmonies go from being beautiful to complicated, or even just very interesting, but nonetheless it’s the best use of 8 voices that I’ve ever heard. Some of it just made the hairs stand on the back of my neck. And other parts just left me grinning. (Their “Flight of the Bumblebee” is just amazing).
If you don’t believe me, check them out on YouTube or google them.
An unexpected, but very splendid night out!
Fashion is a funny old thing. Sometimes you’re an early adopted, sometimes you come to the party late. But some things never quite go out of fashion. Some things are just regarded as timeless classics. One of those things is Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. It’s an album almost as old as I am, that caused a huge stir when it was released, and stayed in the charts for an unprecedented length of time.
I bought myself a Pink Floyd compilation a year or two ago, and quite liked it. It became a favourite when I was in Singapore. But only then did I realise that my favourite tracks from the compilation nearly all came from one album. So I bought it this month. And I think it’s brilliant.
It’s prog-rock, meant to be listened to as a whole, not a set of unrelated tracks. And that is one of the album’s strengths, that the tracks are related. This is an album about life, in all its richness. The first lyrics are “breathe, breathe in the air, don’t be afraid to care” and that probably sets a tone for how the album engages with life. As it goes on, it talks about restlessness, missed opportunities, money, war, poverty, madness and lots of other things. Maybe not so much about romance, now that I think about it. Wow. What a great album : )
I’ll admit that I don’t really dig the instrumentals On the Run and Any Colour you Like. But I think the rest of it is pure genius. I love the beauty of the tune of Us and Them, coupled with the sheer humanity of the lyrics. I love the anguish of Time “No-one told you when to run – you missed the starting gun”. I love the ego of Money. You never really know what to make of the Great Gig in the Sky. But on a good day, it’s just sublime, and does what it says on the tin.
But my favourites are actually the final pair of tracks. Somehow Brain Damage manages to be positive, and “I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon” is an affirming statement, rather than a negative one. And the final words are pure poetry “Everything under the sun is in tune, but the sun is eclipsed by the moon”. Everything should be right, and in-tune, and perfect. But it isn’t, because however great and shiny the sun is, the moon manages to get in the way. And boys and girls of the internet, isn’t life just like that?
That was long and rambling. But anyway, I like this album. I’ve now loaned it to a friend, so it’ll be interesting to head what they make of it.
So here I am, travelling again. The difference this time is that I chose the destination, and there is no work involved. I’ve done a lot of travelling this year, but this is the first actual holiday, and I have to say I’ve been looking forward to it for a while.
So, I’m in Puerto Pollensa, in the north of Majorca. It’s dark right now, but my balcony faces the sea, which is beautiful and blue. I’m also surrounded on most sides by mountains, which are cool, and the sky has been that amazing deep shade of blue you only get when you are wearing sunglasses on a lovely day.
Things to note so far
So, after a week of uncertainty, late on Friday night two weeks ago I was asked if I could travel to Singapore, to join the project team that I am working with. I had a surprisingly easy conversation with American Express travel, and I was booked to fly to the other side of the world on Sunday.
And now here I am on the otehr side of the world, 7 hours ahead of the UK.
So what’s it like?
Well, the office is pretty much like any other office. There and desks and chairs and computers and phones. I’m far from the window, so there’s no sense of the time of day, or weather. One useful feature of Singapore is that the plugs are the same as home, so there’s no mucking about with adaptors and all that nonsense. And I’m pretty much doing the same work that I’ve been doing, just sitting with the people who care about it.
The weather has been unexpectedly poor. Apparently it is meant to be warm, sunny and humid but instead there’s been a lot of rain, with flooding in places, due to tropical storms.
The hotel is very comfortable, but with a disappointing lack of free wi-fi. Singapore has an excellent public wi-fi network, but it’s only accessible to locals with a Singapore mobile number, which is a bit of an irritation. However, I am coping 😉
Right, that’s all for now. At least I finally posted it. This post was started over a week ago. I’ve been busy y’know.
