Last night played a wonderful concert under the shadow of a mountain, with river noise, in the middle of nowhere (*nr Maniago, Italy), by the Mushroom Studio, a largeish farmhouse now a music recording and sleeping space, with a mixing desk once used by iron maiden.

I spent a good portion of saturday thinking something along the lines of "wow, mountains" from the bus and from the town and from the car and from the garden and from the balcony- really i am quite unused to them and they never fai...
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I am beginning to get bogged down with unwritten blog entries.... weblogged down, backblogs, etc etc. So I will try and give as much of the sense of my week or so in Spain with as little keystroke expenditure as possible, and hopeflly no more completely terrible puns.

Spain was really to be a double-edged friendly sword, with half the time spent in te hills of Catalunia at the very secretive Kuiperfest, and half the time spent with friends in the very much more easily accessible comfy suburb o...
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The guitar I am travelling with cost 17 pounds from a brighton flea market. Here in a video recorded by Seb, the lovely organiser of the Lyon gig,is evidence of my new shorter hair, my current barbe, and an attempt to explain about the guitar in french, without using ´merde´as an adjective (as you will see, kids in attendance):

songs are that old devil called love, originally sung by billie holiday, and then a song of mine currently untitled in english

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6ACAlwWI...
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this is what happened on sunday night.
But first:

I arrived in Lyon on Friday to stay with Olivier and Maxime and was warmly accomodated by them and also by the town. Was taken to Lyonnaise gay pride where I tried to engage locals and voyagers in poorly worded conversation, and then recreate Jonathan Richman's 'I was dancing in the lesbian bar' in the queue for a lesbian bar. 

On Sunday I was beginning to struggle with some run-downedness that had accompanied the weather changing and becoming ve...
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Today incorporated two of my favourite things: lizards and ruins. The lizards moved a little bit like stop motion animation, while the ruins stayed mostly still.
see also: singing billie holiday for french hen parties, pealing cathedral bells, hillsides, gold leaf
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I decided not to walk to Newhaven from Brighton, having been advised by everyone that a day of travelling and trudging would not be best prefaced by a morning of trudging. I got lost on the way, got off at the wrong station, qnd had to be driven by ferry staff to the correct check-in.
Still, managed to make the ferry in fairly easy time and passed the journey with Simon, an organist who had worked at Perth Cathedral for 13 years. He advised me of the benefits of laying newspaper on the bed of ...
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