This is rather spectacular footage of starlings "dancing" in the skies over Loch Ree in Ireland as they prepare to roost for the evening. The hundreds of birds appear to move as one, expanding and contracting, in a dynamic, hypnotising and rather magical display.
It's a long film but it's worth watching in its entirety — the action and the film-maker's language heats up at around the 5.10min mark.
Once-upon-a-time — well, 2006 anyway — I spotted Irish actor Brendan Gleeson wandering the streets of Venice. No one blinked an eye at him, but I knew him from The Snapper and Braveheart and Michael Collins and The General and a whole host of other movies. After his star turn in The Guard — which we saw at The Electric cinema in Notting Hill last weekend — I doubt he'll have the freedom to move around Venice without being mobbed by fans, or someone wanting to have a go at him for being a racist cop!
Legend has it that Irish coffee was invented in the 1940s at Shannon Airport to warm up some American passengers who'd experienced a rather rough flight across the water.
The drink is essentially a hot coffee laced with whiskey and sugar, and topped with a layer of cream.
I've consumed my fair share of Irish coffees over the years, but none tasted as fine as the one I had last week -- appropriately on St Patrick's Day -- at the Dublin Writers Museum.
A chef from the Michelin star Chapter One Restaurant gave us a quick lesson on how to make the genuine article: apparently it's all in the technique -- and the quality of the ingredients.
It's been more than a month since our first (of four) gigs T and I saw as part of U2's 360° Tour, and I had hoped to write a proper post about it long before now. However, life has a habit of getting in the way, so before I forget the whole experience, here's a quick wrap-up of the Dublin shows we saw. I'll write a separate post about London a bit later.
Dublin July 24, 2009
First things first. Look at that stage! Or, more correctly, look at that bloody thing hovering over the stage. It's dubbed the "claw" and is supposedly the biggest set piece in rock history. It's 164-foot high and weighs 250 tonne. It looks like some giant crustacean that's fallen from the sky and it makes the stands at Croke Park look tiny by comparison.
We have great seats. I bought them pre-sale and even though we are in the stands and not down on the ground where all the action is, it means I can at least enjoy the music and the atmosphere without the backache and the pushing and shoving. There's a bar immediately behind us, which means we don't have to travel far for a drink, and there's even a set of under-utilised disabled toilets that we can use sneakily without having to queue for hours at some disgusting portaloos, as we did during the last tour in 2005. Yes, this is shaping up to be a very pleasant concert-going experience...
By 8.30pm there's a definite "buzz" in the air and when David Bowie's Space Odyssey begins booming through the PA system -- "Ground control to Major Tom" -- and the smoke starts emerging from the top of the claw and the legs of the claw, you know the band are going to come on stage at any minute...
The screams begin when the tiny figure of Larry Mullen Jnr is spotted walking onto the stage... More screams and cheers and crowd euphoria when he takes his seat at the drumkit, picks up his sticks and hammers out the opening beats to Breathe... The heart's in the throat now... Where are the others?
And then, seemingly out of nowhere, barely before your eyes can register it, there's Edge, there's Adam, and the opening bars of the song are ringing out... And when the crowd goes really mental you know Bono's arrived on the scene...
16th of June 9:05, door bell rings, man at the door says if I want to
stay alive a bit longer, there's three things I need you to
know...three!
You don't even have time to pinch yourself before they're sliding into No Line on the Horizon followed in quick succession by Get On Your Boots and Magnifcent before you realise you're seeing U2 live in concert. In Dublin. And you can't quite believe it. There's too much to take in.
Some eight songs wizz by before Bono even deigns to open his gob for a chat. It's the band's opening gig in Dublin, their hometown, so you can forgive him for going a little patriotic and singing The Auld Triangle and then mouthing off about Irish people being smart and sexy!
It keeps getting better. The Claw takes on a life of its own as the sun begins to set. The legs change colour in the reflecting light just like the surface of Uluru (Ayers rock). It's quite striking.
But then the opening bars of The Unforgettable Fire begin and the screen that hovers directly over Larry's drumkit changes shape: it begins to stretch...
