jazz mangle

February 5, 2008

following a a referral by company girl to a referral by rolling stone that I came across while browsing a feed in google reader that I was alerted to by the gadget I was looking at in igoogle that is the aggregation of anything I look at these days I signed up to musicovery and let it loose in a kind of ‘slightly positive and quite calm’ kind of way. result: jazz!

now, if you’re just past 40 you probably have some internal switch which goes off inside you. that’s the jazz! switch. I think I’m supposed to get a hankering for art blakey and stan getz all of a sudden, but christ on a bike if it’s not just impossible to know where to start, considering that everything ever recorded ever is probably no more than a reasonably carefully crafted search away. having just ordered up a couple of tickets for supergrass at the uea and holy f**k at the arts centre, I’m not entirely sure I’m ready for too much chin stroking, even if it’s up tempo kid ory or something and god forbid I end up in the back alley of easy swing or suchlike with kenny g robbing me of all my gibbering faculties with his saxophone.

so this is where musicovery comes in. without any warning, it’s recommending I listen to lou donaldson’s ode to billie joe and artie shaw’s moonglow, and they’re just about perfect. I can see from the slippery slidy and slighty odd flash interface that I’ve got a good helping of jelly roll morton coming later but I’ll make do with peter tosh and lalo schifrin until then. and when was the last time you listened to the alan parsons project anyway? even if I change my mood everso slightly to, um, DARK, you get a healthy dose of sarah vaughn, for which I’ll probably need a large gin and tonic in a minute. you only slip out of the jazz! boundaries when your mood is more, well, DARK + CALM, but I did get ornette coleman’s all my life and billie holiday’s gloomy sunday squeezed in there, but by that time I was just lying on the floor with all the lights off murmuring about funerals.

I fiddled about with the mood selector long enough to find the point where your mood approaches null. it was all radiohead.

recursive links for 2008-01-16

January 16, 2008

always happy to be part of a social networking trend just as its gone out of favour with those who started doing it months ago, I thought I’d do a very occasional series of links that caught my eye, even before they were links.

recursive links for 2008-01-16
“always happy to be part of a social networking trend just as its gone out of favour with those who started doing it months ago, I thought I’d do a very occasional series of links that caught my eye, even before they were links.”

comment 1
amusing comment from the blog owner regarding his obvious lack of real work to do.

comment 2
a barbed retort from the same blog owner basically telling himself to get on with some work instead of trying to be so clever

etc.

stitch up

January 10, 2008

just when you think you couldn’t waste any more of your own time, you take a look back through your thousands of unused digital photos and come across at least 17 batches of shots that you thought one day you would turn into an exciting panorama, spending far too long with a photoshop file with 229 layers and a lifetime of airbrushing layer masks so that that tree on the right has branches that actually join together somehow. so how serendipitous that I should have come across a folder with not one, but two sets of photos that somehow I thought I could combine in an oh-so-clever way and travel back in time or something. I knew there was a photomerge in creative suite 3, I just hadn’t had time to play with it.

17 hours land 5 different attempts later and a number of lengthy intervals while I foolishly thought I might just rotate my 1.2GB photoshop image 1 degree counter clockwise, and I have a mashed up panorama. its not very good. I mean, when photomerge stitches everything together, it looks pretty nice and I thought it was very clever, but it was just a bit annoying. it didn’t do it exactly how I wanted it, and really it had a thankless task, as my camera is pretty bad and I’d deliberately left out a few connecting frames, just to see what would happen, so that I ended up trying to make perspective views of multiple perspective views which resulted in the centre of the image being about 1 pixel high and the edges about 10000, but you get the hang of it eventually – just get everything right first time.

I’m still working on the most enormous version of a flattened all-round view of the most monstrous building in norwich and I’ll continue to do that by hand, filling in the gaps with ford fiestas that miraculously appear from the car park next door or carefully aligned bushes to cover my mistakes. of which there are many. but its not like anyone looks at it anyway.

a year of looking like someone’s dad

January 2, 2008

with only 3 things already booked for this new year I figured I might take a look back at all the times I stood around in dark sweaty rooms trying not to look like someone’s dad but failing miserably last year to try and pick out a few highlights and lowlights like that woman’s hair that just walked past.

