Confluence

“I love it when a plan comes together,” said Hannibal, although for me, something better than a plan coming together is a series of other things which aren’t plans coming together and making a blog post.
Like this sort of confluence, for example:

A visit to Sheffield. (I just did this.)
A shot I took in a pub toilet on Sunday. (Careful now.)
And a pocketed article on the demise of Working Men’s Clubs in Sheffield, featuring this line:

We did have a young band called Drenge who filmed a video here recently, but other than that we don’t have much interest from students and the like.

Two mentions in a week of a (local to) Sheffield band that I didn’t know about?
About time I knew about them, I think. And wikipedia will assist:

Drenge are an English two-piece alternative rock band, from Castleton, Derbyshire, based in Sheffield. The band is made up of Eoin Loveless, on guitar and vocals, and his younger brother Rory, on drums. They take their name from the Danish word for “boys”, although it is pronounced differently.

And the Drenge video shot in the Sheffield Lane WMC was for We Can Do What We Want – an anarchic, punk-rock effort with rather too much gratuitous Clockwork Orange-style ultraviolence for my liking.

Not that this video is ever so much better, although at least the main victim is a W-reg Citroen Saxo rather than a bingo crowd. Starting with some teens drinking in bus shelter in Bamford (I was there on Tuesday), continuing with some joy-riding in the Hope Valley, and finishing with a jealous girlfriend and her mate beating up a lad and chucking his body onto a moorland fire (actually, it’s not better at all), this is Backwaters:

It’s pretty good music though, with hints of Arctic Monkeys, Joy Division, The Wildhearts and even The Smiths, as well as the more obvious comparisons with that heavy, grungy punk backdrop. Maybe something for walking along the beaches of the Southern Cape in wintertime.

And so I will, as the pub toilet ad suggested, give the album a go and I will report back.

One Last Shot

I’m heading out of Sheffield this afternoon, leaving the Steel City for the Groot Trek back home to Cape Town.
It’s been a good visit, and my last evening here was capped off by this sunset. Which was nice.

[Big on black here]

The length of the summer days here is something I’d forgotten, but it’s basically light from 3:45am until almost 11pm. Returning home from the pub the other night, there was still light in the sky at midnight. I think I arrive back in Cape Town late afternoon tomorrow, and I’ll probably only get about an hour’s daylight before the winter night sets in.

Still, I bet South Africa will still be a bit warmer than South Yorkshire…

Vole photos now live!

While Flickr sorted out their problem yesterday evening, I was out and about in Sheffield, testing the local beer. That meant that when their problem was sorted out, I wasn’t around to take advantage of their new found uploading ability.

Look, the voles are very cute and I would strongly advise that you go and look at them, but this is actually my favourite photo from yesterday:

That’s the dam wall (and quite a bit of the dam) at Redmires, just on the outskirts of Sheffield. I like the photo because it’s so simple. Flat water (flat, but defined, not mirroresque), a solid wall under Simpson’s skies, and that bit of foliage just to break up the geometry and avoid plagiarising Rothko. For the full effect, go large here.
But don’t forget those voles.