Things that strike me

I had some flashbacks today, to the summer when I was 15 or 16 when I was minding my small niece. My sister had something unheard of in my young life; namely MTV. MTV was a lot different then.

I remember just two songs that stood out. One was Wild Wild Thing by the Escape Club. The video was weird. My niece seemed to like it but she was only about 2 anyway. The other was Sweet Child of Mine by Guns’n'Roses. When I got back home, none of my friends had heard of this band, even the so called metalhead. I couldn’t understand why the song wasn’t a huge hit. I can’t remember clearly, but the song had to be released a couple of times before it got adequate airplay to chart and it’s possible that it depended on festival appearances at the time. I didn’t do festivals when I was 15 or 16.

My brother didn’t think too much of Sweet Child of Mine, but when Welcome to the Jungle came along, he went nuts for Guns’n'Roses. For his short life, apart from Bad Religion, Axel Rose was it. He even got my mother interested. We sort of lost interest in Guns’n'Roses at home sometime after the Use Your Illusion albums, so except for the fact that one of my friends was interested in going, I probably wouldn’t have bothered going to the O2 tonight. Or last night. Not sure which as it’s after midnight now.

The support act was some dude from Canada called Danco Jones or something like that. He came on and played for something like an hour. I can’t say we liked him too much to be honest. Maybe I’m too old. Maybe I drew the line at songs about oral sex and wanting to fuck girls you really like. I don’t know. Not heartbroken when he went off, despite his huge eulogy about how he loved Thin Lizzy and how Thin Lizzy inspired his band so much. I wasn’t such a fan of TL – maybe a little young for that – but I know enough of their music to feel the inspiration was somewhat filtered by time. Either way, I’ve lived in Dublin for 10 years, and while some dude from Toronto might think I’m amazingly lucky to walk the same streets that were walked by Phil Lynott, I can’t say it has ever weighed too heavily on my mind.

We then waited for over an hour for Guns’n'Roses to appear.

I’m not used to this to be honest. I gather the band has a rep but pretty typically in the O2 gigs start and end on time. They have a regular curfew of around 11pm although I’ve been in club gigs there until well after 1. So they can arrange exceptions on occasion. That club gig, however, started on time where the support played 2 hours and the headliner played for 4. So I didn’t worry about the curfew so much. It was clear, however, the crowd were getting more than antsy. Up in the balcony we had well more than enough time to get bored with Mexican waves and down on the floor, they were starting to boo. Quite vocally as it happens. Twitter started to light up with comments along the lines of “no sign of the band yet”, and “no one is sure quite when Axel Rose is going to turn up on stage”. The people you’d get talking to were increasingly frustrated. I knew that they’d been late on stage the previous night in Belfast, but apart from that had only heard that they played two hours. I assumed it had been a late but great gig. I could possibly have lived with this.

When the band eventually arrived on stage, it was after half past ten. They were not greeted with much by way of adoration. The chorus of boos just got louder and louder and louder and the band didn’t really open with anything that would have set the gig on fire at that stage.

A couple of plastic bottles flew and Axel immediately said one more bottle and they were off stage. To be honest, at that stage, I probably wouldn’t have cared. We were at the venue at 7ish, had sat through a woeful support act, and the highlight of the evening had been the trip up the Dublin Wheel which was quite nice. Great view over the port. Plan to do it with a camera some evening. I never saw the bottle that finished his patience – but it came just 22 minutes after they went on stage.

The tickets cost 75E and Axel Rose, who was nearly 90 ,minutes late for his concert anyway lost patience with the crowd after 22 minutes and walked off the stage. Am inclined to think that those waiting 90 minutes are slightly more entitled to a little anger and frustration. But then, since I was one of them, you can make of that what you will.

It’s fair to say the crowd were unimpressed. I can’t condone the flinging of plastic bottles on the stage; however, I have zero time for a band who troop on stage almost an hour and a half late and there is no way the flinging of bottles would be happening if they showed up when they were expected to by the majority of the crowd. Someone came on stage to tell us they had technical problems. No one really believed that they were technical problems of the nature that a fuse might be gone in the firework display.

I watched the twitter stream about the gig on my phone for about a half an hour. We were basically waiting for someone to come back and say whether the gig was going to end at 22 minutes or what…they did admit they were trying to persuade Axl Rose to come back on stage.

