Pills, food and books in the sun

Fifteen days to my radio iodine (and final) treatment, so no pills for the next two weeks.

A week in Barcelona followed by a week of sluggishness in the office seemed like a plan.  Sunday to Friday is an odd booking but a full seven days seemed too long for a trip alone and the flights were cheap(ish) even if I had splashed out a bit on the hotel.

I used to holiday alone all the time, but the last ten years or so have mainly been with friends - perhaps I had lost the knack?

Barcelona should be the perfect choice, I have been many times and know it if not like the proverbial hand back then certainly pretty well and no pressure to see or do 'stuff' if I feel too tired or lazy.

The plan was to feed my growing obsession with reading, which in turn feeds my obsession with my blog. Not this one. The other one.  A book a day - but long and chunky ones is the target, with maybe some food and sightseeing if the urge so takes me.

Day 1 - doing well, first book (a short one) knocked off on the train to Gatwick. 

At hotel mid afternoon, last day of pills - taken all at once in the UK to save carrying them, feeling a bit spacey - maybe the heat.

I wander over to the tourist office and invest in a five day travel card and a six venue / three month Articket - best to be prepared.

Drinks and tapas in Raval at a street bar - well into second book, I love my kindle.

Day 2 - breakfast at Bar Boqueria in the market, an old favourite of mine, café con leche, agua con gas, tortilla Español calabacín (courgette) followed by la quenta and not a word of Inglés has passed my lips.

It is Monday so the only one of the six museums open is MACBA, welcomingly cool inside.  One of the exhibits is a room of postcards - could I recreate this at home?

A picnic lunch from Carrefour leaves me full for the evening and I retire early, finishing book number two and quickly starting and abandoning two duds.

Day 3 - breakfast again in the market then to the station to catch a train followed by funicular to Montserrat and the famous monastery that overlooks the city.  It is scorchingly hot in the mountains as I plough through book number five, the monastery has a welcome bar.

In the afternoon another museum - MNAC.

To the hotel to rest and shower before heading to Tapas 24 for dinner.  Padrón peppers, pibil (pulled pork) tacos and cebiche - amazing.  

Stay up to finish the book.

Day 4 - feeling quite sluggish now in the mornings, so much so that after breakfast (the market again) I am ashamed to say I was drawn into Starbucks for a sharpener - I wonder if they pay tax here?

The Museu Picasso opens at ten, I am there for five past along with ten thousand others, my Articket waves me through and I am sure the line has barely moved when I exit an hour later.

No lunch as I head for another funicular, this time up Montjuic to the Fundació Joan Miró, book number six is drawing to a close.

Back in Raval I stop for coffee and am given free cake.  Maybe I look hypoglycaemic. 

A fruitless evening wander through Raval is leaving me tired and hungry until I spy space at the Dos Palillos - the bar of Casa Camper - where I devour tempura anchovies, a bite sized Nippon burger and slow cooked pork jowl followed by bitter almond pudding.

Bed and book seven calls.

Day 5 - definitely spacey now, breakfast followed by Starbucks again is further followed by a bus to Park Guell, which is so hot that I feel faint. Back to the hotel via Caravelle, where the waitress is confused by my beer request and brings me a latte. And a beer.  I am confused by the menu and order an albóndigas sandwich (meatballs).  All conducted in Spanish / Catalan, despite her talking to other customers in English - a minor success from the jaws of defeat?

Book seven finished - time for Tanqeray.

Prawn ceviche and marinated manchego for dinner / snack.

Day 6 - getting used to the tiredness now.  El Colectivo for breakfast - just a café con leche and croissant - then a couple of hours by the pool until checkout.  

I leave my bags, as I have a few hours to spare - useful hours when choosing the flight, killing time hours now they are here.  CCCB the fifth of my six Articket venues beckons, after the usual initial confusion when they wonder if I am Spanish, I am advised in English that my ticket is valid for two days, in case I am unable to finish the exhibit (it is twelve noon).  It is all about Pasolini in Roma - I believe that he is / was a film director - though I'm just guessing as everything was on Spanish or Catalan.  There were English translations of bits of script and diary entries, but no context. I am done in about twenty minutes.

