I don't usually watch talent shows but I make an exception for 'The Voice' - well it's singing! Watching the live final tonight, if Leah McFall doesn't win ... I think questions should be asked in the House (of Commons) - they ask less contentious, crappier questions on a daily basis.
However, for Matt Henry to be first of the finalist out is a complete travesty. His staging, performance, emotional engagement with his song, vocals - just everything - was brilliant. I'm struggling to find an explanation as to why he didn't apparently garner enough votes to keep him in the final three. Other than the explanation given by someone on twitter: that the British public wouldn't know talent if it set fire to its arse.
Honest to God, however good Andrea and Mike are (and they ARE good), would the majority of people really prefer to pay good money to go see a Country and Western singer (albeit probably the first British one) or an Irish Eva Cassidy-alike, both of whose performance styles are predictable and non-physical, or a soul man who lives every note with passion and physicality or one of the most unique voices you're likely to hear?
Saturday, 22 June 2013
Tuesday, 18 June 2013
Up Pompeii
I've just been to see 'Pompeii Live', the British Museum's live broadcast event from their current exhibition 'Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum'. Excellent. Several of my favourite people gathered together in one place at one time and being fascinating. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Mary Beard, Bettany Hughes ... even Georgio Locatelli, who had baked a loaf of bread based on a carbonised one found at Pompeii. Not only did he explain the 'name stamp' on the Pompeiian one as being similar to the identifying marks found on loaves baked even today in public ovens in Sicily, but he also came up with an explanation for the shape of the Pompeii loaf. It was like a very large 'cottage loaf'': round, and seemingly made in two parts with the lower half larger than the upper and a kind of groove around the middle. His interpretation? The groove was there to tie a piece of string around the loaf once cooked in order to carry it home more easily. Genius!
It's a strange thing that the everyday lives of these people who lived almost two thousand years ago seem so similar to our own, and yet so very different. The commonplace ownership of other human beings as slaves, and their background omnipresence in every aspect of the life and activity of the family and household. And yet, unlike other slave owning cultures, Roman slavery was surprisingly fluid and mobile, with former slaves rising to high ranking positions in society once freed.
It was also, at times, a very moving experience. Having examined in great detail the wall paintings, from the garden room in The House of the Gold Bracelet at Pompeii, we then met the family who had lived there: parents and two children who died together hiding under the stairs as the pyroclastic flow of superheated gases hit the town. Finally, we were shown the gold bracelet found with the remains of the woman and after which the house is named. Whilst I'm sure that the connection between all three will be clear in the exhibition, somehow I doubt that it will be as evocative and emotive as live transmission managed to convey. Really very touching. And a poignant reminder, if we still need it after two major tsunami events in the last few years, that a rich (on many levels) society can still be wiped out in a matter of a few hours.
Anyway, loved the live event and the way the experts, including the exhibition's curator, fleshed out the bones (quite literally, in the case of the skeletons and body casts) of so many of the items on display. Looking forward even more than ever now to seeing it all in person in a couple of weeks!
It's a strange thing that the everyday lives of these people who lived almost two thousand years ago seem so similar to our own, and yet so very different. The commonplace ownership of other human beings as slaves, and their background omnipresence in every aspect of the life and activity of the family and household. And yet, unlike other slave owning cultures, Roman slavery was surprisingly fluid and mobile, with former slaves rising to high ranking positions in society once freed.
It was also, at times, a very moving experience. Having examined in great detail the wall paintings, from the garden room in The House of the Gold Bracelet at Pompeii, we then met the family who had lived there: parents and two children who died together hiding under the stairs as the pyroclastic flow of superheated gases hit the town. Finally, we were shown the gold bracelet found with the remains of the woman and after which the house is named. Whilst I'm sure that the connection between all three will be clear in the exhibition, somehow I doubt that it will be as evocative and emotive as live transmission managed to convey. Really very touching. And a poignant reminder, if we still need it after two major tsunami events in the last few years, that a rich (on many levels) society can still be wiped out in a matter of a few hours.
Anyway, loved the live event and the way the experts, including the exhibition's curator, fleshed out the bones (quite literally, in the case of the skeletons and body casts) of so many of the items on display. Looking forward even more than ever now to seeing it all in person in a couple of weeks!
Monday, 17 June 2013
Sunday, 16 June 2013
Advertising Standards
Here's one of those annoying 'targeted' adverts that sully the right-hand margin of your FaceBook page.
Saturday, 15 June 2013
News From The Hen House. Again.
Time, I feel, for a bit of an update.
Sadly, Anthony Quail is no longer with us. She (as it turned out) was playing in the garden at his fosterers. And then she wasn't. All anyone could find were a few feathers ... pointing in the direction (if feathers can point) of a passing Sparrowhawk. Oh well.
