The End of Summer

It’s happening again. I can feel my Melbourne summer ending, as storms blow over the city this close afternoon. The heat has been intense since Christmas, cooling off for a week or so only to return and scorch the earth into submission. Plants eventually give up their green and become the same colour as the dry ground, in a kind of back-to-front hibernation which ends when autumn rains come. Or a midsummer storm passes through, like it’s threatening to do now

Emails from Europeans talking about the snowstorms, Britain and Ireland closed for business as people get out tin trays and slide down previously unremarked-upon slopes. Now some from America talking of blocked driveways and hailstones, while TV politicians arguing with each other over the cheapest way to brush climate change under the carpet, while Copenhagen has become a dirty word instead of a beautiful city or a template for future good intentions.

Going to the sea over new year to escape the suffocating heat, the pounding of rays onto unforgiving earth. On beautiful beaches with sand sandwiches and tap water decanted into plastic bottles. Beach cricket and an arcane form of racquet ball. Showering when home, glowing from the rays and the salt water, thinking to myself that this really is Australia. The animals and the sun are where its secrets lie.

In the studio writing more songs, putting them to one side as I get ready to leave again. I’ve been writing songs for people this time – didn’t start off with that as a plan, it’s just turned out that way. I always go into the studio looking forward to listening to the last series of songs, and end up writing new ones. Lucky. One day soon I’m going to go through them. For now, the ‘Songwriter’ album is still new for me. Been playing a few of the songs I haven’t played live yet. Sweat running down my left arm, guitar slipping and a sliding. I’m hoping it’s like drumming with heavy drumsticks, or the training bit in ‘Rocky’. OK, perhaps the ‘shopping for hats’ sequence in a Brit comedy is more like it.

I’ve started putting my things together to go on the road again. The Bag is waiting expectantly by the door, like a gigantic dog on a constant state of alert. My little 12 string ‘La Perina’ is at a beauty spa and I have promised to pick her up on Friday afternoon – rested, pampered and renewed. The guitar pedals have spent the past week at boot camp and should be tamed and ready for a different kind of voltage when I collect them tomorrow.

Ireland, Canada, America. Familiar places and some cities I have never visited before. I’ll see you out there, I hope. The eastern part of Canada, Edinburgh and Italy will follow in July and August, then Europe in the autumn, where I’ll be bringing the book, and back to Australia after that.

The book! More of that another time, until now I’ll wish you well and tell you that I can see the rain-bringing clouds coming up the gully.

It’s quiet, just a chainsaw far-off and the chattering magpies. As I say, I’ve been keeping quiet. Far from the steel doors of International Departures which are before me now. See you soon and I hope the year of the tiger roars for you.

Andy x

French Film Land

There is vaguely Eastern music. An elderly Chinese man stares out of his apartment window at a young French woman in a negligée through the window of the apartment opposite. We cut to the next day, where an old man in a smelly, sweaty T shirt hangs his enormous beer belly over the balcony. He is listening to the young French woman moaning in ecstasy as she makes love to her boyfriend in the apartment below. After which she walks to her window and stares out, thoughtfully.

The beer-bellied man stubs out his cigarette when his wife calls him in, and the girl returns to her bedroom for another session of love-making. The elderly Chinese man finishes his vigil at his apartment window. It’s just another day in French Film Land. The subtitles flick past too quickly, as I try to pick up the French words for ‘fuck’ and ‘coitus’.

“Deep down, I wish I didn’t exist.” That’s what she’s saying to the elderly Chinese guy, in her apartment, after the ad break. And after pretending to be blind for a while, she fingers a packet of suicide pills. It turns out the Chinese gent was a chef and he leaves her lying on her bed in her negligée, pausing only to read out a letter which has been slipped under the door complaining about the volume of her nocturnal love-making activities.

It’s another evening. The old guy and her dance. He says ”I dance like a breadstick.’ She drinks chick-friendly herbal tea. She loves it. He watches her sleeping, from a blue chair. Just as I’m thinking he’s becoming more like Leonard Cohen, he rearranges her lingerie as she sleeps, and runs off as soon as she wakes up, startled.

There are cafés full of lovers, wearing polo necks and smoking. Giving each other meaningful looks through the haze. We focus in on one couple. He stubs out his cigarette and gets up to leave. She glances up at him, turns away and breaks down in tears. We fade into another ad break. This has obviously been the movie’s light relief, the ‘shopping for hats’ scene.

“You never bring me flowers.” She’s breaking up with her lover, telling him it’s over, at the same time as the Chinese man is washing and ironing her nightie in the apartment opposite. After her lover leaves, she walks out of the bathroom naked, to receive the freshly laundered silk. We still haven’t seen her fully clothed and the film’s nearly over. The vaguely eastern music starts again as the elderly man dresses her.

