All about my stumbling through life and my various projects to keep me occupied. Mostly photography orientated, but with whatever else I feel like thrown in as well.
Back in November I went to North Berwick for the first time. It's a very pretty little seaside town very near to Edinburgh. My colleagues and I had a lovely time frollicking on the beach, eating fish and chips and climbing the Law. The weather was pretty horrible for most of the day, but the dramatic skies did allow me a few good shots.
I experimented for the first time with my new ND grad filter. It's a great little filter for landscapes. One half of it is darker than the other, which means that if you position the divide between dark and light over the horizon of your shot you can darken the sky. This is great because often with landscape photos you have to choose between correctly exposing the sky or the land. The most usual choice is the land, leaving the sky looking washed out and featureless. But with a graduated filter you can keep the drama and colour in the sky. Neat trick. The mounting system is very clever. Firstly there's a ring which screws into the end of the lens. You can buy different sizes of rings, meaning than you can use the same filters for all your different size lenses. Next there's a mount which slots onto the ring. And finally the filter slots into the mount. The mount has three slots so different filters can be used in combination. Very adaptable and clever system.
Anyway, here are a few of my favorite bad weather photos from North Berwick
Loving this song at the moment! Can't stop listening to it! Love the video too! It's so quirky and imaginative and unusual with its beautiful animation and other-worldly feel.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I like to re-read childhood favorites every now and then. In fact I usually pick one up whenever I go home. Lately I've been revisiting the Laura Ingalls wilder books about her childhood as a pioneer girl. It's fascinating reading them as an adult because you pick up on so much stuff you missed as a child. This one was probably my favorite of the series when I was little. It's full of sunshine and summer and wild flowers and running around barefoot. What struck me most about this one this time around was just how independent these people were. They did everything for themselves, from making their own clothes to building their own houses. And how precarious life was for them, and how brave they were to chose that life. The family almost loses everything after losing their crops to locusts two years in a row. Their whole lives were a real life adventure and I have to say I am a tiny bit jealous. So all in all, a lovely read for children and an eye-opening read for adults.
Next up, Burning Bright, by Tracy Chevalier. I would count myself as a Tracy Chevalier fan; I very much enjoyed Girl With a Pearl Earring, and rather enjoyed The Virgin Blue and The Lady and the Unicorn as well. I was very eager to read this one, as it's about William Blake, who I really like. But I have to say I don't think this one was her best. I was quite disappointed to find that William Blake's character had relatively little screen time, and that it concentrated far more on the lives of Jem and Maggie, two children growing up in London. For me William Blake's character just didn't make much of an impact. There just wasn't enough poetry and mystery and fire attached to him. He was really just a plesant father figure for the two children. What I usually enjoy about Tracy Chevalier's writing are her unique and very evocative descriptions, but with this book she changed her writing style entirely (perhaps because it was set in England?). In a blind taste test I wouldn't even have been able to tell it was of hers. All in all, an alright read, but not as good as I have come to expect from Ms. Chevalier.
And finally, We Are All Made of Glue, by Marina Lewycka. This one was brilliant! I raced through it! I've read her previous two novels, A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian and Two Caravans and loved them both, so I was eager to get stuck into this one, and it didn't disappoint! Marina Lewycka's strong points are her amazingly larger than life characters and her ability to capture people's idiosyncrasies and style of speaking perfectly. Her writing of English dialogue spoken by foreigners is both very funny and astoundingly convincing. In a bit of a departure from her previous two novels, this one does not follow the lives of Ukranians, but of Jews and Palestinians. Through the lives of her characters she tells the story of the founding of Israel and the hardships the Palestinians have suffered. It's an emotional rollercoaster. Just like her first novel, WWII is a major theme. And just like her first novel, one of the main characters is a very feisty elderly person who you can't help falling in love with. There is also a similarity with her first novel of a bad situation escalating into a huge mess there just seems to be no way out of, and in the end, against all odds, all the characters just decide to get along and make things work. The only criticism I would offer is her glue theme. The main character writes for a builders' magazine about adhesives, and the author tries to include glue metaphors throughout. I'm just not very convinced they work. They seem a bit forced. But overall, fantastic book, just like her other two. And just like her previous two novels, this one is hilarious! Highly recommended!