as it happens, the first thing I booked for this year isn’t in a small sweaty room at all but in a huge park in the summer sunshine in london which will be crammed full of people just like me wondering whether to stand just here, or here, or maybe go right over there and which piece of technology I’ll look at next to see how much battery life I’ve got left and I wonder what the train home will be like and, oh, there they are. that’s right, I only paid 8 voluntary quid for the download album, but I shelled out an enormous 100 quid for 2 tickets to see radioh_ead in victoria park or wherever it is. I could say that I saw them back when pablo honey just came out and there were 17 of us in a pub in camden shuffling around in front of his royal eye-wonkyness or something by way of establishing some kind of ‘before they were dead famous’ credentials, but that’s not quite true. but you would probably have believed me. as neil says, 50 quid for a ticket = payb_ack time for : free al_bum. I will also be going mental at the futureheads at the waterfront in january and stabbing ryan from the cribs with a knitting needle at the NME tour in february so there are already some guitar loudness calamities in the diary. I almost bought a ticket for the enormous NME gig at the O2 but as I’d seen all the acts last year in <1500 capacity venues (apart from the kaiser chiefs, but I feel like I’ve seen them a million times already even though I haven’t actually seen them), I decided against another 40 quid and the whole O2ness of it. I’ll go to the arts centre and see some kind of techno nose flute opera or something instead.

so that’s it for this year’s calendar so far. I’m sure there’ll be a couple of big band coups at the UEA to hustle tickets for and undoubtedly the waterfront will book somebody who will turn out to be enormous by the time the gig arrives but they can’t transfer to the UEA because due to phenomenal demand, a led zeppelin tribute act are already performing the entire knebworth set there.

but what of last year, I hear the 25 people who read this and have actually read this far cry, well, kind of moan a bit. you’re resigned to it now, you might as well read on. you might even have been to some of the gigs I mention later so you can disagree with me once you’ve worked out whether I liked it or not even if I give that much away or don’t get distracted by the person in the phone box over the road and start talking about pies or something for no reason when you thought I was talking about gogol bordello.

to be honest, I can’t remember what I saw last year, so I’m going to spend the next 10 minutes looking at a calendar I only started on june and various web sites that don’t have archives either just to work out what I did. nothing new there. I think it probably averaged 4 or 5 things a months, which is something like, erm, 50ish events. maybe. the easiest thing to do is to hand out the “crushingly awful can’t even be polite let’s leave” award, which goes, in a fanfare of bored one-hand clapping, to black rebel motorcycle club. oops. shame, as I was taken out by a friend who really wanted to go and see something and was pleasantly surprised to get tickets for something. but now we know why she could. it’s the first time I’ve walked out of a gig since I was trying to watch robert cray in a half empty UEA in about 1985 while extraordinarily drunk and I didn’t really walk out. I think the term is ‘expelled’, but I think it was for my own good.

as highlights go, if I’d written this a month ago, it would probably have been, um, I’m From Barcelona, who managed to make the waterfront seem like christmas in september. no, it was probably the Manic Street Preachers. except I got there late after a meeting and couldn’t get down the front. no no no. it was The Enemy. they were good. mind you, so were The Twang. and Editors, kind of. and Bloc Party, well, the were alright. ah, I know. it was the Pigeon Detectives. they were right good, and at the waterfront. hmmm. I did actually go and see Genesis in july…

an admission, if needs be needy be, that, as you know, even if you don’t, I’m mostly looking like someone’s dad who’s mistakenly wandered into a venue when I’m supposed to be waiting outside in the megane scenic at most of these gigs. but not at twickenham. having done a little bit of ebay negotiation with the 2 tickets I originally got direct, for ‘great view (behind pillar in the loft)’ and getting instead the pitch seated variety for 1, I did indeed proceed to corporate nirvana, past concessionville and into the midsummer middle-aged middle earth that is a genesis reunion concert. I have to say I became completely anonymous in that crowd immediately, which was fine. someone might have seen me. for the record, I was in that place because there was the smallest of chances that they would play at least a few pre-1975 tracks and maybe even not as part of a party mix medley. I’m not a great fan of the eponymous albums of the mid-90s, but peter gabriel genesis including the mind-bending (for an 8-year-old) lamb lies down on broadway evokes childish public school man delight in me. so there. coincidentally, I was due to see peter gabriel the following week in a field in norfolk, but I decided to go and the Stereophonics instead and the kelly jones got a cough and I ended up in the bar down the road from my house eating turkish slipper pizzas through a copy of the guardian. they did do early tracks and so I was happy. I also went to the 1982 reunion concert featuring a broke peter gabriel, but he kept forgetting the words and I stood in the pissing rain in milton keynes bowl for 7 hours for that and if you’ve ever done that, you know how miserable it is, even if they do the knife in full.

