Political Ambitions From Back Behind Bars

I felt a lot better than I probably had any right to do the following morning, although the truth be told, I hadn’t drunk that much, and had the sense to load myself with juice before hitting the sack. You know you can’t have been that drunk when you’re sober enough to take such sensible precautions.

Although yesterday was our last show, we did have one more performance, in that today we had an engagement with the Mayor of Liepaja. Jonathan was obviously taking this very seriously as he spent an age in the morning trying to tie his own bow tie. He was strangely proud at the end of this particular performance that it would be obvious that it wasn’t a clip on, and that he’d tied it all by himself. There would, in no way, be any doubt whatsoever in anyone’s mind that that was a clip on, although I know realise that there probably is a market for clip on really badly tied bow ties. Of course, the tie was in addition to the usual jesters garb.

We were led by Ieva and Ed to our rendezvous, and it has to be said The White Leg Circus made a wondrous spectacle, lining the corridors of power with a shower of white faced clowns. In their ever graceful manner we were ushered up huge staircases and along corridors to a majestic gallery where we were to meet the man in charge. It goes without saying we were a little bit late. The Mayor was however very cool about the whole situation, by simply being even later, if only a few minutes. Then accompanied by his entourage, we were led into a large conference room to discuss what we’d been up to, what we planned on getting up to (at least the bits we were willing to admit), and to cut to the chase, council funding for White Leg projects.

The Mayor commented conversationally that he had seen us the previous evening, in the prison … so I asked him if he spent a lot of time in prison, and smiling he suggested that, no that wasn’t something he did often and proceeded to ask me if I spent a lot of time there myself. At which point, Jonathan added “You wouldn’t go very far in Italian politics”. The Mayor very wisely moved swiftly on, but I feel that we may have blown any chances of doing a tour of Italy. I should add that there were TV cameras while we were at the Prison, so I’m guessing he saw it on TV, and we weren’t being followed around by Latvian politicians or their flunkies while we were there. I’m guessing this. I don’t know for sure.

There was then needless to say, a lot of talking. Some of it I even understood, but given that most of it was in Latvian, and, some of it was in Politician, and we only had a translator for one of those we’ll wait to see what comes of it.

As we left we were introduced to the wonderful lady who’d been responsible at this end for helping get us across the Polish/Lithuanian border. We couldn’t, and still can’t say thank you enough to her, and for that matter, everyone else who helped us. Including the ambassador of course.

We then hit the council café on the way out, and for one reason or another got some very funny looks. I’m guessing they were simply amazed at how well Jonathan had tied his tie. Or maybe they’d been reading the Xantern papers and realised just how famous we now were.  

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