This was presented to us by one of the French students staying with us – we have no ideas what it is. Anyone out there know?

Didi Bergman

Originally uploaded by deadheaduk.

This is a picture I took of local singer songwriter Didi Bergman at the recent 1967 at the Barge event. I was quite chuffed tonight to find she is using it as her profile picture on Facebook.

Two pictures of London landmarks taken from the terrace outside the Houses of Parliament – a view you don’t get to see very often but I was lucky enough to be in there last week

It’s just not fair – I had to be at work in central London at 5am this morning and I was on my way out of London by 8:30am. I still had to pay the congestion charge even though I was going the opposite way to everyone else!!

My shed office thingy is starting to look good – click on image for bigger picture

Pillars of Salt

Southampton Solent University 14th March 2009

Red Nose Day

A year or so ago my Dad forwarded a post card from my Old University asking me to join their alumni program which I happily did. the idea being that you can be kept in touch with what is happening and maybe interact with fellow students.

Or so I thought…..

A few nights ago I had a phone call from them – most of it was pleasant – what was I doing now, did I use my degree for work, etc. They even invited me to pop into the university and have a tour round and a bite of lunch. they’d send me an invite….

But then came the real reason for the call. Had I heard of their bursary scheme? Would I like to contribute £12 a month so that they could help underprivileged youngsters go to university? Well actually I might have up to 4 of ours going to Uni over the next few years and I may need all the money to fund that because no one else is going to help them!

So that was that and I never did get the invite!

The best thing was the picture on the card they sent me which was of the paternoster lifts they used to have in the (now sadly demolished due to being built on an underground stream) Tower Building (imaginative name!).

They were a series of never ending lifts that went up, across the top (as every student found out in their first few weeks) and back down again without stopping. you just jumped into one, went up or down to the required floor and jumped out again.

Can you imagine what a Health & Safety officer would make of those today!

KPFA are a listener sponsored radio station based in Berkeley California who remain independent because instead of raising revenue from advertising they run fundraising sessions to get their listeners to give them money to meet their running costs. A lot of work is done by volunteers to keep the radio station on the air.

Once a year David Gans runs a Grateful Dead Marathon as part of their fundraising drive. Twelve hours of back to back Grateful Dead music punctuated by David’s requests for money. Listeners phone in or pledge on line and if you pledge a certain amount you are entitled to a premium which ranges from CD’s to concert tickets.

While I was listening to this years event I decided to pledge $25 which entitled me to KPFA t-shirt. When the t-shirt turned up I couldn’t help but notice that the postage was around $11. Today I received a receipt for my donation which had a postage cost of over $1.

So if we have now used $12 of my pledge for postage and we add to that the cost of the t-shirt then there can’t be much left of the $25 I donated in the first place. It’s almost as if they would be better off discouraging donations from over seas!!

Phish made a comeback over the weekend at a series of 3 shows in Hampton VA. The band played for a staggering four hours on the first night alone and as far as I can see they didn’t repeat a single song over all 3 nights.

The band also made available after each night free MP3 recordings on their livephish website which I am currently working my way through. I did try and download Sunday’s show only to realize it hadn’t even happened yet!

It brought back some great memories of the shows I went to back in 96 and 97 in various parts of Europe – the best one being the night at La Botanique in Belgium where they played to around 500 people in a very small venue and I ended up going for a spin on their tour bus afterwards!!

Let’s hope they come over to Europe again soon.