sweaty city/cold county

So every year at about this time (usually in May, June) I always feel a strong yearning for cold winter days: snow, wide-open spaces, gloves, vodka, solitude. I think it's my final clutching for calm when I'm already unable to sleep because the humidity is closing in and Barcelona is fast becoming a loud, sweaty, seething mass of bodies. So i'm just enjoying it for now......then when the heat becomes unbearable i'll spend most of the summer splishing about in the water with all the other sardines :D

I'm reading the most beautiful book about ordinary people in a stunningly beautiful, cold place. The language they use is just perfect.....it's the essence of everything I'm craving. I'm going to finish it tonight, so i wanted to write this now while there are still some words left for me to enjoy that I haven't read yet.

David Vann - Caribou Island (Penguin Books)

"Early winter, the temperature minus fifteen. The mountains would be white, the lake and glacier. Only the sky a new colour, rare winter sun, rare midwinter blue. The sun above the peaks moving sideways, unable to rise any higher."

"...She walked towards the glacier, towards the mountains, away from the island. Walked slowly. Then stopped and looked around. Without her footsteps, no sound. No wind, no moving water, no bird, no other human. This bright world. The sound of her heart, the sound of her own breath, the sound of her own blood in her temples, those were all she would hear. If she could make those stop, she could hear the world".

December snow - an ode to clouds

Happy New Year to all...

Here's hoping the task of making and sticking to new years' resolutions won't be too troublesome...

So to begin 2011, i made a little film set to music (not sure if film is the word to use as it was so basically done). The view on my way home to england from spain was so beautiful that i had to record it. It was originally supposed to be the unedited video uploaded with a song, but i got very carried away and i ended up chopping a few parts up to the music...it's been a really long time since i've gone near any video-editing software though, so it was avery refreshing little exercise.

anyway, here it is, it's a little ode to my love of clouds and the british countryside covered in snow (they sort of blended in together, it was gorgeous) and one of my favourite songs at the moment too - Fuzzy by Radiosofa.

RUSSIA - big melt

A visit to St Petersburg and Moscow at Easter-time, during the big winter melt-down of ice and snow. Chilly.