The Boy Least Likely To

"we wanted to take the train to the airport, then we wanted to get on a plane and when we arrived we wanted to unpack the summer things and then we wanted to go for a bit of a stroll in the sun."

i was thinking about love and romance this morning, and i remembered this story from the beginning of the year, so i thought it might be nice to share it.

it is the story of two bold and spontaneous lovers leaving behind everything they know and following their dreams to elope in a faraway land.

on new year's eve six year old mika and his five year old sweetheart anna bell secretly packed their suitcases and set off from the german city of hanover to tie the knot under the heat of the african sun.

they decided not to tell their parents because they didn’t think they'd be gone for long, and then left their homes at dawn while their parents were still asleep. they took along mika's seven year old sister, anna lena, as a witness to the wedding.

wearing sunglasses and swimming armbands, and dragging a pink inflatable lilo and wheeling suitcases packed with summer clothes, cuddly toys and a few provisions, they walked a kilometre up the road, boarded a tram to hanover train station and got as far as the express train that would take them to the airport before a suspicious station guard alerted the police.

holger jureczko, a police spokesman, said "what struck us was that the little ones were completely on their own and that they had lots of swimming gear with them," and then went on to describe mika and anna bell as "sweethearts" who had "decided to get married in africa where it is warm, taking with them as a witness mika's sister. mika told the police that he instigated the plan, after having been inspired by a winter holiday with his family in italy.

to allay their disappointment at being caught, hanover police gave them a tour of the police headquarters. brilliant.

anyway, i just thought it was a nice story for this time of year.

i hope you have a happy valentines day

x

i risked taking the train into london this morning. i walked around the west end for a bit and nothing bad seemed to happen to me so i guess i should think myself lucky. i'm quite relieved to be back home again now. i still have quite a few hours to go though, and i've got a party to go to tonight. i don't think i’ll really be safe to relax until midnight.

i suppose if i think about it i am quite superstitious. i don't walk under ladders. i don't put umbrellas up indoors and i try to remember not to put my shoes on the table, especially new ones. i wish on birthday cake candles. i don't walk over three drains in a row, and if i do i have to walk backwards over them again to undo the bad luck. i freak out around mirrors for fear of breaking them. i broke one once when i was about ten, and i think it explains my whole experience of the education system until i went to college. i salute magpies but i never know about black cats, whether it's supposed to be good or bad luck if one crosses your path, so i don't worry about them too much. i don't use matches that have been struck unsuccessfully three times. if i see a penny i pick it up. i throw salt over my shoulder if i spill it. i touch wood whenever i need to. haha, i've never noticed how rude that sounds before. oh well, it is valentines day tomorrow. all in all, now that i've listed them all i think definitely i am superstitious.

weirdly though, i'm not triskaidekaphobic. i've never been that superstitious about the number thirteen. our studio is even number thirteen, and there are thirteen tracks on our new album. although i do apparently suffer from paraskavedekatriaphobia, a fear of friday the thirteenth. that's a different thing altogether. and there's one in march and november this year as well. i don't usually leave the house on friday the thirteenth if i can help it, but i've got things to do that have to be done today. oh well. wish me luck.

just seven hours til i'm safe again. touch wood.

x

"I'm trying to balance on an upturned milk crate
as i fumble with my catapult
and my hands are trembling as i try to aim it
every goliath has its david."


it's stopped snowing now and everything has just turned slushy and brown. i hate watching snow melt. it's so depressing. it almost makes me wish it hadn't snowed at all. except i always get excited when it snows. i wonder if people who live in places that have snow all year round still get excited about snow. i suppose maybe not, because i live somewhere where it's often quite overcast and i'm not excited about clouds and light rain. but then snow is a lot more magical and you can make things out of it, but then again i don't suppose you'd want to build snowmen all year round and after a while you'd probably get used to everything being covered in snow. it would probably be more exciting when it melted, because people who live in places that have snow all year round probably forget what pavements and rooftops look like. i don't know, i just wish it snowed more often where i live because everything familiar disappears under it for a few days and it feels like being on holiday in my own village.

so, i should probably mention that we've put a new song up on our myspace page. pitchfork wrote a bit about it and put it up on there yesterday too, which was very kind of them. it's called every goliath has its david, and it's one side of our new single, which is coming out in a couple of weeks. we've made a video for it too and we'll try and post that up somewhere next week. it's a song about fighting, but then most of our songs are.

i hope you like it

x