Manics at Shepherd's Bush

I went to see the Manic Street Preachers at the SBE - first time they've toured for a while - well certainly first time I'd seen them for ages anyhow! I'd been playing their latest album heavily so I would know most of the songs, but they did a great gig of old and new stuff so it didn't matter too much.

They played my current fave, which is 'Your Love Alone is Not Enough' - absolutely fantastic. You can listen to it on their myspace site here. They ended with 'Design for Life' which is one of my all time faves of theirs - how could I not love a song which starts with "Libraries gave us power"...!

And the great thing about them is that they look so normal. They've been around for years, and James Dean Bradfield just looks like a middle aged man - brilliant.

After the gig we met up with a friend of Divya's who looks after gig merchandising so I also managed to get a free t-shirt and some very cool badges as well - not a bad evening all up!

More books!

I've added some more books to my LibraryThing as well - at long last. I'm very proud to say that one of the books I added I appear to be the only person who has catalogued it! And somewhat unsuprisingly, my last Harry Potter book has been catalogued by over 16,000 people...

Still got my graphic novels to do yet :-)

Tragic Life Stories

I have to admit I've noticed the plethora of these books coming out over the last couple of years - you know, the triumph over extreme tragedy/hardship/abused childhood etc. But in WH Smiths today (bit like Whitcoull's - in fact they owned Whitcoull's for a while) I was shocked to see they now have that as a category for their books. So in addition to Crime, Romance, Horror etc you now have 'Tragic Life Stories'.

I find that a very sad and very scary inditement of the world we live in.

A very wet Bank Holiday weekend...

So the UK's last long weekend until the end of August (gulp!) is drawing to a close, and given the lovely days we've been having until Friday its been like another country! Started raining on Saturday and hasn't really stopped since.

Quite pleased tho really - there is no compulsion to get out and do anything when the weather is crap so I've had 3 days of extreme laziness and vege-ing out. Including starting to watch the series The Green Wing which I've borrowed from a friend. Absolutely brilliant - very typical C4 comedy so maybe not to everyone's taste but I've found myself laughing out loud. I also took myself off to the cinema to see Spiderman 3 - again not to everyone's taste, but now that Pirates 3 has opened I thought it would be the quieter of the two. And its not bad - not great, and could be shorter (does a superhero movie really need to be over 2 hours long...?) but it filled a wet, Sunday afternoon!

Also went out to the wilds of South East London on Sat night for a drink with Finbarr at
The Clockhouse - his version of a 'local' pub. Not so local for me, Owen and Julia, particularly given that the rain was chucking down as we walked for what felt like miles and miles to get to it...

Wilco, 22 May 2007, Shepherds Bush Empire (8)

Wilco, 22 May 2007, Shepherds Bush Empire (8)
Originally uploaded by Megan Shields.

Wilco, 22 May 2007, Shepherds Bush Empire (1)

Wilco, 22 May 2007, Shepherds Bush Empire (1)
Originally uploaded by Megan Shields.

Wonderful Wilco

So I went to the second night of Wilco's two night gig at the Shepherd's Bush Empire last night - how many ways can I rave about it?? All kudos to Kevin (also known as "I'm your biggest fan Jeff") for letting me take his spare ticket for the show - his second show I might add. He also went to see them on Sunday night as well. He is not named IYBFJ for nothing!

They were just fantastic. And as I think I've mentioned before Wilco do have ground to make up for! It was quite strange to be stood back in the Empire watching Wilco, and having such a completely different experience. Kevin got to see them do 'Be Not So Fearful' on Sunday night, and I live in eternal hope that they will play Lonely 1, but I still haven't seen it. They did however finish with Woody Guthrie's California Stars from the Wilco/Billy Bragg album Mermaid Avenue, which is one of my favourites so I was pretty happy at the end :-). It has taken a long time but I think I've almost forgiven Wilco for that first experience of them...

And they played for almost a full two hours - almost unheard of nowadays. So I took my camera for Kevin and as well as the photo blogged there are a few more on Flickr. Not great photos - but they are my first gig ones!

Another plug for one of my fave blogs...

I've really been enjoying reading the Crockatt & Powell blog recently - I think I wrote about this ages ago.... Sadly I don't get to go into the shop that often now as I work in our other building.

