England, part this is getting ridiculous
Saturday 2 June
Venn festival! Tim's already written about it in pretty good depth here (scroll down to Saturday).
We saw some good live techno (Robert Logan), dull guitar drone (Yellow Swans... honestly, it took me a few minutes to realise their set had begun), and a teenaged white girl who could beatbox like nobody's fucking business (Bellatrix). Quadrode, billed as a Goldfrapp/Portishead side project, were up next. I'd been looking forward to seeing what they were like, since I was utterly obsessed with Portishead for several years of my adolescence. Sadly they were little more than an improvisational jazz quintet that had been unrealistically hyped up. There weren't even any trademark eerie electronic sound effects.
Luckily Safety Scissors came on immediately afterward and saved the day. I think I learned about him from this handy electronic music guide - play around with it sometime when you have a few hours to kill. He played a solid 40 minutes of danceable glitchy minimal house/techno... sounds like an oxymoron, but it was really good stuff that exceeded my expectations.
We stuck around for Justice Yeldham & The Dynamic Ribbon Device, which is basically a guy who holds a pane of glass with an embedded microphone up to his face and plays it with his mouth and hands. Bizarre but SO FUCKING AWESOME. The resulting sound was this wonderful ecstatic electronic noise that sounded something like a cross between a loud vacuum cleaner and a souped-up racecar shifting gears, and he finished his short set (less than 20 minutes) by biting chunks off the pane of glass and smashing the remainder against his head. His nose and lips were dripping blood by the time it was over. It was the most punk rock and/or metal thing I've ever seen, and it was neither punk nor metal. I repeat: so. fucking. AWESOME.
That was pretty much the zenith of the festival for us. Afterward we saw some weird Finnish band (but not the good kind of weird), the douchebag from the Sugarcubes who was always trying to upstage Björk, and missed a potentially good musician because we couldn't find the venue. So we settled for the final act of the night: Spring Heel Jack with one of the members of Spiritualized. It sounded promising enough - drum'n'bass with live guitar and drums - but after they played the same note for about 15 minutes we got tired of waiting for them to not be boring. So we left for Tim's friend Nick's housewarming party, which was just a short walk away. I did the wallflower thing while everyone commented on how much Tim looked like Jesus.
Sunday 3 June
Almost missed our train to Bridgwater (Tim's hometown), but thankfully it was held up at the station for about half an hour. Tim's dad picked us up and took us to their house, where I met Tim's mum and sister Libby and was fed lunch. We piled into the car and set off to Brean Down for a nature hike - little did I know, Tim's parents were long-time members of RSPB and knew quite a bit about the region's flora, fauna, and natural history. We made a brief stop at the information booth and joked about the pictorial representation of dogs running off the cliffs before making our ascent. It was easily the equivalent of climbing ten flights of stairs.
Oh - I saw tits! I was so excited. Other less suggestively named birds seen there included swallows (er... okay, that's the one exception), housemartins, jackdaws, magpies, rock pipits, stonechats, goldfinches, goosanders (aka common mergansers), peregrine falcons, and an oystercatcher. Tim's dad said we saw a wheatear, but I wasn't able to make a positive identification.
After walking the entire loop of the down we headed back to the house, driving very carefully because there was no seatbelt for where I was sitting and they didn't want to launch any projectile Americans through their front windshield. They kept us for dinner - tea! damn, I keep doing that - where I discovered Yorkshire pudding and was very disappointed upon learning I couldn't have any. Feeding me was no problem for them, as Tim's dad is vegetarian (how awesome is that?!), so I partook in the nut roast, veggies, and parsnips, which were surprisingly tasty.
They took us back to the train station; we said our goodbyes and headed back to Bristol. On the walk back to the house Tim explained the concept of pulling. (I've determined it's roughly equivalent to hooking up.) I packed for the trip back and Tim gave me a flask that the previous tennants of the house had left behind. I protested slightly, stating that I don't drink enough to justify owning one, but it was recently put to good use.
Monday 4 June
Learned that the phrase "super tickly piece of hair" makes me laugh uncontrollably at 5:30 in the morning. Left the house early and caught the train to Temple Meads, where we ran into Tim's dad on his way to work. They waited with me for the shuttle to arrive and I hugged them both goodbye. Yes, I remembered to take my suitcase off the bus this time.
After buying some last-minute British sweets and waiting for the delayed plane I began the just-as-long-but-slightly-less-boring flight home. It was daylight for the entire duration of the return trip, so I was able to see cool things like the rivers and fields of Ireland, the landscape of Canada's eastern seaboard (I think we passed over Newfoundland/St Johns and Nova Scotia, but I wasn't really keeping track), and HUNDREDS of icebergs throughout the North Atlantic. Holy crap.
Do I have pictures? Of course! I'll let you know when I've uploaded them.
Mom picked me up from the airport so I didn't have to make the 2+ hour train trip home. Thanks mommy!
One thing I like about travelling is that it confirms as well as falsifies stereotypes. Example: the English countryside really does have cows everywhere.
Counterexample: I confess, I was pleasantly surprised by how nice everyone (except Martin) was to me, even with my horrible sin of hailing from the States. Though Janie did express some disappointment in the fact that I didn't have the pronounced "Noo Joizee" accent made all the more infamous by The Sopranos.
It was a great trip, and in hindsight too short. But it gave me a taste of life in another place and, most importantly, got me away from here for a while.
