Anyone who's seen Withnail and I will agree that Uncle Monty's cottage, site of perhaps the most hysterically funny scene from the film ('I know you're in there boy!') deserves to be preserved for posterity.
This little clip, filmed and narrated by Crouching Tiger director Zhang Yimou, shows some of the things I love about living in Chengdu: the juxtaposition of old and new, teahouse culture, the food (mmm, hotpot), and the famously beautiful and 'spicy' Chengdu girls.
I'm finally back stumbling again! And also back in China. And sooo happy! Although this is a Japanese song, from a Japanese film, it still reminds me of China so much that I'm happy to make it my first return-to-China stumble. If you haven't seen the film `All About Lily ChouChou', check it out.
I've had a busy few weeks - leaving cambridge for ireland, then back to england, and I finally landed in Chengdu last week. I don't underestimate when I say that my mood at being back here has been bordering on the ecstatic. The food, the people, the ease of life and freedom...
I still have to get broadband installed at home though, so won't be stumbling for a while. I'll still check any messages from time to time.
If you've seen this wonderful film, you might remember this rendition of the old Irish song which the film's named after, which comes about 7 and a half minutes into this clip. I've been playing this, among other tunes, on the guitar a lot recently, which, along with trying to get back into a regular meditation routine, is one of the reasons I've barely been stumbling over the past few weeks. Reading the lyrics below, you see how the tension between romantic and patriotic love facing the couple in the poem is transferred into the relationship between the two brothers in the film.
The Wind That Shakes the Barley
(Robert Dwyer Joyce)
I sat within the valley green, I sat me with my true love;
My sad heart strove the two between, the old love and the new love;
The old for her, the new that made me think of Ireland dearly,
While soft the wind blew down the glen and shook the golden barley.
Twas hard the woeful words to frame to break the ties that bound us;
But harder still to bear the shame of foreign chains around us.
And so I said, "The mountain glen I'll seek at morning early,
And join the bold United Men," while soft winds shook the barley.
While sad I kissed away her tears, my fond arms round her flinging,
The foeman's shot burst on our ears, from out the wildwood ringing;
The bullet pierced my true love's side, in life's young spring so early,
And on my breast in blood she died, when soft winds shook the barley.
But blood for blood without remorse I've taken at Oulart Hollow,
I've placed my true love's clay-cold corse where I full soon will follow;
As round her grave I wander drear, noon, night and morning early,
With breaking heart whene'er I hear the wind that shakes the barley!
Little Joy is a new project from Fab Morreti (the Strokes), Binki Shapiro (his girlfriend) and some other Brazilian guy whose name escapes me, and which I'm feeling too lazy to check. Folky, but nevertheless with a touch of that New York cool that the Strokes had on their first few albums. Watching them here in the video makes me think of how the early Bossa Nova jams in the sitting rooms of Rio de Janeiro might have been. Well worth a listen.
Anyone who has even a trace of nostalgia for childhood suppers of a cup of milk and a nice biscuit will surely smile when visiting this wonderfully named site. Here, for example, is a slice from a review of the unbelievably good Choco Leibniz...possibly the only biscuit to be named after a philosopher, I might add:
"The Bahlsen Choco Leibniz is a triumph of design and Germanic biscuit engineering. The slogan on the box - 'More chocolate . . than a biscuit' - probably lost something in the translation into English, but it's true to its word in having the thickest, most exquisitely crafted slab of plain chocolate welded to a precision-made Rich Tea biscuit. I'd say the biscuit is a token gesture intended simply not to make the consumer feel guilty about eating so much chocolate. The biscuit does usefully help prevent getting chocolate over both fingers but is nevertheless quite secondary to the sensory pleasure of the eating experience.
My only criticism is that there is no obvious way of eating one that is likely to annoy a loved one. I found it impossible to lever the chocolate from the biscuit using my bottom incisors; nibbling around the outside only serves to give you one very chocolately finger; and licking the chocolate off is, frankly, quite impossible for one so lacking in patience like myself."
This is a really exciting piece of new folk music, bringing together a bunch of famous and not so famous folksters and other musicians. I love the Indian touches. As explained below, one of the points of this band is to engage with the question of what 'Englishness' is. This track is in a recognisably English tradition, but is influenced by the music that immigrants have brought with them. With more mishmashes like this, it could be an exciting year for folk music. Good stumble by GavMack (and uncanny that I also happen to be both a Gav and a Mack, hmm...)
I like them
Mar 3, 6:28pm
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