the soundtrack to the day you wish you'd had
Ahhhh, New York New York – so great they couldn’t be bothered to think of a different name for the state and the city… New Yorkshire would’ve worked…
Anyway, I’m here, staying with the oh so lovely Shark and TH, in their palatial Manhattan apartment. This is going to be a marvellous week, a marvellous marvellous week, fo’ sho. Talking of Sho’..ws, I’m playing at Mo Pitkins tomorrow night, 11pm, $10 to get in – email all your friends in NYC and tell ’em to come on down!
More soon…
As I’ve said before, I love travel. Love it.
However, airports are now stretching that resolve. Dubya and his made-up War on Tourism (brown people who do bad things in planes) have completely screwed up the process, holding people up for trying to take a tickle-me-elmo onto a plane that’s not in its box, and confiscating toothpaste… I guess you could overpower a pilot with a tube of toothpaste… if the pilot was less than 4 years old and had a severe toothpaste allergy…
The only upside is it might make more people realise what a great way to travel the train is (screwed up Irish Sea ferry things notwithstanding) – as the 80s advert said – this is the age of the train…
But anyway, if you are flying, please give a smile to the poor people who work in airports these days – it’s got to be a seriously thankless task, and one where they need to be obsessive to the point of it being clinical, about things they almost certainly don’t really give a shit about. So smile.
See you on ‘tother side of the atlantic!
I’m just about to go to sleep, in order to be up at 6am to leave for New York, which I’m very much looking forward to.
And this video clip makes me REALLY look forward to seeing the 2nd One Giant Leap film. The first one is magic. The second one, based on the trailer, looks just as good. Coming to a Soul Space service near you soon…
See you on ‘tother side of the Atlantic, Bloglings, xx
wow, that was quick – y’all got some kick-ass praying chops. Found in with my train tickets from the last trip abroad…
phew.
xx
A – you don’t.
So, for those of you that are of a praying persuasion, please say a few well chosen words on my behalf, while I continue to turn the house upside down.
And before you say it, yes this has happened before, no, I clearly hadn’t learned my lesson, yes, I’m sure I will this time. If only I can find the damned thing.
xx
OK, the musak here in the port has taken an upturn – we’ve had ‘A Good Heart’ by Fergal Sharkey (written by Maria McKee, trivia-fans), ‘Young Hearts Run Free’ by Candi Statton, ‘Everybody Dance’ by Chic and some other cool stuff, with narry a ‘featuring Ya Kid K’ in sight. Hurrah.
the sad thing is that in order to find a plug point for my lappy, I’ve had to move across the waiting room, and now my old wireless connection is out of range, and the BT one I’ve just had to log into is twice the price!!!! Balls to BT.
Estimated departure time is now 2pm. Anyone want a bet we’re still in the port at 2.30?
x
There’s a really strange element to traveling across Northern Ireland, in that almost every place name is familiar as the site of a bombing, or a murder or some kind of act of sectarian violence or political significance from the last 30 years. It’s like visiting southern california and driving past signs for Mulholland Drive and Sunset Blvd, only instead of feeling like you’re on a film set, you feel like you’re a bystander on a news broadcast. It’s a strange thing with place names – like Columbine or Waco, Darfur or Wounded Knee – they cease to be the name of a town, and become shorthand for disaster, for tragedy, for crazy behaviour.
It’s one of the interesting things about watching foreign news – or spending a lot of time in another country – you find a whole new set of significant place names. In the UK we’ve got Dunblane – site of a school shooting, Aberfan – site of a coal-slag-heap that collapsed on a school in the late 60s and wiped out an entire generation of kids there, Toxteth – area of Bristol where riots took place in the 70s. Brixton – more riots; Broadwater Farm – yet more riots; Lockerbie – the place where the plane blown up by Libyan terrorists crashed in Scotland… the list goes on. You drive past the road signs and they stick moreso than the rest of the small towns and council estates that fly past on long journeys…
Northern Ireland is littered with them. The sad thing is that it gets to the point where the feeling is a non-specific one – any place name you recognise must be the site of a tragedy, when in reality it could be that you heard it mentioned in a song, or had a pen-friend that lived there in your teens…
it’s been really lovely to spend a few days with lovely people in Belfast – the delightful Dr Higgins is a fantastic tour-guide to the psyche of the place (he hosted the amazing panel discussion at Greenbelt with the representatives from both sides that was so controversial they couldn’t release the tape of it). He’s a wise wise man, and I realise after just a couple of days how little I know about the history of what has gone on over there in the last half a century. I mean, I know the stuff that gets reported. I’ve read articles and interviews, watched the documentaries. But I’ve not even scratched the surface…
Belfast is one of those places that is now forever going to be a benevolent place in my mind – you know, those towns where the only people you know from there are lovely, so you subconsciously think that everyone there is delightful and friendly and wonderful? Nashville’s like that too. And Edinburgh is all about creative people being wacky on the royal mile… except it isn’t really, it’s just how you file things according to your experience. So Belfast is a place of community and parties and good food and great conversation and lovely lovely people and Neil Diamond, Bond Themes, hopes for the New Year, lots of hugs, a place to realise just how pathetic my knowledge of film is and how much catching up I’ve got to do, a place to walk along the beach in the freezing cold talking about child development and irving Goffman, Kierkagaard and the essence of self.
So at least one place has changed ‘Belfast’ is no longer just the site of orange marches and bomb scares. I’ll smile every time it’s mentioned on the news now.
Oh, and Gareth, if you haven’t written 2000 words today, you’ve no business reading blogs – get back to work. :o) x
So surely after the ferry troubles on the way here, I deserved an easy ride home? oops.
I’m sat in the departure lounge at Dun… dun… Dun something – no idea how to spell the name of the ferry port just outside Dublin. it’s pronounced ‘Leary’. Anyway, I’m here, the ferry’s about three hours late, the weather’s to blame, which means there’s an odds-on chance I’ll puke again on the boat… It’s certainly testing my resolve to do this any time I come to Ireland… Nah, it’s not that bad, I just end up sitting around a lot. it’s not an efficient use of time, that’s for sure, but it’s still better than taking yet more short-haul flights.
So for tne next couple of hours I’ll be here in the ferry terminal. Thankfully, this is a much quicker actual crossing than the car ferry, and hopefully there’ll be train to london not too long after we get into Holyhead.
in the meantime, I’m being treated to piped music in the form of some late 80s hits compilation – Dub Be Good To Me, anybody? How about some Technotronic? Oh yes, just what’s needed at a time like this, music from the motion picture soundtrack ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’. Cowa-fucking-bunga.