I felt sorry for them. When I say the crowd was fractious, this is not an exaggeration. Every movement on stage was greeted with an increasing chorus of boos. I’ve been going to concerts regularly since I was 17, some big, small, good bad, a few indifferent. But I’ve never seen a crowd react like this to a gig,. They were furious they’d been forced to wait; they were furious about the walk off. They were furious that no one was actually saying anything.

We waited until about 20 past 11. I don’t think we really believed the band were going to come back on; just kinda wanted it said officially. When we gave up and went to the loo, somehow, someone had persuaded Axel to get himself back on stage. Who knows how. He opened up with Live and Let Die I think. Do I care? Not really. The first 20 minutes hadn’t set my heart on fire; the band didn’t have the support of the crowd; quite the opposite actually. We missed his arrival but I’ve heard he dismissed the fans who hadn’t walked out as being pathetic. I’d like to hope that wasn’t true but…oh well. They played for about 90 minutes nonstop, and yes, they did play Sweet Child of Mine. At some point, they played Paradise City. There seemed to be rather a lot of solo instrumental pieces, one on the piano that sounded somewhat not unlike elevator music and the Pink Panther Theme on the guitars. I’d probably have loved that last one if it had turned up in the middle of a regular concert, and not in the middle of one that was running 2 or 3 hours late, had consisted of the band blaming the crowd for the mess – the mess which could be traced back to the band showing up nearly an hour and a half late for their own gig, but in truth all I felt was that this was just like filler sound.

Only about two thirds of the crowd hung around to hear the rest of the gig. I don’t think they came on board really for it; I thought it was flat. I played with my phone quite a lot; watched the twitter feed. I’d almost have liked to hear the calls to the Adrian Kennedy Phone show on FM104, a station I hardly ever find on the radio dial. At some point they stopped for about 30 seconds and came straight back on. I honestly think they didn’t even dare try to challenge the crowd to demand an encore and anyway, the boos were still echoing around the O2. When they eventually finished, everyone in the auditorium pretty much just left. No major cheering, no major applause. No one seemed to really care all that much. By the time we got out of the building, a car with darkened windows was leaving the O2. The parting crowd assumed it was Axel and voiced their displeasure pretty clearly. I can’t say I really blame them.

Anyone who had to travel from outside Dublin for this gig; I feel a bit gutted for them. It’s clear to me that for some people, Axl Rose is some sort of hero and something like what happened to night has to be somewhat disillusioning. Do I care that Slash wasn’t there? Not really. I’ll be interested to see what MCD have to say tomorrow. A lot of people are going to be looking for money back I suspect.

Via some service on Twitter I get a message any time the International Space Station is likely to appear overhead. It has been doing so frequently of late and I got around to going out to see it on Friday night (but missed it) and last night and tonight.

It’s quite something special to see this little light flying quietly through the sky. For the last 10 years of my life I’ve lived close to the flightpaths in Dublin Airport so flashing lights through the sky are generally accompaned with some aircraft noise. This is quite different. It’s quite a weird feeling to think that we – collectively – put that thing up there.

The first time I saw it was the night that the Space Shuttle launched last year. I was outside watching that too. At the time, it was unusual enough for us to see the shuttle over Irish skies but its trajectory took it over Ireland during two launches last year. I thought it was amazing to watch, this thing which had taken off from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida something like 17 minutes earlier and now, here it was over the skies in Ireland. We can do stuff right enough, humanity.

When I was a kid, and we had relatives coming from America, I used to go to Shannon with my dad to collect them. So I used to see aeroplanes quite a lot, although I didn’t then live anywhere near a flight path (aeroplanes were a huge novelty when I was school because no one ever really saw them). Now of course, I see them all the time because I live not too far from Dublin Airport and I see them on my way to work and on my way home and when I go shopping and when I go to IKEa and when I go to the beach. I used to live in a 20 storey building in London under the Heathrow landing path. It’s quite something to look over the lights of a city like London and see the lights of aircraft lining up to land in Heathrow out your bedroom window. I like flying things to some extent.

Mostly I like the feeling of looking at something with a little feeling of wonder.

One of these centuries, if I ever decide to settle down, my house number will be in blue and white French house numbers. It will have a room big enough for a grand piano. It will have one wall of the kitchen decorated with either this or this.

It will not be too far from the sea and the garden will be southwest facing. It will have herbs growing in it, and strawberries. Most of the kitchen will come from IKEA and be modular.