bonus prize for “concert that could have been good somewhere else especially if the seats were the other way around” goes to george michael at the norwich city football ground. as an extra double joker-played bonus, that concert also gets the “ludicrously over-priced no wonder the people in the upper tier are abusing security” award for the aforementioned reason. I mean, george does a good show, but it would have been better on the telly. I wouldn’t of had to stand up and do embarrassing handclap dancing like prince charles or something then. either. dammit.

but, since this it written in january, the best gig of the year award goes to Gogol Bordello. it was one of those where I bought the tickets on a whim about 4 months earlier and when it actually came to the day, I couldn’t really be bothered to go and there was a midsommer murders repeat on ITV4. still, I dragged myself out and when I got there and a french hip-hop collective was jibbering around on stage you knew immediately it was going to be nice. I’ve run out of inclination to describe what the thing was actually like, but if you imagine baz luhrmann directing the punk gypsy circus apolcalypse then you’re halfway there. the showmanship was unsurpassed and when you look back on all the other home-grown trying-too-hard middle class indie seriouscrats that I normally really kind of like, you thank god for this night. my friend nearly stabbed me over some stilton in cinema city when I told him just how good it was, as he had his office party that day and couldn’t go. he was going to go with me. I went alone, as usual. here’s to 2008. ooh! Gallows! get in!

watching the pigeon detectives

November 7, 2007

the only time the waterfront has got emptier as the night got longer. I’m not sure where everybody went but huge spaces opened up as the night drew on. when I arrived there wasn’t space to swing a glow stick and just enough of a thoroughfare in front of the mixing desk to stumble over a number of pairs of converse and court shoes to the bar where it was strangely empty and while a man who looked like he tried very hard was holding his guitar in the air I shouted for a pint of stella which I didn’t really need but that’s what I do when I arrive.

not 30 minutes earlier I had been up to 2865b and witnessed the most efficient back garden firework display of modern times which latest longer then the ones from the plantation garden which we saw from the bedroom window and after a swift baked potato I shot up the earlham road to find that everybody else was looking for a parking space where actually nearly every parking space is a resident’s space and that audi a3 will get a ticket later ho ho I’ll go in the car park up the road how much is that blimey.

back inside, there was a strange propensity of upturned collars which must be the way you wear them these days although I though it went out with eric cantona kung fu kicks but then that was before most of the people in here were born apart from me and that bloke over there who looks like he should be security but he’s only looking after his girlfriend tonight excuse me mate sorry nice tattoo is that your neck sorry mate and there’s another I hope I don’t look like that he’s supposed to wait outside for his daughter not come in and wait for her. the pillar placement in the old warehouse for that’s where we are was perplexing some people and strange it is with at least 2 empty v shapes of blind spot in the middle of the floor where the occasional group of 16 year olds will delight in finding only to discover its the worst place in the building to be standing even though you’re only 5 feet from the stage that you can’t see so I’m positioned left of pillar #1 spotting the mic stand front centre which is the kind of uninteresting detail you fixate yourself with when you’re in between bands on your own with a pint of stella wondering if all the short people can see alright but then not really caring too much because you can and you’ve set your feet on the floor in such a way that you won’t move for anything even if the celebrity deathmatching starts which is doesn’t anyway not tonight a bit subdued

I’m not sorry no I’m not sorry no I’m not sorry no I’m not sorry. I saw that Ash a few days ago and that was alright in a kind of I wish charlotte hatherley was still there kind of way although that one they did at the end about twilight was enormous and he’s still got it and there was some good arm fighting going on got pushed right to the back of the pit and everything but tonight was more like it even though it seems to me that every band I see these days is just too good at what they do to be that exciting. once they rattled through the album and a couple of b sides that was it and so they left, sans encore, and so did we. they came round on the shuffle on my walkman the next day and I thought oh yes they were quite good and oh, funny how you sometimes get a genre run on shuffle at random and I got distracted and forgot everything. we are scientists on tuesday. then its double maths on wednesday. hahahahaaahaahaaa.

