Songs from Ireland, Part 3

Greetings again from me cottage. Whilst I'm on a bit of a roll, why not keep them coming... The more the merrier and all that.

This is a little song about life on the road. I could explain it to you here, but then that would defeat the purpose of another trademark ramble. Hey at least I am consistent.

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/user/rennyfield?feature=mhum

Be back with more soon...

Cheers,

Renny

Songs from Ireland, Part 2

Hey folks,

Thought I'd get into the habit of posting the links to my songs here as well... I tried to log on to myspace but they lost me at hello. Could anyone explain what on earth is going on over there? I am confused. Very confused...

In other news, I just went for a run along the bay. The view is beautiful, but it's not the kind of weather you'd normally go running in - I certainly won't be making a habit of it. Still thawing out here. Ouch.

Ah yes, I was posting a link wasn't I. Here you go:


http://www.youtube.com/rennyfield


It's a song about cricket!

But let's not talk about cricket...

See you again soon,

Renny

To bus or to boat... Tales from the Irish Sea.

It should have been so easy. The overnight bus to Dublin was scheduled to depart Victoria coach station at 6.30pm, whisking me off through the night, across the Irish Sea and arriving in Dublin just in time for me to catch my connecting bus to Cork. “Connecting Bus” sounds a bit funny doesn’t it… Well let me tell you folks – it’s not funny. It’s not even remotely amusing… It’s the type of privilege reserved for a select few starving artists, and it’s there to be endured, not enjoyed. For me, the real kicker is the 1am trip through customs at Holyhead Ferry Port when your body is screaming “get me on the f…ing boat so I can lie down!”. Unfortunately this is not in the range of recommended responses when the customs officer begins his polite line of enquiry, which more or less translates to “What are you doing here and have you been working because if you have you’ll be in all sorts of trouble and you won’t be allowed back and I am being paid to ask these questions and if you’re illegal I might get a bonus so I’m going to ask a few more just so you have to wait a bit longer to get on the boat and all the couches will be taken by the time we’ve finished so you won’t be able to lie down but that’s just bad luck for you”.

Anyway, the “easy” part I referred to above is really the “catching” of the bus. Because once you’re at Victoria Coach Station, the sea of humanity that it is, you really just have to check in, get on the bus and take a seat right? Well yes in theory this is correct, except on this particular occasion the “checking in” was successful, but the other two steps associated with “catching” the bus never quite eventuated. This despite several discussions with the helpful staff that evening, all of whom assured me the bus to Dublin had not yet arrived and that it would be departing behind schedule. Well, almost all of them told me that. At least the first three did, then the last guy (the same guy who checked me in) just glared straight back at me and said

“The Dubin bus? It’s gone. It went 15 mins ago”.

“What?!”

(Cue homeless guy laughing at me – I still have no idea where he came from or why he was listening to this conversation – perhaps that’s just what he does for kicks? Waits for people to miss the bus then laughs at them in their most vulnerable state….)

“Yeah it’s left. Sorry”.

“But I’ve been sitting here the whole time!”

(Homeless guy laughs again.)

“Well we announced it, and everyone else got on.”

(Homeless guy laughs some more).

And try as I might, though I pursued the line of questioning/reasoning/pleading, it quickly descended into one of those pointless conversations where you realise there is absolutely NOTHING that can be done about the situation. But still, this being the “denial” phase of missed-bus denial syndrome (MBDS), you continue the conversation in the hope that:

(i) they will radio the driver and he will put the bus in reverse for 15mins to return for the only passenger who managed to miss the bus

(ii) the bus will drive into a vortex of some sort, bringing it back to Victoria Coach station, from where it will recommence the trip to Dublin.

(iii) You will wake up from a deep sleep just as the bus is boarding.

