Wirral Tour

Ever since forever ago I've wanted to visit Port Sunlight, the model village built by the Lever Brothers in the Wirral. This weekend I finally made it there and it was every bit as amazing as I was hoping it would be. You can read more about the history of Port Sunlight here. If it wasn't dead inconveniently located for work and things, I'd move to Port Sunlight for sure. Every single house in the village is beautiful in its own way. Phwoar! Go and have a look if you get the chance.

While we were in the area, Liz's mum and dad took us on a tour of the Wirral, which was much more exciting than it sounds. I made a little video* of some of the things we saw as we were making our way along the coast. First we're in Port Sunlight, then Parkgate, West Kirby, and then a bit of Hoylake before we went back through the Birkenhead Tunnel and back to Liverpool and then eventually back home to Manchester. Here's the video! Tell us what your favourite bit of the Wirral is, please. We very much enjoyed our day out on the peninsula.



*video features the track 'Secret Forever' by Haiku Salut from their lovely EP 'How We Got Along After The Yarn Bomb'. Buy it!!!

Haiku Salut and Sausage Gloves

Some people who read this blog mighn't even know that it's the online face of the Young Explorer zine (Buy here or here), which we aim to "publish" every 3-4 months or so. We've made three issues so far and we're currently in the final stages of preparing a fourth one, which is going to be about "the past".

The second issue, with the theme "collecting", is pretty much sold out now. I think we have one spare copy knocking about if you're quick. It had some good stuff in it! Phil Elverum talking about his book collection and swearing (once) and some nice illustrations and the world famous Haiku Salut talking about collecting gloves.

As we no longer have (m)any copies of the second issue to flog, we thought we'd post up the Haiku Salut bit so you can all see what you missed out on.Bits in []s are where we've changed the print article slightly so that it makes sense/reflects the fact that time has passed since the thing was written. Here it is! (Under the line!)

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Haiku Salut are a Matlock based trio who make vaguely French sounding instrumental pop songs. Their wonderful debut EP 'How We Got Along After the Yarn Bomb' was released on 3" CD by Team Strikeforce last year and their first ever full length album 'Tricolore' [was released a few months ago and is a thing of beauty.]

They're well worth seeing live, too. The entire performance seems to be on the edge of catastrophe much of the time, which makes it even more exciting. I'm sure there's never any danger of anything actually going wrong, but there's so much instrument swapping and general excitement that their music seems almost unbelievable. Keep an eye on their website and go and see them if you can!

Anyway, as the theme of this issue of Young Explorer is about collecting, we asked them if they had any collections that they'd like to talk about. A couple of weeks later I received this in our email inbox.

A short tale of Haiku Salut and their journey of collecting things, or lack of, accordingly

We had initial reservations about writing a piece about a subject we felt little kinship with. Yeah, we have a collection of books - the Murakami books, the books that smell of old people and Sophie's selection of philosophical books about Mars, robots and time travel. We also have a small band collection of vinyl, The Beach Boys, Shirley Bassey, The Shins. There is also Louise's minor gaggle of bumbags and the extensive gallery of pictures of our dog in woolly jumpers[*please see below for picture of amazing dog], sunglasses and/or goggles. 

But... something wasn't quite right. It felt contrived. Worthless. These small collections wouldn't really tell a story about us. They would pale into insignificance beside other collections of it's kind. It was then that Gemma remembered the triumphant age of the sausage glove years and everything fell in to place. 

The story begins early spring, or late autumn of any year you'd care to choose. On the way home from the pub Sophie noticed a lone abandoned sausage glove (A workmans' glove with sausage sized fingers). This sparked a discussion regarding the absent owner's possible loves, fears and hopes. We passed the sausage glove by and wandered on home. 

It was then we started noticing sausage gloves everywhere, the clock was always 11:11. Soon the sausage gloves began to come home with us. Eventually the collection was getting slightly overwhelming and laws were passed to curb its growth. If two sausage gloves were found within ten feet of one another they would be considered a pair with the potential of being found by their previous owner and were not to be touched. We agreed that enough was enough when Louise brought a sausage glove back from Japan. The ultimate sausage glove.

Sneaky peek!

We've been working on the next issue of Young Explorer over the last couple of weeks and we thought we'd give you an exclusive (!) look at the front cover to whet your appetite and that. Stuff to expect includes: Phil Elverum, Haiku Salut, buses and dodgy record collections. Oh yeah, the theme is 'collecting'!

S