Another coffee, another book (eight) finished, another book (nine) started, collect bags, head for airport.

Brighton Festival & Fringe: perform

Many years ago I attended a series of events showing seminal music videos on the big screen at the NFT in London (now the BFI).  I always wondered why this did not happen more often, particularly now no-one watches videos on TV anymore.

Seemingly Adam Buxton of Adam and Joe fame, now on BBC Radio 6 Music, had the same idea and unbeknownst to me has been running a series called BUG doing just that at the BFI.  Go figure.

I was therefore very excited to see that Buxton would be presenting a BUG special on Fatboy Slim Bug at the Brighton Fringe and booked my ticket immediately expecting a sellout (what with Norman Cook being a Brighton local).

A week before the event it was announced that Norman Cook would actually be in attendance and on the stage!

The event was held in the Dome, a vast semicircular performance space, so we were given a 15 minute call to take our seats.  The adrenalin was already beginning to rise as the room as filled with a pulsing dance beat and the big screen showed a continuous shot of Buxton's face as he cycled through the streets of Brighton to reach the venue; beneath his chin a large countdown in minutes, seconds and milliseconds.  As the countdown approached zero he arrived (in the film) at the Dome's entrance.

The format of the show is basically Buxton on a stage with a laptop from which he shows us clips, extract from You Tube comments and full length music videos - on the big screen - with surround sound - awesome!

First up Abba and Waterloo, apparently they won Eurovision in 1974 on this very stage.

Then we quickly moved onto Fatboy Slim, with some old favourites and some more obscure videos include one which was worthy of Andy Warhol and an early appearance by Paris Hilton.  After a short interval Cook and his long standing producer joined Buxton on stage for some banter and more videos.  A brilliant night out that everyone was talking about as they walked along the street away from the Dome.

On Friday night I was in bed earlyish (it had been heavy week), when the house started to shake with a pulsating trip hop beat.  At first I assumed it was a student party with unusually good music taste then I realised that no student has a sound system that powerful and I dragged on some clothes and headed out to see what was going on.

Ar the end of my road was a mass of people, a large bus with a French woman in white on top, lots of big lights on wheels and projections onto the buildings nearby.  As I reached the end of the road it moved off around the corner and I headed back to bed.

The next night I was ready and headed out at the first sound.  Figures Libres was the name of the event which had been snaking its way around the city since dusk.  The crowd were encouraged to send text messages that were then rad aloud to the trip hop sound track and projected onto the walls of buildings; the images then morphed into faces of people as the bus and crowd turned the corner into New England Road.

The music got louder, the projections bigger as the event moved beneath the railway tracks - a natural theatre.  Dry ice was released and colour lights turned the space into the fiery heart of a volcano; then the lights turned blue and the projections changed to water, fish and swimmers whilst a woman on the bus played a reed instrument (a bassoon?) as the event reached its finale.

It was an amazing impromptu shared experience, that combined elements of a flash mob, a gig and a piece of performance art.

Brighton Festival & Fringe: walking

Each year I leave it too late and find that all the interesting walking tours are booked up, so this year I got in early and booked three of them:

• Brighton Station
• North Laine
• Embassy Court

First up at the earylish time of 11.00 on Sunday 19th May was the tour of Brighton station.  Our guide was Jackie Marsh-Hobbs, who has been leading these tours for the last fifteen years or so since the train shed roof was restored at the end of the last century.

Stood under the porte cochère Jackie enthusiastically took us through the early plans for station, which was essentially built on the Downs surrounded by glorious countryside as the main body of the city had yet to reach that far north.  It's location allowed the London & Brighton Railway Company to build a terminus for both its London line and its Shoreham line, the latter opened first in 1840, very early in Britain's railway story.

We then moved indoors and followed Jackie up to the 1st floor L&BR boardroom, now sadly subdivided, but with some stunning coving and ceiling detailing recently exposed and restored.  After a cantor through the construction, opening and then later expansion of the station accompanied with various visual aides we were back on the concourse and following the line of the old cab road, now enclosed beneath platform 8.  We also looked at the entry to the old goods railway tunnel that cuts across the platforms diagonally before ending in Trafalgar St.  The southern part of the tunnel was used as railway offices until station restoration.

