Saturday 18th November 2006 : Nashii
people that look like me / It's tough being the tigressWhen I was in malaysia I was reminded of..
'people that look like me'.
Being of mixed race, sometimes it's hard to place me. Where I'm from, you see. I'm half aussie, half malaysian. And neither of these countries recognise me as a native.
BUT. On the way to canada once, I was leaving from Glasgow airport and there they were .. about 40 native american indians. Of all ages. All with long plaits and leather jackets. Some tassles too. These guys are the same skin tone, same eyes. Yes, they kind of looks a bit like me in parts. We observe each other as i walk past. mmmmmm. I'm a lot smaller than they. mmmmm..
THEN. i get on my plane and lo and behold. My seat is right in the midst of them. I'm talking in the middle, seat 38E. I sit down next to this very large native american man. with big plaits.
For the purposes of this story, I'll call him 'dem wolf eye'. We start talking. Turns out they are performers and singers that came to Scotland to search out some ancestors on a remote island. They sang and danced for the (probably confused) scottish locals.
A couple of hours into the journey we talk on. (the surprise meal on the flight is : pizza. On a plane? very strange.)
THEN. He says. o.k I'm going to sing you a native american song I wrote. It's written about a friend that has died and its a song to them about keeping happiness - like a one way conversation about keeping hope.
So he proceeds to sing me this incredible song to me as the plane flies through the air. I'm amazed and honoured and moved.
Then he turns to me and says.O.K. It's your turn. You must sing me a song now.
me : 'erm no, surely not. i can't'
dem wolf eye : 'you must. I have sung for you. (deep voice) it is your turn now.
me : tell you what, i'll play you some of my tunes on the computer. how about that?
dem *now unhappy* wolf eye: (deeper voice) : no. you will sing your songs for me. now.
At this point as if on cue, everyone in the plane turns round and looks at me. mmmm. I realise that you can't argue with a big native american bloke about give and take. So I sing two songs, acapella stylee. What else could i do? Everyone on the plane is looking at me kind of bemused, even all the non american indian people. It's the hardest gig i've ever done.
It's tough being the tigress
SO, I'm sorry I haven't told you about my climb of Mt Kinabalu. Have I mentioned that I climbed this same mountain when I was young? Here's a funny article my mamma pulled out for me:
(click on it to read the damn thing).
so really, you can see, I had a lot to prove. If i can make it when I'm 8, i can make it when I'm.. um, a lot older.
ANYWAY, cutting a long story short and all, on the last day of the climb we leave really early from the camp so we could watch dawn from the top.
We climb and climb passing a few people on the trail. The trail which is rock and white rope. Then hours later, its still pitch dark and I look up. The stars across the sky are amazing. At the horizons I can also see rock formations silhouettes in the darkness and one of these looks like a pair of donkey ears.
THEN. I start feeling dizzy. way dizzy. there's really not enough air round here.
I look up and there's a mountain of boulders to climb. I don't think i can make it. I look up over the rocks and there.. in the distance i see a bright torch light. Its so far.. man, I just can't make it.
I think I'm going to fall over. Then my climbing buddy whose up ahead, says, c'mon nearly there.. but I'm looking at this torch light away in the distance, and i say... "man. I can't make it!" I point at the light and say, "it's so far!"
he looks at me and says, of course you can't make it, that's a STAR, you numpty.
The top is about 10 metres away.
Yeah, baby, it is tough being the tigress. I would post a picture of me at the top, but i look too.. mmm.. not right.
Sunday 13th August 2006 : Nashii
Did I ever mention that f.o. machete is managed by a 'counter spy'? You see our manager Mr ZincSplash, apart from being a band manager is what is known as a 'counter spy'. I hear your interest being aroused .. so.. what is exactly is a counter spy?Here's a thing, if you think you are getting spied on, you would enlist a counter spy like Mr Zincsplash to come in and figure out if you were being spied on or not. De bugging, checking (out) your house, hanging out in trees with telescopes. That sort of thing. You have to go through a lot of hard mental and physical training for this line of work. Obviously.
