I spent the last part of this night on the front deck of the Tattersails - a permanently docked barge in central London. Left arm hung over the Thames, right holding a beer. Lift my eyes and look at Parliament House and Big Ben again, illuminated favourably in the low evening light and a mass of high powered bulbs shining from below. The London Eye is to my left, Old Scotland yard is to my right, Trafalgar Square is somewhere behind it. The sky above London is a maelstrom of clouds plated in a constant golden sheen.

Florian and Christie try to convince me to share a taxi home but I decide to catch the tube, as I want some time to read my new book. There's a funky jazz quartet busking outside the Embankment station but I stick my plugs in my ears and listen to Bjork. Walking through the tunnels I pass someone playing the bagpipes, and I want to give him money - it must take skill to make such precise screeching sounds.

Waiting for the train - 15 minutes is an extraordinary long delay - I read my new book. The underground is always draped in a thin black mist, I think its brake pads or something. Nobody here seems to talk.

On the train the two tuxedoed guys opposite me have come from a wedding or ball - one clutches a cheap bottle of Italian red and the other already has pink vomit stains on his collars and cuffs. He's sleeping. After about 5 minutes he begins making drawn out retching noises, his mate tries to calm him down. I watch him vomit a bit of pink - nobody else in the carriage train takes any notice. When the train stops at Kennington the guy clutching the bottle cajoles the catatonic one out the door.

I enjoy the walk home - London is a good place to walk at night. The buildings I pass by are solid uninterrupted blocks of accommodation; series of identical flats, each ridiculously narrow and two storeys high. The more expensive flats have an extended floor going downwards. Everything is bathed in a uniform orange from the street lights. My flat - a small three bedroom affair with no water pressure in the shower, electric stove and small combined kitchen/laundry costs about 2.5K AUD per calendar month. But it's central - only a few other people I know can reasonably walk to work each day.

I get home and Albane is still awake. In the morning she drinks coffee out of a bowl (apparently this is how its done in France). Now she's drinking gin while taking a few slices off a loaf of sourdough. I'm not ready to go to bed so I grab an opened bottle of white out of the fridge and sit down to listen to the financial hardships of coming to London from the Continent.

Albane gets a call, and soon after gets up and heads out to Camden Town. I decide to turn in for the night and head up to my room, where Bob is already settled into his mattress.

Although there is no excuse for being bored in London, you do have to actively look out for things you'd be interested in, because nothing here is so unusual that you could expect to be notified of it. I'm starting to feel as though I'm waiting for something else, though.

Here's my story:

- some time ago my account got disabled. I asked 'them' why and apparently some spammer had set up some crap on my server that was spamming people.
- I got too carefree when deleting stuff that looked dodgy and accidentally deleted the files that let me write blog entries
- I only just got around to fixing it.

In other news: Sicily last weekend was awesome. Barcelona the weekend after this, then Japan for three weeks!

Things I haven't written about that I really wanted to (not in chronological order):
- Japan '06
- Prague with the Cechner family and Matty
- Germany/Oktoberfest with Shauny and Zoe
- Barcelona
- A Venice/Rome/Florence trip with Aki
- Scotland with Aki
- Dublin with Karim
- Wales with Mos/Melle/Matty
- Amsterdam with Mos/Melle/Matty
- Sicily
- Paris with Aki/Mos/Melle

Crazy times I tell you. Crazy times.

--
Paul

02-July: Added some YouTube video links (see the Björk section especially) and a 'night life' section that came to me in a distorted flashback.

26-June: I'll put some photos up some time hopefully. Until I do though, check these out:
Steve's photos
BBC 'Watch and Listen' - video performances of Glastonbury (UPDATE: not working! Instead I went through this article and added a bunch of youtube Glastonbury video links I found, especially the Björk section at the end)

Your first view of the festival as your coach peaks the final hill reveals a river of tents like confetti through the whole valley. Astute watchers would notice the bulging gray masses that are the stages poking evenly among the milieu.

