It's been a while since my last photo post. That one probably had a lot of robins in it too.

During this week I found where a pair of robins were feeding their fledgelings. The gloomy weather hasn't been the best for photography, but the chance to get pictures of fledgelings was too good to miss. Didn't have any luck yesterday, but today was a very different story.

( Robins and their fledgelings )

( But just so it's not all robins, some pics from my garden; a goldcrest and a fox )

( And here's me with a couple of birds I picked up at the British Science Festival last year )

A few years ago former XTC guitarist Dave Gregory put together a new band, The Tin Spirits. Initially it was just a chance to play live again and indulge in some classic prog covers. I saw them back then, and rather good they were too.

But since then they've started doing their own material too. Their debut album Wired To Earth is now available; it's not a hugely long album, but any prog fans out there will find it rather listenable. And as a taster here's the debut live performance of Broken.

Crabstock, I hear you ask? WTF is Crabstock?

Crabstock is the brainchild of The Really Interesting Crab Company. Seafood festivals are traditionally held in seaside towns, because that's where the seafood is. The drawback is that everyone in these towns probably has a pretty good idea what seafood is anyway. So they had the idea, why not hold one inland? Amazing no one had thought to do it before.

Great Rissington is set in a part of rural Gloucestershire whish is all rolling meadows and stone buildings that have stood there for centuries. A proper piece of glorious English countryside, it was a joy to drive through as long as the rain held off.

The Lamb Inn has gardens in three levels. In the upper one were set the various stalls where the seafood would be prepared, the bar tents in the middle level, and at the bottom a covered stage where various bands would appear. Seafood would be served throughout the weekend, and in between the bands there would be several cooking demonstrations. Apart from the scale of staging the bands the event was basically the size of a small village fete, but if successful (and I'd say it definitely was) it will grow in future.

I was playing two bands on this occasion. Swallow are one of my regular bands, and they were playing at 6pm. And later in the evening I was standing in for the regular drummer of The Floydian Doors (two of whom are my Swallow bandmates anyway). I wasn't alone either; between the two bands there were actually a total of four dep musicians, and each band had only had one rehearsal to get their respective lineups into shape. So there there was a rare degree of apprehension among us as to how it was going to go.

Oh yes, and I was playing on the drumkit provided rather than having brought my own. Which is brilliant in terms of setup time, and allows us to travel in fewer cars, but it also means I have no idea what I'm working with until I get there. On this occasion it was a 4-piece kit, ie. 2 rack toms smaller than my own, which would make a few things a bit awkward. But nothing I can't work around. Probably.

In the event both sets went off remarkably smoothly, apart from a moment Spinal Tap would've been proud of in the Floydian Doors set. Having played through about half of Dark Side Of The Moon we were about to launch into Comfortably Numb whenone of the organisers asked us to announce that a car was blocking someone in and could the owner move it? You guessed it, it turned out to be our keyboard player. So while he dashed off we started Another Brick In The Wall instead, and he made in back just in time for the second chorus.

Oh, and as the lead singer introduced the band members he managed to forget my name and had to be reminded. Classy. :-)

It's been a rewarding weekend in which I've gotten to work with a few new and rather good musicians, and also sample some very tasty shellfish. Oh, and I also got to watch these guys, who were on just before the Floydian Doors. They're called The Reaper, and they're aged between 11 and 14. They're disturbingly good.

Ocasionally on this journal I've shown off some of my photoediting creations. Over the last week I've ended up putting those skills to practical use.

Jane is the singer in two of my bands. Last year she also took over as lead singer in a prog band playing original material called Crimson Sky. She makes her debut with them at the end of the month. Naturally they want to have copies of their CD on sale for the gig, but they were having trouble with the artwork.

When you prepare the artwork for a CD booklet, all the text must fall within a specified template outline so it won't get cut. Theirs had that. But it also needs a bleed area where the artwork itself extends outside that cut, so that when the printed booklet is guillotined to size it doesn't leave a white line around the edge. They didn't have that. (Don't know how that came about, as it's a second pressing of the one album they'd done with the previous singer. So they'd got it right once.) Anyway, I offered to see if I could help.

