Borg Diaries

Vibe Bar/Proud Galleries

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:25:00 +0000

It's been five months since we played London and in comparison to everywhere else we seem to have played recently, it seems very very close to home. (So close, that you're back home and the sun hasn't even come up yet) Traditionally, we're not as suited to Sunday and Monday nights, and I'm remembering that a sober audience and a wankered audience are very different beasts.

Monday 4th August: Vibe Bar
At the Vibe Bar, we get to say goodbye to Martin as he leaves for sunny Los Angeles. Martin gave us our first ever shows at The Spitz when we started out and it's good to be able to see him off with this farewell show.

Sunday 10th August: The Proud Galleries
We're grabbed by some guy with a camera and hustled into a corner for a quick interview. We're spectacularly bad at interviews.

During the show there is a guy dancing in a baby blue t-shirt that made it for me. After the show as I'm ordering a chicken curry from a stall on Camden High Street. "WHAT!? NO! What are you DOING!?" A local guy behind me informs me that I'm dicing with death by eating meat and implores me to stick to the vegetable pizza which I do. In return for saving my life, I told him I'd plug his music.

http://www.myspace.com/silvertieandthemagpies

Sleepsource Does Gashfest

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:44:00 +0000

"Come to Gashfest, it's just round the corner from Kendal". I'm sure I heard this from at least three different sources before this weekend. With an enormous amount of luck we found the clearing in the forest that the directions vaguely hinted at and we rolled in at around 7:30am.

If it takes over four hours to traverse, that's actually a fucking big corner.

Revellers at Gashfest were still up and partying so we joined them for a bit and then a few of us went for a stroll to play pooh-sticks and admire the local fauna.

By mid-afternoon, sleep seemed like a really good idea. This year, sleep has definitely become one of my favourite hobbies and at risk of sounding arrogant, I'm actually getting really good at it.

Somebody suggested once that we don't actually play gigs, we just like to drive our van out into fields with hills and do man things together. (And some other people have even started calling us Bumsource.) That's why I should really remember to actually get photos of the actual festival for evidence.. this blog post won't go down well at all.

Even more mud. Stuey has lost his wellys and borrows Paul's. This I think was the beginning of a downward spiral. Cold, wet and millions of miles from home is fine but cast a welly-less man into a British festival and watch him suffer like no man should.

Night falls. Between a van full of equipment and a stage we have yet to grace, there is a barbed wire fence and 25 feet of deep, slushy mud - the kind where you're worried about losing a welly but also worried about a full body slip. (One day I am going to document and categorize all the different types of mud you are likely to encounter) Spirits have been crushed and we toy with the idea of just going home and cutting our losses instead of playing to the three totally munted people currently flailing in front of the stage. We're still one pair of wellys short too, but we'd have felt pretty bad about travelling 400 miles here to not play. So we play.

It's a shame we can't enjoy this unique party since we came so far for it, but Nelly's left his cymbals at Kendal Calling which we pick up en route, and then we're back home to rest for Monday's gig at the Vibe Bar in London.

Kendal Calling

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:19:00 +0000

1st August: Kendal Calling

The AA routeplanner says it takes 4 hours and 38 minutes to get from Guildford to Kendal. We round this up to 8 hours to make allowances for timekeeping disabilities and our van. (Which after a £900 repair bill is now almost-roadworthy but the rear doors don't lock). Halfway to Kendal, we find out that we're actually on 2 hours earlier than we'd previously been told. We miss our set and they kindly re-schedule us for 1am.

Conditions on-site are muddy and wet. We've already gone slightly insane from the long journey, well aware that we're heading up to the Scottish Borders the following day.

Backstage as Dizzee Rascal's doing his thing, Beardyman confesses that he also missed his set - although whilst we were pelting it up the M6 as best we could, he was chatting and drinking in the hospitality tent when he missed his.

As we go on, the tent is rammed. Everything else has shut down. Perfect. But it's hot, humid and sweaty but gaffa tape loses its stick under these conditions which isn't so good when you're relying on it to hold all your electronic equipment together. Not a flawless set. Laptops just aren't durable enough for our gigging purposes, I'm going hardware synths/samplers when I have enough money.

By the time we get our gear together, it's 3am. There's no way we're getting tents up in this mud, so we drive straight to Gashfest.

July 2008: Life and Glade

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:12:00 +0000

5th July: Life Festival

Our first ever international gig, and we've been racking our brains for weeks to figure out how we get our ridiculous amount of equipment on a plane. Stu's got a heavy-duty coffin for his bass and the rest of bundle as much as we can into suitcases at the mercy of the Ryanair luggage handlers. Our fears are confirmed as we spot our suitcases being thrashed onto trolleys from the windows of the plane.

Kimba waiting for a bus.

Ali (soundguy for this particular gig) and Paul at the bus stop waiting for a taxi.

At the train station waiting for a taxi.

After an endless amount of waiting, the 7-seater taxi pulls up. There's 6 of us PLUS all our equipment. Don't think they quite thought this through...

The light show and stage is amazing.. didn't get to see much of the rest of the festival though.

After another taxi journey, we look forward to the final flight home before realising that they're flying us back to Stansted instead of Gatwick. Yet more waiting as Nelly's girlfriend Kate comes to rescue us in the van.

Essentially, life is all about waiting. Sometimes you'll do important stuff in between all the waiting.

13th July: Shrewsbury Buttermarket (Workhouse Festival After-Party)

Unfortunately we didn't get to play the Workhouse Festival this year (they've already had us two years running) but they missed us so we went down to tie up their festivities for their after-party.

Good to catch up with The Anomalies again who we've bumped into a few times on our gigging travels.

Kimba seems to have done himself some damage to his leg.

18th July: Glade Festival

Well if there's any one single UK festival that we thought that we'd truly belong at, it would be Glade - home of electronic music. After 3 years of dreaming about performing here, Ross from Liquid Records saw good sense to give us an excellent 8pm slot on the Friday and it was an amazing experience to see the tent fill up continuously throughout the set. Thanks to all for the overwhelming support on this landmark gig.

We partied hard. Except Kimba whose leg doesn't seem to be getting any better.

19th July: Westival (West End Centre, Aldershot)

Our best intentions to leave Glade for the giddy heights of playing in Aldershot were almost trashed when our van decided to have a hissy fit. It looks like the starter motor's died again, and we noticed that a couple of tyres aren't in great condition. Dreadzone pitch up and we hound them for a jack. Dreadzone's MC Spee rolls out of the van on crutches, perhaps demonstrating to Kimba the dangers of years of being overactive on-stage.

Slightly fatigued from doing a show the previous night, but we still do ourselves justice to the West End Centre crowd. But I'm off as soon as I can to get back to enjoy the rest of Glade..

Kept bumping into these very enthusiastic fellas from Carmarthen at Glade, said I'd give them a shout-out on the blog.