...and descends, as if the crustacean has just eaten a rather large meal and its belly has become swollen. It dazzles, like a beautiful art installation, all golds and purples.
These city lights, They shine as silver and gold... [...] Carnival, the wheels fly and the colors spin.
It's all very impressive from here on in. It's about the music, not the politics, and I'm enjoying every moment. It all goes super-weird when they present a remixed version of Crazy Tonight that has Larry walking around the exterior runway, banging on a bongo drum he's got slung over his shoulder.
And then as the big screens show scenes from the recent violence associated with the Iran elections, it's Sunday Bloody Sunday...
... the little snippets of The Clash's Rock the Casbah have never been more appropriate.
Of course, it's not a U2 gig without a bit of politics thrown in, and this tour, instead of ramming it all down our throats and turning the whole spectacle into a kind of Nuremberg Rally, it's done with a tad more sensitivity. The band dedicated MLK, "an Irish lullaby" to imprisoned Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi. They then play Walk On for her as volunteers wearing Aung San Suu Kyi masks walk onto the stage. It's relatively understated as far as U2 go...
Later they play a specially-recorded video message from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, which seems unintentionally funny, but all is forgiven when they launch into Where the Streets Have No Name.
The downside to the gig? Probably Bono donning a jacket with weird lights on it as he warbles Ultra Violet, a song I love from the album Achtung Baby, although it doesn't quite work in a live setting because it's too subtle, too atmospheric a song for a stadium gig.
Before we know it the show concludes. Where have the past two hours gone? It's flown by and I've loved every minute, sung my heart out and only cringed once or twice -- this must be a record!
Setlist
1. Breathe
2. No Line On The Horizon
3. Get On Your Boots
4. Magnificent
5. Here Comes The Sun (snippet) / Beautiful Day / Blackbird (snippet)
6. Elevation
7. Desire
8. Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of
9. The Auld Triangle
10. One
11. Until The End Of The World / Break On Through (snippet)
12. The Unforgettable Fire
13. City Of Blinding Lights
14. Vertigo / Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio? (snippet)
15. O Come All Ye Faithful (snippet) / Crazy Tonight
16. Sunday Bloody Sunday / Rock The Casbah (snippet)
17. Pride (In The Name Of Love)
18. MLK
19. Walk On / You'll Never Walk Alone (snippet)
20. Where The Streets Have No Name / All You Need Is Love (snippet)
21. 40 (snippet) / Bad / Fool To Cry (snippet)
Encore(s):
22. Ultra Violet (Light My Way)
23. With Or Without You
24. Moment of Surrender.
It's three nights later, it's my 40th birthday and we're here at Croke Park to see another U2 gig. We're now sitting on the opposite side of the stage, much further back, in the last row. We didn't buy these tickets: we swapped them for the two spare ones we had for the Friday gig.
I'm not quite as excited about this show. We kind of know what's going to happen. The surprises will come when we see what songs they add or subtract from the set list.
They must know it's my birthday, because after playing a whole bunch of tracks from the latest album they launch into my all-time favourite U2 song, New Year's Day.
From where we sit -- or should that be stand, no one is in their seats -- it looks like everyone's gone nuts. It's spinetingling to hear 80,000 people singing along at high volume.
Perhaps it's where we are sitted or maybe it's just a more vocal audience, but this night's crowd seems more "into" the show than the opener on Friday.
Other highlights include Sunday Bloody Sunday, Crazy Tonight, Bad and With or Without You.
The lowlights: Unknown Caller (it kills the "buzz" in the crowd), Ultra Violet (again), the idiots who are all around us and the "lip" of the stadium roof that obscures the sightlines.
But apart from that it's been another stellar performance... and to think we get to do it all again in London two weeks down the line!
