Here was the mid punk gig raffle last Friday. Yes, you read that right. A raffle at a punk gig. Henry (featured in the hat) had the idea to have; a birthday party, 5 bands, cake, 4 DJ’s all to feature on the same night.
What a success! £524.60 for Médecins Sans Frontières was raised on the night. This is going towards Henry’s total, for when he does his next trick – runs 110 miles across The Cleveland Moors in September.
Got back last night after a lovely camping trip to the Lake District. We didn’t see a single Lake though.
Fisherground campsite – lovely spot – part of this set of photos>>
Fisherground Campsite is reputedly (and I can confirm) one of the best campsites in the country for kids to enjoy. It’s got a really good adventure playground complete with zip wire. It’s got a pond with an island and rafts. It’s got a train station with trains that go to the coast or up to the village to the East. It allows fire – a massive plus point in our book – an essential part of camping that so few campsites allow these days. It’s got a 3 acre mowed field for games and sports. It’s got a green team that really do look after the place and its residence – perhaps a bit to Victorian Dad about it at times, but at the end of the day – they do a really good job.
We’ve stayed at Fisherground campsite before – when we were there last time it was rather cold but this time we had the weather on our side. After grouping up on Friday night and imbibing a modest amount of alcohol we got up bright and breezy on Saturday. We made a check list of things to do – Play cricket, look at the trains (perhaps go on one), collect wood (they sell it there, but the Yorkshiremen in us knew best) , eat some nice food, have a few beers and play lots of Boules and Frisby. We did all of the above and added ‘game of rounders’ and ‘fly kite’ to the completed action list. The evening consisted of silly story time from the kids round the fire then we all turned in fairly early after all the days excitement.
Sunday – we got packed up just before the heavens opened. Rainy day activity plan kicked in – Museums. Barrow-in-Furness has The Dock Museum. This was fascinating. A converted dry dock, mainly on the history of (the biggest cul-de-sac in England – ) Bowness. Ships, Trains, Grimness, Engineering, Determination. We all really enjoyed it.
After that, almost by random I discovered that there was another museum on something quite close to our hearts – The Laurel and Hardy Museum in Ulverstone. This consisted of part of an old cinema with anecdotal and historical reference to the comedy duo, as well as memorabilia and a mini cinema showing back to back Laurel and Hardy classics all day long. A very pleasant end to a very pleasant weekend.
Harrogate Fringe Festival ‘Grand Finale’. We’ve been asked to chuck another log on it for the official after party to the Harrogate Fringe Festival. There’s the ‘Crawl’ day on the 31st featuring shed loads of bands across umpteen venues in Harrogate and we’ll be wrapping up the show with double dose of party at Rehab, downtown Harrogate.
“It’s gonna be a belter”. We’re taking on the mighty Bottom of the Bottle =- we’ll do one floor, they’ll do the other (TBD which way round..) Wrist band holders from any of the day event means FREE ENTRANCE / priority clearance (subject to capacity).
We went to a wine tasting event yesterday at The Crown hotel hosted by Harrogate Fine Wine and their suppliers. 70 wines to have a go on, all of a very high standard. I experimented with whites (normally a red man) before going onto the reds.
Quite a fascinating culture the wine crowd. I don’t confess to much about wine but found some of the conversations a fascination. One of the wines I had zoomed in on and went back twice to make sure it was still to my liking was this 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon called “A”. I have always been a of the “you CAN judge a book by its cover” mindset – you can tell by the fonts, the layout, the corners cut, the processes and general attention to detail and due care that has been employed when looking at a book cover or wine label. Some of this has a correlation to the product inside (albeit story, or wine).
So this “A” had a simple black design with an A made with 3 colours. I was told that the colours were the colour of the taste of this wine. Someone with Synesthesia – the condition whereby people can ‘see’ taste, sound and smell – had been used to select the colours on the label and although I had no frame of reference, the colours (a purple, a blue and a dark magenta with white lines if wine addled memory serves me correctly) did indeed look like the taste. I’m on the lookout now for other products where Synesthesia has been used to create a design.
Last week we attended the launch of the Harrogate Fringe Festival. After a general intro from the Harrogate Internation Festival (proper) Director, Graham Chalmers of Gig Scene was introduced. He gushed the passion, like only he can, about how good this thing could really be. There’s so much creativity in this town and so much creative appreciation of off mainstream stuff that – the feeling seems to be – it really could be the start of something quite special.
There’ll be the widest of sub spectrum acts ‘flown in’ , playing at a host of some old – some new Harrogate venues. A secret venue for instance and “The Harrogate Club” which I’d never heard of but someone told me it’s a lovely Victorian chamber down Victoria Avenue.
There’s a day of more home grown acts – mainly Harrogate and Leeds based bands (including an after party by us lot (FIRE) ‘v’ Bottom of the Bottle. whilst the North Yorkshire Hardcode Punk lot make some noise in Crabtrees ) This is billed as “Festival Fringe Crawl Indie Rock Day” but I much prefer the title “Harrogate Fringe Fringe”.