June 2008: We got ourselves a plan

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 20:50:00 +0000

6th June: Thimbleberry Festival

Swampy in a swamp

Like many a good festival, Thimbleberry started life as a party run for family and friends before growing over 5 years to be a much anticipated event for the community and surrounding areas. Run by a very nice farmer called Andy (who has the biggest hands we ever shook), a little bit of rain doesn't dampen the vibe of this festy. Anyway it's up north, it's always raining.

With hands that big, it would be a proper mighty slapping.

7th June: Shrewsbury Buttermarket

Straight down to Shrewsbury to Rock Against Racism. This is the biggest and best food rider we've ever been given although we have to temporarily break our oath to not ever eat curry before a gig. There are no on-stage accidents, although we've clocked up a double-digit number of toilet visits between us beforehand.

Fight The Bear are a wicked bunch of guys and put on a good show, as do Aziz Ibrahim and The Heavy. Aziz downplays the relevance of the gig to anti-racism, "This has got nothing to do with racism has it?". He gets a blank from the crowd so attempts to backtrack a little, perhaps without realising the semi-apathetic crowd proves his point. Still, for me, it's a pleasure to play under the banner of this legacy and whilst an anti-nationalist stance may not be needed as much as it did back in the 70s, I suspect over the next few years it may become more relevant if Britain slips into the economic decline that is looming ever closer. There's nothing like a good recession to help stoke racist tensions.

Fact: When Stu's really wasted he makes this same motion of wiping imaginary sweat off his head.

13th June: Isle Of Wight

After getting off the ferry and being badgered by a whole regiment of police officers and their dogs (wtf!? do we really look that suspicious?) we arrive at the festival. Fond memories of watching old footage of Hendrix, Joni Mitchell et al playing here are blown apart as they show adverts for cars, make-up and the best fabric conditioner on the massive screens in between acts. I wasn't prepared for all this blatant commercialisation at all. To cope, I retire to the comfort zone of our Strongbow tent backstage where I take advantage of drinking all the free cider that I am physically able. (Just under a quarter of a pint)

Big-ups to Chibuku Will, Stumblefunk Matt on the lights and DC Rochford (No. 1447) of the Ryde Constabulary for making this such a wicked show for us.

26th June: Band Meeting - making a plan

We've been scheming with our management for a while about putting out our own release. In the current musical climate, a lot of record labels are having a rough time - it's a risk to put the work in to invest in a new band and potentially, it may not pay off.. it seems every other day we hear of an act that's had money ploughed into it, only to fail. Over the past few years of gigging and hoping to be picked up by some label with money, the coin has finally turned and this seems like the best time ever to go it alone, starting from a grass-roots level and growing from there.

The mission statement is to release a single (currently aiming for October time) with the intention of reaching 1000 sales in the opening week. We have a shoestring budget comapared to that of even an independent label, so we'll be relying solely on digital downloads to count. There's no hiding the fact that a tremendous amount of work will be awaiting us and our management team.

1000 single sales in a week should make the top 80
2500 might make top 40
13,000 usually makes top 10
30,000 is enough to reach number one

Of course, all dependent on time of year and what else is in the charts. Coldplay's, 'Viva La Vida' reached number one with 23,212 in its week of release which was the lowest sales figure for a number one position this year.

Obviously we're not even gunning for top 40, but hopefully this gives you a better idea of what we're trying to do.

May 2008: Festival Season Kicks Off With Mighty Squelch

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 22:41:00 +0000

9th May: Live show at The Croft, Bristol. Couple of new tracks in the set being fine-tuned.. Adam Form (http://www.myspace.com/thedjform) kindly put us up for the night and provided plenty of slapstick entertainment, (one second he's there on his chair fairly compos mentis and the next he's managed to fall flat on his back not looking like he knows where or who he is). We're up into the early hours. Sun comes up, probably good idea to catch a bit of sleep.

10th May: Everybody we spoke to yesterday in Bristol treated us like a close relative had died when we told them we would be playing in Swindon on the way back. Riff's Bar proudly announces that it's winner of the Pub Venue of the year for 2007. Pub gigs remind me of being 16 again and our singer being heckled by an old drunk man at Esquires in Bedford. We get fed (the equivalent of being treated like kings). A totally random assortment of people in the crowd. Up front there's a long-haired rocker moshing like there's no tomorrow. Next to him there's a couple in their 50s totally having it. The Swindon Review has turned up to interview us and hail our grand debut here. Love it.

In a lot of pain from yesterday's performance, getting too old for this.

18th May: The Agincourt, Camberley. Another haven for rockers. In Spinal Tap fashion, we accidentally managed to book ourselves for this gig sometime last month and didn't realise til we saw our names headlining some posters last week. Evident administrative errors and complications kick up a few arguments within the band. Nice stage, sound not so great and a handful of people soak up the sound in the this 600-capacity venue. Kimba gets the set down on video and we watch it a few days later to check out what we really look like on stage. Why did nobody tell me that thing I do with my leg looks crap?

24th May: The Boileroom, Guildford. Got to support the amazing Wobbly Squadron. ( http://www.myspace.com/wobblysquadron) What I love about their set most is the crowd literally stomping. It's kinda like psy-barndance (if that isn't a musical genre, it should be). Mental note to hunt them down at festivals and enjoy them properly. I think my neck still hurts from a couple of weeks ago.

25th May: Komedia, Brighton. This had all the hallmarks of being a great show.. organised by some of the top promoters in Brighton, great venue, amazing line-up. We turn up to find our slots been switched from primetime 2am to the 3am graveyard shift. The stage manager seems to have forgotten to add in changeover times. We roll on at about 3:30am.

A good test-run for breaking in Chris Kingskin (http://www.kingskin.com/), the new sound engineer. (Or more affectionately known as Swampy since he looks like he just got pushed out of a tree somewhere off the Newbury Bypass).

29th May: Sunrise Festival. (aka Mudrise/Mudfest/Shitrise) A million rumours fly around at the Solstice Services Little Chef. It's postponed til Friday / Only crew and artists are allowed in and even they're being towed in / The whole site is being rearranged, they're swapping the car park with the main site / It's completely cancelled / There's a secret entrance if you go down by the diesel tankers and tap L, R, L, R then push both shoulder buttons down at the same time.

Seemed there was a certain amount of dissent amongst the Sunrise organisers. Some were saying the flash floods were a blessing in disguise because the vibe just wasn't right this year.

30th May: Basingstoke Canalfest. Well we were all packed up and ready for a party so we headed to Mytchett instead. Three reasons why Basingstoke is better than Sunrise:

1. Car boot sale. (Now strongly believe this should be a major feature of all festivals now. Scrap Lost Vagueness, bring in the mother of all car boot sales to take it's place)
2. Rowboats paddling on water rather than your vehicle sinking in mud
3. Not getting woken up by shit trance

Above: some of the spoils from the car boot sale

April 2008: Stu's married!