There will be – and this is very, very important – NO Journey CDs in it.

I’m planning stuff. I’m planning to go surfing more often. I’m planning to successfully keep a mint plant alive for another while. I’m planning to play more music, do more crochet and more tapestry. I’m planning stuff.

See, I’m hampered in some respects by living in Dublin rather than Maui. I don’t know how many snakes they have in Maui or, in fact, the Cocos Islands, and I know I can’t get to either of those two places, but I’m planning to make the best of what I’ve got.

I just wish other people would stop hampering me still further. That is all I have to say on the subject. Surf forecast for next weekend is good. Just saying, like.

Lunch menu, limited but fairly decent all the same, 8.95. I was in there today while spending an insane amount of money on jewellery making supplies (must stop that). I enjoyed lunch; it was nice.

Temple Bar somewhere, near the Millenium Bridge end.

I’m wondering exactly how Declan Kiberd got his copy to the Irish Times today. In fact, I’m wondering why he didn’t just call a town crier to deal with the matter. Because thanks to technology, quite a lot of people got to read his piece today on how the internet can, apparently, leave you disconnected. I read it over lunch today, in a restaurant in Temple Bar. I read it because Hugh Linehan said via twitter that it was hilarious (it is) (but hardly in a positive way) and because I was on my own. If I had not been on my own, I wouldn’t have had time to read it, and that’s one person less that would have gotten to read Declan’s piece in the Irish Times today. You see, when I have dinner with friends, I might take a call if I am on work duty which occasionally happens, or I might not. But it is not technology that makes me take that call.

Blaming technology for the behaviour of people is intrinsically stupid. For most of this week I was on holiday. I happened to have dinner with friends a couple of times. I happened to have managed to have complete conversations with them uninterrupted by my mobile phone or by text message, or by twitter. Because when people are there, that’s what happens.

Concentration on a sustained conversational theme becomes impossible because of helpless availability to incoming calls.

So I have to wonder exactly who Declan Kiberd is hanging around with if this is the case in his life. It sure as hell is not the case in my life. And I have a blog, an iPhone, an iPod, an always on broadband connection and accounts on most of the social media giants. How connected am I. Dammit.

This behaviour isn’t just rude and vain. It’s also very stupid.

He doesn’t, however, say why it’s stupid which is a serious failing in an analytical piece. It leaves him open to accusations of prejudice and ignorance, for example.

Current gadgets – iPods, internet, iPhones – create only an illusion of communication.

Uhem, iPods don’t create any illusion of communication at all unless you’re at home and it’s an iPod touch. Otherwise its function is exactly the same as a gramophone player. I wonder if Declan has one; does he know the joy of classical music, of Kanye West (oh wait), of Keith Jarrett’s 1975 concert in Cologne or of audio books, and if not, is it deliberate ignorance on his part or pure laziness. iPhones, on the other hand, mean different things to different people. They are phones, first and foremost. Mostly, however, I use mine for email and twitter. Both of which allow me to communicate with people who are not beside me. I am never alone except when I leave the phone in the car or switch it off. Both of which I am in control of.

Dark glasses, once the preserve of heavy-lidded rock stars, are now worn by office workers who actually want to seem impervious and undecodable.

No they are not, at least not in my world. They are worn by people who want to sleep on aeroplanes and today, in Dublin, to protect their eyes from the sun. Again I ask, what world does Declan Kiberd inhabit?

Social network sites like Facebook seem to ratify the gloriously multiple self of the owner, while really putting pressure on participants to show themselves with endless friends, knowledge, drinks, parties. That may help some to socialise.

In a way, I have to wonder how this is different to that common activity in Ireland, getting hammered drunk on a Friday and Saturday night, and also, is Declan aware that FaceBook, again, is a non-compulsory activity. As it happens, while I have a FaceBook account, I couldn’t care less about FaceBook because most of my interaction is via twitter and a couple of other specialist message boards and sites like Flickr, Pix.ie and Ravelry. Ravelry has been world changing for a lot of people with fibre art related hobbies (I hate that term but it’s useful for collectivising knitting, crochet, felting and tatting, for example). It provides access to creativity and expertise on a world wide scale. My last piece of crochet work, for example, required the assistance of the designer, which I got, via the internet.

No longer does your private life begin in the next parish. It never starts at all.

Where I grew up, it began and ended in the smallminded petty gossip of the neighbours and the judgmental criticism offered by the Church in Ireland.

