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(As will be obvious, the following was written several years ago and lay lost and forgotten (some may think, rightly) in an untroubled backwater of the Tursa computer. Some may be offended by a certain political incorrectness prevalent. It should be remembered this journal was written last century when views now unfashionable or even repugnant were more commonplace. This journal is published purely as a historical document...)
The day starts less then perfectly. For some reason I have read my Eurostar ticket incorrectly and arrive at the station an hour before I needed. This gives me the chance to slurp a grand cafe latté in Waterloo Stations "Latin Quarter". Well, Costa Coffee (opposite platform 12) if you are less the poet and want to split hairs. I use the time to ponder the sense of letting possible war criminal Karl Blake stay in my flat while I am away. I grasp at the vain and some may say naïve hope that he will just water the plants and not stain the carpet. My worries in fact prove to be unfounded as, due to either therapy or medication (or both), I eventually return to find the plants alive and no body parts in the fridge. None of the local (what are laughingly termed) children are missing either. Well, you can't have everything.
I also use this spare time to perfect my Scottish accent. With great timing I will arrive in Paris on the day after naughty boys have been playing Saracens and Infidels in Marseilles to a World Cup soundtrack by our very own Chumbawumba. Still, in mitigation, I believe that band are enough to drive anyone be they English, French or Arab to violence. Anyway, I have decided my name is now "Wee Tam McWakeford" from Taggetville, especially if those loveable scamps from the CRS ask. The accent needs working on, but it's already better then that lovely Mel Gibsons in Braveheart or the rather less lovely but considerably richer David Gibson from World Serpent.
I expect to be met at the station by the kids from Skald. Hope is probably a better word as Skald can be days not hours late. The lovely Sowilla has a touch of the cous-cous, so I work on my anti-towel head quips I admit this is far from gallant, but it will keep me in good with the CRS and roughly 70 % of Johnny Frog. I am a firm believer that a man can show no greater love then to lay down his friends for his life.
My train leaves on time and is two-thirds empty. Apart from two fit gals (who, although supporting Chile, obviously come from the Home Counties), I am surrounded by Americans. Thankfully their predictable initial loud and nausea-inducing cheerfulness is cut short by jet lag. Either that, or Eurostar thoughtfully laced their cola with downers.
The train thrusts into the Channel Tunnel. A remarkable feat of engineering erotica, which I feel is a direct invitation to some prudish Old Testament sky god to do something unpleasant. Ten minutes in, we grind to a halt with a sound like a vacuum cleaner dying.
If this is not bad enough, a chinless prat is interviewing passengers for BBC radio. Sensibly, this bespectacled tax-funded fool stays clear after a Wakey glare. He takes the safer option of waking the gormless yanks, who, being Americans, are happy to be asked and give their opinion on everything. Thankfully, Eurostar change the batteries and in a blink of an eye we are in the flat countryside that surrounds the horror that is Calais.
I suppose I should by now have explained that I am travelling to play a solo concert that my trumpet player in Sol Invictus and arranger in L'Orchestre Noir, the exotically named Eric, has organised. I have arranged also to travel with Skald at the following weekend to Lyon to do a radio session and interview. Then I am back in London for two days, which is just enough time to fumigate the presence of Blake and have a rehearsal. Then it's off to Stockholm to play on a boat as part of a festival to celebrate Stockholm being this year's "City of Culture".
Amusingly I am informed by the panicking promoter that their own "rave police!" have discovered a tiny amount of dope and a CS gas canister which is in fact legal in Germany where the boat hails from. Thanks to the locale media hysteria, "Trio Noir" are now playing an infamous Guns n' drugs rave instead of an old tub run by hippies. Well, that's we Folk Noir Fascists for you! We will go anywhere for Guns n' drugs! In fact, this may well be the title of the next L'Orchestre Noir release.
In reality, all turns out ok. The concert goes well despite some of the crew having a distinctly crusty look that is not to my liking. I tell some I don't like the cut of their jib, but they just smile and point to the WC!
I do discover however that these are honest East Bosch types and not like the thieving unwashed rabble that seem so prevalent in England. When all is said and done, this lot are at least trying to do something other then juggle, walk on stilts, face paint terrified children or beg with menaces. The boat crew, some of whom were fisherman when the boat was a Marxist/Leninist-fishing trawler, liked the set. As a couple of them were only slightly smaller then Arnie Schwarzenegger this was something of a relief.
Anyway, despite the dreadlocks, I say good luck to them, and I hope they survive the best efforts of the paranoid Stockholm media and state to bankrupt them. Now if only it had been a U-boat!
But this is still in the future.
I stay at the house of Skald. Their neighbours, two lesbians, commit the crime of naming their cat "Kiki"--shudder! Sensibly he spends more time next door with us were he is know by his proper name "Fat Maurice". He is a good old boy and stands his ground against the other cat in the hood, a Mac the Knife character known as Felix. Much howling can be heard at night as the boulevard runs with the sound of switchpaw fights. After days playing cards and drinking heavily with Maurice and his snooty Moll "Prudence", I am ready to strut the stage. The Paris concert is in a small but nice club in Pigal, a district given a kind of charm by the menagerie of Whores who disport themselves. It seems particularly popular amongst transvestite and/or transsexual members (perhaps not the right word) of the trade. The spectrum goes from the stunningly (and disturbingly so) beautiful at one end of the spectrum, to what surreally looks like a vision of me if I wore a frock and make up (anymore) at the other. It's an acquired taste, me thinks!