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Tue, 06 May 2008 18:38:00 +0000

Stu finally tied the knot with Nat this month. All of Subsource were in attendance at the magnificent wedding which was one damn fine party into the early hours. His mortgage also passed through the same weekend and of course he's pretty much as bald as can be, but fear not Subsource fans, we'll be keeping a close eye on him to make sure he doesn't start reaching for pipe and slippers in favour of mighty bass action.

The Far Too Loud/Subsource collaboration, "You Know The Sound", has been released and is doing amazingly well. It reached the number one top all-genres slot at Juno, and top breaks slots over at Beatport and Chemical Records so huge congrats to them for pulling out such an awesome production.

Earlier this month, we had a great show up in Bolton where the crowd were really up for it. Earned us a column in The Fly this month too it did.

I like playing in Bolton, it makes me feel pretty

The Gash Collective definitely know how to run a party, so if you're up in that area, I definitely recommend heading to one of their nights. Unfortunately they've had their van nicked recently so head along and contribute generously. I feel like I'm talking out van empathy (our trusty old 'El Diablo Bastardo' racked up an £600 MOT bill at the beginning of April and another £300 cambelt repair bill this month but to actually get stolen entirely would be devastating).

We've been relatively quiet this month what with working around Stu's wedding, but we're back up and running with new tunes at no less than five scheduled dates throughout May, culminating in the first festival of the season. Hooray! (although given the amount of administrative errors that have occurred in the booking process so far, I'll actually be surprised if we end up playing at Sunrise at this very moment in time)

Our chums over at Parka have released their debut album on Jeepster today, best of luck to them, they deserve to do mightily well indeed.

"a must see live band." Q Magazine
"pure adrenaline inducing, effervescent, speeding enthusiasm" The Sun
"Ferociously infectious" Losing Today.
http://myspace.com/parkamusic

This month's dates are in Bristol, Swindon, Guildford and Brighton.. keep an eye on the site for details.

March News

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 22:12:00 +0000

Not too much to say about the Clockwork show. It was late, there was nobody there bar a few of our most-loved friends and fans. Tim Westwood didn't show up as advertised on the flyers (to the relief of many). Lethal Bizzle did their thang but I totally missed them.. was having a proper snooze in the van at the time. Apparently the promoter booked them for £4000 and at peak, there were only about 100 people in the venue. Ouch. Promoting is not a pretty job.

Rhythm Factory, a night run by No Rest For The Wicked and the Step 13 crew, pushing live drum n bass. Damn fine night. Got interviewed for the DnB Arena TV, but not particularly looking forward to it going up. Our interview skills are still leaving a little to be desired.

Above: Step 13 in action

Above: The 'No messin' pose

Above: Ace crowd at No Rest For The Wicked at Rhythm Factory. Their next night is Friday 11th April. Proper dark and dirty. Do it.

This month also saw Stu's stag in Amsterdam take place. Despite Nelly organising it, it actually went alright - although I suspect this was mostly down to chance. I'd love to be able to dollop out the gossip but there just doesn't seem to be anything I feel like talking about right now so ha.

Some of you may recall that at Christmas, I was editing a load of video footage taken on the road, mostly taken by Kimba. I'm pleased to announce it's now gone live on youtube. Head there and search for 'subsource road diary'.. there's about 12 vids there, and maybe of interest to you especially if you were at any of the following: Scala, Hoxton Bar and Grill, Welly Club (Hull), Q-Bar (Cardiff), Glasto, New Cross Inn or Joshua Brookes (Manchester). On average, we might leave for a gig at 4pm, to return maybe at around 8am the following morning. If you wonder what we get up to in those 16 hours, these videos might just tell you.

We've been very lucky indeed to be able to collaborate with breaks giants, Far Too Loud. Had a chance to mosh properly to them properly at The Synergy Project just before the Palestine trip and this trio (Dom, Oli and Oli) were seriously laying down some wicked beats. And they're probably the nicest guys you'll find in the breaks world. Their upcoming release, "You Know The Sound", features Stu on vocals and you can get a sneaky peek over on their Myspace. Release date is imminent.

http://www.myspace.com/fartooloud

We had a meeting yesterday and it looks like we might well have an album on our hands very soon. There are plans in motion to do our next single as a self-release, perhaps landing around late summer time. Exciting stuff. And looking at the budget we need, scary too.

James, our resident sound engineer who has worked with us since last summer has finally decided to do something that's actually worthwhile with his life now, and sadly will be leaving us, so we'd like to say a big thankyou to you for all your hard work and tolerance over the past 9 months. We'll cherish many happy memories and moments of seeing you kick lesser in-house sound engineers into shape and wish you all the best.. will miss ya!

Above: James steps up to cover Scatman John on pre-gig karaoke

The Journey Home

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 02:47:00 +0000

A quick visit to the Nativity Church, where I spend an hour trying to figure out how I got so much dust on the sensor of my camera and attempt a futile clean-up using the equipment I have on me. Then a small wander through the narrow market streets of Bethlehem. I figure it's a pretty small town and that's confirmed when I spot someone I recognise.

Susana is at a cake stall with a couple of foreigners, I assume they're part of some Palestine-supporting campaign. She's pleased to see me, but waves a 'wait a second' finger at me as she is engaged in an intense conversation with the shop owner which lasts for a couple of minutes. She's doing all the talking. Suddenly she's done and nods her head and we move on to meet her husband Farid. "I am very angry, these cakes cost one shekel each and they try to sell them to those foreigners for five shekels, it's not right. I had to tell them off. I was very angry". I smiled. Typical Susana, I thought. I barely know her, but I get the gist that she's always campaigning or scheming for a just cause at any given minute of any day. For that she has my deepest respect.

"Did you hear the news? It's terrible." At least 60 more have been killed in the Gaza Strip in more airstrike attacks. The Circus have not made it to Ramallah as planned due to heavy protests and a curfew emplacement. The Palestinian Authority have declared tommorow as a day for national mourning over the events that have taken place in the past 48 hours. It all just seems to be escalating. Back at the hostel, the residents are transfixed to the Al Jazeera news channel - overtones of the 2005 London bombings as a population is drawn to the slowly disseminating information from a constant channel broadcast. It would certainly an odd time to be a clown in Palestine right now.

The snoring man seems to have discovered new frequencies that penetrate my earplugs and just as I think I'm about to drop off into a nice slumber, my phone's ringing at full volume and I'm scrabbling around for it in the dark. Stuey is ringing me and I've no idea why. Then it dawns on me in a pretty sickening way that he's at Heathrow and the flight I was supposed to be on touched down a couple of hours ago. Fuck it. The Circus way of life has definitely got to me out here.

I promptly book a ticket for the next day, although the temptation to stay for another couple of weeks does cross my mind.

