Phew what a scorcher. And the Cinematic Orchestra

29 degrees and its October. Isn't global warming great? Might even resort to holidaying in the UK if the weather is like this. But then how do I up my carbon footprint (and so do my bit for further warming) without my flights to the tropics? Without that I am virtually a tree-hugger (no car, re-cycle everything...)

Of course if you had to pick something to do on the hottest day of the year, you wouldn't pick clearing out a house. But I did. With the help of a friend (thanks yet again A) we cleared out lots of rubbish from my mum's house, became in one day almost regulars at the local tip, dropped quantities of stuff at local charity shops and then loaded some keepsakes for me. Including a grandfather clock which has passed down the maternal line in my family. Luckily it just fitted in A's car, but only with front seat pushed as far forward as it would go. Luckily too, I am one of the few people with short enough legs to survive a long car journey with that little-leg room. And what a car journey. Just about every bit of roadworks that could hit us did. I had promised to take A to my local Greek restaurant to thanks her for a day of slinging old furniture around in the heat. But she was really tired. We just made it, but eating after 10 is late by almost anyone's standards. I always rather hoped that when a lady flutters her eye-lashes at me over dinner it would signify something more romantic than "I am so tired I am about to fall asleep head first into my plate of calamari." Ah well.

Anyway, I recuperated with an afternoon in my local park in the gorgeous weather.

And then went to see a band called the Cinematic Orchestra at the Barbican with a couple of young friends in the evening. Well, one was the ex-colleague who I attended SW4 with  a few weeks earlier (see relevant blog entry) and a the other a mate of his who was really keen on this pretty obscure outfit of musicians.

Now they are not called Cinematic Orchestra for nothing. The first part of the evening they played music as a backdrop to a number of short silent films dating from the 1920s to the 1970s. Now I have to say not the greatest films in the world. One of the 1920s films was by a documentary maker, but was basically just clips about what rain looks like, umbrellas go up, people get wet, you see reflections in puddles, and raindrops drip off things. Arty I suppose, and no doubt technically impressive for its day. Which was 1921, not 2011.

A couple of modern black & white shorts were a good argument for why you shouldn't fund art students, but leave them to starve. And one was just a continuous film scanning people in a crowd. For which composing music seemed a little odd, in that since absolutely nothing happened you could presumably play absolutely anything over it. When the films gave up and they just played from their own repertoire, with a vocalist, it was rather more accessible. And the quality of the musicianship was unarguable Still, my friends enjoyed it, and even though I say so myself, I had managed to book us stonking good seats.

And it is just great going out with friends like these, and in such a smart place as the Barbican. Sadly I was just too knackered to take up their invite to go to local nightclub afterwards. I am of course far too old for that sort of thing but that wouldn't normally stop me. But it wasn't really fair to cramp the style of these two young chaps. And while I could happily have survived another hour drinking while slumped on a leather sofa in some "old man's pub", standing at a trendy bar trying to make conversation over a pounding beat with two guys well over six foot would have given me at the least a crick in the neck. Pity, as two nicer, cooler guys you couldn't wish to meet. But then I suspect there was a bar full of young women who would also be keen to meet them, but not a portly little pension lawyer on the point of falling asleep. So I left them to enjoy themselves and I headed back to a nice warm bed. Well too warm a bed really. God its hot.