Matthew Stadlen head to head with Peter Hitchens at the Tabernacle.

I'm a bit late posting this. It's a new event at the Tabernacle tonight.

In a new series at The Tabernacle Matthew Stadlen interviews public figures before opening the interview up to the floor where the audience will be encouraged to ask questions themselves.

Stadlen is a journalist and documentary film-maker and has interviewed more than 200 guests for the BBC series Five Minutes With -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/20066560. 

The well-known journalist and author Peter Hitchens will be the first guest to go Head2Head with Stadlen. Hitchens is a columnist for The Mail On Sunday, a frequent contributor to news programmes on TV and has written six books including The Abolition of Britain. He describes himself as a Burkean Conservative.

Details HERE

Glastonbury: Ist Nations of a festival tipi encampment..

A guest blog from Jan Nieupjur. Tribal name: Dances with vowels.

Glossary of 1^st nations of the Glastonbury tipi's:  

NATION                     Description

Indig	The easily Riled people of the shared loo
Fulmi	The short tempered loo queuers
Stag	Dwellers of the mud
Sali	Dwellers of the saltmarshes
Pug	The fighting tribe also known as the Angels of Hell
Conster	The puzzled people (chief Kevin Conster)
peregri	The wanderers who cannot find their tents
Desti	The people who have arrived
Predesti	The people who know they will arrive
Assassi	The back stabbers
Rumi	The thinking people who stayed at home
Procrasti	Those who dally in the mud
Emi	The great tribe in the VIP encampment
Abomi	The awful people (in the next tent)
Insubordi	The tribe that heckles in the poetry tipi
Impreg	The successful fuckers
Resig	The people without tickets who sigh
Indoctri	The brainwashed people who think it is fun
Artificialinsemi	The petridish people
Contami	The tribe that is unclean (All become members of the Contami by the end of the festival)
Imagi	The fantasists who watch at home then pretend to have been

The royal kitkat, common poo.

The muse played a gig at Buckingham Palace recently. she was delighted to find that the queen had popped down to Tesco Metro for a box of Kitkats for the band.

This is the royal Kitkat before we ate it... It tasted regal Ma'am!

The royal Kitkat is now sadly common poo.

Sic biscuittus disintegrat.

The seagull man of Bath. What a tosser.

Charlie Dancey, who made the video, writes: This is the Seagull Man, he turns up at Pulteney Weir each Sunday at 7am and feeds the gulls, who are a menace and have been grabbing the atention of the press.

Permission is granted for this video to be freely used by the media, provided that it is credited to me. I don't much like confrontation, but the gulls are a real menace, and they also kill ducks, and we all know how I feel about ducks.

This is a higher resolution shot of the best identifying picture of the Seagull man I can find in my video...

Charlie Lives aboard the 'Northern Sun' with Cleopatra the duck presently moored at Pulteney Weir and is a driving force behind the South Quay Community Arts Project in Bath: Details HERE

Does anyone recognise the seagull man? Let me know if you do.

Portobello crime scene. RBKC guilty!

Gosh! I'm a criminal...

Yes I did it, I put my hands up, caught bang to rights etc etc.

On Thursday evening I put out a number of bags of garden waste for collection by RBKC the following morning. I had researched the methodology (a word local authorities are very fond of) for disposal of garden waste, I bought the green bags as required, I made sure the day was correct for collection on this street. I did everything asked of by RBKC.

The following morning the RBKC crew turned up, removed one bag of waste and left the remainder on the pavement.... Sheer idiocy! Why on earth could they not take it all?

This morning I found that the good people of RBKC had visited and declared the situation an 'Environmental Crime Scene'. The garbage added to the garden waste by the morons visiting the market doesn't help.

But am I the criminal?  My actions were those of a law abiding resident following instructions from the RBKC website. RBKC however (or it's minions) did not follow the instructions on their website. Surely this makes them the criminal.

I have telephoned the number on the sticker placed on the bags and have been fobbed off with the promise of a call at some time from the environmental officer... I await the call with enthusiasm.

At exactly the same time as my supposed crime the following photographs were taken directly opposite the house.

 As you can see from the lack of yellow stickers RBKC do not consider this a crime yet this scene is repeated weekly in this street due to a total absence of waste bins or skips within the market area of Portobello Green resulting in post market detritus being dumped on the streets and in our gardens. Oh, and if we should leave the litter in our gardens we are threatened by RBKC with prosecution.

Come on RBKC sort it out and clean your shit up!

The Theatre of Small Convenience. A short film by Angelica Landry.