As it’s the first year, its a bit ‘suck it and see’ but the organisers don’t seem to have used that as an excuse in any way for falling short. The Fringe highlight for me would probably be Robin Williamson (Incredible String Band) and local boy Karl Culley – both geniuses in their own right. A brilliant pairing who ever came up with that idea. Field Music (they don’t sound like they’re from Sunderland but they are) who this time last week I’d never heard of, who since have featured heavily on my spotify playlist – quite refreshing stuff. The Rothko v Stockhausen guy Mark Stubbs will be doing some kind of lecture by the look of things – could be interesting. As a package, it’s not (I’m glad to report) billable as ’something for everyone’ as that often means ‘something quite mainstream’ - which this seems proudly not, I’m glad to report.
The thing about a good fringe festivals is, it’s not necessarily the acts you ear mark to see before hand that leave the lasting memories but the magical unexpected moments you stumble across that make them special. This fringe looks like it’s got stacks of ammo in the unexpected department.
An evening with Bob Harris, Jackson-Webber & Special guest
July 14 Harrogate Theatre
Robin Williamson (ex Incredible String Band) plus Karl Culley
July 15 St Peter’s Church
Poems, Prose & Pints, Creative Writing Workshop & Guest Writer
July 17 & 21 - The Harrogate Club
Haiku Workshop
(Run by Eirene! contact us for details) - July 17th – Hornbeam Park
Codebreakers The Story of Enigma
July 17 Harrogate Theatre
Showstopper! The improvised Musical
July 17 Harrogate Theatre
RedHouse presents Music To My Eyes: A Rock n Roll exhibition
July 23 – 25 108 Fine Art Gallery, Crown Place
Kamaca’s Tribute to Gershwin
July 23 Harrogate Theatre
Alex Wilson Salsa Con Soul
July 23 Royal Hall
Fear of Music with David Stubbs of The Wire/Uncut magazines.
July 24 The Harrogate Club
John Otway: Making Success Out of Failure & Chris Simpson of Magna Carta reads Fields of Eden
July 25 The Harrogate Club
Alrnias: Anthropology/art music with Phil Legard.
July 25 Secret Harrogate Location
Esoteric Electronica with Primate Engineer.
July 28 The Harrogate Club
An Evening with Field Music
July 29 Harrogate Theatre
Ralph McTell
July 31 Harrogate Theatre
As soon as I know about booking info, I’ll post it up here – at the moment, unless someone cares to correct me in the comments, there’s no news. Stay tuned!
We’re chucking another log on the FIRE. A Bank Holiday special. 2nd May, Rehab, Harrogate (pictured here).
After a the recent sad departure of Fiona, Sid and Lemon Bun Just got a couple of new pet fish. We’ve called this Lion Head ‘Goggles’ and we got another fish – a baby Panda Oranda – currently about 2cm long. We’ve got a Fish called Panda.
These are possibly the greenest words ever written on dragondrop. They are written on a device that is using 100% solar power. Arguably all devices are 100% solar powered really but this particular gadget is currently exclusively powered using energy from the sun collected using a solar panel which has fed a ‘desktop’ phone battery charger.
Here is the kit – guarded by Misty (a cat). The solar panel (eBay, £25 -a bit like this one) comes in a case that can be free standing, stuck to a window or clipped to a backpack and attached to a charger or gadget (eg MP3 player) via a USB cable. I’ve got a rotation of 3 phone batteries – in good sunlight it charges a dead battery to full in a day – so I can carry on blogging, geocaching, photogro-faffing and generally digitally documenting whilst listening to music etc or using a BlendTec Blender®. even when I’m away from a mains power source – ie camping or a festival or other such deep adventure ops.
Back at work today. Have been into the habit of working from home for ages now. The snow seems to be beating a full retreat for the time being – so the route to work is safe to travel. Shame in a way. It’s great working from home, although after a while I do start to feel a bit like I’m stuck in the tank. There are massive benefits to working from home though.
Most of the stuff I do, I can do from home. As well as being able to take photos of fish at lunch time (as above) and eat fried egg sandwiches cooked on goose fat, it saves petrol (and the green bits) and travel time. It’s good to work away from distraction. Isolate myself in my own thoughts. Face time is missing though although and that’s important, but I can communicate through many other methods. Hmm.. ups and downs. I think I’m going to angle for a bit more homeworking though.
I’m at working at the Harrogate Exhibition Centre / Conference Centre / Royal Hall this week at the NATN conference. I’ve just watched the opening speech from a living legend -
Terry Waite.
What an amazing character that man is. nearly 5 years as a hostage, 4 in solitary. No books, no writing material, no conversation – nothing. An inspiring speech – mainly about humanity itself and the underlying thought that was “what ever happens to me – it could be worse”. He hilighted a story that I found amusing – a few years into his captivity he found a friendly guard who agreed to get him some books. The first 2 books he got were (due to the guards lack of English and access to English books) “The great escape” and “Breastfeeding – a manual” (not even illustrated he added!). He had an idea. He convinced the guard to lend him a pencil and a bit of paper for a few moments. He drew a penguin on it – after that he got a flurry of good books. It struck him (and me) as how powerful a logo can be – an image without the barrier of language. Anyway – I’d better get back to it..
