Eisteddfod

This is Eisteddfod week in Wales. This time two years ago I was trying to pitch a tent in a field in Swansea.

I’ll try and describe the Eisteddfod – a Welsh language festival which is centred around one week of competitions in a giant pink marquee. There are also cultural events like clog dancing and choirs, poetry and harp playing and a large area around it with stalls and activities going on all week. 

This is the respectable side of the festival, politicians mingle with writers and poets while the druids (yes druids) walk around in their different coloured outfits.

Wikipedia can explain it much better than I can: Eisteddfod.

For a twenty something like me the main site is of little attraction. ‘Maes-B‘ (Site B) is where I would spend my time listening to music in to the early hours, drinking enough alcohol to kill a small horse and then try and set the world to rights with some young farmer I met in the queue for the portaloos. It’s a chance to see old friends and make new ones as people from all over Wales come together to party.

Maes B is where bands like the Super Furry animals and Catatonia played early gigs, and this year singer Cerys Matthews will perform. The Eisteddfod is like the Welsh language Glastonbury but with a very very respectable side to it.

Next year the Eisteddfod returns to North Wales to Bala – the last time it was in Bala was 1998 – I was 17 and as most people will say it was the best Eisteddfod EVER. I remember wandering around Maes B celebrating a friend’s earlier win in an acting competition, the two teachers who helped us put our tent up when it collapsed on my friends in the middle of the night, singing by the campfire with strangers - the rest is a haze of faces and music.

I’m tempted to go back next year, but who knows where I’ll be by then. Watch this space.

Late for Work? Blame the monkey!

We all have days when we can’t get out of bed and those extra few minutes in bed mean we miss the bus/ train/ quiet roads.

People traveling on the N11 had good reason to be late this morning, but I wonder if bosses believed their excuse:

HERALD.IE

Just when motorists thought they’d seen every conceivable reason for traffic delays on the way to work, gardaí in Co Wicklow were this morning called upon to deal with a monkey on the motorway.

AA Roadwatch confirmed that it received a call to its traffic hotline at 8.15am from a member of the public reporting that there was a monkey on the southbound carriageway of the N11 at Kilmacanogue.

“By 8.35am we found out there was a place nearby that keeps monkeys, so we thought it could be true,” a spokeswoman said.

“By 8.45am the gardaí in Bray confirmed there was a monkey on the road but he was caught, caged and cleared by 9am.”

It later emerged the monkey, a capuchin named “Gina”, had escaped from her home in a nearby aviary where she lives with eight others, including tamarinds, squirrel monkeys and her sibling capuchin.

(Irish Times.com)

Don’t Beleive The Hype

I worked in theatre marketing for year in the UK. It was a beautiful theatre next to the sea and I worked with a great (but small) team of people who tried to keep the place afloat.

It would often be disheartening to work hard on promoting a show – using all the journalistic contacts you ever made, flyering in the streets on your lunch break and hanging posters on every bare wall in the area – to find that only 10% of the tickets were sold and the amazing show was enjoyed by a ‘privileged’ few.

That is why the article Fake reviews leave Wizard of Oz cast feeling green caught my attention. Staff at the Southbank Centre in London posted rave reviews about the panned production of The Wizard of Oz on whatsonstage.com.

The Southbank Centre, which receives public funding, has admitted that three staff posted the reviews and the matter is being investigated. It denied they had been acting under instructions from the producers of the show, which is directed by Jude Kelly, who is also artistic director of the centre.

The attempt to manipulate public opinion follows in a dubious internet tradition of authors and restaurateurs who have written fake reviews without revealing their identities. (from the article)

I can understand why the staff felt the need to defend the big-budget production. Putting on a stage production involves emotion and hours of work, not only by the actors but all the staff from the ushers to the director. The idea that the staff involved were manipulating public opinion is a bit strong. One persons opinon of a show differs from the next – and I’ve worked on some dire shows which the audience rave about.

Have I ever posed an undercover review? No.

I have been guilty of clogging up forums and notice boards with events I’m working on, but my conscience is clear : )

Marriage is a great institution, but I’m not ready for an institution. (Mae West)

I got two wedding invitations this week.

When you turn 18 you are invited to numerous 18th birthday parties, the same applies at 21. Then come the graduation parties and job celebrations. Once you hit 25 weddings become the major celebration until you hit 30. As I reach that milestone my postman is delivering quite a few delicately designed envelopes with calligraphy.

