Tuesday, May 30, 2006

On Saturday evening, a few of the Grumpy Man gang and myself were asked to play a some tunes at benefit gig for the NO2ID campaign group here in Bristol. It was a strange evening featuring some interesting and some not so interesting music, a speech from our local MP Stephen Williams and of course some top notch tunes from the Grumpy Gang. The organisers were able to swell their rather meagre funds by around £200, which was pretty good news for them.

A couple things I forgot to mention previously. I recently read Everyman by Philip Roth, it’s a pretty slim novel, in fact it could probably be reading in one sitting if you live the sort of life where you have time to do that sort of thing. Anyway, I thought it was great, it perfectly captured the way we unthinkingly push ourselves into corners, cutting ourselves off from those that care for us with a mixture of stupidity, carelessness and fear. I also forgot to mention how fab Micah P. Hinson was when he played with Richard Hawley last week. He burns with real intensity, looking forward to a new record from him.

Over the course of the weekend we’ve spent a bit of time with one of Orynthia’s uncles. He is the captain of one of those huge ships that move coal around the world. This weekend his boat was dropping of a massive amount of Russian coal at Portbury Dock. This afternoon we got to look around the ship and hang out for a while in his Captains Quarters.

Not quite as glamorous as you might imagine, it was still cute in faded glamour kitsch 60’s sort of way. I’m not very good on boats, so was quite happy that this one was securely docked, especially when we discussed how the sea could throw around even a monster ship, such as the one we were on. Being a sea for months on end is the strangest way to earn a living that I can imagine, it’s certainly not an easy life.

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