The Last Bits, and The Next Bits
Posted: Sun 18 December, 2016 Filed under: 2016/17, Day Trips, Domestic, Festering Season, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Food, Getting Organised, Solo Dining, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »
It’s hard to believe that it’s only a week to Christmas Day, and two to the end of 2016.
This week we’ve had temperatures up around 10-13° C – which is ridiculous for mid-December – and I’ve been wandering around in shirt-sleeves. (While also wondering just how people are walking about fully clad in coat, gloves, and even furry hats. What the bollocks are they going to do when it gets cold, for fuck’s sake?)
Yesterday was my penultimate Michelin-starred restaurant visit of the year, so it’s all coasting down to the end of year. Which is no bad thing, to be honest.
I’ve got some plans and ideas for 2017, but really I think the theme is “do less”. I’ll still be doing all the stuff I’ve been doing in 2016, just less of it. That’s the idea, anyway. Whether it’ll work out that way, well, only time will tell.
First Impressions
Posted: Sat 17 December, 2016 Filed under: Advertising, Bad Ads, Business, Catering, Cynicism, Literacy, Thoughts Leave a comment »It’s funny, sometimes, how a first impression – and sometimes even just a single word – can colour one’s judgement and feelings about something.
While geeking about yesterday, I did a google search for ‘Zucchini’ – a programme on TV was showing zucchini (courgettes) that were very different to the ones I recognise as courgettes, so I had a look.
And there on that results page, the second result was for Zucchini Restaurant in Batley, Yorkshire. It looks like this…
Yep – the first word of text on the site contains a spelling mistake. On an Italian word. For an Italian restaurant.
And just like that, I know I don’t want to go. If that’s their attention to detail, I’m out. Simple as that.
Open University IoP Lecture Series
Posted: Fri 16 December, 2016 Filed under: Domestic, Education, Geeky Leave a comment »I didn’t really explain much about the IoP Lecture Series at the Open University in the last post.
I’m lucky enough to live quite close to the Open University‘s main campus in Milton Keynes, although up ’til this week I hadn’t actually ventured on/in to it.
I was made aware of the Lecture series a few weeks ago, by a friend who’d been to one of the earlier events. Basically, it’s a collaboration with the Institute of Physics, and consists of free lectures (open to the public) on a range of subjects. I’m sure there’ll be ones I’m less interested in, but being a bit of a geek – OK, a lot of a geek – I’m always open to learning about new stuff, so I’ll take something out of all the ones I’ll get to go to.
I’m hoping that in 2017 I’ll do some more learning, both random stuff and more organised/official, and this Lecture Series will definitely be part of that…
Open University IoP Lecture – Human Colour Vision
Posted: Thu 15 December, 2016 Filed under: Domestic, Education, Geeky, Milton Keynes Leave a comment »This week, I was lucky enough – or at least organised enough – to go and see a lecture at the Open University campus as part of their IoP Lecture Series, about Human Colour Vision, presented by Professor Andrew Stockman.
It was interesting, and covered the basics of both the biology and physics of human vision, as well as how easy it is to fool and confuse vision.
Being a bit of a vision geek, I understood most of the information coming in – although it seemed to boggle the minds of a fair few of the audience – but I still learned stuff about how light and colour are initially processed by the eye (“univariance” being particularly interesting) and the cell structures etc. that aid this process.
As always, the ways to mess with the brain about colour fascinate me – and although we didn’t see my two favourite images (below) on colour perception, there were others that were just as fun.
I’m hugely lucky, in that I live near the OU campus, so it makes it an easy evening of geekery – I didn’t know about this IoP series of lectures until recently, but you can be sure I’ll be going to more of them…
Theatrical – Thoughts
Posted: Thu 8 December, 2016 Filed under: Do More, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Theatre, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »This year, as I’ve said before, I’ve seen a lot of plays – well, by my standards, at least. Up until two years ago, I hadn’t been to the theatre in a long time, but for some reason it’s clicked into place over the last eighteen months or so, and I’ve been really enjoying it.
There’s been a lot of Shakespeare this year – partly because of 2016 being the 400th anniversary of his death, which has lead to a lot more stuff being staged, but also because it’s interesting, I know very little about it, and wanted to advance my knowledge of the plays to a greater or lesser degree.
