Bonkers is off on an extreme multi-tasking weekend, including a meet up with Val the Cookie Queen!

I am afraid I haven't managed to do my usual weekly (or thereabouts) post this week. I am working on two projects at the moment, involving evenings, early starts, and some fancy mental footwork trying to remember what job I am on every time I pick up the phone. When I do eventually knock off, my brain is completely addled, and I am not up to much more than a distracted scroll through Facebook and a hastily prepared 'fusion cuisine' meal fashioned from the dwindling contents of my fridge.

There will be posts - also on perfume! - coming along once I have got this flurry of work out of the way in a week or two, if not before. I plan to review SJP Stash, Mon Guerlain - that surprised you! - and a few other things, as well as finally compile my bathroom refurb post, now that the finishing touch of a picture is back from the framer's and on the wall.

And meanwhile, I am off on Friday (don't tell Truffle!) to Germany for an extreme multi-tasking weekend, as all my holidays tend - and for budgetary reasons, need - to be these days. It will combine language practice (which I could almost elevate to the status of Continuing Professional Development, even if in practice I am mostly inquiring about platform information and the feasibility of fresh milk for my tea), AND my twin interests of music and perfume. The specifics of the former may readily be guessed, while the latter will be embodied in the human dynamo, fellow blogger, and one-woman gourmet cookie factory that is Val CQ Sperrer(!). Despite not being long back from her action-packed trip to Milan, Val is heading north to Bavaria on Saturday with downhill biking maniac husband, 'no fear' Chris, to meet me for a gig by The Monochrome Set in Augsburg. She being arguably one of only a handful of people in the known world who are diehard fumeheads and fans of that somewhat eclectic band.

The planning of the trip, meanwhile, has not been without incident. I have established, for example, that while Manchester Airport security have absolutely no problems with me taking knitting on a flight out of the country (cue more multi-tasking!), Munich Airport security take a very dim view of my wishing to take it home again. Knitting needles - or Stricknadeln, as they are known over there - are stricktly verboten on account of their non-negotiable status as 'pointy objects' and terrorist weapons. I must say I have never heard tell of a 'in air' terrorist attack involving knitting needles, but I guess there is always a first time. I mean, 'yarn bombing' is already a well-established pursuit, also in Germany...;)

In vain did I try to reason on the phone with the officious official from the Sicherheitsgesellschaft am Flughafen München mbH, and big up the innocuous character of my particular wooden needles: I was firmly told that the material of said needles was...ahem...immaterial. I would have been allowed to take needles measuring a maximum of 6cm on the flight, but you wouldn't be able to knit a scarf on implements of quite such Lilliputian proportions. Even one of those narrow, spivvy Mod ties favoured by Paul Weller would be a stretch, quite literally indeed.

I'll be just as happy to see her this time! 

So there you have it. I will of course report back on the events of the weekend as soon as work permits. And on the day that Britain started the process of leaving the EU - though as I said on Facebook, I had rather hoped Mrs May would trigger Area 51 by mistake - I found a way to ensure the 'free movement' of my latest woolly project (for a nominal fee)...of which more later.

Okay...so that was a sort of a post after all!

Spargel Everywhere: The Monochrome Set Germany Tour 2015: Part 4 - Schorndorf & Augsburg (including a meet up with Val the Cookie Queen and her husband!)

Backstage at Club Manufaktur

FREIBURG TO SCHORNDORF

The following day we spent a leisurely morning in Freiburg before a relatively short drive through the Black Forest up to Stuttgart. My early morning mission consisted of accompanying the singer to a local supermarket to buy kefir. I had clocked the presence of this probiotic wonder drink the night before, when I popped in to buy some (not so healthy) crisps and wine.

The venue hadn't closed till 4am that morning, so the business of breaking down and loading the gear had been deferred till noon on our day of departure, the earliest time the promoter could reasonably be expected to roll out of bed and open up the club.

This gave us a chance to hang out in another of Alaska's 'Geheimtipps' - a characterful cafe quite close to our hotel stuffed with vintage furniture, posters and a motley assortment of eclectic artefacts. There was a toboggan on the wall - but of course! And a motorbike in an archway. Every object had been carefully curated, down to the 'period' toilet roll holder, which I have conspicuously failed to photograph.

