Images of: 'Teeming' by Robin Bell, 1989-1991. Location: Meadowhall Shopping Centre.

Meadowhall is a vast indoor shopping centre on the outskirsts of Sheffield. It opened around 1990 and is packed every weekend. These are some pictures of some art work inside Meadowhall designed to give a nod to Sheffield's steel city history.

In bronze on base behind teemer: "Teeming" / by / Robin Bell / 1989-90 Two identical bronze plaques, one at front of work and one at side by teemer:

BENJAMIN HUNTSMAN (1704-1770) WAS A CLOCK & WATCHMAKER FROM DONCASTER WHO CAME TO SHEFFIELD IN SEARCHOF QUALITY STEEL FOR CLOCK SPRINGS. THE TECHNIQUE OF STEEL MAKING WHICH HE DEVELOPEDUSING CLAY CRUCIBLE POTS REVOLUTIONISED QUALITYCONTROL & ENABLED SHEFFIELD STEEL TOBECOME PRE-EMINENT IN THE PRODUCTION OF STEEL.A DEVOUT QUAKER, HE ALLOWED NO PORTRAITOF HIMSELF TO BE MADE BUT THE CRUCIBLEMETHOD HAS REMAINED AS A TESTAMENT TO HIM.IT WAS USED FOR MORE THAN 200 YEARS.

Raquel Velasco in Madrid.

Here are some pictures of me and Raquel in Madrid. The first ones of Raquel were taken near the Circulo De Bellas Artes just after the Jonathan show. The other two were taken on the Saturday night in the Puerto Del Sol area.

By the way, that's Raquel on the right of the picture.

Neil and his Polish beer.

In May this year a few of us went to Wroclaw in Poland for my 40th birthday. We had a great time and met some wonderful people, mainly in The John Bull pub. I was fortunate enough to return a few weeks later when I spent 5 days there in Wroclaw, Weillen and Karpacz (where we made it to the top of Mount Sniezka.)

When I left I was given a can of Polish beer and a Polish beer glass for each of the five of us who had made the original trip. This is Neil merrily drinking his gift.

The top picture is Neil on a stag do in Brighton. Mostly he doesn't care which country his beer comes from.

Jonathan in Madrid

Jonathan Richman, Circulo De Bellas Artes, 27 October 2006

In 2000 I gave a copy of ¡Jonathan, Te Vas A Emocionar! to Raquel, a Spanish friend of mine, and her sister. I have to say that they didn’t get very far with this despite being impressed that an English speaker had recorded an album in Spanish. I’m not what they were expecting but it would be fair to say that it wasn’t Jonathan singing dodgy Spanish rhymes about Chewing Gum Wrappers. Anyway, as far as I know the CD has lain untouched since that first listen and my love of Jonathan has become something of a joke. When she moved back home to Madrid a few years ago I promised her that the next time Jonathan played in Madrid that I would take her to see him so I was very happy when the tour dates were released and I saw he was playing there.

Phone calls, text messages and emails were sent and after a lack of enthusiasm my friend eventually ordered the tickets and began to prepare herself for a night of tedium and songs about Chewing Gum Wrappers. I booked my flights and a day off work and on Friday morning boarded a plane at Heathrow off on my way to Madrid.

The Circulo De Bellas Artes is a beautiful building spread over (at least) 5 floors. A web site I found says that it is decked out in 1920s décor. Now, truth be told, I don’t know 1920s décor from a hole in the ground but this is a wonderful building with different events on each floor. The floor on which Jonathan was playing (the fourth) was reached by a huge double staircase made of marble or stone and all the windows had very expensive looking, heavy curtains. The room it’s self had a semi circle of pillars towards the back and the whole place seemed to be decked out in marble.

On the ground floor there was a bar/restaurant but unfortunately we arrived a little late to visit there but there was a bar in the concert room. As I didn’t buy a round in there I can’t say how much a beer cost but the normal price for a half pint beer was around the 1.80 Euro mark. The concert hall was filled with Director style canvass chairs and when I arrived all the best seats had a “Reserved” notice on them and were still empty until the second that Jonathan took to the stage.

Luckily, Raquel had reserved the tickets a few weeks ago as the place was full to overflowing by the time Jonathan appeared slightly after 10pm. Apparently Spanish people are notorious for turning up late to any show but either they made an exception for Jonathan or that view is not entirely correct.