We admired the current round of refurbishment, which includes the reinstatement of heritage windows and the demolition of the ugly departure board and WHSmith building and speculated on whether a use would be found for the sealed up basement level toilets, with their vaulted ceilings and mosaic floors.

The final leg of the tour took us down to Trafalgar St, passed the mural showing the original burgundy and cream colour scheme for the train shed.  In Station Road Jackie pointed out the former stables and horse hospital and took us into the final section of the goods railway tunnel, before showing us pictures of the Isetta bubble cars that were briefly made at the former Pullman carriage works before they finally closed in the early 1960s.

The whole tour took the best part of two hours and was well worth the modest £7 ticket price!

Next up, at 5pm on the same Sunday I headed over to St Nicholas' Church to meet up with Geoffrey Meade for his tour of North Laine.  I knew that 'laine' was Anglo-Saxon for large field and that North Laine was one of five that surrounding the early settlement of Brighthelmstone that later became Brighton; I also knew that North Laine had an industrial history in more recent times, but beyond that I knew little of the area's history.

Geoff is a geography lecturer by profession, so his tour is heavily influenced by the physicality of the ground beneath pour feet, which gives the historical tour an almost scientific air.  He explained that Brighton's shoreline was originally half a mile further out to sea with significant dwellings and fishing buildings on the area now occupied by the lower promenade.

The laines; Hilly Laine (now Hannover), West Laine (now Brunswick) and North Laine were agricultural, divided into the strips common across the country in medieval times.  West Laine held the richest soil and was later enclosed into big square fields under single landowners, paving the way for the big regency squares that Brighton and Hove are now famous for.  North Laine had poorer soil and remained as strips, giving it a New York style grid pattern that can still be seen in the streets today.  The east - west streets North, Church, Gloucester and Trafalgar were link ways giving access to the streets and the north - south streets and twittens were a furlong in length and followed the edges of the fields.

During the 19th century North Laine became Brighton's industrial workshop, with factories, sawmills, foundries and abattoirs.  Geoff pointed out the metal rings for tying up horses at the local forge, now behind the Three Jolly Butchers pub.  He also pointed out bone rendering works that supplied the local Dolphin Soap factory and described how the whole area was slated for demolition in the 1960s before gentrification won out.

Finally we traced our way behind Boots, the site of a notorious slum called Durham and Petty France, which was cleared to make way for Queen's Road in the 1850s opening up access to the station (where I had started my day).  A few juicy stories about the Blue Gardenia Club, murder, prostitutes and protestant nuns later and the tour was over - a pleasant end to the day.

A week later on Sunday 26th May was the tour of Embassy Court, the Grade II* listed modernist apartment block on the seafront designed by Wells Coates in 1935.

Our tour guide was Emma, chair of the residents' freehold company, she talked us through the history of the building, which was previously the site of the first Viscount Astor's final home.  When it was first built it was a luxury getaway for wealthy Londoners, who could travel down with their servants for a weekend by the seaside.  It had a staff of 14, a restaurant on the ground floor and a cocktail bar on the roof.  By the 1990s though it had fallen into disrepair and was a crime ridden drug den and a scene of a fatal stabbing.

We were shown into the first floor corner apartment, which was absolutely stunning, though few original features remained.

We then moved up to the roof terrace, with its panoramic views from the marina in the east to Worthing in the west and north to the Downs.

Brighton Festival & Fringe: watching

There were lots of independent films shown as part of the Brighton Festival, though only one caught my eye.  Under the Cranes is described as a 'cinematic evocation of the borough of Hackney'.  It was scripted by Michael Rosen, guest director for the festival as a whole, and directed by Emma Louise-Williams.

Rosen's words were written as a 'play for voices' - like a radio play or documentary - and brings together different voices from Hackney over the years, from Black Beauty, which was set there in the nineteenth century to modern times and the coming of the Olympics and Westfield.

