Went to the Lord of the Rings exhibition at the Science Museum1 at last, and it's over-priced-merchandise-TASTIC! Good to see the costumes and the props up close, to see the quality of them and the detail that went into them. Wasn't overly impressed by the much hyped cave troll model, and I thought generally there were too many things made purely for the exhibition. Why have this stuff in a museum? Also a few bits were missing, as they're being used in the third film apparently. I'm just nit-picking though, it was a nice afternoon out. We got a picture taken using the technique were Gandalf and Frodo are sat on the cart together, one where I am huge and Clare is small, and one the other way round, will scan in and post ASAP.
In the mean time, here are some other pictures to illustrate the sheer joy of my life. The first is a picture I found on the camera the other day, there was a whole virtual roll of virtual film taken at the Camera Obscura gig at the Water Rats, mostly pictures of me, taken by me, in the mirrors in the toilets, no idea why and I don't remember why I took them. This one Clare took, though again not sure why I'm holding two pints and stood at the top of the staircase up to the dressing room.
The other one isn't clear, but it illustrates one of my weird obsessions, which is the parking along Manor Road. Someone's made a placard saying "we need our parking space" and put it outside their house, and today the road is mostly clear, apart from a van parked outside their house. Maybe the council are planning to double-yellow the whole street? I hope so.
Listening to some Darkness rarities that I'd forgotten I had, including How Dare You Call This Love, a smashing tune, warming me up for the Hammersmith gig, which I'm muchly looking forward to.
Found my pension while we were cleaning the office the other day, well maybe... it's a demo of the Darkness EP, with a note from their manager, from 2001... it's PROOF that I was into them before you, and surely it will be priceless one day? Hmmm...
Did a nice little crawl of The Defoe (6X), The Shakespeare] (Old Bob, a new one on me, very good, strong and chocolatey), and then our first visit to The Yucatan (no real beers, but a couple of pool tables, man alive did we both play like a demons or what?) before heading to Anglo Asian, now definitely my favourite curry house in the area. Picked up a new copy of N16 magazine2, a good read, though how annoying is their very own Polly Filler?
I don't know where you spent the summer...
Where I spent the rest of the ruddy year, at home and at work. Is it really common to take a season off? Oh to be rich. Anyway, a good read apart from that page, and apparently their website2 is expanding to become a one stop reference guide to Stokey... HA, will they be able to compete with this site? I don't think so, the site's not updated with the new issue of the mag yet, they're strictly an old media operation still, they'd be better off taking this format I feel and letting the mag grow from the site, instead of vice versa. Still if they're making money from the mag who am I to judge.
Read an update in the national press about the tragic fire at the Prince of Wales, the mother of the boys who died has been arrested for arson. More news here3.
On a happier and more trivial note we saw Stewart Lee and Kevin Eldon on Church Street - Stewart looks like he's been eating Kevin's food, he's turning into Marlon Brando while the boy from Gosport is looking distinctly underfed.
Signing off to clean the bathroom, blee.
💬 N16 Mag
⬅️ ah there's an extra 2600 went on sale :: Programming things to check out ➡️
Paul Clarkeʼs blog - I live in Hythe near Folkestone, Kent. Married + dad to 2, I am a full-stack web engineer, + I do js / Node, some ruby, other languages ect ect. I like pubs, running, eating, home automation + other diy jiggery-pokery, history, tree stuff, TV, squirrels, pirates, lego, and TIME TRAVEL.