Stuff we've been up to

Isn't it nice when people visit and you have a special reason to do fun things at the weekend instead of boring chores? We had friends up from London this weekend and we:

... cooked goats cheese and onion tarts and drank wine on Friday night.

... slept late and then wandered round town drinking "the best hot chocolate in the world" (TM) from Aubreys (the crepe place), before heading up to Nottingham Contemporary for the Star City exhibition. I made a "hilarious" joke about the big wheel in the city centre and how our visitors would never have seen anything like it. I'm funny. Anyway, the exhibition, firstly, don't see the exhibition backwards, we did and I regretted it afterwards. Secondly, it's pretty big/long, so don't linger too long over stuff you're not bothered about. Highlights for me included:
- the machine making noises as water droplets fell - it was like a dystopian sci-fi scene, a bit menacing, like it should be in the basement of a multi-storey car park in a horror film.
- the old Russian posters promoting space travel, really made you imagine how people must've felt about space in the old days. It was such a magical, almost spiritual place then.
- the collages of religious icons & rockets - I love icons stylistically and I really like space imagery, so this just really worked for me!
- the 'doctor's surgery' bit made by a husband/wife team who were some of the first installation artists
- And finally, the quote from Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, near the giant spacesuit in the bottom of the building:

"Those who have already been in space yearn with all their heart and soul to return there again and again. With every single day passing, time leaves my flight in the past. Occasionally the wind will whisper something from the tops of tall pine trees and then everything becomes silent. In such minutes I remember the most bright and wonderful experience in my life: the flight into space."

I can't get over how beautiful that is, and how well she captures a moment and a feeling that pretty much no-one else has experienced.

... saw the most random performance I've seen in ages at Nottingham Playhouse. It was called Pregnant?! and involved a PowerPoint animation with a live performance from a Japanese artist which was about being impregnated by rabbits. I can't really explain any further than that to be honest, as that's pretty much the extent to which it made any sense. Despite that, it was brilliant, really funny, the interaction between the animations and the artist was great, surreal and confusing but great. Plus we learned that bunnies ovulate even when pregnant, so that's a new fact for us all there. It was insane, like someone saying "I had this really weird dream, right", only without it being the most painfully boring conversation in the world, because it actually recreated that dream world for you. Ace.

... ate breakfast late, enjoying John's discovery of bacon and eggs on crumpets instead of toast. Super nice, especially when you get lovely local bacon from JT Beedham's instead of horrible, watery, over-salted bacon from Tesco. Then we wandered round the cemetery next to the forest in the snow. It was lovely. I took some photos and me and Anna Ray made this tree:

... Finally, on Monday night we saw Hot Horizons at the Social. They're really good, strong vocals, interesting guitars and some really good tunes. I'm looking forward to hearing the recorded stuff later in the year. Then we popped over to say a quick Happy Birthday to Andy from We Show Up On Radar who was celebrating with an apple juice at the Orange Tree. We heard about his visit to Maida Vale at the weekend to record tracks for the BBC, it's really exciting! Don't know when they will be on the radio yet, but we've heard that they sound really good.

Anyway, enough rambling from me, hope you have a nice week!

Bex
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