What you wouldn't notice at that distance is the devolved state of humanity down in that bowl. Bleary eyed revelers struggle through almost primordeal ooze, fiercely determined to wring unforgettable experience from the very music, mud and humanity surrounding them. For four days decency, planning and consequence are relegated to memories of the trappings of the outside world.

The Venue
Flags are a Glastonbury tradition, but essential if you want anyone to find you. The taller and the funnier the better.

Mud mud mud. MUD.

Toilets. Its best if I don't spend too long talking about this, because the memory of them makes me want to retch.
We are all just sentient poop sacks. Much of the time is spent learning to deal with 175,000 poop sacks all living together. Every time I saw someone eating a curry I wanted to shout at them for being a selfish prick and making my life harder. You know the old Long Drop? Well imagine a few dozen of these jammed close together with very well lit drops. Basically a platform 5 and a half feet above a bare piece of well-lit ground. After the first day I resolved that I would never use one again. Thank fuck for mens urinals and Steve's bowel-restrictive drugs.

Its hard to describe the scope of the festival. If one in every 120 people living in Australia all gathered together in one farm, camped together and jumped up and down to the same music, you'd have the right type and sized crowd. If one could take from each of those people a list of bands that would play at their dream festival, and then average them out, you'd have the Glastonbury lineup.

The town of Glastonbury now revolves around the festival, apparently having no other real industry not derived from it.

Many stalls, enough so there are usually tolerable queues.

The Music
The following is an inventory of the bands that I remember seeing...

Day 1
Modest Mouse, Bright Eyes, Automatic, Arcade Fire
Björk (over Arctic Monkeys, Damien Marley, Damien Rice and Fat Boy Slim)

Every one of these bands was fucking awesome. Björk was the hilight of the entire festival as far as I was concerned, much to my great surprise.

Day 2
Soil and the Pimp Sessions
The Bees, Dirty Pretty Things, Lilly allen, Get Cape Wear Cape Fly

John Fogerty,
Iggy and the Stooges (over The Killers)

A day of discovery, I guess. Never heard of Soil, The Bees or Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly but they were all very entertaining. Soil and the Pimp Sessions at the Jazz tent especially had an incredible aura of energy about them, so I bought a CD and got em to sign it.

I didn't even know John Fogerty was going to be there till I got there. He played an entirely Creedence set, and I realised that even though this guy up on stage with the terrible terrible hairpiece is possibly just an old guy trying to cash in on his past success, his music is still awesome. I woke my dad twice with phone calls (at 5am West Australia time).

Iggy was an entertaining old man. His wiry body is now covered in a thin layer of loose skin, but he still runs around the stage waving his thin flowing locks with great gusto. At one stage he encouraged the entire audience to rush past security and join him on stage. He spent a subsequent 20 minutes asking the audience to leave him a little room on stage (he had fallen off) so he could continue. His audience interactions, rambling soliliquies and whimsical Sinatra renditions as security evacuated everyone from the stage were hilarious.

Day 3
Marley Brothers Exodus 30th Anniversary,
Dame Shirley Bassey, Manic Street Preachers, Kaiser Chiefs,

The Who (over Chemical Brothers and Pendulum)

Shirley Bassey was a saucy minx. An old saucy minx, but saucy nevertheless. She played Hey Big Spender twice in a row [video], even though she barely had the stamina for it, with humerous consequences. The only performer at the festival with a full orchestra behind her, and possibly the only performer there with the ability to drown out an entire orchestra with her huge lungs.

All I'll say about The Who is that Simon Townsend still windmills like a champ. He never really let up with the windmills actually. I just wish it wasn't raining the entire time, or that I'd bought a jacket with me, or that it wasn't midnight and fucking freezing.

There's a constant compromise in determining which headliners to see, because three usually play at the same time. I soon realised that this was necessary, and that I was even glad for the fact... When 175,000 people gather at a particular place, the last thing you want is to encourage them all to stand closely together at the same stage.

Made all the good choices, very pleased, but on the last day it didn't matter. It doesn't matter what you do, as long as you are wandering around listening to music. If you don't like something, move on and there will be awesome somewhere else. For example, a person could be guided by the crazy band names. Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly and Soil and the Pimp Sessions were both awesome bands that we visited only because we liked the sound of their names, but thoroughly enjoyed.

