Random acts of Wagner

I think Waltraud Meier is absolutely stunning in this, although Domingo contributes a lot to the atmosphere. And, the ludicrous side of modern technology: Wagner's tremendous Romantic scene of lawless love and a Penguin Classics Pride and Prejudice can dwell within a foot of one another on the same sofa on a lazy Bank Holiday Sunday, separated only by my knees.



Health warning: the problem with Wagner is that the melodies are a continuously woven stream through the whole act, in such a way that once you start getting into it, it can be very difficult to stop, and before you know where you are it's an hour later.

pole dancing

In class we were asked to visualise our axis, to help with posture.

I'm supposed to give it colour and texture.

Steely? Rubbery? With bells on? Possibly pink? Something wooden, in light pine and IKEA styling that requires some assembly at home? Perhaps I need one of those aura-seeing people to help me.

After a bit of fidgeting and staring into space, I get a sort of thinnish, silvery, somewhat flexible pole with a brushed metallic sheen. It's not very fancy or original, but it works for me.

I do find that visualisations help.

Zombie music

There's live music, with real live musicians playing their instruments right there and then.

There's dead or suspended-animation music, captured, preserved, and reanimated from something plastic, a boon to humanity.

And then there's Zombie music.

Buskers do this in the London Tube network. They play an instrument, or sing, but they bring with them a backing track, which is all the rest of the music except their own instrument, and loudspeakers. They play along with that, slaves to the machine, and if we're lucky they more or less keep time. It's an abomination, but you can keep moving.

When I was on my holidays I was briefly menaced by the Undead Clarinettist of St. Wendel, a man with a suitcase-sized loudspeaker on wheels, who wandered about playing Undead Clarinet and Ghost Piano to luckless diners at restaurants in the square.

Make music, if you are inspired to do so. Make it badly, if you want; it would be nice if people didn't hire you (I'm dreaming). Make it live with other musicians, or on your own; or make it direct-to-dead.

But Zombie Music is just wrong.

Stained Glass Hat - yarn

I am on Sleeve 2 of the Mosaic Jersey.

I've also promised to make a pink hippopotamus for a breast cancer charity, and there's another baby on the way in my knitting club. That means some sort of animal. And my colleague who sits next to me is having a baby as well and I think she should have something, though maybe not an animal in this case as she already has a little lad of fourish and I feel I'd have to make one for him too, whereas baby hat type things don't create jealousy.

Also in my queue is this yarn for a hat.


It's an extraordinarily soft merino sock yarn.

My plan is:

• Cast on say 150 with a small needle and the dark brown as the base colour, using Techknitter's clever and convenient tubular cast-on for 1x1 rib. This gives a totally ridgeless edge.
• Join into the round and make about 3cm of 1x1 rib.
  
• Introduce the variegated blue-green and work a Fair Isle diamond pattern I've designed on squared paper which uses the blue-green as stained glass and the brown as leading.
• Carry on till it seems long enough.
  
• Then I'll have to make a decision about the top. I could gather the top, as is done with a fairisle hat made in Norway that I own. Or I could work decreases into the fairisle pattern, perhaps by extending the diamonds into some sort of flame shape. Or I could stop the colour pattern and go back to using one colour or the other only, before working decreases for the top.

But for this week, I'm still on Sleeve 2.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!

England 332 & 373/9d
Australia 160 & 348/10 (102.2 ov)
England won by 197 runs

Day Four, the Oval

Ashes decider

See you in Trafalgar Square!

[Edit: there's still only one Gary Pratt, though.]

Egg and Chips Pugliese

I don't know why it is, but ever since I started to recognise the style of Pugliese - even before I knew the name - I have always thought of it as egg-and-chips music.

A free-range egg, obviously, probably organic, and proper chips. Not a wicked battery egg or "fries" or any of that rubbish. Proper fried egg with a rich runny yellow yolk, and proper chips, crisp on the outside and fluffy in the middle with lots of potato flavour, correctly fried in the right sort of oil, and just enough salt, perhaps a touch of pepper.

You do have to be hungry, or it's totally wasted.

I've heard he was a Socialist, perhaps he wouldn't mind.

Slow Food tango - Andreas this Friday

Time for my shout-out to Andreas, who occasionally sets me right in the Comments, especially on matters of music. As you may have partly gathered from the comments on my DJ question, he's teaching classes this Friday and next Friday at Carablanca (19:30) - purely social tango with an uninterrupted close embrace. With Monica Lopez, for this occasion. He's also DJing this week. He has a kind of 'slow food' approach to tango, focusing on the quality of the basic ingredients, which makes a lot of sense to me. He also tells me that he talks to the women in his classes ("I want them to improve - I have to dance with them" - and he looked endearingly shocked at my eventual and only about 25%-joking response of "Dance with your students? Who the hell does that?).

Tangocommuter has already written a post with a particularly nice video (not a performance - social dancing at La Crau, with Céline Devèze).

Disclosure: I have danced with Andreas more than once and would like to repeat the experience as often as he feels inclined to cooperate. I'd also like it if more men tried to dance more like him, because it feels wonderful for the woman. So my motivations in posting this are perfectly selfish. Do as you please.

[Update 27th August: I see Danny has linked this from the Carablanca website, so you deserve something a bit more entertaining for clicking through. Here are Andreas and Detlef Engel taking the piss at La Crau. Andreas following (most of the time) - Detlef with ponytail and poker face (all of the time).



Second update 28th August: Tangocommuter describes the class here, with an interesting comments thread. Class 2 of 2 this Friday, i.e. tomorrow.]