Setlist
1. Breathe
2. No Line On The Horizon
3. Get On Your Boots
4. Magnificent
5. Beautiful Day
6. New Year's Day
7. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For / Movin' On Up (snippet)
8. Stay (Faraway, So Close!)
9. Unknown Caller
10. The Unforgettable Fire
11. City Of Blinding Lights
12. Vertigo
13. Crazy Tonight / Relax (snippet) / Two Tribes (snippet)
14. Sunday Bloody Sunday / Rock The Casbah (snippet)
15. Pride (In The Name Of Love)
16. MLK
17. Walk On / You'll Never Walk Alone (snippet)
18. Where The Streets Have No Name / All You Need Is Love (snippet)
19. One
20. 40 (snippet) / Bad / Fool To Cry (snippet)
Encore(s):
21. Ultra Violet (Light My Way)
22. With Or Without You / Shine Like Stars (snippet)
23. Moment of Surrender
All pictures taken: Drombeg stone circle, County Cork, Ireland. Date: April 19, 2009.
Camera: Panasonic DMC-TZ3.
The Drombeg stone circle is a short drive from Glandore in County Cork. It's hidden away, on a back road, and is surrounded by farmland. It might be Ireland's most famous megalithic site, but thankfully it hasn't been commercialised -- there are no entry fees to pay, no souvenir shops to visit -- and when we dropped by there were only two other people wandering around the site and they didn't stay very long.
The 9m diametre circle comprises 13 lichen-covered standing stones, though there were originally 17. It has been dated to between 153BC and 127AD.
Nearby lie two stone walled prehistoric huts and a fulacht fiadh, which is an outdoor cooking area. This photograph (below) shows the communal cooking pit with a hearth.
I find these sites completely fascinating, on the basis of their age alone, but also slightly creepy. It seems difficult to imagine that real people lived and breathed here, cooked their meals and sheltered from the dismal Irish weather, all those thousands of years ago.
Place: Glandore, Co. Cork. Date: April 2009.
Camera: Panasonic DMC-TZ3.
At last! I've finally gone through my photographs of Glandore and posted the best ones online. You can view my Glandore gallery here.
I've still got loads more to sort through, including the Ring of Beara and the Drombeg Stone Circle, but I'll try to get them up very soon. If I leave it much longer I'll just never do it. Long gone are the days when I used to get my galleries published a few hours after I got off the plane!
All pictures taken: County Cork, Ireland. Date: April 2009.
Camera: Panasonic DMC-TZ3.
For no other reason than they were there, I snapped photographs of these signs during our recent trip to Ireland. I'm always fascinated by the ones that are bilingual, because we all need to know how to say "cemetery" or "strand" in Irish, don't we?
Place: On the road to Dursey Island, Ring of Beara, County Cork, Ireland. Date: April 20, 2009.
Camera: Panasonic DMC-TZ3.
As you may have gathered by yesterday's post on my book blog, we've returned from our trip to Ireland. We had a wonderful time doing not very much at all, although we did explore a bit of the countryside from our base in Glandore, in West Cork, and went on a rather long drive to the Ring of Beara (one down from the more famous Ring of Kerry) on the Monday afternoon.
The above photograph was taken part-way through that six-hour drive, en-route to Dursey Island, a remote outpost only accessible by an extremely dodgy-looking cable car. The landscape was windswept and desolate and very, very green. And no matter which direction you faced, the scenery was awe-inspiring in its beauty.
Once I've had time to wade through all my photographs (some 300 of them!) I'll post a selection of the best ones here. And I'll see what I can do to get a gallery up and running on my smugmug account too. But with our refurbishment still in full swing you might have to be patient...
Place: Ballinesker Beach, County Wexford, Ireland. Date: March 26, 2009.
Camera: Panasonic DMC-TZ3.
If you have ever seen the film Saving Private Ryan you may not know that the beach in that awe-inspiring, gut-wrenching 24-minute opening sequence was filmed here. Ballinsker Beach, a short drive from Wexford Town, is a beautiful stretch of pristine white sand facing onto the Irish Sea. It's a stunning part of the world, and one that really reminds me of the beaches back home in Australia. Even the surrounding countryside, all rolling green hills dotted with farmland, is reminiscent of South Gippsland. It feels, strangely, a little like home.
You can see more of my County Wexford pictures here.
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