Maybe three and a half hours sleep. Not too bad. The boys went to bed at 7.30am and we woke them up at nine. Because.
Nice cup of coffee and a cigarette. Maybe Queenie should call her blog that. The anti-nice cup of tea and a sit down site. She’d make a fortune. As she was outside smoking, she used the opportunity to annoy all the johnny foreigners, ie nice British people, that were living in the square. Then she found the three incredibly poseurish French people who spent the day in bed together on a mattress outside the chalet. It’s a big metaphor for:
Oh yes, we’re French, we’re so sophis. We have three way sex and everything back home in France. You do know what sex is, you idiotic little Irish mucksavage, don’t you.
We took photos of them. They LOVED it. In that French, phuh, shruggy kinda way that’s so endearing. While at the same time irritating.
Then we met the Pauls. A whole chalet full of Pauls. From Cambridge. Doing PhDs in all kind of mad things. With camera bags. And zoom lenses. Very smart. Queenie was glad she had some Doctors in the House, she can tell you! There’s only so much intellectual thin ice a girl can tread on in one weekend, you know.
Saturday ATP daytime is for making friends with the neighbours and drinking lots of tea and doing the washing up and the shopping, and going to the beach. Nice, normal things. Aileen not feeling too well, so she held the chalet and the rest of us headed off to do LOTS OF THINGS ON THE BEACH.
Merzbow was on the beach. Pitying us. Pitilessly. Particularly Krossie and Clare, when they went swimming. Queenie took a picture of Dermot taking a picture of Luke and Tom. Who were flying a kite. She could feel Merzbow’s intellect boring into the back of her neck. She wished Merzbow was taking a picture of her, taking a picture of Dermot, taking a picture of Luke and Tom. Flying a kite. But then the pinnacle of achievement would have been reached and she would’ve had to die tragically. Alone. Bereft of motivation to go on. In a world without meaning.
Snapoutofit!
It was much easier to concentrate on things when he left.
Back then to see Autolux, who were at least as pretentious as Merzbow and were indeed excellent. Two guys and a girl. Carla, Greg and Eugene. The doctor and Queenie decided that the girl, who was the drummer when she wasn't writhing pretensiously around on the floor wailing at us, was doing both of them and playing them off against each other, in order to maximise their creative genius.
That’s the great thing about ATP, you can talk shite like this all weekend and nobody cares.
Afterwards, Queenie’s ears felt like they were bleeding. Her hearing was definitely damaged this year. It usually bounces back after a while though. A stark thought struck her as she stood there: pint in one hand, cigarette in the other, ears buzzing, at 3pm, in a smokey, grimy room watching some anally retentive feedback-frenzied guitar band prancing about on stage – Queenie’s going to be a dreadfully unhealthy fifty-something unless she cops on a bit.
Maybe next year.
We had to leave at 4pm to go back to the chalet for our party. A cocktail party no less. Fin de siecle no less.
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