The Icelanders are in trouble with the Chinese again as the Taiwanese Foreign Minister decided to pop in for a ‘private visit’ yesterday. There’s a picture of him on the front page of Fréttablaðið today, sitting in the back of a luxury car sheltering his face from the Icelandic paparazzi [spurt, guffaw]. Meanwhile, the Icelandic Foreign Ministry swears there is nothing remotely official about the visit, the good man is merely here for his own personal enjoyment to visit people in the Icelandic business and educational sectors.

Personally I think it’s pretty damn annoying that he has to visit undercover, just because everyone is afraid to ruffle the feathers of the Chinese. Pfft!

NO SUCH PARANOIA AROUND THE BOSS THOUGH
… Bruce Springsteen, that is, who stopped off here in Iceland two nights ago, en route across the Atlantic. Apparently while waiting in the executive lounge he was in top form, chatting to the staff and generally being a trouper. He then went off somewhere [probably to the bathroom, although they didn’t say that in the paper, tactful Fréttablaðið reporters] at which point his assistant or whoever asked whether they’d like to hear him perform a song or two. There was a generally enthusiastic response [what are they going to say? ‘Er… no thanks’….?] so when The Boss returned from the loo he picked up his guitar and did a mini-gig consisting of six songs, to which everybody sang along. We’ll take more like him, please!

THE CLINTWOOD FIASCO UPDATE
As all you faithful Iceland Weather Report readers know, Messrs. Eastwood and Spielberg will be filming their latest oeuvre in Iceland later this summer. There’s been a harsh debate over whether this should in fact be allowed, since it transpires they plan to detonate explosives so they can make a bunch of craters in the earth. Nature conservationists are understandably upset, but now the Hafnarfjörður town council has decided to let them go ahead as long as they promise to clean up their mess when they’re done. Although how you clean up a bunch of craters in the earth including the associated damage to the surrounding vegetation is beyond YT’s understanding.

As an aside, they’ve announced they’ll be needing 500 sprightly young men as extras. The only casting agency in town has been working overtime on the recruiting, but I have a hunch that it’s not going all that well. Icelanders are not the sort to fall all over themselves just to appear briefly on celluloid, Hollywood-style, particularly if it interferes with their summer holidays. Besides, old Clint should have checked his population figures. With 300,000 Icelanders inhabiting this rock in total, getting 500 of the young male demographic to show up at a predetermined date in a particular location might be a tad difficult. But that’s just YT’s humble and pessimistic opinion. We.shall.see.

MEANWHILE, DURAN DURAN ARE ALIVE AND WELL
And playing in Iceland. Last night, that is. A concert, that is. And also playing in the Blue Lagoon, and a couple of them went to the movies to see War of the Worlds. And they’ve been out sailing and whathaveyou.

Just keeping you informed.

AH YES! THE WEATHER
Is overcast and a little windy. The forecast is not particularly excellent for the upcoming days. What happened to all the sun? Still, I vastly prefer this to what those poor people in Italy and elsewhere in Europe are being subjected to. Or in Canada, for that matter, or so my sources tell me. Temps in the high 30s and low 40s and oh, awful! [That’s Centigrade, obviously]. Current temps up here are 12°C and the sun came up at 03.05 and will go down at 23.57.

Incidentally, I’m taking a short blog break for the next few days for ‘personal reasons’. Sadly it would seem that my back archives have gone AWOL so if you miss me you will not be able to comfort yourselves with ancient blog posts but will simply have to read and re-read what appears on the front page of this blog. I’ve sent a message to blogger but so far they have refrained from responding to my polite and perfectly reasonable queries of WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY ARCHIVES! Tsk.