Vernal Equinox is here and a much more welcome occasion it is than Winter Solstice was. It’s a very liberating feeling indeed to once again be located in this spot in the cycle of seasons. The mornings look lighter and everything feels brighter. I’m open (ok, moderately open) to new ideas and thoughts. This often happens on springtime and gradually wears off by midsummer when it’s usually too hot to get excited by new things, especially if they require effort and concentration. But for the moment I’m inflating with new energy and The Need To Make Plans. The flights to Spain are booked now and I’m feverishly looking forward to doing nothing much non stop for two weeks on July, on the (presumably) sunny hills of Los Pacos (where my future Father-in-law’s villa is located), and adjoining areas.

Booked also is the place to hold our wedding celebrations at, next year. Because the wedding date is set now but still so far ahead in the future, this means we have the opportunity to celebrate a kind of inverted wedding anniversary next August, a year before the actual wedding, and for this I’m thinking of booking a flight to London for an extended weekend. London in August should be a bit more appealing than London in January was.

Yet another booking, located in the startlingly near future, involves Sinisthra in a novel band-playing-live-on-an-actual-open-to-public-situation. In other words, a proper gig, like real bands sometimes go and do. More of this later.

Oh, and a modern folk-notion claims that on the March equinox day, one can balance an egg on its point. A lesser known folk-notion claims that on a certain mythical and clandestine date one can balance a banana on the apex of its’ curve, with the ends pointing up. This requires a deep understanding of esoterica, however, and cannot be attempted by any other oik. Therefore I won’t provide any links for it whatsoever.

RECENT SOURCES OF MUSICAL DELIGHT:
The Gathering is back with a new album (soon) and a new singer, and with three new songs playing on their MySpace page. Nothing much has changed, surprisingly little in fact. The new singer has a sound very similar to the previous singer Anneke van Giersbergen, the songs tend to float past much in the same manner as in their past two or three albums, and the ”delight”-part doesn’t really kick in until the third song, ”The West Pole”. Judging by these three songs, it’s all very beautiful and soothing but seriously lacking in departments of weirdness, drama and the overall force so plentifully evident in an album like ”How To Measure A Planet?”. Then again, that was ten years ago. I wouldn’t want my own music to always consist of exactly the same elements, no matter how much time passes, and I’d imagine the people in The Gathering might think in much the same way. Still, I enjoyed their new songs.

RECENT BOOKS OF CHOICE:
”Her Name Was Lola” by Russell Hoban. Once again, utterly enjoyable reading, as always with a Russell Hoban novel, and once again, the link explains the plot of the book much better than I would. The protagonist is a writer of successful children’s novels who can’t come up with a new novel for adults, and as his writers block solidifies, even the novel for children refuses to appear. Apart from ”real”, actual people, he has (mostly fruitless and contradicting) conversations with his characters and his mind. He is dating two women at the same time and both of them get pregnant at the same time, with disastrous results. The entire book can be read here, although I wouldn’t, since most of Hoban’s books can be bought, most puzzlingly and inexplicably, from Amazon at a very reasonable starting price of 0.01GBP plus postage. This, in my opinion, is a bargain of magnificent proportions and I have shamelessly exploited the option to trample on the dignity of this excellent writer of excellent books.

I’ve always been fond of books that describe London, my favourite town, in a very graphic and detailed way like Hoban is in the habit of, mentioning places the characters go to and the streets they walk by to get there. This method somehow infuses a dose of reality into a plot that otherwise might have outrageously fantastical elements in it, like Neil Gaiman’s ”Neverwhere”, and err I can’t think of anything else that might qualify as a fitting example. Douglas Adams’ ”So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish”, perhaps. And definitely the book I just started reading, taking place in Victorian era London. But more of this later.

Here’s a link to a blog listing Russell Hoban quotations, among other things.

RECENT BOTTLES OF CHOICE:
Blondel Brut Carte d'Or. And so it came to pass that the time was ripe for me to buy my first ever bottle of champagne after a lenghty period of to and fro-ing. Casting all hesitation and dithering aside, I went out (and down) in a blaze of glory and immortal-deeds-in-the-making, buying the cheapest brand of champagne available in Finland. Although price was not the main reason for buying Blondel, I liked the label of it quite a bit and proceeded according to one of the three basic laws of buying wine ("if you don’t know what you want go for the one with a nice label"). Naturally I’m very much out of my depth when it comes to buying champagne so I thought it’s best to start with the moderately priced ones.

The problem with the moderately priced ones isn’t very hard to figure out: the quality is also very moderate. It’s impossible to objectively compare this to other sparkling wines because, it’s, you know, champagne after all and anyway and the sheer idea of it being champagne gives it a more regal air, deservedly or not. But I found myself thinking ”this is nothing special” because honestly it wasn’t. It was a worthy companion to a three course dinner, from starters to dessert.

Pasqua Prosecco was opened after the champagne ran out and stood it’s ground surprisingly well after such a prestigious pacemaker. It’s a ”semi-sparkling” (frizzante) wine from Italy I assumed to be somehow similar to vinho verdes from Portugal. Well it wasn’t but I didn’t mind because it was pleasant anyway, light, very dry and giving out the aroma of pears and vaguely unhurried moments in some sunny and warm location. A simple, straight forward and quite a one dimensional wine but enjoyable anyway. Unlike Blondel, this might well be bought again. The bottle and the label looked very good too.

Castellblanch Rosado Semi Seco, a pink cava, was bought on a whim (because it was new and looked nice) and opened on returning home from a long dinner at a restaurant, after numerous glasses of various wines and several additional drinks at a cocktail lounge. So my vigilance might have been a bit compromised. I didn’t expect much of this and was therefore pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be very decent indeed. The ”roseness” I’m not able to deal with very well was mostly in the colour and not in the taste, and the sweetness suggested by ”semi seco” was very much on the non-sweetness side. So it tasted like regular dry cava and I liked it. And will buy it again, probably. If I don’t buy something else instead.