On the 1st of February, X and I went to London, England.

Finally. Vacation! We found out that Okkervil River were to play Scala a couple of months back, and have been talking about it lightly for a while. We should go! Well, should we really? - We must go! We can't miss them! et.c. A couple of weeks before the gig, however, we made the firm decision to go, and thus booked a room with Holiday Inn very near to the venue, in Kings Cross. Very simple affair. Lurking through the swamp that is Ryanair's site is a wholly different affair... If you ever have to deal with their Swedish site, get ready for links that (should but) don't exist, cryptic sentences that make you wonder if their webmaster's read too much of William Burroughs' cut-up stuff not to mention there being a lot of repeats everywhere. Never the less, we found out how much we could carry, what not to have in our hand luggage and when to be at the airport, so everything was nice and dandy.

X's mom was kind to drive us to the airport, where we had coffee with her and her boyfriend for an hour or so, before we gated and boarded the plane. X's got vertigo bad, but didn't show it very much before or after taking off. She was really good fighting it. After arriving at Stansted airport we hopped on a Terravision bus to Victoria station, where we queued in a taxi rank and quickly made our way to our hotel, arriving appx. 1:30 in the morning. We were dead tired.

Awaking as sun shone into our quite luxurious room, we kissed, turned on the TV and talked loosely about how to spend the day. We were both peckish for shopping and seeing the sights. British morning TV rules, by the way. As X showered I saw Andrew Marr hosting a BBC morning television show and as I really like "Start The Week", this was it. We had tea in our room. It was strange, though. Turned the contents of a cup into something looking more like murky coffee with milk. Still, it was nice. Nothing wrong with the room, whatsoever. In fact, when we arrived at that ghastly hour, I was hungry. Reception did their best to accommodate my wishes as they called two pizzerias for me, but they had both stopped delivering. That's service.

We trotted up Kings Cross Road right up to the station, where we had sandwiches from Upper Crust. It was so very nice to stand outside the station, lapping up shining sun, especially in comparison with the rainy Stockholm ((We later heard that there had been incessant rain and cloudy skies all over Stockholm during the time we'd spent in London.)) that we'd left behind. Now was time for action. We got hold of two train-tickets and darted to Oxford Circus where we shopped our heads off, everywhere from Urban Outfitters to Monsoon. Exhausted, we returned to the hotel and just chilled.

The day after we continued shopping, but as we got fed up of that and having coffee at The Devil's Place, we went back to our hotel and rested. Kettle Chips, tea and water to the rescue. The London air is a bit dirtier than Stockholm brings so it was nice to get back to the air-conditioned hotel-room. A bit later, we went to a local pub and had a pint of Guinness. Lovely. As I ordered the barkeep spoke with me in a very soft, high-pitch voice and my eye caught a couple of gay men's magazines on the counter. How could I have missed the rainbow-colours riding high on every menu in the place before this? Oh, well. The place was nice and quite desolate. Later on, said barkeep complained on the phone that the place was dead and only tourists and a few regulars were there. After our pint we aimed for the next day, and just had a lovely time until sleep overtook us. Sleeping in that hotel-room was no problem, I can tell you. The ambiance of London...I really, really love that town.

The next morning we decided to be cultural, so we went to Notting Hill, where we walked around all the old and new houses, noticing the vast difference between a posh area like this and a poor one, like some that we were driven through from Standsted Airport to Victoria Station, by Terravision coach. London is an expensive town to live in, and if you want to live centrally you're going to have to pay a lot. We saw a lot of brightly coloured semi-detached houses, most of them old but looking newly renovated. As we approached Portobello Market, we walked past more antiques shops and tourists, and therefore knew we were heading the right way. I'd been there before, but still, my sense of geographic direction is unreliable.

We entered a few shops on the way. We fetched a multi-coloured hair-brush for the pirates, a bunch of CD's (e.g. a funk caricao-compilation and albums by Money Mark) and a book on Elliott Smith at Rough Trade Records on Talbot Road, I got a t-shirt for me and shorts for X at American Apparel, we had coffee at Coffee Republic and relaxed to the soothing video of Britney's "Piece Of Me". Calmness.

Walking back to the subway, I piped up about wanting to see "Cloverfield", found out that it was playing at the Odeon in Marble Arch, so we joyously rode the subway a couple of stations, bought tickets and waited at Starbucks until it was time. The cinema was big yet quite empty. I think we saw a total of three employees there during our entire stay. I swear, the commercials went on for a good 30 minutes (no exaggeration!) before stopping. We were then presented by a screen saying that the British Film Revisions Community (or similar) had revised the film and decided it suitable for kids from 18 years of age (or similar), but somehow, it failed to mention that the film was going to warp and wreck your health due to it being "directed" by a guy holding a home-camera that shoots everything. As the film - no spoilers here - is about New York getting attacked by something from space, there's a lot of camera-movement. Think panic and earthquake combined and you'll get the picture, but try to imagine that for 30 minutes straight; that's how long X could handle it before she felt she had to leave the cinema. We left and to tell you the truth, I wasn't feeling very up to it either. Murderous film. Of course we'll see it, but I guess not on the big screen. Thankfully.

