BarnabyLand

We are currently watching Midsomer Murders and taking a note of locations where they have filmed so we can do a tour of some of them later in the year.  We are calling this our excursion to BarnabyLand - after the main character in the series.  As well as an excellent site called midsomermurders.org we are checking out the interweb for mentions of locations and possible routes through Buckinghamshire and surrounding areas where a lot of the series is filmed.  We could do an organised day tour from London but reviews of those are mixed and seems to depend on what guide you have for the day.  The benefit of going that way is that they can show you the episodes various locations appeared in via the on-board television system.  That would be good but we want to spend a couple of days touring the locations, so we can spend as much time as we want in each and we want to make sure that some locations - like the miniature village - are definitely included.  The big question then is how to plot the best route between the sites, and whether we hire a car in London or train out to one of the locations and get a hire car there.  Lots to think about. 

Glow Up

Ding dong. A mate has introduced me to a not-so-new reality series called"Glow Up". I had seen a program called "Glow" on one of the streaming channels and I had thought that was it - but it's not.  "Glow up" is about aspiring MUA's who are competing for a contract to work in the industry. They are mostly young people - the oldest in Season One is 28 - and seem to be self-taught Make-Up Artists. There are some very interesting looks - always changing as they use their craft to create new and exciting looks for themselves.  Each week's competition is in three parts.  The MUAs have a challenge in a professional assignment under real world conditions - an editorial photo shoot for a magazine, a fashion show (catwalk), preparing personalities for walking the red carpet and being blitzed by papparazzi and doing the drag make-up for the cast of 'Kinky Boots".  The person responsible for the event is the guest judge joining the two usual judges - one MAC's Global Senior Artist and the other a make-up artist specialising in the "outlandish" - Dominic Skinner and Val Garland respectively.  The second challenge is a creative brief where the MUAs can show their vision, creativity and technique.  The third challenge is reserved for the two who performed least well in the creative brief and is the Face Off; the judges inspect the make up task - usually a single task like creating an ombre lip or creating believable freckles in minute detail - using magnifying glasses to check the MUAs works.

The feel of the program reminds me of "Masterchef" - where people are nice to each other and while it is a competition it's not one where they're determined to walk over each other to win.  At the end of the Face Off it's not uncommon for the winner to apologise to the person they have bested.  

Each of the MUAs work on either models or themselves during the challenges.  As well as seeing them work, we also hear them talk about their make-up journey - what it means to them and what make-up and its use means to them - and they also talk about what winning the competition would mean. 

I am on Season 2 after bingeing Season 1and and am loving it.  The latest episode has the MUAs working on the make-up for four characters from the Lion King musical. 

It's worth going to YouTube and searching for "Glow Up Netflix" or, better still, catch the episodes on Netflix.  

Headlines

In these days of information overload, how many of us see a headline served up to us on one of our devices and take that as the "story".  

Yesterday I saw this headline in bold print:  Gold Coast crash pilot took cocaine in days before collision.  It was referring to the crash of two helicopters on the Gold Coast early last year.  I wonder how many people clicked on the link to read the next, more explanatory and less sensational sentence:  However, an ATSB interim report into the incident concluded that the low concentrations of the drug suggested it would unlikely to have been an "impairment of his psychomotor skills".  That does put a slightly different spin on it.  

I think that in the effort to keep up with what is a constant barrage of information, we may sometimes be missing out on more and important details. 

Memory lane via media

It's not often I go through my old media and devices, but it may be something I will be doing a bit more of in future.  I started it as part of my 2024 'decluttering program' and also checking out photographs I have been taking on a phone (Pixel 7 Pro) - and I have been amazed at what I have been finding - including some music tracks which I had forgotten I had.  This in itself is a bit odd since I now remember that long, long ago they were my 'favourites'.  The challenge, of course, is these files were copied some time ago which means they were not copied with their details of artist and track name.  The best I am getting is a track number.  It's good fun going through them to see and remember what is there. And it's also good fun revisiting some of my old blogs and thinking it might be time to re-start them.