Monday, June 28, 2004

New links, new pics, and two requests

Howdy folks!

I shan't be rhyming in this post (not on purpose anyway...) I've taken full advantage of there being no football this evening to do various bits of housekeeping - new photos from the shoot and around London are up (see little boxes, and All Photos Ever). I've also updated my sidebar, adding five new blogs to the blogs by folks I don't know section.

Similar to... I have alluded to a couple of times - I came across this through Phill's extensive blogroll at Danger! High Postage. Written by a young Australian guy called Torfeida, it's a lovely lovely blog, with a great spirit and humility - I'm all for it!

All's Well, Jezebel I've just discovered - again via Phill - it's warm and funny, and I found myself going straight into the archives to read more once I'd finished the first page - the sign of greatness!

Musings of a caffeinated mind I found through Similar To, and also my referrers, as I am delighted to say he had me in his blogroll - it's very much appreciated, as is that awesome photo

Heather Champ and Black and White Photography are both fantastic photoblogs, and having them in my sidebar will save me going all the way up to my favourites list when I want to look at them...

And now my two requests - the first is that I'd like you to tell me whether you can see a banner at the top of the blog with Is This A Good Idea on it. It bizzarely doesn't show up on either of my parents' pcs...

The second is maybe more fun - next week on the set of the upcoming hit movie (!?) "Take 3 Girls" I have to interview Kabir Bedi, Charlie Brooks, Soni Razdan, Caroline Chikezie, Karen Davidand Ramon Tikaram - if you have any questions you think would be appropriate and or interesting for any of them let me know and I'll try and get them in!

Monday no football blues

woke up this morning, (doo doo doo do doo)
feeling a bit tired, (doo doo doo do doo)
went to meditation class, (doo doo doo do doo)
and then came home and went back to bed (doo doo doo do doo)

(meedly, meedly, weedly wee)

Woke up this afternoon, (doo doo doo do doo)
Went to tesco to buy some soya milk, (doo doo doo do doo)
Thought "I'll chill for the afternoon, then watch the footy, then go to bed" (doo doo doo do doo)
Then I realised there was no football on, for the first time for a fortnight

I'll have to make do with watching Henman get beaten by Phillipousis in a fifth set after an epic struggle (I hope I'm wrong about that)

doo, doo do, doo do doo doo doo doo doo....

~(with apologies to all blues musicians everywhere)
~~(and apologies to anyone who has read this)

Update

Well, my predictions are useless,
I am very glad to say
The nation's middle class hero
Has done the biz again...

I have to say I quite enjoyed Phillipousis, upon being given a warning by the umpire for his "audible obscenity", saying "I should give you a warning! You suck!" to the umpire. Not one of the most cutting comebacks I've ever heard.

Friday, June 25, 2004

"I am English, and as such, I crave disappointment"

The title of the post is, of course, a quote from Bill Bailey, but I think it holds a certain relevance today. Losing on penalties is always grating, but what really rattles my cage is that I ever thought it could be different. Before the tournament, I was asked by someone how I thought we'd do, and I said "we'll start slow, then win impressively, thus massively hyping up expecations, and then we'll go out in the quarters or the semis, probably on penalties, probably to Germany." Nearly right!

Ah, England, you do let us down so. Even I was convinced it might be our year. I'll leave the detailed post mortem to others, but suffice to say - we was robbed, but we sort of deserved to be...

It's a good job it's only football, and not something that actually matters... : )

Thursday, June 24, 2004

Ahhh, Birmingham

It's so nice to be home. I'm back for a week again, which is very timely as my energy stocks have been slowly running down for the previous week. After early morning meditations this morning I went to sleep and have just got up - I am feeling much better for it. No major news to report, so here are some links...

Manic has packed up his big bag of revolutionary blogging, and those who appreciated his incredibly detailed brand of Blair and Bush bashing will sorely miss him. Bloggerheads is on sabatical.

Mark Radcliffe's new radio 2 show. It's brill.

Iamdecal has been moved for some time, and I haven't updated my sidebar yet - consider this oversight mended.

Torfeida's blog, Similar to, will be added to my sidebar forthwith, but for now, here's a link.

Moby's blog

If you will all forgive the indulgence, I'd like to share with you the fact that I'm very happy to announce that someone arrived here by searching for "Wagon Wheels" "Not a biscuit."
:)

Saturday, June 19, 2004

The Whole General MishMash (Bollywood, Euro 2004 and Yeti Sports!)