Alaska, Dave and Caryne at the cafe

After a pleasant pitstop, we foregathered outside the club at the appointed 'get out' time. I am not sure if this is the correct opposite of 'get in', but it is now. Within moments of our arrival, a series of small tasks fell to me: the first of these was retrieving the bass player's gloves, which had fallen under his seat at the back of the van. I basically 'dived' head first over the front bench seat to recover them, with Andy holding me by the ankles, like a tourist kissing the Blarney Stone. I then had to hold the gloves for a while, until he needed them as extra protection when manhandling the gig bags. Meanwhile, Bid asked me to hold his cigarette while he went to retrieve some item of gear or other. I am quite surprised no one parked their hat on my head or hooked an umbrella over my elbow. I have got this holding lark - of so many different items, indeed - off to a 't' now.

Shortly after this, I really needed the loo, but decided against using the one in the club, as there was no water in the ladies, assuming I could even have remembered which door was which.

The only foolproof way to 'sex' these toilets is to wait for someone to come out

So I popped into the restaurant where we had eaten the night before (with the imposing green door above), only to encounter yet another memorable toilet roll dispenser.

Is it just me, or is this plain greedy?

Then no description of Freiburg would be complete without mentioned the dreaded 'c' word. That's 'c' for 'cyclists', obviously. The town is positively overrun with them, much like Oxford or Cambridge or the whole of that benighted bicycle-ridden car park known as Holland. When I have visited Freiburg for work, it has always been by car, and as a motorist you are doing quite well if you only come away having mowed down half a dozen cyclists or fewer. And there is an additional hazard I have not come across anywhere else - small water channels at the side of the road, the purpose of which may be purely decorative, I don't know. If the cyclists don't get you, the 'water torture feature' (to quote ex-Mr Bonkers) most certainly will.

By half past twelve we were rolling, the weather still fine and warm. Even in that scenic area of the Black Forest, there were 'ghost interviews' lurking just off the main drag (Donaueschingen - children's shoe soles, I'm looking at you!). By the time we hit the outskirts of Stuttgart, 'the cradle of the automobile', as well as home to a myriad of engineering firms, it was like a veritable spooks' convention, a gaggle - nay, Gaggenau - of career ghosts, if you will.

I also spotted a sign to a place where I had spent several happy weekends on past business trips - a chocolate box-pretty place called Ebersbach. I told the band that this quaint little town was only down the road and that the streets were dotted with bronze pigs. The bass player got quite excited by this, and suggested a scenic detour so that the band could take whimsical photographs of themselves posing with this posse of porcine sculptures. Unfortunately, I realised about two seconds later that I had got Ebersbach mixed up with Eberbach, a completely different town near Heidelberg, that was not remotely on our way to Stuttgart. 'You raised our hopes of a fun time with the pigs and now you've gone and dashed them!' piped up the bass player from the back of the bus in a forlorn voice.

The proper Eberbach and its pigs ~ Source: e-stories.de

SCHORNDORF

Because of 'get in' time constraints, we all went straight to the venue rather than checking in at the hotel first. Alaska had promised us 'arrival snacks', which turned out to be a souped up version of what ex-Mr Bonkers calls 'the cheese and ham rider', though with a perky Easter twist.

Photo courtesy of Caryne

Club Manufaktur was pretty wacky - even by our jaded standards, and we had seen a fair few variants of 'funky / mad / dilapidated / graffiti-strewn / generally bonkers' buildings in our touring time. There were beaten up old sofas with audibly boing-ing springs, stylised signs on the doors of the toilets, and a platter of complimentary tampons in the ladies. 'I should have got here earlier', I thought ruefully.

Then I was thrilled to be able to redeem myself for the pig fiasco, when the bass player asked if I could organise some photocopies of the set list. I put in a polite request with the lady in the venue's main office, and in a trice we had 10 copies ready for the band to use, and for fans to nick at the end of the night, as is the immutable way of such things.

John, digesting the arrival snacks.