So we went down to London to play tin pan alley festival in Denmark St. Which was great. We were hot and sticky. We loved it. We finished at 5:30 and this in machete after gig party hours is what is called 'starting pretty early'. So we drink. And we drink.
We got on a bus with some kids from 'ackney and we persuaded them to give us impromptu rhymes . It's hard to describe amazing this actually was. The applause on the bus cheers rang infectiously right through the top of the double decker bus. We got off the bus, and said good bye to our new friends. Hey did that little guy just moon us?
I bought a bottle tequila and I split it with Mr Zincsplash. We eat vietnamese. Bottles of Vokda are bought. We are very drunk.
Halftime: Via my friend Mark's place for an afterparty, the band wondered around the tower bridge area and we amazed at the lights and lights and bridges. It was almost like being a first time tourist in New York.
Cut to my dear friend Mark's flat. We are still partying.
Cut to 4 am. Mr Zincpsplash is passed out.
Cut to 4:30 am Mr Zincsplash is rather ill.
Cut to 6am Mr Zincsplash is unconscious.
In fact, the last thing he said to me is 'I hate you. You bastard'
Paul says.. 'well at least he knows now'
Simon says: 'that's just one night. He's been holding us back'
Full time: It's 7am. After eventually waking the unconscious man(ager), and we go on the way back to where we are crashing. As we roam the streets, even the bin men stop as they drive by and ask us where we have been. 7:15 am Zincsplash walks in front of a big commuter bus and nearly gets run over as it swerves to avoid the staggering man. Me and Paul look at each other. Nothing seems unusual anymore. Callan is completely oblivious. Paul looks at me and shrugs. We know. We have broken the counter spy. It take a lot of hard physical and mental training to party with the Machetes.
Baby, we even kill off counter spies.
We love you Zincsplash
My second story is this:
Earlier this year, to try and recover, I decided I needed to go home. See my parents live in Sabah now, which is in Borneo - a beautiful, awesome place mostly covered in primary rainforest. And near my folks place towers Mount Kinabalu. Highest mountain in South East asia.
Earlier this year, to try and recover, I decided i needed to go climb this thing. It's now happening in two weeks. It takes three days to climb and its half the height of everest.
Everest 8,850M. Mount K 4,100M. Nashii 1.52M. on a good day.
So to train for this, my climber friend takes me to Ben Nevis. Highest Munro (mountain) in Scotland. But Ben Nevis needs preparation too. My training for Ben Nevis is as follows. Rolling around t in the park, getting mash up in London at tin pan alley and lying in a ditch at the wickerman festival.
So my friend takes me up Ben Nevis, bit what I don't realise is that we are gonna climb it the back route, up two other munros. Via bridges of bolders with sheer drops on either side. Via the mist (man, I can't see shit). Via the hail (man, i can't feel shit). It's ben nevis. Via Mordor. Over the hours, I turn from being miss nashii, to froddo to Golum. After climbing by 1000 th boulder each bigger than me, I'm crawling, drooling and sliding. Its misty, and I'm gasping... the ring... preeeciiiioooouuusss.
.
.I'll keep you posted about Mount K. I hope I don't die.
(Earlier this year, to try and recover) I started making up a cd of some tracks, but it turned out all to be songs about love. Dammit. So I made it my mission to knock up the perfect compilation of songs I love about love. Problem is I never stopped compiling it and the track listing would change on a daily basis as I strove to make the perfect compilation. Well. I've given up as I realised that this is an impossible task and I was never going to be able to finish it as it changed with my every dark and light mood. So. Here's my offer. If you would like to hear what I came up with, I'll send it to you. It will be a scrawled cdr and again, each one may be different, but it will contain some of tracks that I obsess over.
You can listen to it, or alternatively just duck tape it to your head.
mail info@fomachete.com with your address.
