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Does that massive new tower at Elephant & Castle have a name yet? I got my first proper look at it vaguely finished over the weekend and assumed it must be the Cheese Grater what with the wind turbine holes and slope making the top of it look exactly like a cheese grater, but no, apparently that's the one at Leadenhall. It certainly deserves a name, I rather like it.

I love music, but I've never felt I had much to contribute by making it. I'm very happy to write effusive posts on here about bands, or appear in their videos (another of which has just gone up), but they told me at school that I wasn't musical and I know this story is meant to be about horrid teachers failing to spot one's astonishing potential but no, in my case they had a point. Since coming to London, I have been in one band (for a given value of the word) for one night - The17, with Bill Drummond. I thought I'd best leave it there, because how do you top being one degree from the KLF?
By being on the next Indelicates album, apparently. [livejournal.com profile] augstone passed on an invite so I headed up to Walthamstow with him, his fellow Soft Close-Up David (who was also in the same The17 performance as me, as it happens), [livejournal.com profile] keith_totp and [livejournal.com profile] thedavidx, to all of whom a recording studio is pretty much a second home. I just tried my best not to a) break anything or b) lose my cool, even when I realised that Denim had recorded there. And Baxendale! And The Long Blondes! And that we were singing along as a sort of backing choir for Philip bloody Jeays (not physically present)! It's not as if I'm going to be individually audible or anything, but nonetheless, I'm on the next Indelicates album. Bloody Hell.

Otherwise, it's been a relatively quiet week and weekend - albeit also very pleasant, with Friday in the Ewok village and Sunday's barbeque managing a decent amount of cooking before the downpour, plus Prom Night on Saturday, the first time I've had a solid reason to wear a bow tie out after watching Matt Smith rock one in Doctor Who (and remember how ahead of time we thought "Geronimo!" was going to be his catchphrase and that it would soon get irritating? By my reckoning he's now said "Bow ties are cool" just as often as "Geronimo!"). Good little episode on Saturday - yes, it essentially stitched together three Buffy episodes ('Normal Again' for the basic premise, 'The Gift''s "What makes you think the other world is any better?" "It has to be" and the demonic ringmaster performance from 'Once More With Feeling'), then borrowed evil geriatrics from Hot Fuzz with a zombie film twist, but the seams didn't show, and even if they never used the name, the villain was the ruddy Valeyard! And still, those wonderful central performances - for the second week in a row my favourite bit in among so very many choices was a little, gestural thing, when the Doctor thinks the baby is due and adopts that panicked wicket-keeper stance. And because the BBC is utterly marvellous, it also gave us a penultimate Ashes to Ashes which has left me with no clue how they're going to resolve this, but a burning need to find out. I think I'm going to be a bit late to Nuisance tomorrow night.

Date: 2010-05-20 10:07 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com
It looks like a three eyed robot owl!

Date: 2010-05-20 10:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com
Sadly, I can't see The Three-Eyed Robot Owl catching on.

Date: 2010-05-20 10:14 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com
That, right there, is precisely what is wrong with the world today.

Date: 2010-05-20 10:14 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] amuchmoreexotic.livejournal.com
The official name is Strata but I think it will become more widely known as the Philishave building.

Date: 2010-05-20 10:21 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com
Strata is a reasonably OK-ish official name, though - certainly compared to 42 St Mary's Axe or whatever the Gherkin is supposed to be.

Date: 2010-05-20 10:27 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] hoshuteki.livejournal.com
30 St Mary Axe, I do believe. I recall the tower at Elephant being named after a shaver as Ben suggests. Apparently "the Razor" -- a bit naff!

Date: 2010-05-20 10:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com
As with Battlestar Galactica: Razor, this encounters the slight problem that THE THING SEEN IS CLEARLY NOT A RAZOR.

Date: 2010-05-20 10:28 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] amuchmoreexotic.livejournal.com
It would be better if they had followed through on the concept and decorated each floor with a different type of rock and fossils. And filled the third floor with oil.

Date: 2010-05-20 10:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com
Maybe they'll follow it up with a vastly more successful set of towers called Discworld.

Date: 2010-05-20 10:56 am (UTC)

Date: 2010-05-20 11:02 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] piratemoggy.livejournal.com
It's official name is Saruman's Tower, as any fule kno.

Altho yes, Philishave also works.

Date: 2010-05-20 11:06 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com
It's surely more Mordor than Isengard - except instead of just the one giant lidless eye, there are three, which is TWO LOUDER.

