Jenjie

I thought we needed one :D The movie book is listed too: Twilight: The Complete Illustrated Movie Companion (Paperback)

http://www.filter-mag.com/index.php?c=rules&id=115

nooooooooooooooo Gregg's veggie sausage rolls beat all the pasties hands down :P

Manchester. When I used to work on Deansgate, lots of people used The Polar Bear 123 Deansgate, Manchester. Tel: 0161-834 1230. but I can't remember if they were new or second-hand.

The discussions in the "What Are You Reading Now?" thread seem to be taking over, so I thought I'd create us our own thread :D These looks interesting: The Stephenie Meyer Twilight Companion: The Complete Guide (Paperback) The Twilight Saga: The Official Guide (Hardcover)

It'll be tough, but there's a few other books coming out before then which will have to do. The new one in the Stravaganza series by Mary Hoffman has just come out, Kelley Armstrong has the first in a new series out, the Mamoth book of Vampire Romance is due and i forget who else has paperbacks out. But my Christmas list of books is getting very long already :laugh3: because loads of my favourite authors are bringing out their next in series in the autumn. The third in the Inkspell trilogy by Cornelia Funke; the third in Christopher Paolini's Inheritance; the fourth in Malorie Blackman's Noughts & Crosses series; and some others!!

does someone want to tell Coldplay they're there for 2 nights!!! :laugh3: they still don't have the date on the official site :confused:

doesn't really matter what you call it, so long as people know what you're talking about. Viva La Vida is still too long so I generally just write Viva :P

