About
Veggie Guide to Glasgow
Cruelty Free Guide to Edinburgh
Accounts
Click here to check if anything new just came in.
March 03 2010
sigh no more
so, i lied about more mills. i mean, there are more mills, but i never did wrote that blog post. so, anyway, amy and i went to see mumford & sons at the ABC (i think it’s prefixed by O2 or something pish these days). because of the way the space is laid out, we were pretty far back where the bar section is raised slightly. the best photo i could get looks like this:
they were brilliant. beautiful, technical and charming, their performance can’t be criticised. they covered their most popular material and introduced some new songs, while bringing in some old material for their encore. the only thing is this gig revealed to me why i don’t like going to them anymore: other people.
i did my time going to see bands where i was either alone or with a small group of teenage girls in a room of middle-aged men in leather jackets and tennis shoes. not always pretty, the venues of my youth were a proving ground for gig etiquette – my mum is a pretty cautious soul but let me go out pretty much as i pleased because someone always waited for me to be picked up afterwards. it wasn’t child-friendly, but it was friendly and respectful.
so, anyway, gigs these days… teenagers these days… jeez, what can i say? people pushing their way in front of each other, hollering mid-song and waving their arms around in everyone else’s faces? ah, it weren’t like that when i was a lass, i can tell you. but seriously, there is just no bloody etiquette these days. it’s all me, me, me: “i want the best view,” “i want to enjoy myself,” “it’s my right to do as i please.” what about everyone else who paid exactly the same amount for their ticket? what about the band, the artist? “nah, let’s clap loudly through every song, regardless of its tone or tempo, and cheer loudly during reflective instrumentals, because they should feel honoured that we’re here to see them even if we don’t value their creation.” frustrated, much?
so, i’ll end this with a photo of my city on a still night:
listening: the eiffel tower and the BT tower by the voluntary butler scheme
January 29 2010
honest scrap awards
it would seem that they're rolling peer-to-peer blog awards, and they have rules. now, i'm not really a stickler for rules - i'm not very good at sticking to them, anyway - but i'll try to do what i can with this...the rules
1. Thank the person who nominated you and link back to that blog post.
2. Tell ten honest things about yourself and make them interesting, even if you have to dig deep!
3. Pass the award on to ten bloggers you feel embody the spirit of Honest Scrap, and whose blog you find brilliant in design and/or concept.
the scrap
1. my dad's dutch and my mum's malaysian-chinese, but i was born in england and have lived in australia and scotland. i have dutch and british nationality, but only use my dutch passport to travel.
2. new acquaintances frequently check me when i say i'm married. they usually think i'm some exploited child bride, and i have to insist my culpability.
3. i've eaten a vegan diet since mid-2008, mostly due to the devastation wreaked by meat and dairy industries. i don't know many other socio-environmental vegans, so fellow herbivores are usually surprised when i say i stopped eating dairy before fish.
4. i've been knitting for almost a year and my friends still hope i'm pregnant when they see me knitting a pair of socks from the toe up for the first time. strangers on the train ask if they're baby socks.
5. i haven't had a 'proper' job since i left a major NGO 4 years ago. it's getting increasingly hard to explain to my mother-in-law what i do: "activist" and "artist" are not occupations in her book.
6. i love rain. people like to express concern that it rains a lot in glasgow. water off a duck's back, i tell you.
7. my husband and i live in a victorian flat in govan, glasgow. it's the kind of neighbourhood that makes our families concerned, but there's a lot to love here. we have big sash windows and high ceilings, a real wooden floor, open fireplaces and a coal bunker. we can see the river and the old town square from our windows. we can also see the alcoholics and the homeless people who ask for 10p as you're running to catch a bus.
8. my manager was caught off-guard last week when he discovered how much i love sport. i've taken monday off to watch the australian open final. i also devote my life to cricket, cycling, surfing, motor-racing (even though i don't like cars), athletics/olympics, rugby and darts, but my real love is football: scottish league, premier league, spanish league, lower league, champions league, non-league. i even know the offside rule, as much as anyone does these days.
9. i yearn for a garden with a compost heap. every time i throw away a banana peel, i feel bad for it. it will likely never have the opportunity to return to the food chain.
10. my all-time top-five favourite foods are peanut butter, bananas, broccoli, tomatoes, chickpeas and cardamom. oh wait, that's six.
the blogs
• vegancraftastic
• herbivore knits
• sticks and string
• affectioknit
• a girls' cycling compendium
• that crafty fish
• the adventures of captain teabot and me
• slippedstitch
• urban vegan
• herbivore dinosaur
hey, i made it! thanks again, vegan fox. this wasn't as tortuous as i thought it would be!
listening: the smittens
reading: blogs, it would seem!
Maybe Soup is currently being updated? I'll try again automatically in a few seconds...