Miss Nashii x
Friday 30th June 2006 : Nashii
2 stories: when merchandise goes the wrong way and cello-taping the hoffO.k. o.k. so I finally admit that it's me on the last Belle and Sebastian album cover 'the life pursuit'. What I didn't realise when I agreed to do it is that they would stick my face on fridge magnets, glow in the dark nashii t-shirts, shopping bags and wait for it, my eight foot face on the yep .. back of a bus. Even the thought of this makes me furrow my brow and look worried, even now.
Trouble is, it was supposed on the 44 bus. The 44 travels peacefully through the leafy beautiful west end of Glasgow, cruising past the delis, cafes down past the grand looking university. In fact, the 44 travels right in front of my house too and I suppose they figure past potential Belle and Sebastian fans.
Trouble is they put it on the 45 bus. The forty five travels wildly through the south side of Glasgow, crusing past the hoods and banged up derelict drug addled sink estates of the gorbals. In fact the 45 travels past the place where a 12 year old just died from smack overdose too and I figure past every potential person that would probably eat Belle and Sebastian fans for dinner.
So with a failed mission, the manager of Belle and Sebastian kicks up a fuss with the bus company. Guess what the
result is: 'totally, we get the point of your complaint, but no matter who you are, we aint re-routing no bus for you but .. tell you what, we'll give you a free month!'
Awesome. My face is still rumbling around the south side of Glasgow as we speak. Our friend and Engineer Jim Brady said he nearly smacked into the back of it the other day in total surprise as my huge face towered above him. I think he must have been mesmerised by my meter long duck lips. hah!
next
I did an interview the other day for a online site called faster louder in oz and I was reminded of how I acquired my first album.
My mum once rang up a radio station called 'blue danube' and won me a special David Hasselhoff (yes, I'm talking of knight rider fame) signed LP called 'night rocker'. I treasured it more than any other priced posession! David Hasselhoff is HUGE in Austria where I was living at the time. I remember wrapping the LP in clingfilm and sellotape to preserve his signature.
In fact, along with the signed LP, I got free tickets to the David Hasselhoff concert. It was astoundingly bad, but kit the car (yes, I'm talking of knight rider fame) was there too - and they both did a lap around the stadium, with David riding on the top. I also liked the part where he turned into a werewolf.
(When I was younger I thought the Bon Jovi album was called 'slippery win wet' and I always wondered what that meant. I've also mistaken Judas Priest song title to be 'Hell bent my leather' instead of 'Hell bent for leather')
Speaking of cars I just picked up a new car after my last one has been crushed by the car wreckers. It's an old surfer's mobile filled with sand and surf wax. Its gifted to me by a friend. See you in the soup, dude, the nash is mobile once again.
Be scared. Be very scared. Hell has just bent my leather, baby.
Tuesday 30th May 2006 : Nashii
i've not stopped cursing at the sky yet. it's still cold here and no sign of summer. i'm cursing for other reasons too.still.
back to the weather though, i'm craving heat like no other things. my doctor - well a random doctor that saw me once says that my body temperature is strangely low, so this is maybe why i crave heat. i thought it was because i love the sunshine and good climates, but it turns out there's a scientific explanation for it. science comes through again and ruins every poetical theory i've conjured up about myself.
well my car has been officially crushed into a cube. they gave me £140 princely sum for it, which i've decided to spend on absolutely nothing. coffees and catfood mostly. it's my revenge against the world.
the mansion is lying empty at the moment. the french surgeon has moved out out of one of the other apartments. the two wierd looking gay philosphers are gone too, i notice this because they always used to hang their suits up in their window. at night there was always two flat headless 2D silhouettes staring out the window into the driveway at me.
Since everyone is gone, the mad owner (who lives in israel incidentally) has covered all the bits of furniture and busts in the mosaic-ed hallways in white sheets. empty mansion with everything covered in sheets. It's like something out of a movie. me and paul practised tonight into the late hours and our guitars echoed through the empty halls. it's very strange.