Here's a review of the shows I've seen lately: Up first, Chicago. This is one I'd never seen on stage before and only really knew it from the film version. I must say I really enjoyed it! It had Ali Bastian playing Roxie, and I thought she did a really good job. Her singing and dancing were impressive, though for me the real star of the show was Bernie Nolan playing Mama Morton. What a voice! Though I suppose that comes at no surprise. I wished Mama Morton had more songs! Velma, Billy and Roxie were all thoroughly unlikeable and Amos was very sad indeed. The costumes were small and sexy and the staging was really interesting. The band was onstage, which doesn't often work, but in this case I thought it really did. They were placed right in the middle of the stage but they didn't seem to get in the way at all. The cast just moved round them and even used them occasionally as extras, which I thought was a cool touch. They also had ladders at the sides of the stage so some of the singing was done in midair. The rest of the set was very minimal though. Simple and sharp. The Cell Block Tango was, of course powerful and really sexy. All in all, a really good night out!
Next Oliver! This was another one I only knew from the film version, which I saw about fifteen years ago. I really don't remember it being so dark! When I thought about Oliver! loveable cockney urchins and cheerful songs like Be Back Soon and Consider Yourself came to mind. My memory seems to have glossed over the alcohol abuse, prostitution and domestic violence. Nancy's murder really was a particularly nasty scene. Despite the darkness it was a really good show. Very funny, with excellent singing and dancing. What really stood out for me were the kids. They were amazing! Not one single step was out of time, and some of the acrobatics were truly impressive. They were tight. Brian Conley was also excellent as Fagan. Very slimy and very funny. The scenary and lighting were also pretty spectacular with huge, detailed two storey sets creating lots of very clever optical illusions and lots of scene changes. I particularly liked Fagan and the boys' den. Very well done and exactly like I imagined it should look. Bill Sykes was also suitably nasty and scary. So not my favourite show, but this was a really good production of it.
And lastly Starlight Express. I'm a big Lloyd Webber fan, but I didn't really know what to expect from this one. Going in I knew precisely four things about it:
1. It's about trains
2. The cast is on rollerskates
3. There isn't really a plot, a bit like Cats
4. The song "Starlight Express"
And numbers 1 and 3 turned about to be wrong anyway. It's not about trains, it's about toy trains, and a little boy playing with them in his bedroom late one night. Yeah. Surely this is the final proof we needed that you really can write a show about anything. And there is a plot. It's all about a race the toy trains are having. Yep, just one race. And they managed to make an entire musical about it. The songs were great, with some really catchy tunes, though perhaps there weren't as many good ones as in some other Andrew Lloyd Webbers. And the cast being on rollerskates there wasn't a lot of dancing in the conventional sense. There were, however, plenty of impressive roller acrobatics and lots of nice skating formations. And because the cast needed a lot of space the sets were pretty simple. Just a few arches for the train sheds and a few other bits and pieces. The best bits for me were the costumes and lighting. The costumes were huge, shiny, over the top and very very eccentric. The cast looked like something out of an acid trip, with big hair, bright colours, loads of glitter and even flashing lights on them. The lighting team went all out too. The lighting in itself would have been worth seeing as a show, even without all the rest of it going on. They really showcased what lighting is capable of doing. At a couple of points they lit the audience up with hundreds of tiny lights floating all around us. It was like being surrounded by hundreds of shooting stars! Oddly, there were very few female characters in it. Just four ladies, playing coaches (Dina, the dining car, Buffy, the buffet car, Duvet, the sleeper, and Pearl, the first class carriage) but despite this the girls, in their tiny costumes and retro hairstyles, really made their voices heard. Good job, ladies!
I have to say though, I wish I'd seen this in London. When the actual race parts were on they played a 3D movie, which worked very well, but apparently in London they have special tracks so that the cast can actually do the race and they come right out into the audience. Seeing that would have been pretty sweet. All in all, though, really good show. A bit different and fantastic to look at, with some great tunes.