So, here I am, back in Bollywood, West London style. I've been back in London since Wednesday night - Thursday was spent alternately filming the three female leads of the movie singing and rapping in a very funky recording studio near Islington and sitting in the very funky bar opposite said very funky recording studio watching Ingerlund storm to a very fortunate 3-0 win against an inferior opposition in ridiculous temperatures. Friday was spent alternately driving and sleeping. Today we were shooting in Brentford - first a cool looking camera-rigged-up-to-the-side-of-cool-merc shot and then the scene in the movie shows the asian couple at the centre of the story walk past a BNP rally. Despite not having the right leaflets for the mock-facists to hand out (causing some consternation for one of the actors who said "But how can I read it if there's nothing to read") the scene went well. Several extras had been custom ordered, and a few more were roped in from the street. At one point a very convincing looking BNP type chappy with a St George's cross tattooed on his neck, a green bomber jacket and many scary tattoos on the back of his shaven head came and volunteered his services. He was very sweet with all the Indian crew, and indeed the actors and ended up lifting the scene to something more than it would have been without him. Just goes to show, although I'm not sure what exactly.

We left Brentford and went back to the unit base, where a disused annex of an hotel had been turned into a make-shift police station. As we were leaving our exterior location on Brentford high street it began to look increasingly likely that rain was on its way - cue lots of people saying things like "good job this is an interior" "good job we've got all the outdoor stuff out of the way before the rain comes along" and surprisingly few people saying "shame the interior location's got loads of holes in the roof and leaks like a sieve..." Can you guess what happened next? At the most dangerous moment possible, when the gaffer (man in charge of lighting crew) was organising the sparks (er..the lighting crew) setting up the lighting, with massive amounts of electricity and cables lying about, we began to hear the pitter patter of some serious drippage. The first ad pulled the plug and we all went and milled about whilst the 3rd ADs tried to mop up the floods. Several of the senior members of the crew speculated that this would end up being the first time they'd ever had to pull a *interior* because of rain. Fortunately the downpour left as soon as it arrived and I was able to go and park myself in the bar of the hotel and watch the fantastic match between Holland and the Czech Republic.

Which leads me nicely into the next subject listed above. No detailed commentary tonight, as I've been working hard and am tired, but I would crave your indulgence to share a few thoughts...

The mullet count is low this year, but those there are are spectacular (Torres, the Swedish no.21 with the long name and the mullet/mohican combination.)

The refereeing is absoultely shocking...poor decisions all the time, divers getting rewarded repeatedly, penalties not being given, players being yellow carded and sent off way too easily...shocking.

Sven is way way way too defensive minded, and unless something changes England have got no chance - we've got a great set of players, but we are playing way way too deep, and without Roonaldo we'd be in big trouble.

As noted by Phill in conversation, Motson is slightly obsessed with pronouncing s as shh when dealing with Eastern and Central European players.

Lawrenson should really really really stop taking his honourary membership of the chuckle brothers so seriously and stop making "jokes." Witness - "As a game of football, John, it's a great advert for cricket." "As a pundit Lawro, you're a great argument for the interactive steve claridge rambling option."

ITV football coverage continues to be rubbish. Des, Des, Des, like the last four series of Friends, like the 5th series of the west wing, you are a shadow of your former self. It's not your fault really - you've not got a lot to work with...

That Zlatan Ibrahimovic goal in the last few minutes of Sweden Italy was absolutely mindblowingly good.

As was more or less the whole Czech Rep Holland game tonight - if France or England don't win I hope the Czechs do.

I love football more than is good for me. I am more interested in punditry than is good for me.

And finally folks, as long time readers will remember, I first discovered the Yeti Sports some time ago, but I've been reminded of it by the Whole Wide World of the Fat Buddha and it's moved on some since the happy minutes spent there last winter...Check it out if you want some browser gaming penguin whacking good time fun!

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

A line in the sand

I don't like controversy. I don't like aggressive debate. I do like discussion, and I do like constructive engagement with another whose opinions might challenge your own, and lead to the ability to better see from another person's point of view. Above all, I like respect.

The incident on the previous post which may have lead to the end of the very valuable contributions to discussions here of Bob Tidmarsh has unsettled me. I want this blog to be a place where respectful dialogue can take place, and also where people feel free to express themselves. People are generally extrememly respectful of this, and I am comfortable with the vast majority of comments here. The comment that caused the offence was by some random right-wing silly chap, who suggested I moved to North Korea, and his language was not strong enough for me to moderate by the standards I set for this space, which after all I am ultimately responsible for.

