Thursday 27 September 2012

Strange beginnings...

Today I auditioned for and joined the London Gypsy Orchestra. I've never played with more than a handful of people at the same time, save for my recent playing-bestival-with-people-I'd-just-met thing. They are booked for the union chapel (a venue I dearly want to play) in November. Lots of work to be included in the line up in two months. They sound amazing though and I really hope I can add to it,albeit in the now odd (to me after two years of ukulele and mandolin) role of rhythm guitar. Weirdly the rhythm section is guitar, accordion and drums. We are the only instrument asked to just chug out rhythm and not tunes. Tonight we practiced one tune in 7/8 and one in 11/8 plus a more normal 3/4 and 2/4.

Hope this all works out.

Sunday 16 September 2012

Random stuff from over the summer











The olympic park

Whilst I posted some pictures from the triathlon event in Hyde Park... At the Paralympics I got to go to the Olympic Park itself. The whole thing ran suprisingly smoothly (Although I regret not taking a photo of the elderly couple having their photo taken by a cheerful Japanese lady as the "smoking area" was right next to the "Dog comfort zone")



The buildings were frankly all that they had been made out to be and the whole park looked like something we could be proud of (as a nation, and as a city)




One really nice point is that the Paralympics was truly amazing. I've never been so moved by sporting events as I was watching the paralympics... and I say that without meaning that I felt sorry for the athletes, sure there are levels of Cerebral Palsy and spinal injury I didn't know it was even possible to ride a bike with... but no that's not what I mean't. I mean that as an event, the public coming to the games cheered on their respective countries, grappled with the catagories and generally treated the whole thing like an enormous fun family day out. Watching athletes perform at the highest level is something to behold and I had never really seen it before.




We were lucky enough to sit (by chance) with the extended family of the current world champion longjumper, and the emotion as he was at the last monute beaten into silver by his rival was enough to bring a lump to the throat.




Wednesday 12 September 2012

Long time no post...

I've not posted for a while as I have been in the final stages of planning the "bike to bestival" ride for Cancer Research UK. We had a seperate blog running for that which can be found here.


Needless to say I have had a lovely time Riding, Making new friends, dressing as a bee, wondering what a gorrilla in a barrel-being carried by a man in a boiler-suit costume might look like. Finding out what a gorrilla in a barrel-being carried by a man in a boiler-suit costume does in fact look like.


100 miles, lots of fig rolls and vegan power bars, 44 sore bums, ferry trouble in both directions, nobody making it back in time to pick up the bikes. So pretty much a great holiday in fact.


What a lovely bunch of people we met.There is an article in The Times which can be found here with a lovely little video.