SCHORNDORF TO AUGSBURG

It was a short trip the next day over to Augsburg, preceded by a fair bit of hanging around at the hotel for Alaska-related reasons we never did quite fathom, but a mountainous backlog of emails may have been involved. Bid was complaining of a sore neck and shoulders, so I offered to apply that universal panacea for aches of all kinds - 4HEAD - to the affected areas. 'Balm me, balm me!' he pleaded in what can best be described as a strangled yet enthusiastic tone. I also caught a most agreeable whiff of the drummer's cologne, which turned out to be Activist from The Body Shop, a citrus-woody-ambery number that most definitely punches above its price range.

On the way to Augsburg, my excitement was mounting about meeting Val there, eclipsing even multiple further sightings of asparagus fields. She and her husband were driving up from Austria at the same time, and in a flurry of in-car messaging, she sent me a teaser photo of cookie buckets to come...;) She had the new album, Spaces Everywhere, playing at full blast on the stereo. At least I assume so - Val strikes me as someone who would engage with every aspect of life at full blast.

Photo courtesy of Val

AUGSBURG

Soon after checking into my hotel, I headed out to a street called Hinterer Lech that I had picked for our rendez-vous, for no other reason than that it was fairly central and blessed with a pleasingly louche name. I make no apologies for the fact that our meeting was like an urban parody of the classic scene of lovers running towards each other in slow motion through a meadow filled with flowers - I was just so darn pleased to see Val, and also took an instant like to her easy-going, warm and chatty husband, Chris.

Photos courtesy of Chris (by a process of elimination indeed!)

Val was wearing Rozy edp (like Anka - Twilight Zone-y!), and of course I had to give her a thorough olfactory going over, just moments after our ecstatic embrace.

Photo courtesy of Chris

Our first port of call was a little gift shop selling knick-knacks, gemstones, scarves, bags and a modicum of 'hippie tat'. Val was instantly drawn to a beautiful white wood cabinet, with a set of little ceramic drawers - absolutely perfect for her perfume samples - and Chris bought it for her on the spot.

Photo courtesy of Val

The shop was about to close, so the owner kindly offered to stash the parcel in a shed round the back where no one would think to go rummaging with thieving intent. I bought a little semi-precious stone - it was a toss up between a swirly one and a spotty one in shades of black and grey, but Chris observed that the spotty one looked worryingly like the diseased lung of a chronic smoker, so that settled that then.

Managed to catch Val's happy snapper hubby in the act!

Photo courtesy of Chris ~ more navigating(!), albeit less mission-critical

After a bit of a wander round town and a bite to eat in a steakhouse, we went back to our hotels to change and get ready for the gig. Val turned up outside the City Club armed with not one but TWO buckets of cookies for the band and Caryne - who got her own bucket because she was a vegan - together with a generous selection of perfumes for us both, and a travel spray of Hermes Cuir d'Ange ('Angel Leather'). She had in mind to scent the band with the latter - openly or by stealth if necessary - instantly turning them into rock gods. Given that the singer is notorious for his 'leather trouser phase' in the early 90s, he arguably didn't have all that far to go, and submitted his décolleté to a vigorous spritz or three by Val as he emerged from the dressing room in search of a drink.

The band in the 90s ~ unknown source

I asked Bid later in an email what he had made of Cuir d'Ange:

"I thought that it initially smelled of electrical malfunction, but it became ok."

Speaking of electrical malfunctions, I was asked to tap a microphone at some point in the evening. I was crestfallen, mind. not to be asked to say: 'One two, one two' with that. For the first time since Freiburg, I was also summoned on stage again to do my little announcement at the end of the set about the band staying put. This time the issue was not so much the lack of a dressing room as the distance to it. I was ready at last with the right word for dressing room - and clapping, for that matter - but I never even got to finish my sentence about the band playing on, before the already lively crowd broke into an uproar at the mention of whooping and several encores swiftly ensued. I am still puzzling over where the verb should have gone in my sentence, or what it was, even. The endless meandering of German sentence structure has that effect. Oh, I should also mention that after a bit of priming, Val stepped forward and posed with a Wunderbar chocolate bar at exactly the correct point in the song, Alphaville, where the word 'wunderbar' features in the lyrics. Someone took a blurry picture of her in action, but I can't put my hand on it for the moment.

