Lot to catch up on, as I have been quite busy.
Last Thursday was the start of the autumn tour. We went to see Frank Black in Liverpool with birthday girl Julia and rickety ex-hippy Johnny H. It was cool, the place was packed and he even played a couple of Pixies songs. Which if I’m honest, was what I was hoping for. Bizarrely, all four of us ended up leaving with t-shirts emblazoned with the same Pixies logo. Can you imagine the hil-ar-ity if we all wore them at the same time? When out together? Ha ha ho ho ho! No, I can’t imagine it being funny either. More embarrassing, than funny. Like the state of my underpants.
We also had the fun of being stuck in a traffic jam on the way home. For a bit of a laugh, a tanker had decided to dump tonnes of diesel on the M6, meaning it was shut. Therefore, all of the lorries in the world, plus our two cars, had to take the A-road from Wigan to Preston. I’d have cried if I hadn’t have been so tired.
Watched Adaptation on Friday. For the first twenty minutes I thought I really wouldn’t like it, but I’ve thought about it a few times this week and have decided to give it “two thumbs up”. I’m not going to spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it yet, but I recommend you do. Go on then!
On Saturday we ended up in the warehouse. The excuse for going was the Belle & Sebastian promo, where we claimed more than our fair share of free stuff but missed the big prizes. Bah!
Marie was incapacitated due to her rib injury so had to sit out the spaztastic dancing that myself, Liam, Paul and Johnny H indulged in all night. Sometimes in the warehouse I don’t feel like dancing, but last Saturday I rarely stopped. I think at one time I went temporarily mental, spazzing to the point of exhaustion to There Goes The Fear, doing Karen O impressions to Maps, producing ‘one of the most erotic things I’ve ever seen’ (copyright L.Astley) by dancing to Beyonce with Paul, and almost bouncing through the ceiling in a group to Soldier Girl. I think that was my favourite actually, jumping up and down to the happiest song ever recorded.
On the way home, we lost half of the party, some to hidden Narnia-like parties, some to other friends. Like all good nights, a stop at Poppadom Palace (where the magic never ends) produced a gorgeous looking pizza.
Ahem…
You see, for some reason I couldn’t be bothered carrying the Belle & Sebastian poster I had, so I stuffed it up my sleeve. Which made bending my left arm impossible. Which made holding a pizza box difficult. Which made me dropping the pizza inevitable. Bah, almost all a lovely 12” mushroom pizza lay near the adelphi roundabout, saying ‘why?’ to me. Why do you not want me? Was I not good enough for you?
Hee hee, it was a good night though, most agreeable.
Sunday was quiet and mainly involved the scientific discovery that Marie’s industrial strength painkillers made her very travel sick.
On Monday we went to Liverpool, to see Lowgold. I didn’t think it would be packed out, they’re a band with quite a low profile. Mariestats accurately counted 62 people in the audience. It was a shame, as it was a really good performance from an “old-school” indie band. It’s obviously not popular music at the moment, which is a real shame. We’re a dying breed…
I got a cool T-shirt as well, one quite correctly stating “Keep Music Miserable”.
On Tuesday (Birthday Eve) we were meant to go and see Jeffrey Lewis in Manchester. With one thing and another, and with Marie still suffering when travelling, we decided to give it a miss. This again was a real shame. Never mind, he’s over here a lot, I’m sure we’ll see him next time. I still have his Black & Decker sander as well.
On Wednesday IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY! I was 29. Twenty-fucking-nine!
I remember my eighteenth birthday quite clearly, I also remember my twenty-first. Twenty-five, twenty-seven and twenty-eighth are all clear in mind, every other one is a complete mystery. I think that’s mainly because I’ve never really celebrated them before, I’ve always been kinda miserable about them. The last few years I’ve made an effort and they’ve invariably been rewarding.
Anyway, on Wednesday, eleven of us went to DB Mex in town to have some nice food and sparkling chatter. I’ve been there quite a few times now, but many of our party haven’t, and Paul did some investigations using the interweb. This is what he found about the restaurant…

D.B. Mex Restaurant
Preston
Bookings Advisable!
We are mainstream but Gay and TS friendly Offering Authentic Mexican
Cuisine 7 Nites a week, in an informal and friendly atmosphere. 70
Covers. At the w/ends a lively...Disco
I often take customers to a Local Gay Club and it's not unknown for
"Friends" to "come back to mine" and PARTY till Dawn! I'm well known
(obviously..ask Basil in B'pool! Flamingo's etc)
If I can help some T-Girls to have a good time.