Susana warned us well in advance that the Israeli airport security doesn't take kindly to people with footage from inside Palestine. "They don't want the world to see our side of the story." With this in mind, Mauro and me have decided to do a little bit of camera swapping to deflect unwanted suspicion. It would be gutting to lose all the footage and photos we've collected. I've burned DVDs with every photo I've taken, and have two sets of encrypted files in hidden folders on my laptop hard drive. Mauro has only one copy of his tapes, and Ruth's ingenious plan of separating the big-ass professional video cam from the tapes is in action. We venture into the airport and split up so that the pieces of the puzzle would be harder for them to put together, but I guess anyone travelling alone in this region registers more interest. They pull everything out of my luggage and swab everything down for testing. As they do so, I think of Jen's slightly bent fire-staff of doom, and hope that I never got near enough to it for explosive chemicals to leave their mark on me. As they go through my entire inventory, I get an uneasy feeling of worry that I may well have left my pen-knife in the hand luggage I gave to Mauro to take through. Fuck it. Hanging out with the Circus has definitely had an effect.

On the other side of security, I spot Mauro with his dark sunglasses on, reclined right back into a chair with one leg jiggling up and down wildly. I fear he's either had one coca cola too many or he's been anal probed by an overzealous security guard. I approach to ask him the time. "GET AWAY! I think they're following me". I leave him be and conclude that I definitely left my knife in that bag. Oops.

12 hours later, one plane, two trains and a bus trip further, I meet up with him outside Bank tube station. He forgives me quite quickly about the whole knife thing. I can't remember whether he said it was the worst moment of his life or the most exciting one when he was bumrushed by six guards at the security checkpoint. The halfway point between being apologetically responsible and proudly responsible is to feel quietly content.

I joined the Circus just over two weeks ago wanting to know more about these crazy people who would pull this kind of stunt off. Somewhere along the way, I decided I felt the need to support the people of Palestine but aside from boycotting avocados (and other Israeli products), I figured there's not much I can really do. I'm certainly not as driven like Susana or any of the Circus girls, I'm just a musician riding on the perpetual crest of the almost-made-it-wave.

My 12:30pm student shows up slightly late and drops his guitar on the floor in a way that means I'll get to watch him spend 5 minutes tuning it up again. This one always makes polite conversation to make up for the fact that he hasn't practised.

"Hey, how was your holiday? Where was it again?"
"Great thanks. Palestine."
"What? With the rockets?"

Before I knew it, I was dishing out a proper rant (like one of Laura's, but mine definitely lacked her decibels), mixing up clown stories with tales of economic sanction and checkpoint nightmares with tear gas adventures. He really didn't look like he was expecting this, but for me, that was all the more reason to keep going. I finally paused to recompose and change today's topic of education to legends of rock: Whitesnake. He doesn't reach for his pick straight away. "That wall really sounds like it sucks."

My work here is done.

In hope they may one day update their website:
http://www.circus2iraq.org/

Final Day: Protest in Bilin

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 23:01:00 +0000

For a minute I panic that I've overslept because I've woken up and there's just me and the snoring guy in the room. I find the others later dotted around the hostel having sought somewhere quieter to sleep earlier in the night.

At the Israeli-Palestinian border at Bilin, the security fence placed by the Israelis is well inside the recognised border line and cuts off much of the farming land that belongs to the village's farmers. Israelis call it necessary for security, but the Palestinians call it a land grab.

On the way through, there's a pretty modest number of buildings and a couple of simple grocery shops (to my dismay, neither of them sold onions) but it seems that this tiny group of residences is a shining example to many Palestinians for managing to hold out against the Israelis for 3 years. In this small village of indomitable Palestinians, I half expect to find a cauldron of magic potion bubbling away and being dished out to the locals, but I'm told that for the 3 years they have held out against annexation by way of peaceful protest. Each Friday afternoon, local villagers and foreign activists gather to attend the weekly protest as a reminder to the Israeli authorities that they will not give up their land easily.

In the morning, the Circus provides the locals with some welcome light relief. On this gorgeous day, kids sit on walls and families watch from nearby rooftops as the clowns once more wreak comic havoc in an environment that feels subdued by constant pestering of an army on the doorstep.

After the show, we wait at the protest organiser's house. Not a home anymore, the downstairs has been made a base of organising resistance operations. It is kept bare for meetings - cheap plastic seats line the walls under activist posters and photos.

As the protest and media gathers outside - there's a kind of lazy Friday afternoon vibe as an SUV pumps out some dance music across the road and an old guy on saxophone meanders out some tunes. Kids set up markets and sell wristbands and handbags with the Palestinian flag on it. All we need is a copious amount of booze and drugs (both of which also help counter tear gas allegedly) and I could easily mistake this for any UK summer festival.

The Arab-owned MBC (Middle-East Broadcasting Corporation), one of the most globally-recognised news channels for the Arabic-speaking world is here for the Circus, to hear what their story is. There is confusion about the exact situation - it appears the broadcaster was expecting them to perform by the security barrier at the head of the protest but over some discussion, it's realised that this is a dangerous and somewhat irresponsible stunt. To draw children into the heated action is reckless and no doubt the news broadcaster would just love to have a clown shot by a rubber bullet on his coverage. Last week's protest saw an American activist shot in the head and the Arab media frenzy on that still rings on around Bilin. The Circus takes the sensible option and agrees to do some performances at the back of the protest, well away from any Israeli soldiers. The reporter looks a little disappointed and I feel an urge to injure him.

Above: Protesters carried this small coffin and a bundle to mourn the 6-month old baby killed in Gaza yesterday. Later, we find the guy who carried it got shot in the back with a rubber-coated steel bullet.

So we hang well back from the confrontational part of the protest and we hear regular 'thunks' of tear gas canisters being fired. (Perhaps perversely, I find this to be a really good sound) Jen and Ruth captivate some on-looking boys with firesticks and poi. Laura has taken a few younger girls under her wing and appears to be having entertaining conversation with them. Jo and Annie talk to an old embittered man who comes to tell us the story of the pile of rubble on the roadside that was a brand new health clinic - bulldozed by the Israelis due to it violating their building laws despite it being on Palestinian land.

Before he finishes his story, a couple of hissing projectiles have landed only about 20m away. Circus, kids and camera crews pack up and run.

With some distance between us and the gas, Annie is administering onion to the crying clowns. My lungs are burning but that's probably from having held my breath for the best part of a minute under a steady jog. For the kids with streaming eyes, I guess it's just another weekly dose of chemical weapons.

We don't stick around for long, there's another show to get to in Jerusalem. We hold up a checkpoint queue for about 20 minutes as all the Circus items get x-rayed. On the outside, I'm tutting and tapping my foot impatiently in solidarity with the queue of Arabs behind me. On the inside I'm pissing myself laughing as the guard has demanded to see the knife in Jo's bag. She's grinning as she waves the breadknife at him. "Uh, really don't think I could do much damage with this!" and she pokes it playfully in the guard's general direction. Meanwhile, just behind her, Ruth's stilts and Laura's inflatable globe (ingeniously constructed from a giant blue-space hopper and cut-out map sections) seem to have jammed the x-ray machine. In my head, Benny Hill music rolls on. I consider joining in the antics by moonwalking up to the bulletproof security window with my arse hanging out, but think better of it.