Photo courtesy of Caryne

There was a bit of milling after the gig, chatting to Val and Chris and the band, as well as to Augsburg fans and musicians I met on the tour last year. Meanwile, the Cookie Monster snuck off and had a little go on the drum kit before it was packed away.

Photo courtesy of Val

Then at one point some bonus Prosecco appeared from nowhere and my glass of white wine simultaneously vanished. And all too soon it seemed, Val and Chris had vanished too - we had a long journey the next day, plus they are used to early nights on account of the cookie business. But brief as our meet up was, the memories will linger for far longer. The cookies, meanwhile, were all gone by Brussels.

Photo courtesy of Caryne

PS This happens to be my 500th post!!! It seems fitting that it should be one about a perfumista meet up. 'Friends before perfume' as we have now taken to saying...

Bonkers 'on tour' in Germany again: The scented bit

This post rewinds to the beginning of my recent German trip, charting its various scented aspects (more or less) as they occurred...

Semi-comatose airport sniffing

Following the crushing disappointment of the fried bread impersonating French toast incident, I decided to self-soothe in the perfume section of the Duty Free, as you do.  Mind you, at this plateau stage in my perfume j****ney and at that ungodly hour of the morning, I was a little zombified and milled around aimlessly, completely blanking the latest Marc Jacobs or Issey Miyake flanker - assuming I have even correctly remembered that it was those brands that had one.  There was a flanker in a jagged bashed concertina-type bottle - you would think I would remember whose that was - but no, nothing penetrated the mental fog of a semi-saturated sniffer who had been up since before she went to bed, or so it felt.

Then I had an idea: 'Why, I'll check out the Dior Collection Privée!  Give Mitzah another spin - I might be ready for it now!', before I remembered that Birmingham airport stocks the Chanel Exclusifs range, not Dior. And then Birgit's personal mantra of 'If in doubt, seek Hermès out' came to me, and I trotted off to that fixture, where I was able to try Jour d'Hermès again on skin, together with B's new scented squeeze of Eau de Narcisse Bleu. Jour d'Hermès I thought striking, in a tart yet sweet, rhubarb and pretty floral kind of a way, but it was too specific a scent to impress me.  Too singular, even.  Not remotely comforting, and the weather was still cool enough for me to crave that quality in a perfume.

Source: fragrantica.com

The Eau de Narcisse Bleu, meanwhile, opened with a fresh and bracing whoosh of galbanum, but the musky woodsy drydown came a tad too quickly and the green aspect was rendered indistinct - I don't normally complain about perfumes being 'fuzzy' in character, but I wanted the narcissus note to hang around a bit longer.

Channelling Geza Schoen!

So....as noted in Part 1 of 'The travel bit', the first gig was at Monarch, a chic but smoky club in edgy Kreuzberg.  I wore Ormonde Jayne's Ta'if as my SOTE, just because I reach for it more or less on auto-pilot when I am going out.  Imagine my surprise when Anka, a Berlin-based reader, wrote this comment on my post:

Monarch (upstairs) - in Geza's 'hood!!

"And the Monarch is a place I know quite well, too.  About a month ago I was there and listened to a 'fake' talk show; one of the guests was perfumer Geza Schoen who lives round the corner."

Whoo! I had unwittingly picked a Geza creation to wear that night, with no clue about the venue's connection to one of my favourite noses...;)

And Anka went on to tell us more about the event she attended, also confirming Monarch's offbeat charm and gloomy ambience:

"Yes, Monarch is a funny, dusky place!  This particular evening with Geza Schoen was, as an exception, a non-smoking event and we all had a great laugh when the perfumer reported later on that he himself occasionally enjoys a smoke....And I learnt that his most detested smells are coriander, oysters and truffles."

Wow, if I had known that Geza Schoen - to whom I feel a particular bond because he once scented my home city of Belfast (full report on that novel project here) - was a Kreuzberg resident, I would have spent longer hanging out in the falafel parlours on Skalitzer Strasse.  I did have a couscous in a tagine restaurant on Lausitzer Platz, and a mushroom pancake in a cafe on Oranienstrasse, but there was no sign of his distinctive rangy form in either eaterie.

