Bush-man

Sometimes it doesn't matter how hungry you are, lunch will be ready when it's ready. It doesn't help when the mission at hand is to cook using my Panhead pan, over an open fire, lit using a fire-steel. It sure took a while but once it was ready it was... well, it was just like any meal you'd make on a gas hob only I felt like a bush-man while I ate it... in my back garden... in the middle of the day.

Hipster

Jeez, I think I've turned into a hipster. I just bought this plastic camera that uses 35mm film and takes pretty awful pictures unless you start learning about shutter speed and aperture. Needless to say I haven't taken a good picture yet. I've taken loads of bad ones tho. Some are so bad they're pretty cool, ironic huh?

Fucking hipster!

But seriously, there's lots of stuff that hipsters dig that I also dig: real coffee, selvedge denim, jazz, beards, old motorcycles, vinyl, steel frame bicycles, and so on. But I still don't class myself as a hipster mostly because, in my opinion, the hipster only inhabits a scene while it's hip and then blows where the wind takes him. Thus he doesn't have enough time to learn the intricacies and mores of that scene. Some cats get into it and stick around and lose the title of hipster. In that case weren't we all hipsters once? As a budding rockabilly and biker I hung around the scene til I figured out what was what. Wait, does that make me a scenester? (Maybe a scenester hangs around a particular scene while a hipster only hangs around a hip scene- I don't know). What I believe is that once you gain the secret knowledge you can, if you want, become truly part of a scene.

After all that I suppose I'm trying to say that I'm not too bothered with hipsters. The idiots will blow away once the wind changes and the ones that stay will probably be quite cool. In fact I feel a bit sorry for the real hipsters because most high-street shops are selling the instant hipster uniform so now all the lowest common denominator fashion junkies can look like hipsters too so the real hipsters are being swallowed up by a bigger group of idiots.

Like the joke says- How do you drown a hipster?

In the mainstream!

Haha, funny. Ironic but funny.

Gypsy

Playing upright bass has opened up a world of music to me that I never imagined. It's not often you get to play on a gypsy caravan stage under a full moon.

Rock n Roll

Just setting up for a local late afternoon gig when who should walk in the joint, none other than Big Elly from the Tex Speed Combo; a band I watched tear up the Hayride a couple of years ago. First band of the weekend and nothing hit the mark quite like them all weekend. We're still quite heavily rock n roll as we haven't changed the set much since Christmas (still!!) so we aren't in the same league as them but he had his thumbs up and looked like he was enjoying it til he had to run for his train home. Excellent fella and awesome band.

Now just chilling with some brown beer, a pipe of tobacco and a summer evening bonfire. We played well tonight which was nice. Last night we weren't quite so good but hey, that's rock n roll.

BSAmaha

It's one of those bikes you recognise but can't figure it out and then all of a sudden you see it and it's all like, OMG, WTF? The owners name is Yammie; should have been a big enough clue.

Soul

Yeah, so I've been away a long time.

What can I say, I fell out of love. I fell out of love with a lot of things. At least I thought I did. When I started this blog I gave myself a mission statement and that still holds true. There's still a lot of stuff I want to share so I guess I'll carry on the monologue for a bit.

I was inspired by reading an article that said vehicles do not possess a soul. It went on for ages about how some vehicle owners desire to ascribe certain characteristics to an object. Blah blah blah but in my opinion essentially correct. Vehicles do not possess a soul (also it must be said that it has not been proven that a soul even exists). They do not possess A soul but some vehicles do have soul. What that means to me is that a craftsman has imbued an object with a certain amount of energy through a construction process and this energy inspires the subsequent owners. I recently acquired this early 80s Dave Yates racing bicycle and have been obsessing about getting it to a particular specification. I'm close now, just a few more bits and I'll be happy. I stand back and look at this beauty and it sings to me. It sings a song of joy to my heart.

Hula Boy

We went to The Wet Spot burlesque on the weekend. There were lots of talented ladies artistically removing their garments but the only photo I took in the venue was of Craig The Incredible Hula Boy. He was indeed incredible- very amusing act, well worth seeing if you get the chance. I wore my Old Town fully lined Harris tweed trousers and while they look nice they are hellish warm to jive in.