At the same time, I’ve also seen other stuff along the way, and it’s pretty much all been interesting.
The full list for 2016 has been pretty impressive…
- Faustus (adapted from the Christopher Marlowe original)
- Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Globe
- King Lear, with Don Warrington as Lear
- The Spoils (written by, and starring, Jesse Eisenberg)
- Macbeth
- Romeo and Juliet
- Threepenny Opera
- The Alchemist
- Faustus (original script, by the RSC)
- King Lear, with Glenda Jackson as Lear
- Tempest at Stratford-upon-Avon
There’s stuff already booked in for next year, too – including
- Amadeus at the National Theatre
- Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
- Hamlet
- Don Juan in Soho, a play by Patrick Marber
- Obsession, with Jude Law
That’s it for now, but I’m sure there’ll be more to come as well.
Theatrical – The Tempest
Posted: Mon 5 December, 2016 Filed under: Day Trips, Do More, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Theatre, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »This weekend, I went down to Stratford-upon-Avon to see The Tempest at the RSC Theatre.
As I wrote back in April, it’s been a busy year for me of going to the theatre, and this was the last visit of this year. I’ve already got a number of things next year, starting in mid-January, but for this year, I’m done.
I’d not seen Tempest before, and knew very little about it, but thoroughly enjoyed it. The staging is pretty epic, making use of the carcass of a ship for the stage surrounds, and a very cleverly designed floor with mirrored parts underneath. The lighting reflects off the mirrors and produces a number of different effects depending on the colour – it’s theoretically simple, but massively effective.
Additionally, they’ve done some really innovative stuff using technology and motion-capture, allowing them to project Ariel onto large mesh screens that also move, conveying the freedom of the spirit in a very effective and impressive way that would’ve kept me happy even if the rest of the play had been bobbins.
In particular, the man playing Ariel (Mark Quartly) does a fantastic job – beautifully conveying that he’s a spirit that most people can’t see, concealing himself among the stage timbers, with an outfit that shows him but also camouflages him very effectively. You forget he’s there, watching all, and then he moves and you remember and realise – it’s really quite creepy, but done in a really good way.
Mark Quartley as Ariel
I found it interesting to also see the parallels between Tempest and Midsummer Night’s Dream, the similarity of some of the themes and so on. Indeed, a lot of the stuff for the spirits in Tempest could work really well for the fairies of Midsummer Night’s Dream – and I’d like to see it done.
It’s a fabulous production. I don’t honestly know that I’d be overly bothered about seeing the play itself again (although I probably will at some point) but if you’re going to see one version of it, this one’s bloody good.
King Lear, Old Vic, London
Posted: Fri 2 December, 2016 Filed under: Day Trips, Domestic, London, Theatre, Travel Leave a comment »Last weekend, I went down to London to see King Lear at the Old Vic – my second Lear this year, never having seen it before – this time starring Glenda Jackson as Lear. She’s just the start of a pretty mega cast, including Celia Imrie, Jane Horrocks and Rhys Ifans as well as a number of actors whose faces and/or voices were certainly familiar.
There’s been a lot of guff spoken about having a woman play Lear, but in the end I found it didn’t really matter. Jackson is pretty androgynous, and the play really is more about age, families, children and betrayal than whether Lear is a King or a Queen. Personally I found it a bit jarring to hear the male pronouns (“Sir”, “Lord”, “He” etc.) while knowing the role was played by a woman, but that was more about my brain than anything else.
I really liked the production – it’s very modern, which was interesting in comparison to the much more traditional one I saw in Manchester. It’s also quite minimalist for a lot of the time, with some moving scenery and not much else. However, the storm scene is performed through projections onto billowing black plastic sheeting, which was surprisingly effective.
All told, I liked the production a lot, and still feel that I was fortunate to see it.
I felt even more fortunate to also see the “Voices Off” conversation afterwards, with Jackson, Imrie, and Horrocks all on stage talking with a presenter and Lear’s other ‘daughter’, played by Morfydd Clark. That was another forty minutes or so after the main three-and-a-half-hour production, which made for a long evening, but one that I really enjoyed.