Category: Friends

A Brunel bridge seat and the Brunel museum

So I went looking for interesting new bridges, as I do from time to time, but found nothing interesting that I didn’t know about. Like I say, the bridge news these days is when they collapse.

So I gave up on bridges, and instead thought about doing a posting about the Brunel Museum, which I visited on Saturday. There is, of course, a website. But there is also a Wikipedia entry. And look what I found there. That’s right, it’s the Royal Albert Bridge, Saltash, made smaller and sittable upon, with a train:

I’m pretty sure that, while waiting to be told about the nearby Brunel tunnel under the Thames (set in motion by Brunel’s dad Marc), I and my two pals were sitting sipping our drinks within a few feet of this bridge-bench. But it was dark, and I only found out about it just now.

Here are two things I did see:

On the left, a bust of Marc Brunel, in the little museum. On the right, a photo of son Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the famous photo with the huge chains behind him, projected onto the extremely grubby and deranged wall of the place where we listened to a lecture about the tunnel. The guy is saying: “Well, you just can’t get the walls these days.”

No, he wasn’t. He was saying something I didn’t catch because I wasn’t concentrating hard enough to make it out. That being because the acoustics of this strange vertical cylinder in the ground were about as reverberationally bad as acoustics are able to be, and I could only make out about one in three of the words spoken by the guy, despite him being an actor who enunciated very clearly, and despite him standing about four yards from where we were sitting.

But despite all of the above, it was a fun evening. Basically (a) because of the company, and (b) because now, when people ask me if I know anything about the Brunel Museum in Bermondsey, I can now say: Yes. I’ve been there. And because I had fun photoing.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Lady photoers holding other cameras beside the ones they’re using

Today, in search of something worth displaying here, I chanced upon a directory of photos of photoers who were to be seen holding more than one camera. I gathered these photos together some time in 2010, but then never got around to doing anything with them. Almost all of these photos seem to have been taken in and around Parliament Square and Westminster Bridge, my most usual locale for photoing photoers, then as now.

Here are some of them now:

These photos all date from 2005 and 2006. I was not as fussed about hiding faces in those faraway times, but as you can see, I was making some effort in this direction, at any rate enough of an effort to give me plenty of faceless photoers, so to speak, to choose from.

As to why these ladies are holding another camera, this was usually because they were in a group, and were helping to ensure that each photo-op was registered in every camera owned by anyone in the group, and in particular that each camera owner had a decent number of photos of themselves. (In the above photos, in other words, we are often observing selfies being taken.) Often, I would photo ladies (ladies especially seem to hunt photos in a pack) who were taking the same photo two or even several times, with two or several cameras, one after the other, with the inactive cameras hanging down from them in a clump. Sadly, there are no ladies to be seen here with more than two cameras on the go.

Often one of the group would ask me to take a photo of all of them, with one of their cameras, and sometimes with more than one in succession, so that they had at least one photo or some photos with everyone included. It’s all I can do to make any sense of my own cameras, let alone anyone else’s, but I would usually do my best.

It could also be that some of these ladies are taking photos with cameras supplied to them by absent friends or partners. Remember, in these faraway times, communicating photos from this camera to that camera was harder than it is now, and if doable, a lot more cumbersome. How much easier for it to get my desired photo in my camera, even if I myself didn’t take it!

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A view from the Great Pagoda in Kew Gardens

Yesterday, GodDaughter 2 and I spent the afternoon in Kew Gardens. Which is a lot bigger and a lot bigger of a deal than I realised.

The high point of our day, literally as well as metaphorically, was our visit to the Great Pagoda. And not just the Great Pagoda in a general way. We climbed up the stairs to the top of the Great Pagoda.

There were views, of which this one was, of course, my favourite:

Here is variant of that same view. Note how the lighting has changed somewhat. The Walkie Talkie remains as as strikingly lit as ever, and it remains the star of the show, but the Wheel is a bit different (as is the Waterloo Crane Cluster that reaches up above it). It was one of those bright intervals with scattered showers days:

I know what you’re thinking. Not very clear photos. Rather vague and blurry. All true, and you are definitely entitled to your opinion, if that is what it is.

But in my defence, and in defence also of my camera, take a look at the same view, minus the zoom.

The third of the above photos being a lot closer to what I merely saw than the first two are.

