Alex

In life, well for me anyway, things tend to go in cycles, you do a lot of one activity/see a lot of someone and then you don't do that thing/see that person for a while but as soon as you do it/see them again you wonder how you ever coped without it/them. This is true of the relationship I have with my best friend from Uni Alex (who's quite frankly georgous wedding featured on this blog last year). Alex and I met on our first day of Uni when my mum (for the purposes of this story imagine Mrs Bennett from the TV adaptation of Pride & Predudice, in fact for the purpose of any story imagine that, it's pretty close) decided he was a suitable candidate for me to marry dragged me across the hallway, pushed me into Alex's room and closed the door.

This act could have scarred me for life but fortunately Alex is awesome and had already put some music posters up, so we got chatting about music and the rest (as they say) is history. We later gained our slot on the university radio station and for a few very surreal months we had fans who would cheer us around the univrsity campus. When graduation arrived we hobnobed with Ian McKellan (yes pretty good) and then went our seperate ways, me to London to live the music dream (where I ended up at HMV Oxford Circus) and Alex stayed on in Lancaster where he met his wife Victoria (yep my mum was disappointed in a that could have been you kind of way). After leaving Lancaster Alex returned to (my) homeland of Manchester and as of January this year is a resident of London. Do you know how close that is people? An hour on the train, just one hour! We've just been to Mogwai together which was brilliant despite a lack of tea and cake (I dunno how this happened, see previous post for Mogwai write up) and more adventures in London/Oxford are being planned. So awesome to have Alex & Vikki time once again!

Mogwai Magic

So yesterday (Wednesday) we went to see Mogwai, I got into them when I was a teenager, finding their somewhat seminal album Come On Die Young in a bargain bin in action records (go support them online here). I dunno what it was about the album but it really struck a chord with me. Later on in my life it soundtracked many late night essay attempts at uni and then when I was working at HMV and was asked for my top records it featured again in the shape of a handwritten review in the small but perfectly formed alternative section. Despite buying and listening to a heck of a lot of Mogwai between then and now I'd never managed to catch them live, imagine my excitement then when they announced a date at one of Oxford's newest (and most exciting venues), the Regal. Alex was duely summoned from London and we stumbled to the Regal. What follows is a summary of the evening using light/dark photos (I could try and describe how amazing Mogwai were, how much they made use of the quiet loud dynamic (definitely check out their latest offering the catchily titled Hardcore Will Never Die but You Will) but I don't think I could do it justice (having said that my friend Jack has had a stab at a proper review here, if you're interested :-)

A stitch in time

So (or should that be sew? :-) all I seem to be doing lately is sewing for various different people (all of whom are lovely so that's okay). The first project was a delayed valentines present for the boy. He is a bit of a tea fiend so what better than to give him some hand made heart shaped teabags? Why not have a go yourslf all you need is some loose tea, a bit of muslin, needle & thread and quite a bit of time/patience. Cut out lots of hearts from the muslin (cause it is so thin you can do a couple or more at a time), it's worth making a template for this bit as that gets them a bit more uniform & also then you can make sure you have enough room to put the tea in. Put two together and stitch round them till you get to the top part of the heart, fill with tea & then stitch up the gap. After that you can add an extra bit of thread to the top so the tea bag can be fished out. I made the box for mine too, but I'm sure you could put these in all sorts of containers and give them as presents. I don't think he has used them yet so I'm still not sure if my workmanship will stand up but the finished things were really pretty (and I think he liked them so that's good :-).

Second project is for my friend David (we met as undergraduates at Lancaster and then when I came for this job guess who was already working here?), he and his wife have just had a little girl (Amelia, photo below, we think she is gonna be a bit of a heartbreaker). so I decided to crochet her a blanket, nothing too fancy just double crochet all the way homemade and big enough to keep her warm/wrapped up from those summer chills. When I started we weren't sure whether she was going to be a boy or girl so I wanted to do purple, but there were no nice colours in that so I went blue instead but I'm sure she'll be able to carry it off.

Final project is my latest commission. After the sucess of Lisa's wedding dress I've been approached to do several more bits for weddings. This latest one is my first foray into menswear making the hankies and cravats for a friends wedding (so the men match the bridesmaids, aww matchy matchy). We (in this instance me and physicist/should have been a dressmaker, Malcolm) managed to figure out a pattern so now it's just the hard work of sewing the things. The material is lovely (green but in some lights yellow, some lights purple) but it does seem to be having a tendancy to shed everywhere. Also as usual Mabel is trying her best to convince me that she should be the one doing the making (she has always been facinated by my knitting/crocheting (she likes the wool and has the tendancy to try and pick it up in her mouth and run away with it, not so helpful when you are doing it, especially if you haven't noticed, she also used to have her own stash/nest under my bed. I had to raid it and take most balls back however as she has quite expensive tastes). She also thinks the sewing machine is magic, and just sits and watches (which is quite nice if it's 2am the garment has to be finished by 8am and your housemate has gone to bed with earplus in (yes it's happened before)). Hopefully we won't be in for a repeat experience on this one, I've been trying to stick to a schedule and have been allowing myself some breaks so I don't get tired and have to redo stuff. The other definite advantage is on this partiular commision although there is still no money (one day) we are swapping crafts, so I get a cross stich done for me in exchange for my labours (I have patience yes but not the amount needed for that :-)

