Craig Sawyers

Who can possibly forget his movie music for Chariots of Fire and Bladerunner? RIP Vangelis

How do you like them bananas 🍌

Happy birthday!

Went to see Wagner's opera Lohengrin last night at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London. This was the final part of my awesome series of birthday presents - this one from my wife, long planned and two months afterwards. It was bloody awesome. Everything was perfect - the setting, the set and lighting, and an Internationally renowned top flight cast of singers. https://www.roh.org.uk/tickets-and-events/lohengrin-by-david-alden-details With various courses of an excellent meal in the intervals. Carole was not a Wagner fan initially - but I've converted her. She was in tears of emotion by the end of the overture to Act 1 (honestly - so was I!). Now Wagner the man was a loathsome individual. Anti semitic, hateful towards his contemporary composers, and impossible to work with - a micromanager from hell. He described Brahms as "That bastard, Brahms", and put it about that Brahms' music was inspired by shooting birds from his balcony with a "Tyrolean bow" (there is actually no such thing) and listening to their dying cries. His dreadful reputation was not helped by Hitler being a Wagner fan, and it representing the pinnacle of music for Nazi National Socialism. Putting the awfulness of Wagner to one side - he was one hell of a composer! You just have to divorce the man from the music.

That is truly amazing. But it looks like the sort of creation that he probably made a bunch of prototypes to work things out. That in no way takes away the raw skill in someone so young, or the astonishing result.

Alternatively

Actually last week walking in Orkney and Shetland. Orkney is flat with wet pools and quite boring geographically, Shetland is much hillier and nicer to walk. Weather was uncharacteristically superb; the whole area is known for torrential rain and gale force winds, often together. Jarleshof is a Viking trading post on Shetland. The Old Man of Hoy is a famous 450 feet sea stack, and is notoriously difficult to climb. Scara Brea is a stone age settlement on Orkney. Note the stone sideboard! Real Flintstones. And two pics of us.

Couldn't resist posting this - what cats think

George Harrison, unknown, unrecognized, visiting his sister in the USA, Sept., 1963, Empire State Building. His sister, Louise lived at 113 McCann Street, Benton, Ill. Just 4 months later, same guy, same haircut, returning in triumph to New York, mobbed like the second coming.

Bloody hell. Stay safe, you hear?

Can you hear me? Eh?

Inspired by the above: How do you find how heavy a Cetacean is? Use a whale weigh station.

The two Chechen wars (the second one under Putin) accounted for 25,000 civilian deaths and 5,000 missing. Scorched earth, Grosny levelled, mass graves. Sound familiar, twenty years on?

Woohoo - that must be a weight off! Great news Ric. Been there recently so I know exactly the nervousness waiting for the result. Mine took a bit longer to heal than expected because the bone headed nurse that took the stitches out, left a fragment in and that got infected, which was not fun.