Re: More than enough about Sweden

["Paul Vearncombe" <vearn@wo...co.uk>]

I must apologise for provoking this outburst from Mr Rush, but I'm sort of 
glad I did.  

PV2
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Philip Rush 
  To: blueplanes@st...net 
  Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 8:11 AM
  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 ?


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