Chilham Village, Kent

Here's a few shots from Chilham village which I visited a few times while living in Canterbury in the early 2000s.  As you'd expect, the village was quaint and beautiful, but it looked like you had to be incredibly well-to-do to be able to live there.

Below is the customary Anglican church of the Kent village:

Glad to see any kind of church surviving in the crass (post-) postmodern and insane politically 'correct' world that we now inhabit.

And the pub below on the edge of Chilham, well, this is extremely useful for if you ever have 30-40 minutes to wait for the next bus back to Canterbury:

Not really 100% sure if the shot below is from Chilham, but it's definitely the kind of building that's in-keeping with the place:

Archive Concert Poster in Warsaw

This looks like it'll be well worth going to.  Out of curiosity, went to see Archive 2-3 years ago at Warsaw Stodoła, and they were really good. 

Warsaw: My Pre-Sundown Stroll

Some shots from my pre-sundown stroll in Warsaw yesterday, starting with some wall art from Al. Jan Paweł II (above).

Then, on this beautiful late spring afternoon, I encountered the cranes and building work near Inflancka:

Trying to make things look a bit different through messing about with the colouring on the computer below:

Of course, there are also the tall glass buildings near Inflancka:

And then strolling down towards Gdanski for the underground, I came across this, for me, gothic-looking scene:

Recently, there had been thick bushes surrounding the tree above, but the city council workers have ravaged this, as last year, a few homeless men were living/sleeping in the bushes during summer and autumn.

And then there was this mysterious, almost-alien looking scene during my descent towards Gdanski metro station:

And finally, there were some bus stop posters trying to humanise/sanitise the image of the 'canaries' (bus pass/ticket inspectors) who fly round the Warsaw public transport system:

In fairness, the 'canaries' are now a lot less rough/more civilised-looking than they were a few years ago:

Yeah, it's amazing what you can extract from everyday scenes if you walk round in a bit of a hazy dream world.

'Parallelograms' by Linda Perhacs

Came across the Linda Perhacs album 'Parallelograms' from 1970 by chance while Youtube surfing last week. 

I find this album a beautifully laid-back piece of psychaedelia, and a great antidote for being on the computer for hours on end. 

Really like all this album as one unified dreamscape, but if there has to be a standout track for me, it must be the title track (above).

Dover Castle on Top of the White Cliffs from the Ferry

It's the weekend so it's time to get nostalgic while flicking through old photos again.  Below, there is a shot of Dover Castle on top of the famous white cliffs of Dover, taken while on board an incoming ferry from Calais:

In the late 1990s/early 2000s, in the days before the budget airlines, I used to go by coach from Warsaw to Canterbury, Kent, to work at an EFL summer school there.

This journey used to last about 18-22 hours, depending on passport control checks.  Thus, you can imagine how good the couple of pints of Stella used to taste on the Calais-Dover ferry.  After this, it was just a 20-minute bus ride to the beautiful small city of Canterbury.

UFO Live at Warsaw Stodoła 4th March 2015

Few shots of UFO at Warsaw Stodoła from last night.  The 90-100 minute set was a nice balance of old tunes ('Lights Out', 'Only You Can Rock Me'; 'Rock Bottom'; 'Doctor, Doctor', 'Shoot, Shoot' etc.); tunes from the last couple of albums ('Wonderland', 'Burn Your House Down', 'Fight Night'; 'Run Boy Run'; 'The Killing Kind'); with the occasional more 'obscure' tune thrown in (e.g. 'Making Moves').  

Of course, vocalist Phil Mogg (above) is a great frontman so there were a few wonderful wisecracks e.g. he informed everybody that he'd had some kind of accident (and from the way he was speaking in some pain, it sounded like he may have lost a couple of teeth) then introduced 'Fight Night'; he observed that not many people were drinking beer so it kind of reminded him of an AA meeting etc.

And, of course, joint spotlight fell on guitarist, Vinnie Moore:

While bassist Rob De Luca and rhythm guitarist/keyboard player Paul Raymond stayed more in the background:
 

And, for me, the best tunes of the night were 'Venus' and 'Cherry', as the band just seemed to nail them.  But there was no 'Love To Love', possibly because of Phil Mogg's accident, who knows?

Anyway, this was the seventh time I'd seen UFO over the years, and the band will always be more than a bit special for me,  as they were the first band I ever saw live back in January 1980 at Manchester Apollo.

And the Polish support band?  Well, the bassist seemed to have quite a few technical problems, and they weren't really my cup of tea, but some of the crowd seemed to like them:

October Project: 'Angels in the Garden'

Came across this the other day, and, for me, it seems to be the best thing that October Project have done since the Mary Fahl-inspired days of the mid-1990s.