Song for Friday: Mountains

I didn't cycle into work today or listen to my ipod so I thought for this week's Song for Friday I'd stick on 'Mountains' by Prince, from his seminal 1986 album, 'Parade'. I adore this song and the extended 12" version is officially my favourite song of all time and will be played as my coffin slides into the firey furness.

INCEPTION

I went to see Inception last night and haven't seen cinema ques like that since queing up outside the Odeon, Nottingham, during the mid 70's. This was even the unfashionable Vue West 12, not even Vue Westfield! There were people standing in the auditorium it was so busy. It made for an incredible cinema going experience and the film was out-of-this-world good. By far, the best film Christopher Nolan has made since Memento and it's safe to say it will be the film of the year, just ahead of Toy Story 3, which I can not wait to see. Christopher Nolan must direct a Bond at some stage and cast Tom Hardy, the finest actor in a really great cast, as the villain.

Picasso: The Mediterranean Years

Picasso: the Mediterranean Years is an astonishing and breathtaking exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery, in Brittania Street, 5 minutes from St Pancras.
It feels like a really big show but includes just a tiny fragment of Picasso's gargantuan output from the late 40's to mid 50's, when he was at his most prolific, living in South of France and domestically content. It demonstrates his super-human versatility, with works including paintings, sculptures, ceramics, posters and drawings, gathered mostly from the Picasso family and curated by his old chum John Richardson.
I absolutely loved the show, I felt a really strong connection with the tender and loving paintings of his family and children and it was refreshingly free of interpretation, barriers and the curators hand.

Final bits from last weekend

Final bits from last weekend are Ruby's felt-tip drawing, duck eggs for breakfast, some nice scenes on a bike ride by the Grand Union canal and the ice cream van at Roundwod Park.

Other bits from last weekend

These were some other bits from our weekend. Ruby's best friend Maisie came over for a sleep-over and we cooked dinner for her Mum and Dad. On Sunday morning, we went and had a family ice cream in Roundwood Park.

Richmond Park

We spent a wondeful Saturday afternoon in glorious Richmond Park, by Pen Ponds, for Jessica's birthday picknick. The sun shone, Adam's BBQ chicken hit the spot, saw some lovely people we hadn't seen for a long time.

Little Boy is Registered and Named

Just as I did 19 months ago and feeling a bit like deja vu, I did my solemn and civic duty last Thursday and had our little boy's birth registered with, Interim Registrar, Jack Spencer, at Westminster Town Hall. He not only became an official citizen of the United Kingdom but he has also been given a birth certificate with his name on, which is now Lucas Istvan Read.
He was always going to have Istvan as his second name. It's been the first name of every male on his mother's side of the family, for generations. But we've agonised over his first name for over 10 months and it's by far the hardest decision we've ever made. We just couldn't find a boys name that we were 100% sure about.
So, unlike Ruby, we made the mistake of including people in our decision making, which only ended up making the process even more difficult.
Either people had an immediate bad reaction, or knew someone with that name who were awful, or the name was already too popular or pretentious. For the benefit of Lucas, who might be reading this at some time in the future (son - I really hope you've been happy with our decision) or for anyone who might be struggling as we have, here are some of the contenders we came close to choosing. The closest we came was actually Jack. He was Jack in our minds for a long time but after we consulted, we became too aware of it's popularity. After Lucas arrived we tried out Alexander for a few days, a really great name with excellent shortening potential and Alexandranite is a precious stone, like Ruby. But it didn't quite seem to stick. Then there was Jasper, we were really happy with that, keeping the precious stone theme going and a tribute to painter Jasper Johns. But a bad reaction to that put pay to Jasper. Samuel was our alternative to Jasper and that stuck around, we liked it's derivatives, but again we just didn't feel 100% and Sam became a little too ubiquitous, there's a Sam's Chicken down our high street.
Otis, we thought was cool and Ibolya and I were keen but turned out a short lived contender. I liked it as I liked the idea of our boy being named after one of Groucho Marx's characters, he's Otis B Driftwood in Night at the Opera.
Ibolya had great inspiration with Sidney but we didn't like Sid. We had the same problem with Albert and Stanley; I loved the homage to Kubrick, Stan Laurel and it's a family name but we weren't so keen on their shortening to Al and Stan. Stanley had also been bagged by one of our neighbours. Some other long shots included Dashille - as in Hammett, Inigo - as in Jones and Jerome - as in K. Jerome and Saint.
On Tuesday, last week, a superb painting by Lucas Van Leyden, caught my eye in the National Gallery and we thought Lucas, as a name, had the right combination of sounding contemporary, without being popular, European (like our boy), unlikely to age quickly, without associations with anyone we know and comes with strong historical heritage.
As the name arrived so late in the day, and after trying so many other names, it's going to take us (and all our family and friends) a little while to get used to. But I hope we'll look back and our instincts will be vindicated and that our beautiful, precious, little boy will be happy with the name it's taken us so long settle.

Song for Friday

I'm going to try and continue each Friday what I started last week and post the song I enjoyed listening to most, randomly shuffled by my ipod, on my morning cycle into work.
This morning it was Roy Budd's sublime theme to the film Get Carter. An incredible piece of music to hear when you're on the move and a phenomenal opening sequence to a movie. I don't know if it's true, I really hope it is, but according to a comment on Youtube, the other, smoking, man in Carter's carriage is J, the hitman who kills Carter at the end of the film.
Must watch the film again soon. Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

Little Bits of Little Boy

Our little boy was 4 weeks old 2 days ago and is exactly 1 calendar month old today.
These past few weeks have gone by at an extraordinary rate and I can't believe how much he's changing, before our eyes. He's getting ever so long and filling out really rapidly.
Unbelievably, we haven't quite settled on a name yet. We've agonised over it relentlessly for the past, well, 10 months and involved so many people that we know, I think it's become a bit of a joke. It's certainly tested our nearest and dearests patience to the extreme. Even people we haven't discussed it with have known about it. But all will be decided and resolved tomorrow when I go along for our appointment at Westminster Town Hall to have our boy's birth officially registered.
While I'm here, I also just wanted to note that I am absolutely loving people at work, stopping me and asking 'how are the kids?' - that and referring to 'my children' is such an incredible thrill.

Saturday

I took it easy on my camera this weekend. We stayed at home all day Saturday and were visited by my sister and her family, our little boy meeting the last two cousins he hadn't yet met. I wish now I'd got Emilia and Hugo to guest blog but I'll get them to do that next time I see them.
On Sunday afternoon, we ventured to a friend's house in Wembley for a very pleasant BBQ.