Continued…
Next stop City Road, Roath to pick up Gillian, Cerbyd’s driver and Briaan’s sister. We arrive at Charter Van Hire and within the half-hour, drive away in our 17 seater companion for the coming eight days. Fresh from some light hearted banter with a rather nicely suited car salesmen called Geoff who it seems doesn’t take kindly to jokes made about crashing the van somewhere in North Wales.
It is now bang on 12:00, leaving just under an hour to get across town to my flat in Canton, pack the gear into the van and load up on artists at g39. Last night in my dream around this time I was drinking my second cup of coffee leafing through g2. All was calm. This is standard for my dreams they are always without exception variations of my waking hours but to different timescales and/or with dissimilar outcomes. In real time there are three pairs of hands all moving camping stoves, tents, rucksacks, gas cyclinders, pots, pans, boxes of food onto our bus. Our once tardis like bus that now grows small as we pack her.
In my wisdom at the beginning of the week I asked the combined creative masses of Twitter and Facebook to compile CDs for Cerbyd to listen to, during the trip. I am considering this as I stare at my wall of CDs that take up the corner of the living room. Usually I am extremely anal and annoyingly particular with which CDs to take on a trip. I take into consideration such factors as the time of day and season, route, destination and passengers as inspiration and reasons for choosing certain styles of music or artists and albums. Today we have just finished loading what already looks a relatively full van minus 10 artists so I just grab CDs at random. Luckily or divinely Johnny Cash magicked his way into my grasp and back on the bus in the cold light of day the selection looks a good one. I don’t own bad CDs it’s just some of the artists I like make bad albums from time to time.
Parked up on St Mary’s Street now and the driver needs feeding. Briaan and I get large chips from Caroline Street deposit them back at the van and head on through Wyndham arcade to g39. It is all quite real now but in my dream last night I arrive at g39 and none of the artists have turned up. It is just Sean commiserating and we decide to do the trip anyway, just the four of us.
Back to reality and unless someone is playing a cruel and rather elaborate joke by strewing varying brightly coloured rucksacks across g39’s floors then the artists are here and the waiting is over. No introductions needed, well not yet anyway. I have decided to tell the artists only what I deem necessary or vital. The idea is that their local knowledge of places, roads will inform the rest of the group at different times.
