Learning a Lesson.....

I let my dogs out for a last pee last night and both dogs raced across the lawn, and came to an abrupt stop with a yelp from Pepsi. I went out to see what was going on and there, with the dogs hovering over it, was a little hedgehog curled into a ball! Weird that at the end of November a hedgehog is out and about, but the mild weather must have delayed its hibernation. Little Pepsi must have sniffed the hedgehog a bit too closely and got aquainted with it's spines LOL!

Losing U2?

I’ve given myself a few days to calm down after reading on U2.com that the only gig in the UK and Ireland U2 will be doing in 2010 is the Glastonbury festival. Now I’ve been a fan since 1983, I can read shite like this from Ian McCulloch and know it’s more sour grapes than truth, I’ve been angry with U2 over various things over the years but this has taken the biscuit for me (what a strange phrase that is!).

1. First off everyone was encouraged to re-subscribe early (five months early in my case) in order to get new presales for the 2010 tour. This made U2.com seems more like a ticket agency than anything else, I thought we paid a sub for the fan club of which a presale allocation was a possible perk? To me this was clearly a way to add to the coffers by getting expensive subscriptions early, and in a time of real financial hardship for most ordinary fans, I felt that was out of order. I didn’t re-sub and will not be doing so in March when it is due, bye bye U2.com.

2. So then there’s the announcement of Glastonbury, great (though I think it will be a tricky gig for them) but all the tickets sold out when released in October. So no U2 fans who didn’t already have Glasto tickets will be able to see U2 play there.

3. And then there’s the announcement that there will be no other gigs in the UK or Ireland. Some people say well we shouldn’t expect them to play, I don’t feel that way, I’ve always said I expect good albums and good gigs from U2, that’s their job. And when other countries the band played this year (Germany, Spain, France, USA, Canada) get more gigs in 2010 I expect that for the UK and Ireland too. They may go back on this and play at least in Ireland, I hope they do, Larry mentioned looking for somewhere in Northern Ireland to play and there were rumours of the tour finishing in Ireland. Bono often talks about his “tribe” being there, maybe the band should remember they are Irish a bit more often!

4. So what about all the fans in the UK and Ireland who resubscribed just so they would get presales for shows in their country? Well they are left pretty much high and dry, all presales for European shows except two have gone ahead and only a handful of dates have not sold out (and I’m pretty sure what’s left will be the most expensive tickets). So even if they were able to afford to travel, they are restricted to two gigs where they can use their presales to purchases tickets. Maybe more shows will be added to the tour, I hope so for the fans’ sakes.

5. A friend of mine has said she feels she is “losing” the U2 she’s loved for as long as I have and I know what she means. I’m still a fan, but my relationship with the band is being tested. I read this on @U2 and at times it touched on some of the things I feel too. I felt they were often speaking for me, they inspired me and I respected a lot of things they stood for. I still feel those things, but the latter is fast being eroded as the corporate side of U2 becomes ever more obvious.

6. The U2 Organisation has become all powerful and seems to be driven mainly by commercial values now. Don’t get me wrong the band needs to make money and profits, and needs an organisation behind them, but now that seems to be becoming more important than anything else. Bono once said that you have to be careful that in order to to defeat the monster you don’t become a monster. I think the U2 organisation (and by default U2 themselves as what it does is in their name) has now become that monster and there’s a danger that it will swallow U2 and all the special things that makes the band unique.

U2 For Glastonbury 2010

Well, well, well, after all the years of rumours that U2 would play at Glastonbury it is actually happening! They have been confirmed as playing at the festival next year. It's close shave, they are squeezing the gig in between shows in North America on the 3rd leg of the 360 Tour. I'll get to see it on TV anyway, so that's all the UK and Ireland is getting, I'm not happy. I sometimes think also that they have forgotten they are Irish! Read more here

Floods in Cumbria

Cumbria is a rural county which rarely makes the national news, but this week we have made international news, and all because of freak weather. At the end of last week in some parts of the county twelve inches of rain fell in 24 hours, the highest rainfall ever in the UK.