Night time
Wandering around after midnight is like wandering into another world altogether. My first such excursion was met with a psychadelic gameshow hosted by Rocky Horror Addams Family-alikes, shiny teeth and slicked greasy hair with pencil moustache, and the women hunched maids with bloodied mouths. They pulled audience members up and presented them with tragic disturbing doomsday scenarios and provoked a response.

One man, after being told he was a defective android and trying to navigate through his own deactivation/suicide service call dropped the microphone and ran off the stage with his head in his hands.

One woman was passed a swaddled baby and told she was a mother in a luddite paradise, no technology ruling her, but her baby was dying of whooping cough (with echoing sound effects surrounding us). She was told that her baby would die, and that she had no choice, then her baby died and they gave her a free beer.

Purdey volunteered, and was put in a thick black burka (Islamic head-to-toe robe.) The host asked her if shed ever had pre-marital sex, then they began throwing rocks at her. I don't think I'll quickly forget seeing Purdey dressed as a black ghost, being stoned by an angry mob, waving and giggling drunkenly.

The Holiday
Inertia guides you. Should you get something to eat between acts? No, because it would take more than an hour to slog to the food tents through the ridiculously thick mud. The hunger is also finely balanced with wanting to minimise your toilet trips.

My understanding of comfort levels were dramatically altered after only the first two days of washing with wet wipes, dreading toilets, and wresting my body through 5 inches of mud for a good 6 hours of each day. I shudder to think what it must have been like for the poor drunken souls who ended up covered head to toe in mud, for whatever reason.

Glastonbury guidelines
First, most important: take gumboots.
Gumboot cleaning kit: probably just a brush would do.
Possibly some drug that restricts bowel movement.
Put your tent far away from the main crowd, as night time mud wanderers don't stumble through tent guy ropes with the acuity the nomadic residents there might hope for.
There's plenty of food at the festival, and it's relatively tasty and affordable (for an English festival.)

Björk
This deserves its own section because I want to hilight how fucking awesome she was. It was worth the 150 pounds I paid for the ticket just to go see her. Her performance is like a story that unfolds, or probably more a weird dream that you can barely recall on waking, let alone explain to anyone.

Check out this video the entire way through to see how her Hyperballad turned into some kind of techno industrial dreamscape halfway through. Also notice the unbelievably cool touchscreen instrument thing the dude plays near the end.

Then watch the last half of this video for an idea of the frenzy she worked the crowd into by her penultimate performance.

Also Army Of Me got stuck in my head all weekend.

Now compare this to the Björk at Glastonbury 12 years ago... her image has certainly matured.

I'm going to Glastonbury! Check out the lineup: http://blog.q4music.com/glastonbury/lineup/

Three days of sleeping in a tent, sharing public toilets (god I hope there's toilets) with over 130,000 people, Bjork, Arcade Fire, Killers, Iggy Pop, The Who, Kaiser Chiefs, Manic Street Preachers, The Chemical Brothers, Bill Bragg, Pendulum Live Set, Krafty Kuts.

It was a close thing, as I had double-booked that weekend with Karim coming from Australia. But now everythings coming up Cechner.

http://paul.cechner.com/rob/karaoke.mov

Consider this my punishment for not putting anything up for ages at a time.

Scroop is here, having for some reason decided that Sunday afternoon was a good time to visit me for three days.

I never thought it necessary to mention this fact while I was living with him - perhaps it's a cheap shot, or perhaps I already felt bad enough for him being vegetarian or something. But he snores... pretty loudly.

I only feel that I should mention it now because he's keeping me awake. And it feels appropriate that I spend my idle waking moments making sure he pays in some way.

I put some music on and chatted with Shauny online for a while. Now I'm gonna try sleeping lying with my deaf ear exposed. I guess now all I can do then is pray for a quick death.

It's getting towards 2am and once again I find myself unable to sleep for worry that Matty will (once again) miss his 2am taxi, his 3am coach or his 6am flight out of London (it is a family trait to miss flights.)

