Welcome to Shrewsbury!

These were spotted at the Bellvue when we went to that hot bed of trouble Shrewsbury to see a charity gig/Glastonbury warm up of The Wombats/Pippettes/Holloways/CSS. Good gig all around



As Gareth said "No Trainers, No Baseball Hats, No Woolen Hats No atmosphere"


This is my favourite bit. The way I read this you can chain smoke, swear and disrespect the furniture after 6 o-clock as long as you have your Mum and Dad with you.

Better Safe Than Sorry

Spotted at the BBC Gardeners World, Good Homes, Good Food show at Birmingham NEC :-)

Playing with Mystrands and my Phone

I started this blog really for myself and to explore the capabilities of my Phone a Nokia N95. I was paticularly keen to get a phone that had a good web package as ebay, etc is banned at work and I wanted access to email on the go. As soon as I saw the blurb for the N95 I coveted it and eventually got it on a t-mobile web and walk package.

It had a decentish Camera (I've never owned a Digital Camera myself, I leave it to Mrs Wavey), great MP3 capabilities and was alright for Video, podcasts, etc, etc.

Next stop w.as trying to stretch it including blogging from the phone and trying out bleeding edge applications, including Mystrands.

Mystrands allows you to play your music, and as doing so, can catalogue what you are listening too, let you know who else has listend to it, get recommendations of other tracks you would like and put you in touch with a community of like minded people.

See the Mystrands promo youtube thingymajig below.



I couldn't get it to work at first, but a quick email and I was allowed the beta version for the phone and was up and running. I also installed Mystrands on my home PCs. Thne results are quite impressive, and although I have a few questions, gripes and ideas for improvement I am enjoying using it. The 'charts' on this blog come from code generated in mystrands and lets me know what I have been listening to on my Phone and PC. There are other groovey little applications in the Mystrands Labs, such as maps of recommendation to play with as well.

I may add more, once I have fed back my coments to Mystrands and made sure I understand the capability better, but if you have a decent web plan, and diverse music tastes it is well worth a play.

http://www.mystrands.com/Download look for Mystrands Social Player for Symbian.

Royal Festival Hall re-opening at Southbank

Saturday 9th June - This weekend to celebrate the re-opening of London's Royal Festival Hall which apparently had been shut for restoration for a couple of years. There was lots on over the Weekend and we had a couple of Hours to spare before catching our Train home on Saturday so popped down for a look.

The first thing that grabbed us as we got close was the London Eye which we saw from a different angle coming from Waterloo. I just cannot believe that originally it was planned only to keep it for a year or two. Were they mad, it's a great feature?

As we got nearer we started to spot the Anthony Gormley Figures on top of the buildings. They looked fantastic and I wish we had had time to actually go and see the exhibition, but we didn't.

The place was teaming and we arrived to hear the last notes of the Bollywood Brass Band. Walking through the throngs past old cars and routemaster buses, through an allotment (!) we go up to the fountain 'Appearing Rooms' by Dannish Artist Jeppe Hain. It is basically a square fountain subdivided into four further square rooms. Different areas of the fountains turn on and off randomly allowing people to walk from one room to another without getting wet.

In reality on a busy hot Saturday during the opening celebrations of the Royal Festival Hall it is a perfect excuse to get wet and cool down.

All immense fun.



Someone I was pleased to see was modern day folkie, Londoner and all round good bloke Billy Bragg sound checking for a free Busker Set (one of several performances he gave that weekend). Below you can see him improvising around Goodnight Irene (I didn't know he was a Gashead) whilst his sound man tries to both listen in the optimal audience position and adjust soundlevels on the soundboard behind the stage. Shortly after this Billy did a mainly covers set of Busker standards that he used to do at the tube stations, etc in his youth.

Hammer House of Horror and James Bond

Hammer House of Horror and James Bond
Originally uploaded by WaveyDavey001

07 June 2007 - With the announcement recently that the Hammer House brand and archive had been bought by a consortium that planned to raise it from the dead, it was off to Highgate Cemetery and a tour of the older, more overgrown Western Cemetery (the cemetery is split into an eastern and western section). Besides the weather was nice and Mrs Wavey and I had talked about going to Highgate Cemetery for some time.

I had fun here trying the Nokia N95s camera settings, in paticular using the Sepia setting to try and capture that Hammer House of Horror look. I was therefore quite surprised to come across a far more modern grave, that of Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko who was buried right on the main path of the tourist trail possibly a move to ensure he and his allegations stay in the public eye.