Doubtless, at the foot of this column, you’ll be told you can “have your say” online. However, you won’t have to supply a name and address, as those honest people who write letters to the editor have to do.

Well you have to actually create an account with the Irish Times if you want to issue a comment on their site and I believe that involves some contact via email, which of course is the bane of all normal people’s lives, but then, if you’re me, you’ll have a blog where you can respond to some minor points in the piece.

As yet, alas, the new technologies have produced no new art forms. Mostly, it’s been a matter of bullying, beheadings and bad, bad vibes. Masked and anonymous ranters use the media to vent. Others employ it to steal the copyright of lovely songs and beautiful texts.

If you’re going to concentrate on all that’s bad in a form of technology that is fine. It is, however, an ignorant position to take. Via a communications tool, new orchestras have been built, new collective art has come about. I have had access to photography and crochet on a level that I would never have even been able to imagine were it not for the internet and social based sites. I have access to music that has never been played on Irish radio.

For me, the internet creates connections. It connects me to kite photographers in North Carolina and New Zealand. To crochet designers in New York. To jewellery designers in the UK. The practical limitations placed on my life by living on a small, occasionally petty minded, island off the coast of mainland Europe are swept away by the internet, my phone. I think this freedom terrifies a country where the elite fear the loss of control of hearts and minds. Is Declan Kiberd important at all in a world where he has to compete on a world scale for attention? I think not.

And I think he, and people like him, fear this reality. The reality where I can go out and get access to things that collectively, this island nation has not necessarily wanted to make available, be it in simple tradable goods or ideas.

Declan Kiberd’s view is not unlike that of the Church in Ireland today. Society is moving on. It is changing. It always does. You cannot stem this tide. You can only convince yourself it is all for the worst, but the biggest impact it will have is on the control of people’s thoughts.

Most people who know anything at all about social media know that there’s a certain amount you can control and a certain amount you can’t. And that the issue of privacy has little to do with technology and everything to do with people’s attitudes. In some ways, the FaceBook photographs that he moans about, are little different to the whisperings about how 16 year old girls are slags because they kissed some boy or other. The problems are rooted in human beings, not technology.

I had this ultimate wave of envy wash over me yesterday. 50-75000 people lined the surf arena at Huntingdon Beach for the US Open of Surfing. I got to see them from my living room in a grey and cloudy and getting dark in Dublin.

In my whole life, I think the only time I got to see a broadcast of a live board sports competition that wasn’t snowboarding was probably when Eurosport used to show the live windsurfing from the Palais d’Omnisports in Paris every December. Indoor windsurfing. Interesting thought. The turbines were pretty damn big but it’s from there that I know the names of Bjorn Dunkerbeck and especially, Robby Naish. The rest of the time I just had to rely on summaries on YOZ type programmes and occasional rebroadcasts on Extreme Sports Television. Pretty depressing really. In 2007 I went to a couple of major kitesurfing competitions and was really there, on the beach, at a PKRA event. This year, I’ll go to the ASP in France because I have wanted to do it for 10 years or more. Go to a real, proper surfing competition.

Via my twitter feed where I follow a couple of surf companies, one  of which is Mick Fanning’s sponsor, Reef, I learned that the US Open of surfing was live on the internet. It must have been the first big year for them to do a major web broadcast like this because they have not shut up about the feedback they are getting. The feedback is positive and justifiably so. It may be because this year I have decent internet access thanks to UPC in Dublin – maybe on 3MB eircom I wouldn’t have enjoye it so much. The picture quality and streaming has been top quality and and the commentary was fantastic. Unlike my impression of most American sports broadcasts (witness the fun and games with American golf for example) it has been remarkably devoid of advertising breaks with a short one between the changeovers.

The surfing was of mixed quality. I would say it wasn’t all that consistent – but then neither were the waves. I’m angling for Kelly Slater to win and I have no idea why. I’ve always liked him in the few interviews I’ve seen him in and you can’t deny his out and out greatness as far as surfing is concerned. I really like Mick Fanning as well; he always seems to be a very considered person when you see him interviewed too. So I’d be happy to see him win as well.

There was a lot of entertainment to be had from the tow-in expression session – pretty much wipeout central. And the women’s competition had some very decent and respectable heats – my god those girls are all so young. And that’s where I feel a certain amount of envy.

