Back To Shore

Oh look, she’s awake in the early hours again and blogging. I don’t know what’s up with that. Especially as I’ve basically been awake since 3 AM. I got up, booked the Stasher place for my bag this afternoon. Lay down again. Couldn’t sleep. Got up for real.

I guess I’m still totally hyped from the “Operation Mincemeat” mission I accomplished yesterday.

Thanks so much for coming and for your box of German/Anglo treats, so thoughtful, so kind- we feel incredibly lucky x https://t.co/2ZOcL0hRSt pic.twitter.com/3oyVHPmSwM

— SpitLip (@spitlip) April 8, 2023

Because after all these years of fangirling I’m still very much a proponent of the “if you are moved by any kind of art and have the chance to tell the artist: tell them” idea. So I did!

I’ll be seeing the show again on Tuesday with some friends, so I’ll refrain from sharing my thoughts yet. But if you’re interested what the hype is all about you might want to read my older reviews.

• May 2019, New Diorama: “Operation Mincemeat” – Absolutely Brilliant
• January 2020, Southwark Playhouse: “Musical “Operation Mincemeat” – Gets Better and Better With Every Run
• July 2022, Riverside Theatre: Big Flash of Joy: Operation Mincemeat – The Musical

When I pulled up those old posts, I came across two things in the first one from 2019:

I’m so happy for this new and small musical troupe that it seems to be going well. Fingers crossed!

My review from 2019

Well, well… they’re playing their show on the fucking West End now, baby!!!!

But also this

I’m also happy that we got the chance to tell them all in person after the show, because they’ve pulled off something amazing here and they all seemed genuinely humbled to hear how much we had enjoyed it. So I was glad I told them.

My review from 2019

Regular Programming will resume here shortly 😉 I took a few photos while I walked over from Waterloo station, but I’ll share those tomorrow. Or not at all, as today I will be heading out to the River / Bridges again, this time with a professional ‘photo guide’. I’m excited for that.

Awake from a nap in a – as usual – decent bed in my Travelodge, I can give a quick update from the first half day in London. I will still need to catch up on some sleep tomorrow morning, but that’s mostly due to a first crappy night here (not the bed’s fault, but my brain’s).

Train travel has been mostly fine, except for the one hour the train from Cologne to Brussels had to wait for ONE HOUR outside of Aachen main station. There was a police emergency which closed down the station for that long. I was glad that I opted for a over 2 hour layover in Brussels, which usually is more than enough time to get on the Eurostar even for my anxious mind. Due to the delay the ICE terminated in Brussels North and I had to switch to the local train to get to Midi. Nerve wrecking, but it all went fine in the end. A few more stressful moments when I opted for the quicker, but a bit more expensive route out to Wimbledon, where I’m staying this time. Switching from tube to train and finding and getting on the right train at Vauxhall. There was a moment where I thought I might be going in the wrong direction as I jumped on the one in a hurry, but it was fine.

Back when I made day plans for the various days here I had actually wanted to walk another section of the Capital Ring Walk today, but last night I knew this would not be happening. I went for a stroll along Wimbledon High Street up to the Village and Common. How did I not know that the Village is up a hill ;-)?

One thing I’ve learned to do over the past few months (I think?) is to not rush, when I walk. I used to rush a lot wherever I was going for no apparent reason. Sometimes it might be necessary, but often it’s not. Yes, I might get there quicker, but why should I? Just because other people pass me by with a quicker pace, does not mean I have to copy them. Especially not on a relaxing vacation. Yes, part of the reason today might have also been, that I was still quite tired. And another reason to go slowly was to look for interesting things to take photos of.

At the Common I spent some time sitting on a bench by a pond in the sun. Not doing anything. Staying with my thoughts isn’t always easy, but at least I didn’t pull out the phone to read or scroll past social media. Except for posting in my Insta story. What can I say? I’m not perfect.

For the first time ever I tried taking photos with my lens ball and to get an idea of how to best do that will take a while. But it’s fun to dabble around.

Because I then really felt in need of a nap, I opted for the bus back down the hill, grabbed a few things at the supermarket, had a quick lunch in my room and lay down for about 2 hours. Heaven.

After finishing this post I’ll get ready for some early dinner and then heading off to the Southwark Playhouse for “Berlusconi”. Why that and not one of the big shows in the West End? Because I’ll see Operation Mincemeat in the West End tomorrow. And the Southwark Playhouse were such and integral part of getting Mincemeat ready for the West End, so I thought I’d honour that by seeing another show there.

I haven’t been in much of a mood for listening to music lately. Ok, I’ve listened to “God That’s Brilliant” more times than I feel comfortable admitting now. But I have neither listened much to random music from my own playlists or the radio nor to any new stuff. I rarely listen to new stuff or discover new (to me) music anyway. When I turned into a musician’s fangirl many years ago (yes, many, because 10 years can’t be considered “a few” any more, can it?) I sometimes felt a bit out of place among other people at gigs or in the online community. Many of them seem to go to so many more gigs of so many bands and were into many more bands / artists besides Frank. There are more bands / singers I like, but not to that extent as it with Frank. For a long time I felt that my single mindedness made me less of a “fan”. Less “cool”. That my opinion about anything (Frank, music, gigs – related) was less valid. It took me a while to not care about that or rather to realize that it really doesn’t matter.

Single-mindedness or not, I haven’t listened to a lot of Frank recently either. Because too often I caught my mind drifting off to thinking about the song or about gigs or to having imaginary conversations with other people about those songs. Weird? Probably. But that’s just me. Anyway, I put myself on a break from Frank’s music for a bit *gasp*. At least to some extent.

That break ended today though, when the “Frank Turner Heardle” put a rare song back on my radar this morning. A lovely song, which he doesn’t play often enough in my eyes. I listened to that and while I’ve been doing other stuff (see below) and while I’m typing all this I’ve got old – but new to me – clips from very old (2006 – 2008) Frank gigs on in a different tab. Check out this Youtube account. Gold! It’s such fun to see how Frank’s on stage persona has changed to some extent since then but also how he is still the same in so many ways. Biggest surprise (so far) was to stumble about lyrics that did not make it into the final (album) version of a classic. “Photosynthesis” about 27 minutes into this clip

Maturity’s a wrapped up package deal or so it seems,
but no one really checks out what the small print really means…

I mean “WHAT?” The rest of 2nd verse was a tiny bit different as well. Interesting.

I still have over an hour of footage to go through. Where I in the past sometimes fast forwarded through the actual songs and focused on Franks speeches between songs, I’m listening to it all now. He wrote some good songs after all. Duh!