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Post by Helmut83 on May 1, 2016 6:19:57 GMT
Hello forummates, as some of you know I've recently come back from a trip to the UK and Ireland which had as main objective taking a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of watching one of my biggest musical heroes, Mr. Jeffrey Lynne, at the O2 arena in London. Living in Buenos Aires, Argentina, I couldn't pay for the plane tickets to just come, watch the gig and go back, so never having been in the UK or Europe I also took the chance for traveling around the whole country and Ireland, meeting several forum members and living many adventures I'm going to try to narrate on this thread, which I will be writing probably during the next couple of weeks. I know it might sound a bit self-centered to write such a thread, but I know there are at least a few forumheads who would be interested in taking a look at it because they have already encouraged me to do so, and having been on the forum since 4 years ago I thought it wasn't a bad idea to do it. If you are not interested, you can always go on to the next thread. DISCLAIMER 1: I'll try to not get too tiring and cloying about how awesome all forum members I've met have been (and still are), but bear in mind I'm really thankful for the great way in which they received me. All of them were incredibly welcoming, kind and generous, each in their own way. And if you ever happen to meet one of them (come on, guys, you live so close one from the other ), I'm sure you'll say "OK, Helmut was not exaggerating after all". I'm sure the trip would still have been awesome without them, but they took it to a whole new level. - How it all started:When Jeff Lynne announced his Alone in the Universe tour I couldn't even dream about traveling to a European country to watch him. In fact, in the Who is going where thread there's still a post I did in resignation saying "you don't even know how much I envy you guys" and a few of the guys commiserating about that. But a sudden and unexpected change in economic circumstances happened in January, and that's when I reconsidered the possibility of making the trip. I talked a bit to Horace in private and he told me to keep him informed about my decision because in case I decided to go he would help me with several things. A few days later, trying not to overthink and overevaluate things, I got in the Ticketmaster web and bought a ticket for the 26th April show in London. I remember that when I had just bought the ticket and could barely stay still bsj was still connected and I told her about it, and she was elated for me and we talked about it until late at night. That was a great moment to share with her. From then on it was " alea iacta est (the die is cast), so I'd better start organizing the rest because I'm freaking going!". I booked my flights and then announced on the thread mentioned early that in spite of all odds I was going to attend the 26th concert. It was great to see Nick Heynes was going as well on that date so I would have someone from the forum to comment things with. It was also great to share my news with the rest of the forum because they knew how unlikely it seemed for me to go and how badly I wanted it. Then I went on googling and finding out places to visit and things to do in England and it's neighbouring countries. Step by step (or One step at a time) and with the invaluable help of Horace (who took a lot of time and dedication in helping me sort out the trip) and the other guys the trip began to take shape and one day I got all of my hotels and means of transport booked and all activities and programs planned. Those activities included getting together with forum members on certain places. So after having prepared everything and packed an amount of things that was going to prove excessive, I was ready to go.
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Post by Helmut83 on May 1, 2016 7:30:38 GMT
- 7/4: Buenos Aires - Madrid:I took a taxi from home to the Ezeiza airport to take my flight on Iberia to Madrid, where I would take another flight to London. I arrived to Ezeiza with plenty of time, which was a good thing because the previous day I hadn't been able to make my check-in online for reasons still unknown. I was upset with Iberia about this; little did I know what was about to come, which would make the check-in problem an insignificant detail. I boarded the plane, which took off with a delay of 45 minutes. That was a problem, because originally I was supposed to have 1h20m to board the second plane in the huge Barajas airport, and now I would only have little more than 30 minutes. The plane was shameful. It was stacked with seats so each of them was tiny and had no room for legs. I couldn't even sleep in the 13 hours of flight. The crew were incredibly rude. As for my fear of flights, I decided to brave it and not take any Alplax or tranquilizer. Luck didn't help me on this one, as the plane shook up and down in an incredible way, this confirmed by the lady who was sitting next to me, who had traveled a lot by plane and said such an amount of movement didn't happen often. The landing was ridiculous, it was not just myself who was in panic; many people were. And, over my seat, those initials! Yeah, my trip had Jeff Lynne written all over it. Literally. - 8/4: Madrid - London:Arrived to the Madrid airport and went running like mad to try to catch my other plane. When I arrived in the gate, the female