Bruuuuuuce!

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band – Live at Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, 14^th June 2008

I felt a bit of a fraud when I queued up for a wristband with my dad as all the other people there were clearly much bigger Boss fans than me. I had no homemade t-shirt or tour t-shirt, in fact, I felt thoroughly underdressed.

After half an hour or so I had the number 447 scrawled on my hand and joined a new queue. In this way I spent 3 hours in various queues, reading the paper, surrounded by Springsteen fans who’d travelled from all over to get to Cardiff. I was a little bewildered as to why all these people were bothering – some had even camped overnight just to be near the front. But now I’ve experienced the benefits of the magic wristbands, I’d certainly happily spend a morning queuing again.

The Doctor’s made me all giddy…

One of the benefits of living in Cardiff is the extra-terrestrial buzz that surrounds the city. A buzz that has been created by one 900 year old alien and his telephone box spaceship. Cardiff is home to Doctor Who (and his partners in crime Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures) – and they are filming in the city at the moment.

I’m a big fan of Doctor Who and the thought of stumbling across a set or two was quite appealing when I moved to the city six months ago. In fact, I’ve been lucky enough to see some Doctor Who filming along Churchill Street and even caught a glimpse of David Tennant himself. But today at university we had a visitor from BBC Wales who got me even more excited about Doctor Who, and in particular the new series.

A European amble through modern architecture

First it was Monday’s G2 and then yesterday it was BBC’s Imagine – I feel my week is being punctuated by Richard Rogers. He’s an architect who I’ve often appreciated but without really thinking of his work overall, nor assessed my own interest in modern architecture. Whilst watching Imagine, I realised I had been lucky enough to experience some of Europe’s most exciting architecture, and that most of it had been constructed in my lifetime.

I’ll say now that I have never studied art or architecture, my knowledge of it academically is poor. However, it is something that excites me and often when mooching around a new city, if it is diverse and creative in its buildings it will subconsciously appeal to me.

Starting off with Rogers, his most memorable work is probably the Pompidou centre in Paris, which celebrates its 30^th anniversary this year (and thus is seven years outside my lifetime). I first visited the Pompidou when I was six years old and was captivated by its ‘inside-out’ approach with the escalators on the outside. It just struck me as a really fun building – and I imagine probably still has great appeal to kids.