Vengeful

Fascinating piece of Oscars trivia.

The Danish film that won the best foreign film Oscar is called Hämnden (Revenge) in Swedish but the English title is In a better world.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1340107/

Swedish filmgoers do like titles with the words revenge or dangerous in them.

Delighted to see a Scandinavian film getting an Oscar!

Discovering my inner Celt

My good friend, Andreas Fridaspappa, has an interesting theory. He believes that I am the long-lost bastard offspring of a Viking raid in Northern England a thousand years ago who has now returned to the land of his ancestors to worship Thor and Odin and carry out pagan rituals deep in the Nordic forest. Must be my runic tattoos! A dead giveaway!

Be that as it may, just now, as I listen to the bagpipes of Galicia, I feel a deep need to nurture my inner Celt.


http://celticusisacus.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html

Coming clean

7.00 am Sunday morning finds me as ever in the communal laundry with a large mound of smelly laundry.

I felt quite flattered when one of the younger washers asked my advice. Clearly I give the impression of a gnarled old soapdog, a veteran of the suds,a wizened old scrubber who knows his Daz from his Omo.

Super Mario Gatsby Galaxy?

It's a mad mad world! The Great Gatsby on Nintendo! And Waiting for Godot as computer game. In which nothing happens!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/feb/25/video-games-novel-classic-fiction

Do Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog turn up as house guests chez Gatsby?

I look forward to Crime and Punishment on Wii! Hamlet on PS3.

To zap or not to zap? That is the question.

At the Mermaid Parade - Phospherence

I don't expect anyone to be remotely interested, but this song is magnificent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8J1mK3jats

Sticky business

Yesterday at the end of a day that seemed to lurch from one disaster to the next, Kai finally sat down to do his alphabet homework.

Easy! Out with scissors and airfix. Cut out 2 letter As and stick them in the book. What could go wrong?

Daddy this glue smells nice. Really nice. Really, really nice! Try some!

Uh oh!

Two lips

Everyone in the family except me has been laid low by a virus in the last 7 days.

Which means that I never got round to writing about the wonderful surprise birthday party we had for our pal Astrid on Saturday night.

I made some special party dance CDs and co-organiser Ylva dared to suggest were not quite mainstream. Just as I was explaining how MOR all the tracks were, Tiny Tim launched into Tiptoe Through the Tulips.I rest my case, M'lud.

More Harpies

...and just by way of contrast with the Galician duo, here are two Scottish girls, the Duplets, and their harps. And a prince.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZCk5Tx54tQ

Harping on

I know I've been harping on a lot about Galician bagpipes recently. Coanhadeira are a woderful new discovery.

www.coanhadeira.com

Now here are some Galician harps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAfWqQT0yBQ


My mum was Welsh and I suspect that this appeals to my inner Celt. Very pretty and soothing.

I'll play some for Zoe. The poor little pudding is home from nursery with a virus that's being doing the rounds and is completely zonked out.

VABba Dabba Doo!

Of mice and boys

The best laid schemes of mce and boys gang aft aglae and leave them nought but a day in bed fast asleep.

Poor old Kai.He's been counting the weeks, counting the days to his birthday. And when it finally comes, he's not even well enough to watch telly. Nothing but a wee tímorous beastie boy. Poor little sausage!

Happy Birthday Kai! (Unhappy Barthday!)

Happy Birthday Kai! Eight years old today! Happy Barthday would be nearer the truth though as the first thing he did was to rush off to the loo to puke.

Poor little sausage! He's been looking forward to today for months and now it's come he's ill. When I went to school to pick him up yesterday he was asleep and clearly not well.

Despite having a temperature though, he was well enough to open some of his birthday presents. He'll have fun regardless.

Farrow? No! Fado!

Very fine show by Ana Moura at Söder theatre this evening. A girl who puts the foxy into fado! She was wearing an extraordinary glittery evening gown which would have looked more at home at the Oscars Gala than in a humble fado dive.

The Portuguese guitar player, Custódio Castelo, was a quite remarkable virtuoso too playing some licks that Jimmy Page would not have been ashamed of.

I was pretty disappointed by the merch table. Just one CD on sale and no T shirts, stickers or band merchandise. However Ms Moura herself turned up to meet and greet. She told me that she had looked forward to exploring Stockholm, but with temperatures of minus 10 she hadn't dared to leave the hotel for fear of damaging her vocal chords.

The one surprise in her set was a fado version of No Expectations. She's worked with Mick and Keef and clearly likes to be snapped with celebrities. So it would have been very mean of me to disappoint her!

Babes? No. But I'm certainly a magnet!

At St Eriksplan today a loony stepped in front of the buggy as Zo and I started to go across the zebra crossing. He tried to stop me and proclaimed to the world that Zoe was not my daughter.

Embarassed I dashed past him but he then recruited a postman (as one does)and chased after me down into the Metro determined to make a citizen's arrest.

