No-one listens to women

I don't recommend staying at Terminal 2 at Manchester Airport. I've given it one star on Twitadvisor. Needs must though when one is an impoverished follower of nieuw musiek.

Someone I momentarily came across during my ill-fated PhD was having a piece of hers performed at the Transit festival in Leuven in Belgium. I found a flight to Brussels for £30 return; instead of paid accommodation, I'd have been happy couchsurfing. Trina invited herself along, and paid for an airbnb place; after we split up she said I could keep the studio flat. I couldn't ask Wendy anyone else to come with me as that particular airline wants £110 to change names on the ticket.

Without my chauffeuse, the only way I could be at the airport for an early flight was to improvise a bed there the night before. It was chilly, uncomfortable, and there are endless security announcements all night.

In Leuven, there is nowhere to change money and I was walking around with a hundred and fifty of your useless English pounds. I tried the cashpoint with ever more modest requests until it relented at €30. I bought a baguette, a slab of cheap Gouda -- the sight of which was to become odious to me over the course of the next few days -- and a €3 bottle of wine.

The studio absolutely reeked of a washing powder which -- I think I have understood the Dutch correctly -- is dangerous to asthmatics, gerbils and the elderly. It persisted all weekend and rubbed itself everywhere.

This was not starting well. I had no credit on my phone, I'd left my EU/UK mains adapter at home, and there was no note from the studio's owner about internet access. I felt glum, but the plonk achieved the desired effect and I slept for fourteen hours.

Saturday; and If it's Atonal, it must mean an Unlit Concrete Underpass. Lauren Redhead, with her aptonymic hair dye, had a première piece in which two conversations were going on at either end of the keyboard; a more timid interlocutor was interjecting the odd comment in the middle, before acquiring more confidence. Later, I sat outside a pub, De Metafoor [sic], and heard a girl, who was rattling on one-sidedly to her friend, say "people talk too much sometimes." Conversations can work well between friends even when they are quite unequal. Thus it was in the Redhead piece.

Then Michael Finnissy, who was having a bit of a birthday Festschrift, had one of his pieces where he twists diatonic folk music so far until he gets impatient with it and rips it apart; I really have enjoyed his music for decades now.

Ferneyhough's piece was disappointing, a jumble sale of notes. It sounded like a workaday piece by a journeyman, rather than a thrilling work by the master that he is when he's given time and resources. A shame too, because the title, Quirl, describes one of the sexiest things a woman can do, with or without her clothes on.

Then another piano, for the best piece on the programme, by the Portuguese composer Patrícia de Almeida, who did her doctorate under Finnissy. Her Vacuum corporis hominem tem esse memento was a demanding feat of co-ordination with the other (the co-?) pianist Ben Smith, which motored along like a techno-charged Art Tatum, a joyous blizzard of energy fuelled with rhythms of the Charleston and football chants. It would have been better last: Luc Brewaeys' pieces couldn't hold me after that.

What might seem a disparate programme was connected in a most unusual way: all five pieces were scored for Piano and Air Conditioning Drone with a stipulation that the grey noise of the air conditioning system is to be played throughout and unto the beginning of the next piece.

Quatuor Diotima had not only the best shoes of the weekend, glinting constellations against dark leather matter, but the most exciting piece I heard -- Alberto Posadas's Elogio de la sombra, which sounds nothing like its title, with various extended techniques -- one of which demanded playing con sord. and then bowing across the mutes, which made a weepy snoring sound. It was driving, passionate, and involving.

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In the evening I upped the average age at a free techno night with an all-female DJ line-up called No-one Listens To Women. The music was excellent but the naive young crowd were a downer, texting and standing around talking in the middle of the dancefloor. I'm not going out dancing with young people any more. They've no idea of dancefloor etiquette. I got asked for rugs a few times. In the eyes of young people, I've graduated now to Old Weirdo Who Might Have Something On Him.

The bar staff eventually gave up trying to tell people to put their cigarettes out, and the air became more and more acrid. Outside, in the Grote Markt, the atmosphere was of friendly anarchy. Smashed glass everywhere, people sitting around on the pavement, drinking. A group of three young people asked me where I was from, and at 5am I ended up demonstrating batting and bowling actions in cricket to them.

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Next day I went exploring. My flat was close to the headquarters of the Brabant Nazi Party during the War. This house, built at the turn of the century, had an additional brick course added when it was appropriated by the Nazis. In a Council decision of 17 July 1953, it was decided to retain the house as it appears as a monument to the suffering of the citizens during the Occupation.

Leuven also houses the oldest college in Europe dedicated to the study of bananas.

In the evening I went to a jazz club; felt sorry for the group. Very few people were listening to them.

I decided to take a different route home and I soon got lost. The night was still and enveloping, and it was a liberating, sensual pleasure, to have no idea where I was going.

I ended up on this housing estate with this avenue of giant cannabis plants.

Back at Manchester airport, 11pm and too late for the train home, I settled down with the other international dossers in upgraded accommodation in the Lufthansa/Swissair backroom of T1. Woke up around 5am and sent Wendy a photograph of a dress I'd seen in Leuven, telling her, quite truthfully, that she would look utterly lovely in it. Just need to find €195 down the back of the settee first.