employee of Iberia who was in charge of admitting people (and who was discussing with a family of muslims about something), on seeing my ticket and how close to the departure time I was arriving told another employee who was nearby "another imbecile!" referring to me. As soon as the other employee (who was a guy) heard this, he came shouting insults to me at full voice and made a gesture of punching me. I know anyone who's reading this might think "this guy invents things"; it's hard to believe such a thing can happen but I swear it's 100% true and I haven't even exaggerated. I prepared to defend myself and tried to explain him that the cause of me being so late was not mine but the Iberia's plane delay, but it was no use, the guy was out of his mind and kept on shouting things at me. In the end I ended up going back to the female employee who had been kind enough so as to only cast one insult against me, set myself in commanding mode and told her "I don't care, get me into that flight!". While not ceasing to protest, she sent me into a bus with the family of muslims -who BTW were still insulting her at full voice- and we barely caught the plane. So my first contact with Europe made me think South America wasn't so bad after all. The second plane was even more pitiful than the first one. The seats were dwarf tiny. Absolutely ridiculous. I could only get into my seat by placing one of my legs totally into the aisle because there was no room. Forget about getting any sleep. A trolley offering food passed by -like they normally do on flights- and I asked for a sandwich. When I was finishing the guy comes back and informs me that I had to pay for it, and it wasn't a cheap one: 7 pounds. At least this flight wasn't shaky and there were no safety concerns, so I finally arrived in London, but it was a nightmare. Fuck Iberia. I wish them bad. I'm never again flying with them. I took the Piccadilly tube line from Heathrow to my hotel, the Travelodge in Covent Garden that both Nick and Vlog had recommended me. On the way everything seemed surreal. I was there! In England! It wasn't a movie, this was the real thing. For the first time in my life there's not the chance of switching back to Spanish if someone doesn't understand what I'm saying in English, so I better do the best I can. I arrived in the hotel by nighttime and saw it looked much better than I was expecting. I treated my toe a bit, went out for a walk and some reconnaissance of the area (almost got ran over by a bus because of looking to the wrong side when about to cross the street... " OK, they drive on the other side here" ), had something to eat and then off to bed.
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Post by Helmut83 on May 2, 2016 17:08:29 GMT
Reflection #1: The gap, that national obsession. It called my attention that on most trains (if not all) in the UK and mainly in the London underground there are audio warnings that repeat over and over " mind the gap between the train and the platform". There are tons of sources for possible accidents on trains, however the dreaded gap seems to be the only one they care about, and man, do they care about it! If you travel 5 stations maybe you'll be hearing that about 15 times. The situation is so funny that there are even T-shirts sold on the street with the tube logo and the "mind the gap" legend. - 9/4: London:Woke up in the morning for my first full day in England. Went to the British Museum and spent two hours and a half there, mostly on the ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome sections, although I visited several other things as well. Saw the famour Rosetta Stone and the mindblowing number of treasures gotten from All Over The World that are in exhibition there. In terms of museums, I've never seen something like that. Then went on to meet the first of the forum members: vlogdance . Due to a mistake in changing my clock I arrived one hour early -the one time I arrived early for anything in my whole trip -, and then yes, went at the right time and met her. What can I tell you about her? She's fun, really spontaneous, talkative and outgoing. I had a lot of doubts about how I would do with my English but even with my limitations I felt at ease with her since minute 1. And we all know she's clever, but so far you couldn't tell for sure how much time of brain squeezing she put behind each of her witty posts... well, probably not much. She's not just clever, she's also quick in being clever. She gets plays of words out of nothing and as we were speaking she must have used 80% of ELO's songs for situations that were happening then. Yeah, she gets them at the moment, on the fly (or as she would say, On The Run), and she always has an ELO song for each situation. We had fish and chips, and that's when she gave me her presents: Welsh cakes, a copy of Salad at the Bad Cafe (which I couldn't get before because of Argentina's customs thing) and the most genius gift: the T-shirt with the logo of our virtual band Street Next Door (which we are part of together with Buttler )! How amazing was that! Then we went on to see a few London sights. We walked along the Thames and then went on a loop at the London Eye (the views are spectacular). At the square which is infront of the Big Ben and the Parliament we had a privileged view of the English Police hitting protesters with sticks and a good share of running, violence and barbarism, so as to not feel so far away from home. Oh, telephone line...