This is my final show with the Circus, so today I pay less attention to the camera viewfinder as my role of capturing moments with the Circus comes to an end. Instead I take more time to appreciate the show, the clowns' fine talents (I realise that they're actually pretty good) and the scenery. In the Palestinian district of Silwan, East Jerusalem, the stunning wall of the Old City sits on the skyline, but the troubles run below the streets. Israeli-led archaeological tunnel digs beneath Silwan are causing structural damage to buildings here, and there is a heavy suspicion that this is another tactic for Jewish settlers to lay claim to non-Israeli land and intimidate Palestinians further in the process.

My final day with the Circus has been a long, tiring one and the snoring twat at the Hostel really hasn't helped. Rather than celebrate, it's a fairly early night. I say my goodbyes to the Circus as tomorrow I will spend my last day here visiting Bethlehem. They will leave early for a show and head on to Ramallah. It's been a fascinating journey, getting to know the Boomchucka clowns and the people of Palestine and I'm sad to be leaving both.

Day 12: Airstrikes in Gaza

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:44:00 +0000

The Circus has a rare day off. It's quite incredible really, to be able to come to a country with an act like this who have nothing booked - but then with the help of contacts such as Susana and putting the word around to as many people as possible, to pretty much fill in a diary so that there's a show or two every single day. I guess it helps that what they do here is pretty novel and they offer their services for free. It's a liberating experience not knowing what's going to happen from one day to the next but still being an intense journey. It's been a real rollercoaster ride but I'm feeling an onset of melancholia as my time here will shortly becoming to an end. On the plus side, I'm pretty happy today as it looks like Subsource are set to play Glade this year.

I spend the day wandering through the Old City, looking at trinkets that I'm not really interested in. I express an extremely vague interest to a gangly guy who's selling musical instruments. They all look nice but they sound pretty shit. Tourist fodder. He tries the hard sell. "You first customer of the day so you get good price." Word-for-word, the Lonely Planet guide said that's what they'd say. Then, "Me like China very much, you not from USA so give you good price". Within about 3 footsteps he's gone from 1000 shekels (£125) down to 50 shekels (£6.25), but an Early Learning Centre toy still makes a better sound than that piece of crap.

Unknowingly, I stumble across a doorway to the Muslim's holiest place here - the Dome of the Rock. The giant gold turnip roof is mindblowing and as I approach the gateway, I fully expect the overly-serious, frowning, lumbering guy to tell me that non-Muslims can't come in. He does this, but not before a grin breaks across his face and he's half-hopping, half-dancing and singing, "Jackie Chan! Jackie Chan!", whilst pointing one finger in the air in a side-to-side motion. His machine gun flails around wildly in the other hand.

I venture into the main, modern city of West (Israeli) Jerusalem. It's your typical Westernised city. They are lacking in hair products for men. They do have the complete range of L'Oreal products at the Superdrug-equivalent but then it's just industrial-sized tubs of fluorescent coloured hair gel.

In the evening, there is news that in response to Hamas Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza onto nearby Israeli towns, there have been Israeli airstrikes onto Gaza, in which at least 12 have died, including four children. Gaza is many miles from where we are in the West Bank - we're not worried about our own safety, but there is concern for the general situation. Sending in jets like this and accepting this many civilian casualties sounds like a pretty damn heavy-handed method. This isn't a tactic of a government taking out some rebel militants, but a tactic to cause intimidation of a populace.

Tomorrow, we will be heading to Bi'lin village for a show and then head on to the protest which happens each Friday. Internet research shows to expect tear gas and rubber bullets. The veteran protesters amongst the clowns recommend sniffing an onion to combat the effects of tear gas. And just hope you don't take a rubber bullet in the eye or that's it. Cunningly, I've got some swimming goggles to prevent chemicals from getting into my contact lenses and to fend off rubber bullets but Ruth astutely points out that a bullet would probably go straight through flimsy plastic.

There is one non-Circus guy in the hostel room who is driving everyone absolutely insane with his continuous heavy snoring and lack of sleep is definitely having a negative mental effect on everyone. Earplugs may feel weird to sleep with at first but I rank them as the most important item I've brought with me.

Day 11: The Youth Club

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 18:19:00 +0000

The morning starts with one of the rowdiest shows so far. At times, I worry that there's going to be a stage invasion - the kids are getting so caught up in it. The audience sprawls laterally as everyone clambers for a better position to see the show and so the girls quickly adapt to an encompassing 360-degree audience. The difference between how disciplined schools are is obvious.

Above: They are pretty spent after each show

There are the UNRWA schools, funded by the UN which are excellently equipped but places are in high demand. There are private schools where the parents pay up front each term (but due to the poor economy, lessons often continue where parents have been out of work and cannot pay) and also there are the government schools. Here, it's not uncommon for teachers to go for months without being paid due to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority Government. (Just one of many by-products of the Israeli-imposed fincancial sanctions)

In the afternoon, it's another show, this time at an after-school youth club. Kids of all ages in the community have rallied together on a beautiful afternoon. To my irritation, I seem to be getting a lot of attention. Up until now I thought I'd been doing a pretty good job of not distracting from the Circus activities, but here the kids are surrounding me, touching my hair and posing more than usual for their photos to be taken. I soon discover why: Mohammed, one of the youth leaders has told them I'm Jackie Chan's cousin.

It's customary and respectful to spend plenty of time talking and socialising with your hosts, so after the show, we're there for a couple of hours getting to know more about the youth club and the organisers. (Compares directly to a Subsource gig, where it's customary to get completely shitfaced with the organisers after a show.) The main guy is a teacher and describes how he has to cross a checkpoint between his home and the school where he works. Sometimes, he's held there for hours. As he continues about how he has to smuggle schoolbooks in to avoid confiscation, my eyes drift upwards and around the room. From the massive hoard of football trophies on the wall, this appears to be a very active, organised youth club (I'm sure when I was a kid, we turned up, then just snuck round the back alley to neck Diamond White til our parents came) In centre-place, there is a modest printed A4 mono poster of a serious-looking boy who presumably went to this thriving group at some point. It's unmistakably a martyr poster. Like the scores of faded, weather-beaten posters I've seen in the towns, I don't understand the arabic that goes under the face, but it's shown as proudly as the rest of them. This one does not look like a gun-toting guerilla or a stern man in a suit. In the context of all the other laughing and jovial kids today, this is a much more real 14-year old boy in a formal jumper who probably did better in science than in P.E., had a crush on the girl over the road and I've no doubt he would have been belly-laughing like the rest of them at the Circus clowns. Instead, I'm looking up at his face with a plethora of tangled emotions with my imagination running wild about who he was and what rite of action he took in order to earn his posthumous place amongst the glittering sporting achievements.