It’s hot tonight and I can’t take any more of this particular movie. There are chopsticks and jazz. Meaningful looks and a fade to black. A quick fade up for a light embrace between the old guy and the young woman.

Outside on the deck, the girls are talking about Apple computers. I have no idea why.

As the young French woman attempts suicide, I change channel.

Man, I love this French Film Land.

From Sommeri 6am to Melbourne with Christmas coming

Sommeri 6 am

The European tour ended at 6 am in Sommeri, somewhere east of just about everywhere. Walking home with Marc, trundling The Bag by my side, we passed a gravestone which, as Marc’s girlfriend pointed out, probably marked the final resting place of the last person to try to make this walk from venue to B&B on a freezing cold December morning.

I’d just played the final concert of 38 concerts. 38 concerts in 60 days. Then I flew back to Australia with 60 kilos of luggage – one for every day I’d been away. Like picking up a jar of marmalade every place I visited.

Bloody nice marmalade.

Just now I opened my guitar case and caught what I fancied was a blast of London studio air. Hadn’t opened it since producing a song for a friend there, sandwiched between Concert #38 and flying back.

It was 39 degrees centigrade yesterday in Melbourne. The tarmac on the road was sticky, and getting off the train I looked around to see where the shot came from, before realizing that I had stepped on a molten bubble in the pavement and it exploded beneath my feet.

Today a cold wind is blowing through the open windows, it’s in the low twenties and sheet rain is falling. It’s more like being in a car wash than a rain shower. I am thinking about that 6 am morning, walking home from the last show of the tour, and listening to a Robert Forster interview on ABC radio.

I heard the first part of it yesterday afternoon, whilst on my way to the car pound.

Around these parts it’s $300 if you get your car towed.

That’s a bill of $300 for looking up old Rolling Stones videos on youtube and trying to find the John Lennon interview with Bob Harris from 1974 I saw at a friend’s house in Italy.
x
There’s no extra charge for looking at pictures of vintage J-45 guitars – that comes when you try to buy one.

The tour that started in a bar in Copenhagen at the start of October is over. From Denmark’s cobbled streets, rattling the bones of my bags and guitars, I took the bus to Berlin. Flew to London and engaged in practices of the UK kind for thirty days and thirty nights. Travelling with Rad, who’s got the road sewn into the lining of his Iowa jeans.

We headed up to Scotland, practised bad Scottish accents and had a wonderful time with friends and shows, flew to Belfast and picked up The Insignia (or was it The Enigma?) – a sports car to rattle cages and set this driver’s heart a-flutter with its digital radio cranked up loud. Smelt like success. Drove that thing to Dublin and back three times and didn’t feel a thing.

The book was launched in Belfast on a wonderful Friday evening in the Black Box. Rad playing jazz piano, poetry everywhere, speeches and sister Ali joining me in the reading. We’ll be doing more of this in February – watch this space.

Before this, the album was launched in London at the Half Moon, another atmspheric evening (and only the second time Rad and I have played ‘Letter From T’).

In Italy a few days later the onstage conversation turned into band – with bass, drums and female vocals, all talking Italian. I settled back into the world of driving fast and eating lunch. Three weekends later I took a train from Milano Centrale north to Switzerland, which led me via late nights and laughs to that lonesome road, hauling gear at 6 am.

The last concert of the tour was recorded – that is one I’ll be listening to. You have sent videos too – will be in touch.

I’ll try to put them online, and any photos I can find, too. The ones of the J-45 you’ll have to look up yourselves.

Until we meet again,

Happy Christmas and let’s have an amazing 2010.

See you next time …

Andy

Triangle Sandwich

the transcript of an actual conversation I had with marc as soon as I met him at the station yesterday. warning – this may only mean something to those who read the ‘swiss toast’ blog last year.

A: ‘hi marc’

M: ‘hi andy’

A: ‘I need to get something to eat’

M: ‘no problem, I have a triangle sandwich in the car’

A: ‘a triangle sandwich?’ (surprised)

M: ‘yes, you know with three sides?’ (confused why I don’t know what a triangle is)

A: ‘yes, but …’ (thinking of all kinds of nice swiss bread and not UK-style motorway service station sandwich)

M: ‘you know, it’s made with toast’ (totally seriously, without irony)

A: ‘toast?’ (incredulous, deja vu feeling)

M: ‘yes, toast’

A: ‘and it’s absolutely cold, white bread, cut in a triangle, in a plastic container.’

M: ‘yes, I can get it from the car now’

A: ‘a square, cut in two diagonally,’

M: ‘I told you – it’s a triangle sandwich. like you’re used to, made out of toast!’