I discover Eric downstairs having a nervous breakdown due to playing in his own group and also promoting. Never a good idea! The audience is small, both in size and stature (well, they are French), but civilised, as my Gallic audience generally tends to be. They not only stay awake throughout an hour of me whinging to a washboard backing guitar but actually ask for more. Gawd bless them! Quite a number seem to know all the words, something I have not yet mastered! A number of rather attractive gals are present. I know it's not politically correct to comment or even notice this sort of thing but there you have it. A willowy Indian lass sits at my feet, sadly also at the feet of her equally willowy black glad boyfriend. When will these girlies learn that portly late thirty-something's are the way to go.
A few days later finds Skald and me on the long drive south. Of course the weather is blisteringly hot and, of course Skald's car does not have air conditioning. They foolishly seem to prefer spending their money on ridiculous occult jewellery. Admittedly much of it sold to them by me. The pesky sword of Damocles strikes again! Such are the myriad contradictions of modern consumer capitalism. After taking two hours to get out of Paris due to "la lock du grid", we hit the open motorway. This is private and charges a hefty toll but keeps slow poor people out of our way. Obviously Liberty, Equality, Fraternity stops when the internal combustion engine is switched on.
The people at SOL-FM (it's true) are young, friendly and well-mannered, and I even forego fiddling the expenses, such is their fresh faced charm and youthful idealism.
All seems to go well as I lie and bluster through the interview and knock out three ditties including "In A Garden Green", the title track of my next Album (available almost no where in early 1999) for the good listeners of Lyon.
We return to Paris the next morning exhausted and road raddled but pleased with how it has gone. Skald are playing a couple of concerts in Paris. The new addition of a cello played by the slender (apart from being ten months pregnant) and charming Birket whose Prussian good looks...oh yes and her cello playing, adds a new dimension to the admittedly minimalist sound of Skald.
I plan a visit to Mason Wakey, my southern abode, the ground floor of which has been invaded by termites and they have to be liquidated with extreme prejudice forthwith.
The Paris live CD will help in a small way with the destruction of theses least useful (after Scousers) of all God's creatures. In the middle Of August a hired killer from Murder Incorporated went and carried out the contract. This meant having the wooden floor ripped out and, once he has pumped the place full of foul and no doubt cancer-giving chemicals, a concrete floor will be laid. A medieval well has been discovered beneath the termite-decimated floor, which will be glassed over and lit. It will add an extra ambience to this already haunted house. It should also be a good place to dump the bodies of "travelling folk I caught and slew". I have to make up my money somehow, as the feudal robber barons of World Serpent have increased their tithes in what in any civilised country would be classed as daylight robbery. Still I am not one to brood on thoughts of vengeance...!
I arrive in time to view the visual splendour of market day where a fabulous menagerie of gnarled peasants display their wares. Don't get me wrong, I am all for them. In fact I think they and the wolf should be re-introduce to not-so-merry England pronto. I am all for the peasantry, be they gnarled or not. They are much preferable to most of the "ex-pats" that try to turn this fine area into Home counties avec more sun and cheap vin.
I laden myself with fromage and assorted goodies including some chocolate for the web beast some know as Renée. Her increasingly banshee-like demands for toothsome morsels (and the countless phone calls I spend placating this half Hebrew hellcat) threatens to bankrupt me as much as the murder of the termites. Woe is moi! Still, it is too late to complain about it now. I deck myself with runes and wild garlic and play Wagner and hope this will be enough to counter act her rabbinical wrath.
I am ensconced in my bedroom, which seems the only habitable place left. I practice some leadenly plodding bass lines for the next L'Orchestre Noir CD and work on material for the aforementioned Sol Invictus release.
I sip a glass of vin rouge while sitting by the river which is but a minute (or less when it rains) from my door. This beverage is for purely medicinal and holistic reasons, as my French doctor says it is beneficial to my liver, and who am I, a mere layman to argue. While imbibing the liver-improving qualities of a cheeky Bergerac, I remember that I have been ordered by Skald's rotund Harpist to return bearing Canard Susucson. For any vegetarians amongst you, these are dark, nearly black sausages made from duck meat that has been stored in its own fat. They are quite wonderful and some have even inferred they may be better then the succulent "tofu" so beloved of "Tree hugging" crypto-Marxists whose taste buds are re-educated against the taste crimes of being elitist and judgmental. This claim of canard superiority must be fascist meatist propaganda. Still, they are very tasty and recommended by me in the event that there is a dearth of tofu or Soya treats, as sadly is the case in this blighted part of France. A few ducks who have not been promoted by the locals to sausagedom glide majestically by and greet me with a cheery quack. Ah, to quote Louie Armstrong, "What a wonderful world".