I'm particularly impressed with their Harry Potter offer - but you'll have to read about it to find out what it is! Suffice to say, that I had a small part in also getting Ernst & Young involved...

John Simm - the Master!

Or should that be Sam (Life on Mars) or Elling - the play I went to this week with Jax. He was absolutely brilliant in it - I didn't see John Simm at all - just his character. The theatre was pretty small as well (probably only about 100 people) so it was very intimate. Very funny, and while all the actors were good, I did think John Simm was the fabbest :-).

I also found this article from The Sun (a quality paper...) that has reported that he is to play The Master in Dr Who. How cool - David Tennant vs John Simm. What a show that will be!

Lunching weekends

I had a weekend of lunches - on Saturday Nicola, Mhairi and Jackie came to mine for lunch. Very stressful time for me as I'm not a particularly confident cook, so I find entertaining not that relaxing! And with various dietary requirements to be catered for it became even more challenging! However all seemed to go well and as my guests didn't leave until about 9pm I think I can safely say the day was a success!

Sunday I met Julia and we went for lunch at the revamped Dog & Fox in Wimbledon. It has recently reopened and has gone non-smoking ahead of the law change in July so it was great. No horrid smoky clothes at the end, and it was quite quiet as I guess more people were going to the pubs that still allow smoking!

Has it been that long???

Here's a wee round-up of what I've been doing (that is of any vague interest!) since my last post...

Very influential

I've just spent the last three days at the Kettering Hotel & Spa on an influencing course for work. It was really good - I learnt a lot, and as always, more about myself. The hotel looks fab from the website and it was pretty good - on the inside. But it is literally sited on a roundabout so there wasn't anywhere to go outside! I did manage to for a swim on one of the days though which I'm quite proud of!

Wivenhoe wandering, Renoir and the British Museum on a Bank Holiday weekend...

I went out to visit a friend from work, Jax, who lives in Wivenhoe - deep in the wilds of Essex. A bit like going out west in Auckland (but different somehow...). Although most of the day was spent shopping in the neighbouring town on Colchester. I so rarely shop with other girlies so I had a very successful afternoon, acquiring some new colourful tops for work (as opposed to my usual black and brown...)!

Sunday I met up with Nicola and we went to see the Renoir exhibition at the National Gallery. This is sponsored by EY so we used my freebie tickets - quite good as I think we were both a bit underwhelmed with the whole event. Some good ones in there, but it wasn't amazing, and judging by the crowd it didn't seem to be super busy either.

Then we trotted off to the British Museum - my first time for years. I think Nicola was a bit horrified I hadn't been since the Great Court was finished... We went to see La Bouche du Roi - art considering the slave ships that used to come out to England. The accompanying video was also amazing - showing how the petrol smugglers of Benin take their lives into their hands by expanding plastic containers over the open flame so they can get more petrol in to them, then they strap about 10 of these containers on to the motorbikes and off they go... A very high fatality rate unsuprisingly.

On the way out we wandered through the Egyptian room which was way cool!! I hadn't been that keen but Nicola forced me and I loved it. Sadly the museum was closing so it literally was a walk through. Fantastic though - and I'll be back quite soon me thinks!

So what was I looking for?

Aaah - that would be 'wilfing' - although technically it should be spelt 'wwilfing'...

But apparently that is what the British are spending an awful lot of time doing on the web - getting distracted and heading off on many different directions as we surf.

I have to admit I'm a bit guilty of this... but this is something that I've seen mentioned loads over the last couple of weeks. So yet another new word enters the lexicon - as we all head off to carry on wilfing...!

James

James, Brixton Academy, London, 26th April 2007 #21
Originally uploaded by Guildford Ghost.

This is actually from the gig the night before, but there aren't any decent photos of the Friday night one...

James - a band from the past...

Kevin and I went to see James on Friday - as good as they used to be! They sort of disbanded a few years ago, but I suspect they got back together again for the money (as so many bands are doing these days...). But we always used to enjoy going to see them - the lead singer is just a livewire on stage so he always gives a great performance. It wasn't too much of a 'best hits' performance which pleased Kevin - being more of the music afficionado than me...

It inspired me to check my gig tickets when I got home tho, and I only had one other ticket for James in my book - but I know I've seen them loads more than that!