The sheepish postie came up to me and asked me if Zoe (fast asleep thank goodness) was my child. I fear I was not desperately polite to him.

All in all, proof of my extraordinary capacity to attract every fruitcake within a one mile radius.

Birthday girl

A few photos of Zoe's birthday celebrations.

Snowchestral manouvres? Quite a lark!

Yesterday the whole family went along to Konserthuset for a children's concert by the Swedish Royal Philarmonic Orchestra and the Markatta Musical Theatre group: Space Witches.

There was an enornous, new mountain of snow in Hötorget. A serious child magmet!

Often when I go to a gig Duncan sorts out the tickets which means we are usually in the front few rows. This time we were at the side in the second balcony. Excellent really as we had a great view of the orchestra and could see clearly how all the different instruments contributed to the sound.

Zoe was over the moon about it all, clapping and shouting her appreciation.

Holy mistaken identity!

Kai was playing Lego,Batman on Playstation this morning and proudly came to tell me how well he'd been doing.
Daddy! Batman has defeated The Joker, the Penguin and the Hitler.

The who?
The Hitler.He wears a green shirt and asks lots of crazy questions.As far as I remember, the Hitler preferred brown shirts!

Snowpocalypse now

Where do you go get warm when the snow is coming down by the lorryful, the winds are howling and you've just had to trek through the arctic wastes of Stockholm as all busses have been cancelled? A record shop of course.

Zoe and I took shelter in Record Hunter yesterday and the kind chap working there even gave her a CD to cheer her up. Cats in Riot, if you are interested.

It would have been rude not to buy something so I invested in an album of birdsong remixed with electronica: Pausfågeln remixed.

Rare. Obscure. A collector's item!!Probably worth a fortune!

Frost 2- The return

Jack is back! Big time!

Mr Frost was taking no prisoners in Stockholm today. Stepped out of the house into one foot of snow. I then had to carry Zo on my shoulders and drag the buggy to the Metro. Only to later hear that all busses in Stockholm were cancelled. So the two of us had an Amundsenesque trek from St Eriksplan to the Karolinska.

When the going gets tough, the tough get skiing!

Jerry Lee Wakeman?

Zoe says a big thankyou to everyone for all the birthday cards, presents and greetings she got yesterday. We gave her a mini grand piano and she is now sitting there, in her leopard skin dressing gown, knocking out a few riffs.

Kai was pretty keen about it too. I think he fancies himself as some sort of hybrid between Jerry Lee Lewis and Rick Wakeman.

So far: sofa

So far, Zoe's birthday is not going particularly well. She's in very good spirits but is clearly suffering from the tummy bug that Kai had. So she's at home amd there'll be no party at nursery for her. Not today anyway.

And meanwhile, on arrival at school, Ulrika tells me that Kai gave a performance that would not have shamed De Niro. He rolled around on the floor groaning and howling: I'm ill! I'm ill! He even tried to force himself to puke! A method acting malingerer of world class.

Poor Ulrika! All desperately embarassing for her as this extraordinary thespian display was taking place in front of all the other parents who clearly thought that she was a cruel mother who forced her poor child to go to school when he was ill.

It seems we have a bull to take by the horns regarding his attitude about going to school.

Parenting! it's just one big barrelload of laughs!

Happy Birthday Zoe!!!

Our little girl is five years old today! Yippee!

Serious over-indulgence imminent! And that's just me!

I came across a child of dog ,he was walking along the road.....

Garrell kindly gave me a DVD of the Festivals Britannia programme (which you can watch on the Yooftube). It is pretty essential viewing for any festival goer, past, future or present.
It's more social history than music history.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwVlN-cFvv0

Some wonderful clips from the archives. Dig those crazy jazz cats puffing their pipes at the Beaulieu Jazz Festival in the late 50s. No jazz tobacco in evidence. Some Old Shag was rebellious enough in those days. Those guys were rioting and trashing the stage because of Acker Bilk! It doesn't get much stranger on the shore than that.


There's something gloriously Tolkienesque about the moment in the late 80s when the two tribes of the crusties/travelling people/hippies and the Rave party techno kids form an unholy alliance and have five day long party together at a castle. The etsblishment was quaking in its boots.

Ace choice of background music too. The Edgar Broughton Band playing Out demons out in the background for the footage of the Stones Hyde Park gig. Perfect!

Did Edgar and his pals ever do a gig where they got paid, I wonder.

Cool Brittania indeed!

Euromisery

The Swedish Eurovision heats began this evening. Purgatory!

Kai insists that he and Zo must stay up to watch them so they will have something to talk to their small pals with. So that's our Saturday evening ruined for the foreseeable future.

Amused by the title of the song he insisted I vote for: In the Club. In my book, a girl who is in the club is: up the duff,in the family way, has a bun in the oven!

Incontinental

I was trying to improve Kai's knowledge of geography today,so I asked him which continents he could name. Interesting answer: Asia, Australis, Europe, North America, South America and ... Black America!

Perhaps he' s more politically aware than I gave him credit for?