I'm no fan of swearing - in all my posts, you'll only find one which I've written with swearing in it, and that comes with a warning and is an exerpt from my screenplay, which contains lots of swearing because that is the only way I can be true to the characters.

I have bucketloads of respect for anyone's right to set their only personal taste and decency boundries, and I know that people have boundries both stricter and a great deal more lenient than my own, but in this space, in the vast majority of cases, I have to have final say on what is allowed.

Ultimately this means that if people are insulting each other on my comments threads I will soon step in, but generally speaking I will leave insults directed at me alone (unless they contain what is described by television announcers as very strong language!). I hope that people will continue, as they have generally done, to respect the fundamental rules here, which like many internet forums are basically to try and think about how the recipient of your remark will feel before you post it! In fact ladies and gentlemen, I'd advise that in your everyday life...

There's no better learning to be gained than that which you gain by trying to put yourself in someone else's shoes. Metaphorically of course. All you can learn by doing it literally is how your shoe size compares to others. And how people feel about other people trying on their shoes...

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

For the sake of posting

Greetings one and all,

I'm back in Brum for the time being, although off to London again tomorrow. I have nothing either funny or interesting to say, so I'll resort to links!

Politics: The Big Intervention - will it do any good? It's worth a pop.

Football: Sick as a parrot over Zizou's last minute shenanigans? Cheer youself up with singin badgers!

SbEmail: Ooh, and it makes me happy...

Thursday, June 10, 2004

Adventures in Bollywood

Just to protect myself from libel and make clear my intentions I should be very clear that a lot of this is related information and hearsay! There's a lot of people working on this film and I'm sure they all see things slightly differently. It is possible that some of the things I say that so-and-so said about so-and-so having said to so-and-so may be slightly misrepresentative of the actual case!

The Story So Far

An old friend of the family's and long time collaborator of my dad's, Farukh Dhondy, began to work with a small Anglo-Indian production company. He wrote a film for them which they called "Take 3 Girls." He brought my dad in to work on the script, and dad was then also draughted in to produce. They got a production office in a room in a hotel just off the A40 (no landline, no internet access). Half of the crew (the technical guys, sound, lighting, cinematography and an art director) have been flown in from India, and an English director called Baz has been hired. A first AD come Line Producer come Production manager was hired, and brought in some people to work on the production (a second AD, 3 third ADs, an assistant location manager and a designer). Shooting started last Friday, and I arrived in London on Sunday, which was the production's first day off. I had been invited to come along and shoot a making of documentary, and help out where needed. I arrived to find my dad in the back garden on his mobile, in the process of firing the First AD and/or the First AD resigning, depending on who you ask. There had been some communication problems - which were not helped by the chap's questionable attitude towards the peoples of the subcontinent - it also appeared he'd begun to make expenditures on the budget without consulting the necessary people, which on a production of such complexity in terms of management structure was far from ideal. I went to bed about half an hour after arriving and drifted off to sleep hearing dad in the back garden explaining the situation to many, many people...

Day One

So, me and dad head out to the M4 to make our way straight to the location. As I get to the Hammersmith roundabout his phone goes and it's Katerina. Katerina is the mother of my little sister's best friend. A few days before the start of shooting, someone from the production company had asked dad why the measurements for the costumes for the cast (apart from the 2 Bollywood stars) had not been sent to India so the costumes could be made up. It quickly became apparent that this was both impractical and also would not provide the right kind of fashions for the kind of hip London kids in the script. At this point, Katerina and Beth (my step-mother)worked out a deal with some shops in London whereby they could hire costumes for free in exchange for a credit and Katerina was brought in to be the full time costume designer on the project. So, back to the roundabout. Katerina called to say that the driver hadn't come to collect her and the many bags of costumes she had. The driver had been given the wrong pick-up time, allegedly by the original second AD (who had, during the first two days left to go and work on Eastenders). So, we swung back to pick her up and head to the production office before going to the location. The phone rang about 243 times on the journey in. Some of the things that happened were:

The make up artist that was supposed to be working on the girls had been told she wasn't needed for the day. This was ok though, as the girls wanted to do their own make up for the time being, unless they could steal the make-up artist who was working exclusively on Kabir, who is playing the male lead, and is a huge star of the Indian film industry.
No one could find the actress who was needed in costume at the hotel where the production office was but
That was ok because no one could find the key to get into the costume room at the hotel
The director rang to say that the silver Mercedes needed for the first shot wasn't there.
The director was asked to track down the make-up girl who was missing, only to be told that dad had found out from a completely different source that she had been told not to come. This same source then told dad that the Mercedes was in fact on set. This turned out to be true. Not sure how Baz (the director) missed it, but in fairness he was probably off looking for stray make up artists, and the location was split into three parts.
Amazingly, the whole day ran more or less bang on schedule. The new first and second ADs are really efficient and the director seems to be taking all the madness pretty well in his stride. At lunch time the crew and cast all sat around on the grass together, and it seems to be a very democratic set. A few local kids started to gather round to get pictures with Charlie (Janine no more!) Brooks, who was obliging. I was slightly disturbed by the fervour of one kid in trying to get her picture:

Kid, to me: "Excuse me, are you working with Charlie Brooks?"
Me, to kid: "Well, sort of, but I haven't even met her yet."
Kid, to me (his eyes taking on the kind of expression of need I haven't seen since I gave up taking drugs): "Can you get me a picture with her?"
Me, to kid: "Well I'm not really the person to ask."
Kid: "Who is?"
Me: "Well, I'm not sure about that either."
Kid: "Well, can you find out who I need to ask about asking?"
Me: "Ok, I'll try."

Later.

Me: "So, I hear you got your photo."
Kid: (beaming) "Yeah. And an autograph. I'm gonna try and get another one."

Towards the evening Farukh, the writer came to the set and kidnapped my dad, Katerina and Mohan from the production company and took them to the pub. I drove them, and was rewarded by some excellent dialogue. They sat round talking about the many financial and personnel uncertainties in the air, and dad uttered my favourite line of the day "Still, we're making a movie and that's fun."

In terms of the documentary, it was the first day I'd been there so I didn't want to be too in people's faces. I shot some really nice stuff at lunch time of people milling about, and a great bit of the sound man running down the road pushing his cart in front of him. Also got shouted at by the departing first ad (adding my name to the ever extending list of people to have been shouted at by him) for filming him. But that didn't colour what had been a fine, if exhausting day.

Day Two

For me, the first half of day two will be remembered for driving to uxbridge in search of a hat for my dad and one for Baz. And then sleeping in the car whilst lots of people worked very hard in the hot sun in a park in Hillingdon. The second half of the day will be remembered for getting a few cool shots of the whole crew shooting a scene with Kabir and Karen (who's playing Lyla, one of the three girls from the original title)from way across the park. Oh! And I got to move the grips truck when it was blocking me in in a car park which was way cool. It's a big truck man!

In between that though, there was a seminal meeting in the pub of the hotel (where, having had lunch in the dining bus in the car park Baz and dad had retired to quench their thirsts. They said it was because of the curry. I'm not convinced). There was a discussion about the film's title, and how it would need to be decided upon before any publicity could be done. Baz said he'd always thought that, although not perfect, the fact that there was a club in the film called "Slam" they could name the film that. I said "what about Slammin' - with an apostrophe?" I explained that slammin' vinyl was a record label and that it was a word associated with dance culture. I also blinded them with science by looking it up on the IMDB on my phone. Later, after I'd gone home they tested the two titles out on a focus group of kids who'd been hanging around the set and then drafted in as extras. Slammin' won. I think I might end up having come up with the title! Which would be ironic given that I've been working on my film for a year and have yet to come up with a single good idea for a name.

I missed the high point of the day's drama though. There have been on-going difficulties with permissions for locations. A lot of this is to do with communication, but some of it is also to do with the fact that the Bollywood method appears to literally be turn up on the day and point the camera at stuff. Here, of course, you need police and local authority permissions for all shooting, and without it you can't work. On Day two, the morning and early afternoon had been spent shooting in a park, but the evening was going to be spent working just off a busy road. Manesh, the lovely location manager had been really struggling to work with the bullish and somewhat aggressive original first ad and had been hassled by him from day one. Manesh said to me that David (the original AD) had been using "bad words, and I don't like those words. I don't use those words and I don't want to work with someone using those words." Now, come 5 o'clock, dad got a phone call from Baz saying "Peter, I'm at the location, but no-one's here." David hadn't got the permissions to film there. After berating Manesh for a week on that very topic, he'd blown a location. When Manesh asked him about it David launched into a racist tirade and said he was leaving the production anyway. Dad, having just received this phone call was running down to the production office to see what was going on. He saw Manesh screaming off in his motor, flagged him down and found Manesh in an understandable fury, "I'm not working with that man, he's a bad man" - that type of thing. Dad reassured him when he said David was leaving the next day. Manesh asked "who's taking over his job?" Dad said "me." Manesh said "jump in" and within 15 minutes they'd called action on the location and were shooting again.

