Reindeer Gumbo
A long way to go
Some might argue that five thousand miles is too far to go to play just three songs. Having just got back, you know, I think they’re probably right. But I’d do it again…cos that’s what we do.
Rauma is a long way North of New Orleans. It’s a couple of hundred kliks west of the Putin’s Russian border and only a few hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle and the edge of Lapland. 11 o’ clock in the night, and you have to draw the curtains tight because, outside,
in the street,
in front of the hotel,
at midnight,
it’s daytime;
it’s still light.
And it’ll still be light at one in the morning - and three in the morning… and five in the morning, - and seven in the morning...
I’ve just made it back in one piece from the land of the unsetting and unsettling sun, and I’m about to have another futile go at getting some sleep. I tried hard both nights I was there, but despite the fact I’d just been on the move for 18 hours on two planes with a three-hour drive from Helsinki, over an ocean and across seven time zones, my eyes wouldn’t stay closed, and my head was spinning.
Actually, that’s not strictly true; I think I did drop off into a species of blurry stupour around midnight local time, and, who knows, perhaps I would have been carried off to deep sleep if a taxi hadn’t disgorged a bandful of New Orleans musicians at 1 am, directly beneath my open window…