Tonight sees another young sibling off of my corner of the world for god knows how long. Matthew's stay here has been sweet - it must have cost me at least my entire body's worth of organs on the black market trying to scrounge out eateries, events and travels. This mode of operation is starting to take a toll however, the beers and food at constant war with my curvy waistline and London luncheoning making a mockery of my newly elevated income (yesterdays Thai restaurant punched in at over $130 AUD).

Then, of course, there was the Shopping Spree. Matty decided to encourage me to buy a top-of-the-range stereo system, Apple wireless keyboard and mouse, 500Gig external hard drive, bluetooth wireless headset and mic and various other miscellany all in the same 24 hour time period. As the once brand-cynical personification of sparse day-to-day existence I find my newly kitted out technology pod bedroom a constant source of wonder.

Yet my only worry is that we did not get involved enough. Though Christmas in Wales was certainly a hilight of my time in England so far, New Years was a disappointing nightclub dancing to, I swear without a word of a lie, S-Club 7 (a more sold-out version of the Wiggles.) At least for a couple of songs. And looking around the club I was aghast to realise that most people seemed to know the words to the songs!

Anyway, Lucien will be here for part of this weekend, then I'll hopefully meet Matty in Prague the weekend after, then a weekend off before heading to Amsterdam with Mos and Melle to meet up with Matty one last time.

No rest for the wicked - somethings after you!

I uploaded photos of this trip in my Florence '06 gallery

Kris agrees that Italian coffee is quite unique

Kris came through my part of town to mooch for a while on his way back from a US work junket. Not content with the London sights he hit me up for a trip around Italy, a land I had talked up as one of the food and coffee meccas of the world (at least, its in the top two of the three or four countries I've visited...)

Unable to withstand his puppydog eyes and constant whining about shitty London coffee, and him being only slightly satiated by the gorgeous produce in the Borough Markets, I finally organised a long weekend in the most medieval part of Tuscany I could find - Florence.

A little research showed that it was trivial to get from Pisa to Florence in 45 minutes or so by train, and with flights to and from Pisa starting out at 1p before tax our agenda was quickly set. I'll spare you an account of the journey and get right into the good stuff - the awesome food.

Day 1 (2006-11-18)

Kris loved to dance on the cobbled streets

Kris was like a kid in a candy store on the Ponte Veccio

I managed to snap a quick shot of Kris in front of the Ponte Veccio
bridge as he ran crazily in circles

We must have walked into a hundred of these little stores

The first place we went (after checking into the Hostel Archi Rossi, where the plaster seems to be held in place with graffiti) was a restaurant. Hungry, we didn't really want to walk around looking for somewhere awesome so we just jumped into the first one we found, and I couldn't have been happier with the decision. The shop front was very representative of what I have come to see as Italian fare in general - simplicity and good taste. Two archways displayed a rustic uncluttered kitchen with a large kiln dominating my attention, and the other archway led directly from the street into an unpretentious eating area.

Cheese and anchovy bruschetta - delicious. Kris' main (lunch in Italy seems to consist of first mains - pasta or soup - and second mains - steak or fish. We weren't up for this) was a delicious, simple but rich chicken cacciatore, and mine was a stuffed rabbit. Neither was served with any side dishes to speak of, but they were honestly not missed.

A bottle of wine (from the Tuscan Chianti region) and a few shots of grappa, followed by some espressos, and we were walking out the door totally contented with all of Florence still waiting.

We wandered past the Duomo, but at the time I was honestly more interested in planning dinner, having been bitten by the eating bug (it was a serious condition that I am now on medication for.) Florence (Firenze in Italian) is largely a warren of beautiful but narrow cobbled streets joining a mess of plazas together. Each plaza has some sort of theme, and on the weekends street markets make large portions of all this quite unnavigable. It didn't take long to realise that there were some specialty goods available in this city that I owed to myself to investigate further on our stay - namely the food and coffee (of course), good quality yet affordable leather goods, and papier mache masks (my brother Matty bought one back from Venice when he was last there and I knew instantly that I wanted at least one.)

