We were talking to WorkLad about a poster we saw on Ashes to Ashes last week.

He muttered that it must have been just a poster, not a canvas, as they didn’t have canvas prints back in the 80’s, then he looked confused and asked “How come they didn’t have canvas prints in the 80’s, when they already had them back when Jesus was alive?”

We wondered which part of the bible he’d read which mentioned Jesus having a canvas print. He replied that the bible is always talking about tapestries.

I pushed him on the point and said I don’t remember Jesus being famous for his particular love of tapestries, to which he pointed out that Jesus used to make them for a living.

I further queried the point.

He said, Jesus used to make them for a living, he was a carpenter.

I asked what he understood a carpenter to be

“somebody who fits carpets”..

He also stated that Mary was a florist.  No explanation for that, it’s just something he knows.

He later informed us that he failed RE at school

I’ve been learning German for a few months, so thought it was about time I visited the place, to see what it’s all about.

So I went to Frankfurt.

I arrived late on friday night, and got the train to my hotel.  I couldn’t see where my hotel was tho, so had my first real chance to try out my German..

“entschuldigen Sie, vissen Sie wo ist das Hotel Savoy bitte?”

Not great German gramatically.. but the man understood what I was asking, and explained to me where to find the hotel.

Which is where I realised what my big problem would be.. I could make myself understood.. but I had no idea what he just said to me!  Luckily he pointed, so I nodded like I knew what he was saying, followed his finger, and found my hotel!

The ‘not understanding when people speak back to me’ became a frequent problem.  Later in the weekend I went to KFC with nina & ricarda, tried to order a chicken salad in German.. the girl on the till asked me a question about my order, i panicked, and ended up with a tub of coleslaw for my meal.  By the Sunday, I’d given up trying to understand, if someone answered me back I’d just look blankly at them, then turn to nina or ricarda to answer for me.. or just let them do the talking in the first place..

I’d read bad things about my hotel in internet reviews, like people finding blood in their bed, and staff refusing to sort out problems.  But I also saw that the hotel gives away free cakes between 2 and 5pm every day, so I booked.  The hotel was great.  They listened sympathetically to my bad German, answered me in German, and even though I pretended to understand, they repeated it in English for me.

I had a great weekend.  I went to an art gallery (to find out if art in any way interests me.. it doesn’t), went to a flea market (where a scary looking guy was selling Russian military stuff), then met up with twins nina & ricarda who live nearby.

The twins showed me some of Frankfurts landmarks, a church where their parents got married, a bridge that James Marsters stood on once, a club that James Marsters played in once.  Then they took me shopping, and introduced me to some German music and films worth trying.  We met The Simpsons,

then visited the twins favourite pub, then on the train back to their hometown of Jugesheim to watch Buffy in German, go to a street party, wander out drunkenly into the pitchblack countryside, brave the dangers of diseased foxes and wild boars, a German cornfield, back to the street party, and then an early morning train back to Frankfurt.

A cool day!

On Sunday I slept most of the day, then got the train again to Jugesheim to meet nina & ricarda, went to a funfair, met a Gage lookalike (for anyone who knows Gage), went to an Ice Cream cafe, then to the cinema to watch Rush Hour 3 in German.  I barely understood a word, but Rush Hour films are never about the complex plot, so it was still cool.  Then back home again.

On Monday I wandered round the shops, bought one of the German dvd’s the twins had recommended, went to a museum and met some dinosaurs, then flew home.

I had such a great weekend!

Photo’s of the weekend can be found here

Back in the 90’s I used to watch Melrose Place with my girlfriend on her cable tv.  It was an ok show, and at one point built to a big cliffhanger episode, with a bomb about to blow up most of the cast, and another main character falling from the top of a construction site, and another framed for murder.. and then I saw no more

(I don’t remember now whether it stopped being shown, or whether that was around the time I split up with Sarah and no longer had access to cable tv!). 

I’ve occasionally wondered what happened next, so when i saw Living TV were showing it from the start, I began watching again, and have watched it every week.. waiting to get to the point that I last saw.. it’s been building up for a few weeks now, i’ve recognised all the plotlines leading towards the big cliffhanger.. which was shown on Sunday… finally I could see what happened next.. and..

it’s not on next week! 

nooooo!!!