Jonathan had on what looked like a new paisley style shirt and was full of energy and passion from the moment he appeared; luckily it looked like he is over the flu type illness that he suffered from earlier in the tour. I don’t think I have ever seen him in such a boisterous and playful mood. We were treated to a few Spanish songs which I have never heard before along with several of the established Spanish songs. All his talk between songs (and there was plenty of that) was in Spanish (he only speaks in French when he plays in France too which I think is very impressive.) Along with the Spanish songs we were treated to a regular set list of all the favourites. I will post the full set list later.

We got the full version of “Let her go” with the stories told in English, French, Spanish, Hebrew and Italian. During the English version he actually said the “F” word which I don’t think I’ve ever heard him say before. As I recall there were two encores although the first one he didn’t actually leave the stage. A group of people at the front were doing the conga, the rest of us were shouting and screaming for more with Jonathan giving the biggest grin I have ever seen. At the end he signalled to Tommy that they had finished and off they went for the last time living the audience going crazy.

A few minutes later the lights came on and several hundred people groaned in disappointment. We had been treated to 90 minutes of some of the best Jonathan I have ever seen and he could have played 10 hours and we would still have been disappointed to see him go. Even Raquel was impressed, I’m not sure that she will be asking for the Jonathan back catalogue but that doesn’t matter. The trip was so worth it for all the obvious reasons but especially to see Raquel’s thoughts on Jonathan change so drastically after just ninety minutes.

Roll on the next tour!

At last - my new bathroom

Here are a couple of pictures of my new bathroom. Now I have the luxury of performing my business (whilst reading the sports section) in the privacy of my own house.

Ashes are a comming

Taken from The Spin (24 October 2006) after Australia's defeat of England in the Champions Trophy at the weekend.

FIRST BLOOD AUSTRALIA Yes, yes, we are all aware that the Champions Trophy is not theAshes and all that, but only the most obtuse kind of ale-quaffing,pie-eating, Union Jack-waving John Bull-alike would argue that Australia's victory over England on Saturday was irrelevant to thedirection of the psychological pendulum before November 23.

Here,then, are the plus points each side can take from Jaipur to Brisbane:

Australia
1) Suddenly they have an attack. The Spin isn't talking about ShaneWarne, Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee, who are all certs for Brisbane.No, by far the best thing to come out of Jaipur was Mitchell Johnson,the 24-year-old left-arm fast bowler who made Kevin Pietersen look anovice with the two-card trick of bouncer and full-length tempter.Australia's most glaring weakness ahead of the Ashes had appeared tobe the lack of pace back-up, but Johnson - who counts Dennis Lillee among his most drooling fans - could be the solution.

2) The three wickets taken by Shane Watson was enough to persuade this Englishman that Australia will even go into Brisbane with a balancedfive-man bowling unit. Yes, one of his wickets was a leg-sidestrangle, but the Aussies now have a mini-Flintoff who is growing instature, even if his bowling at Test level still needs work. And withMcGrath short of match fitness, five bowlers is precisely what Australia might need.

3) With the exception of Damien Martyn's sun-bedazzled aberration atmid-off, Australia's fielding was ominously smooth. Countless divesin the infield saved them at least 30 runs and provided the perfectretort to the Dad's Army jibes that are sure to come their way thiswinter.

4) Speaking of Martyn, if there was one Australian who needed runs toexorcise the memories of 2005, it was he. Martyn was never exactlyout of form last summer - he just kept getting good balls and baddecisions - and it was an uncharacteristically knee-jerk decision byAustralia's selectors to drop him. But his 78 ("death by silk", as Rob Smyth called it on the OBO) was beautiful catharsis. Never mind that Harmison bowled rubbish at him: this was elegant revenge.

5) Ricky Ponting's captaincy last summer was feeble, and it remains apotential target for England. But on Saturday everything clicked. Six of his 12 bowling changes resulted in a first-over wicket, and there were touches of flair in the field too. The Spin still fancies Ponting to lose his cool if the heat is turned up this winter, but -in the field at least - this was a cucumber-like start.

6) Mike Hussey. He could be the difference.


England

1) Andrew Strauss's decision to charge McGrath's first ball revealedan aggressive blueprint for the winter: hit the old codger off hislength. His figures (9-1-36-2) were reasonable in the end, but thatwas mainly because England were 126 for 5 when he came on for hissecond spell. His first was far more revealing: 4-0-27-0 and almostas many headshakes as runs. England need to take risks to retain theAshes. Getting stuck into the 36-year-old McGrath might turn out tobe the least of them.

