JUST had a week away from the whole Brexit bollocks on tour in Norway and Finland with my wife Robina. A welcome relief, though I was still talking about it for ages on stage of course.

Started off in Trondheim, a lovely city we’ve visited many times before, as guests of our friend Torgeir, who runs local label and independent shop Crispin Glover Records. I’d been invited to perform at a hip-hop festival, which may seem bizarre.

In fashion and general subculture terms it is, because a baseball-capped B-boy or gun-totin’ gangsta I most certainly am not. But in terms of a substantial part of my words and delivery it is the most logical thing in the world.

We arrived last Wednesday weekend and, after a couple of days enjoying the city, it was time for the main event. I was preceded on stage by the local heroes, a bunch of accomplished 20-year-olds with all the right-hand signals and moves, though since they were rapping in Norwegian I had absolutely no idea what they were on about.  

The whole place was bouncing and everyone was filming them on their phones. “Following this is going to be a bit of a challenge,” I thought. But I needn’t have worried. Right across the Nordic countries the level of English comprehension is astounding and I got a brilliant reception from an audience, many of whom were a third my age. A most uplifting experience.

And so to Finland, where I had last performed 30 years ago. We arrived in Helsinki to dark, brooding clouds and a frozen sea but the next day the sun came out and we travelled to Riihimaki for a Sunday afternoon gig in a local cultural centre.

From there we headed for Tampere for two gigs and a solid dose of European revolutionary history. At the beginning of the 19th century, Finland was an autonomous province of tsarist Russia, sufficiently far away for revolutionaries hunted by the Russian authorities to use it as an organisational base.

The first conference of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party took place at the Workers’ Hall in Tampere in 1905 and during it there was a crucial secret meeting of the Bolshevik majority faction, where the decision was made to start an armed uprising against the Russian empire.

This move led eventually to the October Revolution of 1917 and, immediately after it, a victorious Lenin signed the document granting Finland its independence from Russia. The Workers’ Hall in Tampere is now home to the last surviving Lenin museum in Europe and we had a most enjoyable visit examining historical documents and artefacts.

I then had the privilege of taking comrade Lenin for a spin on a revolutionary-era motorbike, as the accompanying picture shows. My two gigs in Tampere were great fun too, and many thanks to Jukka and Thea Juntilla for their hospitality and organisational efforts.

Then back to Helsinki for a fantastic gig last Wednesday at Bar Loose. We had the most fantastic time and I certainly won’t leave it 30 years before I come back.

Talking of European history, advance notice of an important gig coming up at East Oxford Community Centre on the afternoon of Sunday April 14. Historian and activist John Rees and myself will be hosting Levellers, Diggers and Ranters, an afternoon of discussion, poetry and song celebrating the radical movements which sprung up after the English Revolution of 1649.

I shall be performing songs from my new “early-meets-punk” album Restoration Tragedy and the new Abiezer Coppe T-shirt will be on sale.

Not for the faint hearted! All details at facebook.com/events/2191279887867762/