A: ‘hold on, I’ll just get a coffee’

Return to the Pink Hotel — the Italian X Factor

We’re watching the Italian X Factor in the Pink Hotel. A trio of girls has just performed a weird version of ‘Sail Away’ by Enya. It’s word perfect, although there are only two words.

Yesterday evening I had a night off — a concert was cancelled, and I’ve finally had time to face up to all the things I have been putting off for the past seven weeks or so — including telling you how it’s all been going.

The Italian X Factor host has a smooth white suit and a bad moustache – thin like RUC man at roadblocks used to have. He’s introducing a group where the bass player is dressing as a ‘comedy’ Native American. It’s really bad, and just as I say so, it turns out the singer is ‘molto famoso’ and not just a contestant.

In fact, in turns out that the contestants on the Italian X Factor are better than the special guests. The first special guest appeared out of a beautiful mist, a thousand candles lighting up her exquisite profile. Then sang a very dodgy version of ‘Here Comes The Rain Again’.

The most well-known singer in Italy, Vasco Rossi, has just put out a version of ‘Creep’ by Radiohead which is dividing the populace down lines of taste. You either love him, as 99% of the populace do, or you can’t believe why this dreadful cover, featuring a ‘sex-tourist’ vocal performance, is being played on the radio at all.

VR, one of the Big Four Italians, has ‘translated’ the words, and turned the song into the croaky lament of a dirty old man declaring his love for an unattainable woman. I haven’t seen the video yet, but since it’s VR, it’s a dead cert that she’s gorgeous, forty years his junior, and and becomes a lot more attainable around the time of the penultimate chorus.

When I heard last night’s concert was cancelled I knew immediately what to do — call the Pink Hotel. Antonio was at the end of the line in seconds, I could picture him staring at the computer screen, just as I’d left him a couple of weeks ago. Just as I’d left him this time last year. Hypnotised by the Microsoft Word calendar, with its blocks of colour, moving the mouse up and down the screen with no apparent effect.

Last night I drove a hundred kilometers in the rain to find a whole different scene in the lobby to the one I am used to. I’ve never been in the Pink Hotel in the evening — I am always playing a show and get in too early. I have never seen another guest here — I get in after everyone’s in bed, and get up so late that they’ve all left.

Then, just as I suspected that no one else ever stays at the Pink Hotel, I am thrown into the midst of an early evening party. Football is always on the TV in Italy, but when Inter or AC Milan are playing, the stakes are racked up and people gather in bars and dining rooms murmuring and gesturing at the screen. Before last night, I’d never seen as many people in the whole town, never mind the Pink Hotel itself.

This morning, the next X Factor contestant is a boy band refugee. He’s whistling a merry tune, wearing a red designer hoodie. Giuseppe tells me the lyrics mean, “Today eets raining, but outside for me, eets the sun,” and that seems about right. In this country of Dante and Boccaccio, where Giuseppe keeps up a running commentary on just about everything in super-fast Italian, I’m happy that this is all I have to cope with. To my ear, it sounds like the last line of the song is, “It really is fantastic to be stuck outside this lift,” although I could be wrong.

Giuseppe stopped talking for a few minutes to play my guitar this morning. He’s great at playing the intro of seventies classics — this morning, a Boston song and (without irony) the start of ‘Stairway to Heaven’. He only has time to play the intro, since he has to get back to talking after thirty seconds of silence — right now he’s practising saying ‘Thees ees sheet!’, as the panel gives their verdict on Red Designer Hoodie.

I watched the X Factor in England, one late night in the poshest hotel of the tour. We’d just played a wonderful show in the Liverpool Philharmonic, and were staying fifty yards away from the stage, in palatial circumstances. Lying on an ultra-comfotable enormous bed, the walk-in shower/bathroom peeking out of an open door down the corridor, I ran my finger across the remote control and a cinema-sized flat screen TV sprang into life. It flicked automatically to ITV, the goddesses on reception having programmed it to find a show closest to my interests, which they had listed as ‘music’ and ‘fashion’ (!)

Watching the X Factor that night, I reached some kind of moment of what I thought at the time was pure insight. Either that or the smooth glass of whiskey the guy at the bar had poured me. For a couple of pounds the night porter not only filled my glass, but let me into the news that he had served in the (notorious) paratroop regiment in Belfast during the Troubles.

Not only that, but he told me in detail about the affair he had with the (married) daughter of the boss of the most well-known bus company in the city. That he took so much cocaine with her that he had to ‘get rid of her’. I am not making this up. I asked him if she had a special number she could call and a bus would appear to take them home. ‘If only, lar,’ he sighed, ‘the only buses came for her were full of f*ing droogs.’