I know now (thanks to the internet) that the cliffhanger is the season 3 finale, but Living TV didn’t put breaks at the end of seasons 1 or 2, so my worry is that this isn’t just a break between seasons, but that they’re stopping showing Melrose Place.. right at the same cliffhanger I’ve been left at for the past 10 years!

ffs

This weekend I met a wizard, and he granted me a wish.

If you’re wondering how I knew he was a wizard.. he had a big beard.  And was sat in a boat.  In a tree.  With a fishing rod.  Attached to a basket full of wishes.  One of which was mine.  See! a wizard..

Every so often he’d reel in the basket, and grant some of the wishes by reading them out over his megaphone.  Mine was one of the ones he granted.



An unusual occurrence you might think, but not all *that* unusual.. in Glastonbury.

For yes, this weekend I was in Glastonbury, with the wind, the rain, the mud, and my first experience of festival toilets.  And I had SUCH a great time!

Saw loads of cool bands, comedians, movies, the wizard, and a magician.  Amy Winehouse, Lilly Allen, The Kooks, The Killers, Bjork, Mika, The Who, KT Tunstel, The Frutelis, Babyshambles, The Kaiser Chiefs, The Gossip, Get Cape Wear Cape Fly, Shirley Bassey, Chas n Dave.. plus various others I wandered past and caught a quick song or two.

but some of the highlights were the stuff away from the main stages:

The Tent

Emma was kind enough to let me share her tent, so I didn’t have to pitch my own.  Which was handy because by the time I arrived all the good spots had gone.  Also I don’t own a tent.

At Glastonbury the “good spots” are the ones near the top of a hill.. any hill.  The tents at the bottom *will* get bogged down in mud and water.

Our camp had one unexpected side effect tho.. being on a slope, with a shiny sleeping bag, meant that every morning I’d wake up on the opposite side to where I went to sleep.  Most nights I’d wake up 3 or 4 times in the night, clamber my way back to the top of the tent, only to slide back down again when I fell asleep!

the weather

I was hoping for sun.  My plan for Glastonbury (my first festival) was to listen to the bands playing whilst i lay on the grass, towards the back of the crowds.  What happened instead was that I listened to the bands playing, whilst I stood in the mud, and the rain, and the wind.

Mud does seem to be the one thing everybody mentions first about Glastonbury, whether you were there, or just saw the pictures in the media.  And it was EVERYWHERE.

Two weeks before I went, I’d started keeping a close eye on the weather reports.  They all showed rain, and lots of it.  But that was fine, everybody knows how difficult it is to predict the weather two weeks in advance, or 10 days in advance, or a week, or 3 days, or..  It was when the forecast on the morning of the festival itself still showed rain that I finally accepted the mud warnings:



Personally, I think they underestimated, and the 4th image would be more accurate.  But.. it really didn’t matter.  The only real difference the mud made was that you had to wear wellies the whole time.  And you got dirtier.  And it took longer to walk places.  And you had to avoid the occasional mudswimmer wanting to hug you.



The mud did however provide me with one of the highlights of my Friday night..

the mud hole

By friday night the mud in most places was a good 8 inches deep, in some places the added water had made mud pools.

As I was wandering from the main stage towards the bar, I noticed a group of about 30 people stood in a semi circle around one such mud pool.  There was an obvious sense of excitement, so I went to look.

It turned out that in the middle of the mud pool, was a small pothole, about a foot deeper than the rest of the floor.  The semicircle of people were watching as unsuspecting innocents walked through the mudpool, tension grew as they neared the hole.. then erupted into either cheering if they fell in, or booing if they didn’t.

I saw my first person go down, loose his footing, and fall headlong into the mud.. and i was hooked.

The hole wasn’t very wide, so lots of people walked across the spot without falling in, which made it all the more exciting when somebody did.

I kept promising myself the next fall would be my last, then I’d go see a band or something.. but it was just too entertaining to walk away, I just wanted that one last fix…

After about the half hour, I was talking to the guys stood next to me, and we agreed what we really needed was a short person, wearing white, and carrying food or drink, the perfect victim.  And within a minute our wishes were answered, she fell in waist deep, mud splashed all over her white clothes, her tray of chips scattered all around and slowly sinking into the pool.  I decided it wouldn’t get better than that, and went to see Bjork.