The Méharées handover, and the focus group in a kebab shop 

That first night in Berlin also saw the handover by Jane (who FYI rocked Gorilla Perfumes' heady floral, Sikkim Girls, all week) of the bottle of L'Erbolario Méharées, which they had kindly bought for me in Bologna the previous weekend.  Thus it was that when I adjourned with the band to the kebab shop near their digs, I still had the bottle of perfume in my hand, and it was ceremoniously plonked on the table, next to the condiments - before I had the idea to ask them what they made of it, and passed the bottle around, inviting them to sniff the nozzle.

Guitarist: 'It's quite sweet.'
Bass player: 'It's nice - is there really just myrrh and dates in there?'
Singer (in a slightly incredulous tone): 'Whoever thought to put myrrh in a perfume?!'

Later in the week, the bass player suggested that I - or someone - should invent a perfume and call it 'Incorrigible', adding brightly: 'That's a good unisex name - you'll be onto a winner!'  Givenchy take note.....

L'Occitane Eau des Baux and the fragrant Friedrich Sunlight singer

In Augsburg, at the 'secret gig', I got chatting in between sets to the singer from the support band Friedrich Sunlight, whose name was Kenji.  I think I opened the conversation by boldly remarking on the fact that he smelt rather lovely, and he revealed that he was wearing L'Occitane Eau des Baux - a masculine scent that was completely off my radar - and kindly let me lean in and sniff him more comprehensively.  Reader, for all vanilla fans especially, this one is utterly swoonworthy and easily wearable by a woman.  I urge you to watch Katie Puckrik's video review of Eau des Baux here.  It is a woody, incensey, softly spicy, warm and vanillic fragrance that I see the (mostly) men on Basenotes have also given a resounding thumbs up.  Along with cardamom (which always reels me in), there is meant to be a cypress note in there which I barely detect, and on my skin the vanilla drydown is the most striking part of the scent's development. I imagine Eau des Baux might read as too sweet for some men, but I couldn't get enough of it.

Les Baux-de-Provence ~ Source: ignis via Wikimedia Commons 

Oh, and in the course of my research about Eau des Baux, I discovered this review by a blogger who was new to me, and whose blog rejoices in the name 'Villainous Smells and other Olfactory Decadence'.

As it happens, I have actually been to the village of that name - Les Baux-de-Provence - and clapped eyes on the ruined hilltop castle which inspired the fragrance, but it was..er...35 years ago when I lived on the Riviera, and the memory is sadly dimmed with time.  Kenji's signature scent continued to haunt me for the rest of the trip, and at the airport on the way back I made myself a tiny sample to take home. Should have just bought the bottle and been done with it, but there you go!  For even though I picked my daily perfume throughout the tour with studied care, it is Kenji's sillage of Eau des Baux which is the standout scent highlight of the week.

Visiting Parfümerie Naegele, Augsburg, with nary a sniff

The Friedrich Sunlight guitarist - who I later learnt was called Florian, though I had been calling him Brian throughout my visit - gave some of us a lift back from the 'secret gig', and on the way I asked if he could suggest a high end perfumery in town.  He was unsure himself, but promised to put out feelers.  And how! The inter-band bush telegraph must have been positively humming, because by lunchtime on the following day the keyboard and bass players in Friedrich Sunlight had received messages from Florian and taken up the challenge of finding me a Parfümerie commensurate with my exacting standards.  But it was Kenji who finally came up with the name Naegele, and by mid-afternoon I had struck out on my own to the humorously named Fuggerplatz area to suss out the selection of niche fragrances this exclusive perfumery carried.

Well, quite a few, as it transpired, including a whole wall of By Kilians and the bespoke line of Keiko Mecheri - which I don't believe I have seen anywhere, but at 282 euros a pop I couldn't bring myself to try any of them. Unfortunately, I was listless and tuned out to scent again, and ended up just taking a few photos, inquiring after a particular Bobbi Brown eyeshadow (predictably discontinued), and heading across to a cookware store to buy a comedy chicken for my friend's husband's birthday.  He is called Chick, for one, plus I was sure I could pass it off as a poultry-shaped executive stress ball on account of its satisfyingly squidgy bottom.