Anyway during rehearsal, i was reminded today of spam (don't ask, it was random). not the spam that fills my inbox everyday, but the other sort. The meat spam. i read a book once and, well basically spam is the closest thing that taste like human flesh. Its not about everything tasting like chicken like the usual suspect meat, this stuff is human tasting!! they know this because they asked cannibals. In micronesia (a group of islands where incidently they do a lot of nuclear testing - thanks france, love your work..) cannibalism was outlawed a while back and since then, spam sales has been killing it over there. it's huge. I mean there's aisles of the shit in supermarkets. They stir fry it, boil it, chug it and everything. I kid you not.
interesting fact over.
miss nashii x
ps there's a really sad part to the Micronesia story which I had to take out as it makes me too sad, email me if you want to know what it is.
Sunday 14th May 2006 : Nashii
i get caught in a copper and lead fighttues: you know your life is weird when you find a 18" machete in the boot of your car. i was looking for an umbrella 'cos it's lashing out here that night and when i pull a blanket out, a machete and 12 bottle of tennant's beer tumble out. dammit. i can't remember keeping a machete in the car? when .. exactly? of course there no umbrella as well.
and I go and see 'low'. you know the mormon rock band? it's amazing - but not the type of music you might like to get married too.. (or.. wait a minute.. nevermind.)
the beer and machete are left in car.
tues week after: after the webcast in edinburgh at 2 am, i was pulled by the police. my car is overloaded with gear and they think I'm drunk. fuck, nashii, that machete is still in the car, but they don't find it so that's cool. it's a near miss. I've distracted them with my foreignness.
thursday night: my cat is attacked by a fox, and she's injured.
friday morning: my car has been smashed in and everything ripped out. All the beer gone, but that's ok as i don't drink the stuff anyway right? fuck, fuck, where the machete? and guess what? its still there! what is wrong with you glasgow criminals? you can't even steal a car properly, and you don't touch the machete?
friday night: we play with final fantasy. paul's amp blows up and the distortion pedal stops working during the show. I dj at the abc afterwards, owen from final fantasy spins some too! its chaos and messy but lots of fun. perhaps i should change my name to miss mashii.
there's a party back at the mansion where I live. its carnage. my house is currently trashed, the floor is so sticky even my injured cat won't stand on it.
in the morning, i sort of remember lying on the grass in the mansion garden and sleepy talking with andy miller (the machete recording engineer) about garden weeds. we decide that it's all in the definition of unwanted. he's deliriously tired, as i had woken him for company because according to his temperature he was the least asleep at the time.
last night: i watched adem in stirling play to about 10 people. its so quiet that they set up within the audience and play.
without using any electricity.
its so quiet i can hear his every breath. and i'm amazed and humbled and overwhelmed at the same time. it fills me up. i remember tiny details of things I've been trying to put away.
everything, everything, tell them, start it.
Friday 31st March 2006 : Nashii
budgie smugglersBeing half Australian and now, machete being signed by an Australian label, I felt it was time to get back to my roots and all. So i've really been genning (sp?) up on my Aussie slang, mostly with the help of my flatmate Nate, who is the most Aussie guy. ever.
Especially when we go out on tour to Australia later this year, I'd like to be able to blend in wallflower stylee. Nate's been teaching sayings like 'I'm not here to fuck spiders' which is apparently a household saying in Australia, which means 'i'm not here to fuck around'. And how about the classic Aussie saying 'she's more banging than a dunny door in a dust storm'?
unable to sleep this morning, 6 am this time? wrapped in a white blanket I stagger to my computer, and check my email etc. And lo and behold, I have been sent the funniest thing from our Australian label, Jam. I choked on my coffee. Its so good, I have to share it with y'all. You must cut this into your browser. Do it now.
http://mfile.akamai.com/8903/wmv/mtvasia.download.akamai.com/8903/mtvau/avma06/Teaser-budgie_nation.asx
I totally admit defeat. I can't compete with this. You just can't out Aussie an Aussie.
