Shame on moi. I have not posted since August. Well it's been a busy autumn up to now.
The KNOB asked - nay, begged - me to return for the European championships in October, which were held in Cyprus, to coincide with the presidency of the European Union. Cyprus! If there is one country in Europe with no brass band tradition .... still, I packed my dirndl and my triangle and set off towards the land of George Michael, Cat Stevens and Peter Andre.
I had been to Cyprus once before, some 20 years ago, with Harold, when we had found the food abominable, and some of the resorts - Ayia Napa specifically - made us shudder with middle class horror. Some things had improved since then - the spanking new motorway that took us from the airport to our hotel at some unearthly hour of the morning was obviously EU money well spent. The hotel was getting on a bit but quite comfortable, in a 1980s sort of way. Whatever they may tell you, Cyprus is not the most beautiful island in the Mediterranean. It is quite ugly, in fact. The coastline, particularly around Larnaca, is quite industrial, with cement works and power stations interspersed with half-finished villas and blocks of holiday flats festooned with "For sale" signs in Russian. There is not much in the way of antiquities in that part of the island either. Still, we were there to work, not to enjoy ourselves.
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Piraeus Bank is a specialist in recycling. Roubles, mostly.
The KNOB must have been the oldest combo at the competition. Some of the new brass ensembles are surprisingly young, and the old Tyrolean twostep is no longer the benchmark. Those young Americans, particularly, can blow anything out of their brass - it's those marching bands they have at college. One group were practising "Gangnam Style" by the pool. It put Werner right off his black forest gateau.
"Was ist ze point?" he finally exploded. "Es gibt nicht mehr standards! If ve don't play ze German oompah, warum ve should call ourself ein oompah band?" he started to weep softly into his glass of Blue Nun. Hildegard (lead sax) comforted him with soothing umlauts and German baby-talk.
"Ach, ze times sie sind a-changing, die Antwort ist in ze wind blowing," philosophized Hans-Peter. "Ve must mit Die Zeit be moving. Nobody ist interested in ze traditional sauerkraut style, daddyo. "
"So, we must more modern becoming!" I retorted (my English gets a bit Teutonic after being in the company of the KNOB for a while). I grabbed a napkin and started jotting down contemporary songs I had picked up from Glasto for the KNOB to add to their playlist. Lothar was looking over my shoulder.
"Was ist Uprising? Ist das von Bruce Springsteen?"
"Nein, schatzi, it's Muse," I replied.
Lothar, Hans-Peter and the others looked blankly at each other.
"Mouse?" they murmured.
"MUSE" I began to sing: "They will not control us ... we will be victorious .... "
I noticed a number of left arms twitching.
"Or perhaps not. OK, what about Adele? Rolling in the Deep?"
More blank looks. I rolled my eyes to the sky.
"Don't you know ANYTHING outside of Eurovision? Haven't you had any good bands in Germany since the Beatles left Hamburg?"
Hildegard raised a timid hand. "Ja, Daphne .... wir lieben Kraftwerk. But Wir fahrn fahrn fahrn auf der Autobahn does not so well into ze brass translate."
"This is Madness!" I exploded. To my surprise, Werner, Lothar and Hans-Peter leapt to their feet and started doing the "Baggy Trousers" dance.
"Ja ja! Wahnsinn! Wir kennen Wahnsinn!" they shouted. "Suggs ist der Beste!"
And so that, dear readers, is how we ended up re-enacting the "Unser Haus ist in der Mitte unserer Strasse" video clip, with the funny walk, and everything. As luck would have it I had my knitting needles with me and ran up some authentic 1960's sleeveless jerseys for the boys. We borrowed the pork pie hats off one of the Balkan gipsy bands and of course the boys had their sunglasses with them. One of the chambermaids rented me her work clothes so I played the part of Mutti. This of course took some sterling work from the hotel hairdresser - a lithe young Cypriot-Australian who could have passed for Peter Andre's younger brother. I had to get him to do it over and overagain until he got the curlers just right. It took HOURS.
We didn't win in the end - those Serbians are untouchable these days - but we came a creditable 10th. Out of 11. The Koreans doing "The Lonely Goatherd" in full Sound of Music costume came last.