Trainspotters are an endangered species, driven out by officialdom, hypersecurity and a lamentable lack of fashionAndrew Martin It took me a day and a half of searching before I found any trainspotters in London. They were standing at the far end of Platform 8 at King's Cross. David Burrell carried a camera, Paul Rea a notebook. They were both in their sixties, both down from Manchester and staying in West Hampstead, which they found convenient for Willesden Junction. Our conversation was hampered by several modern railway blights. There was nowhere to sit and there was nowhere to dispose of our cardboard coffee cups; we kept being interrupted by announcements telling us not to lose sight of our personal belongings. Our conversation was a study in melancholia, covering many of the causes of the decline of trainspotting, including the latest, and deadliest, of all - security fears. Rea tells me that he started trainspotting in the Fifties “by standing on a bit of unadopted track near Newton Heath maintenance depot. We weren't supposed to stand there but nobody minded.” In the early Eighties he had regularly come down to London on spotting trips with the Lancashire Locomotive Society. I ask if it was thriving. “Thriving! We used to fill up a 52-seater coach every time. Now it's a minibus with 12 at the most.” The three of us are standing next to a typical modern train: a “multiple unit”. It would strike a passer-by as a series of carriages with no locomotive. Rea tells me that it was a Class 365. Not very interesting is it, I suggest? “Not really,” he concedes, “but in my mind this place is still full of Atlantics [big steam engines]. I still see it the way it was in The Ladykillers.” I ask the two whether they'd had any abuse from the public. “I've had, ‘Get a life, mate',” Burrell says. “I've had that lots of times.” I then ask whether they'd had any trouble from the railway authorities. “Two years ago,” Burrell says, “when I was taking pictures on Manchester station, I was questioned by a station official. Nothing came of it, but it was, you know, close questioning.” Others have been more inconvenienced by the increased security across the network, and it appears that one unexpected result of the villainy of Osama bin Laden could be the death of trainspotting. It comes down to a question of identity. Who is to say that the three blokes on the end of the platform with their notebooks, cameras, flasks of coffee and Blue Riband biscuits might not be members of al-Qaeda? Last month's The Railway Magazine reports an “alarming” increase in the number of readers complaining about the heavy-handed policing of stations. It also draws attention to a poster recently published by the British Transport Police urging the public to look out for photographers who seem, in some way, “odd”. “It's not a systematic persecution,” says Chris Milner, deputy editor of the magazine. “You just get these pockets of jobsworths who don't know the guidelines.” After the London Tube bombings of July 7, 2005, Milner was party to the drawing up of guidelines intended for people wanting to take photographs on railway stations. They are accepted by Network Rail and the British Transport Police, who publish them on their websites. Photographers are expected to report to station staff and say what they're about. They are, of course, to keep away from the platform edge. Given the nannyish mindset of modern railways (which determines that all train fronts and rears must be painted a revolting yellow) it comes as a surprise that railway photographers are asked not to wear high-visibility jackets - this for fear that they will be confused with station staff. Milner detects an irony in the implicit wariness of railway photographers. “On the day of the London Tube bombings, Sir Ian Blair was asking for people to come forward with any pictures they might have taken.” Austin Mitchell, a Labour MP and keen amateur photographer, sees another irony: “We are all photographed dozens of times every day on CCTV, so while the Government can photograph us, we can't photograph anything else.” According to Mitchell, who was recently stopped from taking pictures at Leeds station: “Photography is a public right and that should be made absolutely clear.” He has put down an early-day motion about the matter. In truth, trainspotters have always had their run-ins with the railway authorities. In his book, Forget the Anorak: What Trainspotting Was Really Like, Michael G. Harvey relates his trainspotting adventures of the Fifties. He describes an expedition made in 1957 to the Ebbw Junction depot at Newport: “The visit proved to be quite rewarding, as we noted no fewer than 126 steam locomotives ‘on shed', but before we achieved this we had to avoid the gateman's attention. This we did by cunningly throwing a selection of stones...and while he went out to investigate we crept