Zombie Steps

I apologise if the arrival of this latest blog entry is inadvertently interrupting the international ubiquitous carnival of kitsch that Hallowe’en seems to engulf surrounding October 31^st. As you read on, I can only express my sincerest wishes that the content of my character, details of my latest experiences and tone of my prose abhors you all sufficiently enough to grab your attention away from the special edition Haribo bags, fake-blood induced dry cleaning visits and ‘is-there-facepaint-left-on-my-face-or-am-I-really-this-hungover’ visages that may greet you all over the coming week without breaking your ghoulish moods. Unless of course, like me, you don’t really do Hallowe’en, in which case I’ll try not to sound like too much of an arse. In the inevitable words of some anonymous, but sadly inevitable, vacuous TV-series life coach: it’s important that everybody can come here, take what they want from it and feel free to enjoy themselves.

I had my first master-class last week with a Danish man called Claus Olesen (not to be confused with the shop on Northumberland Street). I was pretty sure, before even speaking to him, that I would like Claus and back this first impression up with two facts: 

-He's called Claus.
- He had a nice, full, ginger beard.

The lesson itself was good, and being taught in front of other people was not as intimidating as I feared. I also found Claus’ (did I mention, his name was Claus) appearance as encouraging as his playing. Maybe one day, if I practise really hard, my disappointing ginger chin fuzz can develop into a robust, glowing facial border to rival his! This evening was filled with a concert of Turkish music, in which my teacher was playing. The concert was really enjoyable and approximately 50% of the audience particularly appreciated the dress elected by the singer. I’d have been more impressed if she had a ginger beard, though.

This week has been a ‘week off’ of sorts. There were no official classes at the Conservatorium and a couple of rehearsals that had been booked in weeks ago were cancelled with more or less exactly the smallest amount of notice to make booking any mode of transport home for a couple of days unviable. The inverted commas are present as a means to express the abundance of activities that have gone on in the place of normal classes. I did manage some time off, which included a trip to Amsterdam during the massive Amsterdam Dance Event, in venues all over the city. Last year, my landlady put up a Chicago-based DJ (called Sadar Bahar, if anybody is interested) who was playing in a small record shop. He was a soul DJ and it was awesome. After his set I was allowed to goggle at the vinyl being swapped between him and the shop owner and listen to 1970’s Nigerian jazz. It was awesome. After that, the shop owner put on some unreleased Sun Ra live tapes. They were also awesome. I quite enjoyed myself, in case I haven’t successfully put that impression across.

Things have got a little darker, colder and wintrier. This is actually incredibly welcome, as it has temporary alleviated my on-going battle with bike riding and temperature control! The changeable, arguably slightly crappy, weather is something that the Dutch seem to almost proud of! A regular point of conversation relates to asking how you’re coping with the conditions, asked as some sort of friendly test of manliness. I tend to smile politely and reply with something along the lines of ‘fine thanks’ (out of character for me, I know) but one of these days I should really explain to the Dutch that us hardy Brits are relatively untouched by the meteorological challenges that their country poses as we have a more or less an IDENTICAL climate. That said, our weather is probably slightly better in the sense that it enables you to never run out of conversation with relatively uninteresting people.

I was going to end on that upbeat and positive note. I feel, however, as if I can’t start with a Hallowe’en oriented paragraph without coming full circle and mentioning a further seasonal event which I witnessed on my way into study today.

They put the Christmas lights up.

In October.

Jesus Christ. (…Coming Soon.)

Milestones

Hello! It’s me again, in case you have forgotten who I am. For those of you who spend most of their days on Facebook, obsessively checking my wall and searching desperately for any trace of a blog update (and let’s face it, you are only human), I apologise! It’s been a relatively busy month and, by the time I cycled home in the evening, my motivation only extended as far as watching Danish crime drama or sitting on Facebook waiting for other people to update their blogs with images and a genuine sense of enthusiasm about almost everything that they do. Bewildering.

