Huw in the club - and other great pictures

Huw in the club - Cardiff
Originally uploaded by Maciej Dakowicz

I found this set of pictures using the marvelous http://fffflckr.com/
 application which lets you search flickr using your favourites and those of your favourites (if you see what I mean) .

It threw up this  fascinating series of pictures from The Glamorgan County Council Staff Club in Cardiff, Wales sadly now closed by Maciej Dakowicz.

I love the shots of people having fun and enjoying their weekend.
It's a cliche to say peoples lives are written on their faces but it's a true cliche.

It does raise a slight issue that's been in my mind for a while. I love pictures like this and those of the famous series Martin Parr took in New Brighton. I take if not similar ones  in a similar areas ie. in around Deptford and Barnsley etc and I have nagging fear that they could be seen  put it bluntly as "laughing at poor people".

I hope I'm not I just find these subjects fascinating, refreshing and surprising. We live in an increasingly
homogeneous world and these sparks of humanity, these unguarded moments and the individual acts of creativity are heartening. Of course the distance between the aspiration of some the signs etc and the reality of the shop or the pub they are attached to is ironic but also hopeful and very human.
One last defence whenever I'm somewhere posh I take picture there too

Woodland fun

Latitude
Suffolk
2008

Festivals: where else can you sit in a cloud of reefer smoke, deafened by loud music, surrounded by people in garish clothing at 8 in morning? Well Deptford train station as it turned out. In the midst of London’s most chilled plasterers, randomly listening to music on their speaker phones , clad to a man in hi vis vest, was me lumbering up the stairs with my rucksack, off to the estuary to wait for a lift, while an old gaffer did slight of hand tricks with coins. My friends arrived before he could explain how he lost his eye!

You see festivals are another world after all, in this case "Latitude "which is in Suffolk (which after 20 years in the south I now know is the one near Essex and not the one, Sussex where Brighton is).

Latitude is near Southwold and the sea of which we got glimpses on the way down. We stopped on the way at the world’s nicest Budgens having already seen an airship there was the chance we were going back in time. Thankfully Latitude is very now.
It is meant to be the most middle class of festivals but as I’ve said before listening to rock music in fields is by definition a middle class pursuit (for good or ill and I haven’t got time for a long piece on Britain’s relationship with Arcadia…). I think this (pejorative) tag comes largely because it’s near Southwold and that it’s not just drunk teenagers who go to it.

It seemed a relatively normal festival; you had to hike across fields with your kit, put up your tent up in the rain, queue to get in, pay too much for beer etc. Some of the food was organic (the only noticeable difference with organic chips is that you get less of them), but you can still get donuts and pies, so some things don’t change.

One noticeable thing about Latitude is that a range of ages attend, families with toddlers but also older people with their kids and on their own, which is all to the good.
In fact down the front at Sigur Ros was like night school for 16 years olds with us explaining who The Ros were to some worried girls (they didn’t want to get moshed again) while another older guy was showing a yoof how to use his Hubble telescope of a camera!

Anyway the compactness of the site was great, making nipping round easy and also bumping into your mates more likely. The sylvan setting is nice particularly at night when you can see glimpses of “happenings” beneath the branches.

We had a great time, we got sunburnt and frozen, had a laugh, had a cry, occasionally had a nap, some people danced until dawn, others nattered on about obscure novels and the pipkins. The House of Love took us back in time, grinder man got medieval with our ass, there were loads of new bands who may be the future and some that might not see out the summer. And by Saturday evening it was just like every other festival lots of people having a good time in relaxed if slightly fuzzy way.
Oh and the toilets weren’t bad either.

for more pictures go here



High Lights:
Sigur Ros: The papers reviewer must have missed the ending and is in Icelandic cliché mode describing them as “glacial” and “downbeat” that for a band who had finale involving a marching band of dressed as Droogs, 5 madly dressed string player mashing on drums, a leader singer (Jonsi) dressed like Captain Mark Philps meets a turkey in a storm of exploding confetti, all to a sound track of feedback, mad drums and toy pianos.

Grinder man: top marks to the wildest of Nick Cave’ wildman Warren Ellis, few people can hit cymbals with maracas with such menace.

Elbow: Humanly brilliant as ever; as predicted “one day like this” is the feel good hit of the summer
The House of Love: a poem to beautifully lost chances
The Breeders: Cheery low-fi and endearing ramshackled fun.
Simon Armitage: funny and engaging and he finished with my poem of the year.
Milton Jones: Just plain funny
Interpol's NYC in the rain
Bunkhouse boys: surf twanging suited and booted music.
Great wooded location: do you hear rustling in the hedgerow
Nice seated area: where you can hang around late at night having a pint, putting the world to rights
Absolut Raspberri vodka: it grows on you and then warms your cockles.


Downsides
The random rain showers.
Julian Cope’s rotten self deluded show:
30 mins. late and then he only did 2 songs and spent the rest of the time ranting about paganism wearing a Nazi-looking cap
A lack of brown sauce at the breakfast stall
People with cameras waving them in front of you when you trying to watch bands

Having to go back to work

Sauce, nuts and sprinkles......

You just can't lick'em

What could be better than a 99 on a hot day well may be cider lolly, but we won’t get cute?

A while ago I started a little flickr group “Giant Plastic Ice cream cones”. We are a select bunch 19 members and rising. This week the delightfully monikered “Kitten’s Arse” posted a number of Brighton based pics including this collision of ace British traditional fare e.g. a Wimpy and a 99.

I won’t go on or else I’ll slip into sub Ian Sinclair psyco-geopgraphy but mapping the position of every GPIC may yet tell us more about this occasionally sunny little island than perhaps we at first thought!!!!

Last call for Xmas pics

Here's the last few Xmassy pics.
Christmas LightsSomerset house bauble

Sushi restaurant light Holborn

Angel of the North?

Damn I already sent my letter to Santa...

What about my old 78's?

Help they've escaped from Brighton.....

End of the pier show

Here's the last few Brighton pics I took on the pier. It was lovely day made better because they were playing Telstar on the PA as we walked around.

the scariest ride in the uk ?Bling!


Never by art on holiday

Brighton rocks!

Hopefully this won't be disrespectful considering my last post but here's my homage to Bernd & Hilla Becher. We went to Brighton yesterday and the place is full of plastic giant ice cream cones!

This montage was inspired partly by the 99 below ( and partly by my love of giant plastic food related advertising!). Looks like a fairly normal 99, cone, flake, ice cream. Yes, but notice the curved mounds of ice crean not your usual sharp ridges. The reason for this (sorry I got this second hand, thanks R) is that it comes frozen as whole, not out of machine but all in one from the fridge. It was delish but my heart is saddened that Britain's seaside tea stall staff are so de-skilled that they can't make a "fresh" 99.

Monday 23rd Update:
R (Britain's 8 th Best Mini Golfer) has just pointed out that the "real" 99 I'm holding looks less real than the giant plastic ones. I can assure you it was tasty in that mr softie way and even the cone was crisp!