Williams' images mix archive footage from across the last century are mixed with current scenes of traffic and street life.

The experience was a beautiful and moving piece of work that really demonstrated the strength of community in the various parts of Hackney from Dalston to Hoxton.

After the screening there was a debate chaired by Rosen and featuring Williams and Leo Hollis, author of Cities are Good for You, featured in my literary review of the festival here.  Rosen and Williams were clearly left wing in perspective and the debate took a rather predictable coalition bashing line, which was unfortunate as it took the attention away from the film itself.

For a bit of light relief between Under the Cranes and the Building on What we Have lecture, I met up with friends at Dukes at Komedia to see Star Trek Into Darkness in 3D.  This was my first ever 3D film, so I was very excited!  It was also the first Star Trek film that I had seen.

As a child I remember Star Trek (the original series) being on TV, but I was never that interested and preferred to play on the floor with my Lego.  As a result I vaguely know who the main characters are, but not much more than that.  As a result there were some jokes that the Trekkies sat near me (not my friends) enjoyed but which passed me by.

The 3D effects were amazing and the story was pretty pacey if normal blockbuster fayre.

Brighton Festival & Fringe: talking

This year's Brighton Festival had a strong literary strand and I was able to secure tickets to a number of events both in Brighton and at the parallel Charleston Festival at Charleston Farmhouse outside Lewes.

First up on Friday 10th May was Tracy Chevalier (of Girl with a Pearl Earring fame).  She was speaking at the Theatre Royal, which is a lovely old Victorian theatre thy I had never been inside before.  Booking my ticket early, I plumped for a Royal Circle seat and on arrival I actually thought or a moment hat I would b the only person up there, but it soon filled up.  My friends, who had booked later, were seated in the stalls below.

Chevalier is a warm and captivating speaker, who held the audience in the palm of her hand.  She talked of her love for the UK and her experience coming here as a foreigner, leading nicely into the two lengthy passages that she was about to read from her new book The Last Runaway about a 19th century English Quaker girl moving to America with her sister and stumbling across the route of runaway slaves heading from the south to freedom in Canada.

She then took a lengthy Q&A from the audience, when she explained her writing style and he fact that whilst historically grounded, she never bases her books on real people, though they may feature as supporting characters, such as Vermeer in Girl with a Pearl Earring.

On to Saturday 11th May and Lionel Shriver giving the headline lecture 'Who needs another book?'.  Shriver's approach was very different to Chevalier's - she was more acerbically witty university professor than friendly author.  The talk however was excellent, she wove a linear narrative on the thought process for selecting a subject to write about that will be commercially viable, interesting, relevant etc, taking sideswipes at Dan Brown along the way.  The lectured is available online here.

Her latest novel is Big Brother about her brother's battle with obesity.  She did not directly talk about the book but her themes of relevance and political timeliness were useful examples to her argument.

On Sunday 12th May another lecture, this time entitled Building on What We Have and focusing on urban design and the appropriateness of modern buildings in some historic settings as the world and the UK in particular become more urban in nature.

The debate was in the form of two polemic speeches, from Owen Hatherley and Eric Parry, both of which overran, so the actual debate was minimal  It was an interesting topic explored further in the chair, Leo Hollis' book Cities Are Good For You.

A couple of weeks' gap followed until the Charleston Festival and the Small Wonders event on Saturday 25th May featuring Colm Tóibín and George Saunders in conversation with Alison MacLeod.

The first thing to say about Charleston is to acknowledge just how beautiful it is.  A farmhouse set in the Sussex countryside and the centre of life for the Bloomsbury Set, it was the home of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.  The gardens are spectacular and the festival is set in a number of elegant marquees set amongst the trees.  The stage is set like an Edwardian sitting room.

MacLeod is a lecturer at Chichester University and short story writer, her current book entitled Fifteen Modern tales of Attraction, though as host she does not talk about it.

Tóibín's book is The Testament of Mary in which he gives a voice to The Virgin Mary, as she looks back on her life and that of her famous son.  He read from the section about the raising of Lazarus, a powerful and poignant passage.  Talking afterwards he was wickedly funny and engaging and had the audience laughing out loud.

