What A Wonderful World?

If you're a follower of this blog or any of my blogs or a friend on Facebook, you would know that I love Libera. So when I saw their latest blog on their website, I couldn't resist sharing it, along with the preview for their new song:


Libera has been all over the place……to America, Japan, Philippines, Korea, Singapore, all over the world – in fact, to the other side of the world. But now, the trip to top all trips…..Leeds in the North of England !

‘W-H-A-T I-S G-O-I-N-G O-N’ we all wondered?

We had an exciting purpose of going there. It was to record the song ‘Wonderful World’ at a 1800’s MILL, which meant of course we would have to leave our nice white robes at home and get ourselves covered in something they call….. DIRT – but in film type make up form. My reaction to this was ‘Dirt, what a peculiar prospect! Jolly ho, let’s not waste another moment, cover me immediately in mud, dirt, soot etc. It is my natural habitat.’

Of course the journey between London and Leeds was quite long, so the usual scenarios happened. ‘Where’s my tablet?’ ‘Did you seriously eat all of it, and keep none for me?’ ‘Barbara, can I have my DS back please?’ ‘Kuba can you stop talking about Pokemon?’ But then Mr Peabody and Sherman came to the rescue on the coach DVD, and all was peace and calmness.

Anyway the next day was a ‘Wonderful’-Day! We were off to the mills to record ‘Wonderful World’, and as I said earlier, we had to get rid of our robes and get covered in the aforementioned dirt. We got dressed in old-fashioned ragged dirty clothes, which enabled us to look the part. On a more serious note we were re-enacting one of the most horrific jobs in the history of the Industrial Revolution. So our clothes and dirt were not for a kind of nice friendly Oliver Twist scene, with happy boys dancing and singing about pickapocketortwo, but more real – we had to have bare feet for a start – and we were to be working in the mill where children would have to crawl under dangerous machines risking their lives. We all had different parts to play: nippers, weighers, machine cleaners (one of the most dangerous jobs of all), floor cleaners, hand spinners and bobbin basket carriers.

The children would have been working very hard for very long hours each day and due to the awful working conditions they would not have seen much of the outside world. Their world in itself may not have seemed altogether too wonderful either. Some may indeed have been optimistic about themselves but not all.

We all learnt a lot about the history and the cruelty to children working in the mills. Not that we could hear much – the machine made the most ghastly noise. They told us that most of the children became deaf. It was all so sad, and we felt a bit guilty really as we were kind of play-acting what was real life to them, almost as if their ghosts were around us.

Anyhow, back to the 21st Century, evening came and we went back to the place where we were staying to spend our final night and had a massive Italian meal – in other words, pizzas - on the way.

The next morning we got up at our own times and went down for breakfast. We had the whole rest of the day in Leeds, so we went to see the charming sights of Leeds. It was a nice, sunny day so we started the day by heading to the accommodation’s grounds where we played a bit of football which is very popular in Libera. Then to the Media Museum which is rather nicely related, as it is all about film and television. Later on we went back to our rooms to pack our stuff into our suitcases. We got to the coach and made our way to our next destination. The Park. We played our world famous chase game called ‘Disease”. After about an hour we decided to move out to a zoo. There were orangutans, crocodiles and even blue whales (okay that last one was a bit of a fib!) Anyhow, it was time to head back to London, and we were all sad to be leaving but happy to be reuniting with our families. This was a tour that was not going to be forgotten quickly. Now we are all looking forward to see what the film will look like!