Hello! I am Alexander Matthew Barker, I am in charge now.

Thank you to everyone for your kind wishes, especially to Damon for this hugely appropriate message:

You’ve done well and I like your baby. But could you just make a few changes? The baby’s head needs to be made a bit bigger and rotated approximately 73 degrees counter-clockwise. I’m also concerned that my clients won’t know how to understand a baby with two arms. Give it eight arms. The smile isn’t right either. And with the nose, I found this awesome flashing clown’s nose on another person’s baby. Use one of those instead. Also, My daughter is an expert on babies and she thinks you should have given the baby more ‘pizazz’ – so do that too. And get these changes back to me by this afternoon please.

worriedaboutsatan as recommended a couple of times by Nick. Some words that may or may not describe them: ambient, electronic, interesting, exciting, strange. My favourites are Arrivals and Arrivals Remixed. There’s plently of free stuff on their website to download and get a taste and a fair amount on their soundcloud account – worriedaboutsatan on soundcloud – including a full length live set.

Yndi Halda another great band to code to. Enjoy Eternal Bliss is just beautiful instrumental post-rock. Few reviews have rather negatively complained about lack of originality with comparisons to Mogwai or Godspeed You! Black Emperor, but fuck ‘em it’s a lovely EP, a little more accessible than a lot of post-rock and at an average of about 15 minutes a track for 3 quid there’s not much to complain about.

Sick Music 2 as pointed out by DeathBoy. I know close to fuck all about Drum ‘n’ Bass and breakbeat aside from a growing love of the stuff. No idea of which artists to look for or where to look but apparently Hospital Records is a good starting point. Excellent set of tracks for very little cash. Much prefer the instrumental tracks, although those with vocals don’t grate too badly. Ace for keeping energy levels up when working until the stupid hours.

The Gentleman’s Review Favourite podcast of the moment, heard about it through the fucking awesomely funny Precious Little. I don’t know how to describe it other than: Three men, sometimes a lady, sometimes a dog, Doctor Who, cheese, chaps, filth, leftie, humour, shouting, drunk, Yorkshire, geeks, what? Listen to it, it’s free. Even when it’s not outstandingly funny (which it often is) it’s always engaging.

Reincarnationfish – War With The Newts video – Ace new mashup video for the new Reincarnationfish track.

This Is Radio Silence – I Blame – Sublime music (as always) from This Is Radio Silence

Spucktute – Go To War - Free to download EP from Max from History Of Guns new band. Dark, harsh and not afraid to terrify.

Jim Bob – Storage Stories – Having completely forgotten I had pre-ordered this it was an extra-nice surprise when it turned up. First novel by Jim Bob of Carter USM, it’s heaving with the same dark wit (sometimes a little cheesy in a good way) that I’ve come to love from Carter lyrics. About halfway through and it’s absolutely brilliant. Story of an ex-rock star who has taken over the running of a self storage unit and the strange and interesting characters he encounters. You can get it on Amazon – Storage Stories (and get me some affiliate pennies) but I’d recommend going straight to the source and giving the author a bit more.

Pip pip!

A strange event to go to. The fireworks were cool, although both Tim and Myself seemed to remember them being a little more impressive when were younger, there was a lack of catherine wheels or static display type things (I have no idea of a better way to explain that), just a shitload of rockets. Fifteen minute walk to a field, fifteen minutes of fireworks, fifteen minute walk back to the car and it was all over. Still, a great deal better than sitting in watching fucking X-Factor.

Our intention to go for a meal afterwards was a little misplaced, the entire rest of the world had the same idea and we ended up having to drive into Wycombe to find anywhere without a stupidly long wait for a table.

I took a couple of hundred photos, mostly messing about with long exposures, like a grade a shit-conductor I left my tripod in the car so they were a bit hit and miss. The results were ok for a first go at photographing fireworks, I’d like to give it another go as none of them were very impressive.

Full set of Cookham fireworks photos is here (21 shots).

Here’s some of the better ones:

I took a few photos on the day we did the V&A and Hyde Park, most were a bit too fuzzy. It seems I have old man shaky hands to go with my failing memory. I’m 33 for fucks sake.

Most of the shots I took were for reference (a load of religious bits and pieces and a bucketload of skylines), most will not be uploaded as they are very dull out of context. I’m quite happy with this one:

Why the hell had I never been to the V&A before? It’s possibly the best place in the world ever (this week). Seriously, I can’t start to explain how inspirational that place is. I’m not going to try and review it, I find it hard to string a sentence together as it is without pretending I’m in some way qualified to provide critical evaluation of a subject of which I have minimal knowledge or experience.

We were fortunate to see the Telling Tales exhibition on our first visit which was a thing of disturbing wonder. A dark but beautiful selection of pieces, mostly furniture, arranged in a wonderfully fairly tale arrangement. The sound design was excellent and creepy and the exhibition setting really added to the experience (from the subjective angle of someone who has been to far too few galleries to make a comparison), although one of the sections was a little over-mirrored which freaked me out a little (not a sign of old age, just a sign of not getting out of the house enough). Anyway I loved it and balls to anyone who disagrees. Go to the V&A it’s fun and inspirational.

Oh, the building looks nice as well:

We wandered round Hyde Park for a while on the way to Selfridges. It’s easy to forget there’s so much green space in London. We probably see more nature on a day trip to London than a week of staying in Maidenhead where we live on the other side of the road to the damn moorland.

Hyde Park:

The whole set is here. I need to get some more practice at landscapes.

I nearly had to physically remove Lady K from the Serpentine Gallery. She can just about deal with ‘proper art’ (old paintings) but gets a little angry at anything she deems to be modern art. The gallery had an exhibition of fairly aggressively modern art including a smashed car, piles of newspapers, buckets on a shelf, etc. I wasn’t too fussed, I prefer my art visually interesting (although not necessarily attractive) but I can understand the purpose of more thought provoking works. Karen on the other hand looked ready to kick the nearest artist in the balls and had started mumbling hatred, I daintily removed her from the premises before she spontaneously combusted.

We wandered round a few of the notable London shops; Fortnum and Mason, which was nice but we didn’t buy anything. Liberty, interesting building, there was some cool furniture I will never be able to afford and a nice chocolate department I could afford stuff in. We also visited Selfridges, which I enjoyed less. I may be a middle class twat who sometimes shops in Waitrose and M&S but fuck me, that place is such a temple to consumerist excess I wanted my fucking head to explode and take out as much of the building and it’s yapping fuckhead customers as possible, of course I could have just been in an arse because my feet hurt. Barbie pink Christmas trees can fuck right off along with gold plated mobile phones, jewel encrusted mp3 players and other such shit. Uck. We visited the ‘Wonder Room’ which is so laden with needless luxury it threatens to break reality. On the positive the food court was nice. Mmmmm…. tasty hypocrisy.

We probably went to some other places, but my oldmanhead can’t remember much else.

(Thanks Damon for the biscuit suggestion). Mmmm… biscuits.

Recipe from here.

We went up to London with Scott and Emma a few times recently to go and see the stuff that we usually pass up as being ‘just down the road, we can do it anytime’. First trip we covered the Natural History Museum, The Science Museum and Harrods.

The Natural History Museum is absolutely awesome. It doesn’t appear to have changed much since I went as a child (it probably has) so it was a brilliantly nostalgic experience. Some of the exhibits seemed amusingly outdated, but this just gave it an extra layer of charm. The age of the exhibits is pretty much beside the point anyway, they are fascinating, fun and informative.

The building itself is beautiful, there’s so much detail to it it’s hard to imagine the effort that went into it. There’s carvings around all the doorways DIFFERENT carvings around all the doorways, seriously. From room to room the details change, always in the same style but always slightly different. Some have birds, some monkeys, lizards, plants and flowers and then this:

I blame either Lovecraft or Geiger any ideas?

Next up was the Science Museum. I’ll be honest, I was less excited but possibly more through my aching feet than anything to do with the museum itself. We didn’t manage to cover much of it, it was getting late and my feet were starting to hate me. It was brilliant, the space section was especially inspiring. I really wanted to see the historical medicine section on the top floor but my feet and K’s desire to see the HORROR that is Harrods killed that plan (for now).

HARRODS. Well beat me with a tacky stick from the tackiest shop in tacky land (Harrods). I had been here once before in my youth, but obviously being young and unaware of such things I hadn’t noticed the pure amazing lack of taste and decency in the decor. Kitsch doesn’t even begin to cover it. It’s fun in a tasteless manner. The massive over the top Ancient Egyptian style decor coupled with the OPERA SINGER SINGING DOWN THE FUCKING ESCALATORS did have me wondering if I had fallen through a portal to a world where fairground ghost rides were decorated by drag queens. Karen loved it (of course). It’s now her new favourite shop in the whole world ever. She ran around the Christmas department like a mental and didn’t want to leave. We bought some nice decorations and chocolates (NOT the £10,000 box of chocolates, I mean SERIOUSLY, how does that work?).

I live with her. Pity me.

Then we went home.

Here is some photos:

Here’s the entire set. I was too busy looking at stuff WITH MY REAL EYES to take many photos, unlike various mentals I saw in the museums who never removed the camera from their faces.

I have made a navigation guide for confused couriers.

(photo without stupid comments – any suggestions on the logic behind these actions).