Month: March 2013

1SE – March

~ Phil Lengthorn ~ 3 Comments

One Second Everyday is up and running.

Since my birthday on the 16th March I have begun to take a one second video everyday, read more about it here. The plan was to wait until the end of the year and put it all together, but I thought I'd have a little go and see how easy it is. It turns out, using the 1SE app, is incredibly easy. So we have episode one, the first 16 days of my 44th year…

As you can see, not the most amazing start to my project: Bragg, North, snow, school, running…I must try and do more in April!

 

Trepidation

~ Phil Lengthorn ~ 2 Comments

'A feeling of fear or agitation about something that may happen'

Now being born and bred in South London – which I am very proud of – travelling North is always a slightly worrying time. So when the time came to venture to Huddersfield for an 18th Birthday Party, it was with trepidation that we began.

Overall we had a great time, but I never thought it would be plain sailing….

  • We had previously booked a 'bargain' room in a pub just outside the city. We only paid £35 for a family room so didn't expect too much on arrival. Seemed pretty clean, a lovely little village pub and was perfect for what we wanted, even included a TV that was situated on top a rather rickety cupboard. The full extent of what we had done would be revealed later.
  • After doing a lap of the city centre in search of 'Rhubarb', the hippest, happening joint in Huddersfield, we still seemed lost. So we asked a local. In fact we asked three locals, before actually meeting one who had a reasonable idea of where he was and what century he was living in who was able to point us in the right direction.
  • We entered 'Rhubarb', the hippest, happening joint in Huddersfield. At this point I began to show my age. It was very loud. It was not only very loud, it was dance music. I have a serious issue with dance music – it all sounds the same. I'm pretty sure we listened to the same track for 4 hours. Hence the fact we didn't last too long in the throng of drunken teenagers.
  • The constant bang bang bang of dance music had done one thing – we were now desperate for food. Therefore a visit to a nondescript pizza takeaway place was on the cards. A ham pizza was ordered. I'm not sure if this is a northern thing, but instead of ham we got a light sprinkling of some sort of hard red substance – clearly they had noticed my southern accent and attempted to show me the way of the north.
  • And so we made it back to our room. Only now our room was above the loudest, hippest happening joint just outside the city centre. Our 'lovely little village pub' had turned into the devil itself. And the devil did not rest until 4am!
  • One other interesting point to make about the room is that the en suite did not have its own light, the light only came on when you switched the main room light on. Cue a ridiculous trip to the loo in the middle of the night with the light from my phone shining the way.

AND because I am in the midst of a 'One Second Everyday' project I have even managed a very short video of the events – minus the visit to the loo of course….

 

PS. Happy Birthday Shanice!

Very impressed with Apple….

~ Phil Lengthorn ~ 2 Comments

About a month ago my iPhone experienced a bit of a failure: the lock button decided to give up the ghost. So as the phone was still under warranty I rang Apple in an attempt to find out what to do. Cue a ridiculous conversation with an America lady that involved lots of tango-victor-bravo terminology. Now my NATO phonetic alphabet is maybe not up to scratch as at one stage I used the word octopus for 'o', had various spellings of my surname, Lengthan, Lengthern and Lengthon to name but a few, and finally managed to book an appointment at my not so local Apple store in Leicester (I did actually find out later that it was incredibly easy to book this appointment online).

So today I ventured to Leicester, not feeling particularly optimistic, to solve the problem…

I arrived at the Apple store with what seemed like every other Apple customer in England – it was very busy. I was greeted by a very nice man with an iPad who promptly booked me in and directed me to the rear of the store to the 'Genius Bar'. Arriving at the 'bar' – which did not serve any alcoholic beverages – another very nice man, again armed with an iPad, confirmed what the problem was and scooted round the back to get my replacement phone.

Within 5 mins I had logged into Apple on the new phone, been told that the next time I connect to my WiFi it will automatically update itself – I had the previous night backed up the phone to iCloud – and sent on my way.

And…low and behold he was absolutely right….on returning home within 30 mins the phone had downloaded various apps, photos, videos and music. Lovely jubbly!

 

Billy Bragg: Tooth and Nail

~ Phil Lengthorn ~ 1 Comment

With his first studio album for five years, Billy Bragg is most certainly back…..only now we see the more relaxed-into-middle-age Bragg, an album about love, loss and hope, as opposed to fight, struggle and protest. As much as this album lacks a bit of the old fiery protest singer, what it does show is that Billy has lost none of his songwriting skills: touching and poignant throughout.

The album has a definite Americana influence, lots of slide guitar and a country feel in places. Bragg still manages to produce an album that feels perfectly balanced between the polemical and the out-and-out love songs.

The album is littered with the songs of struggle – only now it is the struggle with relationships, loneliness and loss. As much as Bragg is associated with protest songs, he does, in my opinion, sing about love even better. Take 'Your Name on my Tongue' a song about love and longing, or 'Handyman Blues' a wry look at modern relationships.

“I'm not any good at pottery, so let's lose a 't' and shift back the 'e', and I'll find a way to make my poetry build a roof over our heads”

Following on from the Mermaid Avenue album's of Guthrie lyrics put to music, Bragg has included one Woody cover: 'I Ain't got no Home' – an anthemic track about a migrant worker trying to survive the depression the 1930s.

He does still sing about changing the world, but in a calmer, less anxious way: 'Tomorrow's Going to be a Better Day', 'There Will be a Reckoning' and 'Do Unto Others' all have something to say about people and politicians alike, but with a softer tone and more philosophical approach – perhaps Bragg is mellowing in his old age!

“There will be a reckoning for the pedlars of hate who spread their poison all across this estate and a reckoning too for the politicians who left us to this fate”

Overall, 'Tooth and Nail' is a great album, it has a back-to-basics feel to it, it feels like we are welcoming an old friend back…

 

One Second Everyday

~ Phil Lengthorn ~ 3 Comments

It has been a busy couple of years since I began blogging: 2011 saw #project365 where I posted a picture every day; 2012 saw a different project completed and blogged about every month; and 2013 began with the annual attempt at #janathon. Since then I have given myself a month away from the blogosphere, but now I'm back…complete with a brand new project….

Inspired by a fella called Cesar Kutiyama who has been recording 1 second every day for the last 2 years, you can read more about his story here. He has also created an easy to use app – so anyone can do it. You can literally take short videos through the day, if you remember (although you can get reminders), then decide which 1 second part you want to use, then mash them together. Simple. Here is the inspiration…

Today is my birthday so I plan to begin today and by the end of the year I will have a 365 second video of my year. Not entirely sure how it is going to go – I'm not sure I do enough 'interesting' things – but we'll see what happens. I'll probably be posting monthly videos on the blog just to see how we're doing.

 

Beans on Toast at the Cookie Jar!

~ Phil Lengthorn ~ Leave a comment

It has not gone unnoticed that this post has lots of food items in the title. So, if you have come across this post hoping for either a new funky recipe or a video of someone eating beans on toast by a cookie jar you are going to be extremely disappointed.

Last weekend saw a rare visit to Leicester to watch the fantastic, folky and a little bit sweary Beans on Toast. The Venue: The Cookie Jar – a basement venue beneath the coffee shop The Crumblin' Cookie.

Considering 'Beans' wasn't on until 10.15pm, and it was a Sunday night, an impressively sized audience had gathered. Now, if you've ever listened to Beans on Toast before you will understand that musically they are not the most complicated and complex melodies, in fact 'Beans' will be first to point out that they all sound the same. But what you get is a great collection of simple intelligently written songs, with lyrics that immediately strike a cord with listeners. 'Beans' has a way of breaking down the barrier between artist and audience.

It's not just great little songs you get with Beans on Toast, it's an evening of entertainment: funny stories, requests, forgetting verses, impromptu 'beat boxer' from the audience, and my personal favourite….”Right Leicester who likes blowjobs?”.

It was a great set, funny and quirky – bizarre in places – but what you ultimately get is a 'real' singer/songwriter without a glimmer of pretence, and with it a very enjoyable evening.