Racist Hogroast

It's all kicking off in Chelmsford City today.  I'd assumed that the high police presence was all about VFest but it turns out there's a riot goin' on. For those of you who aren't down with da goss' of da 'Ford, they're planning to build a shiny new mosque on a rundown industrial estate in the, ahem, city centre (still can't take myself seriously saying that). The EDL have taken issue with this and are organising some kind of angry, semi-evolved, anti-cosmopolitanism march thing (for the record the new mosque is being built as part of a complex with a Waitrose, which will really shake-up Chelmsford's 96% white-British demographic, the EDL must be quaking). United Chelmsford (not a football team) have organised a counter march.  So far, with the backdrop of V weekend, sounds like the most interesting thing to happen in Chelmsford since, erm, 1381?

What got my goat (and I know I shouldn't blog when I'm irked as it comes out as a hotchpotch of poorly expressed and easily misconstrued bobbins), was I got handed a 'free hogroast' flier by someone trying to get me to go to a nearby church. Now, maybe it was a coincidence and maybe I'm reading too much into it but part of me thinks that giving out pig products (on a day when even the farmers' market wasn't selling pork) looks a bit like you're trying to court the far right rather than those people that might be supporting a mosque. WWJD?

Right, rant over, in other news i went to Hot Tub Cinema last night.  Odd that sitting in a hot tub with six strangers on a roof in Hackney gets relegated to the 'in other news' bit.  And i didn't even mention that I saw Richard III the other day - that Rylance fellow, he can act.

...To The Imitation Zone

Standon Calling is probably my favourite festival. Don't get me wrong, V and Reading serve a purpose and I've had a couple of great Glastonburys but I just think I've grown out of big festivals.  Even Bestival, the first time I went it was all fun and excitement; the last time I went it took me over twelve hours to get there which just takes the shine off it a little bit.

Standon Calling though. It's great. Showers. Good toilets. The kind of bands I want to see. Good food. Few queues. Limited idiots. And it's only an hour's drive away. Best Fest.  No messin. 

That said the idiot quotient was obviously higher than I thought as ****** **** were filming there. Now I don't know if you've seen ****** **** but it's about as bad as it's possible to make television (which is why it's not getting a mention). It's a half-hour TOWIE-themed Blackberry commercial and every bit as bad as that sounds. I feel that my whole Standon experience has been tainted. I'd heard through the Essex grapevine that we were on it, so I turned my brain off and steeled my eyes for punishment. 

The juxtaposition was almost worth the tedium. One of my mates was shown wearing a full home-made duck costume, quickly followed by someone in a shop-bought Indian headdress saying 'do you think we're we're the only ones that have made an effort with fancy dress'. The correct answer was 'No, fake girl, other people have made more effort than we have.  We're just wearing what the ****** **** stylist put us in.'

Incidentally someone there asked if I'd made my costume. I was wearing a limp cardboard horse.  I thought it was fairly obvious that I had, but it did make me wonder whether there is a market for slightly rubbish but high effort fancy dress. #possiblecareeropportunity

London 2012

London, I don't know how to say it, but I think we need some time apart.  I've tried to get excited about this sport's day thing you've been banging on about but i just don't really get it.  It's not you, it's me, I appreciate that, but you only seem to be interested in one thing; what with your hoops draped all over everywhere and your streets brimming with high-stoppability idiots.

I think it could still work.  I just think we'll get on a lot better if we have a break for a couple of weeks.  Are you cool with that?  Grand. See you in September.

__________

In other news I went to the ballet again.  Play Without Words.  That's supposed to be good, right.  Everyone raves about it.  Didn't get it.  Not at all. Found it boring and I didn't really understand what was going on.  A series of technically adept set pieces, I can see that.  But not sure i'd call it a 'play' more like a particularly tepid episode of EastEnders where everyone does everything really slowly. Guess I'm not as culture as I think I am.

I went to the Tanks, too.  That's the new bit of Tate Modern.  Dead good bit of artspace.  Liked it a lot.  Not certain about the art that's in it at the moment - but we've established that I know nothing about culture so it's probably great.

Ibsen - He's one of the biggies, right?

