Clouds covered most of this week, breaking up and letting the sun shine through until the weekend. I had a great week though, low on stress, low on carbs, high on excercise, just what I needed! How was your week?

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Saw this festival going on at George Square while on the bus… Something related with gay pride or something I guess.

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This is a wee picture I took a few days ago after finding a set of red pens curiously positioned on the floor. Strangely enough right as I took the photograph a red car was passing by. A chance of prediction for Spain’s victory maybe?

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Fortunately things started to look up by Tuesday, I was feeling much better, and the weather was also much nicer, and greener, might I say.

By the end of the week I was doing just fine, and watched a bit of the marching bands going past my street (as every other week), this put me in a cheerful mood.

And here is a wee video of the (protestant) marching bands from Saturday:

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The following week I was buried in work, didn’t have time to go out taking photos, however, this last weekend was quite fun. I watched a friend play live at a garden party, afterwards I took a stroll through the city centre. The following picture is of a band that plays there on Saturdays, I really love it. Traditional Scottish bagpipe music with drums and madness:

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This is a photo from about Tuesday while waiting for the bus to go to work:

On Friday I went to Carlisle for a few hours, and visited a few places around the railway station:

Then I boarded the next train to Newcastle. At around 10:30 PM the sun started setting providing beautiful picturesque scenery. Unfortunately my camera was not able to capture even a tenth of the feeling, but a little is better than nothing:

I arrived at Newcastle where I spent the night at a hotel on Dean St. Not without going for a drink or two with some mates I knew through the internet from over 10 years ago, finally meeting them in real life. I left Newcastle at 7 AM to go to Middlesbrough. The following picture was taken on the train while leaving Newcastle:

At Middlesbrough I merely made a minute’s stop, then took a taxi to Guisborough. Nice little town it is:

Finally I made my way back to M’bro at 2:30 PM, and watched the game (Argentina-Nigeria) in a really interesting pub. It was decorated with incredibly old furniture (really comfortable by the way) and all the TV flat-screens were lined with picture frames. It had old-school wallpaper from the 20s-30s, and wooden floor that seemed at least fifty years old. A rather interesting place to watch the match:

So then I headed back to Glasgow finally. It was a great weekend for taking pictures, you can see more of them on my flickr stream.

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On one side we have artists who are incapable of writing lyrics about anything that happens outside their mainstream lives, and on the other side we have we have record labels that bet on this shite because they know it sells, why? because of all the people who don’t care about anything else than what happens in their mainstream lives?

Have people grown dafter? Or have people just stopped caring? Or maybe it has always been like this. However, as far as I recall, in the 80′s there seemed to be quite a lot more complex lyrics floating around than what there is today. I know this is not always true for radio hits, but groups such as The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan would garner thousands, if not millions of fans, and often their lyrics were rather complex and thoughtfully creative. There seems to be a lack of this nowadays.

The thing about taking on the biggest giants is that most of the time (so often as to be all of the time if you’re willing to do some rounding) you fail. You don’t just fail at the end, you often fail long before the end.

Yet the dreamers persist. These are usually the garage entrepreneurs, people with little market success behind them, those working without a track record or significant resources. People forget that Google was backed with millions of dollars from the biggest VCs in the world when they took on Yahoo.

- from Will Marlow’s post “Don Quijote didn’t ship”

Today I went ten-pin bowling, and in the lane next to mine there was about 7 screaming teenage girls. Every time a “hit” song came on the loudspeakers they would all yell out loud (which seemed to be just about every song). Not surprisingly every single song was about love, relationships, break-ups, or being far away from a lover. Most of the time the chorus was a single line repeated one time too many, or even a single word sometimes.

Just about everything related to love has already been said through lyrics, in one way or another, using old words and using new ones, however love songs seem to occupy the vast majority of all music produced nowadays. With “love songs” I obviously mean anything related to relationships and break-ups. And it’s obvious that the reason is that people relate to these songs in one way or another.

I mean, just study the names and content in Justin Beiber’s latest album for example.

When every single song in an album is about the same general topic, it gets me thinking… Why? Why not talk about the city life? Why not talk about freedom? What about politics? Money? Drugs? (Oh well, that’s pretty much covered by Hip-hop anyway). I mean, it doesn’t even have to be a topic like these. It could even be a love song, but at least the quality of the lyrics could be superseded with a higher level of creativity. There is so much you can do with poetry and words, and we limit ourselves to the most basic of words in this kind of songs.

Now take this song for example, Ndakuvara by Oliver Mtukudzi:

It has nothing to do with mainstream lyrics, yet it is a beautiful song, and its lyrics can mean a million things, or they can mean one thing, but at the end of a day it is thoughtful, creative, and different. Now how hard is that? Not much if you dedicate a bit of time into it.

To end this, I believe that those who write lyrics should act sometimes like poets, and those who write poetry should act sometimes as lyricists. No harm in that.

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This is the Blaarmeersen in Gent, an artificial beach at a lake just south-west of the city centre:

This is an old building in Bergues, a town north of France, where the movie “Bienvenue chez les CH’TIS” was filmed:

These are the industrial docks at Dunkerque. I took this photo while on a boat trip:

All in all, it was a productive weekend, after several days of intense coughing fits, and it was definitely worth it!

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And this is where I wait for the bus every day after work, just me and my skateboard. (I kinda just ripped that line from Belgium’s entry into Eurovision 2010, a song by Tom Dice, if you hadn’t noticed ).

So I was practicing a few ollies on Friday and suddenly I slammed hard against the floor. Less than a couple of seconds later it started hailing. When I got back home and told my mate he said probably the sky was crying out with laughter at my fall. It was pretty funny, though ;P

In all, a pretty decent week in the end. Next week will be much more entertaining! Monday off due to bank holiday, time to have fun? Nah, maybe just rest a bit instead!

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This is one of the scenes I pass through on my daily commute to/from work every day, Hogganfield Lake, right at Hogganfield Park next to Cumbernauld Road. Beautiful place.

By Thursday the clouds had cleared away, and gave way to incredible blue skies and sun.

And with the sun came skating, good food, and visiting a few places near the city centre, including this Irish pub called O’Neill’s on Bell St. near High street.

A great weekend, and a great week in the end. Well, time for dinner!

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