Sinister: Stories and Ink Polaroids from Haldern and other places

[Dimitra Daisy]

...This is one of me and Rachel and Belle sitting on a bench by the river in 
Nairn talking to the one-and-a-half-legged seagull. Belle has just jumped on 
Rachel and Rachel has just got jam on her trousers. They sky is cloudy and 
bright and the light is coming from everywhere around. It feels so unreal 
and magical. I am holding a stolen rose that’s pretending to be a daisy and 
if you listen close enough, you can hear me say:

…I am a lurker, I’m not a lurker, I am a lurker, I’m not…

Hello, I’m Dimitra and I like Belle and Sebastian.

Actually, I like them so much, that I thought it would be a good idea to 
stop in Germany on my way from Scotland to Greece to see them once more –and 
to meet yet some more sinisterines. Travelling is a strange thing, though, 
it sort of happens without you; once you decide it, it just takes care of 
itself. And I’ve been to and left so many places and different situations 
and ways of living in the past month, that on my the train from Amsterdam to 
Germany, I was feeling like an alien – what the hell am I doing here? But 
then again, I couldn’t think of anywhere else I could be.

So I stayed on the train and listened to Richard’s perfect mixtape, and 
waited for the time when it would all start feeling okay. At first Haldern 
was hot, later on, it was wet; everyone was speaking different languages and 
I hadn’t really known them before. But they were lovely, really: they put up 
my tent for me (cause I had never seen it before and couldn’t figure out 
what to do), they gave me food and drink and money and everything else I had 
managed not to bring with me; and it has something to do with falling asleep 
and waking up again and people being there, but by Saturday morning Haldern 
was the right place to be despite the rain.

...This one was taken on Friday afternoon – that’s me looking silly in the 
middle of the road and the girl walking up to me is Nal. I know she’s Nal, 
but for some reason all I can think of is she’s not Ola (for who I am 
waiting for) so when she asks me if I know who she is, I say no. You can see 
the stupid look on my face, the fields around of which the camping site 
consisted, and generally Germany being sunny! You can’t see Ola walking up 
to us cause she’s on the opposite side...

...That’s from a few hours later, there weren’t any lights in the fields so 
it was very dark with the darkness of the countryside. The boy that’s 
sitting half in and half out of the tent is Mark Bots; he’s smoking and 
talking in a drunk quiet voice about how flat Holland is; I am kneeling on 
the grass and getting wet (the weather had changed); you can make out the 
outlines of tents –that are not in rows-, cars, and at the back, some trees; 
and above them, there are three or so fireworks. They’re green and orange. 
To my tired and dazzled mind it all feels like a dream...

...And this is from the next morning, that’s Mark and Marsha sitting under 
the tree in the rain having breakfast. It’s fairly dry under the tree but 
all around the rain falls harder and harder; you can see it fall on –yet 
another- green field behind them...

I joined them, and we sat there until the tree started dripping too much for 
our liking.

Then the rain stopped, and later on Belle and Sebastian came on stage, and 
the ‘what else am I going to do for this band, why am I doing this anyway’ 
soon turned into ‘what am I going to do when they stop touring? What am I 
going to do without them?!’ . This was the sixth time I’ve seen them play 
(in a little longer than a year) and it was the one that made me remember 
all the reasons why I ever fell in love with them in the first place, and 
fall in love with them again.

I’m not sure how this time was different from the others, I have to admit 
that the setlist was perfect and that they do, really, seem to be having 
more fun on stage without Isobel – but there was something about it, and 
when Stuart sang ‘you can concentrate on the ones you love’ it brought back 
memories of the time I first heard that and how I was so thrilled, and 
touched, and surprised, that there was someone else out there that 
concentrates on the ones they love before they fall asleep. And they made a 
song about it! And I liked it so much, that I bought all their records and I 
joined a mailing list about them; so much, that three years later, almost 
every other song reminded me of something: Waking Up to Us reminded me of 
listening to it in Benicassim and thinking ‘I though they’d never write 
songs that describe my life anymore, but this does! Wow!’, Jonathan David 
reminded me of singing it in various places around Europe that summer; 
Scooby Driver made me bounce and Roy Walker made me dance, Simple Things 
made me sigh and Loneliness of A Middle Distance Runner almost made me cry. 
And thank god for Belle and Sebastian.

