Better to be lucky than good
Posted: Sat 13 October, 2007 Filed under: Photography Leave a comment »Over the last three months or so, there’s been a field that I travel past fairly regularly that I’ve wanted to take some photographs in. It’s nothing special, just a large field with a whole load of hay bales in, but it’s very photogenic.
However, I’ve also had in my head a particular image that I wanted to get – kind of related to the long-exposure stuff I’ve banged on about before – that just wasn’t going to happen. Regardless, every time I’ve gone past that field, I’ve thought “I really must come out and take some photos before they bring all that hay in” , and then not been organised, or forgotten, or any number of other reasons.
Last weekend, I finally got round to going and taking the photos. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get the one I specifically wanted, but all the same I figured it would be better to get at least something, rather than just being annoyed that I’d missed all the opportunities. So I took a bundle of photos, and got a few that worked and looked good along the way.
As it is, I got lucky on my timing – I went past again during the week, and they were bringing in the hay. In the end I’d managed to get my photos by a matter of days. I’ll be more organised next year, and hopefully get a couple of sets – including, just maybe, that ideal shot that I have in my head, and that I’d love to turn into reality.
Routine
Posted: Fri 12 October, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Domestic 2 Comments »I’ve commented many times before about the fact that Hound is distinctly autistic, and has what amounts to a very set routine to get her through the day. This has eased up slightly since we started her on the homeopathic pills (known colloquially round Chez Lyle as ‘Happy Pills’- it’s a pretty descriptive name, really) but she is still highly driven by her routines and patterns. A lot of the time it’s a pain in the arse, but at the same time it also gives us a good indicator when something’s wrong, because the pattern changes to her “not feeling well” one.
Anyway, she’s happier when everything is routine, and she knows what’s going on, and (I think most importantly) what’s likely to happen next. At the moment mornings, in particular, are a case in point for this. She still doesn’t actually like me leaving the house – despite plenty of knowledge that I will be coming back later – but so long as the morning follows her timetable pretty well, she’s OK with it.
The knock-on effect of this, though, is that it means I’ve also developed a kind of routine for the morning. In fairness, it’s probably no bad thing to be working on auto-pilot when it’s 5.30 in the morning. But I do find it interesting how easily I slip into a routine of my own – I’ve written before about the fact that despite the fact I like to think I’m pretty random, I do have a lot of bits of my life that fall into their own patterns, which I still find weird, but there we go.
As it is, though, it just makes life easier in the mornings to have that pattern – it means Hound still gets stressy when (for example) I put my bag by the front door, as it means I’m going to be leaving soon, but so long as I keep things fairly standard, she’s then fine when it comes time for me to lock up the back door, and go out the front.
It has to be said, sometimes I don’t know who’s more insane – us or Hound.
Driving Hours
Posted: Thu 11 October, 2007 Filed under: Travel 1 Comment »Yesterday turned into one hell of a long day, what with fixing the problems at work first thing in the morning, and then driving to and from London. It meant I covered about 400 miles all told, and drove for abut 7½ hours.
OK, it was spread out – an hour to Cambridge, then 3 hours there, and an hour back. Later on, three hours in the car (thanks to a nasty accident in Whitechapel meaning a diversion) so we arrived at about 6.15, then leaving That There Lunnun at 10.45, and finally arriving home at 1am. The drive home was a pig, with fog on the roads, and an accident on the A11 meaning we had to do a small diversion, but we still made good time all told.
It made for one hell of a long (and knackering) day, and I’m still recovering today – I must be getting old, the recovery speed just isn’t the same as it used to be – but it was well worth it all the same.
Cowboy Junkies – Royal Albert Hall, London
Posted: Thu 11 October, 2007 Filed under: Reviews(ish) 2 Comments »As regular readers know, I’ve been a fan of the Cowboy Junkies for a long, long time now – well, the best part of twenty years. The first thing I heard of theirs was the Trinity Sessions album (as it turned out, their second album, but the one that started spreading the word about just how good they were) and it’s still, twenty years on, always in my Top Three favourite albums. So when we saw that they were redoing the entire album live at the Royal Albert Hall, well, it was a no-brainer really.
The entire show – well, show’s not the right word, “performance” might be better – was awesome. Not just a copy of the album (although, well, I’d have been just as happy with that, to be honest) but instead it was the same songs, same order, but slightly different versions – helped along the way by the addition of Ryan Adams on guitar (and singing) and Thea Gilmore as a backing vocalist. They’re also releasing a “Trinity Sessions Revisited” album + DVD to mark the occasion/gigs/idea.
To me, seeing the performance of the full album – and to my mind, it’s still also their best album, as well as being on of my all-time favourites – was just fantastic. I’ve seen them do a fair number of the songs before, but to see the entire album was just something else.
Because the entire album only runs at about the hour, there was plenty of time for encores, and again they played a couple of old favourites as well as a couple of tracks from their latest album.
All told, it was just fantastic. I haven’t been all that great this year with gigs, but there was no way we were going to miss this one, and it was well worth it – worth paying for the tickets, the London Congestion charge, the parking, the 2.5 hour drive each way, worth all of it. Absolutely brilliant.
Long may the Cowboy Junkies continue to record, and long may they keep on coming back to the UK to play. I’ll be there.
Let the train take the strain
Posted: Tue 9 October, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Travel Leave a comment »I saw yesterday in the news that apparently the route I use to get to work is a huge success, with 35% more passengers on it per year than originally predicted. Which is great in a number of ways – although not so great in a number of others.
Last year saw the route take 670,000 passengers, which isn’t bad for a fairly rural/provincial service.
But, if the route is so successful, and (if you average out the costs of travel at £10 per passenger – which I reckon is probably a conservative estimate) has already repaid the original investment would it be too much to ask to have trains of three or even four carriages, rather than the current standing-room-only rigid-in-peaktime trains of only two carriages? It’s not like the platforms can only cope with two carriages, and it would probably persuade a lot more people to use the service on a regular basis.
As it is, the service is OK – depending on when and where you get on the train. In the mornings, I’m lucky now to get a free table, although on the way back it’s not to bad (for me, anyway) as I get on the train as soon as it pulls in, rather than trying to jam myself in at the last possible second. But for many people that’s how they see the peak-time service – as one equivalent to a commuter train to London, jam-packed and standing room only.
If One Trains repaid some of the customer/passenger investment by adding an extra carriage or two, the service would be just as well used – and probably more so – but with a considerable lessening in the number of customer complaints.
You’d think that would make sense, wouldn’t you?