music maestro...

had a nice pic used the other day of up and coming artist little boots who visited the sun's new studios at news international in wapping. bizzare at the sun have been dragging in the new talent recently to perform exclusive sessions for them. its a great opportunity to listen to some live tunes and take nice pictures...its hard to know exactly when the sun publish the content but there is an archive on the suns website of all the  videos. along with little boots i have been around to capture electro pop newcomer vv brown, daniel merriwether of mark ronson fame and kelly rowland of destiny's child fame..

little boots..

vv brown & band..

daniel merriwether..

kelly rowland..

tuck em into your socks mate...

i took this picture ages ago whilst waiting for some non picture to happen in town. now the clothes pegs i can live with - well it sure beats buying those ultra cool cycling clips from the yesteryears. although i say  whats wrong with tucking your jeans into your socks. what im really more concerned with is his pedaling technique - or lack there of...

back from france and on to cobham...

i got sent to one of my favourite places in surrey today - cobham. i do usually take my bike but due to the nature of the job and the fact that i fell off my bike and have injured my ribs a bit - i dont have one with me. instead i have - like many other wandering local tourists - come to visit the home where a body has been sat in a bin for weeks - nice!

it does however give me a bit of time with which to update this blog and dig out a few pictures from the end of the help the heroes bike ride. the ride ended up in paris and its finale was riding down the champs elysee at 5pm on a friday - whoever thought of that idea should get a bloody medal! needless to say it was difficult. 

photographs; paris form my hotel room, dream car, the picture of the day in paris.

rain, strong coffee and farmers...

day four on the tour with the help for heroes lot...

my surviving memory from today will be my hotel room which is a cross between a prison cell and a student halls room. i think it's the linoleum floors that really set it off. obviously these are added to by the pod bathroom where everything gets wet - including your room and must finish off with the bed made of foam. no - not that expensive memory foam type stuff - just that stuff you see offered 'cut to size' on the side of the road all over the uk.... i am going to exclude the vile colouring of the room -  orange, red and orange - yes that includes the orange linoleum floor, as my room yesterday had plastic curtains so i feel you have to give these budget hotels some leeway....

it does make you laugh when you see these places though and they have the most unrealistic names - mine is the premiere class hotel. when did it get to the point where all the good stuff was refered to with normal names and the utter crap by names declaring the quality (or lack there of!)...

in terms of bike riding today - i have been trying my hardest to get a shot of the cyclists looking like a team - a 'tour de france' fake with them idling their way through idilic french countryside. but it's not that easy!  the riders only stay together in a pack for about 200 yards before and some mornings they set off from different locations - so you can literally be waiting by the side of the road for a nice shot for an hour and it still doesn't happen. i think ten is the most i have in one picture. the worst bit about that being that after waiting all this time the riders spot you and will then be sporting a big smile, waving erratically or just staring at you....none of which really works. oh well.....

......stop press....just got back from my dinner (we ate out as our hotel only has a vending machine) to find french farmers dumping manure and just general piles of shit infront of the gates at the eleclerc at the end of our road - about 200yards from the hotel - nice. there was a copper there but its france - so they were allowed to dump it. obviously not very happy about something....well - theres going to be a few more unhappy peeps in the morning....

help for heroes...(day two or three)...

i'd say this was day three but its day two in france...i've been working on it for three days...today the help for heroes crew and myself got to experience some truly exceptional weather changes and i for one was a little miffed after standing on top of a landrover in a gale freezing myself to be stripping off only an hour later in the blistering midday sun....france eh..

visited pegasus bridge in benouville where troops from the d-day launches headed into enemy fire 65 years ago to defeat the germans...all interesting stuff - quite the history lesson...

help for heroes...

i'm out in france covering the help for heroes charity bike ride for the sun newspaper. it's a great cause and some of the blokes here are riding bikes on this trip after recovering from horrific injuries.

this is just a selection of stuff from the first day in france - day two of the trip which heads from portsmouth over the mighty english channel to france and onto paris. it's a pretty hectic schedule and there aren't to many opportunities to get tour de france style shots in the beautiful french countryside but hey ho.

timmay..

this one goes out to timmay. i'm super jealous that he is off to whistler for the summer to ride downhill but i'm also stoked that i've inherited (with a donation to the whistler fund) his pimp fixie. enough said...