Pulling in America

I'm going back to America soon. I hope to provide some tips for other visitors. We'll start with meeting the opposite sex.

The most basic method is as follows:

1: Go to a bar

2: Look British

3: Eat some nose

Woe, woe, woe, Sweet Child o’Mine

I’m in Rouen today. It’s near Normandy. So Im obsessing over D-Day, as has been par for the course in the last 6 months. I curse the day I borrowed that Band Of Brothers box-set.

I’m also in the shallow depths of a kind of … apathy. It’s not depression. Or misery. Just a kind of “OK, I’m bored of this now, I want to go back to England and drink brandy and ginger with my lunch again.’’

I shouldn’t complain. I’m very lucky to be in employment at all. This is, for some people, a dream-job. But a dream-job should be unattainable. If it’s attainable it’s just a job. That’s why rock-stars are so miserable and difficult. Apart from Dave Grohl of course, he seems lovely.

Maybe I’ve just got a cob-on because I should have had a day off in Lille the other day, but I ended up in Maastricht huffing cases around in a fucking sleet-storm, sleeping on a bus. My only respite was being called from crowded bars in Lille by various crew-members who wanted me to change their departure time in the morning.

The driver’s right fucking there next to you, chatting up a fifteen-year-old in a gold alice-band. You ask him.

There’s also the lurking feeling that I could get fired at any moment. I narrowly avoided it after the Blackout in Berlintm and it seems I’m getting closer by the day. The last guy’s only crime was lasting so long he required a permanent contract. Eep. That said, he could have been on the rob. I’ll never know.

Perhaps I deserve it of course. I’ve spent most of this morning trying to download a picture of Moomintroll. For a currently unknown purpose.

Still, if I got the boot, I know I’d be, for want of a better word that isn’t ‘devastated’, gutted. I’d probably cry a little bit. Then I’d be back in England, wondering what I could possibly do that I won’t be bored of in a month. The obvious answer is, of course, nothing. Work is for chumps. I read a bit of Monsterwork’s stellar blog where he said he was broody. I’m sure I’ll change my mind tomorrow but it occurred to me earlier that men want kids so that they have something to force them to work full-time. Otherwise you’d just shit on the boss’s laptop, kick the shit out of the snack-machine and go home to play Halo ’til the pub opened.

Sigh… Sorry, I shall endeavour to have a more upbeat entry next time. Or at least one with some purpose and a nice photograph.

I go to the States in two weeks. The work is the same of course, but it’s just so much easier to pull.

No, it's still not ringing any bells

I was so wasted the other night I don't even remember mugging Jesus and nicking his bird. I think he got Papa Shango up there to put a voodoo hex on me.

Hitler's Playground

After the Berlin fiasco, we went on to Nuremberg. I dread off-days, as the crew come up to me at least two days before demanding to know where the hotel is and what time we can check in. They are invariably dissatisfied. That coupled with my fragile state and near-sacking had been weighing heavily on my mind so I wasnt too happy when I rolled out of the bus to see it was 7.22 am and the check-in for 9 was not guaranteed. But it was already looking like a sunny day and I spotted my hotel-key in the bus lounge. Miracles do happen, kinder.
I skipped breakfast in favour of more sleep and forced myself up at 11 after a bit of TV. There's nothing like Al Jazeera to get you up and about.
Armed with my camera and PLO scarf I headed into the old town. It is such a joy just to be out in the sunshine after spending 16hours a day in ice-hockey arenas almost every day since Christmas. The old-town is a walled mini-city with a river running through it and a bank leading up to a castle dating from the 1200s or so. A bit like Durham but every other person isn't wearing a pashmeena and Ugg boots.

Hitler's Collosseum effort is clearly visible from the castle and so I headed back into town to get the tram there.