But going back to my temporary indifference to perfume, I had a similar experience in Berlin in 2012, when I drifted round KaDeWe, only actually smelling the April Aromatics line in the end.  I thought then - and think now - that because of the whole premise of the tour I was suffering from sensory overload already of the auditory kind, and I just didn't have the headspace (no pun intended) to focus on the olfactory as well.

Mr Chick's birthday present ~ Source: Clare Chick

Berlin - epic fumehead trail fail - times two!

I fully intended to make up for this lacklustre attitude on my return to Berlin.  I had the whole of Sunday and half of Monday on my own after the others had gone back, which should have been ideal for a complete re-immersion in Berlin's high end perfume scene.  But I had forgotten that on Sunday all the shops are closed(!), while by Monday I was so tired I used the morning to catch up on some much needed kip (as per the sign at the bottom of this post).  So instead, on the Sunday I mooched around the trendy quarter of Prenzlauer Berg, whiling away the hours in a variety of eclectic cafes.

And it was in one such cafe that I had another scented epiphany - not with a perfume this time, but an 'extra extra virgin top of the range high premium cat's pyjamas' olive oil, called Ladi Biosas.  It was fragrantly floral like no other oil I have ever sniffed or tasted (I had a little bowl of it for dipping the bread that came with my soup - what an inspired marketing ploy).  Reader, I walked out with a 14 euro bottle proudly tucked under my arm.  But this Ladi Biosas stuff is amazing - I would neck it straight from the bottle if it wasn't so darn expensive! Seemingly, the cafe in question is the only stockist in Germany, but if you can get hold of it somehow it truly is liquid gold.  And that means a lot coming from someone like me who is not remotely foody, and perfectly happy with a 99p loaf with the odd pumpkin seed on it, as opposed to balsamic garlic and parmesan flatbread or artisanally hand kneaded spelt focaccia with walnuts and gohji berries and what have you.

Here is some info about the oil - I wish I could gain such 'clear-sightedness' after 'remaining undisturbed for 50 days'.

Bonkers 'on tour' in Germany again: The travel bit - Part 3: Augsburg & Berlin

Augsburg (continued)

The next day was mostly taken up with switching hotels and sightseeing - partly on my own and partly with the hospitable support band, Friedrich Sunlight, acting as tour guides. These walkabouts included a good deal more 'standing on street corners' - not to hail a taxi as in Hamburg, but simply to wait for the 'green man' at a pelican crossing.  For the German authorities take a dim view of jay walking, even at 3am with not a car in sight, and most locals are law abiding in this regard.  

That evening, the 'official' Augsburg gig was held upstairs in the achingly stylish City Club.  Its peeling paint and plaster were reminiscent of the therapy room from The King's Speech, while the cafe downstairs thoughtfully provided bike storage at the bar, along with customer mattresses suspended from the ceiling.  

At this venue, the door in the ladies' toilet had been 'customised' to fit the cubicle, but the sink was sadly lacking a tap, prompting me to sidle over to the men's loos instead, emboldened by their conspicuous lack of a door.  

There was no dressing room whatsoever, not even a nanosized cavity, so for any fan who had worked this out for themselves, the area just outside the men's toilets afforded the best glimpses of semi-clothed musicians.

This gig was characterised by that ever present problem of 'very tall German man syndrome', notably in the front rows.  There were in fact some very tall women there too.  Apart from the atmospheric surroundings and the lofty and appreciative audience, the City Club gig will forever stick in my mind - not in a good way - for a misunderstanding between Steve the drummer and me, dubbed 'The Towel Incident'.  

About two thirds of the way through the set, Steve - who wasn't playing throughout a particular song - leant forward over his drum kit, displaying a small towel stretched tightly between his hands.  He caught my eye with what I can only describe as a stern and meaningful glare.  Or it would have been meaningful if I could have discerned his meaning.  And you need to know that it was stiflingly hot in the venue that night - perspiration could be seen pouring off the faces of the players on stage, and many of the audience, so my first thought was that he meant: 'My towel has become sopping wet and disagreeable to use - please fetch me a fresh one at the double.'  