I made it out of the paratrooper’s range to my room, and that’s when I flicked on the TV. The moment of insight I attained that night? I though maybe a talent show like this is where everyone’s dream of being Elvis reaches its apotheosis. Sure, music isn’t a competition, but isn’t this a place where everyone can be the truck driver walking into Sun Studios? Except that ten million people are watching your audition.

The only problem is that if we’ve returned to the fifties, it’s going to take another ten years until the singers start writing their own songs. Maybe it was just being in Liverpool that night, but what seemed clear in that early morning hotel room doesn’t seem such a good idea right now, watching a guy with a NYPD police helmet judgng the ‘Sail Away’ girl trio’s performance.

The house band strikes up the Zep’s monster ‘Kashmir’ riff, and the trio disappear in a flash of light. Giuliano is the next contestant. He’s got the hoarse voice and designer stubble of a guaranteed Italian superstar. But, on the other hand, maybe Marco will be even better. I’m hooked. Giuseppe tells me Marco’s intonation is perfect — and that he is gay. ‘Securo,’ he tells me, with a serious face. But then last night he said the same thing about George Clooney.

George Clooney? Maybe the girl by the coffee machine was right all along, being more interested in getting a cup of bad coffee off of aul’ Georgie, than having him sign her arm.

Marco ‘steps up’ (people are constantly ‘stepping up’ on these talent shows, usually to a ‘bar’ which has been ‘raised’), and I must get round to telling you about how the tour has been going so far. Just a moment, while I sink this heavenly cappucino and bite into this sugar-coated brioche…

Top 40 no Beatles

Boys like lists. Top 5 hot female bass players. Girlfriends from Wales (a very short list). Leeds Utd first team, 1973-74 (a very embarrassing list), Suzi Quatro’s Top 10 singles (another short one). That kind of thing

So when I was asked for a list of my Top 10 songs “of all time”, and to come in to a Radio Ulster studio to talk about them, I knew the only problem would be cutting “all time” down to 40. A Top 10 seemed impossible.

Might as well say ‘Top 10 Shakespeare lines’, ‘Top 3 Martin Amis novels’ (OK, that one not so difficult), Top Sister. Top 3 movies where Julia Roberts looks good, Top 10 Dinners Made By Mother, Top Breakfast Cereal available in more than 3 continents.

The other problem was a practical one – the train to Great Victoria Street station left in twenty minutes. All I had was a pencil and the back page of the Irish Times. Well – people have survived in the wilderness on less.

My first decision – I would have to take the Beatles out of the equation.
Not because of the fuss going on about the remastered albums, not because of that video game where if I could only remove the numbers and whizzing plastic guitars I could see what’s going on.

No, it’s just because there isn’t room for much else in a Top 40 with the Beatles included. Since hearing ‘Revolver’ playing on a Black Box record player at an early birthday party, they’ve always been in a list of their own, for me.

At the height of punk, walls covered in pages torn from the NME, I remember asking a girlfriend if it was still OK to have the White Album photographs stuck above my bedroom window, “Yes. They’re like church,” she gasped, shocked, inserting another safety pin into an artfully-ripped T shirt.

So here it is – Top 40 No Beatles, as scribbled down on the back page of the Irish Times while waiting for the train from Holywood to Belfast. It’s a true list – these songs are the soundtrack of my life so far. Old wave, new wave – any wave is OK.

They are In sort-of chronological order – or at least, this is how they happened to me:

1. Froggy Went A-Courtin’ – Burl Ives
2. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – Film soundtrack
3. Metal Guru – T. Rex
4. Life on Mars – David Bowie.
5. Working Class Hero – John Lennon
6. My Sweet Lord – George Harrison
7. Heartbreaker – Led Zeppelin
8. I Know What I Like – Genesis
9. Band on the Run – Macca
10. Walk on the Wild Side – Lou Reed
11. Sheena is a Punk Rocker – Ramones
12. Marquee Moon – Television
13. Teenage Kicks – The Undertones
14. Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick – Ian Dury
15. Heroes – David Bowie
16. Another Girl Another Planet – The Only Ones
17. Subterranean Homesick Blues – Bob Dylan
18. Tangled up in Blue – Bob Dylan
19. Rainy Day Women – Bob Dylan
20. Beasley Street – John Cooper Clarke
21. A Forest – The Cure
22. Almost With You – The Church
23. You Can’t Always Get What You Want – Rolling Stones
24. The Big Music – The Waterboys
25. When Love Breaks Down – Prefab Sprout
26. Don’t Give Up P- eter Gabriel & Kate Bush
27. Waiting For The Man – Velvet Underground
28. Bang on the Ear – The Waterboys.
29. Losing My Religion – REM
30. Nothing Compares To You – Sinead O’Connor
32. One – U2.
33. Way Down Now – World Party
34. Persuasion – Tim Finn
35. Human Behaviour – Björk.
36. Wonderwall – Oasis
37. Crazy World – Aslan
38. This Year’s Love – David Gray
39. Chasing Cars – Snow Patrol
40. Madame George – Van Morrison