And I was so happy, I wanted to cry and bounce and laugh at the same time; I 
wanted to marry them and take them home with me, I wanted to watch Stevie 
spin and dance and be so cute in genaral and I wanted to figure out what’s 
going on in Stuart’s head and I wanted to make Mick smile and make Sarah 
talk and laugh at Chris’ jokes. (It was a bit sad, when they disappeared 
backstage: how we think of them and they don’t need us in their lives). And 
wherever I looked there were happy Belle and Sebastian fans, grinning 
stupidly and bouncing to the music played in their heads.

...This one is of Robbie, one of the Bowlie kids, doing that exactly...

...Oh, this one is of the Belle and Sebastian party we had later, we sat on 
a blanket and listened to the latest Peel Session and Tigermilk and sang 
along and we talked about how they and the internet changed our lives, and 
about travelling and different places. All the things that I’ve come to like 
about festivals, that is. But all you can see is a bunch of kids sat behind 
a car in the dark, drinking, looking at the stars. I told you, it was very 
dark.

I think we were too inspired and happy to let this night end and to make it 
last longer, we sat in the space between our tents –Mark, Ola and Goshia, 
Annie, Aton, Olivier, and Andreas, a random German bloke Aton had met at the 
station. Mark and Ola played the guitar and we sang along, some people more 
than others. (This one is of Mark singing dEUS’ Three Blind Mice, which send 
me right back the when I was 18). And then, when they ran out of songs to 
play on the guitar, we sang without it… some people did more than others…

I usually don’t sing, and there’s a reason for that; as Mark very kindly put 
it, I have a Moldy Peaches type of voice. Meaning, I can’t sing really. But 
Mark and Ola said I sounded nice, and no one complained, so I sang three of 
four Hefner songs with Ola, along with This Charming Man; and then I sang 
half a Hefner song, ¾ of an Aislers Set song and a greek nursery rhyme about 
all things pink. On my own. In the dark. To seven other people. And it felt 
great.

...I think this one is from when I was singing Home, I can’t tell you how 
priceless it feels to bounce in the dark (to keep warm) and sing to a circle 
of Belle and Sebastian fans that

Dirty young wives turn to pretty young mums in the springtime
You’re dirty bussinessmen with no light in your lives
You’ve got no dirty little wife of your own
I can’t believe it’s true what they’re saying
I just want to go home
All these people are cheaters and liars
I just want to go home
You’ll never know what your love is like
My true love is at home
We've got the songs, we've got the sun, we've got the love...

...And this one is from the when I was singing in greek… I had my eyes 
closed and my fists clenched and I must have looked like a five-year-old at 
a school show. Everyone took it as a lullaby.

Love and pink songs and dark nights
zoziepop
xx


ps I want to really really thank Ola and Mark for getting me to sing, and 
Mark especially for finding something nice to say about my singing! I never 
thought this could happen. I am as thankful to them as I am to Kenny for 
making me dance at Tigermilking for the first time in my life…

pps Here is the almost perfect setlist (stolen from the Bowlie Boards and 
revised and still probably inaccurate), so that you can be appropriately 
jealous:

Fuck This Shit
Sleep the clock around
String Bean Jean
Waking Up to Us
Wandering Alone
Get Me Away From Here
Like Dylan In The Movies
Jonathan David
Scooby Driver (extended version! Woo!)
Simple Things
The Boy With The Arab Strap
Dirty Dream Number Two
Roy Walker
Middle Distance Runner
Wrong Girl
Me and the Major
Legal Man

And Kraftwerks "Das Modell" (with Stuart and Stevie not singing the words 
very confidently and the melody based on Mick’s trumpet, sooo great), then 
the Model, and Seymour Stein somewhere in the middle but I’m not sure when. 
Do you see why were so happy?

pps Back to being a lurker!




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