Just when we we were getting very bored with Stratford-upon-Avon (at 11am on our second day) we came across this man whose name we may never find out. He built a miniature version of Stratford junction as it would have looked a long time ago and has opened his house to show it. I was a little startled when he suddenly appeared amidst the trains and started telling us all about his work there and upstairs, where he was working on a even smaller scale version. While Hg diverted his attention, I snapped a few shots of him and his pride and joy.

And that’s just one part of our Grand Tour of Britain, conveniently cut into three manageable stretches (Stratford Feb 24/25, Nottingham March 3, Newcastle-Manchester-Leeds March 13-17). I am flying to and fro from various airports where I am met by Hg, the man behind the wheel. Going back to the job in between these outings is nothing less than torture.

While the Nothing Like the Sun shows are the reason we embark on our journey, they don’t seem the centre of it. I am enjoying England, the landscape, the architecture, the drink, the food and the people in their pubs, restaurants and homes. Old fashioned comforts, tasty like the Dandelion & Burdock drink I tried in Beeston’s Victoria pub.

Whether it’s just the two of us going for a pint of Old Trip, or meeting up with friends, having a big cooked breakfast with Hg‘s parents, or being treated by our mad musical hero, it feels like family is the focus.

I feel out of place most of the time. In my house. At work. In my country. With these people. Within myself. But being on the road like this, is like coming home.

This is what I’ve been immersed in for the last two months (regular readers will perhaps have picked up on the Germanic flavour of certain items and links here), basically doing research and lending a hand wherever I can. Nothing major, mind. It isn’t a ‘job’, it’s sort of a string of small favours. What I get in return is the joy of being part of the process, which is just endlessly fascinating.

My trip to Dublin has been booked for a while now, eventhough the contracts hadn’t even been signed. I had faith.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a summer break in Ireland, as far as I remember. I’m going over for a week, arriving a few days before the shows to do what I can during the last two production days. I can’t wait to see it and find out which of my tiny contributions survive and come alive on stage.

I know it’s going to be brilliant.

Ich bin 6 m gross und alles ist wichtig
Ich bin 9 m gross und alles ist mehr als wichtig
Ich bin 12 m gross und alles ist unvorstellbar

Sorry for the mess around here, but I’m never going to finish it if I don’t just go live and fix it as we go along. So, comments are unstyled, individual page are incomplete and archives may or may not be working, etc, etc.

But: I’m so happy to be back on Movable Type after my WordPress and Pivot adventures. You have to work with the tools that suit you best and I’ve found out the hard way that MT is that tool for me. Unfortunately, most developers seem to have switched to WordPress and I don’t think MT is marketed at personal publishers anymore which makes it harder for me to find solutions or plugins. But even without that online support I know my way around MT best.

The reason I switched from MT was that it didn’t seem to handle my extremely large archive very well and rebuilding had become a real chore. This newer version of MT however does a better job, I think the server Pair has me on now is a little faster too. I’ve also lightened the load by dividing 7 years (!) of archives over four different weblogs.

So anyway, birthday, I’m not up to much, I think I need a hairdo…

Do me and my kin a favour and vote for ‘De foto’ on the ‘Wonderen bestaan’ website. You’ll find the poll on the right hand side and ‘De foto’ is the last option in the poll (which doesn’t give it much of a chance of winning!).

It’s a great story and my uncle, who is an author and lyricist, does a great job of telling it (well, duh, he does readings and theater shows for a living). In short: About 20 years ago he was on holiday with his girlfriend L. and another couple. It was a miserable day and he hadn’t even wanted to go to England anyway. When they stopped for lunch, they came across an antique shop.

My uncle had a thing about ‘a book without a title’. He had been talking about this obsession during the trip, of wanting to find this ‘book without a title’. His friends had said books without titles didn’t exist.

Looking through the books on the shelves in the antique shop, he didn’t find anything he wanted. But there was one more book, sitting on a table. Picking it up he saw the book’s cover didn’t have any marking or lettering. It was a book without a title! And when he opened it, he found a picture of himself taken when he was a young man.

Cue theme of the Twilight Zone. Vote now. Vote often.

Last night, the veteran DJ of the programme using the pictures vented his frustration with the people ON them during his show. Very loosely translated it came down to this: ‘I saw them play live back in the 80s and they were uninspired and pretentious’ ⁽¹⁾, ‘They were drunk when I interviewed them’ ⁽²⁾, ‘Their DJ set sucked, Fleetwood Mac was about the most exciting thing they played.’ ⁽³⁾, ‘You only need to buy one of their albums to know what they’re like.’ ⁽⁴⁾.

This DJ had not prepared his questions very well (‘Did you ever sell your soul to the devil?’), he mispronounced the band’s name and got the name of their record company wrong as well. He fucked up. Consequently the interview was a bit of a trainwreck. He was eaten alive by two charismatic artists having a laugh. On stage, in front of 250 of their fans in Ancienne Belgique. Ouch. Even heavily edited, the interview sounded painful on radio. You know you have a problem when the fans’ questions get a better response from the artists.

I felt sorry for him at the time, though I could not understand why he hadn’t prepared properly. Now I wonder why he took the job in the first place. If you don’t like an artist, why put yourself in that position?

I have asked Studio Brussels to remove my pictures from their site a.s.a.p. as I do not want my work to be associated with this level of frankly unprofessional behaviour.

Footnotes:
1. More pretentious than The Fall, who they were supporting-uh?
2. No, they weren’t. We did, however, get hammered afterwards.
3. I heard Fischerspooner, Joy Division, Brel, T Rex, Mingus…
4. Mr DJ, you fight like a girl.

I still have to write about my weekend in Brussels with those two mad Irish bastards and one London gent. Rest assured I’m working on it, scribbling down my impressions in a notebook on my way to and from work. Cause I’m an ‘amateur’.

…mother goose-ing two seemingly unrelated interviews done for two of my sites. Although the interviews are unrelated, the people interviewed have known each other since the late 70s and it is likely that subject matter will overlap. The people interviewing do not know each other, and could both be seen as ‘amateur’ journalists. Both are involved with sites of mine, but have not had an active role for a long time. One interviewer has avoided questions about the other’s subject. The other interviewer hasn’t. One of the people interviewed is a musician. And the other… turns out to be a musican too. One of the people interviewed is a journalist himself. The other one… isn’t.

I feel like a spy master running agents in the field.

A spy master who has a ‘cover’ job on the side that sadly takes up most of her time. Running spies is so much more fun.