I'm nearly home!

Friday 17 April

Last night in Europe! I’ve spent the past couple of days in Sheffield, England, visiting my friend Kirsty (we’re joint Godmothers to Benji – but unfortunately neither of us are Fairy Godmothers – how cool would that be, bibbidi bobbidi boo and all that?).

Sheffield’s a nice area, bigger than I thought, and Kirsty lives right on the edge of town, about 5 minutes drive from some of the most spectacular scenery I didn’t see. That’s right. Didn’t see. It was foggy the whole time I was there and could barely see out her window! However, that didn’t stop us from going out for a walk – Pride and Prejudice country, which was very exciting. In fact, one of the stately homes in the area was used as Pemberly in the new Keira Knightly version of P&P, and we think some of the rocks were used in the (way better) 1995 version with Colin Firth. You know, the bit where Lizzie goes walking with her aunt and uncle when they’re on holiday (see photos).

I didn’t get to meet Mr Darcy, which was a bit of a shame, but maybe next time!!!

The other cool thing about my time in Sheffield is that I got to join a choir for a night! Kirsty sings in the Abbeydale Singers, an a capella choir who have won various awards and toured to places like Hungary. She had phoned the musical director earlier in the day to see if it was alright for me to come and watch the rehearsal.

I could only hear her end of the conversation, which went something like:

K: I have a friend from New Zealand staying. Would it be okay if she came and watched tonight’s rehearsal? She’s as music teacher.
(listens)
K: Oh no, she’d probably just want to sit and watch.
(listens)
K: (to me) You’re an alto right?
J: (suspiciously) Yeah…
K: Yes, she’s an alto.
(listens)
K: Okay, great. And you’ll have a folder of music for her?
(listens)
K: Cool, we’ll see you tonight.

So I ended up singing with an English madrigal choir. Sorry, sight-singing with an English madrigal choir!! It was heaps of fun, even if they did end up mocking my NZ accent after! And bizarrely, the husband of one of the women in the choir is also from Dunedin, and Dunedin being Dunedin, we established that I’m going to be teaching her niece at Balmacewen this year!

I’m in London now, staying at my friend Brett’s place. Then my plane leaves for home at 9pm Saturday night! I think I’m all packed…may have to pay a little excess luggage.

Can’t wait to get back and see you all again and play some music. I’m getting desperate. I’ve never been away from my flute for this long before and I’ve been going through a bit of flute-withdrawal. And just think of all that sheet music I’ve accumulated these past 4 months and haven’t been able to play!

This probably won’t be my last post here, I’ve got a bunch of other photos I’m going to torture you with and who knows what’s going to happen on the plane on the way home? Knowing me, I’ll end up singing next to a troop of Mongolian throat-singers and end up performing with them or something!!

Thank you for reading this and thanks for all the emails, facebook messages and texts you've sent while I've been away. They've kept me sane!!

See you soon.

Belfast

Ireland

Tuesday 14 April

This time next week I’ll be sleeping in my own bed. YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have just under a week left of my trip and I’m definitely looking forward to coming home. Sometimes it seems the past four months have gone amazingly quickly and other times it seems like I’ve felt every single day, every single hour, every single minute…

I’ve spent the last week in Ireland – 5 days in Dublin and 3 in Belfast. I spent a couple of days wandering round Dublin, getting my bearings, going on walking tours etc. One day I went on a bus trip to Wicklow, with a bus driver who looked like Father Ted, swore like Father Jack and sang like…Elvis.

He kept singing throughout the trip: various Irish songs that were about the areas we were visiting, other songs that were appropriate to the conditions (e.g. “Singin’ in the Rain”); and other completely random songs (e.g. “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” or his Elvis impersonations…). He had a reasonable enough singing voice, but unfortunately he didn’t know all the words to any of the songs he was singing (da da da crazy little thing called love…”)

Then, on the return journey he wanted to have a Eurovision sing-a-long. He started off with an Irish song, then he chose Spain. So the Spanish people on the bus had to sing a song. Then they got to choose a country. Good idea, but unfortunately, no-one else wanted to sing… So he sang songs from all the countries.

