The Members of Lucinda Belle Orchestra
Photos taken from a concert at Pizza Express Jazz Club March 2016 in London. A very photogenic crew in my humble opinion. Enjoy please.
Arcticterntalk.org
The blog of a travelling psychiatrist and football lover. Who happens to be a halfway decent photographer. Takes a cynical view of the world
Lucinda Belle Orchestra At Pizza Express Photos
Lucinda Belle is an artist who has produced an album and played numerous concerts over the last few years but who has been a little quiet this last 12 months.
This week March 2016 she played two nights at Pizza Express Jazz Club in Dean street London and was simply amazing. Her new music sounds fresh and interesting and she is one the artists that genuinely sound better live than on recordings.
Her performance was inspirational and the music excellent. The only critiscism was that I could have listened to another few hours of music.
The Pizza Expresss venue is in my opinion the worst place to photgraph in the whole world and I will devote a separate blog to that in due course, but maybe one of the best to hear live music. Her band are also superb and I have had the pleasure of hearing Sheldon Conrich and Philipp Groyssboeck play many times in the LBO.
Sheldon Conrich
Phillip Groyssboeck
Lucinda Belle and Sheldon Conrich
Sheldon Conrich
Phillip Groyssboeck
Enjoy some of these shots from the other night.
Sheldon Conrich and Lucinda Belle Duet
Lucinda Belle
Lucinda Belle
Lucinda Belle
Lucinda Belle
Lucinda Belle
Lucinda Belle
Lucinda Belle
Lucinda Belle
Poundland. Why do I like this shop so much?
The obvious reason is that everything is cheap and everything is £1. Each time I am cascading down New Malden high street this is the shop I invariably venture into. There is another reason though and maybe an even more obvious one. They have everything I seem ever to need. Let me give one solid example of a diverse and eclectic list of items that cost me a whole £6 this morning. I also for some curious reason like the fact that it is 36 and not £5.99.
- Superglue. This was my main reason to go in today. I am having the opposite of joy with my fitbit. Which although only a year old is falling to pieces and the only logical way to preserve it for even a short while is to glue the pieces together. Not ideal and not a good selling point for Fitbit. I bought a pack of 8 small tubes of superglue that seemed indeed to have temporarily preserved my fitbit.
- Gloves. My usual gloves are large ski-ing type items and I wanted a small pair of gloves that I can literally put in my pocket. In Copenhagen yesterday with a temperature of minus 6 these would have been appreciated.
- 40 Tea Holder candles. I was not expecting to find these but there they were looking at me.
- Reece’s peanut butter chocolate cups. Two packets £1 each.
- Kit Kat pack of four large ones.
So potentially I might have considered going to four different shops to get these items. I was also given a useful lesson in life by the pleasant Indian lady who taught me nicely how to scan my own items. Scanning and me are not a good combination. 
Anyone thinking that Poundland is not for them or too downmarket, please think again. An eclectic selection of useful items, ridiculously cheap and the shop was full of a complete mix of our little society.
What do we know of Poundland?
Poundland is a British variety store chain that sells most items in its stores for £1. Established in April 1990 by Dave Dodd and Stephen Smith, Poundland stock a variety of around 3,000 home and kitchen-ware, gifts, healthcare and other products, across 16 categories many of which are brand name and clearance products. Like many of its rivals, Poundland operates a constantly rotating product line with all products priced £1. Although price-point retailing was invented in the United States during the 1870s, the chain claims to have introduced this concept to Europe and is the largest single-price discount retailer in Europe.The retailer claims that their Croydon store is the busiest single-priced discount outlet in the world, generating more than £9 million in revenue per year with 30,000 customers a week. The company estimates it serves 2.75 million customers in an average week. Poundland reckon to be opening another 70 new stores in 2016.
Greetings from the Younger Bushe
A brief intoduction from the ‘younger Bushe’ – I’m Elena, the 15 year old talked about on these blogs, so instead of being talked about on here I decided to write my own to see what this whole blog writing lark is all about. So, as from the title, I promised a rant. Well, you are going to get one. Or maybe a few. We’ll just see how it goes I guess.