As we passed George Best international airport I had got the 40 in the right hand margin. On the left, 10 which just missed out:

GPT – Martha Wainwright
Out of Reach – Gabrielle
Big Time – Rudi
Rio – Duran Duran
Enola Gay – OMD
Here Comes The Rain Again – Eurythmics
You Never Can Tell – Chuck Berry
White Riot – Clash
China Girl – Bowie
Bus To Baton Rouge – Lucinda Williams

The train clunked into into Central Station, which meant I had about five minutes until Botanic and then Great Victoria Street the BBC. I still had the front cover of the G2 section of the Guradian to get the Top 10 sorted. The train heaved its way through, under and around the Markets:

Top 10 no Beatles:

1. Heroes
2. Tangled Up In Blue
3. Waiting For The Man
4. Losing My Religion
5. Wonderwall
6. Hey Jude*
7. A Day In The Life**
8. Madame George
9. Subterraean Homesick Blues
10. Life On Mars

Times of my life in other peoples songs, you could say. It’s not even just the songs, it’s where you are, where you remember them playing.

Just made it, passing the Crown I thought for a moment I’d left the ’papers on the train. No worries, these songs are in my head anyway

See you on tour, album’s out tomorrow.

Andy

* OK, there had to be one

** OK OK – two. Just two.

'songwriter' album cover

 

 

That Menu in Full …

WOMAD asked for Andy’s Rock’n’Roll Breakfast menu, in all its glory.

The jury is in.

Sorry, make that,

The jury is out.

OK, I’ve got it.

The jury is in, but has gone out to lunch to get something decent to eat.

You see, the jury is a motley collection of celeb chefs who have just run their collective and experienced eyes over the Rock’n’Roll Breakfast Menu.

They have pronounced it one of the culinary wonders of the modern age.

They have warned against the recipe for such a tasty repast being made publicly available for the first time.

Andy himself has described his menu as answering an age-old call for the travelling musician. The challenge of making the best breakfast possible from the bizarre selection of food which can be found in the kitchen of whoever he or she is staying with on tour.

Because, dear reader, a touring life of five star hotels and waitress service is merely a mythical existence for most musicians. Most musicians are not in U2, and even if they were, Bono himself would be proud of coming up with as varied a menu as this, the morning after crashing out on the sofa at Edge’s pad.

I mean tower.

Or, rather, castle.

Since Andy is Irish but lives in Australia, he has tried to fuse two hemispheres of culinary experience in an explosive

(Editor’s note – the end of this sentence seems to have gone missing. Could this be the culinary equivalent of the missing lines of ‘Kubla Khan’? At the very least, this tragic omission could serve as a timely warning that overindulgence in this recipe can lead to memory loss, mental instability and severe difficulty in walking a straight line when asked to do so by members of the local constabulary)

Ladies and gentleman, we proudly present:

Coco Pops & Kahlua

Ingredients
1 box of Coco Pops
1 bottle of Kahlua
1 large bowl
Small bowls, as required

Method
It’s all plain sailing after you have located both ingredients for this perky little ‘start me up’. The most difficult thing will be to find anyone who has a bottle of the exotically-named vaguely coffee-flavoured liqueur. Try the dimmest, darkest, local nightclub, or failing that, the back of the drinks cabinet at a teetotal friend’s house. He or she will have stashed and forgotten it long ago.
Pour Coco Pops into large bowl.
Stand back to admire rarely-witnessed sight of so many Coco Pops in one large bowl at one time.
Pour in bottle of Kahlua.
Mix.
Eat out of large bowl or, if in company, serve into small bowls.

Main Course

Cereale di Melbourne, alla surpresa di Dublino
(aka Toasted Granola with Black Pepper Strawberries Flambéed in Irish Whiskey)

Ingredients
Serves two people
1 small mug of large oat flakes
1 large mug of small oat flakes
1 medium-sized mug of medium-sized oat flakes
1 cup (not too small) of oat bran
1 slightly smaller cup of wheatgerm
1 large spoon for honey
1 small spoon for sugar
1 large pot of organic australian honey made by worker bees with funny accents
1 small bag of non-organic irish sugar made by Messrs Tate & Lyle
1 large bottle of Irish Whiskey
1 saucepan full of beautifully tasty English strawberries cut up carefully
1 litre of yummy soya milk not the dodgy yellow looking longlife stuff
1 squeezed lemon
1 mango sliced x 2
1 peach x 2
1 kiwi fruit x 4
1 raisin (just testing if you’ve read this far I know you don’t like raisins)
1 large saucepan1 milk frother – looks like a french press but with more holes in it
1 lump of butter
1 pepperpot containing black pepper