It’s been a while since I’ve been here.
But I’ve been busy!
The start of the summer has become a really busy time since our church moved our two major summer clubs, the one for the primary school children and the one for the teenagers, from the end of the summer to the start. The logic is impeccable – if we do it at the start of the summer, we can use the schools to do some promotion the week before, and try and bring in some new faces.
But the other thing that has increased the workload for me is the success of our puppeting last year. That meant that we had to do it all over again. So not only was I committed to driving down to Craigavon to church every night for 2 weeks, but I was also up and down a lot for a fortnight before, writing schetches for Bella, Bert, Bindi and Buttercup.
On top of all that, work got very busy as well, with some big deadlines looming for a major contract that I am doing some wok for.
So, I got busy and stressed out for a month. But it was worth it – both of our clubs went well, and I would have to admit that I enjoyed them both.
And then, just as I was settling down to relax after all that, something unexpected happened. And that will come in the next post.
Just a quick note to say that yes, I am still here.
And I haven’t fixed the banner graphic yet.
But I just haven’t been in a blogging mood recently I guess.
Main news items are:
On Monday, with fanfares and simultaneous transmission at stupid times throughout the world, the final 2 episodes of Lost were shown. Well, sod that silly o’clock stuff. I taped the repeat on Tuesday, and watched it today.
It’s been a long ride. I remember being keen to see the pilot, because it started with a plane crash, and I was such a frequent plane traveller at the time, I thought there might be something I would learn in case of emergency. Needless to say there wasn’t! But the first series was quality stuff, and attracted a lot of viewers. As time has passed, and the confusion has increased rather than decreased, a lot of people let it go, and stopped watching, but I hung on in there. It remained a series with remarkable vision throughout – it had deaths of major characters throughout, plane crashes (yes, more than one, and seen from all the possible perspectives), mysterious computers, conspiracies, messages from the dead, time travel, and even a nuclear bomb!
And now it’s over. So what did we learn? In the end many of the mysteries were not answered (how did they keep their hair looking so good throughout?), many of them were (we did find out why the island was important) , and some were sort of answered (what was happening with that parallel timestream?).
The final episode reminded me how much I liked the character of John Locke (the actual Locke, not the Locke Monster), and in many ways, although the actor that plays him won’t get the modelling jobs that some of the others have, I think he stands out as one of the best parts of the show. Mind you, I’ve liked him in other things too. The episode also made me think about how beautiful the real island of Hawaii is, which has been a great backdrop to the series.
But what of the ending itself (spoilers here)?
I guess it did what the makers intended it to do. With the end of any series, there’s often a desire to give some completion, but to make it open-ended enough to give the implication that the characters go on to do other things (“The road goes ever on and on” as Tolkien says). By having two different finishes, on the island and back home, it gave them the opportunity to do that. It’s clear that some of the characters went on to do other things – Hurley’s compliment to Ben about being a great Number 2 speaks volumes of lives spent together on the island in the years to follow.
I liked that Ben continued to be a conflicted character and didn’t get a simple on-screen redemption, but seems to have gone good in the end with Hurley.
I am pleased that they did explain why the island was important (thank goodness).
I liked that Desmond got quite a bit to do in the last few episodes, as I always liked him.
Likewise, it was nice to see Rose, Bernard and Vincent the dog again, as they were always cool.
But we never find out why Walt was so special (he wasn’t even in the final ever-so-religiously-neutral church scene).
Or where the polar bear came from.
Or what Widmore wanted to do with the island.
Or how the Locke Monster interacted with Widmore’s group when they were living on the island, or why they left it.
But I like that Hurley got his moment in the sun as the new guardian – that’s fitting.
Over all, I am not displeased, though I am still at a bit of a loss how the parallel time-tracks thing fitted together. I guess it didn’t – it would seem that it was invented by the characters as the lives that they would have had if they hadn’t gone to the island. Or something. That could have been better resolved.
But part of me is just glad it’s over – it got dragged out quite enough I think!