Jam 1, Nashii 0
Sunday 26th March 2006 : Nashii
'with all your powers, what would you do?' TFL.So I prided myself that the only car crash I'd ever had in my life was with a hearse. plus body. plus flowers. all ready to go. and tons family and friends assembled on the pavement nearby waiting for the body to be brought forward for the procession. So what do i do? I smack right into it. Precisely square into the right front of it. Its a three week old shiny Bently. The coffin and body shaking, rocking from side to side with the impact of my car. Damn. Death warmed up. I swear I'm gonna get haunted by this guy. Its funny how i had had an accident with one fatality, but he was already dead before I got there.
Then, considering how distracted I've been ever since I set my beady eye on this year, it was only a matter of time before the next one. I shouldn't be allowed to drive right now. It was really late the other night, I'd spent hours with my flatmate in the hospital as he'd broken his wrist and my car was full of the machete drums. So in the darkness, and as is usual with me these days, I'm tired and thought-distracted and I can't see and I'm not paying attention. So here it comes. Outa my head space and into another smash. And judging by the damage, it don't even looked like I've put the brakes. I'm talking at least half a metre of car carnage. Worst and best thing is it's my friend's car I smash into. fuck..
um.. 'is this your car? i crashed it so well...'
Will someone please look after me?
or even just take my license off me. please.
nashii x
(Editors note: Site updates may take longer now. grrr.....)
Thursday 16th March 2006 : Nashii
diving diving divingWe are all broken shells after tour. That kind of chalky, brittle feeling? The more you touch it, the more it breaks up. The whole tour could be summed up by one event really - me running down shoreditch streets at 6 am last Saturday after no sleep for a week, in the negative 5 degrees panicking and searching for Paul who I thought had been left for dead. Damn.
I have this mad fever everynight at the moment, I wake every morning soaked. Thought it was a tour thing, but this morning was the same.
As the boy from bright eyes says.. head full of pesticides.
So still can't talk about now, but there's a couple of past things that have crossed my mind in the last while on tour.
One. Kill devil Hills, North Carolina. My family drove down there once from Virginia through roads that looks so wickedly American it was unbelievable. Lemonade stands and guns for sale. Little ramshackle shops with no fridges, perched next to Mangrove ponds. Mad heat.
Kill devil hills was a walk from our wooden house that we rented, through bushy land, one snake and pretty summer flowers. Then towering above it all; many sand dunes. If you will walk up them for hours or maybe it was just one hour, the best is yet to come. At the very top - steep sand cliffs, that you leap off and run as fast down as fast as possible .. tumbling, tumbling, tumbling.
There was a hurricane warning that night - mad storm and I remember the house shaking. I slept in a pyramid bunk bed, a thing I'd never seen before. Happy Days? Yeah.
Two. BCG. Like in the injection BCG. I went to a school that looks like two big concrete blocks in a field, a short walk down the hill from our house. In fact, my school was in a place where I grew up called 'Bandar Baru Bangi' or BBB for short. Our school was so poor that when we got our BCG injections we all used the same needle that our math teacher put into us, cleaned only by placing it into a bunson burner until it was red hot for a few seconds between each child. Mmm.. healthy. Always too young to question and at the time these things were normal? I can still feel the skin and flesh burning as it went in, then off back to class, with a small trail of blood coming down the arm.
My now life is quite different now. I tour and play music which I like, very far away from BCG in BBB. I spoke with a boy on tour who told me that nowdays you get a skin test to see whether you even need one, and he didn't. I thought everyone was marked with BCG, but apparently not.
