Oh Teka, my Teka.

Broken tail, missing tooth, unflappable, hilarious, and sweet, sweet, sweet. We loved you, little guy. Like crazy cakes. Like one million of the craziest, bestest, crazy cakes, forever and ever and ever.

RIP
Oronhyatheka Lion-Face Hooper-Hoyano
2004-2009

And then more stairs

So. Fierce independence, it turns out, is not always the best technique.

This week I'm moving. Not very far, mind, just a seven minute walk down the hill, easy! Easy! I thought, I'll just carry my stuff down! All my stuff:

Down three flights of stairs,
down my (old) street,
past the pharmacy,
two coffee shops,
a penny on the road,
the barber's,
the news agent's,
the hair-dressers',
the pub,
the Co-op,
a vacuum cleaner shop,
a vet's,
Julian Road Stores,
another hair-dressers',
a hotel,
an expensive restaurant,
up my (new) road,
and up three flights of stairs.

Again and again. And again. I wonder what all the barbers and hair-dressers think of this girl going back and forth with her giant purple suitcase and various instruments. If I wasn't me, I might write a story about me. As it stands, however, I am me, and
I'm so tired I don't even feel like running. Which is, of course, pretty darn tired. I phoned Neil. Tomorrow Neil is bringing his van.

Germay, day 7, the pinnacle of germanydays

A sad day, because Ben, the bassist/trumpeter, had to leave early this morning for Important Things In Paris.

But, also, a happy day because…

WE GOT BAUMKUCHEN!

At our final gig, in Gottingen, the brilliant, lovely, amazing, talented, and, over-it-all, sweet boys from Dogs Run Free presented us with a gourmet, in-a-fancy-box-and-all, authentic, Baumkuche. Wow. Wow! After the gig (At the Blooming Bar, a great space with lots of great people in it) we chopped it up, carefully, reverently, and, at last, sampled “The King of Cakes.” It had been cooked on a pole! It had ten whole layers of cake! And a chocolate coating! Wow. Dogs Run Free are amazing, check them out, everyone. We didn’t get them a cake. Instead we made them a card with a lot of dogs on it.

And...germanyday6

You know how sometimes you’re magically able to eat more food than is physically possible? Like more than the size of a human stomach, by far? We did that this morning, when Heiko from our German label, Dandyland, (also the brains behind this ‘Songs and Whispers’ tour) made us a gigantanormous brunch. Hurrah for eating! It was great.

Then a gig in Achim, at a place called “Katakomben.” There was bat-and-witch themed décor and lovely nachos. The audience put up brilliantly with my inane punning-across-three-languages banter. Oh, and we played some music, pretty well, I think.

And then we were German, Day 5

Wow. We hurt. Last night’s foosball, Jagermeister, and robot –dancing almost killed us, it turns out. We stumbled through our balconytv set in Hamburg as well as we possibly could, then we ate a lot of emergency falafel. (The Balconytv.de tune will be up for watching in about four weeks, we are told.)

And on to Delmenhorst, for the evening’s gig. They give us really nice sandwiches. We play our songs slightly slower than usual.