Jarkko Lehmus Diary

Stick 'em up, punk!

Fast, Huey, some dodgy geezer and Frank. Photo by a lovely lady©

All hail mad friends!!! In this case it would be lovely Sarah from Aberdeen for fixing me a free ticket for the Fun Loving Criminals concert in Aberdeen. What a way to top off a week! Never seen the guys live and was I impressed? Damn right I was! Them boys are, as a good friend of mine would put it, too cool for school. After two hours of absolute funked up madness I headed for Private Eyes, the best strip club in town and, Lo and Behold, an hour later The Criminals followed suit. Not entirely a stroke of luck... Aside from being global rock stars they turned out to be the nicest bunch of guys you'd ever hope to spend a chilled out evening with. There must have been something funny in the cigarettes they smoked though... They seemed to make the boys a bit drowsy and very susceptible to crap jokes. That just goes to support the well known fact that smoking is bad for you. And just to emphasize the harmful effects smoking has to the people around you, later on during that very same night I found Blade 2 intellectually and emotionally involving and at the same time absolutely hilarious...

After a refreshing two-and-a-half-hours of sleep on my friend's couch it was time to head back to the train station and to Glasgow. If I encountered any criminals during the trip it must have been in the ticket office. Daylight robbery that is.

All hail mad friends, the sequel!!! The woman who made this Saturday a real Valentine's Day was my friend Lexie. She plays violin for the ballet's orchestra and RSNO and got me a couple of tickets for RSNO's concert in the Royal Concert Hall. No better way to release some domestic pressure. Tschaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet overture and Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No2 were very beautiful and so were my dreams. Thoroughly refreshed and ready for the second half I fully appreciated the way the conductor John Axelrod was getting down to the beats of the West Side Story medley and a truly stunning rendition of Ravel's Bolero.

A couple of days of freedom left. Time for some well overdue rest. Assisted by a hot bath, a dash of alcohol and a good book. Come Tuesday I'll be heading back to the salt mines. But what is life without salt?

of violence

Welcome to Belfast. Photo by me©

There's a heavy blanket of past, present and future loaded with high explosives hanging over Belfast. A constant presence of violence. Go to a shop and call their Monopoly bills Irish money and all of a sudden the goon next to you hisses: "It's not Irish money... It's Ulster money!" The whole town plays it's own games, follows unwritten rules leaving a simple tourist feeling out like a snowman.

By the end of the tour the show had so much routine and momentum that if left on their own devices the set and costumes would have done the show without us. Not even the skislope-wannabe stage was able to upset the flow of it all. Another one bites the dust. I'm already looking forwar to next Christmas Season for another adventure in the mind of Herr Drosselmeier.

Because of the reputation of Balfast the whole company was booked into the same hotel. It just happened to be Hotel Europa, the most bombed hotel in Europe. Apparently they've never lost a single quest though... A few of us seemed to get pretty lost every night though but that hat nothing to do with bombs or terrorists. I'd blame the triangle formed by...

...Hotel Europa... Photo by me©

...Grand Opera House... Photo by me©

...and the world famous Crown Bar. Photo by me ©

A triangle not unlike one named after lovely Bermuda. Hours, money, people and dignity all seem to vanish inexplicably.

The holiday was needed then. And a contact number for Betty Ford's... I promised myself I'd take it easy and sleep well and blah blah blah... I'm a nocturnal animal me! Sleeping like a baby? 6-7 hours a night when I know I need a few nights of 9-10. I can only blame myself. And what comes to treating my body relaxing... I've got myself a membership to Krauseworld, a martial arts centre, on Tuesday and have since done two classes a day. A bit of kick boxing and stick fighting never hurt anyone...

The attraction of violence is curious indeed. In a controlled environment when you know it's just a game. But what about the situations you know you don't have any control over it? A night out in the wrong side of Belfast?

Oh well. I'm off to Aberdeen to watch Fun Loving Criminals and to hang around in a strip club with Huey.

It's never dull in Hull...?

What can I say? The show works and the audience loves it. I still find it very interesting. After 41 shows I'm just getting inside the head of Herr Drosselmeier. I'm looking forward to exploring him more during the next Christmas Season.

Apart from studying the character I find it very interesting studying my fellow dancers. All the different ways of dealing with things growing from cultural background, personality and training. Some of the younger dancers are feeling the strain a bit and are slowly finding their own ways around it. To be honest the whole company's pretty tired and looking forward to the holiday. We've been hard at it since August and the spring's looking very busy. I'll be piling plenty of massage, swimming, sauna and steamroom on my holiday plate.

A moment of relaxation after a long day. Photo by Lexie ©

On arrival Hull looked grey, dirty and boring. After a week I can tell you it is grey, dirty and boring for 166 hours a week. For the remaining two hours it turns into a raving zoo with police and paramedics galore. That would be around chuck out time on a Saturday night then. The lack of peolple during any other night suddenly makes sense: they all spend their weeks in a jail or a hospital after driving their cars into car park gates, stabbing and glassing each other, getting beaten up by bouncers and, if nobody's there to lend them a hand, filling themselves with cheap booze until the inevitable alcohol poisoning.

Not that I had anything to do with any of that sort of behaviour. I was just observing. Honest. Me and my mates liver and wallet we've had enough of hell raising for a while. In the absence of the usual nocturnal activities I turnes my eyes towards another passion of mine: food. I stumbled across this rather lovely thai restaurant, mainly because it was just about the only interesting looking place in town, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. So much so in fact that I came back the next night and found myself in the kitchen being taught the simple art of thai cooking and ended up cooking my own meal. The result? Chicken green curry fit for gods. Well chuffed and stuffed I was.

Coming up next week: Adventures in Northern Ireland (fuelled by Guinness).