[Werk] Photographer wanted

I've been asked whether I know anyone who'd be able to take photos "somewhere close to my standard"¹ at an event on the afternoon of Sunday 6th June, as I'm very unlikely to be able to make it there.

The kicker is that it's in Cirencester (which is part of why I won't be able to make it, spending a large chunk of the Saturday night in Cambridge as I am). Oh, and it's a polo match. Duties will involve getting snaps of designated folks and taking some shots of blokes wielding giant croquet mallets from horseback.

Anyone out that way and interested (or know someone who might be interested), let me know. Suspect it might be "a job for charidee", but I can check.

¹ Should be pretty easy for anyone not a concussed chimp, that being roughly my standard [grin].

[Food] Oh, yes, forgot to what we ate at Bel & The Dragon

Oh, I've just remembered to put up what we (valkyriekaren and I) had for dinner at Bel & The Dragon in Godalming the other week ...

( Our selected menu. )

And a) yes, it was delicious, and b) damn, now I'm rather hungry. Now for lunch, although it'll be nowhere near as mouth-watering.

[Journal] Last Friday

Last Friday valkyriekaren and I met up at the Bloomsbury Theatre for yet another Robin Ince School for Gifted Children event - this time the School for Gifted Children May Ball - Module One. K described it as "Hotties of Science", featuring as it did appearances from Brian Cox, Simon Singh and Ben Goldacre (together with someone else who I can't recall right now ... hang on, it was Adam Rutherford) - Simon and Ben coming on mostly to eulogise Evan Harris following his election defeat the previous night. It also featured music from Martin White (well, in a fashion - using a rather random approach to generate a tune and words in order to disprove a theoretical proposition¹) and Gavin Osborn, comedy from Andrew Collins and Marcus Brigstocke and a rather odd diversion from a woman who was obsessed by The Fall (the band, not the rebel angels expulsion from heaven, or the removal of certain apple-eaters from a garden by the landlord). There was also final surprise turn from Tim Minchin, who performed some newer songs (including The Pope Song) and at least one he had to re-start twice. He even segued into a verse or two of Crocodile Rock.

Possibly due to the exhaustion of both Robin Ince ("Has my inner monologue come out earlier than usual tonight? Why, yes it has. Why do you think that is? I'm very very tired.") and Marcus Brigstocke, it actually ran roughly to time. Additionally, Robin left the reading of Sagan books to Brian Cox and Adam Rutherford, instead choosing to provide excerpts from The Olivetti Chronicles, a collection of John Peel's columns - which he read out in a rather good impersonation of Mr Peel's apparently-not-inimitable style. As a result of this, I found myself needing to acquire a copy, which I did on Monday, at an event which itself deserves a post of its own, and have been reading it while commuting. It may well have exacerbated the already rambling nature of my posts.

¹ That being, that if you hear any 'tune' enough times, it becomes memorable. While the resulting chord sequence was enough to make valkyriekaren wince, and I'm am renowned for my lack of tunefulness, I suspect that he didn't in fact play it enough times for it to become truly ingrained - I do, however, recall the chorus², even though I couldn't sing it in tune, even then.
² Quite easy, in fact, given that it was inspired by one of Robin's readings from the book of Peel, and while the verses were fairly random strings of words, the chorus was the repeated phrase "Napalm Death".