We can’t all grow up near Huntingdon Beach or Bondi, or Waimea Bay. I grew up 60 miles from the sea. I don’t think anyone even tried to surf on the beaches in Kerry when I was a child although there is at least one surf school in Banna, and two or three on the Dingle Peninsula now. I’d love to have had the opportunities these girls had. Actually as a child growing up I’d have probably appreciated figure skating even more but that was even harder to get to. I was 15 when I finally got a test of windsurfing and I loved it.

The way I see it, I think that normal broadcast television is dead. I’ve always wanted a demand package whereby I could decide what I was going to get in the way of television but your options for that with cable are somewhat limited and to be blunt, when UPC are trying to sell me premium channels, like, SkySports for example, I just don’t want them because they don’t add anything to my life.

Looking – from my point of view – at how successful the surfing broadcast was for this event – and it was laid on by the event itself rather than by any of the sports broadcasters in the States – I’d have to wonder if that’s the way things are going to go. I know a couple of the sports clubs in the UK have tried to take back control by setting up their own television channels but as I don’t give a toss about football I have no idea about how this might have worked out for the clubs in question.

I would love to see the PKRA do something similar with the kitesurfing. I realise that surfing is a far longer established sport with a much bigger industrial base behind it – I doubt the US Open of Surfing could have come close without the support they got from Hurley, G-Shock and Casio to name just three of their main sponsors. I think Nike 6.0 are there as well.

But I came away from that broadcast wanting two things. 1) I want a Casio G-Z One phone. I really, want one of them. POssibly you’d have to have lost a phone to seawater to understand why but the commentary team had one guy out in the arena on a jetski (that was sponsored by Red Bull) and he had one of those phones with him so they called him up on it. And while he was on the phone to them (which was filmed from another jetski) he dunked it in the sea and it was still working. The call was still open.

I so want one of those. I bet they’re not available on the O2 shop and anyway I’m tied into my bloody iPhone for another year at least. I want that because without the US Open of Surfing, I would NEVER have known it existed.

2) I want the new girls surf movie from Nike 6.0 to reach me. Apparently it’s going to be great. The trailers look pretty hot so the question is will it turn up on the front of Surf Europe like Cancer to Capricorn did, or will I be able to download it or will I have to bribe someone to get it for me in the States.

They mentioned something about a follow up to Blue Crush which was one godawful movie, but nowhere near as bad as the MTV reality show about the girl surfers was.

No, this Nike 6.0 sounds just the ticket.

Finally, I hope I can pick up enough signal to watch the end of the surfing tonight. But I will be in Achill Island so it’s anyone’s guess.

I’d one of those perfect mornings this morning where life is almost 100% right. I don’t know how to create these mornings – sometimes, they just happen. Lately, probably via rearrangement of stuff in my life, I have been getting up around 7am – I’m aiming for 6.30 actually 7 is already good – and instead of a) messing around dealing with early morning emails or b) rushing into work I have been c) making breakfast and putting on a DVD. The DVD of choice at the moment is actually the latest surf freeby from some big corporate (I think it’s called Cancer to Capricorn and it can be downloaded from Reef (which I will do) or, is currently stuck to the front of Surf Europe. I buy the surf magazines for the pictures only. And free DVDs now and again.

Anyway, it’s one hell of a DVD, features Mick Fanning, Rob Machado and a bunch of other youngsters I don’t know, and surf breaks in all sorts of nicer-than-Dublin places. And the soundtrack is pretty hot as well and has introduced me to Mackintosh Braun and Blonde Redhead, two outfits I had not hitherto met on my music journey.

So with that, the sun shining, breakfast being made (no pressure) and lunch being made (no pressure) and great music and cool waves to decorate my life, I just felt in the zone where things were where I want them to be.

We spend a lot of time aspiring to stuff. I remember for a long time in my life wanting to be the type of person who did X, Y and Z; latterly one of those things has been getting up early; and although it’s a hard and bitter realisation, the only way you can be that type of person is to get up and do it. So I am. I get up early although to be fair one of the big annoyances for me while I was battling with that was that I used to be. College? 7.10 every morning, relaxed breakfast, whatever radio program (for a long time it was Good Morning Scotland, just to be different). Germany? 5am to start at 7.30. Early morning program via satellite on radio 1, relaxed radio. No rushing. No messing. It fell apart when I was in Paris for some reason and I never really got it back in the meantime although I came quite close in Brussels where the morning routine tended to work like a star.