I spent the next two hours with what looked like a giant lollipop stuck to the side of my head, basically rehashing GCSE history, but with crowd effects and bigger photos. A lot of the plans were abandoned when it occurred to old Adolf that the rest of the world was getting a bit ratty about his persecution/slave labour/invasion of neighbouring countries. It's not like a museum in France or Holland where they stil have relics, as virtually all evidence was obviously cleared away, or hidden behind new brick-work on old SS-men's chimney-stacks. The comparisons between Hitler's Germany and Bush's America are a little disconcerting. The Reichstag fire, anyone?

Speer's architecture was pretty impressive. We went to the Zeppelin Field where they famously opened the Olympics and held the drive-past rallies. We marked the occasion with beers and cheesy photos.

The weird thing is, the US Army held their victory parade on the same ground, and as the closer, exploded the swastika on top of the building. I could picture the music - dan dah-dah-dah-dun-dah, KABOOM!!

Blackout in Berlin

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. Probably. We did two sell-out shows in Berlin. And they sensibly put a party in between the two shows, rather than after the second. I was already shattered and starting to succumb to the orchestra-AIDS which is ripping through the group but I didn't want to look anti-social. Plus Laura the Chilean soloist had earmarked me as her dancing partner.
We'd finish at around 11.30, a half-hour drive to the hotel, ten minutes to check in then a half-hour drive back. The club is an old Burlesque place called the Winterhalle so I was looking forward to Liza Minelli-alikes sashaying up and down the bar hitting people with a cane.
I didnt relish the prospect of commencing libations at 12.30 so I hit upon a masterstroke- drink as much beer on the bus as possible, therefore being tipsy when i got there, dancing and flirting for two hours then going back to my suite (the only perk of booking the rooms) to "close the curtains'' (see previous blog) and awake early to explore the old East Germany before work at 12.30.
I also had some free drinks tickets for the hotel and surmised it would be wrong not to wring as much out of them as possible.
So I was pretty trashed when I arrived, black shirt half unbuttoned, and was quickly accosted by said Chilean for some salsa dancing. She gave me her badly-made Caiprinha which had the texture of broken glass. This happened four or five times.
Then I had a bitof a boogie with Dawn from the Gospels, another reason for me to be nervous. We've been on dates in Maastricht but she broke the news to me that, although rocky, she has a boyfriend in New York. Presumably who weighs 18-stone and wouldn't think twice about poppin a cap in a honky's ass.
So I babbled some incoherent 'I'm not avoiding you, I just feel a little nervous because I really like you and I wish something could happen between and I'd like to wear your ass as a hat for all eternity' She looked suitably bemused.
Then I opted to stick with my pal Tim, who told Laura that I'd slept with one of the other Gospels on a previous bender. It was better that sleeping on the bus anyway so I figured what the hell?
Then someone put a wreath of flowers on my head and the rest, as they say, is black.
I woke butt naked up in my suite at 11am with no recollection of leaving the club or anything afterwards. I was actually afraid to turn over inc ase there was a burly hell's angel there. Amazingly I had my camera and everything else with me, and no visible signs of vomitus.
It was check-out time so I retreated to the bus and tried to sleep, but just lay there for 3 hours, my mouth watering.
My boss doesn't drink. Never has. Not even coffee. He was hella pissed at me.
So as well as that awful feeling of not knowing what I'd done and to whom, there was the very real possibility of being fired. The boss would barely look me in the eye.
Every crew-member I passed would smirk upon sight and make the usual standard wisecracks so I felt it necessary to apologise to every female orchestra-member I may have come into contact with.
At the end of the night Pierre announced he'd be gone for a week and I was in charge in his absence. Which I guess is why I wasn't fired on the spot.
So now I have a week to straighten up, fly right and hope nothing bad happens so I can worm my way back into favour.
On the plus-side though, it's probably made me closer to the other crew-members. Apparently I was 'funny-drunk', not swearing or smashing things. Richard the light-guy had seen me in the lobby at about 7am, trying to get another drink with the aforementioned wreath of flowers still on my head.
I think Dawn, a non-drinker, was a bit shocked at my state though. So that's probably the end of that one. Now I have to convince Laura that I didn't sleep with the other Gospelleria if I'm ever to get into that bodice.
Sigh...