Faggots and Peas

It seems that every time I go to Cardiff I walk away from any obvious signs of life to go to a beard-achingly-hip pop-up in an industrial premises. Last time it was Pyramid Scheme, a literary event in a print studio. This time it was Brewfest, the trendiest beer festival that I've ever been to.

In my head beer festivals are about barrels. You find a space - be it a marquee, a corner of a pub, a church or a school hall - and you fill it with barrels. Loads of them. In massive horizontal piles. Then you get served beer by a guy in a Camra poloshirt. This wasn't like that. This made a warehouse into a career fair for microbreweries, only with way more decor.

I'm staying in Pontypridd which was absolutely buzzing as the Lido has reopened. Had lunch in Ponty Market - the café advertised itself as "The Place for Faggots and Peas" which I kinda wanted to take a picture of but worried that that would make me look like a class tourist so figured that I would blog about it instead. I'm an idiot.

You Can't Go Wrong With a Footwear Song

I'm at the Edinburgh Fringe again. This time I saw this:

Messrs Brimson and Wilson - Shamefully I really quite enjoyed this. Two quasi-music-hall, lowest-common-denominator comedians telling averagely funny jokes before going "weird fringe" and doing a song about inflatable shoes.

Sofie Hagen - Warm and funny. The best thing I saw on Day 1.

Joel Dommett - thoroughly enjoyable, however the structure of the show was so similar to Sophie Hagen's that you couldn't help but compare the two.

Simon Slack - He reminded me of someone I went to school with so my highlight of the set was imagining that someone who once had a very promising future was now dancing in their pants in the back room of a club for coppers. Turns out it's not him. Sadtimes.

Full Scottish at Ryan's Bar - not strictly speaking an act, but worth sharing. 

The Walking Dead - more a lecture about the impending zombie apocalypse than a comedy show.

Kane and Abel - not been to a magic show in years.

Ben Clover - Ben's a mate so obviously this was great.

Russell Hicks - This guy managed to do a funny hour's set with essentially no material. Day 2's highlight.

Simon Munnery's fylmshow - he's one of those comedian's comedians that I've been meaning to see for years. Not certain that I wholly got him. He had two guests (whose names I missed), the first one may have been Njambi McGrath. It might not but she was really good.

Alternative Comedy Memorial Service - I found this mighty enjoyable. However I got the impression that I was missing out on a whole heap of injokes.

Mickey Scharma - We were aiming finishing with Liam Williams, but didn't realise there was a queue. Ended up here instead. Not quite the big big bang finale that we had planned.

"Like You, but Good"

Standon Calling time again.  Once again I saw virtually nothing, well done me. 

This year's highlights: 

Ezra Furman - this is the kind of nonsense I've always loved. I'm unsure how he has managed to release three albums before he's dented my awareness.

Malory Torr - a pretty voice singing pretty country songs - what's not to like? 

DJ Yoda - forty five minutes of euphoric pop hiphop mash up.

Poetry Goes Pop - a high-brow / low-brow panel show that didn't always work, but when it did it worked super well. Consequently I've had the Jabberwocky to the tune of Wrecking Ball stuck in my head for two days. 

Piggy Platter - I can't remember the name of the foodstall that sold this - Maple pork, maybe. It was tasty and massive and frankly set a new precedent for festival food which will probably never be superseded.

Caistor St Edmund

Norwich is a city that likes a dragon. Even without the GoGoDragons roaming the streets there is definitely an above average number of dragons in that there city.

Norwich is a bit of a weird one.  I went quite a lot as a kid but I had never explored the city as a grown up.  I'd always discounted it as just a slightly bigger version of Chelmsford. Which is somewhat false. The city was dripping with both history (with its Norman castle and enormous cathedral - Chelmsford cathedral could probably do a three-point turn inside Norwich cathedral) and culture (there seemed to be cinemas everywhere).

There just seemed to be a buzz in the town, at least when comparing it to the last similarly sized British city that I went to (which was Coventry a couple of weeks ago.  Now this is unfair, I'm comparing Norwich on Pride Saturday to Coventry on a Thursday afternoon. However Coventry didn't shower itself in glory when I asked at the tourist information what I should see if I only had a couple of hours - "it's after three, everything's shut now." Anyway, back to Norwich). I wandered out to the edge of town to get to the Sainsbury Centre.  This suburban, provincial art gallery was stuffed full of famous names. I know that this was a special exhibition and not the regular collection but three Michelangelos and a Titian?  Really?  That's just showing off.