So one thing that really bothers me, being a tall girl with a disproportionate limb to body ratio, is when people walk slowly infront of me. Now maybe these people simply cannot walk any faster, and they are merely walking as fast as they possibly can and it is just me being irritable but as much as I’d like to believe that, I can assure you that that is not the case. In the mornings at the lovely time of about 8:00 am I can usually be found walking to school with some friends. I can also usually be found stuck behind a group of slow walkers. Thats the thing with people with attributes or habits that annoy you, isn’t it? When they crop up (quite frankly more often than any of us would like) they are never by themselves, oh no, they quite helpfully feel the need to enlist the help of others to help them in their quest t0 disrupt the journey and day of others. And if thats not bad enough, another helpful attribute these slow walkers seem to have picked up is to become completely oblivious to the fact that there is a growing-more-annoyed by the second tall 15 year old taking half steps behind them while they talk about whether they are going to hockey club after school or not, which, quite frankly, I do not care about and I would be very appriciative if you could just let me squeeze past you so that I can get to school and start copying my Physics homework which, regretfully, it appears has not been done the night before, and is now due in in approximately 20 minutes. However, you must not panic for I have picked up a technique of my own to deal with these small year 7’s (so small I genuinely worry about accidentally crushing them with one of my gigantic limbs), and that is to simply make myself appear to be a moody, tall, grumpy year 10 who will purposefully shove you off the cycle path into the long grass. This might not sound like a menacing sight to you, but believe me, it terrifies them. So, after gearing myself up to sound like the biggest, baddest year 10 that ever lived, I utter those two fateful words that no year 7 wants to hear: “Excuse me.” This is usually greeted by mass scurrying to the sides of the path while the three big, scary year 10’s stride through and then all assumes its usual air of calm. Apart from myself who still has to do her Physics homework.
I’m going to fit in another rant because that one just was not long enough for my liking.You might think its long enough, and so might my mum but I do not, and so the story continues.
One thing I really dislike about being a teenager is the fact that most people will stereotype your music taste based on your appearance. Or your personality based on your music taste. And I for one find this extremely frustrating. Picture this: Me, an almost transparent white girl with lots of freckles, sort of mousey golden coloured dead straight hair with bright blue eyes. Based on this appearance, the most common stereotype I get is being into pop music. While I have absoloutely nothing against pop music, it is not a genre of music that I listen to (apart from the deep dark depths of my music taste that includes the Backstreet Boys, young Cody Simpson, The Vamps and 5sos, but we won’t talk about that) My favourite genre of music is definately Alternative or Rock or Pop-Punk but we aren’t supposed to use that term because the god of music (AKA Billie Joe Armstrong) has decreed a strong dislike for that term. If you are looking for examples, one might find some in the way of Fall Out Boy, All Time Low, Panic! At The Disco, Halsey, Good Charlotte, The Cab, Twenty One Pilots, Sleeping With Sirens, The Maine and many more. I also have a passion for electro chill style music which suprised me greatly but it is fabulous and I recommend listening to it (particularly a song called Circles by the Eden Project and especially the rain and thunder muffle audio of it, that is top-notch.) Also I have a secret passion for a certain artist known as Charley Marley whose songs never fail to make me smile and I am proud to say that I will be seeing (and hopefully meeting) this guy next week. Anyways, when I first tell people about my music taste, some are quite surprised. More recently though, people who I’ve told have smiled and nodded and said “Oh yeah, I’m a fan of them too.” which results in lots of in depth conversations during lessons and then being asked questions by the teacher and having to rely on the helpfully whispered answers from the rest of the class.
Since I am so new to this blog writing lark, I have no idea how to finish so I hope you enjoyed my little rants and I don’t know, maybe if you liked them leave a comment as I am considering starting my own blog but I just don’t know if the things I write about are interesting. – Elena ^-^
Walking Rescue Greyhounds in Hersham. Great exercise and Great thing to do
On sunday mornings a great way to get some exercise and be helpful is to take a trip down to Turners Lane in Hersham where Hersham Hounds/Wimbledon Greyhound Welfare have their greyhound kennels. The kennels are home to maybe 100 greyhounds at any one time.