Day Three and Four

And that set the tone for the next two days. There have been a few hiccups, as there always are on films, but generally things have been pretty smooth and the crew seem to be beginning to come together as a unit. There's what is hopefully going to be an interesting documentary shaping up in the coming together of two film making traditions - at all levels, this production is a combination of the talents of the "Western" and Indian traditions and seeing how it gels is fascinating. Some of my personal highlights of these two days have been:

1. Dressing a set with a guy who worked on 2001 and Barry Lyndon, two Kubrick pictures. He told me a brilliant story about Kubrick's legendary crazy perfectionism. Barry Lydon was shot mostly in candle light and during one scene the characters are playing cards with antique French playing cards. Kubrick asked the art department if they had got genuine antique French playing cards. They hadn't, they'd painted some up. Kubrick was not pleased. He sent the production buyer to Paris. Two days later shooting started again. And it's in candle light. So you can't see the cards clearly enough to make any difference. Still, you can't legislate for genius.
2. Filming Kabir surrounded by 20 adoring fans in the luxurious basement of the house we've been shooting in for these two days, and will be in for another 5. The lady of the house, the formidable Mrs Malhotra arranged a substantial gathering of admirers for the first day we were there.
3. Filming Mrs Malhotra showing the Generator operator how to work her sit on lawn mower.
4. Filming Karen learning to ride the aforementioned lawnmower, chasing various people round the garden.
5. Just generally being on a film set. I loves it I do. And the documentary is shaping up nicely. We'll see how it progresses!

Ok, love and exhausted best wishes to all. I'll keep up the diary as often as I can!

Tuesday, June 08, 2004

My friends have the funniest blogs

So, I have lots to say of my adventures in Bollywood, but have no time and am shattered! But stay tuned, it'll be here soon!

In the meantime amuse yourself with these hilarious posts from Dave and Graham

All is well in London for those reading this to keep abreast with news, and as I say, a full description of events will follow shortly...

Monday, June 07, 2004

Morning in the big smoke

Here I am in London. Last night I immediate fell foul of the increased pollen count, and having gone to bed nice and early in readiness for today's exciting excursions I woke up at 1 in the morning with an 'orrible attack of 'ayfever (I'm dropping my aitches for the duration of my stay in the smoke. I'm not really.) This being the metropolis I thought I'd go investimagiting the possibilities of finding some clarityn from an all night garage or some such marvelous modern convenience. In fairness, there were at least 6 all night mini-mart type things surrounding Shepherd's Bush Green, but though I could happily have bought my own weight in Mediterranean and Turkish delicacies, no remedy was in sight for my sniffling. So I gently made my way back to my dad's house listening to some pirate radio station playing fantastic 2-step garage, only to find that despite the fact that it was now approaching 2 in the morning, I'd lost my cushy parking space two doors down from where I'm staying, and spent 15 minutes driving around trying to find a replacement space. West London on a Sunday night is car parking chaos folks! Double parked cars, cars sticking out around corners, but an admirable respect for the one or two disabled spaces which remained empty. That impressed me, especially since one car was blocking in 4 motorbikes and mopeds all on his own. Ended up parking about 1/2 a mile a way from the house and walking back through the streets of London feeling like a yokel.

Today will find me on the set of a film called "Take Three Girls" starring (amongst others) Janine from Eastenders! This is very exciting, I am already practising not shouting "Janiiine" in my best Mike Reid voice. Obviously I mean Mike Reid who played Frank Butcher. This is no time for Saturday Superstore. I'll be writing up the days filming either later today or tomorrow morning, so stay tuned! (Or, you know, go and do summat else!)

Sunday, June 06, 2004

Off to London

Right - out the door now, just thought I'd leave you with this link. If you like your Lo-Fi Electro then you'll be right at home.

Ideosphere

Friday, June 04, 2004

New links and other things

So, as I prepare to go and live in London for six weeks (latest news on that is that I am also going to be involved in making the making of documentary of the film which is, frankly, awesome!) I was greeted this morning by the dulcet tones of the postman delivering my new hat. This I take to be a good sign, as it will protect me from all that southern weather...

I've updated my side bar - firstly to welcome Des back into the world of blogging - and join Graham in hailing the phrase "Percussive Maintenance" as a landmark for the language.