Angelica has made a lovely little film about the wonderful Dennis Neale and his theatre in what was once a Gents lavatory in Great Malvern... English eccentricity at its best.


The Theatre of Small Convenience from Angelica Landry on Vimeo.

visiting the theatre is now high on my 'to do' list.

Urban fox No: 3

This little chap has been visiting us for some time, she checks out the dog bowl for food and if it is empty pretends to limp to get a bit of sympathy. For my part I am happy to see the little chap... The bastard squirrels keep away!

Shadow dance... 真的笑死我了啦！'s video: 这表演太强了！不分享不行！

I know nothing about this except that it is very very good!

It is also very weird. someone somewhere seems to have the ability to change this embedded video at will. the video you are watching is not neccessarily the video I embedded in this blog. Is this a Chinese invasion of some sort?

The lovers.

Every day at 6.00 pm these two love birds turn up in the garden for a spot of billing and cooing. I've taken to feeding them on seeds from the lesbian shop. 

Life on Venus? Signs of an alien invasion.

The photo is a little out of focus and wobbly due to the shock of witnessing signs of extra terrestrial life!

Saporitalia Portobello Road. Dancing on Tesco Disco's grave. (The best pizza in Notting Hill).

The muse wanted a pizza and when the muse wants a pizza there is only one solution....

I decided to try Saporitalia at 222 Portobello Road. I wrote about the place when Tesco Disco closed some months ago and decided that enough time had passed for the place to iron out any wrinkles and soothe any teething pains.

The place looks and smells good and the staff were great considering I had gone in during a very busy Saturday night to order one solitary pizza; they could have been extremely snotty but were not!

I ordered, asked how long (seven minutes) ran an errand and was back on the dot to find said pizza waiting...

So far excellent. But what would the muse think?

Best pizza in the area by a mile was the verdict and the muse has tried them all. Good fresh ingredients, plenty of it, absolutely gorgeous and at £12.50 better value than anywhere else too.

Ten out of ten then! I'll be back.

The website is HERE

David Bowie - The Next Day.

What is all the fuss about?

Duncan McTier… Guilty! A curious silence! And what about Phillip Pickett?

I find it strange that there is a deafening silence in the music world after the arrest of Duncan McTier, currently professor of double bass at the Royal Academy of Music in London. I can only find reference to the arrest in the Guardian and regional newspapers. The Huffington post has run the story but the BBC is studiously ignoring it.

Why is the BBC studiously ignoring it and why is no-one rallying round in support?

The full Guardian article is HERE

UPDATE: I'm having to keep silent on this one, I'm not one to gossip, I've even banned Jan Nieupjur from putting his ten pennyworth in. My thoughts however do go out to Duncans wife and, of course, his students!

I do, however, wonder if Duncans German style of bowing might play a part in this Wagneresque penny opera! As my mum would have said: If he'd stuck to the French way this would never have happened! Not that my mum was a double bass player but she did liken my table manners to those of a German bassist and what the fuck would the Queen say if she invited me to dinner!

I did point out to my mother that the Queen was mostly German and would probably prefer to be fiddled with in the German manner!

UPDATE. November 2014.  Mctier pleads guilty! Surprise surprise: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/nov/11/double-bassist-admits-sexual-assaults-students

UPDATE. Jan 6th 2014.

I read in the Standard today that Phillip Pickett, ex teacher of the recorder at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, allegedly raped two students who were under his care…

                                Phillip Pickett. Accused of rape.

I tried to log on to his website to read more but found that it is down for 'Maintenance'.

I have learned however that he took up the recorder after his teeth were kicked out as a student. Prior to that he blew his own trumpet.

If I were the parent of a daughter wanting to study music I would have to think long and hard about her studying in England, it doesn't appear to be very safe from predatory teachers.

Do male music teachers feel that they have an automatic right to abuse their pupils?

UPDATE: From the Times 12th Feb 2014

Ex-Guildhall teacher Philip Pickett faces rape charges

A musician who taught at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama has been charged with 15 historical offences, including rape and false imprisonment.

Philip Pickett, 63, from Oxfordshire, is accused of eight counts of indecent assault and three of rape.

He is charged with two counts of false imprisonment as well as one charge of assault and attempted rape.

The offences, relating to nine separate victims, are alleged to have occurred between 1974 and 1988.

Mr Pickett, who lives in Chipping Norton, was a freelance teacher at the school between 1972 and 1997.

Since then, he has played the recorder and directed early music ensembles, including the New London Consort.

He is considered an authority on early music interpretation and has also collaborated with members of the folk rock band Fairport Convention.

He has been bailed to appear at City Magistrates' Court on 28 February.​​