It was a long journey…

Then yesterday in Belfast I went on a day trip to the Giant’s Causeway on the north-west coast of Northern Ireland. And had an interesting bus driver there…

Only this time, he was more like a strict school teacher. We weren’t allowed to talk on the trip so he could do his commentary, and asked if we were sitting by someone who kept on talking, we should go up and tell him so he could have a word with them. We had to stay in the same seats all day, and those who had changed, he made them stand up and switch back to their original seats. He kept getting angry at people who were late back to the bus. We ended getting back to Belfast an hour later than planned and all the way back he kept saying “I’ve never been this late before” or “I’ve never had such a stressful trip as this.” I thought we were all going to get a detention or a letter sent home to our parents.

I think I preferred Father Ted.

Anyway…I did like Ireland, both parts – the Republic and the North – and I’d like a chance to explore a bit more of the country some other time.

I’m writing this on the ferry from Belfast to Stran…something-or-other and then I’ll catch a bus to Manchester where I’ll stay for a night, to Sheffield for a couple of days, London for a night then I’ll be spending the next 24 hours in the sky…

See you soon!

Oh – there were some music shops in Ireland…

Dublin

Rome I

Monday 06 April

Originally I had planned a funny blog about Italy, but in light of recent events, all I’m going to offer is pictures.

Rome II

Rome III

Florence

Naples

Italy Earthquake

Just a quick message to you all to say that I was in Rome when the earthquake hit last night at about 3am. I felt it, but am fine. I flew out if Rome today and am in Dublin.

I'll do a proper update in the next day or so with photos etc.

J

Folk Festivaling

Thursday 24 March

OK, so you caught me out. I actually had nothing to do with writing that song I used in my last blog entry. In fact, I was a baby when it was #1 in the charts, and although I’m very clever, and was an extremely clever baby, I still couldn’t write a #1 hit song. So thanks for the use of the lyrics Sir Paul McCartney.

It’s been a whirlwind couple of weeks, but absolutely brilliant. I ended up in London and was going to go to Ireland. I had a ticket to get there, but couldn’t get any accommodation because I’d forgotten it was St. Patrick’s Day over there. I managed to cash in my ticket and ended up going back to Oxford. I had to stick around the UK region because I’d promised my friend Brett I’d go to his band’s gig on the 25th. More on that later.

I chose Oxford because it was on my list of places to go back to if I had the chance. When I was traipsing through the UK in January I only spent an afternoon there because I was on my way to somewhere I thought would be much more exciting. Obviously I was wrong, because I discovered Oxford was the best place in the entire UK. So I headed back for a few days to explore.

Oxford in the 3rd oldest university in Europe, with buildings dating back to the 12th century. It’s absolutely beautiful, and even more so in the springtime. I went for a big walk alongside the canal and decided that if I ever do move the UK it will be to Oxford and I will live in a houseboat. They are the coolest things ever. I even saw one being driven along the canal and watched the process where they lower it into the next part of the canal using floodgate-thingys. So perhaps I don’t know the ins-and-outs and all the technical stuff involved, but it’s pretty darned awesome.

I even got chatted up by a 21-year old Australian guy who was in the same hostel. Kind of flattering, except for the bit where his jaw dropped when I said I was 32. I don’t think he’d ever realised that people could be that old – he certainly was never going to be that old. He spent the rest of the night going round saying “32? 32?” But then he got distracted. There were some Swedish girls staying there and he knew how to say some naughty words in Swedish, so he went to hang out with them. Perhaps not my soul mate
.
On my final day there I got talking to a girl (Australian, not Swedish) at my hostel who had a programme for a folk music festival. I asked her if it was happening at the moment as I figured that would be kind of a cool thing to go to (stop laughing – I’m becoming a big fan of folk music festivals – I’ll tell you why in a minute). She said it was happening the next weekend, but she was coming back because one of her favourite bands were playing. I asked who that was, and she said…The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.

Well, you know me and ukuleles…(actually, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m developing an unhealthy obsession with the uke…). I got all excited and she got all excited and it turns out that we have heaps in common. Ukuleles, Beatles… She was heading off to Liverpool for the intervening week (oh gee, I wonder why…) and I decided that I had to come back for the festival, so I booked myself a ticket up to Glasgow to return the following weekend.

I went online to check the availability of tickets for the festival and found there was a volunteering form – and the payment for volunteering at the festival was…a free pass to the whole thing. Which meant I could go and see the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain for FREE. If I was accepted as a volunteer.