Lots of interesing stories and tales on the tour, including visiting graves of several famous people including the writer of the first Lesbian Novel whos catacomb is always adorned with fresh flowers still.

More photos at my Flickr page

Bling Art?

Today we went to see the new Damien Hirst exhibition Beyond Belief which is split across the White Cube Galleries in Masons Yard and Hoxton Square.



The White Cube - Masons Yard

Damien Hirst is often called things like "Shock Artist" or "Enfant Terrible of the Art World" but as that doesn't really bother me (hey I thought the K-Foundation burning a Million was Art) I was interested in seeing whether I would actually like anything.

First up was our timed tickets to see the centre piece of the exhibition 'For the Love of God', or as everyone else would know it the skull with the diamonds in it. After queuing to confirm our tickets, and having our bags searched we were led upstairs in a group of ten monitored by security cameras. After depositing our bags we were ushered into a pitch black room to get our 3 minutes of wonder with the Skull. Only the skull was lit and it showed off the 8,000 plus diamonds to perfection.

I have to say it was beautiful to look at and I'd recommend anyone in the area to go and have a look. I wouldn't want the responsibility of owning it though.

We also had a good look at the rest of the exhibition across both galleries which consisted mainly of 3 things. First were the almost photographic paintings surrounding the birth of his son (his wife must be very understanding). These were well executed but didn't do much for me. However they could shut up the pub bores who claim that Modern artists can't paint.

Next up were the series of large paintings of cancerous cells, that looked really lovely and decorative from afar, but on closer inspection were very textured with paint and additives that included broken glass, scalpels and hair. There is something quite unsettling about thinking that the painting would make a good basis for a nice wallpaper before thinking about what it actually depicts.

Finally there are the animals or bits of animal suspended in formaldehyde that everyone knows about. This included Sheep in Prayer, Fish a dissected Shark and two Cow front ends arranged so that you can walk through the Doctor Doolittle Layout. These were actually a bit better than I thought they would be with my favourite being the heart with a Dagger through it with Doves wings that looked just like a 3D real-life depiction of a familiar tattoo.

I'm sure it has been written about in a much more flowery way, but basically the exhibition is all about Life, Death and God pretty much the basis for most art and music.

I'm glad I went.

wholefoods market opening day

Today was the opening of American chain Wholefoods Markets 'flagship' and only UK store in Kensington High Street so we decided to join the beautiful set, (some people clearly dressed up to be seen here, and go see what all the fuss was about.

Wholefoods Market has been much talked about with one report on the BBC suggesting that it will change the face of Supermarkets in the UK. It may be no coincidence that Sainsbo's has been advertising its British Produce quite a lot recently, or that there were people on Stilts outside M&S in Kensington handing out competition entries to entice you in the store where posters emphasised how much fresh organic produce they did (I won a Fruit Salad which isn't exactly like winning the lottery).

Anyway, the store itself was like a giant New York Deli crossed with a department store food hall (and London has plenty of them). There were Bakeries, A Cheese monger, Fresh Fruit and more kinds of Olive Oil than you could shake a bread stick at. Amongst the eggs I spotted one so huge I'm guessing it was an Ostrich Egg.

Also downstairs were the Deli style counters allowing you to box up a variety of hot and cold foods all paid for by weight. Not everything was labelled and although I cant remember the price per 100g (or whatever) I'm guessing that the food would be bloody expensive, but i doubt that most shoppers would give a flying fig (you could buy them too).

There were no ready meals as such, but you could make up your own from the vast array of pre-cooked foods and no-doubt throw a wonderful dinner party if you could use a microwave.

Upstairs there were a huge number of seats to take your boxed up deli stuff, or you could order Champagne and Oysters, Mezze, Dim Sum, etc or pick up a pint of organic ale or cider from its in-house 'Pub' (actually just another Counter. Off course you will enjoy your food and drink whilst listening to the DJ spinning his decks in the corner (how frigging trendy eh).

Although there were lots of Organic Foods and stuff from local producers (check out the cheese) there was masses of stuff that would have covered a huge number of food miles (unless Papayas, Kiwis, etc are all strangely in season now). There were only about half a dozen English wines on sale.

To my mind there was probably far too much choice available, with less emphasis on being Green and Organic than you being seen and ending brassic.

Later in the day I had a look at a branch of Fresh and Wild (part of the same company) and with less choice and less poseurs I thought it far better a shop.