Arrival in Bury

Arrival at the Premier Inn, from my recent trip to my home town, Bury (Lancashire).

Bury may be my home town but I now feel like a stranger in a strange land there. 

The Premier Inn room was nice and comfortable, though.

Some Good Mid-Winter Food

Some good, mid-winter food I've been having recently, starting with courgette-filled tomato sauce and pasta, topped with black lentils:

Top marks for my wife for that as it was delicious.

Below, my conventional vegetarian sausage and vegetable meal, topped with red chilli, pizza sauce:

 And finally, a similar conventional meal, topped with tofu and French soft cheese, this time:

 Of course, always nice to wash any of these meals down with a decent (pear) cider:

 Below, Kotek is getting excited, rolling about with a black olive on the floor:

 Cats love olives, of course, but only 1-2 a week is healthy, so an olive is always a treat for Kotek.

Concert Tickets Done The Proper Way

At the Stodoła in Warsaw, you can still go to the booking office to get concert tickets the old-fashioned way:

The ticket above is from Lisa Gerrard & Jules Maxwell last Sunday.

For me, it's much more pleasant to hand your money over to another human being and have a real concert ticket printed out. 

At the Stodoła, you can actually hear the noise of a machine printing out a really quite ornate ticket:

The ticket above is from Soul Asylum on Monday.

Yeah, all this makes buying a concert ticket a pleasant experience, not having to mess about online with various kinds of concert ticket providers.

Soul Asylum - Warsaw Stodoła (3rd February 2025)

A day after seeing Lisa Gerrard & Jules Maxwell at Warsaw Stodoła, it was the turn of Soul Asylum at the same place:

Had never seen Soul Asylum before, so it was an honour to catch them live (late rather than never).

This was a great evening with a 20+ song set:

With more or less every tune being highly melodic.

Was great catching classics like Black Gold; Somebody to Shove; String of Pearls; and, of course, Runaway Train live.

Can't beat a good Rock concert washed down with a few decent beers.

Lisa Gerrard & Jules Maxwell - Warszawa Stodoła (2nd February 2025)

First concert of the year was Sunday night, Lisa Gerrard & Jules Maxwell at the Stodoła in Warsaw.

The first half of the show was Jules Maxwell material:

Really liked Flowers Grow, a wonderfully melodic tune.

Not sure which song the snail appeared on, but it provided a wonderful visual dimension:

After a short break for a nice beer:

Lisa Gerrard & Jules Maxwell took to the stage:

As expected, it was a wonderful audio-visual experience:

Really enjoyed seeing Burn done live, especially Deshta (Forever), my favourite tune of the night.

Now seen Lisa Gerrard three times, once with Dead Can Dance and another time with The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices choir, all great occasions, of course.