Luckily for me where I live, it was wet but not to that degree, the worst rainfall was further west and south of the county. The towns of Workington and Cockermouth were worst hit, I could not believe the TV film of a raging torrent of water flowing through the main street of Cockermouth, usually a quiet, picturesque town on the edge of the beautiful Lake District. On the radio all I hear is news about closed roads, overflowing lakes, collapsing bridges. And worst of all the latter - collapsing bridges - claimed the life of policeman Bill Barker as he was helping others by stopping people crossing an unsafe bridge which gave way under his feet. My thoughts are with his family and all the people who have lost their homes in this terrible deluge. Despite our high tech society there is no power like Mother Nature unleashed.

Bill Barker, rest in peace.

A Dog’s Revenge

I couldn’t stop laughing when I first saw this advertisement http://video.aol.co.uk/video-detail/pedigree-jumbone-advert/4139010538 on TV, any dog owner will relate to it I’m sure. They should make more funny ads, people remember them and it’s good to have a laugh!

Work and Concerts

Time has been flying by recently and I haven't had much time to write in my blog. I've started my job and am really enjoying my little job, who'd have thought it, my new career as a cleaner! It's totally stressfree, I just do my work and go home. I work in a lovely well loved primary school and the teachers I meet are really nice. It is two hours a day non-stop physical work and I am just getting used to it - the first week I had aching muscles in every part of my body! But now I can feel I am losing weight which can only be a good thing.

Still no UK/Irish dates. What's going on? My friends and I have bought tickets for German shows in Frankfurt and Hannover, we don't want to risk missing out on seeing U2 live next year. If it's just those two shows for me I'm ok with that, but maybe in time more dates will be announced.

Book Review: Power’s Garden, by Dianne Ebertt Beeaff

I haven’t had much time for reading recently but I did get to read this book. It’s set in Arizona in the early part of the twentieth century and is a tale of a clash of cultures, love, death and dark family secrets. It is based around two families, the Mormon Beechams and the Texan Brennicks. There are lots of twists and turns in the storyline that keeps you hooked and wondering what will happen next.

The main characters are the gentle Malvina Beecham and the feisty Duett Brennick and, though they are very different characters, their friendship crosses the divide. They are also strong women (especially Duett who has an array of wonderful Texan phrases)who you come to admire.

The novel describes the harsh, unyielding landscape of Arizona and the difficulties early settlers had in surviving there well. I come from somewhere totally different but could easily picture the valley and homesteads in my mind from the descriptions.

Power’s Garden is good read, I would recommend it and hope that perhaps there will be a sequel in the future. You can read more about the book here www.powersgarden.com

Bono on Berlin, Germany and U2

Bono has written another guest column for the New York Times titled Five Scenes, One Theme: A True if Unlikely Story.  In this article – written in a different style from his usual - he weaves together the unity of Berlin and Germany, the fight against African poverty and the healing and rebirth of U2 through the creation of the song One.  I think it is a brilliant article, very well written with wisdom and humour. 

And I must say I think Angela Merkel’s father gave her very good advice in the words “Always be more than you appear and never appear to be more than you are.”

Read Bono’s column here

Berlin, The Brandenburg Gate, Reunification and U2

Berlin was wet, grey and very cold but I was still very excited to be there. I found the railway station at Schonefeld airport ok and got on the train that was supposed to go to a station where I could change for one near my hotel. But it didn’t go there and I had to hop off and get another train to the Ostbahnhof, but couldn’t find the train I needed so I hopped into a taxi. It was soooo cold and it was lovely to be whisked off to the hotel. The driver told me that they had their first snow today! That showed I was definitely in the east of Europe!

The hotel, Alt Berliner, was really unusual, you entered through huge, old, carved wooden doors into a gorgeous hallway with an original tiled floor. The wide flights of stairs had beautiful wooden banisters. There were various old household items in the hallway too, almost like stepping into the past. Reception was warm and cosy, the receptionist friendly. My third floor room was lovely and it looked out over an internal courtyard.