The way out of the cinema was complex: having turned loads of corners we finally arrived at a fire-escape where we wondered whether or not an alarm would sound if we opened the door, but it didn't. We ended up in an alley, walked past big trash-bins and pushed our way past a fence, and finally ended up on the street. We made our way to the subway, and London was dead. The streets and subway was empty of people. Nobody around. Weird, being such a big city. Back "home" and to the real world.

Tuesday. Okkervil River day. We wasted it and then went to Scala where people were queuing en masse outside the venue. WTF! What had we missed? Thankfully, there were two queues and as we had pre-paid our tickets we got in the short queue. Suddenly, I could identify a smiling face. Travis! HEY! The man came up to us and we talked our time in the queue away. He had to rush off to get something to eat but we'd catch up later. We entered the venue, that was cold. Michal stood selling merch and I ordered two of the worst glasses of Guinness I've ever tasted. Yuck! X couldn't finish hers, so I finished mine and her for us, out of sheer desperation. Travis entered and we spoke with him. He's so charming and such a nice person, I wish he were living in Stockholm instead of so far away. He's a gentleman with moxy. I left to get us all drinks (despite somebody's stashing whiskey and water in a bottle of his own) and when I came back a tall figure hovered over X. "Hey, Patrick!" It was nice to see him and talk some. X and Patrick know each other since before but I haven't really said more than hi to him before, so it was nice to get hold of him and talk some more as Travis spoke with another couple in the meantime.

We went up to the VIP bar and had a calm time while the support bands played away. There were a lot of people seemingly enjoying them, but I just wanted my Okkervil fix. Oh lord, it was a lot easier waiting for the guys to start playing this time than in Stockholm, which was just as well. I love being excited, but for me, being too nervous is like running through the entire gamut of insanity.

As the second support-act went off-stage, Patrick suddenly jolted: he was needed on-stage. We all swigged our drinks and headed downstairs, pushing to the fray, letting Patrick plough his way through the crowd. He hopped onto the stage and went backstage, while we waited. Behind a couple who seemed keen on watching the band. More about these characters later... Here's what I managed to snap of the show before my batteries went out:

The band came on to a roaring crowd, kicking off with "The President's Dead", to which you can hear me whoo in the video a bit further down in this post; I almost burst when the song went into overdrive. We screamed. We sang. We heard Will softly sing the bluesy classic "A Girl In Port" and the band segue "Black“ into “A Hand To Take Hold Of The Scene". We clapped, we jumped, we heard Will shout "Fuck!" as a string broke, right at the very start of the performance. Brian was cool on the electric guitar and Patrick did the backing vocals wonderfully. The man who stands in for Jonathan's very good at the keys, and Travis is...Travis, energetic, living for playing. He really does. And forms an outstanding rhythm section with Patrick. As you can see below the band did amazing work live. I must agree with X, "So Come Back, I Am Waiting" was outstanding. And I must add I love the way Will bent the words in "Plus Ones", the paragraph where he usually sings "Let's get lost, let them send out alarms...". Euphoria blended with the feeling of being there, with X, my love, watching the best band in the world. The couple before us left their places, and we snatched them. Whopee! We were at the front, singing along.

Post-show some weird things happened, e.g. a guy asked X if she was part of the crew and asked if she wanted to help him steal the drums. What a bastard! As people seeped out, we stayed and got backstage passes from Travis and one he snatched from Will. No matter, as we and the band were kicked out of the venue faster than Michal could trade CD's for cash! Once out on the street, we talked with Travis and a little with Patrick. I attacked Will, thanking him for the show and asked him about the coming appendix, that'll most probably contain 8-9 quite long tracks. I told him I was firmly expecting something in the vein of Einstürzende Neubauten which caused laughter. I'm really, really looking forward to that. Heck, I'm really looking forward to anything the band would release. We had planned to party on with them but because of some intrepid, moronic, actual groupies, we skipped that and went to the hotel instead.

The day after we left London. Bright, sunny London. The Terravision coach was late which rattled us, but after a while we left. Below you'll find a video from London. When we landed in Skavsta, the air was filled by a dense fog and rain. Gawd. London. Oh, how I miss you already. But don't fret. We'll be back in May, trailing ATP and JTR. By the way, don't miss X's glorious post on our trip to London.