The vast expanse of greenery in the foreground is … Kew Gardens. That photo was photoed half way up the Pagoda, as soon as I realised that this view was happening.

Maybe a compromise is in order. Maybe this is the best photo, with some zoom, but not the maximum allowed:

Sadly, though, that lighting effect hadn’t yet occurred. That was one I took earlier

As I keep saying, my camera has far better eyesight than I do, and I am afraid the gap is growing.

Something else that continues to grow is my admiration for the Walkie Talkie. When lit as it is in the first two photos above, and when it is seen from a great distance, it is the most beautiful City of London Big Thing of them all, I think.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Photoer shadows

From the I Just Like It directory:

That’s GodDaughter 1 on the left there. We were on one of our photowalks, in August 2013, in other words just under five years ago. I was looking for something dated, perhaps because temporary, and there was quite a lot of stuff in that part of London, Olympic Games territory, that must look very different now. But that snap grabbed my attention, and I hope it tickles yours.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A friend in front of a strange lighting effect

I took this somewhat over a week ago, at a friend’s, of another friend:

I took several versions of this shot. The above was the first and best version, once I had realised that I could crop it to include everything about the shot that mattered and remove everything that didn’t, basically by losing a chunk at the bottom of my original. I tend to resist cropping. There is something (to me) pure, even perfect, about the image exactly as it comes out of the camera, no cropping, no enhancing, no nothing. But this time it made for a definite improvement, I think.

The subject of the photo (perhaps mutual friends of her and me will recognise who it is (and also where it was taken)) put it on her Facebook page, which is very flattering.

She being an Instagrammer used only a square version, which may or may not have been an aesthetic preference. Personally, I find the patterns made on the wall by that strange planetary light fitting very intriguing, especially in a photo, which, by eliminating all context and knowledge of what is going on makes it seem all the more strange. That’s the thing about photos. All you see is the photo.

And talking of how others may recognise her, I find it intriguing how very recognisable she is, to me anyway.

In her version, she added some blue to the wall. To make it more weird and outdoorsy, and less specific? In general, I like it when people take my photos and play around with them. Again: very flattering.

She also said something about how her scrunched up shoulders revealed how stressed she had been lately. I never noticed that, neither when I photoed the photo, nor since. But one thing I do know, from speaking to my friend Bruce the Real Photographer, and being photoed by Bruce the Real Photographer, and from speaking to others who have been photoed by Bruce the Real Photographer, is that Real Photographers know all about things like that. Real Photographers, of the sort who photo people, are experts on human physiology. They know, for instance, how to make your face look different by making you move your body around. Had he been photoing this lady, he would have made her relax.

But I wasn’t doing a portrait; I was just snatching a fun shot, uninvited. Then once I had worked out how to crop it, I sent it to her, and asked could I put it here? She said yes, and also could she use it too. So all the niceties were observed, as is proper in this age of face recognition software and easily violated intellectual property rights. Whatever they are, exactly. In plainer English, both of us like this photo, and are happy for it to get around.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Heatwave jacket derangement syndrome

I don’t believe I am the only man to have been deranged by the heatwave in the manner I am about to describe, in fact I know that I am not, because I had one of those How-Very-True You’re-So-Right type conversations with GodDaughter2’s boyfriend, Only The Other Day, about exactly this matter.

I refer to the fact that I, and many other men, do not merely wear a jacket to fend off frigidity. We also wear it to carry stuff. It is our version of a handbag. In my case: wallet, cheque book and paying in cheques book (so I was born before you were – live with it) (both these items serve another purpose besides handling the financial instrument relics of the previous century, which is to fill up the pocket containing my wallet and stop the wallet falling out (which would be a catastrophe)), pen, purse, Old Git free London transport pass, keys, handkerchiefs, mobile phone, spectacle case with reading spectacles, spectacle case with spare camera batteries and spare SD cards (the latter for if I forget to put my regular SD card back in the camera), Disprins, cough sweets, regular sweets, eye allergy spray, and no doubt several other things I can’t now remember.

Unlike some men, I also carry an actual bag around with me on my travels, containing: a folder with paper to take notes, a shopping bag for if I shop, a camera, a book, a small bottle of fruit flavoured anti-dehydration liquid, any food I have bought, any spare garments I might need for if it gets colder, an umbrella, and even sometimes a laptop computer, on those days when I am in a mobile laptop computing sort of mood (although lately I have tended not to be in such a mood (too heavy)).