On the Big Wheel, the view Above the Clouds (well, not quite, but still a great view...)Vlog has an aura of light that follows her everywhere she goes
Me before the trip: "...I don't want to go to London to take pictures of the Big Ben just like everyone else does, I want something more original..." Me during the trip: "Look, there's the Big Ben! Let's go take some photos of it!"
A funny and weird series of fast incidents happened while we were looking for the Waterloo tube station. We got to some sort of monument that looked like a spaceship, with colour lights on it. We said " we should take some photos on it and joke about the ELO spaceship on the forum". We started taking photos to each other until a lady came and offered us to take pictures of both of us. When we were ready she said " OK, a little kiss now!"... so Vlog started explaining to her that we were friends and where we knew each other from. In the middle of all that, as the explanation was going on and the lady was shooting photos a fat guy who was drunk came out of nowhere and threw himself belly upwards over the spaceship and right in the middle of us so as to be part of the photos (or photobomb us... do you have that photo, vlogdance ?). Then a boy (approximately 12 years old) who was passing by with his mother saw the photos, the "fan" and heard something Vlog was saying to the "photographer" about our band, so he rushed to me saying " you are famous! Can I have a picture with you?"... " no, I'm not famous!"... " yes, you are! You have a band! Please, can I take a picture with you?"... " OK, but I'm not famous!"... As I was making progress in convincing the boy, Vlog, who was still talking to the photographer lady, called me and told me to show her the Street Next Door T-shirt. As soon as I showed it to her the boy saw it and started again, convinced that I had been trying to hide my famous-ness, " See? You are famous! Can I have a picture with you"... I don't know if the kid's mother took a picture of us or not, but by this point several of the passers-by had stopped and were staring attentively to see who these "famous" people were and what was the fuss about. It all happened in probably one minute, but all of a sudden we were the center of attention of a lot of people there. In the end I took my time to explain the boy the situation (he was really kind and sweet, although he might have been disappointed), the drunkard went away, we thanked the photographer lady, the curious people lost interest and we went on our way, laughing about how bizarre the whole incident had been. At night we went to the Hard Rock Cafe near Hyde Park and watched some interesting Rock n Roll items from famous musicians. We had a few beers, burgers and a really good conversation. Unfortunately by then, after more than 12 hours in the street, my toe started hurting really, really bad to a point I just wanted to take my shoe off and put some ice on it. I'm still sorry about it, but it felt so bad I told Vlog I'd rather skip the tour through the vault of the Cafe and go back to the hotel because I wasn't enjoying my existence at that point, and she was very understanding and kind. All in all we were like from 2:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., so we still shared a fair amount of time. - 10/4: London: I went on the sightseeing hop-on hop-off bus. Got down at several attractions as the St. Paul Cathedral (didn't do much to me to be honest), the Tower of London, etc... and then went on an interesting ride on a quite lousy boat through the Thames. I'm not going to say much more about this day, as it was mostly what any tourist would do in London and there's not much interesting to write or read about. At night I went for a few drinks to dancing clubs and that sort of stuff in Covent Garden to see what the night there is about. It was a Sunday, but even like that I found less movement than I was expecting.
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Post by vlogdance on May 2, 2016 19:26:23 GMT
Ahh, thank you for this glowing description of our day out, Helmut83 . Glad you enjoyed it. (The only thing I would question is... extrovert? Chatty, yes... but, er, no, I wouldn't say extrovert! According to Myers-Briggs, I'm INFP. Has anyone else done this test, by the way? What result did you get?) About the photobombing incident - the lady who had my camera pressed the wrong button, and took a video of us instead of a picture. Sadly I haven't been able to find a way to post this video, so I've taken a picture of my camera showing the moment when the drunken guy jumped on the "spaceship" between us. A bit blurry, but it gives you an idea of what happened. I expect Drunken Fat Guy thought it was his duty to protect public decency, in case we obeyed instructions and tried to kiss. And he only jumped on because we'd left a space between us. You see, this is why people need to listen to those Tube warnings to Mind The Gap...
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Post by Helmut83 on May 2, 2016 20:27:02 GMT
Haha, that "photo"! Yeah, Drunken Fat Guy definitely had an altruist objective in mind when he did that. I'm curious about what else does the video show.
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Post by vlogdance on May 3, 2016 13:16:28 GMT
The rest of the video mostly shows views of the concrete pavement, and my shoes as I get off the spaceship! The lady couldn't have realised she was still filming.