I did feel slightly guilty later in the festival when Tammie texted me and mentioned 1000 people had suffered broken ankles and other injuries in the mud.. only *slightly* guilty tho!

my lack of moustache
After Bjork, I met up with my mate Paul from work.  We had a few drinks, went for a wander, and ended up in Trash City, described as:

Trash City is an intergalactic red-light district, straight from the pages of a 2000AD comic, where space pirates, bootleggers, illegal aliens and all the scum of the universe can come to party the night away.

I loved it there!  We queued for 15 minutes to get into a 1970’s New York nightclub, only to be turned away at the door because none of us had moustaches, which seemed such a great reason to be turned away that we didn’t mind.

So we went next door to a weird eastern european bar which was like something out of a horror movie, and then to a crazy Russian disco, both of which were weird but fantastic.

The next night, after my humiliation at the ‘World Record Attempt’ (see below), I found myself back in Trash City.  My mobile battery had long run out by now, so had no idea where anyone was, so was wandering round on my own.  I’d heard a rumour of somewhere I could source a fake moustache, so queued again for the 70’s nightclub.  While there I got talking to the group stood behind me in the queue, we were talking about the need for moustaches, and I offered to draw some on them using a permanent marker that I was still carrying after Bonnie lent it me at Decology.

See my handiwork here:


It didn’t occur to me at the time that.. as I learned at Decology when Nina wrote on my arm with the pen.. it takes a *lot* of scrubbing and a few days to get rid of this pen.. and that was in my house with ready access to hot shower, bath and lots of soap.. not at Glastonbury.. where you’re in a tent in a field with minimal supplies, and no running water.  Also it’s a lot easier to vigorously scrub an arm that your face..

I didn’t see her again after that night, altho I did keep a close eye out for a girl wearing permanent markered facial hair for the rest of the festival.. you’d think she’d be easy to spot!

I do know she was back at work in her office on Tuesday.. I hope she got most of it off!

the world record attempt

This is the bit of every blog where you get to share in my humiliation..

On Saturday night, following a secret Madness gig, match.com were going for a world record attempt for the worlds biggest kiss (or some similar wording), they wanted to get 30,000 people to kiss the person stood next to them.

As a (pending) world record holder already for being part of the worlds biggest ghost hunt, I decided that being in the Guiness Book of Records once is a good thing, twice would be better.

I left the Killers a few minutes before they finished and rushed (took 45 minutes) to the Lost Vagueness area to see Madness, followed by the record attempt. I missed Madness by 2 minutes, muttered a bit, and decided to leave.

As I walked past one of the clubs, they announced it was time for the attempt, so I wandered in, everyone was pairing up, a few singletons left over so I went to speak to a girl on her own. She saw me and came over to me. Countdown from 10 began.. she said “so we just kiss for 10 seconds?”, i nodded, the countdown continued.. at about 3, another girl walked over and started kissing the girl i was stood with… so for the world record attempt there was a room full of kissing people.. and me stood there in the middle of it all on my own just hoping for the mud to open and swallow me up..

I wouldn’t have mentioned this.. except that it seems hearing about my humiliation is the only reason some people come here!

bill bailey

On Sunday night after all the headline bands had finished, there was one show left, over on one of the circus stages Bill Bailey was doing a stand up routine.  It took a long time to get there, I got very muddy and very wet.. but he was ace!

Glastonbury was my first festival, I wasn’t sure what to expect, and was dreading the predicted mud.  Turns out, it was absolutely, positively fan..tastic!  It had all the things I like about cons, but with 180,000 people, loads and loads of top bands, a small towns worth of shops, stalls, takeaways, constant entertainment, loads of weird things to see and do, an oxygen bar, sensory deprivation room, massages, buffalo chili, crocodile, kangaroo and ostrich burgers, and of course, a wizard!

I emailed a friend with the story of last night, after re-reading it, it seems embarrassing enough to add it as a blog!

Be warned though, by the end of this, you WILL squirm with shame just by proxy of knowing me!

Names have been left out, to protect the not so innocent!

Background Info:

I met a girl this weekend, who it turns out I really like.

We kissed a lot, and at the end of the weekend, whilst drunk she said she was going to a concert in Birmingham the next day, and that I should come.  I said I would.

In the end tho, I couldn’t make it.

But I heard from a friend that she was gonna be at another gig in Liverpool on Tuesday, before flying home on Wednesday.  So i *could* turn up there.

Tuesday June 5th: Daytime

I spent the whole day stressing about going or not going. I really suck at this stuff, I get ridiculously shy/nervous!

My main worries were: