RE: More than enough about Sweden

["Philip Hendry" <philip.hendry@bb...co.uk>]

Too much !!!

        -----Original Message-----
        From: blueplanes-admin@st...net [mailto:blueplanes-admin@st...net] 
On Behalf Of Philip Rush
        Sent: 25 August 2004 08:12
        To: blueplanes@st...net
        Subject: Re: [Blueplanes] More than enough about Sweden
        
        
        The event 
        
        The event is taking place all over town. 
        Every viking who can play an instrument 
        has been roped in. As one band fades out 
        
        another fades in, like an amateur DJ 
        has seized control of the soundtrack of the city. 
        At the harbour quay, there is a camp 
        
        destroyer, with miniskirted visitors 
        and its gun barrels done up in pink 
        cling-film so they're the ultimate 
        
        dildo. Other weird vessels, too, 
        including a flat one I really can't read. 
        A monitor. And playing on the harbour quay, 
        
        making their own contribution to the event, 
        the summer festival of Göteborg (pronounced Yortiborg): 
        the Schytts. A tour bus and everything. 
        
        And the vikings do their unique viking dance 
        on the specially constructed viking dance floor, 
        though an inexpert eye might confuse 
        
        original viking ethnic ballet 
        for jiving and straight-up rock and roll, 
        which is where the Schytts come in. 
        
        One drunk viking in a white vest 
        and a cloud of lager-on-tap breath 
        persuades a woman in her fifties to dance with him: 
        
        they bop and canoodle like they're twenty-three again. 
        Like it's nineteen sixty-one. 
        You do the math. 
        We sit with our beers on the long benching 
        at the long tables under the long canopy 
        at the end of the long summer's long day, 
        
        making sure we make it home before Grendel 
        is due in from the boggy moors along the Jönköping road. 
        And on the way back to our elegant Swedish 

        apartment, every bench has its own Abba. 
        Honest. No messing. No question about it. 
        When I get back, all being well, 

        I'm starting a tribute band to the Schytts. 
        I just have to think of a name which really works, 
        capturing the spirit of the music but 
        
        with that little touch of irony. 

        Guidebooks 

        Under the huge sky, 
        the Swedes were invisible. 
        Just their farms, their toy farms, 

        their little collections of plastic buildings 
        spray-painted with dark rust paint. 
        And their churches, 

        every one a backdrop to Ibsen 
        or Strindberg. With its rigid 
        spire in its dutiful white. 

        You could tell just how hypocritical 
        the Pastor must be, just by driving 
        past. You've seen the film, 

        read all the plays, after all. 
        At the Swedish Connemara seaside, 
        following our picnic, 

        of course we looked out for the willowy 
        blondes we'd read about. 
        100% nude. 

        We found forty-seven fat old women 
        with varicose veins and complicated swimsuits 
        which combined modesty with built in prostheses 

        and life-support systems. And there were big, floppy 
        jellyfish in the water ballooning 
        and puffing as if they were out of breath. 

        They splashed to the edge of the shallows, 
        the fat women, 
        and watched the chemical works on the horizon from there. 

        In the cities, the streets were filthy 
        as a docker's Y-fronts. 
        There were four rats running round 

        the Cathedral precinct. 

        A glimpse of eastern Europe 

        By the iron gates to the park, 
        for which the town council 
        makes a small admission charge, 
        this elegant café, nestling under the trees, 

        roped off, is where the agents meet, 
        where contact is made over chocolate, 
        where the jackdaws busy themselves 
        with the left-overs and the pastry crumbs. 

        And this is where the lovers wait. 
        He wears his best brown suit. 
        The trouser legs conceal his one pair 
        of leather shoes. She wears lipstick. 

        They talk in code. They have made 
        themselves sad by remembering 
        the future and anticipating the past. 
        One day he will spell it out 

        in that sad pause between asking 
        for the reckoning and paying up. 
        'It's for the best,' he will say, and her eyes 
        will turn towards the rose garden. 

        She will be able to see the palm house 
        and the warden's villa; 
        the brown paint of the Lagerhuset 
        will contain this moment. 


        On 24 Aug 2004, at 18:35, Paul Vearncombe wrote: 


                More. 
                ----- Original Message ----- 
                From: Philip Rush 
                To: blueplanes@st...net 
                Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 8:08 AM 
                Subject: Re: [Blueplanes] (no subject) 

                Went to Sweden. 

                Nice. 

                Enough? 


                On 23 Aug 2004, at 19:18, Paul Vearncombe wrote: 


                In?  I might as well be. 
                News, of a sort, everybody.  Had a message from Ann 
Sheldon.  She says: 
                G working on another LIT while The album has been properly 
mastered and will be sent to record cos shortly... 

                there may be some gigs in Norway! 
                So there you have it, straight from the proverbial.  
So...who's been on holiday?  Anyone? 
                PV2 



                ----- Original Message ----- 
                From: gordon 
                To: blueplanes@st...net 
                Sent: Sunday, August 22, 2004 11:27 PM 
                Subject: [Blueplanes] (no subject) 


                knock knock ! 
                Is anyone in ? 


                <promodll.gif> 



http://www.bbc.co.uk/ - World Wide Wonderland

This e-mail (and any attachments) is confidential and may contain
personal views which are not the views of the BBC unless specifically
stated.
If you have received it in error, please delete it from your system. 
Do not use, copy or disclose the information in any way nor act in
reliance on it and notify the sender immediately. Please note that the
BBC monitors e-mails sent or received. 
Further communication will signify your consent to this.