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Post by Helmut83 on May 3, 2016 13:25:47 GMT
And when it comes to love, we form an image of this ideal on a pedestal, who is our perfect soul mate... (Dear me! However do they come up with these silly ideas! ) smiley-music025
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Post by vlogdance on May 3, 2016 13:43:43 GMT
And, when teased, we are merciless and stop at nothing in our desire for vengeance! Yes, well.... go on with the story, please, Helmut83 bach.
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Post by Helmut83 on May 4, 2016 2:39:15 GMT
11/4: London - Birmingham:" Birmingham? What are you going there for? Birmingham is shit!"- Czech employee of the Travelodge buffet, when around 2 a.m. the previous day I had gone for some sandwiches before going to bed. This concept, even if a bit more extreme, wasn't that different to what other people had told me about the place they also call Brum. With these expectations I went to the city of Jeff Lynne or, given how far our musical hero has been from it ever since he hit the big time, I should probably say the city of the legendary Horacewimp . I took a train at London Euston, losing the previous one thanks to a lady who occupied the only human tickets vendor for about 15 minutes, forming a silent and patient queue behind her that in Argentina would have caught her from her limbs and thrown her to the rails after about 30 seconds. On the way I realized I had taken way too much luggage for the kind of trip I was intending to make, so when I arrived in Birmingham and finally met Horace I asked him if I could leave him a good share of my luggage to be able to travel lighter (I would come back later on to fetch it), a request to which he very graciously agreed. This made the rest of my trip much easier. As for Horace, he is pretty much like he is on the forum: calm, level minded and with a great sense of humour. He had prepared a really organized day with plenty of activities and we followed that schedule with admirable precision (at least admirable for someone who's a mess like me). First thing he took me on a walking tour through the center of Birmingham. I must say I was thoroughly impressed by how modern it is and how you can find here and there a lot of beautiful places, particularly around the canals, which have barges, some of them full of colour flowers. I didn't cease to repeat to him " hey, this is great, it's much better than what I expected!". I liked a lot what I saw from Birmingham, nothing like the Czech guy had told me. Sure Horace didn't take me to the worst places, but then again all cities have some of that. Don't let people fool you, Birmingham can be beautiful too!Now those are goodlooking gentlemen...My personal tourist guide had been shining so far and, knowing how much of an ELO fan he is, I was expecting him to take me with eyes closed to Jeff Lynne's star in the Birmingham Walk of Fame. The way we finally got to it was a bit more accidental than I had expected though. We were looking at some stars on the floor (Nigel Mansell, Bev Bevan...) when the rain started falling pretty heavily. Horace said " let's run to that roof for shelter!". In the middle of our run Horace almost stepped over a star on the floor and, without even concealing his surprise, he exclaimed " oh, look, here's Jeff's star!". That's the way my guide took me to our hero's star. Floozie in the jacuzziLike I said, Horace was a great guide and really knowledgeable about what's at Birmingham city center. I can be quite a pesky tourist with my questions and he resolved a big majority of them very convincingly. And in the few cases he wasn't sure about whom that guy on the statue was, he had had the foresight of preparing a default answer: " it must be one of the important guys from the Industrial Revolution". When our walking tour reached to an end we went to Horace's car. I was surprised by the fact that when he stops for example on lights the engine stops completely to save fuel and contaminate less. Maybe it's nothing new to anyone reading but I had never come across such technology. Next thing we went to Jeff's childhood home, a house in Shard End. On the way, upon witnessing some situations with the traffic which involved us and which looked very dangerous to me, I was grabbing my head in horror like " nooo, Horace, what are you doing??? We are going to crash!!! Step on the brake!!!... ooooohhhhhhh... that was so close!!!". But Horace was laughing his ass off, so I thought " Ok, maybe I'm making a fool of myself and this is how they always drive, so I better shut up, cross my fingers and watch". And indeed, it came out that passing only a few centimetres away from each other at full speed is a common thing in England, and Horace was totally used to it and proved to be a most skillful driver (I'll be back to the English traffic issue on a special reflection). Horace's car has cactus mode, which means it's suitable for transporting the likes of Wilf Gibson
We dedicated a small and pointless video to BSJ while we were looking for Jeff's house
Jeff Lynne's childhood house in Shard EndHorace's family insists that sometimes he takes his ELO fanatism a bit too far (it's his car, swear!)
