Eugh, lemsips are horrible. I put three sugars in it, yet it still tasted like paracetamol. I know Paul really likes them, is he mad? I'm glad it was the last one anyway. Even though I guess it alleviates cold symptoms by ooooh 1%, I'd rather not drink the fucking poison.
Yes, I have a cold. It's not overly horrendous, I do feel slightly ill but it's not stopping me doing anything. I just don't like being full of mucus, and it feels like a lot of it has sat on my chest. It's also fucked up my singing voice, which I'll need for Friday. If the cold could piss off by then I'd be most grateful.

The next section of this blog may contain bad language. I am sorry but the word 'cunt' is the best way to describe people who are, well…cunts.
My car is parked next to Dave's this morning. Dave works on our site occasionally; he drives here in his "baby". It looks like an estate car, but one with fancy tyres and spoilers on it. I've seen some more OTT car bodywork in my time, but it is obviously the motor of a car obsessive. This is confirmed if you talk to him for longer than 30 seconds. He tells you about the speeds he has managed in it, the engine modifications and the nitrous oxide he has fitted. Most of it goes completely over my head. Cars are extraordinarily dull. I think he goes to car shows and I am 100% convinced he is in various car clubs. He probably spends his leisure time on specialist websites, talking about his latest bit of body-kit and swapping pictures with other obsessives.
Last night on the way home from London, I was overtaking a Fiesta on the motorway. Even though my car is fast and a popular boy-racer car, I have it for two reasons. Reason number one is that I vastly prefer smaller cars; they fit in the garage easier and look less like penis subsitutes. Reason number two is that driving is boring, and I like to have a car that can get me from A to B in the shortest time possible.
So I managed to do London to Preston in three hours last night. The roads were quite empty and I put my foot down. I didn't race anyone though or try to intimidate anyone off the road.
Anyway, as I was overtaking the aforementioned Fiesta, he deliberately pulled into my lane to prevent me from getting past him. I had to slam the brakes on, and suitably annoyed, I flashed my lights at him.
He then drove faster than he had been doing so I dropped in behind him. A couple of miles further on though he dropped his speed considerably so I went to overtake. Again, he did a blocking manoeuvre. Why? Was I offending his manhood by putting my faster car further down the road than his? Or was he just a cunt? I'm thinking it may be both reasons.
I just didn't get it; you can see lots of bad driving on the road and some staggering examples of how inconsiderate people can be to each other. A lot of the time though you can see how somebody can possibly justify something to himself or herself, even though they might be totally in the wrong.
This guy was just being a dick, because he didn't want to be overtaken by a Citroen Saxo. I don't think it would be a great leap of the imagination to suggest that he may be the sort of person who shows ill consideration for other people he meets in life.
My link between the Fiesta driver and people like Dave (who when not talking about cars is reasonably affable) is that I think both are the sort of people who see the car as an extension of their masculinity. So many young (and not so young men) see a car as a way of stating how far up they are in the male pecking order.
The ridiculous cunts.
I have to laugh at young men cruising around towns and cities, hoping that the fact that their car has an exhaust that delivers a 100+ decibel loud farting noise may make them more attractive to young women. The ridiculous cunts.
So many terrible things have happened in this world due to the need for men to assert their masculinity. It takes all forms, most of them illogical and stupid.
Bah, I could go on and on about this forever, ranting about mans need to hunt, or how absurd it is when modern day man tries to stake his position in "the tribe" (modern day man has many different tribes). But I won't, I think I'll summarise it all in a nice little soundbite. Hmm, let me think…
Okay, here goes. Most of the men who are members of car clubs should be boiled alive. The ridiculous cunts.

I think we'll start with that and move on from there.
Swear words will now be toned down 80%. I don't want you thinking I've gone a bit Liam.