I get to know Mohammed better - he has a wicked sense of humour. The Circus alreadys knows that comedy is a universal language. I'm 5'3 and he towers above me at 6'6 and we have laugh about the difference and the problems. Since I've been here I've been very attentive to the music around me, not entirely convinced that music is as universal a language as comedy is, with foreign scales and instruments with heavy overtones causing a language barrier in itself. Mohammed at least is very into Santana and is one of the few Palestinians that would very much like to learn guitar. (I get the impression that Western music is not quite trusted which to me is no bad thing since it means that MTV will not penetrate it's way here any time soon) I offer to teach him a lesson or two if the chance ever arises and he says he will save up to buy an instrument. He pats me on the back and I ask him if I'll see him again when the Circus performs at a local school later in the week and he says he can't. Because of the checkpoint.

On the way out, I'm cornered by some kids keen to practise their English skills. "What is your name?", and "How old are you?". Then they try something a few times in Arabic before they run off to fetch a translator, who says helpfully, "They want to know what hair product you use".

In the evening, Jo and I slink off to pig out on a huge plate of overpriced Chinese junk food. The food here is damn tasty, healthy and very affordable, but it's been a long day and it seems like a reward to chow down on something familiar, dirty and overpriced. Veal fried rice for me - it's like beef but naughtier.

Above: Who wants VO5 matt clay?

Day 10: Day of Rest

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:51:00 +0000

With bleary eyes, I'm woken up by Jen and Ruth getting ready to leave. The taxi turned up ten minutes ago and all-in-all, it sounded like a pretty good excuse to have a day off and I catch up with a bit of blogging and photo editing.

A nicely chilled day - the Hostel is definitely feeling like a home from home, largely thanks to a speedy Internet connection (and therefore also fresh Family Guy episodes). I guess there has been a subtle change of social graces at hostels across the world, where travellers are now often found huddled around laptops in the communal areas. In the evening, between his circus practice, (Mauro the video-cameraman is now the best juggler out of them all), he starts his informal documentary. Seedily, he keeps referring to this as his 'private tape', which mostly consists of Jo, the natural clown, arsing around hilariously for the camera.

The latest in Circus fashion: Frogsocks

As wine is being drunk by the bottle, from the bottle - the girls flip between topics that has them in fits of laughter and giggles (often beyond my comprehension) and also discuss improving the show, "These kids might see the Circus once in a lifetime, so it'd be nice if it wasn't shit". With the political backdrop, it's easy to forget that they're performers at heart and it's impressive to see they can take their act as seriously as their more serious dialogue.

Meanwhile, I have been banned from the Faisal for cavorting with the guests there despite the fact I'm staying at the rival Palm Hostel next door, and discover a steady influx of familiar faces that have moved too. Discussing how shit the Faisal is compared to the Palm Hostel is an easy starter conversation. Later in the evening, I find that coincidentally, Klaus has also made the move. Nothing like a friendly-neighbourhood stalker.

Day 9: Palm Hostel

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:58:00 +0000

Walid the taxi driver I think quite fancies himself as part of the circus now and this morning, he's showing off his skills by raising me up above his head in a variety of manoeuvres and poses.

Another show at a school in the Abu Dis area of Palestine.

The tarot cards from the previous day seem to have had a negative vibe on some of us. Laura tells us of her dream - in it, she was an undercover agent working for the Palestinians against the Israelis, but then she's discovered. They try to gouge her eyes out and she tries to tell them that she's really a Westerner but they don't believe her and also threaten to chop her hands off if she resists. We tell her that's pretty full-on, and she astutely realises that translates to, 'that's fucked up'.

Laura is an incredible character - vociferous, determined and courageous. As an American Jew in Palestine, that could well be the most disliked mixture of origins that anyone could be here, but it's exactly for that reason that she's here - to achieve what she can and do her part to undo some of the damage that the American government has done here. Total respect to her, and I'm so glad that the majority of Palestinian people share this sentiment.

Today, she seems to have mislaid 90 shekels.

The show is in cramped conditions compared to what they're used to but again, the kids love it. I'm starting to feel a bit sick of the sight of children.

Ruth has managed to make an administrative error in booking shows because she was looking at the 2009 section of the diary. I'm starting to wonder how anything has ever worked out okay, but I think she's one of those who somehow always manages to land on her feet.

We decide (or rather, it wasn't decided, but just seemed to happen without discussion) to split up and have some of us stay with Susana and some of us stay at a hostel in Jerusalem to help ease the burden of hostessing for seven people when you've got a husband and four kids to look after. We try out the Palm Hostel - next door to the Faisal Hostel. This is a much, much, classier affair for not much more money, but hot water seems a little sporadic and I'm still braving cold showers. My sperm count must be rocketing.

In the evening, I pop next door to the Faisal in search of beers at request of the girls and to my great pleasure, Martin is there - our Palestinian affairs guru from day 6. He looks like he and his girlfriend have been hitting the shisha pipes for a while before I'd got there and he helps fill out some questions that I'd had about the situation. I tell him that when he talks about the 'First Intifada', I have no idea what he's talking about, and he leaps from his seat so fast that his glasses very nearly come clean off his nose. He's pretty much crapped himself as he's so excited to be able to talk about all of this to someone who wants to learn. He rushes me to the map of West Bank on the wall (the one that I came close to stealing a few days ago) and explains the two intifadas are periods where the Palestinian people have had a mass uprising and rebelled against the occupation - often marked by the use of suicide bombers against Israeli targets. In my head, things begin to shift - we hear of the awful terrorist attacks on the news, but these are the desperate actions of a people who are suffering and choking at the hands of others, and for the most part, there is very little they can do.

As Martin talks passionately and fervently about the dismal state of affairs late into a somewhat hazy night, he is despondent. For all he knows and for all his energy behind the Palestinian cause, he confesses that there's very little he can do. "When you really get to know the Palestinians and find out what it is they want, you find it's usually two things - firstly, money. Secondly, a passport to get out of the country." He draws a long puff from the slow-burning Shisha and he exhales with a deep respect, "But the Circus, actually manages to bring a tangible commodity they also need - they really do need to laugh and smile. What they do is amazing." I can feel my heart swell, knowing that I'm proud to be associated with these clowns and on the way out, back to the Palm Hostel, I pick up a few beers for the alcohol-deprived girls. They're fast asleep by the time I get back (clowning around looks like pretty hard work) so I rest the cans on their pillows so that they'll each wake up cuddled up to a can of beer. My fuzzy shisha'd head tells me they deserve more. Especially since, odds-on are that they'll probably have caned those bevvies by midday tomorrow.

Day 8: UNWRA School / Ramallah

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 16:36:00 +0000

Cool! Like from the Thundercats!? Except I didn't say that out loud because I could have pretty much guessed that nobody would have known what I was talking about. Walid pitched up to pick us up and at least I knew I could hit him with the punchline without him giving me weird looks. I'd been practicing aluminium-pipe and tooted a couple of notes at him. He patted me on the back.

