I don't want to go to Delphi

Still not running on Sundays due to a thumb injury in the ranks so we took ourselves to a real ale pub on friday night to put the world to rights.

Discussion inevitably turned to various holidays shared and, in particular, one touring Greece as students with no money and very little clue - for some reason we had thought it a great idea to do our hiking and youth hosteling trip in August when Greece is at its hottest - highlights included severe sun stroke, getting caught short on top of the Acropolis, on the Olympic running track and in The Temple of Apollo, being woken up early in the Lord Byron youth hostel by the manager playing "Que Sera Sera" on his accordion, badly, and having to suffer terrible Greek food wherever we went.




A memorable day should have been our tour around the ancient ruins of Delphi, but my abiding memory is the Elvis Costello hit of the time - "I don't want to go to Chelsea" , adapted to refer to Delphi.

Anyway here is the video for you to sing along to ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKwKx_Umqoc

Why men shouldn't write advice columns

It's a gas, gas, gas...

Have been having fun at Art School this week with an old Malaysian spinning top - found in a East Coast junk shop some 25 years ago. The Malaysians call their top spinning sport , Gasing - the top I have is made of hardwood and lead and weighs some 5 kg.

The whole sport is full of unusual traditions - I particularly like the fact that they often fumigate their tops with Styrax Benzoin - an extract from bark - to endow them with supernatural powers - in competition the winning top can spin for up to 2 hours...




Styrax benzoin can also be added to boiling water to produce fumes which when inhaled have a soothing effect on the lungs - sounds like we need to order some to help us with our long distance runs .

Slowcore music

If you don't know Low, a US band from Duluth, Minnesota, then you are missing a treat.

They play slowcore - slow music for slow runners - and they are very good at it.

See http://www.chairkickers.com/ for their website and I'd recommend Dragonfly, Silver Rider and When I go Deaf as stand out tracks.

Also worth listening to the lead guitarist's louder and faster band, The Retribution Gospel Choir, if just for its excellent name.



New album due out soon...

Supermassive black hole

Yesterday, we ran along 2/3rds of the Regents Canal and then back from Paddington, through three rather lovely Royal Parks and back to Smithfield for an early lunch - all in aid of London Marathon training. We ran circa 13 miles - so only twice this distance for the real thing - and then had to have a long lay down.

Managed to make it into London again in the evening for a fantastically funny and thought provoking play called Jerusalem - would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the state of Britain today and also to see Mark Rylance - probably the best actor alive today.

http://www.jerusalemtheplay.com/

Today, I have tried for the umpteenth time to understand what a black hole is - middle son is studying them for A level physics - as usual I am with the explanation for most of the way and then ... nothing ...

Anyway here is an artists impression of a black hole pulling gas off its companion ... doesn't look very black to me ...also could have been taken from a Roger Dean album cover ...

Astronomers have spied a star-sized black hole much further away than any such object previously known. It has a mass 20 times that of our Sun and is sited six million light-years away in the galaxy NGC 300. The discovery was made using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) facility on Mount Paranal in Chile.

You would have thought the scientists would come up with a more inspirational name for its telescope - answers on a postcard please ...

Progjogroglog

Whilst, as usual, today's chat on our run covered many and varied important topics, we found ourselves mainly discussing the wonder that is the Prog Rock of the 70's.

Favourites have always been Yes, Genesis, King Crimson and Frank Zappa (Hot Rats mainly). Mark had been cooking to Tales of Topographic Oceans the previous evening and I had been painting on saturday to a mixture of Hot Rats and The Lamb lies down on Broadway.

I had also been to see Avatar recently and was struck by how similar the images were to Roger Dean's Yes album covers -







Let hope Roger gets some of the proceeds from the largest grossing film ever.

Following Mr Blair's perfomance on friday, we saw some new graffiti that sums up our mood nicely -



All those in agreement say Aye ...

Beautiful plumage.

Mark suffering from a sprained ankle today, after over enthusiastic training in the week , but he made it round the course - he's hard is my friend Mark. We had to briefly stop in Trafalgar Square when we saw a real bird of prey swooping in front of us . Ended up chatting to its owner who is employed to bring one of his Harris Hawks each day for 3 hours to scare off the pigeons. We were priviledged to watch a 20 month old male Harris Hawk at close quarters.

While most raptors are solitary, only coming together for breeding and migration, Harris's Hawks will hunt in cooperative groups (casts) of two to six. In one hunting technique, a small group flies ahead and scouts, then another group member flies ahead and scouts, and this continues until the prey is bagged and shared. In another, all the hawks spread around the prey and one individual flushes it out.

In the wild, Harris Hawks have been seen to indulge in "stacking" - sitting on each others backs, often up to three high, either on the ground or on the top of a cactus. It is not certain why they do this, though it has been suggested that it is a method of still hunting, giving them more height to see in desert areas, which do not have the benefit of trees or poles to sit on.

Continuing last week's music theme, I went to a brilliant gig by Anais Mitchell last night - if you haven't heard of her you should listen to her 2 albums - Hymns for the Exiled and The Brightness - http://www.myspace.com/anaismitchell - she is a fantastic story teller and has a brilliant and moving voice.

Below is a video I took last year of one of her perfomances - you can tell from how she moves her feet that the music really is within her.

Feets, don't fail me now ....