Today is St. George's day, the patron saint of England.
What isn't widely known is that St. George is also the saint of Kerplunk, Dusty Springfield and being lost on an A-road but finding an old map in the boot of your car.

Happy being lost on an A-road day! Check for a map in your boot.

I'd Like To Stab People Who Talk AT Gigs In The Neck. With A Knife.

When you go to one of the Academy venues in Manchester you invariably end up with a flyer listing the gigs which are on in Manchester for the forthcoming months. Bar for the obvious reason of finding out who is on and where, you also get to roughly find out whether a band is on its way up or slowly fading away to inevitable death.
The Manchester venues can roughly be listed in size, starting with the largest they can be put in the following order:

MEN Arena, Apollo, Academy 1, Academy 2, Academy 3.

There are other venues such as the Roadhouse, Night & Day and Life Café which can be considered on a par with the Academy 3, maybe slightly smaller. If you want to go bigger than the Arena then it has to be a stadium. So, factoring out bands that are deliberately playing smaller and more "intimate" tours you can see what stage in its career a band is in.
Bloc Party played the Academy 1 last week and will be playing the Apollo for two nights in October. On the way up. About five years ago you would have expected JJ72 to be playing the Academy 1 as they were quite popular. Instead they are playing the Academy 3. On the way down. Let's have a winners and losers list.

Winners
Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party, The Arcade Fire, The Futureheads, Audioslave.

Losers
Melanie C, A, JJ72, The Coral.


Chris was investigating on the internet about the calorie values of various alcoholic drinks. As he was doing this he stumbled across a site listing vegetarian beers/wines etc.

Here is the link. What is bizarre is that the list is maintained by a guy who worked with us for several years. I never knew that Geraint was a vegetarian, I only knew him as the metal-looking geezer who did the fuel software modelling.
It appears that several of my favourite tipples aren't vegetarian. I shall be avoiding them from now on.

Paula Gone Done A Whoopsie

Did you see the London marathon on Sunday? About twenty miles into it, Paula Radcliffe stopped and crouched over at the side of the road. At first people thought that the leading female marathon runner in the world had a muscle problem.
No.
Paula Radcliffe had stopped to go to the toilet. But, she didn't go to one of the portaloos dotted around the cousre, she just crouched over at the side of the road and did her business in front of thousands of spectators. Thinking of the look on the spectator's faces as they realised Paula was doing toilet right in front of them makes me giggle.
So, pissing on the street in front of people would be bad enough, but that doesn't seem to be the full story. Radcliffe it seems was suffering from severe stomach pains and had to go there and then. Now, if you have stomach cramps, it isn't a slash you need is it?
It appears that Paula Radcliffe, supreme marathon athlete, HAD A SHIT AT THE SIDE OF THE ROAD!
What? Why? How? Why? Why? Why?
Now, if I go to the toilet for that sort of activity and take a magazine with me, I have to cover up the eyes of anyone looking out of the page at me (too much information there Glenn). I can't have people staring into my soul whilst I do "dirty", but Paula seems to be quite happy to dump fizzy chocolate in the gutter in front of hundreds of people cheering her on.
Still, that just makes me giggle even more at the look on the spectator's faces.
I haven't seen the footage but I wonder if she dragged her arse on the ground, like dogs do when they have worms.

Last weekend was spent decorating. We painted the walls in the spare room and then put down flooring. It looks okay, but nearly drove me insane on Sunday. I can see why it is now a discontinued range, as it didn't seem to want to stay together. I then had to take the door off, saw a small bit off the bottom and then reattach it.
I'm sure I've inhaled about two trees worth of sawdust. I've probably got an MDF tree growing in a lung. The MDF tree is a fruit producing tree, yet sadly that fruit is the Cancerberry.
I didn't feel much like painting on Saturday as Friday had seen a works piss-up. What started as my idea to take a Thursday afternoon off so a few of us could drink ourselves stupid whilst playing pool, evolved into a Friday afternoon/evening booze session for over a dozen people. As organiser, I ended up carrying the kitty. This wasn't too bad at first because it meant that I could force people to go into the pubs that I wanted to go in. As the night wore on though and I lost the ability to count and think, it became a pain in the arse.
The agenda for the day was The Ship Inn, The Lamb & Packet, The Old Black Bull (we wanted to go to the New Britannia but it was shut), The Black Horse, Revolution, Wellies, The Exchange and finally The Railway.
Everything was quite civil at first, until we reached the Revolution. We arranged it so everyone had a shot of chilli vodka, one of Kola Kube and one of apple. Some people it seems don't like vodka.
Nige egged me on to try the most potent vodka in the place, and somehow we ended up with a lot more shots.
This meant that Wellies quickly became a mess. I held court with my views on the music scene, until I discovered that Wellies sells 'Purple Rain' cocktails. I steadily degenerated further and further until I fell off my bar stool whilst trying to stop Nige from licking my neck. The bar staff then stopped serving anyone from our party. Apparently the booze, ranting and falling was not what was wanted from their clientele. Fuck 'em, I'm boycotting the place. Hmm, such nice cocktails though.
I bailed out at The Exchange as an appalling Queen / Guns N' Roses medley had started. I managed to eat a giant pizza within about twenty yards from the point of purchase, and then fell down the stairs whilst trying to get some water and painkillers. I like booze.

We're going to see Brendo Benso tonight. That should be nice. We have quite a few gigs coming up, with tickets over the next month or so to see Interpol, Herman Dune, Idlewild, Super Furry Animals, Supergrass, The National and Embrace (shock!). I'll be able to drink at some of them as well. Yay!

Other plans are a trip to The Lakes this weekend, to walk the full trek around Grizedale Forest. I'm really looking forward to that.
Then the weekend after we're going to St. Ives. That should also be fun.

Alan the fish died last Friday. Poor Alan. We didn't have him that long as he developed swim-bladder problems. I think I may get another couple of fish soon, the ones we have look quite lonely.