Making our way from home to Hubert’s concert boat in Germany Suzy and I used an impressive range of transport. In the early hours of the morning Mum and Dad took us by car to Stansted Airport, where we had to take the Stansted shuttle to get to the right gate for our aeroplane to Stuttgart. At Stuttgart airport we found the trains and took the S-Bahn to Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof. From there we took a Regionalbahn train to Heilbronn Hauptbahnhof. Then it was a taxi to the concert site (my foisting a carefully prepared map into the driver’s hand and saying “dorthin, bitte!” made Suzy laugh). At the venue we went on board Hubert’s concert ship - and here I’m going to count his manager, Hage, lifting me on board as another mode of transport. Early the next morning the boat set off to the next concert site in Hirschhorn, thereby adding another mode of transport to our list. Incidentally, our journey from the boat back to the airport will be a whole other blog entry, having turned out to be a much greater adventure than we had originally expected - and allowed time for.

Having last year sailed the Danube from Linz to the Black Sea, Hubert is now going west along the Rhine Main Canal and various other waterways, heading for the North Sea. Along the way the ship drops anchor and the stage on the concert barge is erected and concerts are given from the ship to the audience on land. Locally renowned artists come on board to collaborate with Hubert and his band and in the evening there will be sets from both lineups, as well as performance of the fruits of this collaboration.

The guest coming on board in Heilbronn was the famous jazz musician Klaus Doldinger with his band “Passport”. Klaus wrote the music for the film “Das Boot” - music I didn’t realise I’d heard until he played some of it during the concert. Hubert and his band introduced him to Hubert’s pieces “Kohler” and “i bi ån”, for which Hubert wanted Klaus to join him on stage. “I bi ån” is an absolute firework played live and, sitting across the table from Klaus, I couldn’t help joining in with the vocal. I made him laugh, catching his eye and singing “bow!”. (The very start of this video explains what I mean)

Rain clouds were gathering as the start of the concert approached and, sure enough, during Klaus’s one hour set we started to get wet. Very wisely Suzy went back on board to grab our macs - and discovered that someone had kindly moved our rucksacks under cover, but not before they’d been rained into. Joy.

The rain continued through most of Hubert’s set and we got completely drenched. We were sitting on the floor of the grandstand, making it beautifully convenient to soak up the puddles around us on the boards too. I managed a few shots of the great show taking place before us, but mostly kept my camera huddled against me under my coat. I felt like a chimpanzee sheltering her baby from the rain - a certain shot from a documentary bright in my mind.

As arranged Klaus Doldinger came back on stage to join Hubert & Co. for “Kohler” and “i bi ån”, coming up with some fantastic improvisations on his saxophone. As is traditional Hubert also called on the audience to echo his vocals. “I bi ån” (pron. “ee bee on”) means something like “I’m fine, I don’t need anything from you” and despite being wet, after a concert like that all three thousand of us were “on”, baby.

Click on the photo for the set so far

I got back from Germany (by the skin of my teeth) on Monday. Lots of my own photos to come (assuming I ever catch up on my work), but meanwhile here’s a link to a Deutsche Welle “Euromaxx” report on Hubert von Goisern’s tour. Suzy and I can be seen in a few scenes, on the concert ship in Heilbronn.

Watch the report in English | Watch the report in German

* I’m running away at the weekend. Ok, not quite true. I’m flying away. There, that sounds much better. Suzy and I are off to Germany for a couple of concerts from the Meister. I’m sort of hoping that my new lens won’t have arrived by then, so I won’t need to decide whether or not to take it with me. By the way, short of putting my head in a bag, is there any way to avoid Boat Hair while on a boat?

* I thinned out my carrots. I thought I’d try transplanting the thinnings elsewhere to give myself a little extra carrotage. The floppy pile of carroty uselessness I’m now left with tells me that this was not possible.

