china boarder from siberia TO FINISH

I just arrived in China... Manzhouli, exactly the same border town I came to 4 years ago. It was a more epic journey last time... crossing Siberia in November with my girlfriend with no money busking in minus 18 celcius to get enought for the trains and rushing so I would get out before my russian visa expired. This time it was a little more mellow, money was no issue so we messed around much more eating well. We left tallinn 11 days ago and stayed a night in moscow and partied out quite hard there before an overnight train to nizhni novgorod on the wonderful volga river. My friend there has moved to a gypsy village over the river where we got our fortunes read by a dark gypsy women who told us her granny was estonian and a lot of twaddle about getting married and settling down and getting a big car. Another overnight train to Izerbsk which is a bit off the transiberian railway route.

My painting of Nadya playing beautiful Udmurti songs to me in her kitchen!

We met Erko's friend Nadya who works in the House of the Friendship of Peoples. She is Udmurti, a finno urgic cousin of the Estonians in the urals but the language does not sound very estonian AT ALL and they are famous for their red hair and ... not sure.

Tom and Nadya

Well, she sings really nice and we went to a tea party with an oriental tea drinking action going on and lots of ambient bird song music and they asked tom and me to play and so we played 3 songs and everyone started going wild and loving it and I stopped early, leave them wanting more, after Tom and I had thrown ourselves around the floor and the point had been proved.
Two Finnish girls took over a little after us and managed to calm things down a little with their sad songs. I knew one of them from a Katja's wedding last summer in Finland. I would have happilly joined them on their ethnographic search for music in Russia and China but we have this stupid flight to Australia from China to catch. I wont do a big journey again with a deadline this fast ... planes really suck! anyhow, we rushed out of that scene, managed to catch the midnight train east to novosibirsk with sunny weather all the way. beautiful scenery... best time of year to travel. such brilliant autumn colours outside. Fantastic. Whenever the train stopped for more than 20 minutes (a few times a day) we would rush out and organize a football match near the station with local drunks or i would practice breakdancing in the station hall with the brilliant marble floors. We took another long train from Novosibirsk past Bailkal lake to Chita and arrived there this morning. That was a nice ride, except for the drunk soldiers who cornered me in the smoking wagon and would not let me leave until i had drunk their beer with them and Tom and Erko's battle with the mother of train (wagon guard woman) trying to buy a boiled potato off a woman at the platform... the potato war. A few drunk soldiers, funny babooshkas and screaming kids but all great fun in the end. Erko has wonderful charm and could make the most horrid witch of a train conductor smile. He would just start telling them we were going to Australia from Estonia and where we were from and opening up so cheerfully and they became sun-shiney people when before they had been telling me to stop playing music in the smoking room or to tidy up my bed. He is a brilliant traveling companion and tom would have erko and me in stitches with his stories about containers and how to spell fridge. We decided i would have PARTY ON DUDE on my gravestone and Tom would have NO-ONE BELIEVED ME!
I think we have to go soon lots of love jimmy x

AUSTRALIA II Train from Perth to Adalaide

Erko outside the Indian Pacific train in Cook

Hi everyone

hey I made it to Adelaide almost exactly one month after leaving London! I have so much to say but wont write much right now... hopefully find time soon before I forget it all. Basically I am not regretting this journey at all. It has been very interesting and I think it is really helping me with my confidence traveling independently and besides I am having a wonderful time.

The train journey took 2 days from Perth in western Australia to Adelaide. A lot of desert but I was so busy having fun that I was not watching it too much. I was sitting next to a very mellow truck driver from Kangaroo Island who was plastered with nicotine patches, he said they were great, you can even taste the nicotine on your tongue. I asked him if there were lots of kangaroos on Kangaroo island and he gave me a little look then said that sometimes there are a lot. He said he once killed over 2 dozen because they jumped into his truck as he was driving. "Kangaroos just have NOOOOO sense of road safety! Same as Koalas, but you have to stop for them. Unlike the other animals which you would not mind killing, Feral Cats and crows... they get out of the way!" So for two days and two nights I spent my time playing music, chatting, eating, playing cards, making friends and popping out at the towns to run around and see what is happening.

Sadly we lost my fishing stool and football in Kalgoorlie the town with the biggest open mine in the world ... or maybe just biggest gold open air mine... I did not see that but it is the archetype cowboy town ... I felt like i was in the cowboy playmobile set I had as a kid. Wild bars staying open late for the minors to come after their 12 hour shift when then get drunk and eat and spend money on girls... maybe a little less honky-tonk than that but that was the impression.

Erko in a bar in Kalgoorlie

A very authentic gold rush atmosphere. I went into the first bar and introduced myself to everyone... i shook everyone's hand.. about 50 people... it only took a couple of minutes. Leonardo was celebrating his birthday with a huge gang of mates... all lads... we played happy birthday for him and they all went mad... cheering JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY then I breakdanced a bit and some other kid did a wicked worm so I did some more moves then moved to the next bar... and we climbed on the roof of hotel where Erko kicked the football but could not find the football and the owner phoned the police so we left quick! I was wandering down the road looking at the bright southern hemisphere stars for the first time in my life and a huge road convoy went past... a truck pulling about 4 container-sized trailers! Amazing and pretty scary!

Toilet in Cook

In Cook we also got out in the middle of the day for a short wander about and that was proper desert! Nothing but brush and dust for as far as the eye can see... amazing bright sunlight glare and a few ramshackle corrugated iron shanty huts, a couple of small prison cells under a tree and not much else!

Some nice girls I sketched in the train

We had a little concert jam session on our last night in the train and I took over the restaurant car with nice sing along like songs. Nicole sang very nicely with me and some of the other travelers too. Earlier in the day I did a sketch of the bar:

The Indian Pacific train from Perth to Adelaide - the restaurant car

After Kuala Lumpur, I am delighted to find that the weather at the moment is absolutely wonderful... not hot at all... just pleasantly warm and sunny during the day and the fresh side of chilly at night... So after much excitement and dozing and chatting and long train activities, including Chinese chess and all the different card games we have learnt these last 3 weeks on Asian trains.. we arrived in Adelaide this morning and my aunt Lindsy was on the platform waiting for me... lovey to see her... i was just introducing her to Erko and Louise and our new train friends when i noticed someone was standing quite close and stone the crows there is cousin Harry grinning his grinniest grin. Uncle Johney was on his heels and cracked jokes and had me in fits of laughter... he has a really infectious laugh and great sense of humour. they took me to their home and we had porridge together in the garden with the exotic birds and the freight trains passing behind the back hedge then i had a nap and have been exploring Adelaide for the rest of the day... very nice looking place except for the 70s tower block excrescence, at least it does not look too pretentious. Much bigger town than i thought and reminds me a little of New Orleans with its colonial lay out. I am sure I am going to have a lot of fun here! We are setting off to see a jazz band now in Light square (Colonel Light designed the town before dieing a premature death 3 years later from exhaustion it seems).

I go to the primary school tomorrow where i will teach to see what the deal is. I have to get a document from the police proving i am not a molesterer and a SIM card for my mobile phone!!! fancy that!!! and hopefully in the next few days i will be finished my paintings on the trains and towns of this journey and have some interesting new pictures on the website!
wish you all the best
lots and lots and lots of love
xxxxxxxx
jimmy
xxxxxxxxx

ps if you want to write to me here is my postal address until the end of November
JIMMY MONAHAN
C/O Martucci Family
9 Pulsford road
Prospect
Adelaide
South Australia
OZ

WEEKEND IN DEVON

I have just come back from a wonderful weekend with the HOTSY TOTSY in Devon. On friday we took a train from London to Exeter. There was a lovely Eritraen family sitting next to us on the train and the children were very excited looking out of the window and whooping at all the cows and horses and the rivers. The smallest boy had us all laughing when he told us about going to the sea to catch a fish or maybe a wooden whale and how he did not like the yellow trains because they were stuffy and when absolutely everyone in the train burst out laughing he turned to his brother (about 6 years old I think) and started pummilling him and saying "Its NOT funny!".

From Exeter we  took a little bus along very tight winding roads to Chagford. We had to reverse at lots of spots where there was no room in the tiny hedged lane for cars to pass eachother. We got chatting to a lady living in Chagford who was originally from California. I told her we had no place to stay and at the gig somehow a lovely lady found heard the news and put us up. Her lovely boyfriend Phil took us back to her house (she went to bed early to go to work next morning as a nurse) and we were treated like guests of honour. The next morning Phil drove us to Embercombe, a pretty hard destination to arrive at by local transport... door to door! He was our first guardian angel of the weekend. He is a bass player with THE INVISIBLE OPERA COMPANY OF TIBET and several other bands and has lived the life of a solid musician. He has definitely heard the chimes at midnight and was really lovely to all of us! He went out of his way to drive us to Embercombe even though he was going to arrive late for his auction at Bovey Tracey. What a wonderful guy!

It was great to see all the folks at Embercombe again! It is an alternative community on the western edge of Dartmoor (http://www.embercombe.co.uk/). The people there are so lovely and really sincere. Caring for eachother and their visitors and the earth and our common future! Jo, one of the chief organisers and organic farmers on the site was turning 60 and he was partying to the max. It was a lavish spread of food and we had a swim in the lake and eat our fill and more before playing a couple of sets on the small stage. It was really fun. Several other performers did their thing and I stayed up till around 3 or 4 am (a long time in the country where the nights get dark soon) getting in and out of the hot tub, dancing and jamming out with Tom beneith the wonderful firmament of stars. The next day was all about jamming outside our teepee where we had slept and more swimming and stretching and eating and music and nice shared conversations with the visitors. All lovely people! it was so relaxed and friendly and fun!

This is where our new guardian angel Greg took over. He is a professional guitarist and mouth harmonca player who has a studio for his wrapping paper company near the Dart river towards Totnes but mostly sleeps in the back of his beautiful van. We all piled in and he drove us to Totnes... once again door to door. We had a little picnic in the park on the island in the river dart then strolled up the hill to the Barrellhouse for the gig. We started when the first person walked into the bar and since we had nothing to loose I danced and gave it a bit too much... good time to test out stuff in an informal setting. The first set was fun but the second set really took off when lots more people came out of the night streets and started dancing like mad and after our last song Laurence came up with the wolds most perfect encore! I heard the first few chords and then sussed what he wanted to do and leapt up onto the bar counter and standing next to the spinning silver disco ball I started playing ITS A WONDERFUL WORLD! When Wednesday started singing it was so beautiful i wanted to hug everyone in the audience and I tried with one arm while playing the melody but it went a bit wrong anyhow, people got the idea. It was one of the very very very few times, or maybe even the first time, when i actually felt the thrills and shivers on my back while playing! It was truly wonderful and after the gig I went about with the hat and embracing everyone! It was brilliant! A wonderful shared experience. 

We said goodnight to Greg and he went back to the pub. We will meet again. He handed us over to our next guardian angel, Helen. She is the mother of a former flat mate of Laurence and took us to her small home outside Totnes where we filled the sitting room and spare room with our sleeping mats and bags but all to her delight. She is the loveliest lady and her boyfriend, an artist from a village not far away, makes wonderfully simple and moving watercolours and 3D models and automatons from scrap paper and card. He is so inventive and his work is so positive and full of unsophisticated beauty it reminded me of some great Japanese artists.

We slept long and hard and in the morning took a very long leasurly breakfast and a walk in the local hills before getting a ride to the station and taking the train to Dawlish where we all jumped out and messed around for a couple of hours on the beach and strolling around town watching the Dawlish carnival. The best part by far was the sack races with a bucket on your head! It was truly wonderful! About 60 kids were involved and we laughed and laughed and laughed as they hopped, fell, bumped into eachother and tried different techniques. The funniest was the little boy who moved off at a snails pace and the girl who did not even bother to look out of the hole in her bucket hat but just leapt forward at top speed bumping into anything in her way! 

The train was delayed at Exeter so Tom and I had a breakdance session for 40 minutes there before our train eventually arrived. Who should be on it but our little Eritraen friends who we had sat next to on our outward journey. I came to visit them but like me they were all very exhausted after a wonderful weekend and were all asleep. I followed suit and slept until Paddington station. I met them again at the platform but the small boy was too tired to care about who he met so i just gave his brothers high fives then tootled back home to kings cross!

 A wonderful weekend, lots of thanks to all the in band, Phil, Helen, Greg, Jo and the many others who were so kind to us!

  lots of love

 jimbino

 xxxx

Paintings from Asia

LUANG PRABANG on the Mekhong River

THE CAPITAL OF LAOS

Buddha statues under a tree

The ukulele player for Jaja band in Nagoya Japan in JAJA BAR!

Our hostess in Nagoya in a temple there with a hippy playing jewls harp in the background

Here is a small selection of paintings from Asia when I was there 3 years ago but which I only recently finished. Above is a Noh theatre performance in Japan and below are some of the characters in the traditional masked play:

A kind of devil dog

A royal hunter who slays the devil dog

Some priest or king or samarai

A chinese lady playing a kind of Tsimbalim

Tea cup and Lindyhop dancers sculptures and breakdancer

THE BUSCUIT AND TEA CUP

A mug I made for my dad, you can drink tea from the top and put buscuits to keep warm

in the mouth lower part!

My cup for my dads birthday, with a mouth where he can put his buscuits... not an original idea but an original nose for sure!

I based the figure a bit on my memories of the Green Man

of English myth... he is a wild fella who carries a huge club and represents fertility!

A present for my wild dad! May his energy never diminish! He he!

SCUPTURE OF ALEKSIS AND HANNA REETA

I made a small 15 centemeters high sculpture for our Finnish friends who invite Triin and myself frequently over to Finland for gigs in Tampere at the swing dance school there.

They celebrated their wedding in mid Febuary 2010 but the piece was not yet quite finished.

Hopefully by April it will all be glazed and maybe even painted.

They are a lovely couple and also very good swing dancers with an appetite for fun.

Breakdancer

This is a sculpture of a breakdancer which I made while studying Art Foundation at Filton College Bristol in 2001. I exhibited it in France that summer in Fougeres during my time as a Young European Artist in residence near the castle there and one of the local kids we were breakdancing with stole it from the gallery. Quite flattered! He could have taken the Video player!

artwork summer 2010 estonia

Stadium in tallinn with Edwin my Latvian friend posing.

Some paintings from Tallinn which will describe my life there a little in the summer!

A free open air concert outside the house where I live (Uus Maailm Community House) by visiting Finnish French duo called the bee and the blue sky.

Marta Marmor making string at the Uus Maailm street festival 2009

Some friends at Uus Maailm seltsimaja. Including Erko, Ivo, Eliisa and Maria. Funnily enough the picture of Erko on the top left looks a lot like my friend Bots! Close up pictures below:

Eliisa Ehin

Ivo

Erko, one of my living heros!

My football buddies who live near Triin's flat in Tallinn. From left to right: Artem, Erik, Maxim and Ahmed. They are all Russian speakers with virtually no understanding of Estonian. Ahmed's parents are from Adzabaijhan.

Hannis and his friend playing chess in the courtyard of Uus Maailm. They both work at the Velokuur, the community cycle workshop helping customers to fix their own cycles.

Maria, a lovely Tartu girl who bravely tried to make a documentary about our band in Tallinn.

A coloured in stencil of the bridge bordering Uus Maailm quarter from Kriistina. It looks like a cover of a detective novel. I really like this style and would like to experiment more with it.

The blues man, visiting musicians come and play concerts in our yard. This was a great show by a top New Orleans blues musician. This party continued until the police came.
Pirita beach lies a couple of kilometers east of Tallinn. It was the site of the 1980 watersports olympics and is a lovely spot to bath and relax.

The amazingly entertaining Estonian Blind Orchestra (find out more in my seperate blog all about them entitled Blind Orchestra of Tallinn).

Ago Niklaas, Triin's lovely flatmate. Like everyone in that flat he is a music student. A wonderful young lad who is now serving in the Estonian army for his 1 year compulsary service.

Clarinet player in the theatre in Tallinn

Estonian Banana

Drunk young Finn at my friends wedding carried to the sofa to relax.

My brothers Tom and Louis at New Romny Station on the minature railway in SE England

Tom, Louis (in chair) dad and Klara at our camping site on Romney Marsh July 2010

Brighton Beach, summer 2008 I think

Triin and some other musicians at Herrang dance camp July 2010