I’m nowhere near ready to stand up in front of the people I hold dear and declare my love to a man. The idea of the whole thing, from choosing a dress and a venue to who will be invited makes me want to crawl under a duvet and hide.

I am a believer in the institution of marriage - my parents have been married for over 30 years - but do I see myself walking down an aisle dressed in white…I’m not so sure. With the average cost of a wedding just over €30,000 I’d better start saving in case I change my mind!

Three of my friends have been married and divorced since I hit 21 and all they have are feelings of regret and a fat legal bill to pay.

Nevertheless – the best of luck to all my friends getting married in 2008.

Nothing To Do With You : a night with The Pigeon Detectives

This week I went to The Academy, courtesy of entertainment.ie, to see a band I knew nothing about.

The Pigeon Detectives had to cancel their last appearance in Dublin because singer Matt Bowman hurt his leg after jumping from the stage at a gig in the UK, but they did make this year’s Oxegen line-up.

My housemate played me a selection of tracks from his ipod the night before the gig – none of which I’d heard before. I knew the band from listening to Jo Whiley’s  show on Radio1 but couldn’t sing any of their songs off the top of my head.

So with little background knowledge I made my way to Abbey Street not knowing what to expect. There were a few people there when I arrived but my friend and I were able to grab some stools and pick a vantage point on the upper level. The stage was flanked by a metal barrier, very different to the last two gigs I’d been to at the Academy, so I was set for a rowdy performance…and the band didn’t disappoint.

The Pigeon Detectives came on stage full of energy and opened with ‘This Is An Emergency’ and a hyped up Bowman took a sip of water and spat it out over the crowd then threw the bottle up in the air soaking frenzied fans who were jumping in unison in front of the stage.

During ‘You Know I Love You’ there was more rock n roll behaviour when the mic was thrown in the air and landed in the hands of a guy the front row. There were songs from their new album and bright lights and drums of ‘Nothing to do with you’ got everyone clapping to the beat.

During ‘You Better Not Look My Way’, Bowman scaled the speakers to the roof, much to the annoyance of the bouncers who prevented excited girls getting near him as he stood on a railing high above the stage. Of course, the crowd loved it and lapped up every ounce of his display.

The best known track of the evening was ‘Take Her Back’ and everyone, including myself, joined in to sing “She’s got everything he wants; she’s got everything he needs, take her back…” Bowman was lying on the floor by the end of the song, unsurprising given the amount of running around he had just done in one of the most energetic performances I’ve seen in a long time.

We were left with ‘I’m not sorry’ and another bottle of water over the audience – an excellent closer to great night of music.

Breathe

Festival season is in full swing and all the newspapers are going Oxegen crazy.

I’ll be at home this weekend keeping warm and dry and I’ll be playing with my rain stick in a bid to encourage rain fall, laughing at the misfortune of those caked in mud at Oxegen.

Am I jealous of those attending the three day festival? Not at all…well, perhaps a little.

Remembering 7/7

I received a phone call at 9am on Saturday morning to do a quick interview about the London bombings for a radio station in Wales. Thankfully I wasn’t in bed and although I wasn’t quite awake I was able to string a sentence together.  

I was living and working in London on the 7/7/2005 and had not left for work that day. My boyfriend called me and said there had been a crash on the tube. I couldn’t believe it, so I went to my housemate’s room and he had the radio on. Nothing was being reported so we thought it was a hoax because of course it would be headline news…my boyfriend shouted “Turn on ITV” and we watched in disbelief as the news unfolded. We were in shock, why would anyone do this? Were our friends OK? I got on the internet and tired to access the BBC News website which was slow because of the number of people trying to get information.

I e-mailed everyone in my e-mail address book asking if they were OK. I spoke to a friend who had made it into work and she said the office was eerily quiet. She told me about one girl had been on a tube when it happened and they had to walk through the underground system as rats ran next to their feet. Everyone who made it into work had to walk home because the transport system had been shut down. Crowds of people walked across London’s bridges in a slow mass exodus from the city centre.

I made it into work the next day and although there were people around the streets were silent. I saw people in suits with plasters and bandages heavy with sadness as they walked along the river. The slogan became ‘We are Londoners, We are One’ and people became united in a war-like valour against the bombers who had thought they could bring Londoners to their knees.