Several Saturdays ago, I hopped on a double-decker Intercity train for my first excursion to Amsterdam. This it itself is not a particularly weird thing, the train ride is only half an hour and I am sure that many Utrechters, indulge in a similar pastime. There is, however, a slightly peculiar twist when you get off the train in a new city to find your brother waiting in the foyer having already had a walk around (‘I don’t like it much’) after a gig in Den Haag the previous evening. It was nice that this change of scenery could coincide with an opportunity to reflect on the previous three weeks with one of the people best equipped to empathise with the contrast from my home life and it was very refreshing to be walking around somewhere alongside somebody with an equally confident grasp of basic map reading. After spending much of the day just walking around and absorbing atmosphere of the place (tinged with a slight smell of Cannabis), it was a great pleasure to join the rest of Out of the Blue for an awesome steak and a trip to a Whisky café with the largest menu of single malt I have ever seen!

Daily life has continued in a relatively firm routine. I am in the Conservatorium seven days a week (apart from today, when the ‘really-quite-serious-okay?’ ailment of manflu has got the better of me), practising, going to classes and rehearsals, or drinking copious amounts of 40p ‘espressochoc’. I feel lucky that I have managed to manoeuvre myself into a relatively varied timetable, flicking between chamber music lessons, jazz theory classes, classical saxophone concerts and free improvisation rehearsals. Meanwhile, TDS/BDS (see previous posts) has become less of a novelty and more a necessity of life. The main problem I am experiencing whilst cycling is the ‘menopause simulation effect’ (or MSE), resulting in annoying fluctuations in temperature. As the winter draws ever nearer, I need to wrap up warm; wrapping up inevitably results in overheating within ten minutes, removing layers and becoming annoyingly cold for another five minutes! The problem is exacerbated by the deadly ‘Dutch gust’ - an inevitable side-effect of such an obscenely flat country - or by having to stop for traffic and stand there panting and perspiring in a big black coat just as the sun decides to peek it’s head round the corner of a bank of grey cloud for the first time in three days. Alas! I’m getting there though – on a good day you arrive feeling (and looking, obviously) pretty damn fine. If you get it wrong, you turn up covered in sweat and freezing cold.

The extremes of weather can also make the journey more interesting. Cycling in a downpour last week was a particularly unpleasant, yet oddly enjoyable experience; after about ten minutes of furious pedaling, with one’s jeans becoming insistent on clinging to the legs as affectionately as possible, it just become quite funny. Whether in a storm, a swimming pool or victim to a foul prank, there is only so wet you can actually get.  When you’ve managed it, someone else’s daily dose of schadenfreude.

The weather has slowly begun to turn more autumnal. I always enjoy this time of year - colours start to become more interesting and the weather more entertainingly unpredictable. The wind is always accompanied by a background rustling sound, and the canals look particularly idyllic when half coated with floating orange and yellow leaves. I apologise for my lack of photography, I’ve always been useless at it and feel particularly inferior to my friends from far reaches posting similarly beautiful pictures of amazing places. You can probably Google ‘Utrecht, Autumn’ and you’ll get the idea.  Failing that, Google ‘Utrecht’ and ‘Autumn’ separately and use your glorious imaginations to amalgamate the two. Delightful, don’t you agree?

If you’ve stuck with this long, and particularly disjointed, blog post to the end then well done! I’ll try and be a little more regular from now on, so you don’t have to go a whole month with the burden of ‘Oh god, how’s Jamie? I hope he’s alright. Jees.’ weighing heavily on your minds. Thanks anyway though – you kind, kind people.

I called this blog post 'Milestones' as it's the first one I've posted since being here for over a month. I've been trying to have a jazz-album theme to my titles but have realised how little I actually know about music...at all! Don't be at all surprised if, by the time the year is out, I've resorted to 'Greatest Hits, Vol. 5' or something similar. My godfather would be very disappointed.