Collings and me got the train to Cardiff this lunchtime. Not only are we doing a live podcast at at St David's Hall on Thursday night
click here or ring or 029 2087 8444 for tickets, but we're also spending the rest of the day in a recording studio recording four more exclusive podcasts which will be available for sale via
Go Faster Stripe. It's a little probing attempt to see if we can make a little money out of this otherwise complimentary entertainment. We shall see. Our plan at the moment (and who knows it may change by tomorrow) is to theme each one around the elements of earth, wind, fire and water and then call it "Collings and Herrin: Elemental", or "Collings and Herrin: Earth, Wind and Fire*" and then at the bottom of the packaging have in small letters "(* and water)" or "Collings and Herrin: Elemental, my dear Watson." It won't be that last one.
Basically each title is just a jumping off point to get us talking and as always the whole thing will be improvised, spontaneous and might very well go anywhere. I suggested that earth means we can talk about shit, wind means we can talk about farts, water means we can talk about wee and fire means we can talk some more about farts. And to be honest that might be all you get. But for a change everything will be recorded in top quality in the best studio that Wales has to offer (which is a cardboard box with some polystyrene over the top of it - ha ha, I am funny).
So we arrived in a drizzly Cardiff and walked to our hotel, which turns out to overlook some big sports stadium and next to it a smaller rugby stadium. From my window I could see into the ground. If they were playing I could see everything that happened on the far touchline FOR FREE. Plus if the ball got kicked up high (which it sometimes does, as I understand it) I could see that as well. Unfortunately there was no rugby match going on and I am reliably informed that no one plays at this stadium any more.
But still.
I went for a walk around the city centre (totally failing to find the massive new complex of shops that have sprouted up around St David's Hall in the last year - though I saw them later when we went for dinner) and headed into an arcade to escape the drizzle and was delighted to see a shop that sold nothing but harps and harp paraphernalia! In Wales! A harp shop! Who'd have believed it.
It confirmed all my stereotypes of this ludicrous country. So everyone here does sit around all day in big dresses wearing those cut off witches' hats, making things on looms and then when evening comes, they stop weaving, get out their individual harp (that everyone of them has - there's enough demand for them that they have a shop that sells harps and nothing else) and play until bedtime. The Welsh idiots.
Either that or some idiot outsider English person came to town and thought, "I want to open a new business, but what do the Welsh like? I know, harps. I will open a harp shop. I will become a millionaire!" And only now that he's realised that 21st Century Welsh folk prefer to play the Nintendo Wii than the multi-stringed instrument of the angels is he thinking, "Damn, I wish I'd gone with my second impulse and set up a brothel, where all the whores were sheep."
Ha ha, I am funny.
I have right zinged the Welsh there in an original and amusing way. I hope none of them read this and turn up at St David's Hall with burning torches and throw bread made out of seaweed at me.
Perhaps I should buy a harp though, to entertain them in the interval. That should make them forget my insults. And also if it's not going well, I can just do an upward and downward scale on the harp and then suddenly time will have magically passed and it will be the end of the gig.