This is the Circus's biggest show yet, it's at a well-equipped, big school, with around 1000 students. It's been built and funded by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which suggested that somebody, somewhere is doing something right. The kids are excited to have guests, they're running up and down the corridors, posing for photos and mobbing the clowns. Today they're performing for around 300-400 of the smaller kids, but that doesn't stop some of the older ones trying to get a peek. Susana introduces the show and whips up the crowd, as they chant, "Boomchucka, Boomchucka!", and it begins.

Going back through the photos, every single kid is smiling or laughing - this is a performers' dream show and they skilfully take advantage of the wide open playground stage, whilst me and Mister Marrow are panting by the end from running around getting angles. Rather than her usual half-hidden, embarrassed smile, Ruth is beaming openly and it's a beautiful sight. She doesn't give much away with words, you always have to read her expression.

Jen is nowhere to be seen at the show finale, but surfaces later for the interactive part of the show. At first glance, she comes across as shy and withdrawn, but one of the very best things about this trip so far has been getting to realise the integrity and the character of this girl - never afraid to approach awkward subjects whilst being ultimately modest about her knowledge and awareness. And quite the perfectionist too - she later tells us that she missed the finale of this show because she was beating herself up about mishandling the fire staff during part of her act. She would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for the fact that when you fumble a fire staff, it's a pretty damn good idea to make sure that no part of you is alight.

Above: Jen's totally in her prime when she's with the kids.

Above: Every I look up to get a shot of the window, there's a sudden flurry of hiding and curtain activity.

Above: Trying to encourage the sport of extreme stupid-face-pulling. These guys have a little way to go.

After the show, we venture to Ramallah, one of the main Palestinian cities where we check into a cheap hotel. Partially to ease the burden that we're worried we're placing on Susana and also to hunt down some beer. It's a much more claustrophobic affair than Jerusalem, with tight, busy streets and plenty of stalls and markets. Annie, Jo and Ruth go hunting for trinkets and comedically distasteful spangly earrings, whilst I browse the hair products.

Across most of Palestine, I've been tending to attract more attention from the local populace than the girls - people shouting, "China!" or "Ni-how!" from across the road but in Ramallah, there's a constant echo of these words as I walk around. I really get the impression that they don't have many orientals out in these parts, and I learned quickly that when they ask where I'm from, there's just no point in saying, "England" because they just look at you confused until you say, "China".

In the shopping bustle we lose Laura and meet up with her again in, "Stars & Bucks" - it seems like the premier coffee shop in Ramallah and the green, white and black sign which sits proud on top of a main road intersection is very, very similar to another well-known coffee shop. Intellectual property rights are not a high priority to safeguard here.

I whip out my laptop to catch up on some blogging. The Stars & Bucks network is protected but I can get a weak signal on an unprotected network, 'Al-Quds Bank'.

Laura pulls out a few packs of cards later and offers tarot-style readings, which I take her up on. After a readings which all tell me that I'd be happier if I changed my job, I ask the cards a 'yes/no' question: "Will me and Mister Marrow have sexytime with each other before the end of this journey?", and the cards respond with the most definitive yes that Laura has ever seen. Hubba.

More readings later, Laura has tutted and, "Oh My Gosh"'d about a hundred times - things do not sound positive for her.

In the evening, we're off to one of the few pubs in the town, where we find 90 shekels (just over ten quid) on the floor. Having had experience with this kind of thing, Jo recognises it as having been given to us by the beer fairy and the clowns drink into the night. There's some tension as the property rights of Mauro's video are discussed and it is revealed that the Circus will not be able to do as much with the footage as they previously thought. It feels awkward, but we've spent a week together in fairly close quarters and it was only a matter of time before there'd be some sort of disagreement.

Ruth has e-mailed out a schedule to all of us. Euphemistically, Friday is labelled as, "Day Off", where we'll be going to an anti-wall protest in Belin. Conversation then descended into remedies against tear gas and how lethal rubber bullets can be.

Fuelled by a little bit of alcohol, it has become a bit of a dark evening, and as I bed down, I wonder if there's really any truth to the Tarot. Hubba.

Day 7: International Student Confernece

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 12:43:00 +0000

Above: Laura and Mauro, just a-chillin.. just like hanging out in the Middle East ya know..

Above: Morning Practice

We get a well-appreciated lie-in and the morning is spent chilling out and some light circus practice. Wahid has given us his mobile number and it looks like he's going to be our designated regular taxi driver for our stay. He's a wicked dude and I suspect we might have had some great conversations. He doesn't speak a word of English and I don't speak a word of Arabic, but that doesn't stop us from having a good chit-chat, even if we're not talking about the same thing.

I realise by now that Susana is THE local person to know with regards to all-things to do with activism and action in the area - she has been organising a conference between international university students in the area and Palestinian students in a chance for them to forge links, make connections and brainstorm ideas for Pro-Palestinian opportunities and the like. And I'm her geek-bitch for the day - after showing her how top operate a laptop yesterday (she's quite a whizz with computers considering, but this particular one had a lock switch on it that she didn't spot so it wouldn't turn on), she's got me making sure the projector unit is working okay.

The conference is dull. So dull. Various students take turns to say a little bit about their lives - an Austrian girl opens with what she describes as being a little inspirational introduction to the proceedings but by the end of it, the only thing I'm inspired to do is to temporarily and suddenly convert to Islam because I feel the urge to leave the building and scream in an Easterly direction. (Or actually, any direction would do). For about an hour or two, they continue to take turns to describe their life stories - one who manages to bring in his views on alcohol and drugs being the scourge of the world and another who has a speech about how he was fiddled with by a priest when he was a kid but look at where he is now. (We all award him with a rather polite golf clap, which seemed to be the only appropriate response at the time)

Jo is blatantly getting restless and starts looking at the rest of us with her sarcastic face on. The rest of us do our best to suppress fits of giggles and laughter.

Jo is a good friend of Annie's from back in the UK - she's the boisterous, good-humoured and not afraid to speak her mind. She loves her food, she loves her beer, and will wise-crack til the cows come home. Totally not your typical foreigner-in-Palestine, she's totally along for the party which is a welcome relief sometimes when there's so much serious political chat. She hasn't even had much Circus training in comparison to the others, but she's spent many years under the influence of Special Brew falling over ungracefully and she's never afraid to make a fool of herself. She's the perfect clown - and the strong relationship between her and Annie shows up beautifully when they both take to the stage as a hilarious comic duo.

Getting out of the conference room and talking to Jo is a massive relief. She laughs as I make a long, loud mock-snoring voice and then I suddenly realise that everyone who just made an 'inspirational' speech is standing right behind me.

The students finally get a short amount of time to get to the crux of this whole convention - to chat and network with each other, before it's announced that they have to head off because they're hungry. There's a quick fire show from Jen and Ruth for them first. I'm not sure whether they thought they were performers brought in for their own pleasure (like frat-party entertainment or a free vodka shot on entry for showing student ID) so I volunteer to stand up and describe to the students what the Circus does, before fumbling the responsbility on to Ruth who I suddenly realise is even a worse public speaker than me. I think they got the gist of the CIrcus, but I didn't get round to what I really wanted to tell them.

