Rudders at Home

Every time I’m meant to see Radiohead, it rains. I don’t mean a drizzle. I mean serious rain.

I was invited to a Radiohead concert a few years back and while we were driving to the concert, the heavens opened up. It didn’t look good. The sky was black. We were optimistic, though, when the rain broke as we arrived at the venue. We were out of the car and into the concert when we were hit by further torrential downpours and heavy thunder and lightning. The concert was an outdoor event, and was soon cancelled. I was disappointed not to see the band, but more to the point, that was the wettest I have ever been in public in my adult life. Even London rain hasn’t been so bad to me.

So, bring on Glasgow. When Paul surprised me with Radiohead tickets for the Glasgow show, I thought nothing could be as bad as my previous experience. Being that it was in Glasgow, I was positive they wouldn ‘t cancel because of a wee bit of rain.

How right I was.

It rained, it poured. It was wet and dreary, and it ended up being that Glasgow was the perfect place to see Radiohead. For the second time in my adult life, I’ve never been so wet. And it was fabulous. And utterly worth it.

It all boils down to the fact that Radiohead are an excellent band to see live. They have such a large catalog of music that they were able to play for 2 hours, with quality. You wouldn’t expect them to be able to play their music live with the same quality as it is recorded, but the case is that they can. It’s really impressive. Songs that came along during the night were Weird Fishes, Karma Police, Fake Plastic Trees, Bodysnatchers, and my all time favorite, No Surprises. Surprisingly, they didn’t play Creep. It really was one of the longest playing concerts I’ve been to, which was a pleasant surprise.

The night was full of highlights. Not only was the music excellent, but Radiohead were a sight to see. Thom Yorke wore some funny, skinny red pants (that’s trousers to you Brits out there – now stop laughing!) and at one point in the night did a funny little dance on stage. He hopped around and did a jig which was highly entertaining.

The light display behind the band was quite neat as well. Very basic, just long lines of lights which reflected different colors while the music played.

Have a little taste of No Surprises which Paul shot with our little Sony camera. It’s only 23 seconds, but it’s worth a look.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk1dgSWDRrQ

I also have to mention that one of the other highlights of the night was something completely unexpected. The toilets were AMAZING. I have never seen such an efficient system anywhere. Essentially, they were just port-a-johns, but the way it was set up was genius. The line was enormous, but it moved quickly because they had attendants that kept things moving along. They were also the cleanest toilets ever seen at a concert of this size.  The attendants made sure the toilets were empty and clean before they moved the next person along. I don’t know if they do this everywhere (this sure wasn’t the case when I went to see U2 at Twickenham), but it was the best concert toilet experience ever. Ok, I’m done using the word toilet now.

Simply put, Radiohead rocked. And as I said, they were so cool; people were going bananas over them. It was definitely worth the rain.

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I’m playing a bit of catch up here with a post from an event which happened a while ago.

Back in March, someone in Paul’s family had a special birthday, and we were in Scotland for that weekend. I’ll let you figure out who’s birthday it was.

Oh, all right! It was Paul’s mom’s birthday! More pictures from the big party can be found here in the gallery.

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upon meeting Paul for the third time.

“My what a nice boy he is to hold our handbags while we get our picture taken!”

Poor fellow, he didn’t realize we’d then turn the camera on him!

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So, I made some more ice cream at the weekend. This time I made my favorite, chocolate chip mint. Gorgeous. Basically, I just took a basic custard based ice cream and added peppermint extract. Then I cut up a bar of dark chocolate and added that in after it had churned. It was so good I think I might just make it again next weekend!

The rest of the weekend passed in a bit of a blur. Today we spent the day in London, visiting with a friend of mine over from the States for work. He’s come down from Newcastle for the weekend, so we met up for lunch.

After we left him to catch his train, we wandered over to the National Portrait Gallery. I can’t believe I haven’t been there before. It was an excellent museum, with a broad range of portraits from over the centuries of British history. Definitely worth a visit if you’re in the area. And it’s free, so there’s no commitment!

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They don’t celebrate that here, the fourth of July.  I wouldn’t know why… 😉

All kidding about the UK and independence aside, I’m missing home terribly at the moment. With the warm weather starting to wane and London feeling a bit oppressive, I’m yearning for home and country again. Mainly it’s because I know what I’m missing back home that I won’t get here. I miss the hot days, swimming pools, back roads, and cookouts on top of the hill. Fireworks, county fairs, scratchy lawn chairs and laying out in the back yard. However, I must say that what I’m missing most of all, is a family tradition that I’m not sure we’re all familiar with, and my summers here are never complete without it.

My brother and sisters will know exactly what I’m talking about. For you, dear reader, I will need to explain further. I refer, of course, to the annual trimming of the hedge. It’s not a very exciting tradition, but it’s one that needs to be done.  Every year, around the fourth of July, my father trims the hedge in our yard. It’s no ordinary hedge; of course, it’s a fairly awkward hedge, situated on a bank at the side of the road.  See the suspect hedge below:

And that’s not the whole hedge! There is a bit more to it further on to the left. The picture doesn’t even do it justice. The hedge itself sits on a fairly steep-ish bank which doesn’t aid in the trimming process, and only hinders and makes things more difficult, or so I’m led to believe…

And my father doesn’t trim it on just any day of the year. Oh no, he trims this hedge on what is always the hottest day of the year. Guaranteed. You want a perfect day to go swimming? You just talk my father into trimming that hedge. Then forget about swimming, he’ll get you involved in the project.

Nope, it’s not just a solo activity. Dad likes to get the whole family involved if he can.  If it isn’t starting at the crack of dawn so the teenager in the house is awake by eight, then it involves someone fetching him a glass of water – or at least getting out of his way while he gets on himself!  I may make it sound entertaining, but if you’re smart, you’ll stay safely out of the way. I hear that this year he’s already done it, so we can be assured that the summer won’t be getting any hotter.

But, silly me, I miss weird things about home, and this has to be one of them. We may lament about the fact that dad insists on doing this task at the most inconvenient time of the summer, but it wouldn’t be summer without it.

I just have one thing to say: There’s only one hottest day of the year – why waste it? Sod the hedge, surely he’d rather be doing this:

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