I don't know how these two stories relate to each other, but there's another couple of things I know right now:
I must be more brave. I must play more music.
with love,
Nashii
Thursday 2nd March 2006 : Nashii
Absorb in me
So after promising to my friend Kenny in Australia I would keep up with my logs, I was gonna tell you about how on the way to our first video shoot, Callan ran over my (and the machete hq) laptop 'trinity' with the long base transit loaded with our gear when he decided to mount the pavement and run over my bag. It's crushed, but still working.
And well, I was going to say all this stuff, but truth is, I feel a bit homesick right now.
Nashii x
Monday 6th February 2006 : Nashii
I'm in the curve! ... So am I!back from Aberdeen, man.. what a trip. here's the lowdown
interesting facts about the machete Aberdeen trip
1. The Aberdeen river is frozen
2. Venue is jammed with kids. Underage drinking should be illegal. oh it is. Good.
3. A sixteen year old lesbian metal kid tried to snog me on the way out. It's too weird, girls feel way too soft!
4. I got locked out of my hotel room and had to pad down to the reception wearing not much to try and get back in. The receptionist is asleep too.
5. With not much sleep, I drive down from Aberdeen next morning. Most of the trip is in blinding sunshine and then, suddenly, we plunge into the deepest fog. then out of nowhere a car is stopped dead in front of us. I slam on the brakes of the van and we skid 20 metres. Stop in time. Good as I'm not ready for a dead machete just yet, thanks.
Its a four car pile-up ahead of us. On the road are a couple of people surrounded by destroyed cars. And, on the side of the road.. what seems like a pile of guts. A disintegrated human? Actually.. we drive past and it's... chicken feet and chicken innards. Area : about a metre long and a few chickens high. What is up with that? I'm feeling delirious. Chicken? really?
6. Paul and me struggle to get my bass amp up the spiral staircase in the mansion (I live in a Mansion, really..)
N: I'm in the curve..
P: So am i!
N: i can't move
P: Ow, my leg!
7. Paul and I watch 'old school' and fall asleep, 'in bed with Machete' style. Damn, we be tired.
8. Its a great way to start this exciting year.
Friday 2nd December 2005 : Nashii
brazilan darknessI don't like fancy chocolates. You never know what's coming next. I don't like these type of surprises. Some cadbury roses appeared on my desk and I've been going through them. Here it is in order of preferences:
1. Hazel Whirl (yum - I can't pick a fault)
2. Chocolate bite (I only discovered that I like these quite late in the proceedings so I think I missed a few. fuck!)
3. Cadbury Dairy milk (cool, nice and simple - no surprises)
4. Praline moment (yes, a few moments.. most of them good)
5. all the other crap. I know, you're saying that Hazel in Caramel is good too. Well, I got news for you. It isn't.
6. What the fuck is Brazilian Darkness? I haven't even tried these. Sounds horrible.
Other things on my mind.
We finished our album. We like it. The artwork is amazing too. Someone wrote to me the other day and told be that Brooklyn is warm and exciting at the moment. I think our album is warm and exciting too.
What's the signal? What's the Signal? What's the signal?
Come see us at our single launch. I think it will be a special night.
Hello to everyone who reads this.
xnashii
Monday 24th October 2005 : Nashii
'If Gold was Silver and Silver was Gold' explained.In my dad's home town (or in Malay, 'kampung') Melaka, Malaysia I have these two cousins. So, one is called Gold and one is called Silver. We pretty much grew up together as we were of the same age. As kids, they are really different from we way me and my sister were, but more noticeably, my two cousins never got on together. They were always fighting. Viciously. Silver, strangely enough was always trying to prove herself to the much calmer and more collected Gold. Gold always seemed superior, and would never be shaken. My theory is that if you name your two kids Gold and Silver, Silver is going to feel a little second rate. Don't get me wrong, as a metal, I'm more a fan of Silver myself, but in a country where its all about cash-money, Gold is more valued. Unrelated: the jewellery shops in Malaysia all have guards standing out front that wear the most old and decrepit SHOTGUNS. The worst is that the guards are also old and decrepit and look like old post jail term nutters. We once saw one that was steaming drunk wielding this shotgun like he was going to shoot one of the Gold buying cliental. I reckon people just can't be trusted with shotguns.
