Easter skate133

Yup.

Sun sets over east Berlin

So I took another trip to Berlin, that mental city seething with history, subculture, debauchery and a myriad of places to get a spot of afternoon tea.

Of course I had to ignore most of that – save for the tea – and skate the 2007 Berlin Half Marathon, which I managed to finish in a time of 51 minutes and 26 seconds. About eight minutes faster than my previous time, and quite good given that I was thinking I wasn’t even going to finish having been bought down by something migraine like the day before that left me with a stabbing headache at the start line and complete and utter dehydration by the finish.

1. Whilst at secondary school, my Guitar Hero was Bernard Butler, the original guitarist with Suede. I remember once trying to convince a friend that he was better than Jimi Hendrix. Young and foolish, me.
2. My first exposure to technology was through a Yashica 35mm camera. I didn’t own a computer until I was 16.
3. The first single I bought was the classic “I Should be so Lucky” by Kylie. Got played endlessly on the incredibly cool blue Sony Walkman I bought to play it on.
4. My favorite TV program was Lost, season 1. But the last episode was such a let-down that I vowed never to watch another.
5. I used to collect Garfield comic strips.

I tag Amar and Eamon.

Last Saturday, 23^rd September, I took part in the 2006 Berlin in-line marathon. I say ‘took part’ as ‘competed’ would be pushing it – although my time was respectable I finished some three quarters of an hour behind the eventual winner.

Still, 26 miles of flat, pristine German tarmac and 8000 skaters means an unforgettable experience – even more so starting right at the back of the pack and spending the race carving through the traffic. And I managed to drag my by then exhausted bones over the line with a time of 1 hour 45 minutes and 46 seconds putting me firmly in 2185^th place. Go me.

Not wanting to break a habit, I also managed to draught with another skater more or less the full distance; a skater who turned out to be none other than Camberley’s web master general Dan, who was looking for a time of around 2 hours and got himself over the line just a few seconds behind me for a time of around 1 hour 46 minutes. Having never met Dan before, I was pretty awed at the coincidence of picking up another Brit, let alone repeating my Goodwood roller feat of collecting a Camberley skater. Thanks for tagging along Dan, catching me when I tried to stack it, and saving me from what could have been a bit of a lonely marathon after I lost Erika and François in the first 2km of carving through the skate traffic.

Berlin TV tower

Because you never change; you are always changing.

Only way to travel

Yes! My hopelessly crap blogging schedule continues.

Bet ya couldn’t wait.

So the photo is from the Goodwood Roller Marathon - 11 laps, 26 miles and 2 hours 1 minute of pain made just-slightly-better-than-bearable by the addition of Camberly’s finest Cheryl, who I towed for nearly the entire distance.

She insists she was pushing me. She’s probably not fibbing.

I repeated the same feat again, the next week, at the London Roller Marathon, except instead of being pushed by ms. photogenic I spent a good deal of the distance in the wake of what I can only describe as an older generation of skater with a slight flatulance problem. Still he beat me - I dragged myself over the iine in 2 hours 15 minutes after driking nearly 13 litres of water on what was probably the hottest day of the year.

In other news I’ve got my mits on the delightful Panasonic FX01 camera. It’s 28-105mm lens is absolutely stonking, creating the most bonkers colours and some pretty darned pleasurable vignetting with a little contrast pushing in Photoshop. Checkit:

Tom McRae

I’ve meant to write something about Tom McRae’s gig at the Brighton Fringe Festival Spiegeltent for a while. But life is off the rails right now and as for so many things, I couldn’t find the time, and frankly the words, to do Tom even a teensy bit of justice. Look, though: the time’s been forced on me thanks to a bout of insomnia and the words feel, well, like they are not being pulled out of my mouth like teeth.

Amazing what a bit of heat stroke will do, eh?

So it’s almost a year to the day when a good friend leant me Tom’s first record, and to be honest, I didn’t take a great deal of notice.

That is, until I woke up from my stupor and realised that anyone who can approach the subject of the Holocaust to such a devastating effect with the crushingly simple line “You cut her hair, you cut her hair” deserved a second, third, fourth, fifth listen and some serious respect. Good? Deep? Dark? Where had you been all my life, Mr McRae?

Makes me all the more ashamed that the very song had first glanced off my still dull cranium during the autumn days of 2003. I had practically ignored the track, featured on one of those semi-pathetic MOR fest “Acoustic” compilations the record companies throw out to us every couple of years featuring such musical greats as Nickleback and generally being about as acoustic as my Telecaster put through a Big Muff and fed through a maxed out Blues Breaker into the biggest PA you’ve ever seen. If only. But I digress.

So, on to the show.

Quite how a man, in whose repertoire you are unlikely to find a merry word, can have a crowd in stitches not fifteen minutes into his set is unknown to me. But the funny ones are always the depressives, right? Whatever – he pulls it off because he’s a smart guy dissecting James Blunt just minutes after belting through “Mermaid Blues” – “I can raise you from the deep or drown with you in doubt” – un-backed, no guitar, just him, a microphone, two-hundred hearts simultaneously break.

And with this he sets the tone for the show – song after song of relentless melodrama-romanticism interspersed with quips and self referential gags that teeter on the verge of self indulgence… until his chocolate voice lifts you up then dashes you against the rocks, again. He can say what he likes. Dose me up, indeed.

It was the best show.

And yes, Tom, if you ever read this, the twat who was taking far too many photos, with a camera that was far too big, was me. Hope you like your portrait.

Climbing the Monument

I’m mucking around with the “desperate for comments” groups on Flickr. You know, like 1-2-3 and Hit Miss or Maybe. I want comments too, damit.

So I was chuffed to bits when I gotta stack on Climbing the Monument.

So many, in fact, I thought I would splurge it across my homepage for all the world, I mean about three people, to see. But no - I can’t find the original and the version on Flickr is a 750 by 500 sample from the days of my free account. Oh… crap.

After thirty minutes of sulking and poking around my ‘puter’s utterly disogranised file system, nothing. At a last resort I put the file name in to Windows XP’s hopeless search feature, and by god, the original RAW came up. Guess where? A folder called “RAW” in c:\. Where, when I was shooting RAW, I used to dump the so called digital negatives.

I’m going to get it blown up and framed…

(Those with a death wish may skip step 5.)

]]> http://www.howardstredwick.com/stop-whining-and-get-on-with-it-life/what-to-do-if-you-tear-an-abdominal-muscle/feed/ http://www.howardstredwick.com/photography/tornado-gr4s-over-east-london/ http://www.howardstredwick.com/photography/tornado-gr4s-over-east-london/#comments Sun, 18 Jun 2006 11:03:12 +0000 Flickr Photography London Abstracts http://www.howardstredwick.com//tornado-gr4s-over-east-london/

Tornado GR4s over East London

EOS 10D + 70-300mm USM IS. 1/1000 F9.5 280mm.

Trooping the Colour shinanegins.

The flightpath was straight over my flat in east London. I saw the Spitfires escorting a Lancaster through my balcony doors, but my camera wasn’t to hand, and besides it had the 50mm stuck to its face.Thinking there might be more to come I wacked the 70-300mm on the front of my 10D and hovered by the window. I wasn’t dissapointed - Tornados, Jaguars, a couple of AWACs craft and the Red Arrows all flew over, about 45 seconds between each formation.