Chicken Dinner, my gorgeous, lovely cockerel has now left us and gone to live in Winchcombe where a mixed flock of chickens and bantams were in need of a fine fellow to look after them. Step up, Chicken Dinner. He's been declared "Soooooooo gorgeous" by his new owner and incredibly tame. This is because he was too much of a twat to dance out of range like the girls did when it looked like I was threatening to try and pick them up. No, instead he got all defensive and cocky and danced into range ... and got scooped up for undignified cuddling. Ha! Anyway, it's good to hear he's settled in well and is much admired. But then there's much to admire about a boy who looks like this:
In a happier vein, Amelia Nugget's foster chick continues to do well and is growning up to be a very big girl (yes, she too has turned out to be a she. Hurrah!). She's gone from this:
At a day old. To this at three weeks old:
Four weeks old and able to reach the dizzy heights of the back of the seat in the arbour:
At five weeks, and still looking like an as cute as a button fluff ball of a chick:
Sadly, Anthony Quail is no longer with us. She (as it turned out) was playing in the garden at his fosterers. And then she wasn't. All anyone could find were a few feathers ... pointing in the direction (if feathers can point) of a passing Sparrowhawk. Oh well.
Chicken Dinner, my gorgeous, lovely cockerel has now left us and gone to live in Winchcombe where a mixed flock of chickens and bantams were in need of a fine fellow to look after them. Step up, Chicken Dinner. He's been declared "Soooooooo gorgeous" by his new owner and incredibly tame. This is because he was too much of a twat to dance out of range like the girls did when it looked like I was threatening to try and pick them up. No, instead he got all defensive and cocky and danced into range ... and got scooped up for undignified cuddling. Ha! Anyway, it's good to hear he's settled in well and is much admired. But then there's much to admire about a boy who looks like this:
In a happier vein, Amelia Nugget's foster chick continues to do well and is growning up to be a very big girl (yes, she too has turned out to be a she. Hurrah!). She's gone from this:
At a day old. To this at three weeks old:
At five weeks, and still looking like an as cute as a button fluff ball of a chick:
To being nine weeks old and almost fully into her adult plumage:
Amelia Nugget has been a splendid mother and finally got herself back into laying condition a couple of weeks back, so we've had a good supply of bantam eggs. Until today, when she's holed up in the nest box refusing to move. She and I are going to have to have words tomorrow. I can't cope with another eight weeks of broody chicken-ness again. One things for certain though, there'll be no more hatchings going on!
Friday, 14 June 2013
Mad Scientists
So ... some scientists somewhere have decided that women may evolve out of going through menopause as it's no longer of any use to them.
This is rooted in the 'grandmother hypothesis' that suggests women evolved the menopause and stopped having babies right through to the end of life, as other mammals do, as a survival strategy. By not competing with their own children for resources for their respective babies, it gave the grandchildren, and thus the shared genes, a greater chance of surviving and continuing through subsequent generations. So far, so reasonable. In which case, I'm really not sure where the advantage to women in back-tracking down this particular evolutionary road might be.
I can see why a small number (overall) of privileged women might see it as a benefit to extend their reproductive years beyond the current biological limits. Some, of course, already do, and that's another soapbox for another day. But I can only view the possibility of having babies velcro-ing themselves to ones support stockings or having to use ones zimmer and emergency help cord like a lion tamer's chair and whip during 'the terrible twos' as some kind of dystopian horror. The idea of mother and child bonding over the shared use of incontinence knickers is just not right!
Besides, most women I know relish the all too brief space available in their handbag between Tampax* and Tenalady*. I can't see us voluntarily giving that up for anything.
*Other brands of ladies unmentionables are also available.
This is rooted in the 'grandmother hypothesis' that suggests women evolved the menopause and stopped having babies right through to the end of life, as other mammals do, as a survival strategy. By not competing with their own children for resources for their respective babies, it gave the grandchildren, and thus the shared genes, a greater chance of surviving and continuing through subsequent generations. So far, so reasonable. In which case, I'm really not sure where the advantage to women in back-tracking down this particular evolutionary road might be.
I can see why a small number (overall) of privileged women might see it as a benefit to extend their reproductive years beyond the current biological limits. Some, of course, already do, and that's another soapbox for another day. But I can only view the possibility of having babies velcro-ing themselves to ones support stockings or having to use ones zimmer and emergency help cord like a lion tamer's chair and whip during 'the terrible twos' as some kind of dystopian horror. The idea of mother and child bonding over the shared use of incontinence knickers is just not right!
Besides, most women I know relish the all too brief space available in their handbag between Tampax* and Tenalady*. I can't see us voluntarily giving that up for anything.
*Other brands of ladies unmentionables are also available.
Poncing Around The Countryside With A Daisy Behind My Ear ...
Today's post is all poetical. Hence the title.
Last night, I went along to BlueGate Poets open mic at Lower Shaw Farm in Swindon. Lovely setting, lovely people, lovely evening. And I was brave. I actually read some of my work. And people were nice about it. So it was all good.
Today, in celebration of that fact, I have written a small piece of nonsense for my lovely chum Miss Lucy Loquette. I've done it in fuschia because I think it suits her. Hold on to yer hats. This is it:
Miss Lucy Loquette
A gorgeous coquette
And one time soubrette
Played a mean clarinet
In a small kitchenette
Whilst I made vinaigrette.
It was, surely, Kismet!
Well, it amuses me. Hopefully, it amuses her, too.
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