This meant taking a couple of photographs and cloning bits to extend them beyond their existing outline, including buttons on a mixing desk, a hand on the neck of a guitar, the top of one person's head... It also meant moving a couple of titles and logos inward a bit so they wouldn't get sliced. Which would've been simple if I had master files with those bits in separate layers, but I only had JPGs to work with, so it meant not just moving them but recreating the bits of photograph underneath them too. But after much playing around with everything for a few nights on and off, I fitted the artwork to the required templates and submitted it on Wednesday night. On Thursday morning I got word that it had been accepted and the pressing could go ahead. Cue massive sighs of relief all round.


It's been three and a half years since an email from Jane was forwarded to me, leading to my joining Run Like Hell (and a year later her other band, Swallow). Sadly with her new position in Crimson Sky she couldn't keep up her day job and two other bands as well. Something had to give, and it's turned out to be Run Like Hell. She'll play one more gig with us this month and two in June, and then it's over.

I joined Run Like Hell at a time when I wasn't sure how well I'd be able to play again, as I was just recovering from an accident that left me with a shattered elbow. Three and a half years on I'm in three bands with some excellent musicians; I've played music I've never had the chance to play, much of it decidedly challenging; I've learned a great deal and I think I'm playing as well as I've ever played, if not better. It's going to be sad to see a part of that come to an end, and Jane's going to be very tough to replace. But hopefully we can turn it into an opportunity, and in the meantime I still get to play with her in Swallow. Musically I think the last few years have been remarkably kind to me, so getting negative about it now would be totally missing the point. But I think I'm entitled to get a bit wistful.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote to my MP and asked him to add his signature to Early day motion 2659, demanding the publication of the Risk Register associated with the Health and Social Care Bill reforms.

I received no reply.

Yesterday his monthly newsletter arrived in my email, and in a column headed "Time for Labour to be honest on health" he talks of having welcomed Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham and his health team to Reading recently. "I even invited him to tea, but he turned me down. I'm not surprised; he would have had to face a few awkward truths. Andy knows that Labour is being totally dishonest about the changes to the NHS and he needs to be honest with the public."

After hastily checking the link for Early day motion 2659, I wrote to him again.

Dear Rob Wilson,

I received your newsletter yesterday. Your column demanding honesty
from Labour regarding health was noteworthy; on a matter of such
central public concern as the NHS it is vital that all issues are
treated with the utmost openness and transparency.

It is therefore with some sadness that I write to inform you that your
signature appears to have been omitted from Early day motion 2659,
requesting the Govt. comply with the ruling by the Information
Commissioner to publish the risk register associated with the Health
and Social Care Bill reforms. Given your commitment to honesty on this
issue I trust you will act immediately and with the utmost urgency to
rectify this unforgivable error.

Yours sincerely,

Adrian Ogden

For those who haven't seen it yet, Social Investigations have provided a staggering list of all the politicians who have financial ties with companies who will profit from the proposed reform of the NHS. And yes, the aforementioned Rob Wilson is on it.

And even with (at the time of writing) 153,000 signatures on the petition to Drop The Health Bill the government still refuse to debate it in the house.

Remember folks, Write To Them. Because sometimes they need to be reminded that They Work For You.

It's been the coldest week of the winter, with overnight temperatures dropping to -15 in places. Honestly, if I knew I had to be so ill I was bedbound, this is the week I'd've picked.

Tuesday I felt somewhat flakey, but I still dragged myself out to Mitch Benn's Distraction Club because I missed the last one owing to a clash with band rehearsals and didn't want to miss two in a row. And it was excellent; Mitch nailing "Quantum Mechanics" live, Abandoman's acoustic improv hip-hop - not to mention their Connect Four battle with a member of the audience (none other than AFP's Alan Bellingham) - and Rayguns Look Real Enough, who don't medley songs together so much as carpet-bomb them. Frankly the evening was worth it just to see The Segue Sisters and Kirsty Newton deliver a swinging a capella version of Hotel California, especially with the way they handled the guitar solo.

As I left the club it was already pretty cold, but not enough to stop me spending a few minutes chatting with Carrie from the Segue Sisters, and even joining her in an impromptu rendition of Tom Lehrer's The Elements, prompted by my complimenting her on their updated version from the previous month. By the time I got back to Reading, however, the cold was biting and in the five-minute walk from the train to my car my teeth were chattering.

