Sometimes you forget who you know

I always vaguely remember my mother saying that her sister's husband, Johnny, was Arkle's groom, but maybe because we live nowhere near the rest of her family we never heard any stories and generally forgot about it.

One of my colleagues is crazy about horse racing; it inhabits every part of his life, to the extent that on our christmas night out on Fri his dancing consisted of him gently riding a horse around, giving it the odd tap with a crop, at one stage I heard him murmur "Istabraq" - drink may have been taken.

I tried to chat to him about Arkle, but my recollection was so hazy that I decided to check it out today. I'm amazed at what I found, Johnny looks so young in the photo (42 years ago) and not terribly impressed with the Duchess of Westminster.

Here's a lovely article in The Scotsman.

Kris Kindle

The lucky, lucky bloke in work that I drew for Kris Kindle will get this fabulous pressie.

Review of Roisin Murphy gig

Roisin Murphy gig

Roisin Murphy should be a huge star, she has it all, an amazing voice, the charisma, the dance moves, and the costumes.

In the Savoy, Cork, last week she covered most of the tracks from the Overpowered album, and the music sounded even better live with the band adding a richness and depth occasionally missing from the album's electro-pop. As the gig progressed the crowd got more, and more enthusiastic, and her two bouts of crowd surfing only fuelled it (Security leapt on stage to grab her back, the 2nd time round she landed a couple of kicks to fend them off.)

Her costumes were fantastic and the role playing was so entertaining. The first costume was a huge
black and white feathery creation, which did admittedly resemble a giant turkey. Singing Checkin' On Me, she was dressed in a leather jacket and sunglassses - incognito. Another 'outfit' saw her crammed between two large stuffed humanoid figures, one on her back, the other in front facing her (if you get the image?). And during Primitive there was much twining around the 2 (female) backing singers and (male) guitarist.

The backing singers / dancers added tremendously to the show, reminding me of Santogold's girls at Electric Picnic, but looser, less scripted.

For the last song, Slave To Love, the costume included a stuffed black and white tartan deer across her shoulders. This encore ultimately involved the 2 singers and Roisin in a choreographed kerfuffle, ending on the floor, with a mannequin's leg suddenly appearing at the end.

Terrific fun, an incredible performer.

Rated 5/5 on Dec 10 2008

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Review Tags: music, concert, gig

Sweary is back

Sweary's back blogging, oh me, oh my!!!

Restoration of Service Announcement, Worldwide Release

Dear World:

The United States of America, a quality supplier of ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for its 2001-2008 service outage.

The technical fault that led to this eight-year service interruption has been located, and the parts responsible were replaced Tuesday night, November 4. Early tests of the new install indicate that it is functioning correctly, and we expect it to be fully functional by mid-January.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage, and we look forward to resuming full service --- and, hopefully, even to improving it in years to come.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

The USA