Venn festival! Tim's already written about it in pretty good depth here (scroll down to Saturday).
We saw some good live techno (Robert Logan), dull guitar drone (Yellow Swans... honestly, it took me a few minutes to realise their set had begun), and a teenaged white girl who could beatbox like nobody's fucking business (Bellatrix). Quadrode, billed as a Goldfrapp/Portishead side project, were up next. I'd been looking forward to seeing what they were like, since I was utterly obsessed with Portishead for several years of my adolescence. Sadly they were little more than an improvisational jazz quintet that had been unrealistically hyped up. There weren't even any trademark eerie electronic sound effects.
Luckily Safety Scissors came on immediately afterward and saved the day. I think I learned about him from this handy electronic music guide - play around with it sometime when you have a few hours to kill. He played a solid 40 minutes of danceable glitchy minimal house/techno... sounds like an oxymoron, but it was really good stuff that exceeded my expectations.
We stuck around for Justice Yeldham & The Dynamic Ribbon Device, which is basically a guy who holds a pane of glass with an embedded microphone up to his face and plays it with his mouth and hands. Bizarre but SO FUCKING AWESOME. The resulting sound was this wonderful ecstatic electronic noise that sounded something like a cross between a loud vacuum cleaner and a souped-up racecar shifting gears, and he finished his short set (less than 20 minutes) by biting chunks off the pane of glass and smashing the remainder against his head. His nose and lips were dripping blood by the time it was over. It was the most punk rock and/or metal thing I've ever seen, and it was neither punk nor metal. I repeat: so. fucking. AWESOME.
That was pretty much the zenith of the festival for us. Afterward we saw some weird Finnish band (but not the good kind of weird), the douchebag from the Sugarcubes who was always trying to upstage Björk, and missed a potentially good musician because we couldn't find the venue. So we settled for the final act of the night: Spring Heel Jack with one of the members of Spiritualized. It sounded promising enough - drum'n'bass with live guitar and drums - but after they played the same note for about 15 minutes we got tired of waiting for them to not be boring. So we left for Tim's friend Nick's housewarming party, which was just a short walk away. I did the wallflower thing while everyone commented on how much Tim looked like Jesus.
Sunday 3 June
Almost missed our train to Bridgwater (Tim's hometown), but thankfully it was held up at the station for about half an hour. Tim's dad picked us up and took us to their house, where I met Tim's mum and sister Libby and was fed lunch. We piled into the car and set off to Brean Down for a nature hike - little did I know, Tim's parents were long-time members of RSPB and knew quite a bit about the region's flora, fauna, and natural history. We made a brief stop at the information booth and joked about the pictorial representation of dogs running off the cliffs before making our ascent. It was easily the equivalent of climbing ten flights of stairs.
Oh - I saw tits! I was so excited. Other less suggestively named birds seen there included swallows (er... okay, that's the one exception), housemartins, jackdaws, magpies, rock pipits, stonechats, goldfinches, goosanders (aka common mergansers), peregrine falcons, and an oystercatcher. Tim's dad said we saw a wheatear, but I wasn't able to make a positive identification.
After walking the entire loop of the down we headed back to the house, driving very carefully because there was no seatbelt for where I was sitting and they didn't want to launch any projectile Americans through their front windshield. They kept us for dinner - tea! damn, I keep doing that - where I discovered Yorkshire pudding and was very disappointed upon learning I couldn't have any. Feeding me was no problem for them, as Tim's dad is vegetarian (how awesome is that?!), so I partook in the nut roast, veggies, and parsnips, which were surprisingly tasty.
They took us back to the train station; we said our goodbyes and headed back to Bristol. On the walk back to the house Tim explained the concept of pulling. (I've determined it's roughly equivalent to hooking up.) I packed for the trip back and Tim gave me a flask that the previous tennants of the house had left behind. I protested slightly, stating that I don't drink enough to justify owning one, but it was recently put to good use.
Monday 4 June
Learned that the phrase "super tickly piece of hair" makes me laugh uncontrollably at 5:30 in the morning. Left the house early and caught the train to Temple Meads, where we ran into Tim's dad on his way to work. They waited with me for the shuttle to arrive and I hugged them both goodbye. Yes, I remembered to take my suitcase off the bus this time.
After buying some last-minute British sweets and waiting for the delayed plane I began the just-as-long-but-slightly-less-boring flight home. It was daylight for the entire duration of the return trip, so I was able to see cool things like the rivers and fields of Ireland, the landscape of Canada's eastern seaboard (I think we passed over Newfoundland/St Johns and Nova Scotia, but I wasn't really keeping track), and HUNDREDS of icebergs throughout the North Atlantic. Holy crap.
Do I have pictures? Of course! I'll let you know when I've uploaded them.
Mom picked me up from the airport so I didn't have to make the 2+ hour train trip home. Thanks mommy!
One thing I like about travelling is that it confirms as well as falsifies stereotypes. Example: the English countryside really does have cows everywhere.
Counterexample: I confess, I was pleasantly surprised by how nice everyone (except Martin) was to me, even with my horrible sin of hailing from the States. Though Janie did express some disappointment in the fact that I didn't have the pronounced "Noo Joizee" accent made all the more infamous by The Sopranos.
It was a great trip, and in hindsight too short. But it gave me a taste of life in another place and, most importantly, got me away from here for a while.