So anyway, so the song is about my two cousins. Gold and Silver (cousins). Then there's Copper and Lead fight (guns, in Jamaican). Then I just realised it today, we finished up a song called Neon (the colour). I seem to be going through the elements and it's a total coincidence.
Unrelated: Scotland's weather is officially the pits. Nashii x
Friday 23rd September 2005 : Nashii
AWWW. My ears are bleeding.This is not a rant about bad music that's around at the moment. My ears are actually bleeding. Apparently the correct medical term is 'traumatised' or so my doctor's has gravely advised me. To many rehearsals, headphones and a four track have finally killed me. Ok. here's what its like. Whenever you walk its like walking in a cave, Thud Thud Echo Echo. Whenever you talk you hear a borg electronic version of your voice in delay. Like an overseas phone call. Hello? Hello? Thud Thud Echo Echo. Hello. Hello. And what am I doing about this? Off to Amsterdam to play a show with some metal bands. I'll compensate my woes with some aged gouda cheese believe you me.
Nashii.
Wednesday 17th August 2005 : Nashii
bird eat birdHave you ever noticed how these insanely mutantly big seagull are taking over the city centres of Scotland? They are not like the nice friendly cute things we have in Australia that flap about on the beach looking for a french fry. I mean these things eat pigeons as a snack. Me and paul were coming home from pracky one day and we hear this thump on his car when we were at the traffic lights on the very busy byres road in Glasgow. All people cars around us are pointing and laughing. There's a mangled pigeon, bloodied and dead, crucified on the back wind screen wiper. 'A seagull dropped it' cries a delighted witness. Nice. Its pretty funny really but these oversized cannibals are taking over. Beware. Next time you see a shadow looming over you, its probably not a grey rainy Scottish cloud but a bloodied pigeon, raining blood, headed straight for you. You have been warned.
Anyway, I didn't really set out to talk birds, but I just wanted to describe how poor the public transport is in Scotland. I agreed to go up North to join my mum on her Scotland trip. She's on Orkney right now. She's here in Scotland for the World Sci-Fi convention that took place in Glasgow last week. 6000 of these weird novelty t-shirt loving folk descended upon the very unimpressed and dangerous streets of Glasgow. My mum's a fantasy author you see, and I was honoured to watch her give a reading of one of her books. It was great and in fact, I was very moved. And yes, I saw elves, goths and hobbits in my wanderings through the convention centre.
So. Back to Orkney. I'm on my return journey and I get off the Ferry, slightly green (i hate boats) and I ask them where the bus is that will take me back to the train station to take me to civilisation. They are looking at me blankly like I've been beamed in from outer space and just started gurgling green slime at them (I have afterall, just got off the boat). After a pause, 'its sixteen miles away, but if you walk up the road you might be able to flag a bus down'. So, I cart my stewardess case and up a track and wait on the road. It starts raining. An hour goes pass and so does a fisherman on a painfully slow bicycle (?). Even the ferry has gone so I can't even get back to Orkney if I wanted to. It starts really raining. I see a bus, I flag it. I jump up and down. He sees me. He waves at me and drives passed. Hello alien from outer space.
Another half an hour. I'm thinking about hitch hiking. I need to pee and I'm not moving from the side of the road, as I'm scared I'll miss another opportunity to wave at another bus driver. No one about apart from sheep so I pee on the roadside. Would have been a great photo. No way... Another bus. I flag it, he stops. I get on. Thank fuck but it takes an hour to go 10 miles. We go everywhere, every little village and farmhouse. This bus is going no where, but I manage to get another bus to a town called Inverness. It takes 4 hours to go another 100 miles. I mean, we stop everywhere we missed on the other bus. In turn, I miss my train from Inverness by one minute and I wait three hours for the next one. Which brings me to now. I'm on the train and I get into Glasgow 14 hours after departing from Orkney. Here's my plee to fix public transport.