After settling in, I wrapped myself up in a warm jacket, scarf, hat and gloves and went out for walk. Potsdammer Platz, with it’s glimmering new buildings was ten minutes away. It was lively, with shops, swanky hotels, cinemas, a little market area with stalls selling food, Christmas decorations, hats and scarves, sweets, there was even a carousel for kids. I walked another five minutes and there I was on Unten den Linden (under the lindens, apparently the only trees that would grow on the street) And there on one side of the Pariser Platz was the famous Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of German reunification. Normally it stand there in the square in all it’s glory, but now all the preparations for the U2 concert filled the square, yet the Gate was still awe-inspiring even with the work going on around it.

I could hardly believe I was there, everything had happened so quickly, I’ve always wanted to go to Berlin ever since I was very young. My mother was German and when we used to go to visit relatives in Germany we got the ferry from the UK to Hook of Holland and then got the train to her home town in Westphalia in the then Western Germany. It always felt like an exciting adventure to me, I watched the station names pass by, Gouda - Utrecht – Amersfoort – Hengelo – Rheine – Osnabruck are some I remember, everything was so different. That train’s destination was sometimes Berlin, to me a mysterious place behind the Iron Curtain - in those days the Cold War was in full swing. It always fascinated me, it seemed in another world in my young mind, and in reality it was. And here I was standing at the Brandenburg gate in the now free city!

I heard lots of Irish voices around and a few fans stood by the hotel adjacent to the square, so U2 were probably staying there. It was too cold for me to hang around for them and I left and walked back to my hotel.

The next day I woke to very welcome blue skies and sunshine! After breakfast I walked to Potsdammer Platz once more to catch the sightseeing bus. I wasn’t going to be in Berlin long so I wanted to see what I could and I thought the best way to do that was to go on a tour.

One of the first things we saw was part of the Wall that remains, there are bits of it still around, there was also a small piece in situ in Potsdammer Platz. It looked really forbidding and to think there was twenty eight miles of that wall! Nearby was the well-known Checkpoint Charlie with tourists posing for photos with a “guard”.

We passed an area with lots of colourful Trabants. Berlin Cathedral was magnificent, strangely surrounded by a lot of open ground where building work was going on. This kind of thing was evident in many areas in the city, they are probably areas in the east that had decayed buildings now demolished and new ones will take their place. We passed the famous satellite-like TV tower, another symbol visible from many parts of the city.

We drove down Friedrich Strasse and the guide told us one of the U-bahn (underground) lines ran under the street, it stayed open after the division of the city and guards on the East side made sure no one got onto the trains. It was hard to imagine that this city so divided until just twenty years ago.

Then we turned into Unten den Linden, the guide mentioned the U2 concert and I could hear music, so I think the band were sound checking at that lime. We went on past the Reichstag, impressive with its glass dome representing the original cupola (the building was severely damaged by a fire in the 1930‘s and also during the war, and was not fully restored until after reunification).

We passed by the Tiergarten, a very large park. On a traffic island on a busy roundabout within the park was the column on top of which was the Siegessaule, the golden angel of victory, she glistened in the sunshine. Of course I was taken back to U2’s video for Stay which featured the statue.

We went on to a main shopping area of the city and I saw the famous KaDeWe store. Then shortly afterwards we were back at Potsdammer Platz where I’d joined the tour and I got off the bus. I really enjoyed the tour and it gave me a good snapshot of the city.

For my lunch I got a bratwurst at one of the market stalls, it was delicious. I walked back to my hotel in the sunshine. As I walked along I noticed how relatively litter-free the streets were. It also amused me how obedient most Germans were at pedestrian crossings, waiting for the green go symbol even if there is no traffic in sight! My friend Chris told me something interesting about the traffic lights. There were two kinds, one rather like what we have in the UK and other set featuring a red symbol of a man with a hat holding out his arms for stop and a walking man with a hat in green for go. The latter type (known as ampelmann) are the East German lights, one of the few things to remain intact from East in the modern city. They are quite cute!

At 2.30 I set off for the meeting point I’d arranged with Chris. On the way I passed the Holocaust Memorial, dozens and dozens of coffin-shaped black granite blocks of different sizes. It was moving in it’s simplicity and a beautiful memorial.

