Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Views From The New Bridge.

This evening after school I thought I would try out the logistics of taking photos from the New Bridge. I had to park quite far away on a local industrial estate and walk about half a mile to get up onto the bridge. The sunset wasn't that brilliant but since I was there, and rather cold, I thought I would take some shots of the view down the estuary towards the sea.
As the sky darkened the colours started to be reflected in the river.





I wanted to take some shots of Barnstaple in the evening light but the traffic lights at both ends of the bridge were timed so that the road was never clear in both directions and the traffic was pretty heavy. And I didn't feel like walking all the way out to the traffic lights and back up again.
Later on I had to drive Romas and drum equipment to The Ariel, a recording studio in an old coastguard station high above Ilfracombe. It took Romas nearly an hour to set up his kit for a recording session he and his band are doing there on Thursday. I'm going to drive him down there mid-day Thursday so I will have the opportunity for some new views, that is if it isn't raining.



This next part will probably only make sense to anyone who is Lithuanian but I will try and explain why I've included this rather bizarre clip. First you need to know that Lithuanians sing ... a lot. It's in our blood. Next - the song in the clip is a simple folk song that everybody knows, it's sung at school, round camp fires and by drunks (we do like a drink too), who are too drunk to remember the words to anything else. Even I know it and I hardly speak the language. It's about young men wooing girls with bunches of rue (Ruta) and the girls' mothers warning them not to talk to the boys. So as you listen to the clip imagine someone singing 'Twinkle,twinkle Little Star ' in this way. That's why it's just so funny/weird. I love the bit where he is handed a bunch of flowers, typical in Lithuanian concerts, which he then plays air guitar on.