So, the above caused some questions amongst my friends. Hee hee. It was really nice, the food was good and I was really chuffed with the turnout. Friends of mine who hadn’t really spoken for a couple of years seemed to get on well again, everybody seemed to really enjoy it, and that was my main priority.
I got a quality selection of presents and cards, so thank you to all, who somehow saw me as worth the bother of getting a card and/or present for.
On Thursday, work brought me back down to earth with a bump. I’ve alluded to it before in this weblog, but over the last few weeks it’s been simmering and simmering. I guess the situation has been waiting for a spark, in a way I guess it still is. For the last couple of years, I’ve been widely seen as second in command of our team at work, I always take the role when the boss is away for whatever reason. He’s always known this, he used to be okay with it, but he isn’t anymore, and his girlfriend is really annoyed at it. It’s a long story but at the end of last week, we had some changes in roles and various emails going around, stating who was doing what. Well, they really didn’t like this, and have started sending emails behind my back, probably moaning about the current situation. I guess I’m just really naïve, I mean, it’s a business. People are bound to be a bit cutthroat, especially where their career is concerned. I’m not like that though, I prefer to treat people with some sort of respect, some kind of morals. Anyway, it seems to have led to open animosity now. Maybe that’s for the best, at least this way it may get sorted. Here’s hoping anyway. You spend about 40% of your waking life at work, if that is a horrible experience, I think it may be better to do something about it. I’m just hoping apathy, cowardice and general reservations about change, don’t stop me doing what is right for me and the people I care for.
Before I mention the weekend just gone, can I say that ‘Peep Show’ is the best thing on TV at the moment.
On Saturday night we went out into town. Marie met up with her friend Donna, it was only a quick drink due to circumstances but hopefully Marie will see more of her friend in the future. It annoys me when I lose touch with friends, usually due to laziness and being forgetful.
We ended up in the warehouse as usual, it promised to be a good night but virtually the only dancing we got to do was when the place was quite empty early on. At about 1am, we sacked it off because it was too full, packed with gibbons and not enjoyable anymore.
I think the majority of the problems with Saturday night concerned the football earlier on. The England V Turkey game had finished by the time we left the house, yet the pubs were still full of very pissed football fans. We met up with Donna, Paul, Johnny H and his friend in The Ship, usually one of my preferred pubs in Preston. It was rammed and people were drinking outside. It looked slightly grim from the start but after about two minutes, a chant of ‘If you all hate pakis, clap your hands’ went up from a group of five or six. My stomach sank, my anger levels raised, and we sloped off to a different pub. I don’t know why we chose The Black Horse but we ended up in there.
Later on that evening, I went to the toilet and stood queuing and listening in to the conversation taking place. There was a black guy at the urinal who was wearing an England football top. Another man was telling him, ‘You’re black but you’re okay by me’, I believe in reference to the top he was wearing. For some reason, the bloke at the urinal told him he appreciated it, to which the other guy said ‘Coz one day I’m gonna twat one of you lot’.
I don’t know who was most dumbfounded, the bloke at the urinal or me.
This is the reason I no longer follow the English football team, why I don’t give a shit whether they win or lose. What kinship should I share with these dense, knuckle dragging fuckheads? What fucking pride should I have for being English?
This isn’t a handful of troublemakers, this is a large share of the population having beliefs which I personally find abhorrent. England – if God could see it, he’d burn it.

I’d better stop there, I could write pages on this matter. Yet I’d either be preaching to the converted, or writing to people too thick to reason with.

Last night, we travelled with Dave and Liam to Manchester to watch Okkervil River. They were meant to be on in the Tmesis Bar, but when we got there –after Dave made us trail aimlessly round Manc- it was shut. Now luckily, Liam had read on the internet that some places listed the band as actually being on at The Star & Garter, so jumping into a taxi, we went there. Hooray, the correct place!
It was a really old building, and upstairs where the band was playing seemed about 100 years old. Everything had been painted black, I can’t remember any non-boarded up windows and the floor had a slight slope to it. After calming my claustrophobia down, I settled down and really enjoyed it.
Okkervil River were supported by Bluebottle Kiss and a guy called Tom Easton. I think. They were both good, different to each other but agreeable on the ears.
I’d not heard anything by Okervill River themselves, but I thought they were great. I really liked them, not as obviously as Dave seemed to do, but I left feeling happy at hearing a good nights worth of music.
I don’t get this whole playing instruments thing. Seems like voodoo to me. Bah! Musically talented people make me sick.
Two other things to note: the bass player and drummer of Okervill River –who were sat next to us during the support acts- were laughing at me for clapping by using one hand and my head, instead of two hands. Don’t they know this is how we clap in northern England? Eh?
Also, I had an odd moment when I realised at the exact same time as the guy behind the bar, that we were wearing the same Belle & Sebastian badge. Hee hee, we both looked really awkward.
As we were leaving, a guy downstairs was playing ‘since you’ve been gone’ by Rainbow at some sort of open-mic night. Bizarrely, even though we’d heard so much good music that night, that was the song that was stuck in all our heads for the rest of the evening.