Glasgow was fantastic. It was sunny the whole time I was there (yes, I know, I was shocked too. I didn’t thing the sun ever reached Scotland). I went up to Kintyre one day, hence the last blog), mucked around for a couple, visiting different parts of the city and went for a day trip to Perth.

Now, Perth is a pretty small town, but nevertheless, it’s still a town. A friend of my mother’s lives there, Christine. She used to live in Mac Bay and I used to babysit her son, Robert (who is now in his final year at university…). Sue had given me Christine’s address before I left NZ, but somewhere along the way I’d lost it. On the bus on the way there I thought to myself “wouldn’t it be funny if I bumped into Christine, ha ha ha”, because, obviously, that was never going to happen.

Except that it did.

I was walking along the banks of the River Tay when I could sort of feel someone beside me. I stopped, turned around and a familiar face in the most incredulous voice imaginable said: “Justine? Justine?” So, yeah, I bumped into Christine. She had seen me and thought I looked like me (funny that) so she started following me (not in a freaky stalker-y kind of way). She was on her way somewhere and I only had a short amount of time in Perth before my bus went back to Glasgow, but we spent about ½ an hour catching up. Funny the way life works!

Back in Glasgow I had an email waiting from the organiser of the folk festival saying that I could indeed a volunteer for the weekend, which meant in exchange for 8 hours of my time, I could have a free ticket.

The festival was brilliant. I ended up only being used for about 5 hours all up, because there simply wasn’t that much to do at the place where I was stationed. I just had to point people in the right direction for things and hand out programmes. Pretty easy!

This was the first folk music festival I’d ever been to, and I’ll definitely be going to more. It was great getting to meet the other volunteers, most of whom almost make a career out of volunteering, going from festival to festival, listening to all their favourite bands for free.

My main focus was the ukulele orchestra, but I discovered SO much new music and so many new bands. You need to google or YouTube these bands, because they’re amazing:

The Dhol Foundation
Lau
Kris Drever (a member of Lau)
Spiers and Boden
Jack Harris
Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain

I even went to an accordion workshop one afternoon. Uh, guess what my next instrument might just have to be? But never fear, I won’t be abandoning the ukulele! Or the flute. Or percussion. Or the violin…

I’m back in London now and am heading off to Belgium tomorrow, en route to Italy. I went to my friend Brett’s gig last night in London, which was great. He plays guitar in a band called Lo Star. Again, YouTube them.

It hit me the other day that I only have three more weeks left in Europe, so I’ll have to get busy to see the places I want to. I really want to see Rome, so I think I’ll base myself there, somehow make my way back to the UK to go to Ireland, try and get to Sheffield to see my friend Kirsty and then back home.

I’m definitely ready to come home – I really want to play some music (flute, perc, uke – don’t care) and I’ve even been having these really disturbing thoughts of wanting to get back into teaching. Bizarre, I know.

It’s also just hit me that throughout these blogs I’ve subjected you to about 10,000 words. That’s nearly half the amount I submitted for my postgrad diploma thesis. Scaryy!! So I apologise for making you read through all my ramblings. (As an aside to you flute-y people – there may be another blog in the making based on different ideas I have re the whole music-making process…watch this space. Well, not actually this space. It’ll be a separate blog).

Alright – see you in Italy!

Justine

A Song I Wrote (with a little bit of help from Macca...)

Mull of kintyre
Oh mist rolling in from the sea,
My desire is always to be here
Oh mull of kintyre

Far have I traveled and much have I seen
Dark distant mountains with valleys of green.
Past painted deserts the sunsets on fire
As he carries me home to the mull of kintyre.

Mull of kintyre
Oh mist rolling in from the sea,
My desire is always to be here
Oh mull of kintyre

Sweep through the heather like deer in the glen
Carry me back to the days I knew then.
Nights when we sang like a heavenly choir
Of the life and the time of the mull of kintyre.

Mull of kintyre
Oh mist rolling in from the sea,
My desire is always to be here
Oh mull of kintyre

Smiles in the sunshine
And tears in the rain
Still take me back to where my memories remain
Flickering embers growing higher and higher
As they carry me back to the mull of kintyre

Mull of kintyre
Oh mist rolling in from the sea,
My desire is always to be here
Oh mull of kintyre

Mull of kintyre
Oh mist rolling in from the sea,
My desire is always to be here
Oh mull of kintyre

Salzburg

Vienna