Playing solo

During our family holiday in the North East of England we visited the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, and it was a very pleasant day out. The previously run down quayside area of the river Tyne has had a facelift and the views are stunning, particularly when there is bright sunshine and a clear day, as we enjoyed. Coming out of the Baltic, after a dose of installation art from the likes of Serhiy Bratkov, Graham Dolphin and Vasco Araujo, and a contemporary tribute to the infamous Andy Warhol, I found myself loitering around the quayside waiting for my wife and children who had gone on a short visit up to the Gateshead Sage (pictured). So I perched overlooking the Millennium 'Eye' Bridge, soaked up some of the sun and listened to a couple of buskers who had taken up residence at the edge of the water.

The guy playing the squeeze box was pretty good, but believe me his mate on the trumpet was atrocious. I think he only knew one tune, and there proceeded a tacit battle between the two as the accordianist attempted to change the tune every few minutes. He would be allowed to play his new tune for a while and then the trumpeter would come back in with his same, tired, badly played theme tune, regardless of the chords or tempo. I think most people were getting a little cheesed off with this by the time I left to find my wife and kids. I returned about 30 minutes later and the trumpeter had gone (much to the relief of the families who were strolling around). The accordianist was now free to go through his entire repertoire without hindrance. I think his takings rose exponentially as a result.

In a way, my time online is spent similarly, trying to get out of the same old rut of 'doing the e-mail', visiting the websites I run to see what messages have been left, and then following the same old jaded snail trail of ideas I always seem to follow. Life can be a bit of a tedious experience online and we are all creatures of habit, more or less. Even Second Life is getting a little boring.... There is so much ‘out there’ to see and do, so now, at the start of a new academic year, I am promising myself that I'm going to be a little more adventurous, and pledge to be more of an accordianist and less of a trumpeter.