I Meet The Underground Harpist Again

I met this harpist for the second time yesterday, in Oxford Circus Underground station.

The Underground Harpist

The guy in the poster is showing an interesting expression!

It’s good to hear music, of any type of decent quality wafting through the tunnels. In fact, I don’t think, I’ve heard anything underground, that anybody would complain about.

An Unusual Place To Play your Drums

This guy was entertaining everybody at Kings Cross station.

An Unusual Place To Play your Drums

You can’t question his ambition. He wasn’t too bad either!

The Last Quartet

I saw this film last night and it was thoroughly enjoyable and a very good study of the tensions and relationships of a group of talented people.

In some ways, I found it a bit allegorical, as the tensions between the major players in Metier, were rather similar at times, although we had simpler relationships.

Of course, philistine that I am, I didn’t recognise any of the music in the film. This probably means that you don’t have to be a music lover to enjoy the film.

I saw it in the excellent Barbican Cinema and afterwards had a drink looking out of the window, at the front door of Cromwell Tower.  That was a bit surreal and I did wonder how my life would have mapped out, if C and myself had kept the flat there, which we probably would have done, if Metier had been sold earlier.

Do we just go round in circles in our lives?

I Brought My Piano To A Station And Someone Asked Me To Play

I took this photograph at St. Pancras station this morning.

Piano And Pianist At St. Pancras Station

It would appear it’s a street piano and that the music and the musicians are well liked.

 

 

 

The Galician Gaita

I hadn’t realised that there are bagpipes in Spain, but I saw this guy in Santiago de Compostela.

The Galician Gaita

They are called the Galician gaita and they seemed to my untutored ear to be less harsh that those of our friends in the North.

A Good Pluck

I spotted this sign as I walked down the hill from the hotel to Liverpool Central station.

A Good Pluck

It’s for things like this, I always carry a camera.

Justin Bieber Forgets That Customers Are Important

I don’t know much about Justin Bieber and his music, except that a lot of his fans are quite young.

So to turn up last night two hours late as is reported here on the BBC, is inexcusable.

A Warning Not To Rely On Your Phone

Ed Sheeran must feel a right chump this morning, after losing his phone at the Brits. This is from the BBC’s report of the show.

A double award-winner at last year’s Brits, Ed Sheeran suddenly went white with fear at this year’s show.

“I’ve lost my phone,” he said, panic building as he patted down the pockets on his suit.

“It’s not locked. It has the whole of my new record on it. And it has quite a few phone numbers that shouldn’t be released.

“That’s not good, is it?”

I suppose many will excuse him, as he is from Suffolk, a county that the locals often pair with silly. But generally, they are just using it as self-promotion.

Football As Monoculture

This is the sub-title on a wonderful picture of football on Hackney Marshes in a piece by Simon Barnes in The Times today.

There are 88 football pitches on the marshes these days.

The marshes were also the venue for BBC Radio 1′s Big Weekend in 2012.

The Pianist With A Pipe

You don’t see many men smoking pipes these days and I was surprised to meet this gentleman  as I walked to the bus.

The Pianist With A Pipe

It turned out he was the pianist; Lubomyr Melnyk, who’d given a concert last night just down the road at Cafe Oto.

I think, I’ve only seen one pipe smoker in the last three or so years and that was after Ipswich won at Bolton.