Date: 2010-05-20 11:41 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] amuchmoreexotic.livejournal.com
They've spoiled it for me by actually finishing it so it doesn't look like the Citadel from Half Life 2.

Image

Date: 2010-05-20 10:20 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kiss-me-quick.livejournal.com
Oh I could have told you about the tower thing at Elephant & Castle - it's a shared orwnership place called Esprit Apartments. Or Strata. Or both.

Date: 2010-05-20 10:22 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com
How come 'could have'? You just did!

Date: 2010-05-20 10:23 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kiss-me-quick.livejournal.com
It sounded like you'd been pondering it for a while.

Date: 2010-05-20 10:27 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com
No, since Sunday I'd been blithely assuming it was the Cheese Grater, until this morning when I went looking for a link and discovered that was something entirely different.

Date: 2010-05-20 10:25 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shewho.livejournal.com
are there a few folks going to nuisance? i quite fancy giving it a go, and 'free' fits my budget at the moment...

Date: 2010-05-20 10:29 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com
Yeah, of whom you know at least [livejournal.com profile] stephens and Aug. Not sure when anyone else is getting there, should be 1030ish or a little after for me.

Date: 2010-05-20 11:09 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] carsmilesteve.livejournal.com
i am DEFINITELY not thinking of going, oh no, that's RIGHT OUT, some art down the ica then home, DEFINITELY NOT dancing to britpop 'til 2.30 that would be a bad...


...idea...

Date: 2010-05-20 11:21 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shewho.livejournal.com
i'm hoping to go see we are klang and then oooooh shiny shiny britpop

(definitely not until 2.30 that would be terrible i'm coxing in the morning who would be such an idiot...)

Date: 2010-05-20 11:23 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] carsmilesteve.livejournal.com
terrible terrible...

Date: 2010-05-20 10:45 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vertigoranger.livejournal.com
Doctor Who was tops. I thought the Dream Lord was a great villain, and everyone was on top form. Also the first episode where I really noticed the fairy tale aesthetic they'd been promising for the series. It stood in sharp relief to the look of the RTD series, and I liked. I hadn't thought of all the Buffy stuff but you're spot on.

Date: 2010-05-20 10:47 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com
Really? I noticed the fairytale stuff even in Moffat's work under Rusty ("I'm the man who gives monsters nightmares"), and this season it's been even more pronounced - though not so much in the prior episodes by other writers, granted.

Date: 2010-05-20 11:21 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vertigoranger.livejournal.com
Well I'd noticed the fairy tale plotting and themes certainly, but I felt this episode looked like The Company of Wolves or something. Possible I wasn't paying attention during the Angels episodes where I felt it less acutely.

Date: 2010-05-20 11:21 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sbp.livejournal.com
Although I did work out they must both be dreams fairly early on, from the symmetry of the whole thing. When there's a choice to be made, always look for the third option :-)

The Valeyard eh? Yes, that makes sense.

Date: 2010-05-20 11:37 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com
Yes, this thing.

Date: 2010-05-20 11:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] augstone.livejournal.com
and one of them (i think 'atf') is gonna be a duet with jeays and vessel! amazing.

Date: 2010-05-20 11:06 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com
And was Jim Bob going to be on any of the same songs as us?

indie bingo

Date: 2010-05-20 11:10 am (UTC)

Date: 2010-05-20 11:23 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] augstone.livejournal.com
heh. i can't remember.

Date: 2010-05-20 12:05 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] msdaccxx.livejournal.com
Strata, for those of us living in the shadow of it, is mostly known as "that horrible bloody thing", but I have heard it likened to a Pringles tube. I very much resented it when it first appeared, but it's beginning to grow on me, like mould.

Date: 2010-05-20 01:00 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] carsmilesteve.livejournal.com
i assume i'm correct in thinking that the three big circles at the top are going to have massive bassbins in, right?

Date: 2010-05-20 01:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] msdaccxx.livejournal.com
You know what, I wish that were true. Peckham would be totally jealous

Date: 2010-05-20 02:30 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com
Now that really would make it a nightmare neighbour. As is - turbines! Something where Elephant already seemed to be doing a better job than a lot of boroughs - the only Islington one I can think of is sequestered in the ecology centre, very much a special interest concession rather than an integrated part of the council strategy.

Date: 2010-05-20 06:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] missfrost.livejournal.com
Hahaha! I'm more concerned at the moment that the Shard (nearer to me) has SHARD written on the top.

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