* Sam had her hen night last Saturday, which was a fine affair in London. We had lesson in how to make shots and cocktails before dinner and dancing. Let it be noted that I pour a mean B52. Let it also be noted that drinking a glass of champagne on a fairly empty stomach makes it difficult to get up the stairs to the bar to have the lesson. Then drinking a shot, a cocktail and various “sips” of other people’s cocktails makes it even more difficult to get back down the stairs for the meal. Should this happen, allow Lauren to order for you.

* I rang the police the other day. Very exciting. You park your car for sale so that it’s blocking most of the footpath - the footpath that leads to the primary school - and I will soooo tell on you, sucker.

I’ve just ordered myself a new toy. A shiny new UV filter … which will screw onto the front of my similarly freshly ordered Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 lens.

I think that sound I hear is Lauren moving in.

You know, that bit of ground into which I put some seeds and wandered off.
The vegetable patch, right. It feels like I’m not doing so well this year. Partly because I’m not accosted by luscious green leaves and vines the moment I step outside the door. Things are a little smaller in scale than last year. Not quite so grab-you-round-the-throat-lush. But they’re still growing.

Ahem. Well, some of them are.

Yo, sweetcorn, what did I do to you? Hmm? Last year you took off like a thing possessed, leading me to leave more plants to grow than I’d planned. Ok, so this year - admittedly with a different seed type - I thought I’d just put two seeds in at each station, rather than the three prescribed by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I wanted to avoid a glut in my smaller allotted space for corn. But insodoing I seem to have displeased Mrs Ingalls Wilder. A couple of plants deigned to show themselves above ground. The rest of the seed rotted.

I poked a few leftover kernels from last year’s packet into the ground and a couple of those are now growing, so with any luck I might just get a meal out of the sweetcorn part of my patch. Smart arse vegetables.

The onions are beginning to look more like onions now. The potatoes have gone long and leggy, as apparently that’s the only kind of potato haulm I can cultivate. Even when I buy seed potatoes and follow the frigging instructions (rather than scraping the bottom of the potato sack and shoving them into the ground as darkness falls) they still refuse to look all bushy and cute. Well, it’s been raining a fair bit recently, so who wants to place the first bet on when they’re all gonna get blight and the Irish will be up chip creek without a potato again?

The broad beans over by the fence are just about standing up straight and the pods are now forming, though they still feel quite hollow at this stage. The blackfly and creepy ants that had previously seen fit to set up business on the tips of the plants have long since been, ahem, dispersed. And that bit of earth that I’d left bare for either a second sowing or turnips or something remains bare.

Click for the set

Last Sunday we had our Summer Party, blogged live by me and Lauren before the immense quantities of food we’d made and then consumed finally overcame us and we no longer had the ability to type.

I’d rented a very shiny, very heavy, very beeeyootiful lens to try out that day: a Nikon 70-200mm f2.8. So I went around scaring impressing my relatives with a piece of kit twice my size, taking photos of them sitting at the tables outside while, yes, I ate guarded the food indoors. That lens was so good, with such a nice little swishy noise as it focussed, that all day I had an argument going on in my head about whether I should buy one of my own or not. Sure, I’m lucky enough to be able to afford one, but where the hell would I keep it? Yes, the photos are fabulous, but you’re going to need a wrist transplant, etc…

I’d rented the lens from an absolutely brilliant company called Hire A Camera, who saved the day when the first company I’d gone to, Camerent, eventually conceded after actually, no, they couldn’t supply the lens. Sorry about saying we could and all that - and sorry about having a caveman answering our phone. The lovely people at www.hireacamera.com liked my feedback on their service so much they put it on their customer comment page. The only thing is that they asterisked my mention of C*******, possibly leading readers to wonder just what new and exciting swear word I’d used that would fit that many asterisks.

Oh, and apropos the food, I didn’t get any photos of it. But Lauren did. She also took photos with her new wide angle lens. And it’s about time she put them on Flickr and sent them to me. Here’s what she probably says to that:

Click on the photo for the rest of the party set