Ghosts & Shadows – She Makes War Music, ramblings and recommendations

2012 4/52 – Five Things I Liked This Week – Feat Grace Petrie, Brighton and Musical Broccoli

Click to see the rest of this week's photos

1) Grace Petrie

A wonderfully inspiring songwriter and performer I met at last weekend's Midwinter Picnic 4. She makes music that really gets you in the gut, and her rousing lyrics are still echoing around my head a week on. I should have heard of her before, actually, because she's getting some of the recognition she deserves at the moment, but at least I know of her now! Debut album "Mark My Words" is available on Bandcamp now and "They Shall Not Pass" is one of my favourites so far:

2) Brighton, generally.

It's long been one of my favourite escapes from London but after two trips down already this year my enthusiasm is all fired up again and I'm thinking of ways to be there more. I love the sea air, the pretty buildings, the vibrant community and fantastically lovely and creative people. Perhaps it's time to start checking out rent prices...

See more of my Brighton pics here.

3) Hal Higdon's Half Marathon Training Plan

As I head towards the end of week 3 of my 12 week half marathon training plan I am surprised and pleased to announce it's all going really really well! I've been running for about 5 years on and off, and making the effort to properly stick to this plan has paid dividends. Very quickly I started to feel big improvements in my general mood and ability to cope with things, I've surprised myself by enjoying runs in all different kinds of weather (I used to always cry off running if it was frosty or wet out) and my legs are feeling really powerful all of a sudden. Booking my apartment and flights for the Berlin Half Marathon at the start of April definitely helped me to focus on my training, too.

Hal Higdon has a whole range of different training plans available for free on his website, and here's the Half Marathon Novice 1 Plan. You can do it!

4) Stuart Flynn - "Ears Have Walls" live at Midwinter Picnic 4

Charming, erudite, hilarious and amazingly moving, Stuart's beautiful set had me alternately in fits of giggles and floods of tears. Here he is on Facebook and here's a snippet of "Ears Have Walls":

5) A sweet potato slide whistle and broccoli slide whistle "Musunde hiraite" with Ionica Bizau

Because music really is everywhere.

What did you like this week?