Method
Put said lump of butter in very big saucepan on a low heat until it melts.
Start adding all the oat flakes of varying sizes, bran and wheatgerm.
Don’t stop stirring as you add them. Ever.
Pour in lots of the the honey – maybe about quarter of the pot, and some spoons of sugar.
Don’t stop stirring.
Stir some more, without stopping.
Warm up the soya milk. Gently does it.
Don’t stop stirring. I thought I saw you stop.
Have a taste of the toasted granola.
Nice, isn’t it?
Froth the warm milk in the frother.
Take the toasted granola off the heat.
Put sugar into another saucepan.
When the sugar melts, add lemon juice.
Start again if you’ve messed this bit up and the sugar all stuck together in a sticky blob.
Keep stirring. Don’t stop.
Add half the saucepan of strawberries.
Pour in liberal amount of Irish whiskey.
Light with match.
Repair clothing and hair.
Fall about with nervous laughter.
Add cracked black pepper.
Take off heat.
Put frothy milk in bowls containing cut up mangoes, kiwi, peach.
Add toasted granola.
Top off with the black pepper, strawberry and whiskey sauce.
Dig in.

Side Order

‘The Ashes Challenge’

Ingredients
2 loaves of bread
1 large jar of Marmite
1 large jar of Vegemite
1 Toaster
1 packet of butter
2 colours of plates

Preparation
Toast one loaf of bread, butter, and spread with Marmite, put on one colour of plates.
Toast one loaf of bread, butter, and spread with Vegemite, put on other colour of plates.
Ask friends who prefers Marmite to Vegemite, and the other way round.
Listen patiently as they scoff at one or the other vegetable-based spread.
Distribute toast to friends on different coloured plates remembering which contains Marmite toast, which Vegemite.
Ask friends to guess which one is which.
Get totally confused and forget which is which.
End up not knowing what this proves, but satisfied.
Sort of.
Bit like The Ashes, really.

Dessert

‘Champagne and Strawberries, with Ceylon Tea (optional)’

Ingredients
1 bottle of champagne
The remainder of the strawberries left after making the sauce
1 china teapot (optional)
1 packet of Ceylon tea leaves (optional)

Method

Boil water
Put leaves in teapot
Add boiling water to teapot
Wait
Put strawberries in champagne glasses
Add champagne to glasses
Don’t wait
Drink
Pour tea (optional)
Drink tea (optional)

Notes from an Italian post office, #2

The lady behind the window at the post office looks me straight in the eye, unsmiling. Although she lets out a world-weary sigh, I detect no emotion in her face as she brings out a pair of scissors with a flourish from a drawer, and cuts my ATM card in half.

This would be bad enough, even if it wasn’t the third time she has done this. Three ATM cards in the past year, and I still haven’t got to use one. My Italian post office account has turned into a savings account, mainly because it’s impossible for me to withdraw money from it.

I originally opened it because sometimes, just sometimes, I get paid by an ‘above-board’ promoter who wants to transfer money electronically (probably a sophisticated double bluff to fool the authorities that all musicians get paid such tiiny sums as these).

I chose the Italian post office as a home for my Euro fortune since I reasoned that it’s been going ever since Mrs Centurion first wrote letters addressed to ‘Mr Centurion, Hadrian’s Wall, South of Pictland’.

Wrong again. Picture the scene – a 365-day a year gale blows across the Northumbrian wasteland. Mr Centurion is attempting to write a postcard back to his muse-like wife, using an eagle’s quill filled with Scotsman’s blood.

He scrawls “Wish you were here” on the back of a photo of Mel Gibson and ties it to a pigeon’s foot, hoping that this Rattus alle penne will eventually fly over the imperial capital.

As he chucks this noble pleb of birds into the eye of the storm, he sees it immediately drop the epistle into the churning waters of the North Sea, and head for the Bahamas.

What I am saying is that any trust conferred on the Italian postal service because of its long service is misplaced.

Today I signed three 20-page forms and received what looks like a plastic calculator from the lady behind the counter, all with the aim of improving the security of my paltry store of Euros. Together she and I can build a wall of strength around the pitiful balance of my account which would survive even an attack by a horde of wild Celtcs.

After I have signed the third 20-page form, the lady gives me the plastic calculator. I look at it as if it is a raffle prize and ask how it works. Apparently I have to use it to dial up a new PIN every time I want to use the ATM card.

