dancefloorlandmine

Oh, should possibly have included this in the other update. Oh well ...

Back at the start of this month, I got a text saying "What are you doing Saturday night? I've got a spare ticket to The Guilty Feminist 7th anniversary gig." So off to Hammersmith we went*, hampered only a little by a slight detour caused by the planned route involving a change at Wimbledon tube, which wasn't possible as although the tubes (and trams) were running, Wimbledon station is managed by the 'real' rail services ... who were on strike, so we re-routed via bus.

Still, turned up shortly after Deborah Frances-White hit the stage to introduce the night, and had an excellent evening, with acts including Desiree Burch, Kemah Bob, and Rachel Parris, and musical turns from one of the cast of Six: The Musical, Grace Petrie, and Jess Robinson - including an excellent duet of "Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves" by Grace and Jess.

Would recommend.

(* My first visit to Hammersmith Odeon was in 1989, to see a very silly metal band.)

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".