I saw A Doll's House last night (note the capital letters, that's the A Doll's House not just a doll's house; that's probably not newsworthy, although, to be fair I probably see more plays than doll's houses so maybe that would have been more newsworthy than my so-called news.  I appear to be waffling...).  I figured I ought to see it whilst it was on, it is one of them-ones-what-you're-supposed-to-have-seen, after all. That Ibsen fellow, father of modern theatre, in't he?  It was pretty impressive - well theatrical. Weatrical?  I can see what the hype's about, although not sure that I loved it but then I'm not an 1890's feminist so I'm probably not the target demographic.

One thing that did move me was the price. It was only about 70 pence more to go and see "one of the greatest plays ever (TM)" in London than it was to go to Braintree and see some dire Hollywood dross last weekend. There's something wrong with the world.  Or specifically, there's something very wrong with cinema's cost:quality ratio.  There's a few of those film things coming up that I'm half curious to see but that last experience made me feel 3% more stupid and i'm not sure I want to put myself through that again. The only thing that would have made it worse is if it was in 3D and I had to wear those eye-bleeding glasses.  I was going to add a flippant comment there but then remembered what was in the news today - still quaking from a masked psychopath would have at least given me a story to tell rather than just led to me whinging.

This week I've mostly been eating scorpion death chilli chocolate. I appreciate that it's a lot hotter than chocolate needs to be but I'm finding it strangely addictive in a masochistic way. I've got used to it a bit, now - don't get me wrong, it's still a little bit like getting kicked in the mouth but I can eat it without a fire extinguisher to hand - and am probably being a bit free and easy with offering it about.  Is it rude to break your mates?

It looks like my Blog has got a medium-sized Russian following.  Hello Russia.

Hotel Shampoo

I saw Gruff Rhys last night, not so much news in itself, I've seen Gruff in his various guises many times before.  What's probably more news is that I'm fairly sure that this was my first 'proper' gig of the year.  It's July.  That means the first six months of the year were completely devoid of live 'pop' music.  Is this still that growing up thing? I've seen jazz, opera, choral and ballet this year.  But no 'pop'. I feel like I'm losing my edge.

I managed to not see the Olympic torch.  I was tempted - I set an alarm and everything but it was raining so I went back to sleep. Once in a life time opportunity - like the Jubilee Regatta - which I also slept through.

I feel like I ought to pass some level of condemnation on the nasty nasty goings on in Timbuktu.  I'm not going to, mainly because i don't understand it (and by it I mean religion) but it does make me feel a bit lucky I went when I did what with all these military coups, kidnappings and desecrations.

This cross will make you jump

The biggest cross in the world is on the top of a mountain overlooking Skopje. That's 60m of religious symbolism goading you wherever you are in the city. Now I'm not one for getting goaded, especially not my religious symbolism, so I climbed that there mountain to give it a piece of my mind. Nearly killed Chappers in the process. Innocent casualty caught in the crossfire. One of the perils of goadability.

We'e been pootling around Skopje or a couple of days now. It's a great city. I genuinely can't understand how it had slipped under my radar or so long.

We visited Mother Theresa's house. She wasn't in. Booo.

Another booo is that it's last day of the holidays, so what have we learned:

1. That bimbling around a city generally means you take about 18,000 steps a day, which is a lot. Surprisingly it doesn't make a at lot of difference if you actively try and walk to somewhere. Even yesterday's mountain scramble didn't change the totals all that much.

2. If you're asked at customs 'what are you doing in this country?' 'Wearing a hat.' is
the wrong answer, even if it is true.

3. There's a gap in the market for both Mother Theresa and Alexander the Great action figures. Can't find them anywhere.

Kosovo

So it seems like all of Bitola's alleged beautiful people are sipping expressos in Pristina - who'd've thought? Turns out that there Kosovar capital is way more trendy than I'd given it credit for.

I didn't really get Kosovo as a country. It seemed to be one long sprawling ribbon of breakers yards from the border to the capital, occasionally interspersed with a trendy looking new build that would put an equivalent building in Blighty to shame. Not what I'd expect from Europe's poorest country.

Pristina itself was fairly much the same thing only concentrated. Lots of things that shouldn't go together together and the whole thing topped up with more cars than a city twice its size needed.

The whole city seemed to be in a state of flux, as though it hadn't quite worked out its identity. Give it two years and it will be chock full of stag dos.