She then asks me for my card and tells me to switch on the plastic calculator. She then tells me to put in the PIN which is dispayed on it. I do – and the number is rejected. She looks at me, saying “Is this the first time you have used this card? You must register it first.” I struggle to find the Italian words for “That’s the reason I have come here today. Not to receive a free gift of a plastic toy.”

She heads off in the direction of the back office – the very place where a few months ago a postman cut off his index finger in the sliding door. The postman who at last year’s Christmas party set off a rocket which hit the roof and rebounded, getting caught inside his shirt, burning him severely.

I sneak a glance at the queue which snakes round itself towards the door. People are looking at me as if I am Michael Jackson’s doctor. Well, exceot if Michael Jackson were still alive and he was in the queue – in which case he would be looking at me as if to say “Got any anaesthetics?”

I ask the lady behind the counter if I can withdraw money with a card which is cut in two.

“You can get money with your travellers cheques.”

I have never bought travellers cheques. Ever. “Sorry, I don’t have any.”

All the converation so far has been carried on in my broken Italian. A guy steps forward from the queue to offer assistance.

They talk for a while. She punches buttons on a keyboard. She tells me that due to overdue bank charges I have only 5 Euros in my bank account.

I pray that the ground will open up beneath my feet. I mutter something about waiting for money to arrive from England, and shuffle away from the window, mortified. I have kept the whole queue waiting for hours.

As I leave, the lady draws herself up to her full height and tells me there will be a charge for cutting up my ‘old’ card. I ask how much it is.

“Five Euros”.

I am an Irishman in Italy who has nothing. Nothing but two halves of an ATM card and a pair of leaking gutties.

Outside, mopeds carry Italian girls to and fro. Traffic lights change with no visible effect on the traffic. It’s early evening and I’m thinking about a botte of wine I bought yesterday.

The phone rings and Andrea invites me to play with him at a show in Genoa. I have enough petrol in the car. My guitar’s on the backseat, and I have a box of CDs in the boot.

I might just pull through this one, doc, but it’s going to be close.

Waiting for the Goldline

“‘Bout ye, lad,” the driver looks me in the eye and winks sideways, as I get on the bus to Dublin outside Jury’s hotel in Belfast. He’s not quite a skinhead, but he’s not far off, and I choose a seat fairly close to the front, since there’s hardly a soul on this cross-border ship of fools and I want the company of familiar accents I haven’t heard for too long. The Belfast driver has a mate from Dublin perched on a seat to his left. He’s called Michael and keeps up a running commentary with Colin for most of the 100 miles it takes to get to the fair city.

“D’ye mind the time,” Colin starts in a piercing whine, “when Norn Iron played in the World Cup Finals?” He starts a long stream of statistics, exhaustively researched, into the football team’s progress in each competition since 1958. Drifting in and out of sleep, I realise he’s talking about a drunken goalkeeper. Not Pat Jennings – he’s already described the size of Pat’s hands for the best part of half an hour – but another goalie. Apparently this mystery man is going out with a model.

“Aye, she’s stick-thin. Never eats a thing – just drinks and smokes … ” (pause for effect) ” … and takes drugs.” Sharp intake of breath from Michael, who is leaning forward, trying to catch every detail of the celeb’s transgressions. He’s older than Colin, and has a mop of bouffant white hair. I can’t see his face from where I’m sitting, but his voice is a soft southern brogue,

“Holy God. Droogs?” he asks,

“Aye, Michael, that’s what keeps her stick-thin. That and not eating. She was in the papers, sure enough, for feeding him drugs. In his tea, for Christ’s sake. Shockin’, aye. There’s a German goalkeeper too – he’s even worse. Bayern Munich has paid every bouncer in the city to watch out for him. If he tries to get into a nightclub, they only have to phone a special number for security guards to come round and take him away, in return for a large cash reward.”

“Mother of God, that’s incredible, altogether.” Michael is almost overwhelmed by this tabloid anecdote.

“Aye, Michael, ye’ll ne’er guess – that guy goes out with a model too.”

“Is she stick-thin?”

“Right first time, Michael, stick-thin. Only drinks water and smokes fags.”

“Droogs ‘n’ all?”

“Oh aye, loads of drugs, Michael. Drugs everywhere. Her handbag’s full of them.”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph give us all strength.”

We’re passing Lisburn as the two of them lapse into stunned silence, doubtless ruminating on the vast amounts of drink and drugs consumed by innumerable goalkeepers and stick-thin model girlfriends all over this benighted world. The silence is almost respectful, since the glamour and the extent of the debauchery is beyond description. It’s a moment of religious awe.

Colin turns up the rock golden oldie station we’re listening to. “I Got You Babe” comes on.

