Hot air balloons… An enigmatic topic for a very prolific chat with Dede, Thomas and Darren from We Have Band, after their gig on 2nd August!
How do you call flying in a hot air balloon? Ballooning, balloonage,
balloonment?
Dede - Isn’t it ballooning?
Thomas - I quite like balloonage though.
Darren - I think balloonage is more the group of people, or when you’re involved in that.
Dede - Yeah, like an entourage. Maybe they’re the people that accompany the people ballooning. Instead of entourages, they’re balloonages…
Darren - No! (laughing) It’s rather: “Oh what are you into? I’m into balloonage”…
Dede - Or “I’m part of a balloonage…”
Darren - And you then go ballooning.
Thomas - Like: “Are you part of the balloonage scene”?
Darren and Dede - Yes, totally!
Darren - “Yeah I’m really into balloonage, you know, and good food, lovely wine.”
What would be the best print on a hot air balloon? Best colour, design?
Thomas - I quite like the sort of swirly ones.
Dede - I like swirly ones and stripy ones. I like bright colours.
Thomas - Or a bit of retro.
Dede - I’ll tell you what I don’t like, I don’t like if they have Mickey Mouse on them, all that Disney shit…
Thomas - I’m a bit bored of that fucking Virgin thing. In the 90s, whenever you turned on the news, Richard Branson’s face would be there in his hot air balloon.
Darren - He was always ballooning somewhere…
Dede - It’s like obsessive balloonage, isn’t it?
laughter
Thomas - And he always crashed, he kept on crashing!
Unfortunately, this is the exact moment my so-called friend the Handy Recorder decides to let us down, go for a nap filled with all electronic dreams and recording fantasies, which is not what we hired it for, let’s be honest. But what can you do? Back then, I was
positive about my ability of recollecting all the major hot air balloons issues we addressed, but very surprisingly, my mind is now a blank. So I’m very grateful that Thomas and Darren drew up a quick recap of our chat on the spot :
Thomas and Darren - We hate balloons, we don’t like Richard Branson, we wondered how big the basket of a hot air balloon is, size of a small car, five people, balloonage is the general term for people who are involved in ballooning, they like camembert, Chilean wine,
balloonage.
Do you have a story to tell us about hot air balloons?
Darren - Oh I have a story about balloons. At school, you’d put a tag on a helium balloon, with your name and address on it, and you’d let it go, and then you’d wait for someone to write to you. Somebody in
France, in Calais or something, wrote to a kid in my school, that was amazing!
Dede - I think your teacher wrote the letter…
Darren - Shh shut up, next question!
Where would you want to fly with a hot air balloon?
Darren - We actually really wouldn’t.
Thomas - If I did, it’d be the Isle of Wight maybe.
Dede - I don’t want to do sea, so I’d just like to go over the English countryside.
Thomas - No, I’d be more relaxed to go over sea than over land. It’s soft landing if you crash…
Dede - But what if you can’t get out?
Thomas - Oh well, I don’t want to do it anyway, I’d shit myself. Or maybe I’d go to Calais, I’d go to a Hypermarche, get some cheap booze and then come back…
Dede - Have a balloonage night.
What is your favourite song or album linked to hot air balloons?
Dede - What about the Pink Floyd one with the big pig, it looks like a hot air balloon but it’s a floating pig… (Animals by Pink Floyd)
Darren - Actually I remember this book! “Hop hop and away went the red balloon, hop hop and away!” It’s this kid who’s on a hot air balloon and then picks up his friends, Charlie and John, and “hop hop and away
went Charlie, hop hop and away went John”. Then they pick someone else and by the end of it, it was: hop hop and away went this massive list of people. It’s good, isn’t it? (Unknown book…)
Dede - Well… I think instead of the album, we’ll go for the story.
Can you pick next week’s hot topic?
Darren - Can it be elephants? Elephants it is!