Then I went to Horace's house (impeccable, with a dream garden) and met his lovely wife Ma. (aka Mrs. Wimp) and daugther Me. (aka Daugther N° 2), who were really kind all along. He also introduced me to his already famous sea monkey, the only one strong enough to survive the changing water temperatures to which he had exposed them during the previous days. That blurry thing you can see left of the circle is the Hercules of the sea monkeysHorace had promised not to make me work with the tiles but there I am...The four of us then went by car to pick up Horace's brother C. who was coming by train and we all went for some curry at a local Indian restaurant (correct me if I'm wrong, Horacewimp ). I loved the curry to bits (absolutely delicious, and it wasn't heavy) and tried an ale which's procedence I don't remember but also liked very much -also help me on this one, Horace-. All of the Wimp family were really kind, very welcoming people and I appreciate they had the detail of coming for curry with me. I chatted with all of them a bit (I must admit I found Daughter N° 2's accent a bit harder to understand that the others', but that's probably because teenagers have their own way of speaking anywhere in the world).I stole this photo with Horace's family from the Birmingham Blues thread.
Kind of a mystic photo of Horace and brother at one of the bars When we finished Mrs. Wimp and Daughter left us at the train station and we (Horace, his brother C. and me) went again to Birmingham's city center for a few more beers on some of the city's most notable pubs (it was still raining a bit, it had rained cats and dogs during all day). Of course I took advantage of the occasion to try a few new ales following my mates' advice. While drinking we talked about ELO, football, Argentina and life in general, and when it was time for them to go we said goodbye at the door of Birmingham New Street train station after a great day.
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Post by Helmut83 on May 4, 2016 6:43:03 GMT
There's another great thing I'd like to add about this great day at Birmingham. Despite the fact that I was going to meet several of the most active forum members, if there was an absence in my trip I was lamenting it was BSJ 's, because she's a great friend of mine and, as you all know, she lives in the States. However, she found a clever way of making herself present on my trip. When I met Horace at Birmingham he gave me a few things that BSJ had secretly sent him by mail so that he would give them to me when we met: an ELO 1973 pin -which she had sent me to Argentina but I couldn't get out from customs and they had sent back to her-, tissues in case I got emotional at Jeff's concert and a Christmas card she had also sent me but never arrived. It was a crazy but really good idea of her and I was absolutely happy to come across this surprise.
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Post by Horacewimp on May 4, 2016 7:50:36 GMT
Great write up Helmut83 of a brilliant day it went by so very quickly but I was glad we met up. As I guess were you because I had your concert ticket You have a good memory of the things we did, the Indian Restaurant was the Juboraj in Wylde Green, you had Chicken Tikka starter and a Chicken Balti (mild) as a main course we shared Pilau rice and a Naan. The bottled beer we had with the meal was Doom Bar
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Post by vlogdance on May 4, 2016 9:12:04 GMT
Great chapter, Helmut83 bach. Glad you enjoyed Brum. A Discovery car with cactus mode, Horacewimp ! The perfect car for our forum Moderator. And tissues from BSJ , what a great idea, in case of Tears In Your Life. Although in this case it sounds more like Beers In Your Life R.I.P. the Sea Monkey.
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Post by Helmut83 on May 4, 2016 17:27:36 GMT
Great write up Helmut83 of a brilliant day it went by so very quickly but I was glad we met up. As I guess were you because I had your concert ticket Oh, come on, Horace, you know very well the concert ticket was not the only reason I wanted to meet up with you. You also had BSJ's items... Seriously, it was great meeting up and yes it went by very quickly but you cannot say we didn't make the most out of that day. We did tons of things. Thanks for completing the data that was missing, my memory might be good for things that I/we did but I'm terrible when it comes to names (of people, brands, places, any name).
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Post by Chippa on May 4, 2016 19:00:06 GMT
Sounds like ya'll had a fantastic time. Great to hear of forum members meeting up in person.
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Post by BSJ on May 4, 2016 19:24:37 GMT
Enjoying your Chronicles, Bub. Laugh out loud situations, great photos. Dismissing the rain, this is what I call a perfect day. What’s the small white square on Jeff’s star? And look at that stain. *tsk*After guarding that world weary package with his life for a month, I’ve no doubt Horacewimp was happy to have restful sleep again. Thank-you, H W. And you Helmut, for your kind words.
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