Humphrey. A gorgeous greyhound who loves everyone
Home for the Greyhounds
Many walkers walk anything from a single pair of greyhounds to as many as eight. A thoroughly recommended way to get anything from 4-8,000 steps in Fitbit terms.
Turners Lane Hersham
Muddy Fields
The walk by itself is pleasant down the lanes. The field nearby show evidence still of the excess amount of rain of the last month and some of the fields are pure mud. One feels sympathy for the horses stabled there. The area is also home to many parakeets that take southeast England as their home, with their noisy chattering quite obvious, and flying around in small flocks of maybe 4-10 birds.
In the past the life of a greyhound at the end of its racing life, 4-5 years was not terribly optimistic but rescue groups such as WGW/Hersham Hounds work hard to ensure socialisation of the hounds and training for re-homing. Many dogs are rehomed though some are scarred and have idiosyncrasies that make it more complex.
If you do decide to come down and walk the greyhounds do remember to bring personal and address identification as this is needed to “sign-on”.
Paintings of Bergen in Norway
More paintings by the British artist Vincent Van B. Bergen sits on the Norwegian coast and I struggled to be captivated by it, in contrast to cities like Stavanger that have something special. Here are a few paintings designed to try and bring Bergen to life and light.
Few interesting turrets floating around. 
Green Cauliflowers.Where have you been all my life?
Today is the first day of my life that I have seen Green Cauliflowers for sale. An article in the Daily Mail from 2008 describes green , purple and orange cauliflowers as not genetic engineering but derived from selective breeding. Although the colours seem unusual it is not the first time that plant breeders have changed the appearance of vegetables.
Until the 17th century most carrots eaten in Europe were white, yellow or purple. The orange pigment was added by Dutch plant breeders looking for a way to celebrate Holland’s royal family.The last few years has seen the introduction of purple carrots to supermarkets in Britain, along with yellow tomatoes and purple potatoes.
In America, where colour cauliflowers have been available for several years, they have been a big hit with foodies. The orange cauliflower has higher than normal levels of beta carotene, a form of vitamin A that encourages healthy skin.The purple colour comes from anthocyanin, which may help prevent heart disease by slowing blood clotting.
Tests of the orange cauliflowers in America found that they contained 25 times the concentrations of beta carotene in normal cauliflowers.
So what do we know about green cauliflowers? There are two types of Broccoflowers. The first type seen here has all the attributes of the white cauliflower but with green curds. The second type is more a visual cross of cauliflower and broccoli. They are hybrids of cauliflower and broccoli, both members of the species Brassica oleracea, making them fully cross compatible. The cross is easily made by hand pollination or natural pollinators. Green cauliflower can also be found under the name broccoflower or cauliflower broccoli. Green cauliflower is higher in protein, at 2.95%, than either white cauliflower, 1.92%, or broccoli, 2.82%
The photograph below seems in fact almost to show both types of green cauliflower.
Green Cauliflower
Photographs of 24 Hours in Amsterdam
Amsterdam is in my opinion the most photogenic city in Europe and maybe the world. Despite having been there with cameras numerous times there are always things to photograph and see. With only my I Phone this time the weather changes were immense ranging from snowing to sun in 15 minutes and cloud formations to match.
This time however I took more than a passing interest in the amsterdam graffiti, or graffiti art depending upon how one visualises this option. Graffiti was everywhere including in the urinals that adorn the canals. One knows they are urinals before entering them from the odour de latrine that they ooze for many yards. The question that resonated in my head was who painted the graffiti in them, why did they do it and even how did they do it?
The Graffiti on the walls was far more eloquent and spoke to a lot of thought before painting. I have posted many blogs already on Amsterdam and the risk is repetition, so I have attempted to minimise anything previously photographed and take views or views from angles that are new. Like Penguin graffiti. A real new experience for me.
