So I have made my first pilgrimage back to the mecca of UK environmentalist, the Centre of Alternative Technology, to carry on with my masters after a small pause of 13 months. It sort of feels like I haven’t been away - loads of interesting discussion, lectures and good veggie food and wine.
The only thing I wasn’t expecting was that the technology has moved on somewhat. I’m staying in the hostel in Corris and I can currently 13 people sat around the common room (complete with log file) using their laptops on the wireless network. There is wireless also within CAT, and the mobile phone signal seems quite strong too. I sort of miss being out of the loop but it’s also positive in that it shows communities like this have fast networks like we in the city are used to.
The walk this morning was beautiful; a lovely sunrise, mist rising off the hills and a chill in the air.
The WISE building seems to be coming along, although I’m not sure it’s gonna be finished before I finish the course next summer. I think the bad summer weather has hindered its progress
You can tell autumn is creeping along. I’ve never seen a sunflower looking so sad!
So tomorrow we are off to the sauna in Mac to investigate thermal insulation, the having lunch on the beach and a seminar in the pub. Then on Friday we’re off to look at a heliodom for our practical. Saturday I’ve gotta do a presentation. Eek! And then a party/ watching the rugby. Gonna be a good week!
Watching Ella Guru last Thursday was a much more satisfying than the other event taking place on the same day - the General Election. With Richard Caborne in our constituency there was not much chance of anything changing. He got in with a much reduced majority - might give him a kick to actually reply to his constituents emails (According to theyworkforyou.com he only responded to 17% of messages sent via FaxYourMP.com during 2004.. Which is 564th out of 590 MPs…..)
It took about 2 hours 45 minutes to get to Liverpool from Sheffield in the rush hour (how do these people cope with commuting every day… Sat in a car twiddling your fingers in amongst lanes of traffic and pollution.. what a waste). The gig was in the barfly which, luckily, was not too far from the car as a gale was blowing in from the North Sea (Sheffield’s unique micro climate lured me into a false sense of warm weather - I was only wearing a light jacket). I forget who supported Ella Guru, they were nice enough to listen to.
Ella Guru (all 8 of them) came on stage just after 10 accompanied by a huge amount of instruments. They played a range of album tracks, old tracks I’d not heard and some new stuff. The slide guitar sounded incredible, the vocals were breathtaking and some of the crazy instruments are indescribable as I don’t know what they are called. The only downside was drunken scousers talking throughout (not many and Ella Guru play very quiet songs).. I noticed the lead singer of the Coral in the crowd too.
Amazingly it only took 1 hour 20 minutes to get back. There was hardly a car on the road. I sat up til 4.30am watching Labour win the election - I don’t know why and I was knackered for the whole weekend. But I suppose it only happens every few years. I have a horrible feeling that in 4 years the country won’t be as economically rosy as Mr. Brown makes out, but time will tell.
Quite a bit of my new musical finds more recently have come from mp3 blogs. They sometimes contain a couple of (probably illegal) album tracks for you to download, as well as new and live recordings. I would argue that discovering new music is only more likely to make you go out and discover more of a band that you would never have had the opportunity of listening to. Well for starters try kingblind.com and the tofu hut. Also these 2 - Ska for the Skeptical and Bollywood for the Skeptical (Skeptical in an Alanis Morissette ‘ironic’ way I think..) - The bollywood one especially is very good.
Finally, for some great veggie restaurants, you could do worse than try these (thanks Rach!) from the Eighth Day Cafe in Manchester. I’ve never actually been there but next time I’m in Manc-ville, I’ll give it a try. We’ve had the Minestrone soup (very nice), Spinach & Potato Bake (Yes Nick it was much better than the infamous Potato Bake of Heavygate Road) and this thai soup in the last couple of weeks. All turned out very nicely indeed!
Created a Flickr account today which is where you will find a small selection of the 407 photos I took in India (most of the 407 are of elephants!). You can join and comment on the photos should you wish!
There is also some information on Transmission Sheffield about our next night on the 19th February. Also some photos of the last event on flickr!
It was a night of contrasting events yesterday when I firstly went down to the Showroom cinema to see a documentary made locally in Sheffield called “Get Over It”. The blurb said it was about the decline of the mines in South Yorkshire and what is happening now, and whether the local residents should get over it and get on with their lives… It was possibly the worst documentary I have ever seen screened. It was a combination of non-existant script, terrible camera work, awful sound (but the band who performed over some tracks were good). Some scenes you couldn’t hear people being interviewed for the noise of doors slamming and kids screaming. The footage went from one subject to another. Sometimes there was not enough information (about the miners strike) then there was too much (Do we really need a 10 minute interview with a woman who was in debt?)… It was tedious and I kept closing my eyes hoping it would end sooner.. But it didn’t.. It was like they’d just decided to film it one day, wrote the script in the afternoon (or over lunch) and filmed it later that day..
Luckily, I then headed up to the Grapes to see the delightful Tegwen Roberts performing with Hazel Leigh. These two are incredibly talented singer/musicians and for (possibly?) one time only were performing in the small intimate upstairs room in the pub. The two of them performed each other’s songs with just guitars and the occasional Saxaphone (Tegwen) and Trumpet (Hazel). It was just great. They had the small audience in the palm of their hands. The sound was just perfect too. I could hear the fan spinning above me and my own breathing but then their incredible voices just blew me away! If you get a chance to see them you should…
I keep waking up at exactly 7:30am. I don’t know why but it’s quite scary. Well today it was good cos we got a couple of inches of snow in Sheffield last night. It fell in about 3 hours and makes the place look quite nice, despite the slipiness of walking to work:
They’re a bit dull cos the sun had only just come up but it was so nice crunching around in proper deep snow!
In other news, I somehow lost 1/2 of my photos from Malaysia/Laos in the Summer. They were on a memory card and I (somehow) never transferred them to another computer. As you can imagine I was pretty gutted…. There’s probably more to say but it’s early and I need to slide to work.
