Starships at dawn

Lots of stuff’s happened over the last couple of weeks. It’s been one of those years when I’ve booked off most of the year’s holiday in two day bursts.

Last week was the Green Man festival, where the was no green man, but there was a big tree ent who was happy to let us walk under him and write wishes on his legs. Doves were too loud and the singing was out of tune. I reluctantly quit early. The Flaming Lips played mostly new stuff, which was quite psychodelic compared to some of their recent output. The return to their earlier vibe was marked by the inclusion of She Don’t Use Jelly. It was fun and unexpected to see the band turn up in the morning to do their own sound check.

The week before we were up at Edinburgh for this little festival they have each year. Turns out, there was quite a lot on. We caught mostly small theatre shows, like Deborah Pearson’s little piece to a handful of audience in a tiny video shop where she had worked after immigrating from Canada. She had used her camcorder for it’s only outing to film her last days hanging out with her friends before leaving her homeland for good, and repeated verbatim every word that she said in the home movie of the end of her old life.

There was also a bloke walking to space. Well, the same number of steps, anyway. I love Live Art.

My bro came over to visit this weekend. He’s just come back from a gruelling five day residential piano course where he rubbed shoulders and had lessons from some of the best pianists in the world. We celebrated his survival by having an amazing curry in Lasan in Birmingham. Mmmm.

We also went to see The Illusionist, a beautiful hand drawn animation by the director of Bellevue Rendez-vous.