I have met many curious gentlemen. I shall tell you about four of them.
One.
The first was Phil, the heavy metal musician. I went for a drink in a bar with some students. Having played the tambourine with that amazing Japanese bass guitarist that plays on Cornmarket sometimes, I decided to ask him if I could join him and borrow his tambourine. He looked and me and said,
– No.
So I walked off, slightly disillusioned with the supposed kindness of Belgians. After a song he came back and said,
– Where are you from?
– England.
– If you like you can sing…
– No, I do not sing.
We discussed Led Zeppelin and Oxford and then I went to the toilet. When I came down, my students had orchestrated me going on stage, and as I secretly wanted to anyhow, I went up and sung a Beatles song and a Dylan song. I pity the audience. Phil said I could come back next Thursday, but I'm inclined to think it is because he wanted something scrawny rather than my voice. I never did.
Two.
The second was an illustrator. He was sitting in the corner of a restaurant and I took my notebook to him. We talked about cheap art utensils from supermarkets, and he showed me the magazine he drew for sometimes. He'd been to the art school in Liege. I told him about my sister and her thesis on Robert Crumb, and he told me he liked to chill with Robert Crumb's daughter. The illustrator is my new idol and I have knuckled down to the comic strips I've been wanting to make for a while. Earlier that day, I'd been into the FNAC, a culture shop, to browse through the independent comic books and read some really good stuff, and then I'd visited an independent comic book shop. So many coincidences!
Three.
The third was the jazz man who wore a beautiful navy blue jumper. Claire (see my last blog entry) and I were on one of those wonderful dawdle days. We were looking for the museum of Walloon art but saw a sign post for "The House Of Jazz," we looked about and walked into a bulding. After visiting the first floor and the lift, we went back down to the first floor and Claire knocked on a door. The man in a blue jumper opened the door and looked at us inquisitively. We returned the gaze, then I said
– We saw the sign outside. We just walked in.
He explained about the place, which was basically an office with racks full of vinyls smothering the walls and the odd photo of a man with a sax or a harp, the odd bookshelf and aged vinyl players. He told us the nights where we could listen to Jazz in Liege. His jumper was beautiful, he was not so much but that is not my problem.
Four.
The fourth man I'm going to mention in this episode is not a good one, as the others were indeed good ones. The fourth man is my stalker. I was putting up a Tea Time (Mondays 2PM www.48fm.com) poster, attatching it to a lamp post with sticky tape. He stopped and said,
– Hello. I think you are very pretty. You go to the Haute Ecole?
– Err yes I do. How do you know that?
– I work in the café opposite, I see you every morning. You are very pretty.
– Right.
– Can I have your telephone number?
– Err, well, I don't know my number, and, well, it doesn't have any batteries.
– Oh.
– I guess I'll see you when I walk past the café!
Since I have bumped into him five times, and made myself out to be in a hurry each time. The fact that he knows where I live and work, and I often bump into him leads me to conclude that I have indeed acquired my very first stalker. Of all the curious gentlemen, he is the most horrid and scary and uninteresting. And revolting.