But, transferring all the clobber described in paragraph two above into the bag, and into the midst of all the clobber described in paragraph three above, is a serious derangement, not least because the bag gets far too full. For remember, what if, late at night, if the heatwave abates, I need the jacket? I have to have the jacket in the bag, just in case, even though it is far too hot to wear it and in fact, throughout the heatwave, it remained so. So, with everything now in an unfamiliar place, much of it buried under other bits of it, all the usual reflexes stop working. Nothing is any longer where it usually is. I start suffering from that frightful female syndrome of digging about inside the bag, frantically trying to find whatever it is. Which may in fact be in one of my trouser pockets, or maybe even my shirt pocket, for goodness sake. Oh God, where’s my wallet (which contains all sorts of priceless stuff which I dare not even itemise (see above))?!?! Etc..

Today, the heatwave sort of ended, as in: the weather oscillated between pleasantly warm and somewhat warmer. But unfortunately the London Underground didn’t get the email containing the link to the short-term weather forecast, and chose to remain full of the horribly hot air that it had been accumulating throughout the previous fortnight, or however long it’s been.

But the discomfort I suffered was the discomfort of wearing my jacket when it was rather hot. That I can live with.

But worse, just like the London Underground, I too found myself suffering a systemic hangover from the previous period of high temperature hell. Earlier this evening I was in a pub, and when my pubbing was done, I picked up my bag, and visited the toilet, prior to leaving. Luckily, while there, I realised that I had left my jacket on the back of the seat that I had been sitting on. I reclaimed it, seemingly unmolested by plunderers, except that … hell’s bells, my wallet wasn’t in it! It was, of course, in the bag, where I had recently been learning instead to put it.

It’ll be a few more days before I recover my usual calm and suave demeanour, when out and about.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A Jordan Peterson evening

I have just finished hosting my latest last Friday meeting. It seemed to me to go very well, despite, and arguably because of, the low turnout. The fewer people show up at a meeting, the more subtle the conversation can be. Each question can get really answered.

Tamiris Loureiro was the speaker. Unusually, she actually spoke for a shorter time than she had in mind to. Usually what happens is that a speaker assembles twenty things they want to say, and gets through about three or four of them, and speaks for twenty minutes longer than they had in mind to. She raced through hers in about twenty minutes, which left lots of time for comments and questions from the rest of us.

Her subject was Jordan Peterson. She described to him as “The Good Libertarian”, which proved interestingly provocative. Peterson spans a lot of political territory between conservative and libertarian, including classical liberalism, classical liberal being what he calls himself. Paradoxically, said Tamiris, a lot of Paterson’s political impact comes from the fact that he approaches most of the problems he tackles in a non-political way. He urges us all to take personal responsibility for our lives, rather than palming our problems off on governments. Which of course is what libertarians recommend.

What did I learn from the evening? Some of what I learned came from finally getting stuck into 12 Rules for Life, by way of preparation. I had been put off from actually reading this book by the fear that I had heard it all, in the various videos and interviews of Peterson’s that I have already heard. I feared being bored. Oh me of little faith. I really enjoyed reading it.

One of the many things about Peterson that strikes me, as I found myself saying at this evening’s meeting, is that he has a very interesting “talent stack”, to use a phrase that Scott Adams likes to use to describe successful people. Peterson has a range of intellectual skills, from digging deep into ancient religious texts and coming up with non-trivial interpretations, to being an experienced councillor of troubled people, to being interviewed on television without losing his rag (think of the Cathy Newman interview), to jousting belligerently on Twitter with the worst of them. He is a self-publicist of considerable talent, and he has deeper stuff that will stand up to being publicised. It comes, I surmise, from his belief that a man’s got to take on the most responsibility he can carry. He needs to reach as many people as he can with his redemptive messages. He shouldn’t be too modest. He should put himself about as much as he can contrive.

Next up, hearing if the recording I made – or tried to make – of the talk, and of the subsequent Q&A, is any good, as a recording I mean. I don’t usually record my meetings, but I recorded this one in order to make the event mean something if the only people present had been Tamiris and me, which for a couple of days earlier in the week looked like it might happen.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Complaining about the heat after complaining about the cold

Today’s weather:

Bloody hell. And I’m feeling it already.

