Sign with socks

I like this, which I photoed this afternoon in my local laundrette:

I like the photo it makes, and I like the thing itself. What I think I like about the thing itself is that it suggests to me that someone is putting an effort into this laundrette, like they care about it and intend for it to stick around. In recent years, this places has seemed temporary, uncared for, intended for closure. The above sign with socks suggests to me that the laundrette won’t be closing any time very soon. Which I am very glad about.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Talking with – and without – a microphone

I like doing podcasts, and have recently resumed doing this. The difference between these and earlier efforts is that I am not making the mistake of trying to be the interviewer, a role which I have learned, the hard way, that I am utterly unsuited to.

I do not, however, like doing podcasts because I assume that I will reach a huge audience with my brilliant insights and opinions. Rather is it that I deepen my friendships with the people I share the microphone with. The first is a mere outside chance. The second is pretty much guaranteed to happen.

Although neither I nor any of the other people whom I podcast with assumes that we will reach a huge audience, we know that we probably will reach some sort of audience, probably very tiny, of friends and acquaintances and general passers-by, and that means that we had better say things we have thought about and which we mean and which are worth saying. We need to be at our conversational best, just in case.

Compare that with two or three of us just chatting in a pub or an eatery or in one of our homes, but with no microphone on. The level of conversational intensity, so to speak, is, in those circumstances, far lower.

Almost all of my renewed podcasting activity has been with Patrick Crozier. I recall with particular pleasure the first of these recent efforts that we did about World War 1. Who else has listened in? I have no idea. But I listened. He listened. I can listen again, and I have, more than once, because so many interesting things, I think, got talked about.

More recently, I took part in a group podcast on the subject of freedom of speech, alongside Jordan Lee, Bruno Nardi and Tamiris Loureiro. On that occasion I can be sure that others were listening, because there was a room semi-full of people, listening, right there, in the Two Chairmen, where Libertarian Home meetings now all seem to happen.

The microphone that Bruno placed in our midst was distinguished by its size and its striking appearance. I photoed it:

That photo, for me, illustrates the bigness of the difference that a microphone makes to a conversation. Jordan, Bruno and Tamiris are all slightly better friends of mine now than they would have been if we’d not done this.

Why then, do I not switch on a microphone during my Last Friday of the Month meetings? Maybe I will start doing this. But for now, I believe that a roomful of people, assembled to hear a particular person speak on a particular subject, achieves that same heightened level of attention and conversational concentration that a microphone achieves for a smaller group of people who are talking amongst themselves.

It is also helpful for speakers to be absolutely sure that their talks won’t go straight to the www, and that means that they can confidently take an early shot at a new subject, with all the errors, hesitations and confusions that might occur. Ideas need to be nurtured and shaped and polished, and that is far easier to do if such early efforts are not being bugged.

This Friday, I have another of my Last Friday meetings. Dominic Frisby will be doing an early dry-run version of his Financial Game Show, which will be having a run of performances for real at this year’s Edinburgh Festival. I’m pretty sure that me threatening to switch on a microphone during this out-of-town preliminary try-out version, so to speak, would have been a deal-breaker.

There’ll be another early version for this show at the King’s Head, Crouch End, on May 22nd. I attended the very first outing of it at the same venue last Monday, and I can report that I and the rest of the small crowd had a lot of fun. As Frisby reports at the bottom of this piece in MoneyWeek:

We had fun. My MoneyWeek colleague, Ben Judge, turned out to be the winner, prompting many in the audience to make accusations of an inside job.

Yes. This was a pity, because actually what came across rather well was how imperfect the knowledge of financial experts often is, and how other people, with direct experience of whatever it is, often know more than them.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Two adverts for the Pauline Quirke Academy of Performing Arts

I’d never heard of it, until, yesterday, at a bus stop near near Finsbury Park tube station, I observed, and photoed, this:

This advert didn’t impress me. I actually laughed. The Pauline Quirke Academy. Give over. You’re ‘avin’ a laugh. I did anyway.

Later, I saw the same advert in the tube:

This did impress me.

I think it was that the back of a bus is a tacky advertising spot, used by tacky enterprises that you have never heard of and will never hear of again. Ergo, the PQA must be tacky and will soon disappear. The tube is not such a tacky spot to advertise. Ergo, the PQA is not so tacky after all.

I wish the PQA every success. PQA website.

Pauline Quirke is best known to me for doing this. And to most others, if the internet is anything to go by.

Might someone else who saw both adverts have been more impressed by the bus advert than by the tube advert?

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Excellent airplane photo

I love this:

Not because of the flowers. Because of the airplane. Well, the flowers and the airplane.

It was taken by the same lady as did that outstanding selfie, that I reposted here on Saturday.

I didn’t find the above photo by looking for more photos by her on purpose. It just turned up on my twitter feed and I liked it, before I even knew who did it.

If cropped like that, well cropped. If taken like that, then even better taken.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The centre of London from Alexandra Palace ten years ago

Yes, ten years ago to the day. April 23rd, 2008:

Memo to self: Go again to Alexandra Palace, and try to photo the exact same view, to illustrate what has changed.

No Cheesegrater. The Gherkin stands in something resembling splendid isolation.

No Shard. Just to the right of middle tower of the three dark Barbican (I think) towers on the right, we see Guy’s Hospital, in warmly lit concrete. The Shard is now right next to that.

That’s just for starters. Those are the two biggest changes. But there’d surely be others. The Gherkin is now almost surrounded by huge stuff.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Super selfie taken on a sky slope

I reckon that, if there were some kind of competition for selfie photography, this selfie would, if entered, be a definite contender for a medal spot:

I am fond of arguing that you should judge a new technology or communicational device or software application, not by its merely average, everyday uses, but by its most significant uses. So long as the average uses do no great harm, then if the highly significant uses are very good, that’s proof of the extreme goodness of the thing. Don’t judge telephones only by all the silly but harmless chitchat they transmit, judge them by those life-saving 999 calls. Don’t judge Skype by people just gibbering at random even though there’s no big problem with that, judge it in particular by how it connects people with relatives who are dying on the other side of the world. Judge it when doctors use it to do long-distance and life-saving diagnoses, or when an absent father, working abroad, is able to keep in touch with his kids back home.

The same applies to selfies. Most of them don’t do any harm, even if they aren’t great works of art. But some are terrific. See above.

As you can see very clearly, this one was taken with a mobile phone. Look closely, and you’ll see that there is a perfect shadow of the photoer, just to the right of the mobile phone.

Found it here.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Trafalgar Square lions

When you think of lions in Trafalgar Square, you think of lions like this one, as photoed by me, in January 2015, at the Charlie Hebdo demo:

But one of my favourite lion in Trafalgar Square photos, which I took in April of 2014 but never got around to putting here until now, was this one:

I think it’s the leather handbag that makes this so good. This is a lion quietly going about her business (it feels like a her despite the mane), not conquering the world or even aggressively promoting anything. She’s just out shopping. She does have a rather startled expression on her face, but that’s because she’s being photoed. She’s not angry you understand, just surprised that anyone should be interested in photoing her. “Ooh, hello dear! Are you photoing me? I hope I’m looking my best.” And maybe a bit scared that I might have designs on her bag.

More seriously, I like to photo, and to show here, faces where face recognition is not an issue.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Getting to know Mrs Smith

Via Scott Adams, I encountered this, from someone called Peter Smith:

Been chatting to my wife while Twitter was down. She seems nice.

But what does she now think of him?

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The Castalian String Quartet at the Wigmore Hall last night

Yes, last night the Castalian String Quartet played late Haydn (op 76 nos. 1, 2 and 3) at the Wigmore Hall. Wonderful.

Often, when I watch string quartets in action I feel a bit sorry for the second violin and the viola. Not with these players. Even the most innocuous and repetitious little chords, chugging away in the background, were made to come alive. Every note, every phrase, especially every chord, had been thought about, but unlike with some of the latest string quartets, the result was not, despite my early fears, any excessive yanking around of the tempo and general over-emphasis on passing detail at the expense of the bigger musical story and the longer musical line. There was plenty of detail, but all in the service of the pieces as a whole.

Here they are, soaking up the applause at the end:

And here they are taking a bow:

I was going to call this posting The Castalian String Quartet take a bow. But when string instrumentalists take a bow, is that bow to rhyme with how (the lowering of the head forwards when being applauded), or is it bow to rhyme with go (the thing they each use to play their various instruments)? The English language is, to borrow a phrase I recently heard being used to describe a rather over-enthusiastic expert on something or other, a minefield of information.

Whenever I really enjoy a live concert, I tend to rootle around afterwards in my CD collection to see what recordings I have of the music I just saw being played. While concocting this posting, I had this cd on in the background. Also wonderful.

I’m guessing from all the microphones that were to be seen last night, which my photos only show a few of, that there may soon be a cd of this concert. I hope so.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Me and Me talk on the phone

This morning I get a phone call:

Me: Hello.

Voice at the Other End: Hello.

Me: Who is this?

Voice at the Other End: Me.

That is such a perfectly idiotic answer. And such a perfect joke, provided only that it isn’t happening to me or to you. It should be in an American sitcom, and I am sure it has been.

The subsequent conversation included this:

Me: I am going to blog this.

My thanks to Me.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog