Music for your pretty little ears

I started putting together this playlist a few days ago and decided to call it Walk, the idea being that it would be the perfect soundtrack for a walk, possibly in the country - thus it started off very classic folky - it has had a few adjustments and would still be a good accompaniment for a walk in the fields but any walk would do i suppose. Because I try quite hard to ignore technological advances, I am a CD walkman man over iPod, i've realsied I will have to download all these records but if you are young and thrusting and know the difference between an iPad and a block of chedder then you will probably have Spotify on your (i)phone (or whatever it is you have) so you wont have to do anything as complicated as downloading all the tracks individually - having said all this you dont actually have to listen to this while walking, it works equally well in the office! Click here and Enjoy.

oooweeooo I look just like buddy holly...

http://nerdboyfriend.com/ Look like a Hero.

D

Music for a rainy day

Its been a while since we posted some music. I've been indoors today writing and staring out my window at the rain falling hard over Sheffield. These are some of the songs that have got me through so far: Click here

A History of the World in 100 Objects

As part of a thrilling 100 part series, Neil MacGregor, the director at the British museum and the perfect (gentle)man, takes us on a journey through human history. Using 100 objects or 'things' selected from the British museum, he takes listeners on a journey through human development from the first stone axe, a primary indication of human's desire to produce things that aided survival, to the credit card, an object that has played a crucial role in our social structure today.

The series begins to offer us a really interesting insight into early production, art and migration but is a constant reminder of our fellowship as human beings, and the superficial nature of our discrimination and our constant determination to find ways of separating ourselves. It reminds us, as does MacGregor's approach to the British museum's curation, that the land is ours to share and prosper and the product of our history are ours to enjoy.

Click here to listen back to the first in the series from Radio 4's morning slot.

A land that flows with milk and honey

There are key rules when navigating a busy bar that will reduce the amount of time you will wait to be served. It is important to find yourself somewhere that you are likely to catch the tender's attention. Most successful bars will split their bar into working sections from which tenders will usually follow a strong navigational path behind the bar between ice station, spirits and fridges. Pay attention to where they are and exploit this. Heavily avoid areas with beer taps as they prevent eye contact with the tender.

It is good to remember, a tender is at work. They are neither your friend nor servant, but attempt to chat with them, if you can catch their name, its a bonus. You may have the money, but they are much more powerful than you are as the consumer. The three key elements of success are: be patient, it is a virtue and will be rewarded. Secondly, have manners. This means no heckling and avoid being inappropriate to other customers, especially females. Instead, make eye contact and have your money at the ready. Thirdly, always tip first time around! By doing this, you are reducing your wait for every other visit throughout the evening.

The bar is a stage, or thats what Wilde would have said were he writing this post. Ordering drinks that offer your host the opportunity to show their skill is encouraged. Sazeracs, Old Fashioned or Manhattans (served dry) are always a good choice. Be assertive, suggest you know the ins and outs of your chosen drink, but never be cocky. This will encourage the tender to make the best possible drink he can.

A good read...

I have just finished reading The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane; in it the author embarks on a number of journeys around Britain and Ireland in search of wilderness which he explores both geographically and intellectually.

One of the chapters that stood out for me was about Holloways, ancient tracks or roads that cross our country; Macfarlane explores the Holloways of Dorset in the company of Roger Deakin (more on Roger in a future post). Macfarlane talks about how these tracks would follow contours, ancient field systems, valleys and rivers; they followed the grain of the landscape and worked with in it. Primarily this would be because of the logistics of actually constructing these roads, rudimentary tools, if any, would be used, equally the way in which people travelled, on foot, by horse and cart would necessitate where possible keeping to the natural shelter of valleys and woods.

The motorways and A-roads of today don’t have a dialogue with the landscape they pass through; hills have been blasted through, ancient forest felled, archeological sites concreted over. The way we travel has also changed, the landscape is all too often something observed from the window of a speeding car, just as our roads are not sympathetic to the landscape they run through, our connection with the landscape as we travel is also almost non existent. Walking these ancient tracks, following ridges, streams and contours helps us gain a greater understanding of the landscape we live in, a world away from observing the world from our air conditioned cars.

One of they key themes of the book is cartography and the way we map the landscape. The AA road atlas is but one way of mapping our country – Macfarlane travels to the wild places of our lands, islands, woods, ridges, valleys and estuaries and creates a new map, a geological map, a philosophical map, a historical map of the wild places that remain in our country.

In short it’s a call to the wild and for us city folk a reminder that we need space, that we are, at the end of the day, rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things. A humbling and rather beautiful book.

Whiskey tango foxtrot is a phonetic alphabet? Lima oscar lima.

What we think of as a phonetic alphabet is actually far from a traditional International Phonetic Alphabet, a complex system of phonetic transcriptions, that offers us a wider understanding between symbols and sounds that orthography cannot. For example, "bough" and "trough" do not rhyme and are pronounced extremely differently in the English language. However, dialect and phonetics aren't what I am particularly getting at. Instead, I have been thinking about the importance of knowing a "phonetic alphabet" otherwise known as the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet.

Much like the shipping forecast, ask somebody to name as many areas as possible, and the chances are they could tell you three or four, most likely to including Dogger and Fisher. The same goes for the phonetic alphabet, namely Whiskey, Tango or Foxtrot. Ask people why they know these things, and you're likely to receive a distant gaze or the confused response of, "err... I dunno, really."

The fact is, this coding has been a vital part of not only military operation, but civilian industry. It shows us an interesting progression in the expansive network of communication through trading. With a constantly evolving international network, the NATO phonetic alphabet, originally devised for information transmission between allied forces, still has a language relevance. We are at a point where we are becoming divided, we have visual communication through email and SMS and the more primitive telephone conversations. There are points in time where technology cannot serve us efficiently, where human interaction is essential. The possibility that dialogue across language barriers will propose the use of an internationally recognised code because there are letters, words and phrases which sound extremely alike.

If it is true that the phonetic alphabet no longer has a relevance in our technophile society, then perhaps it has a nostalgic quality, a reminder of a time before we could hide behind the comforting secrecy of email, where human interaction was essential and we fought one another with sticks in the local park rather battling interactive dwarf princes in Elwynn Forest. But most importantly, it has accompanied most of us from childhood, a constant, unchanging cultural reference point that goes back further than Coronation Street, Smash instant potatoes and even the Rolling Stones. Very few of us know it, have ever learnt it, but it should be there... somewhere in the back of your subconscious. Just in case!