behind his hut and into the depot!” Those knockabout days are over. The change is symbolised by the way that what were once casually yet felicitously called Loco Sheds are now “train care depots” - places bounded by bureaucracy, “the compensation culture” and very high fences. In the first half of the 20th century, access to railway premises could be gained by informal negotiation, and this was founded on mutual respect. Between 1911 and 1950 The Wonder Book of Railways went through 21 editions, and in those days it was the young lad who wasn't interested in trains who was regarded as a bit weird. Trainspotting specifically grew out of “loco spotting”, a term coined by a young publisher called Ian Allan, who in 1942 began publishing The ABC Railway Guides containing lists of locomotive numbers. But gentlemanly “train watchers” had existed since late Victorian times. Among their number were the first members of The Railway Club, which was founded in 1899 and is, according to The Oxford Companion to British Railway History, the world's oldest society of railway enthusiasts. Today, the club has 85 members, of whom, I believe, I'm the youngest at 45. There is an annual dinner that begins with grace and ends with a toast to the Queen. Regular talks are held in a room at Marylebone station. Recent ones included “The Railways of Cornwall” and a member of the Transport Ticket Society speaking on “I Don't Know Much about Tickets, but I Know What I Like”. (We can be sure that this was entirely false modesty: the speaker in fact knew a great deal about tickets.) But in recent years the club reports have made agonising reading. One new member might have joined, but two will have died and one resigned. A few weeks ago, members received a special letter: “The executive committee has doubts about the continued validity of the club...” A meeting will be held in October to decide the club's future. Mike Burgess, its honorary secretary, says: “There's this faint hope that someone will come along with a plan - new blood, you know.” The North Eastern Railway Association, of which I am also a member, recently wrote to me announcing that it was seeking to recruit young members: “Can you suggest any ideas how this might be accomplished?” None came to mind. Britain is not making trainspotters any more, just as it is not making enough engineers to maintain our main lines. Trainusership may be at its highest since the Second World War, but this is largely because of commuting into London. Fewer than half the children who visit the National Railway Museum in York have ever been on a train, let alone spotted any. Let's get this nasty, tyrannical little word out of the way, and acknowledge that trainspotting is not “cool” and that you call somebody one at your peril. My friend Andrew was recently ejected from a North London suburban station for being on the platform without a ticket. “This halfwit came after me, moving really fast and speaking into his walkie-talkie.” Andrew had gone there to look at The Aberdonian, a high-speed train running out of King's Cross, and when I put it to him that many trainspotters were having similar difficulties, he replies: “I should punch your lights out for calling me that. I am not a trainspotter. I like good transport design. I like the Coronation steam engines; I like European diesels; I like the Woolwich Ferry, the Isle of Wight ferry and the Routemaster bus.” Note that he did not enthuse about the Class 365. The utter boringness of modern rolling stock is like bromide in the spotter's Thermos. Not only have steam locos disappeared, but so have locomotives per se. In 1958 there were more than 21,000 on Britain's railways; today there are 2,000 and, instead of being called The Flying Scotsman, they are called things such as Good Morning with Richard and Judy. Instead of locomotive-hauled trains we have the multiple units, which are functional - they are worm-like in that they still move when cut in half - but about as aerodynamically exciting as wardrobes. The decline of the locomotives is the main reason why Ian Allan Publishing stopped bringing out its ABC guides 15 years ago. At King's Cross, as the Class 365 drew away, to the indifference of bystanders, I put it to Burrell and Rea that excessive security might compound the other factors to kill off their hobby entirely. While they were willing to consider any number of gloomy possibilities, they were more bothered by public abuse. “We had it the other day in Milford Junction,” David Burrell says. “Two blokes in a white van shouting ‘Stupid bastards'.” The trainspotters of 2008, it seems, are caught between the jihadists and the white van men. A more sinister pincer movement would be hard to imagine. Death on a Branch Line, a novel by Andrew Martin, is published by Faber & Faber http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article4288147.ece