To be honest, I don’t even worry too much that I still get to work at around 9 in the morning now that I am getting up over an hour earlier because I’m a lot more relaxed. Frankly I was more concerned thinking how great that film is (it is definitely one of the best) and wondering if I could possibly justify getting a projector or large flatscreen television just to watch it. Given how little television I watch however, that’s a tall order.

Meanwhile, the days are somehow a lot easier when I’m a lot more relaxed because I haven’t been rushing around in the morning. And that’s good.

So today, Google announced they were done developing Google Wave. It’s hardly surprising to be honest with you.

I tried it about a year ago after I eventually got my hands on an invite, and my main crib was that it just didn’t work.

Most people are taking the view that in fact, the problem was there weren’t enough invites so not enough users. The product was in alpha mode and for me that was the problem. Even where I had people using it – and quite a few of my tech/geek/photog mates were there – it was essentially rubbish. It took forever to scroll, it took forever to respond. I got told “ah well it’s better in Chrome” to which I reply “way to go to alienate a lot of users”. I don’t and won’t use Chrome. For the most part FF does what I need; the few things like downloading the odd MS thingie – which doesn’t happen often through a browser – is done through Internet Explorer. Downloading another browser just for the sake of using a product that should be browser independent is a FAIL in my view.

Not sorry to see it gone. Still wondering how Twitter is going to make money since some of its options for advertising platform are gone.

When you read discussions in the UK about the future of the BBC, you get deeply, deeply concerned. There isn’t much about Great Britain these days, but the BBC is one of the greatest gifts they have given the world. It’s a pity that people with the power to do so feel the need to talk darkly about the need for reform.

Coast is one of their unsung gems. Genuinely I don’t think they get anywhere near enough credit for a series the main remit of which was to introduce Britons to the news that actually, they lived on an island and had a deep relationship with the sea. They have done some fascinating pieces on shipwrecks, watersports, mining in Cornwall. Tonight they were in Brittany.

Brittany is a place which is extremely close to my heart. I lived there for a while shortly after I graduated, and I’ve been very deeply attached to the place since the age of 14. For the most part, you’d have expected me to be living there rather than in Dublin now, shacked up somewhere between Quimper and Vannes. When I lived there, I lived in Auray, which lies between Vannes and Lorient.

This programme had lots of little pieces of interest. The U-boat station in Lorient which I have never seen but I do know that Lorient had to be built almost from scratch post war because it was very heavily bombed in a bid to disrupt the U-Boat campaign.

But I have been to the standing stones in Carnac. And I have been to the Pointe du Raz. And I know the salt farms in Guerande. I know many other parts of Brittany as well of course.

For me, one of the things which was particularly interesting was a little cameo they did about a photograph. I’m a marine photographer (you can see evidence of this on Living for Light). The photograph is one of the most famous oin the world and it was taken by Jean Guichard. It’s part of a series called Lighthouses in the Storm.

Many years ago I met a man who sold marine books and pictures and memorabilia who told me that he had been the one to tell Guichard where to send the photograph. It’s the photograph of a lighthouse keeper at La Jument, standing at a door just before the lighthouse was engulfed by a huge wave. He actually got back into the lighthouse before the wave broke over it. I’ve seen this photograph all over the place. 15 years ago in Germany, on seeing my collection of lighthouse photographs, a young English man asked if I knew of it; it’s been in at least 2 houses that I have visited with a view to buying; I’ve seen it in the odd restaurant. It is one of the biggest selling lighthouse photographs in the world; the other high profile one is a Plisson one taken in a different part of Brittany.

They took Jean Guichard to the lighthouse keeper with a beautiful print of the photograph. I think the lighthouse keeper lives in Ouessant, a windswept island off the northwest coast of Brittany. I remember being told that no one there took too much notice of the photograph because it was hardly uncommon conditions for them there.

I am a nerd for Breton lighthouses. I like lighthouses in general but I particularly like the French ones and I suppose it is a mark of my lighthouse nerdery that I recognised every single lighthouse that featured in the film tonight and I suppose it’s an additional point of extremism to know that I’ve been to the foot of 2 of them, and looked at another two of the off-shore ones from the closest land point I could get to. From where I am sitting, I can see 5 books about lighthouses, three of which concentrate on the Atlantic lighthouses and two more general ones. And one of those Atlantic ones is by Jean Guichard.

Next week, they will be visiting Wales. I am looking forward to that.