Slowly realising that none of these events will take place, you then proceed to phase 2 of MBDS, which I like to call the “I can still catch it” phase. That wonderful 5-10min period where you briefly (but seriously) contemplate forking out three times the price of the original bus ticket to catch a taxi to rendezvous with the bus further along the way. And although this would be practically impossible, because the taxi would have to deal with exactly the same peak hour traffic as the bus you just missed, it still seems a completely logical and viable option. At least until the homeless bloke laughs at you again…

I can’t say exactly how long it took for the “acceptance” phase of MBDS to kick in, but rest assured it did… And I did what all normal people do in this situation:

(i) I cried
(ii) I walked to burger king

A special thanks here to my girlfriend Kate, who stood by me throughout the crisis, helped me through the various phases of MBDS, then shared a romantic dinner for two on the Bakerloo line platform of Victoria Underground Station. I wonder how many bites in to the Chicken Royale she started questioning her decision to go out with an independent Australian singer-songwriter…. Perhaps this had already happened whilst witnessing phase 2 of the MBDS… Or perhaps she had progressed to an “Acceptance” phase of her own – that more commonly associated with DSADS (Dating a Starving Artist Denial Syndrome). In which case I was in luck, because the thought of spending a night in Victoria Coach station was even less appealing than the bus trip itself!

-----

So what to do? There had to be a plan B, and being someone who was used to dealing with similar calamities (there being frequent and determined attempts from the man upstairs to steer me towards a new career), I was going to figure out a different course of action. Sure to re-book the bus would have been the simplest option, but something told me there would be a better way, and a few google-searches later I had discovered the overnight boat from Swansea to Cork, departing the following evening! A ten-hour sea voyage directly to my final destination, meaning (in theory) I would at least be a chance of getting a full nights sleep, without being rudely interrupted by the Guantanamo Bay hopefuls at Holyhead Ferry Port. There was still a bus trip to negotiate from Victoria Coach Station in the morning, but by comparison, the drive from London to Swansea was a breeze, and from that point onwards I just had to settle in for a night on the Irish Sea. (Slightly easier said than done, especially into a headwind… as I was about to discover…).

As fate would have it, my good friend and fellow Aussie touring partner Kent Eastwood was also booked to catch the boat across on the same night, so not only had I stumbled across a much better alternative to the original plan, but I also had some company for the journey. Things were looking up. I’d even got to Swansea with plenty of time to spare – a fortunate accident shall we say given I received a text message that afternoon (the Irish apparently don’t do notice periods very well) to let me know the boat would be departing one hour early. Something about adverse weather conditions, but I didn’t read the fine print... It was just a good thing I had some extra time up my sleeve, otherwise I might have been in trouble. And if the MBDS in London was hard to deal with, I imagine the MFDS in Swansea would have been a whole lot worse. (F=Ferry in case you were wondering…).

Checking in for the boat trip you become acutely aware that the glory days of ferry travel are certainly long gone. The “waiting room”, if I can call it that, was designed in the 1950’s, and I suspect beyond a coat of paint every now and then it hasn’t changed much since. I was reminded of the old RSL clubs in Australia that still seem to exist out the back of nowhere, and are now visited solely by the people who helped build them in the first place, all of whom are now retired and all of whom apparently carry a deep sentimental attachment to the interior design trends at the time of construction. The only difference being – an RSL club has a bar and some television screens; the Swansea ferry terminal has neither of these modern conveniences. In fact, they haven’t even bought the elevator music greatest hits collection, which often seems to pop up in these types of places… It was a prelude of things to come, and a subtle reminder that if we were going to fully appreciate the “voyage” that evening, we were going to have to take matters into our own hands.

If the waiting room was old-school, boarding the ship (The “Julia”) was a bit like entering a time warp... With a curious yet strangely comforting blend of fascination and trepidation, we made our way around the vessel, taking in our surroundings and soaking up the experience in the process. The glory days might well be over, but you can’t help but feel some sense of stateliness when you board one of these old ships - the wood panels, the brass finishing, the leather upholstery - it’s as though they set out to build the Titanic, but couldn’t quite afford to go the whole hog and settled for an Irish car ferry instead. Still, it all lends itself to a real “voyage” in the truest sense of the word, and the expected battering we were about to receive from the Irish Sea was momentarily forgotten as we made our way from the luxuriously appointed cabin* to the white linen and fine china of the dining room.

(*Slight exaggeration, but I feel a necessary one as some mark of respect to Mr Eastwood, who allowed me to park myself on his top bunk rather than the “Pullman Seat” I had originally booked. Let’s not get started on how Pullman seats got their name. Sometimes it’s better not to ask questions…).

