My Music is on iTunes!

Straightman's Skambolo album is now iTunes!!

I know many of you have this on CD already, but I would be very grateful if you could all go to iTunes, search for Straightman and rate my album - five out of five of course!! I'd be very grateful...

The Two Teds!

Well, I was bored, so I thought I'd have some fun with Photoshop, and what better way to celebrate the great time I spent with M&D last week! (Click for a bigger version)

Congratulations Barry & Yuka!

Well, here's a post that I've meant to write for a few days now!

Barry Coates got married.

You read correctly - my old and best friend Barry, who I have known for far too long has got married to a Japanese lady called Yuka.

They met online some months ago, realised that they had an enormous amount in common, decided to meet in Yuka's native land of Japan and ensure that they were 100% right for each other. They were, they got married! Sound insane? You betcha! But at the same time it seems so totally right and pragmatic. He has taken stock of his life, decided what he wants, gone out and found what he wants and married her. It was certainly fast, and yes I had my moment of concern, but I sit here now simply bitter that I had to deliver my best man speech to Mindy and thank her for making such a beautiful bridesmaid.

Yuka will now have to stay in 'quarantine' for 5 months, giving both of them what will undoubtedly amount to a frustrating few months of waiting, before she moves over to the UK. I for one am really looking forward to meeting Yuka and enjoying time with the pair of them (and cats) with Hel. I'm actuallyreally excited!

Congratulations to the pair of you if you are reading - here's to the happy years of insanity to come!

Congratulations Lee & Gal!

Alias Mate and Wife - baby Ben was born this morning at 9am, weighing in at an un-Harrisonly 6lb 7!

I suspect that none of the three truly know what they have let themselves in for....

Congratulations guys!

The French Way of Life....

Here it is, the photograph that in one fell swoop sums up the French way of life. Here is Ted, strolling away from an Artisan Boulangerie (the very best kind of bakers..) in nearby Langoat, under his arms 2 top quality French sticks. The kind of loaves you start eating when as soon as you buy them, bread tasty enough to be eaten on its own with a smidge of butter, bread that makes a UK sliced loaf taste like cardboard. The kind of bread that each village in France is legally obliged to provide its residents.

Contrast this supremely civilised notion with the way Ted is taking his life into his own hands, bravely running the gauntlet, facing down a French driver on what they laughingly call a Passage Cloute - a crossing that they are NOT legally obliged to stop at. All he wants to do is to return home with his catch and feed his family.

Et viola; La France, in one simple photo...

Beauport Abbey

Well, this was a lovely surprise. Today M&D took me to a ruined abbey, some 10 miles away from here in a town called Beauport, near Paimpol (thats France folks). For those not up on such things, an abbey is a monastic community governed by an Abbot or Abbotess. Basically a monastery - I'm not sure what the difference is, maybe someone could explain?! Mum has tried hard, bless her, but I'm still in the dark...

Either way, this one was 13th Century and made the most spectacular and atmospheric setting. One couldn't fail to get good pictures, so I will bore you below with my shots. Aside from the historical significance, it was a place loaded with emotion, and without wanting to over dramatise, a palpable sense of decay, timelessness, death and nature - if that makes sense. Sprouting from the ruins were natures attempts at reclamation - this once magnificent building, all angles and lines, juxtaposed against these huge twisting trees. The bleak, white sky and bitter wind, added to the sense of the cold, souless erosion of humanity by entropy and what must have seemed at the time to be an eternal spiritual strength. Here, Christian artifice, once loaded with that power station sub-hum that you feel in churches, now broken by natures hard reality. Real life, real eternity reasserted by the Earth, making human attempts to capture, house and live the eternally divine in masonry look rather pathetic. Here was the true divinity of the universe, truly majestic - and still very much alive. It was a place rich with atmosphere, all enhanced by the constant howl of the wind through the abandoned fireplace and flues. I found it quite moving.

In the middle of all of this green chaos were two graves, side by side, of an abbey benefactor - a Duke and his wife. I hope this doesn't sound pretentious, but it certainly made me stop and think about life and death and our own transitory lives - our present, already someone elses history.

Enjoy the photos.

Bleak Abbey

Abbey Photos Part 2 - less bleak....

Doctor Who materialises in America

The TARDIS is due to land in the US tonight, at 9pm on the Sci Fi channel, for a double bill debut from the new series.

I'd be really interested in hearing any feedback from March-pane's US readers, and any info on how it goes down over there. It will be fascinating to see what the yanks make of it....

Just to let you know guys, the first episode is possibly the weakest, so do stick with it......

There's a great article in the Seattle Times which I'm going to cheekily paste here, I liked it so much:

"Christopher Eccleston is the new Doctor in the BBC's latest incarnation of 'Doctor Who.' But don't get too attached to him. He won't be back next year. The superb 'Doctor Who' achieves something difficult for American shows: It makes TV look easy by demonstrating that intelligence and escapism are not mortal enemies. But then, 'Doctor Who' has experience. The world's longest ongoing sci-fi series has kicked around the time-space continuum since 1963. Over 40 Earth years, the time travels of the mysterious Doctor and his sidekicks have grown from a British children's show to a legend. The latest incarnation hits U.S. airwaves at 9 tonight via Sci Fi Channel. Co-starring Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper, it's Season 1 of a revival launched in 2005 by BBC Wales and the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Those not already privy to past splendors needn't fear. While most space sagas drag a comet-tail's worth of back story behind them, 'Doctor Who' is instantly accessible. Maybe that's because the series at heart is an old-fashioned romance in the dashing, 19th-century sense. The mechanics of being transported 5 billion years in a moment or using Anti-Plastic to melt an enemy are tossed off with deadpan insouciance; what counts is the distance closed or opened among people and other forms of life. The focus for this epic jaunt is the relationship between the Doctor and his traveling companion, who in the new version is a pretty blonde named Rose Tyler. Rose resembles the Bridget Jones type of Englishwoman, albeit a few pegs down the socioeconomic scale. She labors in a bland department store, dates a bland boyfriend named Mickey (Noel Clarke) and tolerates her antic, overbearing mum (Camille Coduri). ... On paper, this formula puts 'Doctor Who' in the same territory as 'Star Trek.' Both reflect the optimism of the 1960s, along with the Western World's first self-conscious steps toward global thinking. But the approaches were dissimilar. The one-hour 'Star Trek' was indisputably American in its sober and open moralizing. 'Doctor Who' took a lighter, ironic point of view and each half-hour installment concluded with a cliffhanger. Even the treatment of technology was different. The Trekkian transporter room looked cheesy and behaved flawlessly; the Doctor's machine TARDIS (Time And Relative Distance In Space) was, and is, quirkily flawed. ... Mainly, though, the series resonates with its message to examine as well as relish life. Today's audience has moved beyond flip cynicism, and if the replacement isn't quite sincerity, 'Doctor Who' allows room for both."

Off to France

I flew over to France yesterday afternoon, where I will be staying until next Tuesday. Mum & Dad live in La Roche Derrien in Bretagne. Its a 1 hour flight from Stansted, and Stansted is a 1hr 40 minute train ride from Peterborough, so its a remarkably easy journey and not particularly expensive, basically the cost of your ticket is the airport tax. They cram them in of course, but its bearable for an hour...

I've come alone, Hel is staying at home to chill, she's having a couple of friends over for dinner on Saturday night, and will have a good time without my endless Doctor Who banter.

So far the weather hasn't been great - the wind is howling and its a chilly to say the least, but I'm here to relax and relaxed I am. In between a visit to Tregastel beach (my ears were fit to drop off in the cold) and the eating of fine foods, I've managed to squeeze out a short film script that's been in my head for a while. That only happens when I relax. M&D are fantastic hosts, and one finds oneself waited on hand and foot. What I have seen of their lifestyle, definitely agrees with me...

Lucky buggers.

Postcard from the Beeb

I got a postcard from the Beeb on Tuesday, just to say they had recieved my script for Jobs and would read the blighter. Which is nice of them. Should hear from them within 4 months - sadly they don't comment on every piece of work they get, but here's hoping.

Pandora's box

I was recenlty pointed in the direction of a new webiste called Pandora:

http://www.pandora.com/

I am very impressed. If you like music, have a go, its probably easier for me to say that than describe what it does. I will warn you though, its very moreish, especialy, if like me you tend to listen to choons whilst using the PC.

Last Life

I made a decision, not long after Christmas, that the Xbox was going into retirement. Not because it was poor, or expensive, or because I wanted a 360, simply because it was eating up too much of my life. The problem is, its too much fun and its too easy to switch on.

My productivity on the creative front has dropped considerably since my 30th birthday - there are a variety of factors which contribute, but I can't help but feel that I'd be more inclined to sit in the studio, if I didn't have the Xbox waiting downstairs. Its a question of self control. Boredom is a great motivator.

So, as I said, I made a decision that I would buy all of those games I really wanted to see and then put it away for a bit, quite a bit.

Half Life 2 was the key game. If there was one game I wanted to play on the Xbox, it was HL2, and I decided this would be the last one before the retirement. I loved HL and all of its expansion packs on the PC, and for a long time it was one of my favourite games - probably still is. It blew me away back in 2001 or whatever it was now (actually 1998, I've just checked...scary). It was like a really good FPS, but things happened, a story unfolded in front of you in a way that it hadn't before; there was a believable world behind every corner - epitomized I think by the opening sequence on the train through Black Mesa, everywhere you turned 'stuff' was occurring. And maybe more importantly, you were key to events - how much fun was it, helping to start the 'experiments' that set off the chain of events that created the scenario? The answer was lots actually.

So anyway, I finished HL2. Was it a worthy successor and final game for my Xbox?

Well, it was very good, but I have to confess to being very slightly disappointed, something was just a bit lacking. Still a 4 out of 5, but it could have been a 5 - I'm hesitant to turn this entry into a review, but the graphics were amazing - a fantastic final curtain for the Xbox, they really managed to milk it for all it was worth. I just found the gameplay a bit lacking for the first half - it definitely picked up for the last 50% though, and had one of the best endings I've seen on a game.

But we digress again. I can't help but think, that when I finally reward myself with a new game, a body of work the size of Mindy's dung pile under my arm (but hopefully without the odour) that rather than returning to the Xbox, or any other console, it will be the PC that I come back to. Time will tell and you will be the first to know my decision. Then again - when are the HL2 expansion packs coming for the Xbox...?