Friday 20 February 2009

Leeds in the North

The gps made me aware of the fact that there seem to be two cities called Leeds in the UK. We went to the one in North Yorkshire.
After we'd all arrived (after a lot of confusion in the one way systems in the centre of Leeds), we went for a drink to discuss the tour. On this trip we have two cars: the van and a family car. We'll be driving up and down England for two weeks, in the traditional UK touring pinball machine way.

We all knew Leeds Met from before, we've always enjoyed playing there because we get very nice audience and it is a tiny but really cosy space.

During rehearsal the glass cake dish broke. It just kind of fell off the little table it was on. The little table itself has gone through a variety of repairs that clearly don't really hold it together any more, so all of a sudden we were without cake dish and without suitable cake table. So I went on a mission in Leeds to find a glass bowl with a lid.
Mission impossible, it seemed. So I got something else, that was ugly and wrong, but we had to have something to put the cake in.

The shows in Leeds were very nice. We were forced to be very sensitive about sound and movement, as the space was so small, so the show was suddenly a lot lighter than when we last played in the huge theatre in Parma. We all agreed that it was good to go back to a very small space every now and then.

Leeds struck me as quite rough. I saw a man standing on the street with blood gushing down his face and a crowd just watching him. The next afternoon I saw three seemingly homeless men with dogs nearly get into a very nasty fight.

I've lived in the UK for 4 years and got used to a lot of things. Now I've been gone for 3,5 years and got unused to some of those things. Like the dress code of young women in winter in England. I realise it's not exactly freezing anymore, but still, I would say it's too cold to dress in a few strips of fabric.
Then again, maybe that's just me.

1 comment:

Gretchen said...

It's not just you. English girls are mental with their "fashion".
I saw girls in hotpants and ballerinas on !!!christmas eve!!! in Diss/Norfolk...