Also, I just had an email from a Brazilian friend, who is doing a talk at my place tomorrow evening, and who has been suffering from the heat. It included this, about how she doesn’t like …:

… to complain about the heat after complaining so much about the cold …

But she does anyway, as do I.

Good to hear it from a Brazilian. Who probably came to live here partly because our weather doesn’t normally do this kind of thing. No doubt in Rio now, it is an equable 24 degrees C. Yes.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts Gurrelieder at the Royal Festival Hall

Yes. Last night I went to the RFH, to see and hear Esa-Pekka Salonen conduct Schoenberg’s mighty Gurrelieder, something Salonen has done at the RFH, with the same orchestra, before. GodDaughter 2 was somewhere off in the distance, singing in the chorus, and had got me a seat near the front. So although I still heard lots of seats creaking and programmes flapping and coughers coughing, I also heard Schoenberg. And only Schoenberg, when Gurrelieder got loud, as it often does.

What a piece! If all you know about Schoenberg is twelve tone discordancy, all passion spent, but on the other hand if you like how the likes of Wagner and Mahler and Debussy sound when they get really worked up, then if you’ve not done so already, you really should check out Gurrelieder. Likewise Verklarte Nacht, if you like Brahms chamber music. Schoenberg greatly admired Brahms, I believe. When GD2 told me about this Gurrelieder concert, I mentioned Verklarte Nacht to her and she tried it, and loved it.

So, what does Gurrelieder sound like? Try: Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde meets Zombie Warrior Apocalypse meets Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream turned nightmare, meets some mad Russian novel with mad drunkard clowns and with Ring Cycle theology inserted, meets (and ends with) Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony. Hence GD2 and her friends, singing in the chorus at the end.

I don’t go to many live concerts, but I am extremely glad that I went to this one, long and interval-less though it was. And there is now something particularly odd about my concert-going history. The dullest performance of a great piece of music I have ever witnessed (Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at a Prom) and the most exciting performance of a great piece (this), were both of them conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.

I think this says something both about Beethoven and about Gurrelieder. If you just play the notes, exactly right, when playing a Beethoven symphony, but are not excited by the idea of playing this piece yet again and wanting people to like it yet again, the result is totally boring. Playing the notes exactly right (which in my opinion is a much under-rated musical virtue) is Esa-Pekka Salonen’s particular speciality, so his Beethoven 9, a piece the performance of which, yet again, seemed not to interest him, was the definition of tedium. But if you play the notes, exactly right, of Gurrelieder, and if you are interested in performing it, once again, and want everyone present to be astounded, then it is astounding. It has a lot of notes, and they are really difficult to master and play, all exactly right, all together, all as loud or as quiet as they should be. Salonen made all this happen, or so it sounded to me, and was also very excited about performing this amazing piece, once again. Accordingly, the result was amazing. As I thought it probably would be, because the less well known piece that Salonen also conducted at that Prom was almost as exciting as the Beethoven 9 that followed was crushingly dull. And you are not going to supervise a performance of Gurrelieder unless you totally believe, as Esa-Pekka Salonen clearly did, that this is a piece that should be performed, once again. Too much bother. Far too much bother.

A great concert and a great occasion. I was lucky to be there. GD2 was even luckier to be actually performing in it. I trust she realises this. Early emails following the concert suggest that she does.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

BMdotcom and email problems – now sorted

No posting here yesterday, because from mid afternoon onwards this site could not be reached, either by readers or by the writer, i.e. me. Sorry about that, but all seems to be sorted now, as it had to be for me to be able to post this.

I also had email problems, and just when I really did not need them. The Sunday evening before the last Friday of the month is when I do a mass(-ish) email about my forthcoming Last Friday of the Month meeting. (This time: Prof Tim Evans on Corbyn.) But, it would seem that the emails all got through, even if replies to them were only getting back to me at around midday today.

When you have problems like this, then as soon as they’re sorted the worrisomeness graph nosedives from VERY BAD!!!! to profound happiness:

Which is always a better feeling than, logically, it deserves to be, considering that all that happened was that something bad happened and then stopped. But when badness stops, that feels very good, even if, logically, it is only things getting back to normal.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog