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!)

---

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.

Sea life month #2: Whale of a Time!

Remember way back in August when we were going on about it being 'sea life month'? Well, here's the second in the series. The 'month' part of the title is redundant, really, as it's been over a month, so just ignore that bit.

Anyway, I have always been a big fan of sea mammals. Dolphins? Amazing (Although Liz thinks they have an attitude problem). Seals? Brilliant. Manatees? So good I even recorded a naff song about them. My favourite TV show as a child was Sharky and George! Aside from Liz's aversion to dolphins, which she attributes to them being "attention seekers", we're both agreed on how cool they all are.

We both think whales are great, too. So we've done a mini zine about them that you'll be able to buy soon! It's called 'Whale of a time!' and contains some nice illustrations of whales that Liz did and a bit of vaguely amusing/informative writing that I did. Here's some sneaky preview images for you to have a look at:

Always keen to develop any merchandising opportunities, we've done some temporary tattoos too! Whales tend to be quite large, so we thought it'd be appropriate if the tattoos were too. They'll be available soon and they look like this:

 

And we're doing some shrink plastic whale brooches that followers of our Instagram will have caught a glimpse of recently. Keep an eye on our Twitter and our Etsy page to find out when all these neat things are available! Speaking of Etsy, we've curated a list of really nice whale related things that have nothing to do with us. You can have a look at it by clicking here. 

Tell us about your favourite sea based mammals, please! Do you agree with Liz? Are dolphins "attention seekers?". Answers on a postcard, (Or in the comments section or on Twitter) please.

See yer

S

Fig + Sparrow and Brownie Owl!

Our favourite place to get coffee in Manchester is Fig + Sparrow on Oldham Street. We like it to an almost creepy extent.  We were initially drawn in by the amazing gift shop at the front of the café (They sell dead nice homeware things and other great stuff) - and we still probably buy something or other every time we go in - but it's the coffee and cake that we go for now.

Do you remember when it was really hot a few weeks ago? That was kind of alright, wasn't it? But in a way it was pretty unbearable too. Thankfully we were able to go and sit in Fig + Sparrow next to a fan and cool ourselves down with some lovely iced teas and coffees. Look how their cold drinks come! Cute, eh?

The breakfast pots they do are pretty brilliant as well. You get a jar of yoghurt and some chunks of chocolate brownie on the side and then you mix it all together and you're in heaven, basically. Sadly I don't work in town so going for breakfast every day is not really an option. But if I did...

Speaking of the brownies, wow! They're made by The Brownie Owl and they're probably the best brownies I have ever eaten. I'm always a bit 'okay then' about brownies. A brownie is a brownie. Like a jam tart, I'd be happy if I was given one but probably wouldn't choose one if there was anything more fancy on offer. But these brownies are actually incredible.

We were lucky enough to win some Brownie Owl brownies in a Twitter competition, so we had a whole box of them to munch on (With a fair amount of restraint they still only lasted about two hours). Here's the exciting news as it was announced!

Winner of our @thebrownieowl competition for a box of amazing brownie is.... @_YoungExplorer congrats!!
— WhosWhoManchester (@WhosWhoManc) August 16, 2013

We enter the lottery every now and again but very rarely get a number. This was like the food equivalent of hitting the jackpot. Look how tasty they look...

...and then times that by 100 and you're somewhere close to how good they tasted. They are probably on sale in other cafés in Manchester but we haven't bothered to find out where. A coffee, a brownie and a table at Fig + Sparrow is the best way to spend your afternoon.

See yer!
S

St Anne's Fans

Some time ago we decided that spending the day in a beach hut would be a 'nice thing to do'. We hadn't really thought about where we would actually do this or anything like that, though. Then when we were brainstorming about how we could mark our friend Rebecca's birthday, we decided that we could kill two birds with one stone and throw a surprise birthday party in one!

As St Anne's seemed to be the only seaside resort in the north west with beach huts, the decision on where to go was kind of made for us. We found the amazing St Anne's Beach Huts online and booked a lovely little hut (The yellow one in the middle below!) and then got thinking about the kind of food we'd include in the spread for the party.

The hut was dead good! It was nicely furnished and had a little kitchen area - perfect for preparing all our picnic food. Here's what the hut looked like when we'd decorated it.

As Rebecca is vegan, we went for the usual 'Leon party spread' that has been mentioned several times on this blog. Briefly: sweet potato falafel, fried garlic courgettes, miso potatoes, pitta bread, crisps, fruity cous cous, madeleines and probably loads of other things too. Look! Here's the BIRTHDAY GIRL!!! and the birthday cake (A vegan hummingbird cake (like a carrot cake only instead of carrot it's got pineapple in)).

St Anne's is pretty nice. It reminded us a bit of Southport - a little bit posher than your average seaside resort. Obviously Morecambe, Cleethorpes and Mablethorpe are ace, but it's nice to go upmarket every now and again. Posh or not, St Anne's still had a pretty incredible £1 a go bowling alley near the seafront. We are rubbish at bowling but it doesn't stop us from embarrassing ourselves. Here's Liz perfecting her swing.

It's all in the stance, ladies and gentlemen.

Anyway, we'd definitely recommend hiring one of the beach huts at St Anne's! We think we'd like to go in the winter when it's cold and the huts are a bit cheaper. We could just spend the day sitting in one of the beach huts, reading and crafting and whatever. It might not be so nice in reality though.

See yer!

S

Hot Property

Young Explorer have been all over the place recently. You probably haven't been able to go a single day without someone saying 'Have you heard about Young Explorer?!'. In case you have been living in a cave for the last three months and haven't caught 'Young Explorer Fever', here's a little summary of some things that we've been in.

Firstly, we did some talking for a bit about Victoria Baths Zine Fair in which I used a 'mild curse word'. Then we did some talking (And posed for some photos) for the Fred Aldous blog. Here's some of the ace photos that Elle took on the day:

And finally, our friend Stef Bradley (Who we must have mentioned about a hundred times on this blog now) included a little interview with us for a zine she was making for a zine workshop. As well as making the excellent Today Zine, Stef has recently started her own zine distro called 'Best Pressed', selling zines by other people she likes at gigs and other events. We're going to put a few of the 'How to make a zine' zines on the shelves at Salford Zine Library, so pop over and have a look if you get the chance. They're really good and have loads of really good tips on how to make your own zines. And some bonus exclusive Stef Bradley comic material too! Here's a glimpse of our interview that has been described as 'inspiring' and 'really great' by no-one.

If your famous blog/magazine/newspaper/television series wants to talk to us, get in touch! You can email us at youngexplorerzine at gmail dot com or tweet us @_YoungExplorer.

Bye!

S

Crystal Palace Park

As Steve mentioned in the last post, we have been super busy recently and haven’t had much time to update our blog, mainly because we have been having far too much fun! So get ready for lots of blog posts updating you on the last couple of weeks!

This blog post is going to be all about how much we love Crystal Palace Park! (No, I'm not talking about Crystal Palace's football ground, Selhurst Park, although this seems to be a common misunderstanding amongst people we have been talking to about it!).

Crystal Palace Park is somewhere I had wanted to go for a while. One of my friends had recommended it to me and we were not disappointed. This park has it all! The park was built in the Victorian era for cultural and sporting events and those Victorians certainly knew how to build a park. It used to be home to the actual Crystal Palace, which housed the Great Exhibition (which you may have learnt about at school). However this beautiful building was sadly burnt down in 1936. The only thing that remains of the Palace now is the large number of steps leading up to where the palace once stood. According to the internet a Chinese billionaire is planning on rebuilding the whole palace exactly how it was. I’m not 100% sure how true this is but I hope it does happen!

Anyway, the palace isn’t the only thing the Victorians built in this park; they did like to do things in style. There still remains a fantastic maze, which is probably one of the best mazes I have ever been in, even better than the one at Hampton Court. We did worry at one point that we would be lost in the maze forever, as we spent about fifteen minutes walking around in circles. It really is great fun, and even better, it’s completely free!