its a bit twangy

October 31, 2007

no. its them again. with that singer that can only be described as dave tong incarnate. I nearly actually liked them this time but only very nearly. there was that one song at the beginning that was pretty good and as I’ve heard it 3 times in the last few weeks I’ve almost got used to it. but he looks like dave. can’t get over that.

as the ripples of one hand clapping bade little man tate farewell back up to sheffield or wherever they come from I just picked sheffield because that’s probably true which in fact it is, so the strangely empty pit began to swell slightly. and then a bit more. and then a bit more. but nothing too menacing. lots of short little stoners behaving themselves which I hadn’t really expected I thought at least there’d be a travelling minibus full of lacostes from wolverhampton openly flauting the smoking ban. oh. here they are. much like the banter that befell the 6 foot 7 young man at the enemy, this lot took ownership of their immediate area with some carefully placed ribbing of hapless students and middle class ‘dads picking me up after’ types who were no match for their untrained wit. their sword of glib swathed a path through the throng like a pencil flitting over a betting slip until they found their nirvana – a spot a bit to the left, behind some nervous teenage first timers. truth be told, these are the kind of people you like to see at the uea because they open their mouths occasionally and are wantonly up for it. without them each performance ends up being greeted by the faint sound of someone in the offices upstairs buttering a snackajack and a 12-year-old wooping like a girl, which they are.

by his own admission, the singer was feeling ‘a little rof’ as he had a throat infection and the first number was slightly encumbered by technical spasms so it was all rather ignominious and I was wondering if top gear was repeated on bbc3 tonight when things got better largely fuelled by the lager and brandy washing around on stage and notwithstanding the washing-up water sound system in the lower common room it all got subliminally marvellous. by the the time they cracked into ‘either way’ I was barking along with the wolves stoners, with my best EEVER WAYE, EEVER WAYE and the occasional I LUV YA spontaneous outburst and by now I really had no care whether I looked like an embarrassing dad at a wedding disco because I had the epiphinal feeling that them up there wouldn’t care. I mean, they were largely off their faces, but we were avin a parrtee.

incidentally, the guitarist who suffered good natured finger-poking throughout for being a miserable perfectionist was a one-man niagra of sound who should be stuck on a huge column somewhere and gold plated. he was smiling about it all by the end, like we all were.

NME 2007

October 15, 2007

alright norwich la, I ope lethal bizzle warmed you up good and proper yeah <small woop> we’re from liverpool 1 2 3 4. what? warmed you up? it’s 10 past 8. and anyway, since when should it have been wombats/milburn/holloways/pigeon detectives/other bunch of students on after lethal bizzle? I’m about as interested in the wombats as I was about the mystery jets who opened the NME tour last year who I missed because I was at a parent’s evening or something but lethal bizzle sounded like he might at least be a bit interesting even if he does just kind of shout about running away from the filth after he’s crashed his joyride up that london or wherever it is. but never mind

its not busy in the Lethargic Cramped Ruin like it was last year either, but that’s because there isn’t the same wet pants frenzy around the enemy as there was around arctic monkeys so even though its chocked up with 15 year olds there’s a satisfyingly healthy contingent of stoners and boners who look like they might have a fight later, which, coincidentally, they do. even as the wombats tread pedestrianly through their me too english eccentricities there’s loads of space to wander down to the sticky wooden floor. you’d even say it was a bit empty really. the thing about the NME tours is that they don’t turn up the house lights in between the acts, so you’re never quite sure how many people are in and what their demographic is, but in the main, everybody is short tonight, except for the occasional 6 foot 7 20 year old who’s getting lambasted by small groups of carlsberg exports for just being tall which isn’t funny really but they’ve got that pissed-up local turn of phase that I still think is funny even when they’re lobbing a pint of watery lager at your head.

after the adverts for the NME have scrolled around on the projected backdrop about a million times and we’re all wondering what the shock might be about the new radiohead album the lights that there are go dim and there’s a small ripple of enemy, enemy, enemy, after which more projection, but very loud this time, and that cleverly pitched (old idea, new audience) railway station noticeboard rattle begins as it flips through a number of provincial towns until it finally settles on norwich, which elicits a deafening “norwich, har, look, norwich, thass good hint ut” and then today’s date. it’s cringingly basic, but splendid all the same. and then the jam come on stage and do in the city a few times.