Secondly, I've joined the rest of the western hemisphere in having Bloggerheads in my blog roll. It's just a wonderful resource for a variety of things, not least political campaigning. I've followed the instructions to register this blog in various places, and am also happy to contribute to the google bombing of the word opportunist as requested.

I've added Agewell in Sandwell to the sidebar - Bob Tidmarsh, who has been commenting here since I started, has been involved in its development - nice one Bob!

Finally, I've added The Tofu Hut, a fine MP3 blog with an excellent name. I am a big fan of tofu.

So, lots of new links for you to enjoy at your leisure. Or ignore. Or write to me to complain about. Or something.

Update!
I am now initially going to London for a week, which is good for a whole variety of reasons, not least of all my mixed health. So I'm going for a week, and then will probably go back again later in the shoot...Much better solution all round!

Update 2!
I am now going to do a week in London, then a week here, then a week in London etc...for the duration of the shoot...which is just about the best outcome I could have hoped for, which is nice...

Thursday, June 03, 2004

Bad News, Good News

So, sadly, Screen West Midlands (not linking out of malice ;) haven't seen fit to give me a small development grant, on the grounds that my project is not "commercially viable" or "compelling" enough to award a grant to. So it's official: I'm a misunderstood artist! I was, admmitedly, slightly devestated at first, but have very quickly come to terms with it - for a start, it's one person's opinion and they are entirely entitled to it. Secondly I've had lots of really great feedback from people who's opinions I trust a great deal, not least my dad who commisioned, amongst other things, A Very British Coup, GBH, Lipstick on Your Collar, The Cammomile Lawn and Tales of the City when he was head of drama series at Channel 4. (and I'm not name dropping, just putting it in context ;) He's outraged by Screen West Midlands' response, particularly as they ended their letter by saying the writer showed "potential" and "should seek further training opportunities, such as those provided by Screen West Midlands, to further develop your talents for future projects." So, "we're not gonna give you any money, but suggest you give us some." But I'm not really bitter, they're just doing their job.

Thirdly, I'm a great deal happier with the script now than I was two months ago, when I sent it in to them, anyway. I've done a great many re-writes, added a whole new section, changed another one around a lot - I was just hoping they'd see potential in the first draft. But now I can start wallpapering my room with rejection letters like F. Scott Fitzgerald did. I'm not actually going to do that, but it's nice to think that all great artists have been rejected in the early stages of their career. I'm not gonna give up yet anyway

The good news to come out of all of this is that my dad seems to be on board with the project and I'm going to London either at the weekend or next week to plan the next stage of the campaign!

I'm not giving up on it anyway. I'm currently amusing myself by writing pretend award acceptance
speeches in my head..."I'd like to thank my parents, the cast and crew, the production company," then I'll read extracts from rejection letters : )

Update!

I'm off to London on Sunday to be an assistant to my dad on the film he's producing! Exciting!

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

Links 'n' things

This is from the Whole Wide World of Fat Buddha and it's great fun, and curiously addictive. You are given a word and have to write about it for a minute. No one buzzes in and stops you for hesitation, repetition or deviation though.

This I found via Bloggerheads. It's a flash video for Come Together and it's awesome. It'll take a while to load, and it's probably prohibitively large for narrowband users.

"Whether long range weapon or suicide bomb, a wicked mind is a weapon of mass destruction." This track came out on the 31st May - Dave sent me this link weeks ago, but I've just checked it out, and it's mindblowingly good. Faithless' new album (No Roots) is all in the key of C apparently, and is also very politicised. After seeing this, I'll definately be checking it out.

I've added Councillor Bob Piper's blog to the sidebar - he's a regular commentor here, which is much appreciated and frequently has links to really interesting stories and miscellany. Although he doesn't think I should have bought this hat, but quite a few people agree with him on that. He's also got a blog in his blog roll called "Slave to the 11c" which has got a truly fabulous name.

I've been engaged in a variety of political debates today (well, the same debate, but it's been taking place here and over at Maggie Thatcher's Underpants. It's raised some interesting issues. The argument which has affected me the most was Bob listing the things he'd been dealing with in surgery. This is why politicians need blogs. Because then it's easier to see them as the people they are, instead of the faceless representatives of the spin doctors they might sometimes appear to be. Food for thought, anyhow.

Photos from Hamstead Station

On Bloggerheads, there are 4 links to blogging mps. I wish there were three. Then we could call them the .... you got there on your own right?

Currently listening to: Nyah Man Say, by Ras Michel and the Sons of Negus