Ben Aston | benaston.com

Sometimes the transition from Summer to Autumn can be a bit difficult, so usually the best thing to do is to go to Spain and take a trip to Seville. It’s warm there, there’s ice cream and all the creature comforts, like Boris bikes.

Pica.

I joined London’s first Cow Club because I like mmmeat.

The concept is pretty simple; get a crowd of mmmeat eaters together, buy a cow, get someone to chop it up, and get it delivered to your door for a bargain £10/kg.

OK, so on the face of it, it might not be a bargain, but this was no ordinary cow.

The Cow Club mmmeat was locally sourced; a Sussex Bullock, native to the South East. These beauties are exclusively grass fed which means they taste better and are healthier too – with lower overall fat content & higher Omega 3 fat ratio. Not only that, but when you compare it to the competition, it stacks up pretty well financially too. After 20 months of chomping on delicious grass, the happy cow trotted just three miles up the road to a small family run abbattoir, hung around for 28 days, and was then transformed into a selection of  delicious mmmeat pieces.

Game.

What an amazing story. Who’d have thought the buffalo would make such a good equid? It’s so versatile.

Buff.

Trying out the new facebook developer release September 2011, originally uploaded by benaston.

Probably the biggest news from Facebook’s f8 conference is a totally redesigned Facebook profile page based on telling ‘the story of your life’ over time, through something they’re calling Timelines; strangely reminiscent of Nokia’s Lifeblog app or HTC’s Footsteps app. There’s a fundamental shift; Facebook isn’t just about statuses any more, it’s about stories. According to Zuckerber, it’s ‘The story of your life.’

Responding to a lot of the criticism that Facebook is boring and un-engaging, they’ve tried to re-create some emotional engagement with Facebook by creating tools to enable people share their important ‘Life Events’ such as getting engaged, buying a home, getting a pet, or even breaking a bone. Interestingly, they’ve also given people more of a chance to express their personality with a bit of ‘MySpace-ing’ by allowing people customisation of the look of their profile page with a huge header banner.

Timelines haven’t been rolled out to hoi polloi, but if you’re keen to try them out, you can get a sneaky preview by following the instructions described here.

Bookylicious.

Going dancing with grupo corpo, originally uploaded by benaston.

In a bid to be cultured and that sort of thing, for the second time this month I trotted along to Sadler’s Wells, this time to watch Grupo Corpo; a Brazillian comapny who have been “reinventing classic ballet since the Seventies.” Not sure what that means but it certainly sounds like an awful lot of re-inventing.

I chose this show mainly because they looked like they did a lot of prancing about, combining ballet with a sprinkling of Riverdance; styles which I’m proud to say I’m quite good at too.

I’ve got no idea how to assess whether or not it was a good performance or not. I think it probably was. The sychonicity, flair and athleticism of the dancers was outstanding and I even had to concede that maybe they were better than me.

On the downside, there was a bit of confusion half way through when the show ended and the dancers started bowing, seemingly a bit prematurely. But after getting over the awkwardness of not really knowing whether or not it was time to leave, we were glad to find out that it was to be a tale of two halves; not just Ímã but Onqotô too.

It was only after the show that I realised just how much it was beyond me. Apparently, “Ímã is inspired by the scientific law of magnetism as particles either repel or attract one another”. Erm, right. Didn’t get that. Nice idea though.

And Onqotô tackles the origins of the universe through, a football match in Rio. Hmm, didn’t quite pick up that bit of the story either. Retrospectively of course, it kind of makes sense. It’s art. And it’s good to watch. Apart from the naked man bit.

Bonafide. 9/10.