A bizarre character called The Lost Airman dropped in on a London gig Saturday night by Evelyn Evelyn, Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley.

And who was that masked man? The audience gasped as he tore off his false ‘tache and eyebrows, popped out the zombie contact lenses, and shed the Galliano coat; then Amanda said “It’s Thomas Fucking Dolby!” And the audience (mostly under 40) didn’t know who the hell Thomas Dolby was either. Never mind, I thought, and launched into an impromptu ‘New Toy’, which I wrote for the original, seldom-credited punk cabaret diva Lene Lovich. Amanda took a good long sniff of her armpit and blasted out a great version of the song, as Jason strummed.

Here’s a fan video clip of the song, which we managed to pull off without bass and drums.

Many thanks to @karohemd for the pics!

I was rather taken with this ‘manual’ clock I saw last week at a museum in Amsterdam. Every minute, a figure in silhouette erases the hand(s) of the clock from behind, and draws new ones. Twenty-four hours a day. Must be expensive to maintain!

I’m not sure who the Dutch dude is, or why he’s wearing white kid gloves.

RijksClockSm

We took a nice little Easter break in Amsterdam, where I managed to score a couple of nice items for the Nutmeg:

A reproduction deep sea divers’ helmet…

… and this WW2 portable explosive detonator designated for ‘Coast Defence’ (!)

We cruised around admiring the waterways and architecture of this wonderful city in great style in an eco-friendly electric motorboat.