Coming Up For Air

I'm not really getting the hang of posting frequently, am I?

Last weekend was a bit of a downer for sport, what with the Rugby final (which I watched half-heartedly) and the Grand Prix (which I have absolutely no interest in at all). Still, Leeds won on the back of another poor performance. Unfortunately, I was working so didn't get to hear the full match. What I did hear sounded pretty dire. At home to Millwall today, so will be trooping off there this afternoon.

The half-term break saw Debbie and Elizabeth spend a couple of nights with Debbie's parents, freeing my evenings up to catch up on a couple of recent film releases. The Dark is Rising is OK, but should have been so much better - I marked it 6/10 over on Yahoo. The Last Legion is a film which ties the last days of the Roman Empire into Arthurian Legend and tells the origin of Excalibur. I'm a sucker for Arthurian Legend, so probably enjoyed it more than I should. It was clumsy in places and very similar to King Arthur (the Clive Owen starrer from a few years back) in others. 7/10.

On Friday morning I went (with Debbie, Elizabeth, Elizabeth's friend Cathryn and her mum) to see Ratatouille - the latest Pixar offering. As usual it was up to their high standards, with laughs aplenty and the odd tear-in-the-eye moment. It's hard to see how animation can get any more detailed than this. 8/10.

Friday evening (with Elizabeth away again) Debbie and I went to the Post Office Social Club for the CD launch of Coming up for Air, by Breathing Space. It's a slightly more upmarket venue than Fibbers - we could drink hand-pulled beer in proper glasses and sit at tables while the band played. Unfortunately, we chose to sit near the bar - too close to those who had paid their £7 ticket money to try to talk over the band. Muppets! The band played two sets - songs from the first album during the first set, followed by the whole of the new CD. It all sounded very good, except for a couple of times when the sound went a bit dodgy. For most of the gig it was hard to hear what Olivia was singing - that might of been her lack of vocal power, bad mixing or simply that the brain wasn't filling in the missing lyrics because it hadn't heard them before. I picked up both CDs and a limited edition Amberstone one as well. I have high hopes for the Breathing Space pair, but Amberstone is an unknown quantity at the moment.

Finally, a confession... Breathing Space is the breakaway project by Iain Jennings, ex-keyboard player of Mostly Autumn (and Olivia is still their backing vocalist). I only came across Mostly Autumn a few weeks ago but, since then, The Gap Is Too Wide (from their second album) has become one of my favourite pieces of music. It is stunningly beautiful and full of emotion. It was written by Iain Jennings. Apparently, it is no surprise to people who have seen Breathing Space before that it is also their encore song, so I got to hear it live last night. Afterwards, I'm afraid I turned into a bit of a fanboy and gushed praise, for writing the song, at Mr. Jennings while getting him to sign the new CD. I blame the beer!