So by this time, my agenda included: eating dinner at this place called Il Latino that I'd seen referenced in a couple of tourist books, buy a mask, buy some leather gloves, and eat more stuff. Visiting the Uffizi gallery and the Duomo were also on the list, but I don't like being told what I must do, Kris and I both decided we want to set our own agendas. Kris had some other stuff on his agenda, but I'll leave it to another time to talk about that.

We swiftly discovered this: if you walk along the north side of the river you'll only really find the Ponte Veccio. The Ponte Veccio is awesome (basically a beautiful jewellry market on a really wide bridge) but my point is you should walk around the warren of streets instead, but definitely with a map or you'll get lost. And how!

Salvatore and Francesca: regaled.

Anyway, at about dinner time we found ourselves walking around the streets on the south side of the river. Seeing one restaurant that looked pretty popular with the locals we decided to try our luck. 20 minutes wait later we were sat in a small alcove in the corner of the restaurant elbow-to-elbow with a Sicilian couple. Entree: chicken liver pate on bread and something else, then 'small pig' for me and veal scalopine for Kris. The small pig seemed literally to be a small pig that had been roasted then cut into once-centimeter-thick slices across. My plate was one such slice with spine up the top, kidneys still in their anatomically correct locations, and crackling skin surrounding. The veal was overdone, but who gives a shit what Kris' meal was like?

The best part of the first night was without a doubt Salvatore and Francesca - the Sicilian couple who after we had finished our main courses leaned across and asked whether we were American or English, as they couldn't spot our accents. 6 rounds of grappa later we were getting kicked out of the restaurant (they were closing, we were the last patrons left) and exchanging promises to meet again when they came across to London (the 1st December - I'm looking forward to it.) We had learned several names for things that should probably not be named in polite company, they had been entertained by our descriptions on the differences between Australian and English women. That's probably another blog for another time though.

Day 2 (2006-11-19): The moon hits our eye

The next morning we were out about 30 minutes after waking up (the hostel had that kind of effect on us.) We spent most of the day in the Uffizi gallery. This is where we realised how crazy these Florentians are about their Leonardo Da Vinci. Anyway, some good shit in there, two thumbs up.

The staff of Il Latino were quite embarrassed by Kris' constant
enthusiastic exclamations of adoration

Dinner rocked - there's no two ways to put it. Il Latino provided quite simply one of the best dining experiences I've ever had. Extremely happy and friendly service, the chubby Italian men behind the counter and on the floor spend their few free moments up at the food counter cutting up large chunks of cold meat for the entrees, sampling liberally as they go. The ceilings are decorated with hanging salted parmahams and the rafters with local wines. Each table is equipped with large loaves of bread and home branded Tuscan wines - both provided completely gratis.

Ordering didn't involve a menu, merely the waiter asking 'would you like me to bring you some starters?' and then a quick hustle around a corner where he somehow initiated a process that involved five different starter dishes coming out in rapid succession. Most delicious of these was doubtlessly the chicken liver pate, which I refused to order again subsequently, knowing that I had from that moment been ruined of the experience.

Second I ordered the 'vegetable and bread' soup, suddenly concious that I would have difficulty doing justice to a full sized main meal portion. Kris ordered the ravioli. Both these meals completely blew us away and left us constantly exclaiming on how simple such delicious food could be.

We skipped mains in the end and shared a large desserts platter with the American and Italian girls sitting on one side of us. The Japanese girls to my left were also pretty amusing to watch, having decided they should get the steak main without apparently realising it would weigh about half of their own weight. They must have spent more time taking photos of their meal than actually eating it.

Day 3 (2006-11-20): Lost in Firenze

We must have stood entranced by this gypsy band for hours

The third day was mostly a write-off, we spent literally about 10 hours solidly walking around. This was a direct result of me letting Kris navigate for a while, though I'm sure he'll take umbrage at me telling you this. The third day also marked the first time we had pizza - a slice each from a cafe along our travels. Delicious, as could be expected. Got home at 11pm totally fucked. We spent about half of this time looking for chocolate and chilli gelati - something I'd had in Rome and really wanted Kris to experience. In this mission we failed. We did see a Gypsy band though, playing festively on the street till they got shut down by The Man.

