Thanks to a lovely gig-buddy I had the chance to be at an exclusive, small and thus super cool Frank Turner gig earlier this week. It feels like it’s been too long since I’ve seen him play some songs on a stage in front of me. Almost five months ;-)! I know, I know, I’m a spoilt fangirl of a touring maniac who actually provides me with ample opportunities to see him play on a pretty regular basis. Did I just book four more of his gigs in October / November? Maybe… ? Kidding. Of course I did!
Frank Turner on stage at Radio Bob
Back to that surprise gig; for the first part of this post anyway. Frank played for about an hour to about 100 people. Half of them won the ticket by telling the radio station why they should be at the gig, e.g. how big / special a fan they were. The other half (like me) were ‘plus ones’. I could have argued my case for being a big fan as well of course, but I hadn’t even entered the lottery, because I thought I couldn’t make the date work. Thus I was especially happy that I was able to tag along . Frank played five of the new songs – the four already released plus “Never Mind The Back Problems” and besides that it was a “Greatest Hits” set, which is always fun. The gig came with a “Meet & Greet” if you want to call it that. Frank was available for autographs, photos and a quick chat afterwards and of course we went to that as well and even though it’s always only just a short moment, it’s always nice to have that with him…
Last week I went to see a P!NK tribute show at the local theatre and it was lots of fun. Going in I was aware that I don’t know all that many songs of her. I mean, I know the hits of course and a few more, but there were also a few which felt new to me. When I looked up how long ago she had her first big hit, I felt so old. But I guess, with nearing 50 (next year) that’s just the way it is. Anyway, it was fun to sing and dance along and I’ve downloaded some more of her music to listen to on the next long car drives. For some reason I didn’t get around to catching up with her music on on Sunday as I had planned originally.
When I started a draft of this post on Sunday I had actually planned to give you an insight into the various newsletters I’ve subscribed to in order to get a variety of perspectives on news and politics and global and social issues. But I then spent way too much time catching up with the various news articles that day and in the end couldn’t be bothered to compile a comprehensive list of my sources. Next weekend, maybe.
But I’d still like to share one – not news article – but “Dlf nova Hörsaal” science podcast episode I listened to on the weekend, which blew my mind. It’s in German, so maybe not available to all of you, but if you speak the language and are interested, I’ll share the link below.
A lecturer of evolutionary anthropology talked about spatial and social cognition in non-human great apes and children and how different cultures and thus languages have different words and a whole different way of spatial awareness. He started with the simple test how easy we can agree on what something looks like, because we all have the same understanding of colours (blue is blue to everyone). But how difficult it is for us to describe smells or tastes and how different we experience and describe smells. And how other languages have much more words for different tastes and smells and so much more.
What blew my mind then was his report on how people in other parts of the world have different spatial cognition. These days the majority of people think that “left and right” are the proper terms to talk about the space around us. But that’s not the case everywhere in the world and it hasn’t been the case all through history of mankind. From what I took away from his studies using absolute terms like “north and south” to navigate the world around us is the more natural way than to use directional terms like “left and right”. Great apes think in absolute ways, but also small children and like I said some cultures elsewhere still do. According to him more languages in the world in fact use absolute terms than directional ones. It’s just that those languages are going extinct and that the majority of people in the world by now grow up in cultures that use directional terms like left and right. According to him that also explains why children only learn to use those terms correctly after a certain age and that even adults sometimes have problems with that. It’s not natural!
I thought that was super fascinating. NerdAlert? Maybe!
I was brought out of my lie-in yesterday morning by the doorbell around 8:45. The postman had to deliver a package which wouldn’t fit into my mailbox. I knew it would be delivered on that day, but I had forgotten that it came by regular mail via the postman in the morning and not via the parcel service, which serves our route in the afternoon usually. Anyway reason enough to get up.
Just a few of the books from my recent ‘book buying binge’, there are more to come
I’m on a bit of a crazy book buying binge these days. I would try to explain why, but I honestly couldn’t. My lack of impulse control when it comes to books clearly has something to do with it. Also the fact that I’ll get a bit of extra credit when I don’t cash-in the money I get for selling read/used books to the recommerce service I use for that. For instance instead of getting 10€ back into my bank account, I get a voucher for 12€ to buy more (used) books from them. I don’t sell my books to earn money, it’s mainly to make space on my shelves. Which I then fill with new and more books. Yes, this might constitute a problem in the long run, because I usually buy more books than I sell. I need to get rid off, e.g. throw away some of the stuff on my shelves. I do have books (non-fiction, travel guides etc.) which don’t have any commercial value anymore and as much as it pains me, I need to bin them. All the public bookcases in my area are already filled to the brim and I don’t want to add to the “throw away” books which I assume are quite a few of the ones in there.
The actual books I’m reading this week are the non-fiction “Unwell Women” by Elinor Cleghorn (still, as I haven’t made much progress there) and Maggie O’Farrell’s “This Must Be The Place” (on Kindle). I’m about 1/3 in and enjoy reading it, because I like the prose and I think the way the narrative is structured is interesting. This book actually was one I’ve owned and still haven’t read for the longest time. In a weird / wild (?) attempt to tackle the long list of unread books – which gets longer and longer with each book buying binge, I KNOW – I thought I should intersperse the newer and current books on to-read-next-list with the ones unread for the longest time. O’Farrell was the one that looked the most interesting and I honestly wonder why I never picked it before.
Back to how I also spend my weekend: besides reading fiction / non-fiction books, I also try to catch up with all the news articles I bookmarked during the week. I think, I mentioned that last week as well. I also try to listen to more news / politics / society podcasts. Mostly in the car, but maybe I should do that more at home as well instead of mindlessly watching vintage shows on Netflix. I don’t listen to most of them on a weekly basis, but pick an episode if the topic interests me. I listened to an informative German one on the International Humanitarian Law aspects of the war in Gaza. And I’m halfway through another German one on how the right-wing populist party AfD might change the education system if they manage to govern in a federal state in Germany. Another interesting new one in English is “A Muslim & a A Jew Go There”, hosted by politician Sayeeda Warsi and comedian David Baddiel.
Back to how I spend my spare time: I finally was motivated to finish building the LEGO duck. I run out of good shelf space to put all my LEGO though. It’s a first world problems, I know.