I've had a mental few days. Really mental.
I read the Embrace message board and last week they had a competition looking for 25 boys and 25 girls to appear in the video for the next single Ashes. I replied ) and we were chosen to go. It involved a trip to London yesterday, to meet at a West End theatre.
Jesus, I woke up at about 2am on Tuesday morning having mammoth panic attacks about the whole thing. We hadn't been told what the video would entail, just that we should wear black.
So at 6am yesterday morning we set off to London. I had to use the last of my holidays for the year on it; a fact that I think will come to haunt me over the last three months of the year. I've never actually driven to London before and was pleasantly surprised when we got there within 5 hours. We actually went on the toll road to see if was paved with gold and had cartoon trees singing songs beside it, like something out of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It didn't, but it did allow us to avoid Birmingham during the morning rush hour.
We parked up at Euston station and went to find the theatre. Once we had found it, we wondered into a nearby pub and found a group of people also there for the video. It was really nice to place a face to people I'd seen the name of on the message board. It calmed me down a bit as well, meeting a group of people in the same boat as we were, and with all the same worries and anxieties that I had. Well, my worries centred on the belief that I may be too un-photogenic, and it was nice to see that I wasn't the only "broken biscuit" there. Heh, seriously though, everybody was really nice and friendly all day.
At 1pm we wandered across to the theatre, had our names checked and were allowed to sit in the circle of the theatre. Down on the main stage people were arranging lights and cameras. Pretty soon the band came on and for about 4 hours there were about a dozen run-throughs of the song, with the cameras in different positions. At first it was really interesting seeing how a video was made, but then when you realised it was long stretches of organising, followed by three minutes of filming, it quickly became slightly boring.
It didn't seem much fun for the band either, though I think they enjoyed messing around for the benefit of the fifty fans watching them from above. We were treated to various jammed covers, from Sting, to Queen, to Joy Division.
At about 6pm we were asked to wait out in the foyer, as they wanted to do some shots with an empty auditorium. For the next 90 minutes we just sat around doing nothing much in particular. I didn't feel particularly well, I was really tired as we'd got up early and travelled a long way; I was really starting to regret actually coming. I wasn't alone in this though, a lot of people seemed quite down.
Then the band wandered through the door next to where we were sat. It was nice to see them and people perked up immediately. Danny chatted to people next to us about how boring it was. It was nice to hear that it had been boring for everyone. The whole band happily mingled, posing for photographs and chatting to anyone who wanted to. I've said it before but they come across as really nice, down to earth people. There is no huge ego here; they are all willing to chat with fans.
I did feel a bit sorry for Richard though. A girl had her photograph taken with him and then ran off. She was obviously a bit overawed by it all, but Richard seemed willing to chat, and looked a bit startled when she ran off without saying a word. He does seem a thoroughly decent chap though and I made sure I shook his hand when we left later on. I also shook Mickey's as well, for pretty much the same reasons.
Danny had to scarper pretty quickly though, and it soon became clear why. Everyone had woken up and cheered up after the band had paid a visit and now it was time for us to do our thing. We went downstairs and were asked to stand in the centre of the room in a bunch. The camera was right behind Danny's head (the rest of the band stood watching and egging us on nearby) and whilst the last bit of the song played, we'd have to jump up and down and look excited.
Danny did his best at making us relax, by jokingly saying that he'd batter us if we looked shit after all the hard work he'd done. He also told us to not worry about looking like idiots, as who really gives a fuck? And he was right. I'm always "too cool for school" at gigs, nodding appreciatively and singing along. I've only ever jumped around like an idiot at a gig once before (Idlewild - Lancaster Sugarhouse 2000) and I've always been slightly jealous of those who are less self-conscious and give in completely to how they feel. But Danny geed us all up and I jumped up and down like a lunatic for the last 30-40 seconds of the song. We filmed it three or four times and the director was laughing at how mental we'd been. The band were also laughing at us strange people who kept following them around.
Then the band said bye and vanished and we had to do another 7 or 8 takes, with all fifty of us moved into different parts of the auditorium. The idea was that by using camera jiggery-pokery, the fifty of us could be multiplied to look like a mental mass of 400. Heh, if it comes out right, we'll look like the most enthusiastic audience ever.
Just before the very last group shot, the band appeared again and joined us at the back for jumping up and down. Danny became repulsed at the thought that he could be giving the eye to himself from the stage. So we jumped up and down for one last time, with all five members of the band trying to out-spaz us all.
Oh I forgot that we had to do it from the centre again with a scary close-up lens. Eek!
After all the boredom and waiting during the day, the last hour and a half made it a great experience. I don't know if it'll be easy to see us in the video, or if we'll just look like dots. I don't really care now. It was just a quality and really random experience. The band said bye to us and we were let loose into the night. (Note: Not the band 'let loose'. We didn't transform into them and start doing a cover of Crazy For You).
I'd assumed that the crew and staff would be surly media types but they were far from it. We were treated well all day, and it's not the fault of the crew that making music videos is quite a dull thing.
So, whatever the end result, I met some really nice people and got to spend a day watching my favourite band record a video that should be a top ten hit. I can't praise them highly enough.

I see that the NME today has several letters from Embrace fans, slagging off the 1/10 review that the album got and laughing that the album got to number 1. The NME reacted in its usual childish way, mocking the people who had written in and just making themselves look even worse. For a whole magazine to be so full of vitriolic hatred for a band who have produced their best work of the last 6 years smacks of an agenda and a set policy of what is good and what is bad. Sigh. Idiots.

On Friday night we saw Brendan Benson in Wolverhampton. There was a disappointing amount of people in The Little Civic, which is a shame as Brendan was really good. He only played a few songs off Lapalco but his new material seems very strong.
Bizarrely somebody in Bristol had warned him that the people in Wolverhampton wouldn't put up with him being pretentious and I think this made him nervous. God knows why somebody said that to him, as he was good-natured and appreciative of applause all night.
What do Bristol people think Wolverhampton is? Some place where self-important singer / songwriters are burned at the stake for the ungodly way that they can play a guitar at the same time as singing? If Bristol people think this badly of Wolverhampton, who knows what may happen. All the people in Bristol could have a meeting and decide that they are so upset at the way Wolverhampton treats people playing acoustic guitars that they declare war. The people of Wolverhampton would know nothing of this danger and end up being slaughtered in their beds. Slaughtered in their beds!
I may phone the mayors of both cities tonight and request peace talks. Bobby McFerrin could be my peace envoy.