I should mention the restaurant at which we ate this day. Our criteria may have been skewed by our disappointment on discovering that Il Latino was closed and we decided to go to the shiniest closest restaurant we could find. Turns out it was more focussed towards romance, less towards truly value-for-money food. My love-heart shaped way-too-floury ravioli was the give-away. My lesson is that the well lit simpler places are the best.

Day 4 (2006-11-21): A train too soon

Little known fact: you can't buy set-squares
in Pisa

The fourth day was good, but we made the mistake of choosing to spend most of it in Pisa. Don't get me wrong - its beautiful and theres plenty to do there, but it's not a scratch on Florence. Our self-imposed crusade that evening was to find some good waffles with gelati, which we didn't manage to do.

Anyway, Florence rocks so hard that I wouldn't at all mind setting aside my 'don't visit the same place twice' doctrine to revisit it anytime anybody wanted to. Anyone?

Next on the list: Tool concert tomorrow night, Matthew arrives on the 30th Nov, then Christmas in Wales on the 24th Dec. I should note also that my first pay-packet comes in this coming Tuesday (I am completely broke now.)

Delicious dinner at the onsen hotel in Kusatsu

I occasionally see studies or articles claiming that London is second only to Tokyo as the most expensive city in the world to eat. This is a load of shit. I find it hard to imagine any place in the world where small quantities of ineligant and unexotic food would cost as much as it does in London. The real food afficionado will probably be more excited about the wider range of fresh produce and raw ingredients in London, such things being far less accessible and far more expensive in Tokyo.

A very traditional style izakaya in outer Kyoto

I was constantly amazed at how inexpensive good food was in Tokyo. The range of different foods is amazing, and as long as you're happy eating an Asian style meal you'll get some really decent meals at an Izakaya or Ramen shop (I would say comparable to a western fast-food place, price wise.) You will come unstuck if you insist on eating pizza or hotdogs and the like, as, strangely enough, they are considered exotic foods and go for a mint.

A person looking for a quick bite to eat also has the option of walking into a Kombini (convenience store) for an inexpensive sandwich or small bucket of chicken karage. While not particularly exciting, such food is always fresh and usually surprisingly tasty.

During the awa-odori festivals the street vendors make simple
yet good quality grilled food

As I said earlier though, anyone expecting to make their own fresh meals at home will be disappointed by the prohibitive expenses of vegetables and meat in Tokyo supermarkets.

In travelling around London I was amazed and disgusted when I finally decided to buy a Burger King junior whopper. This tiny little burger cost 2 pounds (5 AUD)! Of course it's not fair to compare the fast food chains in one city with traditional outlets in another, but I've found this representative of all foods in London, raw goods included.

I can therefore assume that whoever goes around saying that food in Tokyo is more expensive than London must prefer to buy western food in Japan, or they are confused by the denominations used in the respective countries (1 pound is equivalent of about 250 yen). Or, I guess, tourists in Tokyo that only go to novelty restaurants and don't realise the value of the izakayas might tend to head towards the brighter facades of shabu-shabu, teppan-yaki or whatever, but we only went to these things on special occasions.

Convenience stores in London do not stock simple, quick meals on par with the Kombini in Japan. Perhaps this is another area the unawares tourist in Japan spends more money than necessary - on numerous occasions when travelling quickly around Japan my group would drop by a Kombini for a quick snack, where perhaps someone else may have gone into a restaurant or something.

A 'traditional' English breakfast

I also read occasionally that British food, although once justly maligned, is no longer deserving of its bad reputation. This is also crap. The only decent food I've found here is in foreign restaurants. As far as prepared meals go, I've not discovered any good British cuisine. Good cheese, certainly. Sausages are good, as are some raw produce. But English-style meals are still expensive crap. 'Traditional' seems to mean 'with mushy peas', 'floating in soup' or 'badly cooked eggs with shitty mushed up baked beans'. (This coming from an Australian, though, is a bit of a laugh.)