Accordingly, I burrowed my way through the crowd to the bar, where I explained to staff that the drummer needed to wipe his head with a fresh towel as a matter of urgency.  After extensive rummaging, the bar tender could only produce a sticky wet dish cloth, so I ran to the merch table and asked Jane for advice. 'What about a jumbo roll of toilet paper?' she suggested brightly, and we promptly went and stole one from the Ladies.  'Hmm, actually I think he might have problems manhandling that', I replied, 'Why, it's bigger than his snare drum.'  So in desperation we decided to sacrifice a brand new T-shirt from the merch stall. 'Quick, quick, Jane - what's the slowest seller?' I asked. 'Women's small!' she exclaimed, as she ripped open a plastic bag and handed one to me.  Moments later, I had lunged forward across the stage and tossed the T-shirt on the side of a drum, my life and death mission seamlessly accomplished. Strangely though, at no point did Steve retrieve the T-shirt during the remainder of the set.  What had I done wrong?  Could it possibly be that he did not want something approximating to a fresh towel after all?

Reader, he didn't.  I later learnt that he was merely trying to show me the logo on his towel, which commemorated the ill-fated Titanic steamship - he had got it at the museum in Belfast, and - knowing that was my home town - thought to draw my attention to it mid-song.  I would never have seen that coming, not in a million years.  'But...but...', I protested, when we held a post mortem about the incident later that evening; 'I thought it was an emergency.'  'Trust me', the drummer intoned solemnly: 'If I ever do have an emergency, you'd be the last person I would ask for help.'

Berlin

Saturday was the final day of the tour, and we set off early on the long train journey to Berlin.  Though not before Jane had kindly brought my red hair brush from the Grand Hotel Cosmopolis, where it had almost got irretrievably lost in the all-encompassing pink and red decor of my room.  'I have Herr Brush!' she texted cheerily from the tram on the way to the station.  Herr Brush in a little paper bag no less, with my room name on it and 'The Monochrome Set'.  It might be stretching a point in my own case, but Herr Brush is evidently 'with the band'.

On the train up to Berlin I carried on knitting wrist warmers; people read or slept or played silly travel games.  At one point the bass player showed us his unfeasibly large banana, of the existence of which we had been apprised the day before, following his latest fruit-buying spree.  That also morphed into a predictable game of: 'Guess the length of the banana.'  Steve was the winner with his intriguingly precise guess of nine and three quarter inches...

Jane's husband adjudicating the banana challenge

The final gig was at a fast food restaurant called White Trash.  It was always understood that the punters were going to be there primarily for the burgers, but even so, a very respectable crowd of (mostly) first timers formed and a few new converts to the band's music were made by the end of the night.  The White Trash gig was also notable for another toilet-related incident, namely the unexpected presence of a man in the Ladies.  When I remonstrated with him, he explained that his girlfriend was in a cubicle and very ill.  'I have diarrhea!' she exclaimed helpfully through the door, 'and I can't get off the loo'.  It must have been serious, for eventually the paramedics were called, and the blue lights of a waiting ambulance flickered through the window for much of the main set...

Steve waggishly showed me his towel again in another non-drumming moment, but I saw him coming this time.  This one had a little Berlin Ampelmann on it - I smiled and gave him a thumbs up.  The thought occurred to me that if he ever does want someone to fetch him a clean towel mid-gig he is going to be pretty much stuffed.  Oh, and the 'Bunny Lady' was back!  I quizzed her some more and learnt that she is an artist, and that her business has a rabbit for its logo - the whole dancing bunnies thing is in fact an ingenious PR stunt.

The bunnies checking out the burger selection

All too soon, it was the parting of the ways at the tube station nearest our respective hotels, where abrupt but warm goodbyes were exchanged.  The guitarist said I had helped the band 'immeasurably' - presumably for my ad hoc translations and analysis of 'train composition' to determine the most ergonomic spot on the platform for the band to stand with all their luggage and gear.  There again, he had just downed a margarita that he said tasted so strong it probably equated to three.

Herr Brush and his travel bag

For anyone feeling a bit bemused by the last three 'pure travel' posts, perfume-themed blogging will resume shortly!