The Most Massive Meditation Yet

To begin at the beginning of what would logically follow the end of the last plot based blog post:


So, on Thursday we showed up at the Hope & Anchor for our last London gig, and our final show with the talented Mr. Vaughn. Well, they stop us at the door and tell us we shouldn't be the equiptment in, only one of us. Why, we ask kindly? Because the place has lost all power and the show might be cancelled. Also, they say, grab a drink - they are giving them away free until the freezers stop being freezy. Turns out the show was being moved down the street. The headliner Tom Hingley (the voice of The Inspiral Carpets!) was to go on first, us second.





In the meanwhile we ate dinner at a sushi place next door with the following odd and random guests at our table:

1. Seth.
2. Ryan
3. Ben
4. Three Austrian Au Peres
5. A distant relative of mine from Nantucket i hadn't seen in 8 years and her friend from Philadelphia
6. Seth's english friend Claudia
7. A girl Lindsay, who we had met the night before and kindly gave us a ride.
8 the prospect of Tom Hingley showing up
9. two of my friends from Bristol wandering the streets nearby.

The show was a wild success. Tom Hingley set was brilliant... everyone in the club was sort of astonished that the man himself from The Inspiral Carpets was there doing an acoustic set for us. Brilliant. The Austrian Au Peres even left with tshirts.



Then we headed off to Goring town...midway between Reading and Oxford. But we got to reading, intending to transfer trains to go to Goring when we find out that all trains out of Reading have been suspended due to flooding. So we go outside and i play on my melodica as Seth searched feverishly for a route to the land of Goring.

Here I am with a Melodica (not while being stranded, but still a beautiful photo)



And here's Seth lying on the damp cement as we figure out how the hell to get out of Reading...



We do manage to get a train eventualy and land ourselves at a beautiful bed and brekfast run by the kind and maternal Francis, who made us tea and drove us into town to play at the Goring Unplugged. We had been told that afternoon that the Goring festival the next day (the regatta! lord, the regatta!) was cancelled due to a high and dangerous river and because when they put the power generators in the field to power the music...they began to sink. Oh what a damp and soggy country. The earth is reminiscent of life cereal left in milk for too long...bloated and overgrown with excess liquid.

But, goring unplugged was a beautiful event. Hosted in the town hall, which would be home the next day to a shoe sale (inhabitants of goring, now go wild!). The audience was as quiet as you can imagine. Even the listeners breaths seemed to be contained, or atleast timed with the pusles of the music so that they were completely inaudible.

Coughs were taboo,
Sneezes were too.

We made a good number of friends, good friends. Small town friends. The type of friends that you could go out to dinner with and never shift in your chair for lack of conversation. In fact, the next day we went out to dinner with these wonderful new friends and fed ourselves with enough suculant food to kill a small horse. It was wonderful. We went to bed happy.

Since the Regatta was unfortunately cancelled, we decided to have a festival of our own. So, we met up with Dan & Jon Clifton (the two men responsible for introducing us to the Light Years and getting us across the sea) as well as the man behind Goring Unplugged, Chris Hawes, for an afternoon jam session by the river full of folk covers and singalongs.



The next day we high-tailed it to Bristol, it only took us 6 hours (should have taken 2). About half the stations in the country are flooded. So when we took a train to oxford, all subsequent trains in and out were canceled. We then sought out a bus, but only one bus runs to bristol a day and this bus runs at the bitter our of 9am. So we had to take a bus to london, and then from lonon meander on to bristol.

It is like trying to travel from Philadelphia to New York but having to go to Des Moines on the way because New Jersey is under water.

Good lord, have i typed this much? Tonight we play Mr Wolf's in Bristol with the ever-so-awesome Bizali. Hoorah!

-ben