The place was wet and this was easily determined by how much rain fell on one’s head but if that judgement felt unsound then the standing water on the tram tracks gave a better explanation.
Wet Tram Tracks Amsterdam
Vondelpark is always beautiful but less so on a grey day, however with a little sun it begins to show its charm. However the muddy paths showed again how wet the last few days had been.
Gates of Vondelpark Amsterdam
Vondelpark Amsterdam
Even Central Station joined in the fun looking grand in the warm light with the clouds looking like they were dancing in the sky.
Amsterdam is truly a beautiful city and just an hour walking along the canals it does not matter so much which direction one walks, just remembering that the canals are best thought of as onion rings outside each other and eventually leading to Central Station.
And if you cycle there which has its positives and negatives in terms of enjoyment and death risk, it might not be so easy to remember where you left your bicycle.Unless you left it next to the penguin graffiti in which case it might still be there. Maybe
Paradiso is a world famous music venue but one would never know that from the outside. An old church converted into a music venue in which many famous names have played. Including Lady Gaga, Duran Duran, Joy Division, David Bowie, Suede and Rolling Stones, amongst hundreds.
Paradiso Amsterdam
Cheap Football Is Possible.Cost of £7.90 per game in The Championship. Huddersfield Town Leading the Way in 2016-17
The costs of football have been spiralling out of control in some clubs, the recent debacle of Liverpool trying to recoup a few extra pounds on a few extra seats and in that process pushing prices up to £77 have been well reported. As have the fans response, by walking out of a game and the subsequent result was a retraction of that ridiculous pricing.
The Championship side Huddersfield Town have however followed other clubs like Bradford City in making their season ticket prices so cheap that it remains to be seen the numbers that will take up this offer. For next season 2016-17, adult season tickets are priced at £179 for the first 10,000 season tickets sold. The rationale is mathematically simple. Championship clubs have an extra 2 million pounds TV revenue next season, and Huddersfield are diverting 1 million of that to fund this season ticket pricing reduction. This equates to a per match cost of £7.90 which is often less than I might spend in the tea bar at half time at Brentford on a burger and tea.
This is affordable and in fact brings the cost of league football to be cheaper than non-league. Many of the lower tier ” proper” non league clubs ( by which I really mean have a few stands and maybe terraces,and do not play in essentially roped off fields, trying to be descriptive not rude here!) who live at the Ryman league standard or above , charge £8-10 entrance, Molesey 8£ if I recall correctly and Carshalton 10£ ( both recommended by the way).
An interesting scenario and one we should watch avidly to ascertain the take up in Huddersfield of this exceptional offer. Other clubs should take note. Watching the Cardiff V Brighton game on TV last week one might be excused for thinking that the ground was empty as the cameras focused on the lower tiers only. Would it not be better to fill the ground? Numerous aspects are possible. Reduced prices for televised games? Buy one get one free? Free food, drink and a programme?
Bradford city are a class example. A club in League 1 not looking like an immediate return to the Championship is likely. For 2015-16 season their season tickets cost £149 for 23 home games. This is £6.50 per game, again little more than lower non league entrance costs. And this was actually £50 cheaper than the 2014-15 season ticket cost. Perhaps the only surprise was that junior season tickets were priced at £99, when a lower cost might seem a logical way to enhance the younger fan base. Especially with the curious meanderings at nearby Leeds United, for those not local these two cities share an airport, Leeds-Bradford airport. And anyone who might be cynical that this is a short term option consider that Bradford City have been running this cheap season ticket scheme since 2007 when the adult season ticket cost was £138.
Which World Famous Music Venue Is This?
The only clues are the following bands have played there:
- Rolling Stones
- Lady Gaga
- Duran Duran
- Suede
- Adele
- Joy Division
- Florence and the Machine
- David Bowie
A Great Place
The rants and warblings of an active and some would say disturbed mind. A Brentford Fc supporter and a psychiatrist and photographer. Welcome to my musings and rants.
chris1957
Arcticterntalk.org 