I'm fading, but the good things of the moment are: new smog album on and getting to wave at my friends house as the train goes past his block. We've synchronised watches.
Please note: My mum says we have a different species of seagull in Australia and this is why they are bigger here. and she really know about birds.
xn
Thursday 30th June 2005 : Nashii
shot to the tart-an you're to blame, darlin' you give twee a bad nameOkay, so I opened an email in Venice which was inviting me to take part in some pictures that were being planned for another Glasgow band ('s record cover?) in the Scottish country side and did I want to take part. So I wondered whether this is something I'd quite like to show my grandkids when I'm 100 years old and I figured I quite fancied it. Coming to a record store (tentative) near you... Nashii in a tartan mini. The jury is out. Just been reading the other bands log - feel like mine pales (pale pink) in comparison, mental note, spend more time on sentence structure and descriptive words.
I had a show-down with a fox yesterday. There's one that lives by my house, I know its the same one as it has no tail. Now, usually the way to tell a fox is a fox is by its tail, so this one always looks a bit weird. I got off my bike (tuff II s) when the fox was spotted and he (I think its a he) looks me dead in the eyes. Then as soon as and every-time he turns away I creep forward. This goes on for a few minutes and I get pretty close. Its all very exciting. Then all of a sudden (my bikes just not quiet enough) he's off into the mansion garden. (leave me alone, I have no tail!) And as I walk up the drive, I know he's (you're) watching me from the darkness. I've lost again, all but having a brief encounter.
I wonder what China is like and whether it's worth a visit.
House sitting for 3 cats next week for two weeks. I like having two apartments.
Planning a Machete side project, might be quite good if only one song. Got three minutes on tape to work on. I like tape a lot, even if i know its clunky.
Signing off.
Nashii 'fox hunting' Noramly
Wednesday 15th June 2005 : Nashii
Fjord 21so, I was in Bergen yesterday and came across the dock. and rows of fish and other sea loot for sale in the fish market. one would expect the sellers of the these fishy artifacts to be old grizzly sea battered men, but no. these were the funkiest latte drinking kids in town. Blond Scandinavian modelesque girlies - pig tails wearing - perfect figures - digging their hands into bits of eels and monkfish. And the boys ... vegetarian skateboarders? For what reason i can only think this is to entice the unsuspecting tourists to be charmed into buying overpriced whale meat. its black!
(guys there's only 300 left in the world - go figure).
My coffee withdrawal is going o.k i guess. There's no vegetarians in this country and they enjoy very much the 'lurve'burger which is a 12" size hammered meat in a normal bun. please if there's any Norwegians reading please explain.
I think I've just seen the biggest boat in the world reverse out of Flam dock. I walked four hours today.
love from norge.
nashii x
Wednesday 8th June 2005 : Nashii
Its monday 00:26. 6th June. This is my first log.The upstairs neighbours have a fight yesterday. A chair gets thrown out the window. (did it arc?) . Two brothers and both in prison now, probably over playstation. Glass showers in the garden and down my front door. I'm pissed as this means no more barefoot in the garden for at least 60 years, or however long it will take to round the sharp edges. I'll be well off by then. Maybe I'll pick more when they start to sparkle if it's sunny. (blinding? Hopefully.)
Next. Starting to think I'll never get everything done by tomorrow. Said I would not arrive tired to Venice. Venue looks insanely intriguing - do you really have to step over the wooden bits?
Big day out is sounding good. Its about how one specific thing that happens in the past. This event can last only for a mili second or even a few hours, but give you hours of material (and even a song or two?) thinking about it it's that good. (verse) and how all the good super heroes are getting a bit old these days and there's a new team now (bear and child), and together they go on a big day out (chorus).
Don't call me, I can't answer. I don't have reception right now. These walls are as thick as...