It was a quiet night on the old Julia my friends, and the poor folks in the restaurant couldn’t wait to show us the type of hospitality they had been trained to deliver. I couldn’t help but wonder if their enthusiasm was at least partly attributable to faint hope that one day Leo and Kate would stroll in for a romantic candlelit meal. Sadly on this particular night, Di Caprio and Winslet were replaced by Field and Eastwood, and although the latter had managed to find a shirt and tie for the occasion, there was (fortunately) a distinct lack of romance on offer, and neither would be able to afford the type of tip dished out by your average Hollywood movie star. That said, we were still treated like royalty, even if the evening fare didn’t quite live up to the price tag…

Buoyed by the type of satisfaction that only an over-priced steak on the Irish sea can provide, we made our way to upstairs to the main bar to join the other 10 or so people travelling that night, ready to indulge in a quiet ale or two before retreating for the aforementioned “full nights sleep”. It is whilst ordering our drinks that I notice none of the staff here appear to be from England or Ireland, but rather from a landlocked country somewhere deep in the heart of Eastern Europe. How did they get here and what are they doing on the Irish Sea? It’s the kind of question best considered but never asked, and in any case there were far more pressing issues at hand, like trying to keep our drinks from spilling all over the floor. We were less than two hours into the trip, and already the boat was going through a range of motion the likes of which I had not experienced since jumping from a bridge in New Zealand with a bungee rope tied to my feet. Little did I know it was about to get a whole lot worse…

Now whether it was during the first beer or the third it’s hard to say exactly, but at some stage myself and the brother Eastwood decided an impromptu performance might be in order. The “full nights sleep” didn’t seem quite as achievable or for that matter appealing with the boat doing cartwheels every ten seconds, and the prospect of a wee gig at sea brought with it a level of excitement that the wee bunk bed could not offer.

These things are always difficult – do you ask the Eastern European bar staff directly, do you try to garner support from your fellow passengers, or do you get your guitars regardless and set up round the corner in the hope that someone encourages you to join them in the main bar? As it turns out, we discovered that a combination of options two and three was the best course of action, thus circumnavigating the bar staff completely and rendering them helpless to put a stop to the show once the fist round of applause had been given. Even the most unsympathetic bar manager would have to agree that three hours of drunken sing-a-longs would do wonders for his mid-week revenue!

And so with a small yet enthusiastic audience in attendance (the level of enthusiasm increasing dramatically with each pint of Guinness consumed), as the sea bared it’s teeth in the fiercest way possible, the brothers Field and Eastwood played through the back-catalogue, the front-catalogue, the hits, the misses and a selection of the finest drunk karaoke classics currently doing the rounds on the cruise boat circuit. It was shambolic; it was magnificent; it was a chance to experience first hand “The Craic” for which Ireland is famous the world over. Stories were shared, nations were united, and two blokes from Australia played their hearts out till they could play no more, the spirit of song transcending all else, as a group of weary travellers were swept up in a collective wave of emotion so powerful that it might have changed the world….

Ok so I got a bit carried away there, but it was a famous night, to be sure, and one that will live long in the memory. The highlight coming when the bar had long since closed but the music had refused to die. When the sea was at it’s most ferocious and the drinks were being flung from the table at an alarmingly rapid rate. When Kent Eastwood wrote what is perhaps the greatest song of all time and sung it with the type of gusto that can only be mustered when you’re rolling drunk on a rolling boat in the middle of the night:

If the glass is moving and I’m not drunk it’s just the ship that’s moving.
If the glass is moving and I’m not drunk it’s just the ship that’s moving.

Repeat.

Repeat.

Repeat.

I think it’s that last repeat that gets me every time.

I could post a video, but I think it wouldn’t do justice to the magic of the moment. You just had to be there.

And so with approximately 4 hours left to our destination, we retreated to the cabin to try to catch what little sleep we could. All I can remember from that point onwards was clinging to the side of the bed, desperately trying to remain on the top bunk as the ship launched itself off what appeared to be a series of Irish Tsunamis. But to be honest, sleep was the last thing on my mind. I couldn’t stop singing Kent’s fucking song.