the second one is brilliant, but mushy in a different kind of way. brilliant development of Jacob though :D and some great new characters if Twilight makes a great film, then New Moon is going to be an amazing film. its nice reading about a vampire/human relationship where they don't have sex every 5 mins too :laugh3:

Finished New Moon and now onto Eclipse. i love this series and will be asking for the fourth one for Christmas :D

I enjoyed Twilight so much, I picked up New Moon & Eclipse yesterday. Am 100+ pages into New moon and still loving it :D

Wiki update: We've been adding all the reviews as they've been published, and I have finally had the time to compile them into a handy index

Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - 8.5/10 would have had 9 if it wasn't for the mush which wasn't in the book! Hancock - 8/10 Pretty cool, nice twist in the middle, not so sure about the end

Echo & the Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch tells Eamon Sweeney why he’s looking forward to Oxegen, why he told Coldplay their songs weren’t good enough and why he just had to be in the ‘best band in the world’ Friday July 04 2008 'If you think I Will Follow by U2 is an anthem, then I Will Lead is the song I would have written." Such grandiose statements are typical from the man nicknamed Mac the Mouth, renowned for an unshakeable belief that his band, Echo & the Bunnymen, are none other than the best band in the world. Not of all time, just the best band in the world. Their 1983 masterpiece, Ocean Rain, was actually marketed with the modest tagline, "This is the best album ever made". Years before the Gallagher brothers would trumpet themselves as the saviours of rock 'n' roll, Ian McCulloch was the undisputed master of overstatement. To be fair, Ocean Rain still stands up as a remarkable album and I fondly recall being endlessly enchanted by a battered cassette copy in my youth. Its signature tune and lead single, The Killing Moon, memorably soundtracks the opening credits of Donnie Darko, and its gorgeous lilting melody is also used to mesmerising effect in Gia and Grosse Point Blank. Despite all the bluster, there is no denying the fact that at their best, Echo & the Bunnymen are a band apart. Ian and his cohorts return to Oxegen 2008 after their appearance in 2005 and a Witnness slot in 2003. " I love being backstage at Oxegen, not because the dressing rooms are particularly great, but you get to meet everyone," he enthuses. "It's not full of poxy portacabins like other festivals, so it's a good place to mingle and it's dead relaxed. I'm not really a big eater on gig days, but I like the good old-fashioned food they serve up there with loads of roast potatoes." Moving swiftly on before Ian turns festival-goers green with envy, there is the forthcoming matter of The Fountain, the band's imminent 11th studio album. "I'm not going to give the game away yet, but this one is very unusual," he teases. "If we manage to pull this off, it will be the first time anyone has done this sort of thing. Right now, we're thinking about early January. We want to focus on the Ocean Rain shows this year. Rather than sideline the new stuff, I'd rather go into the New Year with proper new shows." The Bunnymen's most iconic album will be performed in its entirety with a full orchestra in the Royal Albert Hall, New York's Radio City and a hometown show in Liverpool. "I didn't want to do some fortnight of classic albums in the (Camden) Roundhouse," he says. "We wanted to bring it back to the Albert Hall because our manager spent a year convincing the powers that be in there that we should play there as all rock bands had been banned. That's something that is never remembered and it opened the floodgates for every other Tom, Dick and Harry to play there. We blazed a trail and we always wanted to do things differently. I know the records are there, but sometimes it p***es me off that we're not credited with things like that." In addition to writing a solo album and a series of compositions for his daughter, Ian is currently completing his memoirs, which are due to be published next year. "They're not really memoirs, it's like a dream," he adds mysteriously. "It's a total mish mash. It's the way I think and talk. I try to capture the feeling of Ziggy Stardust coming out when I was 13. During that year, everything just sparkled. There are a lot of poignant moments in it and a lot of laugh-your-head-off bits as well. It won't be about what we've done as a group, but my life up to then and why I had to be in the best band in the world." Ian is enjoying moonlighting as an author. "I find writing classic songs easy," he boasts. "Any time I write 10 songs, I know three of them will be classics and the other seven might be as well. Everyone says The Cutter is great, but it's not in the same class of The Killing Moon or Nothing Lasts Forever." McCulloch was also mysteriously credited as an "associate producer" on the second Coldplay album, A Rush of Blood to the Head. "That made me laugh!" he cackles. "Brian Eno just took over my role! I was amazed when I read that. I just came in and did a bit of Bowie dancing and a few impressions. Then I told them the songs weren't good enough, and just f***ed off or hung around in the bar. I'd basically just crack jokes and make them laugh. "It was great that they recorded in Liverpool. I immediately got a sense that they were a band that was just meant to be together. I had to be in the best band in the world because that's why I was born. It wasn't because I needed to write music." Mac the Mouth is on a roll. "People think being in the gig guide of the local paper means something," he continues. "For Coldplay, they'd already written Yellow when they started. From day one, they had a blueprint. Chris (Martin) would say, "Hey Mac, I think we've done our Ocean Rain." I'd say, "Give us a listen," and tell him it's nowhere close and that I never want him to darken my doorstep again. It was just funny hanging out. I was a Bowie impersonator and a gag-teller, not an associate producer." For the record, Ian currently digs Glasvegas, MGMT and Nouvelle Vague, whom he will be recording with in Paris after Oxegen. It's time for Ian to pack his bags on the eve of three shows in Brazil, but he doesn't seem to be in any particular hurry to sign off. "Can I end with a stereotypical cliché?" he asks. "Have you got any tips for the 7.45 in Redcar? I actually won on the National this year, but I forget the name of the horse." (I try to tell him that it was Comply Or Die and that I backed it too, but he doesn't seem to hear me.) "The names of the horse don't seem to be as nice or alluring anymore... Now, it's all -- "Thick as Pigs***" or "Hung Like a Donkey", rather than "Falling Haven". Anyways, buy us a pint at the festival, and I'll buy you two! Ta ra." n - Eamon Sweeney http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/day-and-night/features/echoes-of-the-past-1427529.html

I voted no. I love his chat show and frequently watch it, but sometimes I think he goes too far. (don't ask me for any examples because I can't think of any at the mo). I don't remember what he said to Gwyneth, my over-riding memory of that interview is that she still managed to look sophisticated whilst drinking a pint of Guinness.

