What I Did On My Holidays
Back about three four hours ago from day two of the exhibition in Broadstairs of the photos I took circumambulating Thanet, all thirty miles of it. Trying to avoid going to bed too early.
Obviously trying to get photos sorted was one of the many things I did in a run up to a so-called holiday at a certain festival - said holiday involving writing a PhD report, checking some proofs of a review and briefing new staff. And a panic attack.
Being a creature of habit, I broke the journey at Wakefield, and stayed at a Travelodge in a spirit of optimism (don't ask). I got to the Hepworth, seeing the William Scott show I hadn't seen in St Ives, and out to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, where I saw Seizure and some other interesting stuff and probably walked about eight miles. Wakefield I suspect has the world's largest Greggs, what I like to think of as Greggs Extra. I coincided with Pride, once more a rather mixed experience. More importantly I returned to Fernandes Tap and Bier Keller and sampled many ales, some of which were fine.
More beers were sampled north of the border, mostly Scottish, with some interesting bottles sampled from beer shops with better selections of London beers than 99.9% of London off licences. (Is now the time to note the closure of the never open off licence in St Pancras? Sourced Market remains.) I managed to pick up the two best bottles in the shop. Craft Beer Pubs are spreading, although I'm largely disappointed by the fizziness of even the cask selection. Does fizzy beer attract young men as lager once did? There is a distinct demographic. Holyrood 9A and The Hanging Bat sampled, along with the Stockbridge Tap, Smithies', Cask and Barrel and The Blue Blazer. There is a recurrent, brackish, burst caramel taste to a lot of the beers I sampled, that I am not a fan of.
Pleasingly I have found enough sense of geography to avoid all but a little bit of Princes Street with its walking three metres a minute pedestrians.
Most of the people I wanted to see weren't there, but repeat views for The Noise Next Door (top of their game), Mitch Benn (singing about stuff, heavier again), Will Adamsdale (genius), Bo Burnham (still looking twelve, still breathless) and new discoveries Max and Ivan (meh), Johnny and the Baptists (as heard on The Now Show), Ursula Binns (Peruvian harp) and The Full Bronte (disappointing). A Marcus Brigstocke improv with the usually suspects. Was that it?
And art and art and art - walked to Modern One (some weird stuff) and Modern Two (Paolozzi and sf, plus withccraft), Man Ray (as deliberately not seen in London), Church (again), Peter Doig, Peter Liversidge, Leonardo, Franz West, Gabriel Orozco, Elizabeth Blackadder, Croatian Scottish Art... a trek to Summerhall - lay out infuriating even with a map in their programme book - to see Michael Nyman with a Movie Camera, work based on Jarman's Blue, Sun Ra photos, Fiona Banner ... I failed to see one item that hid. And thanks to a school friend's insistence, a bus trip out to a sculpture park... Thousands of photos to follow.
Still no castle, no zoo and no fucking tattoo.
No books, either, as I was carrying Macbook and a Phd and the back is a year older.
I do like Stockbridge though. Very bourgeois of me, I suppose.
And then, naturally, down to Liverpool and another Travelodge (again in optimism, which I scuppered), and time to see the Shergar exhibition (the horse was missing) but not the Rankin, and a pint and a half at the Baltic Fleet. I ran out of energy for the Ship and Mitre and - after several pints in Ormskirk the next day - it's a relief Sourced Market was closed by the time I got to St Pancras.
Some of this needs more attention, I doubt it will get it. I need to list beers sampled, but in another place.
Obviously trying to get photos sorted was one of the many things I did in a run up to a so-called holiday at a certain festival - said holiday involving writing a PhD report, checking some proofs of a review and briefing new staff. And a panic attack.
Being a creature of habit, I broke the journey at Wakefield, and stayed at a Travelodge in a spirit of optimism (don't ask). I got to the Hepworth, seeing the William Scott show I hadn't seen in St Ives, and out to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, where I saw Seizure and some other interesting stuff and probably walked about eight miles. Wakefield I suspect has the world's largest Greggs, what I like to think of as Greggs Extra. I coincided with Pride, once more a rather mixed experience. More importantly I returned to Fernandes Tap and Bier Keller and sampled many ales, some of which were fine.
More beers were sampled north of the border, mostly Scottish, with some interesting bottles sampled from beer shops with better selections of London beers than 99.9% of London off licences. (Is now the time to note the closure of the never open off licence in St Pancras? Sourced Market remains.) I managed to pick up the two best bottles in the shop. Craft Beer Pubs are spreading, although I'm largely disappointed by the fizziness of even the cask selection. Does fizzy beer attract young men as lager once did? There is a distinct demographic. Holyrood 9A and The Hanging Bat sampled, along with the Stockbridge Tap, Smithies', Cask and Barrel and The Blue Blazer. There is a recurrent, brackish, burst caramel taste to a lot of the beers I sampled, that I am not a fan of.
Pleasingly I have found enough sense of geography to avoid all but a little bit of Princes Street with its walking three metres a minute pedestrians.
Most of the people I wanted to see weren't there, but repeat views for The Noise Next Door (top of their game), Mitch Benn (singing about stuff, heavier again), Will Adamsdale (genius), Bo Burnham (still looking twelve, still breathless) and new discoveries Max and Ivan (meh), Johnny and the Baptists (as heard on The Now Show), Ursula Binns (Peruvian harp) and The Full Bronte (disappointing). A Marcus Brigstocke improv with the usually suspects. Was that it?
And art and art and art - walked to Modern One (some weird stuff) and Modern Two (Paolozzi and sf, plus withccraft), Man Ray (as deliberately not seen in London), Church (again), Peter Doig, Peter Liversidge, Leonardo, Franz West, Gabriel Orozco, Elizabeth Blackadder, Croatian Scottish Art... a trek to Summerhall - lay out infuriating even with a map in their programme book - to see Michael Nyman with a Movie Camera, work based on Jarman's Blue, Sun Ra photos, Fiona Banner ... I failed to see one item that hid. And thanks to a school friend's insistence, a bus trip out to a sculpture park... Thousands of photos to follow.
Still no castle, no zoo and no fucking tattoo.
No books, either, as I was carrying Macbook and a Phd and the back is a year older.
I do like Stockbridge though. Very bourgeois of me, I suppose.
And then, naturally, down to Liverpool and another Travelodge (again in optimism, which I scuppered), and time to see the Shergar exhibition (the horse was missing) but not the Rankin, and a pint and a half at the Baltic Fleet. I ran out of energy for the Ship and Mitre and - after several pints in Ormskirk the next day - it's a relief Sourced Market was closed by the time I got to St Pancras.
Some of this needs more attention, I doubt it will get it. I need to list beers sampled, but in another place.