if last year was faux shakespearian ponderings from sheffield and reading, then this year is cmon norwich lets see what you’re made of up for it no f**kin abaht from the heart of the empire, erm, coventry. the enemy are quite angry about stuff, mainly inner city decay and provincial apathy and the loss of identity and the hopelessness of youth and slashed seat affairs and travelling on buses etc., but they are wantonly uplifting and undeniably up for it. I’d tell you more about them, but their web site is currently just a black page with nothing on, which is probably appropriate. I mean, they are the jam reincarnate, but without the red wellerism. not sure what else you would need to know. they shouted most of the album and there were nice fights going on between delirious stoners and petrified students in the circle of death. the sound was terrible and it was all over by about 10:30. I watched a programme about sharks and hitler when I got home.

travelogue 30

October 11, 2007

its got to be here somewhere, I mean, this is a campsite. so is that. I can see the river from here, its just down there. hang on, lets go back in the town.

its a peculiarity of the towns on the river dordogne that all the best riverside spots are taken by bloody campsites. except it doesn’t necessarily tell you that, as you’re walking around with a cool box full of jambon and brie, in your map de tourisme, which is clamped in your teeth. “but look, that’s (point with nose) a bridge and there’s (point with foot) the river, but that’s (point with pelvis, to concerned looks from passers-by) another campsite. we can’t get over the bridge unless we’ve got the right canoe with us.” as it turns out, we’re slightly in the wrong place on the map, which isn’t surprising, as its not really a map, more a ‘representation’ of the geographical features, but done in thick orange lines and symbols without any explanation. “but surely that’s the abbey, there. look, there’s a cross. no, wait, maybe that’s the hospital. anyway, look, we’re here, and that’s the river. no, hang on, its the scenic walk, but its blue. BLUE.” when we realise we’ve been upside down for an hour, the cheese is ‘a bit runny’ (“I don’t care how f**king runny it is”, etc.), and the baguettes have escaped from the bits of paper wrapped around them and keep slithering off like wheaty snakes, landing in the conveniently placed plops of poodle poo, from which, you are never far, around here.

we finally find the bit by the river ‘like what we saw on the postcard in that shop daddy’ and lo, there’s even a bit of grass and a few benches. after lunch, we were entertained by a nuclear fallout ice lolly which could actually bend and was a nasty shade of of blue (‘that’ll never come off his tshirt you know. why did you buy that?’) and we just sat around for a good while, watching the campsite on the other side of the river and wondering what it would be like sharing that patch of ground with those other people in the caravans pulled up right next to you, even though they’re quite friendly and would probably offer to take your children to a play park somewhere for a few hours. we decided it would be godawful, and then headed back to the villa we’d paid about a thousand pounds for, but hey, it’s got a brick barbeque (which we never used).

poke the editors

October 2, 2007

I’ll be out at about 8 but that’s fine so I can do that I’ll be quick ok get ready lets try it you see its the same both times except the three notes at the end so you see where he’s put the fingers on the different strings that’s what you play yes you see you can do it its just a bit different at the end don’t worry its a lesson its not a test I didn’t learn to do it this way I just made it up so that’s why I don’t know where ‘A’ is so you should do it this way there thats right anyway little and often little and often its only been three weeks right? don’t worry. it doesn’t matter. yes, I need to go out now. I’ll just do the washing up

I expect it’ll be better this time because they’ll have got his guitar up in the mix so it’ll sound right and anyway they’ll put on a show with big lights and bits of mdf or something so whatever it’ll be busy anyway so I want to get there soon enough to tailgate some drab couple in matching latitude shirts onto the floor just one pint these shoes aren’t quite right I don’t know why I changed them the other ones were fine no one ever sees your feet that’s what I always say its true why am I wearing these then. why’s the car park so busy must be one of the literary evenings here as well look there’s half of mill hill road trying to work out how the car park barrier works that must be why there’s nowhere to park in this poxy car park oh its alright right back here that’s fine I’ll just have to run at the end.

it’s not that busy I’ll have that space at the bar please no I always have a ten pound note everyone has a ten pound note carlsberg that’ll be it for the night its only half eight who the hell are these sub-arcade fireites all I can hear is “that cello player she’s fit” I haven’t got my glasses on not getting them out now oh that bass player is annoying that song is alright your voice is terrible that’s over. good. so come on then. hurrah. and there they are got more hair of course straight into whatever that song’s called oh straight into another never really sure that’s a good idea and bullets right ok done that now.

silence. little clap. beery leer.

