I know some people get a little agitato when it comes to AI (and in some cases rightly so, I do get it) but, for the most part, whenever I've used it, it's really been just as a surrogate photoshop tool. Here's a case in point. The above snap was a photograph I took of a Heron food store earlier this year. But, me being me, and in an ideal world (question for the ages: would there even be a Heron food store in an ideal world?), I'd have preferred it if there were no people or cars 'blocking the view'; so, I asked AI to lose them. And, I said, while you're about it, overlay a few bold and vibrant brush strokes. This is how it came back. It's like Hockney's A Bigger Splash except without the swimming pool. Or California. I like it. But then I would, wouldn't I?
In July of last year I and countless other volunteers helped contribute to a giant work of art that took over a year to complete: a huge mosiac mural that when installed (about half a mile from where I live) would dominate an entire wall over 5m long x 3m high. It's called The Sherwood Tree of Knowledge and is the brainchild of local artist Anna Dixon. The piece was broken down into bite size chunks and each of us worked on small sections approximately 12" square.
My 'bit' was the poppy you can see above. Until I walked into Anna's garden studio 12 months ago on a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon I'd never mosaiced(?) in my life, so I had to learn fast. With nothing more than a tile nibbler and hundreds (thousands!) of broken tiles & porcelain fragments at my disposal, off I went. Everyone in the room was dead friendly and very helpful.
A few hours later and after consuming countless cups of coffee and chocolate biscuits I had my poppy in the can (or whatever mosaicists say when they've broken the back of the thing they've been working on all day.) I loved doing it and loved being part of something very special. Sadly, I missed the grand unveiling a couple of weekends ago as I was out of town, but the picture below taken from the local rag gives you an idea of the buzz it's created.
A big thank you to Mike Douglas & everyone at Sherwood Business Centre for helping to fund this fantastic installation.
There are a number of mosaics, large and small, dotted around my neighbourhood. I found this little one (pictured above) on Saturday morning as I stepped outside a coffee shop I'd hitherto not frequented before. Did you know there are twenty-six different types of ladybird? No, me neither. This is a fin. A fiver. A five-spot, a.k.a. Coccinella Quinquepunctata.
Thelonius Monk - Five-Spot Blues*
*Monk (1917-1982) dedicated this to the Five Spot Café in New York's Bowery neighbourhood.
Today's Monday Long Song is pretty self explanatory: it has a wonky bassline and is a disco banger. It's also something of a kitchen staple here at Medd Towers.
The head honcho behind Red Rack'em, Danny Berman, is a musical geek. If loops, drum patterns and samples are your bag then you need look no further to see how the whole 8 minutes and 10 seconds was painstakingly pieced together.
However, I only speed read it as, a bit like magic tricks, I'd rather not know how they work (it quite literally ruins the magic); which reminds me - I must tell you all about Mike, the landlord in my new favourite bar, who specialises in close-up magic - maybe next time...
I can honestly say I've never been billed as a special guest before. Ever. But Special Guest is, seemingly, what I am for this upcoming shindig on Sunday. I think a greatest hits set is called for; so that would be the one about the woman with the dogs, and the one I nicked off Neil Young. I might even do my version (vershion) of I'm Not in Love. There never were such times.
Once again I'm looking forward to combining two of my favourite pastimes - music and beer: I've been added to the bill at Nottingham's Bar 71 on Sunday 25 August. It's a Bank Holiday, so the atmosphere should be quite special.
Bar 71 is a thriving community micro-pub a mile or so from the city centre (and conveniently a mere hop, skip & a jump from where I live). The incomparable Paul Carbuncle is compering the event and headlining too. I think I'm on at 5pm. Promises to be a great day.
A collection of my photographs is currently being exhibited at A Room Full of Butterflies in Nottingham. A big thank you to Andy Welch at the gallery; Andy thought my 'Bio' was too self deprecating, so has asked me to have another go and big myself up. We'll see.
A Room Full of Butterflies
632 Mansfield Road
Sherwood
NOTTINGHAM
NG5 2GA
P.S. 30 April 2019. So, this is how my (revised) Bio. reads:
John Medd
John has been photographing people and places all his adult life. This collection brings together six striking images that capture the colours and textures of life in a city - and beyond. His work regularly appears in his vibrant blog - Are We There Yet?
John lives in Sherwood, and in winter can often be seen photographing puddles. www.johnmedd.com
Boxing Day. A day to relax. A day to do precisely nothing; the square root of nothing, no less. There's even a formula for this prolonged bout of inactivity: e=√FA That said, I am reading a rather splendid book at the moment, whilst simultaneously demolishing nearly half a tin of Quality Street. Oh, and I've hung a few pictures this afternoon that have been leaning against walls for far too long. And I'm currently compiling a couple of playlists. Downtempo playlists, if you will; nothing too strenuous, nothing too upbeat. Not today. Not on Boxing Day.
Paul Weller bookends the first one with two different versions of My Ever Changing Moods - one of my fave Weller songs from his Style Council days. He did a rather tasty piano version 30+ years ago and then, last year I think, included it in a specially recorded BBC session - a version reflecting his now slightly reduced vocal range (Macca, a hero of Weller, does something very similar when he sings Beatles songs these days).
When band members cite reasons for leaving a band then 'musical differences' must be the most well worn of them all: cliché central. But that's precisely why I, together with Sharon and Janet (pictured above), left our last choir and decided over a drink one night to start our own: CHOIR ON FIRE!
We start proper a week on Monday and already we're getting a lot of interest. The venue's booked, the set list is taking shape and we're getting ready to sing. And we'll sing anything from Abba to Zappa - that's what it says in the Nottingham Post!
It's sleeting. It's cold. It's still dark at nearly 9 o'clock in the morning. That can only mean one thing - the festival season is upon us!
Gin for breakfast
That's right, kicking off in a little under two hours is 'The Sherwood Gin Festival'. It being a Bank Holiday Monday, my friends have decided that I can't possibly have anything better to do today than drink copious amount of what was once described as Mother's Ruin*. They know me so well.
*You'd be run out of town on a rail these days for using that outdated term. It's strictly hashtag gin now - the new craft beer - which, I've been promised (and the only reason I'm going today, to be honest), is also being served today. Don't get me wrong, I love the stuff, but a gin only diet would mean I'd be an early faller for sure, and, after about 2:00 p.m. could not be held responsible for my actions.
The bloke second from the right may well have a Knighthood, but that don't make him the Best
I may not always be the best person to come to for advice (blog posts passim), but I'll always give you a good soundbite; since moving back (just in time - a year later and I'd have ended up like Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and finding myself in familiar surroundings and in the company of friends old and new, I can look back at the year just gone and say 'Yeah, I think we smashed it.'
As for resolutions to carry into 2018, anyone who knows me will testify that you've got more chance of kissing the Queen's tits than me coming up with any resolutions, let alone those of a New Year variety. That said, the Great Escape from Pickering and my relocation to Nottingham has been done to death (again, this blog is littered with reams of the stuff) so, after today, we won't speak of it again; the files have been shredded and the numbers deleted from my phone. Literally.
Right, I'm glad we've got that out of the way. So, in keeping with the unwritten Blogger's Code, here's 2017 all wound up and ready to play; no Top Tens of this, that and the other, just one list. Here you go:
Best Album: Pugwash - Silverlake
Best Single: Pugwash - What Are You Like
Best Gig: Ryan McMullan - Rescue Rooms
Best Choir: Sherwood Voices
Best Novel: My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent
Best Magazine: Ferment - Adventures in the Global Craft Alcohol Movement
Best person to follow on Twitter: Neville Southall
Best film I went to see on my birthday: North By Northwest
Best TV Programme (Not just of 2017 by the way): Detectorists
Best TV soundtrack: Johnny Flynn (Detectorists)
Best Boxset/Netflix series I've watched this year: Mad Men. By a country mile
And finally, the Best thing I did in 2017: Move On
* Thank you to We Are Cult - always a riveting read - for reminding me earlier this year just how good McCartney II is. Whether or not 'it's the boldest statement a solo Beatle made during Lennon's lifetime' is another thing altogether. (But it makes for a great strap line.)
Macca - Waterfalls
*And that's where today's Blog Post title came from. It could even be your New Year's Resolution.
Lat night night was choir night. We're getting there, slowly building our, ahem, repertoire: softly softly, catchee monkey.
So, alright, we're not quite match fit yet; not the finished article, but we're not far off. We could do with strengthening at the back - a couple of strategically placed flyers dotted around NG5 (I'll drop a few off in Doctor's Orders and Kraftwerks) should, with a bit of luck, yield an extra vox or two.
We're quite an eclectic bunch who are always on the look out for new material. We've already had a go at couple of my songs and, I think, this one suits our voices. We've sung it both a capella and with me on the guitar and everyone singing the chorus & harmonies. Both work well, but we'll get a definitive version nailed in the next week or two. In the meantime, here's my demo:
The last few days have gone by like something akin to a whirlwind; long story short (regular readers, feel free to stifle a yawn) - we finally vacated God's Waiting Room on Thursday and have reconnected with civilisation. So, for the last few days all* my possessions, barring the clothes I'm standing up in, are now in storage - where they will remain until next Friday, by which time we will have deep cleaned and decorated the new gaff from top to bottom.
The above preamble is by way of explaining why the milk bottles** have been piling up outside this blog and the neighbours have been reporting me as a missing person. Though not a prolific writer by any stretch of the imagination, I do like to check in two or three times a week and record the random thoughts that invariably blindside me at 4:00 pm on an idle Tuesday***.
Now that Amazon have my new address I was pleased to take in my first parcel yesterday morning: a recommendation from one of the bloggers**** you'll see over in the right hand margin, led me to a wonderful book - Spoon's Carpets. Kit Caless was sitting in a Wetherspoon's pub reading The Way Inn by Will Wiles in which the main character travels the country living in a low budget chain of hotels. Every time he gets out of the hotel lift he sees a different painting which he soon works out form part of a giant collage. Kit then had a lightbulb moment and realised that every Spoon's carpet is totally unique. A hit blog was born - which members of the public embraced and became willing participants and photographers; not to mention enthusiastic beer sommeliers. As a guide it's every bit as important as the Good Beer Guide. And much funnier. I'm heading out later today into our new bustling high street and know that when I cross the threshold of the (huge) Spoons (The Samuel Hall) I will be keeping my head down and my chin up.
Finally today, I've always been fascinated by numbers and sequencing of numbers - Fibonacci being one that has always intrigued me: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89...
But far and away the most personal of sequences (and everyone reading this will have their own unique sequence) now has a new addition: 86, 11, 20, 17, 108, 25, 29, 17, 79, 111, 24, 90. You don't need to be an employee at Bletchley Park to crack this particular code: I was born in No. 86, and 90 now sits on all our new correspondence - nicely rounding off today's offering.
Feel free to share your unique set of (house) numbers.
* The packers even packed my glasses. I'd only put them down for five minutes ** Do milkmen still deliver bottles? *** With thanks to Baz Luhrmann **** Pete Brown - the UK's finest beer writer