Wednesday morning I woke up feeling like I'd been hit with the flu hammer. I had a fever, shivers, a headache, and felt utterly drained. Plus my throat felt like I'd been gargling caltrops. I emailed work to tell them I wouldn't be in, and my bandmates to tell them to cancel the rehearsal scheduled for that evening. I did so from my phone, because I couldn't summon up the energy to get out of bed and walk to the PC, 3 feet away.

It was much later in the day that I finally emerged, and only when other bodily functions insisted it was no longer possible to put it off any more. I made lemon & ginger tea with honey, and took a good look at my mouth in the mirror. Specifically my tonsils.

There's an old Bill Cosby sketch in which he tells how his childhood doctor explained how the tonsils are armed guards in your throat, fighting off the bad stuff. Normally, though, they're more like footmen, discreetly out of sight and blending in with the furniture. But mine had decided they were tired of being footmen and had decided to be bouncers. They were bursting out of their suits looking thuggish and angry. And a lot like streaky bacon.

I spent most of the day dead to the world. Thursday morning I managed to go to the doctor; I told her it was tonsillitis, she took one look in my mouth and thanked me for keeping her job easy. I returned home with antibiotics, and spent the next two days becoming gradually more active and hoping to be fit to gig by Saturday.


In the end I ventured out of the house on Saturday afternoon. It occurred to me that I'd missed feeding my robin for the last three days, right when the bitter cold meant he'd miss it the most. I was relieved to find him in our regular spot, and noted that for once he didn't even touch the mealworms, but instead wolfed down a number of suet pellets. Definitely a worthy addition for this weather.

The day was bright and clear - although still sodding freezing - so I decided to make a full circuit of the lake for the first time in ages. I just wish it had occurred to me to bring my camera. The entire lake was frozen over, with a ruffled greyish look that spoke of snow melting to slush. On closer inspection it would turn out to be solid ice, possibly where slush had been frozen back to ice and new snow had fallen on top of it to repeat the process. White streaks where actual snow still lay shone brilliantly in the sun. The sight of a single heron standing in the middle of the ice was one of the things to make me wish I had my camera.

The others were rather more fleeting, and I doubt I could've photographed them anyway. One was a rare encounter with a fox; I've seen them on the campus before, but never in broad daylight. This one was about 40 feet away when we caught sight of eachother at the same moment; we stared at eachother for several seconds before it turned and bounded off into the bushes.

But even rarer was my final encounter. At the top end of the lake the banks slope down at a 45 degree angle, meaning that if you look down at the lake from the path your eyes are effectively at ground level for about 8ft. And through the tangle of bushes I saw something moving. It was about the size of a moorhen, but sleeker, and instead of the graceful wading motion of a water bird it moved in a series of awkward jumps; the word galumphing sprang immediately to mind. I followed it for several paces until I found a point with a clear view, and was stunned to see it was a sparrow hawk. The dense bushes hardly seemed its natural territory, yet there it was, tearing strips from something and devouring them. Presumably it had made a kill somewhere else and then brought it to this inaccessable place to feed undisturbed. I managed to watch it for a minute or two, and though I never got an unobstructed view I was thrilled to have seen it at all.


And I managed the gig in the evening, and survived, and should be fit for work again Monday. Go me.

Originally posted by halcyon_shift at Say No to ACTA

...if you've taken a vow of silence?

Apparently, like this.

I was helping one of the lecturers clear up the Common Room after a Freshers' welcome / induction meeting. This meant gathering up such rubbish as crisp packets, plastic cups and unused handouts and dumping it in boxes to be taken away.

As I was reaching for a box she told me "I wouldn't use that one if I were you; it collapsed on me earlier."

I'm pleased to report that, through a heroic effort, the words "Oh don't worry, it's probably just tired" did not pass my lips. But I may need a new tongue.

Got invited to a jam night tonight by two of my bandmates. We played some Kate Bush and some Pink Floyd, and somehow ended up performing Stairway To Heaven with John Mitchell from It Bites on guitar.

So how was your evening?