I met up with Chris at the hotel beside the Brandenburg Gate. It was lovely to see her again, we hadn’t managed to meet up during the tour earlier this year, so this unexpected opportunity to meet up was lovely. She introduced me to her friends, a lively bunch of people who were very friendly and kind to me. We all went to an outdoor café near the Gate for something to eat and drink. Tiny bottles of vodka shots appeared from everyone’s pockets and they generously shared then with me, they warmed me up! It was starting to get dark by now and the temperature was dropping rapidly.

At 5pm some of us went into the concert site leaving the other still hitting the shots and beer. My ticket was for a different area, so after arranging a meeting point for after the show, Chris and I went our separate ways.

I could have got fairly near the front but because I’m not very tall it was pointless staying there as I couldn’t see over people in front. So I went much further back and I could see the stage pretty well from there. Time dragged and the cold started to bite. The crowd was easy going and I heard quite a few languages around me, there was a tangible excitement in the air. Floodights shone into the sky their beams hitting the very low cloud peppering it with discs of light, giving the impression that there was a grey canopy overhead.

The gig was supposed to start at 6.30pm, but that came and went. I paced about to try to warm up, no U2, it started to rain, the drops sparkled like diamonds as they were illuminated in the beams of light.

The rain didn’t last long thank heavens. Quarter to seven no U2. More pacing, I cursed Irish time, I was so cold. At last at 7pm U2 came came onstage to massive applause and cheers from the crowd. They went straight into One. As the music swept over me I suddenly felt really emotional, tears came to my eyes and I had a lump in my throat. I think it was a combination of seeing U2 again, being in Berlin, the significance of the event and the general emotional atmosphere within the crowd. I was so moved. Colourful graphics relating to the Wall were beamed onto the Brandenburg Gate during the song and it worked really well. Next was Magnificent which was wonderful, what a brilliant song that is! The third song was Sunday Bloody Sunday, a song I am really tired of in live shows, but for this occasion it was appropriate, Bono changed the lyrics too. Jay-Z joined the band on stage and rapped for a while, something I could have done without, but the crowd seemed to enjoy it.

Bono talked a little about Berlin and recalled the time the band spent there whilst recording Achtung Baby “wrote some tunes, met some beautiful spirits". Another time he said - in a strong southern US drawl - “swayin’ like a field of golden corn” (or something very similar) I’ve no idea what he was talking about!

Next was Beautiful Day another very appropriate song for the occasion, again I felt very emotional and I never normally feel like that during that song. I think it again was the atmosphere and the crowd singing on top of their voices, I could only imagine how special this occasion felt for native Berliners.

Vertigo rocked, and they closed with Moment of Surrender. Short but wonderful, U2 never disappoint live. For those who have read about U2 erecting a “wall” around the gig site that’s rubbish. There was a security fence around the site which I fully expected. There were rumours of up to 100,000 people coming to listen and they needed to have some safety measures in place. Also anything that was done at that gig was nothing to do with U2 anyway as it was an MTV production.

The crowd dispersed and I met up with Chris and we went back to the café to meet up with her friends. During the gig I hadn’t felt or thought of the cold, but now sitting in this outside café it really got to me. After a while I said I’d have to go as I was so cold. So I said my goodbyes to Chris and her friends and walked back. I passed the back entrance of the hotel and a handful of (hardy!) fans were waiting for the band. I walked past, no way was I going to join them, all I could think of was to get out of the cold!

At the hotel I had a hot coffee in the restaurant before going to my room. I was still cold, had a hot shower, slightly warmer, turned the heating up as high as it would go and after about twenty minutes I felt better (I am very cold-blooded!). How I suffer for U2!

Looking back now on the trip I almost find it hard to believe it happened! It was all so quick. Berlin is one of the most unusual cities I’ve visited and I find it hard to sum up how it felt for me. Berlin is a city that has risen up from the ashes twice in 45 years, it’s been ripped apart and is trying to heal itself. Much of the city I saw has re-grown into a vibrant modern place, but there are still scars of the past, maybe the Fall of the Wall celebrations will help them heal.