Birthday Thoughts

A decade ago I lived with a guy called Nick and his extensive collection of Detroit techno singles in an uber-hip Manchester loft apartment. A fair chunk of my best flat-sharing anecdotes come from that year.  Here's a very small one:

"I'm just bobbing to the shop. Do you want anything?"
"Nah, you're alright, cheers."
"Catch you in a bit."
Nick returned home five days later - lucky I din't need milk.

Today would have been Nick's 40th birthday. It would have been a hell of a party.

The phrase "Rest in Peace" doesn't seem appropriate - it pretty much misses the point of Nick - but you get what I mean.

The Old Three Country Weekend

So I found out why I couldn't get a room in Basel. It was ArtBasel weekend. The world's biggest art fair. Basically like rocking up to Edinburgh in August and expecting to be able to get accommodation. Still not 100% sure what ArtBasel - or indeed an art fair - is; whether it's a South by Southwest or a Glastonbury. Or some kind of highbrow mutant of the two. Either way, I saw a lot of art.

It started in the morning with Parcours, a cheeky offshoot of the main ArtBasel project which put some of that there bonafide concept art in and around Munsterplatz, the historic core of the city.This was ace as it forced me into crannies and nooks into which I otherwise wouldn't have ventured. Had what I'm fairly sure is my first edible art experience chewing on art flavoured ice cream, which was, erm, flavoured.

Had an afternoon break from ArtBasel in order to see some art galleries, the pick of which was the Museum Tinguely with it's ubertrendy architecture and mechanised bobbins.

Evening was ArtBasel proper. Thought I'd smashed it in an hour and a half - you're not so big, biggest artfair in the world - only to find I was less than a third of the way through and had only seen those bits that were too big for the main hall.

Have you flown into Basel before? Turns out the airport's in France and is known as the Three Countries Euroairport.  When I couldn't find accommodation in Switzerland I snuck across the border into Germany and slept in Lorrach.  From the map it looked like it was just a Basel suburb but turns out it was a fairly substantial place in its own right - famous for Milka chocolate, apparently.    

In more UK based news, I saw Jenny Collier do some comedy. It was ace.

In even more local news I see that Elan Lounge is changing its name again. It'll be Backtrack from next week, never did get to go to Indigo, oh well, fairly sure it wasn't all that different from at least one of its five previous incarnations.

Dick Turpin and Other Essex Boys

Did a treasure hunt the other day it took in three Essex villages, which (unimpressively, as a local someone who likes an explore) I knew barely anything about.

It started in Thaxted, a village that I know mainly from driving through. Didn't know Holst lived there though. I feel like that's something I should know. Even more than  that, I definitely should have known that Dick Turpin came from Hempstead - that made me Wikipedia (is that a verb? It is now) - turns out he used to run with The Essex Gang. Guessing that they didn't have to worry too much about originality of gang names in those days - it's no Baseball Furies.

The adventure finished in Finchingfield. You've probably heard how pretty Finchingfield is. That's all anyone knows about it. Turns out the rumours are true. It oozes prettiness.

The treasure hunt itself is a bit of a weird one - doing it has made me approximately forty per cent more observant - but a mate had bought it off the internet. Now don't get me wrong, I am not belittling the treasure hunt itself - I had a thoroughly pleasant day - it's just that someone managed to get paid for doing something that was probably kinda fun. Wandering round making up clues is the kind of thing I'd do in my spare time, just because (or at least it would be if I wasn't so lazy). I tell you what Internet, if I'm feeling frivolous I might do you a treasure hunt. I won't even charge you.

Just been to the Barbican to see Sun Kil Moon. Not the kind of gig I normally frequent but that Kozelek fellow has a voice on him.

On a complete tangent, it was pointed out to me at the weekend that us Brits put in unnecessary Rs all over the show. And it turna out they were right. I say drawring rather than drawing. I've been trying out draw-wing in my head and it sounds all kinds of wrong. My reality feels a bit brittle.