However, something did change that day. People suspected each other that little bit more, an unattended bag became something o panic about and you checked who was on your carriage on the tube. Police walked around major stations with guns and stopped and searched anyone who looked slightly suspicious.

Although three years has passed since that day people have not forgotten and those who lived in London remember where they were when they heard the news. Today the victims will be remembered, but it’s also a time to look at the legacy of the bombings – all the innocent people detained in the fight against terrorism, all the young people stopped and searched in the fight against terrorism and the inescapable number of cameras watching our every move – all in the fight against terrorism. 

Three years on, victims remember 7/7

 

 

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.

- Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio.

Knife crime in the UK – too little too late.

 

Following a spate of stabbings British headlines have been filled with stories about knife crime:

 

Knife crime: Blunting the edge (The Guardian)

The wrong handle on knife crime (The Times)

Boy, 10, ‘pulled blade on girl, 9’ (the Sun)

Blunt truth about Britain’s knife crime (The Mirror)

 

I lived in London between 2003 and 2006, close to where French students Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez were murdered. It was clear even then that  knife crime was a problem, especially on a Monday morning when the bus journey up the Old Kent Road was littered with police signs reporting murders, robberies and assaults.

 

Working in the black music industry I’d hear stories from musicians and their friends about how they had lost close friends and family members to knife and gun crime often related to one of the many gangs in London. There was a real feeling that the media and police ignored the problem. I often question why nothing was reported in the large newspapers and small local newspapers were the only ones covering the alarming number of incidents.

 

Since a lull in news in April youth crime has been a hot topic for the newspapers in the UK and in the past two weeks every instance of stabbing is now headline news. On the news we see families devastated as they stand around wreaths where their loved one perished.

 

Knife crime is nothing new and the British government is now implementing panic measures to tackle the problem. Politicians and musicians use the topic to make headlines by speaking out about the problem and make themselves look good. But some fat cat politician with his Chelsea town house and country mansion isn’t going to stop young people from the roughest estates in the UK taking up knives in a bid to survive life in the so called ‘ghettos’. The real question is who can? Community groups have been tirelessly working to try and get youngsters to turn their backs on gang culture and the amazing work of www.mothersagainstguns.net highlights the alarming rate of gun crime. But for all the good work the young are still dying.

 

One morning in south London I saw a young man who was trying to get through a crowded train and violently pushed people out of his way. What struck me was the anger in his eyes, and that’s when I realised that there is a generation coming up which is so full of anger that they don’t care who gets hurt. They feel abandoned by society and all they have left is the respect they have amongst their peers and they’ll do anything to keep it.

 

The frightening truth is that it may be too late for these youngsters. They are so immersed in a gang state of mind that they can’t come back. The killing won’t stop because friends die, this just leads to retaliation attacks and the cycle continues. With gangs such as ‘The Peckham Boys’, the ‘Manor House Boys’ and the ‘Beaumont Man Dem’ only growing in number then the death toll is only set to rise

Umbrella ella ella eh eh eh…

I don’t mind the rain. I have fond memories of being in my bed in Wales on a cold Sunday morning listening to the rain tap against the window. I would open the curtains and see the grey clouds obscuring the tops of the Cambrian Mountains and hide under the duvet for another hour or so.

Until recently I couldn’t do the same in my Dublin home because my window looked out onto the main road and all I could hear were buses, lorries and cars passing by, but I’ve moved to a quieter room in the house and once again I can enjoy those wet Sunday mornings.

What I don’t like is the lack of umbrella etiquette on the streets of Dublin. I had half an hour to walk from Pearse St to Thomas St. last night and on my journey had to dodge several low umbrellas. There are people who know the correct way to behave – when a pedestrian sans umbrella comes your way, lift said object over their head to avoid the poking out of eyes and the annoyance of your fellow human beings.

On one particularly wet afternoon when walking up Grafton Street I had to physically push an umbrella out of my way, much to the annoyance of the girl holding it. I imagine what I would do if I was a bit more mean – adopt an East End accent a laKray Twins and shout “Oi…get outta my way” and push all offending objects (and people) out of my way…or I’d get a tomato ketchup sachet and when an umbrella comes too close start screaming “My eye, my eye!” whereby I squeeze the ketchup from between my fingers which will be covering the eye. However, this may lead to shock which can lead to heartattacks and I wouldn’t want that.

So spare a thought for us non-umbrella holders:  we didn’t think it was going to rain – we’re already pi**ed off so don’t get too close with those umbrellas.