and that’s the strength of it for the next hour I mean they’re good and everything but there’s only so many times you can step up to the monitor and pull that clown face although I like it when you all get mental and swing around like apes but I think you’re just pretending really and what’s with your guitar again I can’t hear it at all this time stupid. “thanks” “yey” “you’ve been very welcoming” in the same way a dentist’s waiting room is welcoming but you’re at the uea what do you expect. “that ricky ross from deacon blue, he really knows how to work a crowd I mean there was no atmosphere” which somebody actually said as we were walking out which made me kind of want to kick her but I was distracted by the fact that she said there was no atmosphere when they sound a bit like joy division. crossed with camel. or something. I won the guess the encore competition I was having with myself in my head. and then I get home and watched the andromeda strain. it just gets rained away. fancy that.

travelogue 29

October 1, 2007

“no, we’ll go tomorrow morning. we’ll get up early and we’ll get there before everyone else does. well. look at the queue. no we can’t, its raining. r-a-i-n-i-n-g. can you see? anyway, its four o’clock now. let’s just go back to the house and have a nice cup of tea and then we can work out what we’re doing tomorrow. yes we can come here tomorrow. yes. YES.”

not the day before had we been sat by the cafe pool watching our skin peel in the thirty-five degree heat reading about rupert everett’s passage and feeling very pleased with ourselves when up this morning and window opened with a flourish to see a lank of low cloud lapping around the hillside and very nearly piddling into the bedroom whereupon we unpacked the kag-in-a-bags and determined today would officially be not like it was yesterday I mean cold it might rain, yes r-a-i-n. so we trit-trotted off to the nearest enormous hole in the ground and expected it might be a bit busy at this time of year but I mean it won’t be that bad.

“look, it starts there, goes round there and then it doubles back round that tree there and see, look, it goes back round again and there’s the end, right over there.” “I don’t know, at least an hour.” “an hour? more like two hours.” “two hours?” “yes, look, those people were there when we went to the cafe for that drink (plus that mysterious extra tourist drink inserted in the bill), and now they’re just there.” “who?” “them.” “who?” “them. THEM. oh, je m’excuse, pardon.” “right. that’s it then. what are we going to do instead? its too early to go back now and there’s nothing else around here.” “there’s that insect place.” “insect place?” “yes. that insect place we passed up the road.” “what, you mean, like a hive or something?” “nooo. that insect place. insectopedia. insectipedo. insecticidia. something.” “oh, that ‘insectopia‘ place? with the huge insect outside it?” “yeees. that place.” “oh, well, that’s not going to very interesting is it?” “WELL WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST THEN?”

in the end, insidopia insectopia was a reasonable way to spend the hour you’ve got when the place you really came to see just down the road is overflowing with travelling badgers and gypsies. there’s insects in there. which is kind of interesting. I guess. on the way out there was a small shop that sold huge battery-powered bugs made in ipswich that wheel around the floor blarting out inane playground taunts at well-over-threshold volume which, naturally, we bought two of, and spent the evening watching them wheel around the living room floor, blarting out inane playground taunts at well-over-threshold volume, until one of them got stuck under a foot by mistake and its wiry guts fell out yes we can get you another one, tomorrow, maybe.

bright and early we’re off to a hole in the ground. its porridge weather, so we clad ourselves in nylon and pile into the megane scenic and sing songs from joseph although I’m secretly singing songs from manic street preachers in my head but nobody knows and there’s an inner calm from doing that that makes me almost drive into a river. as we pull up, a queue is forming, but that’s just for the pleasure of weeing into a hole in the ground (a different hole), so we pass straight on to the ticket office and I say something in french that I’m assuming is correct and lo, I get five tickets for the hole in the ground and we’re off kids, come on, we can go in the shop afterwards, oh, they’ve got those bugs too, great.

descending the slippery metalwork while holding at least a couple of hoods the air gets musty and damp and so we overtake the couch party from derbyshire and everything’s alright again. there’s not so much as a queuing system for the underground boats, more of a ‘put your hand up if you think they’ve asked you to and apologetically jump the queue for no reason’ thing going on, so I stick my hand up for no reason and we’re ushered onto a flat-bottomed wreck of a pretend boat affair which is supposed to transport us 2 kilometers or something along a freezing bottomless river to the largest cavern in europe (all caverns are ‘the largest in europe’) and back again, which, in the end, it does, and very interesting it is down there as well, but I’m not going to tell you about it because its teatime. you can look for yourself.

Things what I writ