Dark chocolate sales double in two years For years we have largely managed to resist its smooth, bitter-sweet charms. But now it seems the tastebuds of more and more Britons are being tantalised by dark chocolate. Sales have almost doubled in two years to reach £85million last year, a report revealed yesterday. Consumers are buying more of the dark variety because of its healthier image, according to the market research analysts Mintel. Senior analyst Mathilde Dudouit said: 'Although dark chocolate is still high in sugar, it is rich in antioxidants and is lower in fat than milk chocolate. 'Dark chocolate now has the reputation as being a healthier alternative to other chocolate and this has really struck a chord with Britain's chocoholics.' Mintel's report said dark chocolate is considered the healthier option because of its high cacao content. First cultivated by the ancient Mayans, cacao is considered to be one of the world's most beneficial 'superfoods' due to its high content of antioxidants. Sales of 'luxury' chocolate also soared in the same period, rising by 46 per cent from 2005 to 2007. Miss Dudouit said: 'Brits may not be eating chocolate as often as they used to, but they are certainly splashing out more on premium varieties. 'The trick today is to eat less, but to go all out when indulging so that it really is a luxurious treat.' The success of dark and luxury brands has reinvigorated the flagging chocolate market, which enjoyed a 10 per cent increase in value in the two years to 2007. Between 2003 and 2005, it grew by a mere 1 per cent. With a further 5 per cent growth expected in 2008 alone, the British chocolate market should be worth £2.23billion by the end of the year. These trends are predicted to continue long into the future, with sales of chocolate expected to grow by 17 per cent in the five years to 2013. Despite the success of dark chocolate, sales of milk chocolate remain way ahead. They are currently worth around £1.4billion. >According to Mintel, a niche area that could expand is combining chocolate with wine. It suggests upmarket bars could offer a choice of the finest chocolate to go with their best wine or champagne. Miss Dudouit said: 'In the same way that wine-lovers deliberate over different grape varieties, single - estate chocolate and chocolate made from different types of cocoa beans provide a real opportunity for the true chocolate connoisseur.' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/diets/article-1031694/Bitter-sweet-Dark-chocolate-sales-double-years.html

grrr can tell its a slow news day :P thought I was gonna beat you all to it :laugh3:

The headstone of Ian Curtis, the lead singer of late 1970s band Joy Division, has been stolen from a Cheshire cemetery. Police announced today that the theft occurred between Monday lunch time and Tuesday morning at Macclesfield Cemetery on Prestbury Road. The headstone carries the inscription "Ian Curtis 18 - 5 - 80" and the words "Love Will Tear Us Apart". It has little material value, but the stone has become a beacon for Joy Division fans who have visited the town on pilgrimages from all over the world. Police officers suspect it may have been taken by a fan of the singer. A Cheshire Police spokesman said: “It's an unusual theft, it's probably a good piece of memorabilia for someone. "There is no CCTV in the area and there are no apparent leads as to who is responsible for the theft.” Curtis was an iconic performer until his death in 1980. He hanged himself in his kitchen at the age of 23, just as his band were about to embark on a tour of America. Interest in his life was rekindled recently with the release of the 2007 biopic Control as well as a documentary called Joy Division earlier this year. Police urged anyone with information to contact them on 0845 458 0000. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4261001.ece

oh, and as she was there the following night, its no wonder she didn't enjoy it when they weren't even there :laugh3:

why has it taken her 2 weeks to write the review? surely, you would want to publish your review as close after the gig as possible. the cynic in me feels that this review was kept so it would stand out on its on and make a statement (something along the line of showing off to your mates that you're trendy too). I'd take it more seriously if she'd published it the day after when other reviewers were raving about the show.

didn't see it, but did see 2 of the models on This Morning. Was a very interesting interview with them.

anyone PM'ed him?