2) This was a huge match for Ian Bell. His previous memory of playingAustralia was a pair at The Oval, since when he has averaged 51 in 10Tests and 45 in 17 ODIs. But he needed a score to prove to himselfthat he can take on the Aussies - and to prove to them too. A crisp43, full of strokes he would not even have considered last summer, will do very nicely.

3) Adam Gilchrist might have fancied his chances against an attack missing Andrew Flintoff, but instead he was undone by another giant Lancastrian bowling round the wicket. Yes, the timing suited England- it was the first ball after a concentration-threatening floodlight failure - but his dismissal was so reminiscent of last summer thatDuncan Fletcher cannot quite have believed what he was seeing.

4) The bowling of James Anderson was a very welcome bonus, but of more significance were the two wickets in seven balls from Sajid Mahmood,not least because one of them was Ponting. He bowled drivel eitherside, as he tends to in one-day cricket, but his brief internationalcareer is studded with match-turning mini-spells. Two of those infive Tests this winter should keep England in the hunt.

5) There is no No5.

This is me

Down and out in Paris and London

As one would deduce from the name of the venue “Union Chapel” this was Jonathan playing his second church in 4 days (maybe more – I didn’t make it to the Cambridge show.) Is this a trend I wonder? Has Jonathan found God or did he simply fancy a change? His last few shows in London have all been in North London so maybe the local promoter simply offers him a number of available venues in the area for the night and Jonathan picks one.

As has been said on other reviews, this was a full on church, the only non church thing about it was the bar (but it’s so many years since I was in a church so maybe they all have bars these days.) Anyway, Red Stripe was £2.50 a can which I thought was pretty good, I have paid almost double that at some places and been happy enough.

The strange thing was that the whole of the audience was seated in the pews – no standing (until the end anyway) and no dancing or drinking. Personally, this wasn’t my favorite venue, after all, what is a Jonathan show without a little bit of dancing and cheering. As it turned out things weren’t as strange as they might have been due the state of Jonathan’s throat which so bad that he sang very quietly with his amp turned right down and Tommy playing very gently.

Throughout the show Jonathan was sipping on some kind of medicine to ease his throat but he really didn’t look too well at all. I think the sound man may have been sneaking the volume up once or twice but when it was at the level Jonathan wanted this was, by a long way, the quietest show I have ever been to. I was sat next to a guy who was telling me that his 15 year old son had found his old Jonathan records and had been playing them a lot and it was impressive to see these two generations sat silence watching him.

The show lasted the usual 75ish minutes; I really wish he would play longer but at least the ticket prices are still sensible and won’t ever reach the madness of the Madonna prices. OK, please don’t shoot me for saying this but am I alone in thinking that it’s maybe time for a bit of a change in his show? Over the last 13 years I have seen him solo, with a band and obviously with Tommy. I think the first show I saw with Jonathan and Tommy was at The Jazz Café in Camden in 1999 and it was superb. It remained superb for the next few years but this time I got the feeling that I would have liked a change. Maybe it was the venue or maybe it was the fact that Jonathan was feeling under the weather or maybe it’s just me but something different would have been good.

Anyway, because of the early start of the show I think I was on the tube by 10pm and already wondering about the next night’s show in Paris.

I arrived at the Parc De La Villette, a beautiful green area about a fifteen minute metro ride from the Gare De Nord in north-east Paris. We found the venue easily enough but there seemed to be several venues in the park along with, what I think translates to, “Village of Music.” I imagine the whole area is superb in summer, even on a cold Tuesday night the pathways were full with people seemingly going to various shows.

Jacques has given a wonderful review so I won’t repeat too much here. The difference between this and the London show was huge. Although, Jonathan was still pretty ill he looked a lot better and sang with a lot more volume and energy than we had see the night before. We were lucky enough to get an encore. I think, along with Jonathan feeling slightly better, Le Trabendo was a lot better venue than the Union Chapel but maybe that is my personal choice. For the record a can of Kronnenbourg 1664 was 4 euro.

Jonathan had on a buttoned up green shirt, I’m not sure if it was the same green shirt worn in London the previous night (which was open with a white t-shirt) and black jeans. If I saw his shoes then I have forgotten what they were.

So, that’s two more Jonathan shows, not the best ever but I will happily put that down to his health. There is something so good about seeing him play that I am amazed that so few people have heard of him. To most people he will only ever be the bloke from There’s something about Mary but we know better. I still dream about seeing him play for two and a half hours with a full band but until then I will make do with him, a guitar and Tommy.