Saunders' book Tenth of December is a collection of short stories that had previously been published in the New Yorker magazine over a period of fourteen years.  I had not heard of him before, but was impressed enough to buy the book.  He read aloud a tale of a sudden death and funeral, written in the first person by a colleague of the deceased.  It was written as if in a diary, with unfinished sentences and asides to the reader.  Like Tóibín he had the audience in stitches.

The day was beautiful and marked a lovely end to a wonderful and inspiring season of literary events.

Film Series: I'm So Excited! Gala Launch Screening

Tuesday 23rd April was much hyped by the Picture House team, who were showing the UK Gala Launch of the new Pedro Almodóvar film 'I'm So Excited!', with live screening of the red carpet in Hackney before the film and a live Q&A with Almodóvar afterwards.

In honour of this glamorous event I splashed out on the premium balcony seats at the Duke of York's.

From the trailer that I'd seen the previous week I was expecting the usual mix of saturated colours and campness prevalent in much of his work, together with a return to the comedy of his earlier films.

The film begins with sun drenched shots of the taxiway at Madrid's Barajas Airport interspersed with 80s style graphic imagery and an upbeat 80s style soundtrack.  The feel was very much like the UK British sitcoms of the 1970s that were stretched into feature films, or a later Carry On film such as Carry on Camping.

First up was a funny little vignette featuring Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz as ground crew readying a plane for take-off.

The action then moved to the business class section and cockpit of the plane itself, where it remained until the final few minutes of the film, with a landing at the white elephant mothballed airport at La Mancha.

The film is funny, bawdy and incredibly smutty with a hilarious musical number halfway through; the underlying storyline is not dissimilar to the slapstick / disaster genre of the Airplane films of the 80s.

In the Q&A Almodóvar explained that he was comparing the optimism of Spain in the 80s, newly freed from dictatorship and about to enter the EEC with the current financial crash.  Sadly it was not one of Almodóvar's better efforts and the comedy combined with social commentary was a bit clunky.  A fun night out but I'm not sure it was worth the hype.

Film Series: Promised Land

The Brighton & Hove Movie Club has had some great events lately, which has really got me in to the cinema going habit again.

Promised Land is the new Matt Damon film and was showing at the new Dukes at the Komedia cinema in the North Laine.  It was a smaller group than usual as there were rival films being shown in Shoreham and Hove, so just four of us met in the very comfy bar area before heading into the startlingly empty auditorium - there were no more than ten people in the whole place and we were able to bag the sofas.

So how was the film?  Well it was directed by Gus Van Sant, the screenplay was written by and starred Matt Damon and John Krasinski (Mr Emily Blunt); and was based on a novel by Dave Eggars.

Set in rural Pensylvania, it centres on the attempts of two consultants Steve and Sue (Damon and Frances McDormand) from Global Crosspower Solutions trying to buy up hydraulic fracking rights from residents of a small town.  Krasinski is the environmental campaigner trying to stop them.

Damon is excellent as the 'good guy' working for the big bad energy corporation; his childhood was scarred by unemployment in his Iowan farming community, he sees fracking as a way to help communities achieve financial independence.  McDormand is awesome as the jaded, seen it all before sidekick who is there to do a job to support her teenage son.

Damon is settling well into middle age (he is 42), slightly podgy around the middle and greying hair at the temples he is becoming an American everyman; McDormand at 55 has a face that is full of character, generally dour but occasionally lit up with a smile - she is brilliant in this role.

The scenery is stunning and the aerial shots (the helicopter pilot gets a mention in the credits) are incredible, with the pairs red truck cris-crossing the green landscape.  There are also lots of cleverly filtered shots - through dirty windscreens or bug covered flyscreens.

Tentative romances start for for both main characters, for Damon with the local school teacher and for McDormand with the grocery and gun store owner, but this is no rom-com and the stories and lightly played.

After a surprising twist, the film is let down by a smaltzy ending, but overall I'd give it 4 out of 5.