You guys can sit around all day discussing how you've come from nothing to where you are today, and feel good that ooh you've actually spoken to a real-life Palestinian in the flesh - you can go back to your respective countries and tell your friends that you're backing the underdogs in this everlasting ongoing conflict and have late-night discussions about your role and feel superior to your peers who don't - but at the end of the day, this understated five-clown circus act is here because they are your example. They're an example of how to achieve tangible results in an area where there are so many viewpoints that you could easily get bogged down in way too much bullshit trying to understand suffering, rather than ever do anything about it.

The students certainly look entertained and a few kids teeter on the edge of a rooftop to check out the scene.

We head up to a section of the Israeli-Palestine wall nearby where Mauro (or rather, 'Mister Marrow' as he has become affectionately known) wants to get some scenes for his documentary. The wall is made up of 8m high concrete slabs, apparently twice as high as the Berlin wall. Jen aks if the construction is the same as the Berlin wall. "No, I think that's in Germany", I quip unfunnily, but then break into uncontrollable hysterics. It dawns on me that I may be going a little bit crazy.

We head back to Susana's for more wonderful Palestinian hospitality. In a controlled, deliberate, furious rant, Susana describes her disappointment about today's conference. She says how rude it was of them to leave quite suddenly just as things were happening. She is definitely a person you would not want to upset, but her weariness of looking after us begins to show as we manage to get away with washing the dishes.

After a short fart-on-each-others-heads competition with Jo (I won), I leave her to entertain Susana's children with her lack of juggling and plate-spinning skills. She's great with the kids, and there's hoots and laughter coming from the next room into the night. I'm back blogging until Omar comes through to talk to me, he can't sleep. He shows me some of his music collection which is dominated by Arab Sheikh music. He also likes Avril Lavigne which he found on the Internet and he's singing along for me until well-past 3am.

Above: Omar

Day 6: Through The Jordan Valley

noreply@blogger.com (borg) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 22:52:00 +0000

We're up early for another show. It's another beautiful day out in the sunshine and we head up north-east into the Jordan Valley, first meeting up with our British contact, Martin, who knows the families that the Circus is due to perform to today.

We first have to take a taxi to Jericho to the east. Our taxi driver, Walid, waits for us patiently to get the Circus equipment together. In the meantime he's happy to show off his skills on a musical instrument that resembles a recorder. As he hands it to me for me to have a go, I inspect it a little closer to find that it's an aluminium pipe with six holes cut into it. I can't even get a note out of it.

Above: Monastery carved into a mountain on the way to Jericho.
Below: Martin

From Jericho, we take a second taxi heading North. Martin explains that we're headed into territory that although it is in Palestine, has been designated as being under Israeli Military control. We've got one more person in the taxi than is lawfully allowed, and as we approach a checkpoint (not even on the Palestinian border), Jen, the tiniest member and also the contortionist of our group is stuffed under a load of blankets on the back seats. Here, even the smallest excuse to make life hard for anyone crossing this checkpoint is used - Rafeed's description of the Israelis just wanting to cause irritation is becoming evident. As the taxi driver shows his documents, we wait about 20 minutes, and we later find out that the taxi driver has been fined without reason. We're told it's common for corrupt guards to issue fines to boost their own income. There's no wall here, but there's a guardpost about 16 foot high, manned by a kid on a mounted machine gun turret. For obvious reasons, I haven't managed to get a photo of this yet.

Above: Jen peers out of the back window of the van along this dirt track of a road.

We drive on for another hour or so through barren lands. Every now and then, the taxi driver makes sure we've got our seatbelts on as we drive past an Israeli military placement. Having lived in the area for a few months, Martin is well-informed about the situation of the area and says how usually everyone takes their seatbelts off after passing these illegally placed military placements. A small act of defiance but one nevertheless. I'd take my seatbelt off but I'm rolling around at the very back of the cargo compartment of the taxi van anyway, and am feeling very much at home thanks to many a Subsource journey.

Above: At 30 metres below sea level, the Jordan Valley is the lowest land on Earth. It is a flat and extremely fertile plain compared to the rest of the dry, sandy land that we have passed so far. I'm told that Israelis have forcefully occupied this territory within Palestine with support from their military and much of the Israeli food exports that make it out of the country are actually from right here in Palestine. I get an eerie feeling from this place.

Martin, who has reached guru status in my eyes by this point (definitely helped out by the kick-ass beard), then tells me of the atrocities committed in the tiny villages that the Circus is about to perform at. In these tiny communities of Palestinian families within the Israeli military-controlled zones, they are having their homes bulldozed after an hour's notice. The lucky ones get a few days. Unlike the major towns and cities, these tiny encampments are powerless to resist any military takeover and the result is a gradual annexation of the land by the Israelis.

It's only when we get there and I see it with my own eyes that the reality kicks in. The sight of a few shacks built out of re-used food sacks and some sheets of corrugated metal feels like a kick somewhere just under and behind my stomach.

Above: Panoramic of the family camp. It really is in the middle of nowhere.

This is Al Hadidya, where the Palestinian families live in separate tribes, and the hope was for these different families to come together and bring the children to see the Circus. Unfortunately, there are feuds between the tribes and we're told that they refuse to all get together. It's a sad state of affairs, knowing that even with the military oppression, they fail to unite - it's as if the constant intimidation has brewed frustration between the camps with it. I ask our host what the intertribal fighting is all about and I'm told that nobody can really remember any more. For the Circus, it's all a bit of a blow as they do a short version of their act to just one of the families here: four children and a few dogs.

The taxi driver stops for a break by a few more shacks. We realise that this is where he lives and he invites us in for one hell of a meal. And a photo of the whole gang.

Afterwards, it's off to a second show at Ein Al Beida, where the children are called from working on the plantation to attend the show. The girls pull off another fantastic show. The kids love it of course, and it's incredible to see women are in hysterics, the men joining in and the teenage guys catching it on their mobile phones.

On the way back, there's another close call with the traffic - a van coming in the other direction has come a little too close to our taxi and we've lost a wing mirror. Nobody stops. At one point earlier in the trip, I was reading about renting a car and I'm sure I read somewhere that recommended that if you hit a pedestrian, you should just drive off.

We meet Walid again at Jericho for our final leg home. He hands me back my lens cap which I realised I'd misplaced earlier in the day. Then he hands Ruth back the single most important possession you might want to hang on to whilst travelling - her passport that she left there earlier. Nobody is surprised. I thank Wahid for the earlier music lesson and he gives me the aluminium pipe instrument to get some practise in.

We're really settling in at Susana's now. The flow of late night conversation is tending to divide between Jen, Laura, Mauro and Susana talking about the troubled situation of Palestinian affairs whilst the rest of us talk about the troubled situation of all my photos showing up too many double chins. There are a lot of double chins but hey, Photoshop can only do so much.

Martin's Blog:
http://brightonpalestine.org/