Krypto the Superdog

Whilst at the gym this morning, one of the screens was showing BBC2 and more specifically Krypto the Superdog. The gym has a couple of screens, and this morning the other screen was showing MTV and the sound from this was being piped out. This led to me having a moment of realisation, as this was one of those cartoons where you don’t actually need to hear the voices and soundtrack to know what is going on, meaning that you could use such a cartoon for language studies, as you could pick up the story without having to understand every word. Thanks to Mike who sits opposite me at work for finding the video clip :-).

Valentine


Valentine by Sioux Hurman
Originally uploaded by Jane Dallaway

I bought my first ever open house art purchase during this years Brighton Festival.

She is called Valentine and was painted by Sioux Hurman.

I spotted this picture the day I first visited the Shadow Box Open House in Tidy Street. She is just so vivid and eye catching. I dragged Richard back with me the following week, just to make sure he didn’t hate it and that if I bought it, I could have it on display and not tucked away at the back of a cupboard somewhere…

He approved, I bought her and on Sunday I collected her, and brought her home. She is now happily hanging on the wall in our hallway.

Geek Wine Thing


Checking the colour
Originally uploaded by Jane Dallaway.

Last night we attended the first Geek Wine Thing organised by Danny and held at the Regency Town House.

Henry Butler from the Butlers wine cellar led the tasting, and for the cost of a tenner we tasted 8 different Spanish and Portugese wines. As a total novice in the wine tasting world, it was interesting to learn more about how to smell, look at and taste wine. Henry was an excellent and enthusiastic teacher.

The tasting started off very quiet and subdued, but before too many glasses had been consumed we got noisier and noisier.

The wines we tasted were:

Whites
Pares Balta Blanc de Pacs 2006 – Spain
Soalheiro Alvarinho 2005 – Portugal
Castello D’Alba 2005 – Portugal
Navajas Crianza 2003 – Spain

Reds
Monte Real Reserva 2000 – Spain
Clos Le Fites 2002 – Spain
Quinta de la Rosa Tinto 2004 – Portugal
Niepoort Redoma 1994 – Portugal

The white wines were split into unoaked (the first 2) and oaked (the second 2) with one each from Spain and Portugal. As usual I preferred the unoaked – so another nail in the coffin of oaked wines for me.

Next time, and I hope there will be a next time, I’ll try and remember to bring a pen to make some notes, as somewhat unsurprisingly I don’t remember too much beyond the first couple of glasses 🙂

As usual, my photos from the evening are all on flickr.

Brighton Festival

Well, it is festival time again here in Brighton, and so today I headed off in search of the Streets of Brighton, open houses and more of the 41 places installations.

Despite having lived in Brighton for 5 festivals, I’d never ventured into an open house until today – and I’m converted. I visited 3 and found them all to be of a really high standard. The first was Rod Clark.

Rod Clark's Open House

The second and third were both down Tidy Street. They were Shadow Box and SQ1.

The Shadow Box Artists Open House

I will be visiting more of them.

I managed to catch a few different street performances, the Deep Sea Jivers performed by Swervy World and Eco Pirates performed by Desperate Men.

Desperate Men

Has anyone seen our Universe?


Bob Nichol
Originally uploaded by Jane Dallaway.

Last night we went to Cafe Scientifque and heard Bob Nichol talking about cosmology.

It was quite a complex subject to talk about but Bob Nichol was excellent, very engaging, enthusiastic and able to explain things to those of us who haven’t studied science in over 20 years. I’m still too baffled to consider either the supernova that will cause earth to vapourise, or the fact that there might be 11 dimensions. It was also the biggest crowd I’ve seen at a Cafe Sci since it moved to the Branch Tavern from the Terraces.

It was also good to catch up Dom, Sophie and Tom.

Fabrica: Beneath the Strides of Giants


See no evil
Originally uploaded by Jane Dallaway.

We popped into Fabrica yesterday to see what was on display at the moment and found Beneath the Stride of Giants by Brian Griffiths. It is a wooden boat, made from other people’s junk.

Fabrica is such a lovely place to stop, it’s always peaceful and cool and its often hard to remember it is in such a busy location.