On Friday we packed our bags and left Linton Street for now. We got on the tube and headed to Heathrow, from where we were picking up our rental car.
After an hour or so we arrived at the pick-up and, long story short, due to a pedantic clerical error the company wouldn’t allow us the car. Thanks very much. Given that the price of booking the same car there and then was exponentially more, we decided to go a different way.
We found another place and trudged over to it and, after a more accommodating experience, drove off in a nice wee car.
We headed onto the ring road, anti-clockwise around London before heading south to Brighton. We were staying with friends of Nadia, Lucy and Will. Lucy is a musician who performs as Lucy Rose and Will is her manager husband. From the moment we entered the house I felt an instant rapport with Will – he had similar traits of my dear friend Stefan in Liverpool. Needless to say, we were off to a good start.
Lucy and Will live in a fantastic house, about 10 minutes walk from central Brighton. We, very optimistically sat in the back yard under apple trees drinking beer while a dark sky loomed and spat drops of rain on us.
We talked shop for a while before heading into the village for a bit of a tour of the lanes, a swift pint at a local and dinner at a lovely Indian restaurant.
We trudged back up the hill and had a nightcap before headed to bed after a long day.
The next day we woke to 60 mile/hr winds, which had been blowing all through the night. I had suggested last night that I would do breaky, so I walked down the hill and picked up some eggs, bagels and sparkling water from the co-op.
Everyone was up when I got back and we settled into a slow morning sipping coffee, eating breakfast and sheltering from the weather. Lucy and Will were beavering away on their laptops as on Monday they were releasing a single for their first management project – a band called Chartreuse.
We left them to their work and went out to have an explore. It was a tough day to be a tourist, being nearly knocked off our feet a few time. We further explored the lanes and had a look at the pier and lay in the yard of the Royal Pavilion for a moment.
We headed back to the house for a little lie-down, Lucy and Will still working hard. I had suggested that we make dinner for them, so we popped down to the super again and pick up some bits and I made an epic vege lasagne which went down a treat.
We spend the evening together chatting and giggling together. Lucy and Will are such a delight and a great example of really driven music professionals.
The next morning we were off to Cardiff. We said our goodbyes to Lucy and Will the night before as they were off to London before we were up.
I thought it would be nicer to drive the slightly longer way along the coast, rather than head back toward London. However, after a very pointless and uninspiring stop in Portsmouth, we decided that the fastest route was the best route. I did, however, pick up a book there that would spark my love for reading. ‘So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed’ by Jon Ronson. (As I edit this, 2 weeks have past and I am on to my fourth Jon Ronson book)
We were staying with Nadia’s long-time friend (also a musician), Hannah Harding, who was currently staying in Bristol for a few days with her producer. We swung by Bristol and had a cup of tea with her hosts before whisking her away back to Cardiff.
We arrived at her lovely top floor apartment in Rothe, which she shares with her boyfriend Hew, who was currently away on tour.
That evening we ordered some food in and had a good catch up on everything. Hannah had kindly offered us her bed and opted for the couch, which she insisted was where she had mostly been sleeping while Hew was away. It was a very comfortable couch mind you.
The next day Hannah took us into the city. It was a gentle 20-minute walk into town where the girls mostly looked in shops and giggled. They even rode the carousel which was a thrill, I’m sure. We stopped for lunch before walking back to the house, where I made nachos and the girls request and we hunkered down.
The next few days continued in this fashion, lots of silliness and giggling, walks and food. We did go for a lovely walk along a disused canal. On our second last day, Nadia and I met up with a studio engineer called Greg, who is Welsh but lives in NZ for a coffee. We had met him last at the premiere of The Chill’s film in Dunedin
On our final night we took Hannah out for dinner to thank her for her grand hospitality. Nadia and I had such a beautiful few nights with her, and while we hadn’t been blown away by Cardiff itself, it is great to relax with old friends.
On Friday, after breakfast, Nadia and I bid farewell to Hannah and drove an hour north to a little village called Sennybridge, where we were staying for the next few nights. The purpose of this was that we were attending Green Man music festival for the next few days, but we weren’t that keen to do the whole camping thing, due to lack of gear and the unpredictable UK summer.
We dropped our things at the flat and made our way to the fest. And of course, it pissed with rain that day. The atmosphere was still jovial however and we spent a few hours getting our bearings and trudging through mud in our Tesco gum boots before deciding to pack it in and go to our dry room.
Saturday and Sunday, however, were mostly dry, and eventually, the mud dried up. We saw kiwis Tiny Ruins play and I saw Jarvis Cocker do a keynote on creativity. On Sunday we saw Hannah do her thing on the main stage with her 8 piece band which was very cool.
After a few more hours on Sunday we decided we had had enough and went back to the house, opting to leave early to beat the traffic.
We got up at 5.30am the next morning and were on the road by 6am, which was great because we were back at Heathrow by 9.30 and back at Linton Street before lunchtime.
This gave us enough time to decompress, for me to have a haircut and to clean up.
That evening we were having dinner with Nadia’s publisher Jeremy, who coincidentally lives about 3 minutes walk from our front door. He is a groovy music lover, probably in his late 60s. We were also in the company of his girlfriend and her sister and eventually Laura, who is a music writer and curated the speaker’s stage and Green man.
We sat around their very lush apartment, talking festivals of music. The house was a relatively new purchase, with a lovely open plan living area and kitchen with exposed steel beams. We were given the tour before we left for dinner, the highlight of which was a music room, which contained a beautiful sound system and all of Jeremy’s CDs and Vinyl (all arranged alphabetically, and chronologically within the artist) and a framed letter from Leonard Cohen to his muse, Marianne Ihlen, sent from Cuba the day after the bay of pigs.
We stepped out for dinner, up to a lovely pub that served very excellent food. Jeremy ordered a few bottles of wine, which we tasted before accepting. We talked shop a lot, pep talked about Nadia’s upcoming release. I’m still not really sure what the difference between a label and a publisher is, and where their roles cross over.
After a very pleasant meal, we walked back down the road where we were left at our front door. We said goodnight and climbed into bed.
McBryde Looks At Things 2 
Whew! A whirl. Thanks – been looking forward to this for a while.x
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