“Is that the Rolling Stones?” asks Michael, leaning forward towards Colin.

“No, big lad, tha’s Lulu. She’s singin’ wi’ tha’ guy used to be in Rod Styoort’s bawnd. It’s incredible, he lost his life in a freak accident.”

“Chroist almoighty. Heaven help and spare us all.”

We cruise up Hillsborough main street – that’s right, we’re only twelve miles into the journey – where you can see remnants of the 12th July procession hanging from the lampposts and strung between buildings across the road. There’s tired bunting, and the arch across the main street is decorated with pictures of the Queen and Prince William, lost in a maze of Masonic Lodge symbols. It looks like the powers-that-be in the Lodge have discarded Charles as heir to the throne, and gone straight for the next generation.

Even though he’d probably make a better King than Chas, and no one could face his or Queen Camilla’s head on the back of a coin of the realm, I can’t help thinking that the line will stop when Liz pops her ‘by appointment’ royal clogs. Wills can always end up a celebrity judge on Royals Without Talent.

By now, Sonny and Cher have stopped and, by strange coincidence, ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy’ starts up.

“Did you hear about Rod Styooort kickin’ a ball from a concert stage and it lawnds in tha’ weeman’s fayce?” says Colin, “he broke jus’ ’bout every tooth in her head, and fractured her jaw, like.”

Michael is almost crying into his flask of tea.

“You know what Rod did, Michael? He went to the haws-pital himsel’, and brought her a bunch of flaw-yers. That and a hugh-mung-gus cash settlement. Nobody knows how much … well, he may have told Elton, ye know.”

“Elton John, now there’s a terrible man, and no mistake.”

“Whatdye mean there, Michael, yer a wee bit harsh there, lad.”

“Cocaine and rent boys everywhere. I saw a documentary about it – Sodom and Gomorrah all rolled into one.”

By now we’re on the Dundalk bypass, driving through an industrial estate.

“Madonna was at the party, ‘n’all.”

Another awed silence, which lasts until just outside Drogheda. After crossing the Boyne, the lads settle back to talking football, and the glory of the EU-funded glorious new pre-financial crisis Irish roads system brings us into Dublin in record time. A journey which used to take up to a day, including hold-ups, rerouting and bombs on the line (or road) is now completed in a couple of hours. We come to a halt in peak rush hour traffic beside the site of the proposed Samuel Beckett bridge. As Colin and Michael prepare to say goodbye to each other, I’m thinking I’d like to see them as Vladimir and Estragon in a cross-border production of ‘Godot’. Perhaps we could persuade Rod Stewart and the drug-crazed goalkeeper to play Lucky and Pozzo, Beckett himself could be billed as Godot – we know he’s never going to show. Failing that, the General Manager of Ulsterbus Ltd, could substitute for him. As Colin says, when asked by Michael if he’s ever got to meet him,

“Ye’ll die waitin’ for tha’ mawn, Michael.”

The traffic shifts a little, and we slowly roll into Busaras (that’s the ancient Gaelic word for Bus Station). Colin shuts off the engine and as the passengers shuffle out of the front door, Michael says to him,

“Shall we go, then?”

“Aye right, mucker, let’s go.”

They do not move.

Scowl

I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by easyjet’s excess baggage charges. Wandering blind, screaming, naked through security. Howling into the midnight sky from the designated smoking area outside Arrivals.

Artists, musicians and writers driven half-mad by the demands of repacking. Trying to get luggage down to a regulation weight, forcing suitcases into tiny wire frames in front of check-in desks, cramming guitars into suit-bags. Pulling manuscripts out of cases, scribbled sheets flying everywhere.

I have witnessed short stories dumped in favour of a cheap duty-free bottle of booze, I have wept as novellas and pages of free-form jazz poetry are discarded in the recycling bins of regional British airports. All to save a lousy £40.

Pity the poor poet on his or her low-cost artistic flight into Egypt, for paper has weight and Dickens and his collected works would struggle to come in under 20kg. Charlie Parker’s sax would incur an additional ‘musical instrument’ fee as well as the ‘extra bag’ surcharge. Neil Cassady might try to opt out of travel insurance – but they’d get him by asking for his driving licence first.

O God, in this new century, awake from your slumbers and prove to us that you exist. For if you, in all your hallowed glory, can persuade easyjet to relax their weight restrictions and allow you another 5kg to get at least one tablet of stone checked in and the other as hand luggage, I shall henceforth BELIEVE in your almighty powers.

I shall HOWL your name through the night and, dear reader, I shall be with you in Rockland.

Where in my dreams I see you walk dripping through the arrivals gate. Abandoned, glorified, dragging a rolly-bag full of stones, and I feel love, respect, admiration and a great excess weight lift off my heart.