Then lastly and probably my favorite thing about the park was the dinosaurs. Not your normal dinosaurs, no! Victorian interpretations of what they thought dinosaurs might look like. They were made by the sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins who completed them in 1854, to show off the then newly discovered dinosaurs and other extinct animals in the park. The dinosaurs don’t really look that much like what we would imagine them to look like now. They actually look more like giant lizards, which we thought made it even better.

Overall, Crystal Palace Park is a fantastic day out and if you live around London you should most certainly go. Along with all the exciting things I have mentioned above, the whole park is lovely if you just fancy a nice walk in the sunshine.

Liz

x

Sea life month #1: Tenbo! (And a general update)

With the whole taking over the Salford Zine Library thing, the exhausting hot weather and being on holiday in Tenby, we haven't had much chance to update the blog for a while. Please forgive us! As a result of our incompetence, woodland month is going to be extended! But it's also going to be overlapped by SEA LIFE MONTH. The reasons for this will become clearer later. In fact, these two 'months' are not so much monthly themes any more, they're probably more like non time-specific series of posts.

Tenby

The diehard fans amongst you may remember that we went on holiday to Tenby last year. Well this year we went again! We really like Tenby, although phone signal is hard to come by and some bits of it are plagued by horseflies. Despite that, the weather was amazing, we got to do loads of swimming in the sea (remember, this is sea life month, this is not a coincidence) and eat loads of ice cream.

The main thing we wanted to do while we were in Tenby was go to Fecci's Ice Cream Parlour, as featured in the third issue of the Young Explorer Zine (Buy here or here). We like its slightly faded charm and the amount of novelty ice cream sundaes they have on offer. This time Liz went for something called a 'Crinoline Lady' which looks like this:

Let me talk you through what you're looking at here. Yes, that is a plastic doll stuck in the middle of the ice cream. The doll was actually only a (naked) torso with a stick at the bottom to poke into the ice cream. As Liz was eating, the doll was being undressed and, to be honest, it was a little bit creepy.

Anyway, there's lashings of ice cream and whipped cream (the white ball gown) complete with black cherry, sugar paper flower and hundreds and thousand adornments. And a fan shaped wafer at the back. Very tasteful. Liz wasn't able to finish it - she might have been attempting to save the young lady's modesty or she might have just been suffering from a dairy overdose.

Ice cream isn't the only thing that Tenby has going for it. Check out this view! Cor! I spent the first 18 years of my life living by the sea and I never really took advantage of it. I find being by the sea very relaxing so I'm going to try and spend as much time at the seaside as possible from now on. There's something about the sound of waves crashing against the shore that never fails to slow my heartbeat down a bit. In a good way, not in a cardiac arrest/dying way.

There is nothing we like better than a boat trip. While we were in Tenby we got to go on two! The first was a seal safari around Caldey Island, where we were *guaranteed* to see some seals. And we weren't disappointed! On the way around the island we also got to see some lovely rocks/cliffs (see above) and a couple of puffins (we weren't quick enough to get a photo of the puffins but we instantly fell in love with them). Then came the stars of the show.

This is the best photo we got of a seal. We saw about twenty of them altogether, dotted around the rocks and in the water. Apparently they like to lie on the rocks and sleep while their food digests, which I think we would both have enjoyed after our massive ice creams. That one is a male, or a 'bull' ^^^

The second boat trip actually landed on Caldey Island, where there is a monastery, a little village, a lighthouse and some lovely coastal paths. We'd been warned against taking the trip due to the earlier mentioned plague of horseflies, but we thoroughly sprayed ourselves with insect repellant and went for it anyway. There were loads of them! Everywhere you went, horseflies. Gross. Thankfully we didn't get bitten though.

Caldey Island is beautiful. It reminds me a bit of an island we visited when we went to Oslo, except it's a bit smaller and is more Welsh. I'll leave you to look at some photos of Caldey Island while we go away and think about other things to blog about. See yer!