Valentine and Jon Boden

Today at work I got the most wonderful suprise, I was called down to the post room about 9.30 and there waiting for me was this beautiful red rose, a little box of pretty chocolates and a card too from this secret admirer. When I came down and Dean handed me the box I honestly thought he had emailed the wrong Vikki (it happens all the time) but after 3 mins of debate and Dean making me read the address label it turned out he had indeed got it right and I had to apologise. To my not so secret admirer than you it was beautiful but you shouldn't have (I will get revengae at some pont :-).

Valentines evening I had made plans for a couple of months ago, Jon Boden and his remnant kings were playing a gig in Keble (one of the Oxford colleges) as Jon's father is bursar there. My hot date for the evening Janey unfortunately fell ill at the last moment so I went on my own (*sob*) I'm really glad I did however as it was a really brilliant gig. Jon has been doing a project called a folk song a day for some time now, it's exactly what it says on the tin, Jon will be posting a folk song a day for the whole of 1 year. The audience from last night's gig were invited to join him in a sing along at the end of the show (we even got a practice run during the show, you can't say farer than that). You can hear the result here http://www.afolksongaday.com/2011/02/14/cupids-garden/ plus there is a fabulous video of Jon performing my favourite of his songs (it's a cover of an old croony one, seemed apt for Valentine's) here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ-kdOQZPLU

Finally as well as Mr Boden there were two other major stars of the show for me, two edison phonographs, the pre cursor to the record player these play music captured on wax cylinders. Jon's current album (the one this album is promoting) is called songs from the floodplain. It's an album based on the idea that in the not too distant future humanity will be in crisis because the electricity/oil will run out. On the album this leads to people rediscovering and putting value back into folk traditions as well as digging out fabulous old technology. Throughtout the set last night the two phonographs played background music and sound shots (Jon has even named them Edith and Eric, awww). Out of pure curiosity I had a quick look if you could still get hold of them, you can but they are pretty rare. I think I might have lost my heart to this one however this is a edison red gem circa 1905. I think it would look lovely in my house sadly I don't seem to a spare £700 but I think we can all look at it and see how pretty it is!

Recording at last

So yesterday at 9.30 in the morning (that's on a Sunday morning, suffering for your art or what?!?) the bad met up at the SAE insitute Littlemore to record the tunes that we'd been playing. Our band in general is a bit of a nighmare from a sound perspective, we have the flute and violins doing most of the melodic stuff and then the accordian/bass/drums giving it some bass (so very different sound needs). Originally the plan was to put us all in seperate rooms with headphones on, however we've only ever played in the same room as each other (and none of us apart from Loz our drummer have ever recorded before) so it was decided we would be recorded 'live' and Loz would be put in his own room (so the bleed from the drums didn't effect the recording of the rest of the instruments).

After the organised sessions finished there was a definite practice plan but due to illness/holidays etc we hadn''t practiced as a band since before Christmas, which wasn't ideal. The plan was to lay down three tracks all containing two tunes. We started with the one we were weakest on which I'm still not sure was the right way to do it as we got really demoralised because it wasn't going to plan. It took us 3 hours to get a take that we were anywhere near happy with. So this meant that we had limited time on the remaining 2 tunes but that they were both pretty much nailed on the second takes as we were a lot more familar with them (good that we didn't spend ages trying to get those perfect and then run out of time for the 3rd one). The actual recording experience was really fun (it's always nice to get the entire band together anyway) but what I felt a bit weird about was that one of my tunes was being recorded (something that I wrote in our living room is now going to be put on a cd, it exsists as a recording, weird huh?).

I was really nervous before the recording, but the sound engineers were really awesome & reassuring & moved the microphone out of my eyeline so I wouldn't be freaked out by it, it also really helped that the rest of the band were nervous too. We've been told the mastering will take about 2 weeks then we should get a copy. The next massive challenge is getting ready for a 20 min slot at Oxford Folk festival (we are on the second stage on the Sat afternoon, I'm actually on twice as I'll b perfoming with stranger things and then again as part of a duo). Listening back to the recordings in the control room I think we have a few consistency issues to address as a band (some of it was brilliant, other bits were a bit touch and go) but at least we know what we've got to work on...

Black Swan

Went to see Black Swan last night, what can I say? Really brilliant film although definitely disturbing moments. I went to see it with my friend Maddie and another friend then asked me to see it with them, before watching it I thought I could probably go and see it twice but I think quite a bit of the impact may have been lost second time around. I also found it quite difficult not to shrink the film/apply the enirity of my 1st year theory & Criticism notes to it (Freud, the double and all that gang). Very beautifully shot though, Natalie Potman is stunning and I would thoroughly recommend it if you are a fan of the arty (whisper it slightly pretentious) film.