Quinti Quinti

It is Sunday evening and after a day of reading the Times, listening to war poetry on Radio 4, Pick Of The Week and being slightly less interested in Liverpool's progress yesterday than I normally would... it is time to take in the streets of Brussels once again. 

Sometimes I really distinctly dislike this place on days like his and it is not only due to my fear of French and invisible rain that soaks through when you are not paying attention. It may be the thousands of tourists clogging the streets or the sense that this city is still as odd to me as the first day I set foot here five years ago. There is no familiar feel to one street or the next but that may just be me. I attempt to find a particular destination and can't get my head round the map, each place having two names or none at all. I love my hotel room and the hospitality but there is something lurking in the techno heart of Brussels that makes me question it's heart.

Sitting outside the chipshop last night I heard two young people complaining that they were artists and wondering what it would be like to have a 9-5 job so they knew when the work was over and really over for the day. I interrupted as one would expect me to do and explained that people in a 9-5 job just can't switch off when they go home either. They eat chips, complain about the boss and watch mind numbing, 'reality', TV shows or midweek UEFA Cup clashes on frozen winter shit pitches in Lativa.  This inconsequential nonsense is what we call life.

I was invited to the church that is my alarm clock today but avoided the aftermath of meeting local christian artists from the area over breakfast. It was nothing to do with them being christian, artists or locals, rather I have talked my head off for the last week and want a chance to listen to my own thoughts for a change. I have so much in my head for Quinti Quinti tomorrow but little idea of what to expect from their reality and it is a very heady one indeed. I am wondering if everyone there has huge Jimmy Hill type chins from much over-scratching. 

Of course I am very open and brimming with optimism but this is the first time I take on such a task. Working with willfull artists/armchair politicians and philosophers who perhaps have no wish to be directed or realised in any shape or form will take a lot of energy and concentration. Quinty Quinty work 10-5 round a small wooden table for some reason and I have never done that before. Perhaps it's a piece of lucky furniture or their producer locks them in there. My main aim right now is to get a grip on where they are and then throw that out the window if necessary. Launch a rescue attempt or assualt? It appears to me that the project is more about process rather than progress which perhaps I can learn from if I slow down for five minutes. I will go with the notion of shaping clouds of unknowing using my new secret weapons, 'counterintution', and the selfish genes. 

I look forward to tomorrow with a certain amount of honest apprehension yet a sure, secured belief, quizzical fascination and the new pinstripe jacket gifted to me by Mr. Oshea. It's designed by 'Angelo Litrico'. Apparently he dressed Kennedy, Tito, Eisenhower and Nikita Chrushchev. The last time Mr. Oshea gave a jacket away it was to M. E. Smith of, 'The Fall'. Well that's a good start to a new week.