Jose Gonzalez @ The Edinburgh Assembly Rooms

She’s late because she’s been climbing trees behind her house and painting flowers on her two-year-old niece’s legs all afternoon, so I meet her at the bottom of my street, waving to her as she skips along excitedly from the bus. Her sister has bought some new clothes via mail order that arrived today and she’s already helped herself to a stripy red vest with gold buttons and a pretty, short skirt that shows off her legs. I kiss her and we race down to the subway at Hillhead, huddling for warmth on a brown metal bench as we wait impatiently for the train. An old jakey comes smiling over on his heels giving us a perfect ‘O’ sign with his finger and thumb and exclaiming ‘True Love! True Love!”

Under-ground we squeeze into one seat by a partition and she nestles her head into my neck as I slide a hand round her small waist. A guide dog in training ignores its master to come and sit obediently by my side and I place my other hand on the dog’s warm collar. I am suddenly awash with a sense of familial warmth and belonging and smile to myself at the possibilities of life as we rattle along together inside this metal carriage.

She refuses to get on the train at Queen Street without a coffee, but we manage to board with seconds to spare and find seats opposite each other at a table with two young tie-guys staring vacantly out of the windows. I’m a little annoyed because I want her all to myself and brood irritably over an empty notebook, but she doesn’t seem to mind and pulls out a battered copy of Through the Looking Glass, giggling to herself as she drinks her coffee and reading out occasional extracts for me. Suddenly she grabs my pen out of my hand and writes ‘Don’t waste time or time will waste you!’ on the folded Metro lying on the table, spinning it round for me to read and offering only a sly grin by way of explanation.

The receptionist’s spiel in the Royal Mount Hotel is so melodic and well rehearsed that we are both momentarily put into a deep trance and its not until we get into our room with its fat white pillows and castle-view that we realise we’ve actually arrived in Edinburgh. We pull some chairs up to the window to watch the pedestrians and buses rush by on Prince’s Street and I put on some Jose to get us in the mood. She asks me if I think its strange that I’m English and she’s Glaswegian and whether I think that she sounds rough because I’m so polite and all. I suggest that we get naked and under the covers to discuss it, which she says is extremely impolite, but she agrees anyway because it’s raining outside and the gig isn’t for hours yet.

Afterwards, we get dressed without showering and cross the Waverley Bridge up to Cockburn Street where there’s a little Mexican restaurant I know with brightly coloured paper decorations hanging from the ceiling and walls filled with black and white stills of families and fiestas. A blonde, Polish waitress with burn scars on her left arm sits us in a quiet corner downstairs and we order beer and fajitas which we wolf down hungrily, talking all the while of our own plans to run away to South America together. I try to take some photographs of her while we digest, but she comes over all shy and covers her face with the scarf that still smells of sulphur from her trip to Rotarua geysers in New Zealand. I’m not disheartened though; even if she only lets me take photos of her eyes and hands it will be enough for now.

The Assembly Rooms are alive with chairs and chatter as we step past the marble columns and red drapes and heads bob up in every seat, but a security guard takes a shine to us and tells us that if we hurry upstairs there’s still room on the balcony . We run through the velvety carpets dragging ourselves up thick, gold banisters and spot two perfect chairs overlooking the entire room, sliding over laps and legs and snapping them down.

High domed ceilings scattered with stone-flowers, balls of light, red velvet curtains and looping arches fill the rooves of our consciousness, but before we have time to absorb , the lights dim low and a slight young man with long black hair and an open forehead ambles onto stage with guitar in hand and launches straight into a collection of emotional folk songs, sketched out by intricate picking and country rhythm and set off by a haunting, feminine voice that bewitches and unsettles. This is Death Vessel. I become so absorbed that when he suddenly stops strumming and starts snapping his fingers in rhythm while continuing to sing I am brought to a moment of such clear awareness that I feel the wax melt from my ears and the words flowing directly into me, the bright flags waving in the disused corridors of my mind. When he finishes, she grabs hold of my thigh and looks at me in that super-intense way I like, staring right into my eyes as she tells me how she’d been dreaming of swimming deep underwater, surrounded and buoyed by liquid as she was sucked down, away from herself and deeper, into another world. I put my hand softly on the nape of her neck, but she catches me as I glance down at her perfect nipple, visible in the looseness of her vest, and scalds me with a playful slap. I’m a typical Scorpio, she says.

Jose Gonzalez takes his seat. He warms his fingers with melody, stumbles upon his gentle voice, brings the depth of rhythm and harmony alongside him with friends and then begins to carefully weave for us a vision: a log cabin, lost in the Swedish firs in the heart of winter, a small boy wrapped in colourful ponchos drifting in and out of sleep by the fire, listening to the soft, melodic voices of his parents as a million snowflakes fall like stars through the window singing of love and life and loss.

And as the music and images swim up and over me I too begin to feel as though I might be slipping into a fluid dream world beneath and beyond the ocean. I look across at the girl I love and smile as we float up and under the sparkling chandelier, riding the waves of these beautiful, ethereal songs, holding each others hands so tight we can’t even clap our applause.

Bedtime

one self portrait


one photo over the easter weekend, a rest day! Finally...

It is midnight in Flensburg. I have been for a run, about 14km, 75 mins. Ate some bread with herring and some bread with prawns. I need to get to my room. Training is pretty tiring and I have noticed that if i drink the protein shakes at night it gives my some interesting gifts in the morning. I will not take a photo of it. I am feeling pretty fit. Always have something tired, legs today, was shoulders a few days ago. I had to do 10 x 50m reps, each one had to be less than a minute, I was consistently at 55-58 secs. So aiming for the 50.

I got my wetsuit, it is tight. I got my tri suit too and tri bars... SO i guess I am ready to go. Just got to get fitter. I was impressed though, i was checking my heart rate today and it was at 52 BPM while I was standing in the car park.

I will get some more photos up soon