This is the umpteenth time I've had to ask this question, and I promise that this time I'm just going to save the damn number in my phone, but... please can someone give me the mobile number of lovely Bill and his lovely van?

(It's not for me this time... small mercies).

Enjoyed Black Plastic on Saturday; I recognised practically nothing of Jo's set, but the stuff with guitars sounded like early Spandau and the stuff without guitars sounded like early Human League. Is that Italo disco? Anyway, it takes a true pop scholar to realise that Couples and 'The Perfect Kiss' piss all over Someone to Drive You Home and 'Blue Monday', so well done there. By the end of the night everyone was too pissed to care about being cool and it turned into a great big old-fashioned 80s disco, which was great. Early sign of gentrification in "cool" Dalston- while we were standing in a desolate landscape, waiting for an obscure nightbus off Kingsland Road, a man walked past in full evening dress carrying a great big teddy bear.

In lieu of having a life for the moment -and inspired by the excellent music writing by M. Devereux at Radio Nixon- I've set up a new blog where I can indulge my cinema geekery to the max. Unlikely to be most people's thing, but it's a week old and had less hits than Whitetown so far, so I may as well draw your attention to it: ritualsanddreams.wordpress.com.

Anyone fancy seeing 2001 at the NFT, 5:30 on Saturday? Not my all-time favourite film, but I always supsected it would look and sound really, really good on a f*ck off-gigantic cinema screen, and now's my chance to find out.

At work today it was my turn to go out on relief, and I had to go to the first of our libraries to have gone "self-service" (our turn early 2010). The counter is 25% the size it used to be, there are only two staff computers so it's almost impossible to do any work if there are customers around, and if you so much as turn around you collide into a colleague.

I had a look at the self-service machines. It says at the top, 'PLEASE CHOOSE YOUR LIBRARY EXPERIENCE'. On the screen, there is a cartoon of a PC monitor wearing an Indy Jones hat and a leopardskin sash, with the caption 'SAFARI'. To its right, a cartoon of a PC monitor wearing goggles and flippers, with the caption 'DEEP SEA'.

The more I see of this world in which we "live", the more convinced I become that I was meant to have been gunned down by the Jerries in the Somme, except that I was born 80 years late due to a clerical error.

The past fortnight I've been doing jury service in Zone 4. Don't go out way that often. It's Snaresbrook Court, just on the edge of Epping Forest. Very nice old building (on the outside), it looks like the hospital from The Prisoner. According to wikipedia it was originally an orphanage built by King Leopold of Belgium. My bus goes past this horrific great horseshoe-shaped monstrosity after Leytonstone High St, called the Green Man Roundabout- all cracked concrete, tall weeds and incomprehensible multiple lanes. Beyond that it's very cosy suburbia and fairly nice. Overheard on the bus today:

"Look at that! Would you look at that pound coin the driver gave me!"
"It's got a leek on it!"
"A leek and a dragon!"
"Well you know what I always say? I'm NOT British, I'm English."
"Brilliant! Absolutely right!"
"I'm NOT British! I'm English!"
"Absolutely right! And how unfortunate for you too! How unfortunate we are!"
"Hated by the Welsh."
"HATED by the Scottish."
"Hated by the Irish!"
"Tsk."
"A leek and a dragon!"

This is a truly terrible thing, but it'll keep me off the streets for a night or two.

http://www.xtranormal.com/users.php?mode=profile&uid=299294

"Marseille is my kind of town; intolerant, fractious and right wing." - Luke Haines

This was a good trip. Marseille is not that touristy and after a few holidays in cities where tourists by far outnumber locals, like Venice and Florence, it was good to get away from that and see a town where people are doing their own thing without much regard for you. Unlike Paris, you do get opportunities to have conversations in French. It's very urban but it's a seaside town too; a bit like Brighton crossed with Soho. Like Brighton, it has a faded and crumbling feel which I like. Window shutters with the paint peeled off. The streets are permeated with a slightly seedy, den-of-iniquity feel and it's impressive, but too edgy to be a chocolate box destination. In a phone box right in the middle of the most touristy area, I saw grafitti that roughly translated as 'What do we need to get through the recession? What do we need to get well-being? LA VIOLENCE'. Photos on facebook, for what it's worth.

( me bore you long time )

Back in the day, Dirk Bogarde refused on principle to do anything for television; "I'm not having my audience get up to have a piss or put the kettle on while I'm hard at work". I'm not really au fait with The Great American TV Series of the past decade (The Wire, Sopranos et al), but unless you live in a bubble, even the most ardent cinephile would have to concede that these shows are where it's at right now. I was a fan of Six Feet Under at the time but the little I saw of Desperate Housewives and Nip/Tuck were enough to put me off.

Recently however I've been watching series 1 of Mad Men. "You would like it," Mr Sarll told me, "because all the characters are very dapper and filled with repressed longing for each other". Sounds about right, I thought. It's a drama about advertising on the cusp of the 1960s- the ultra-competitive world of the admen, the clients they have to please, the scheming secretaries whom they screw in hotel rooms, the wives raising their kids in big commuter belt detached houses. It's a chauvinistic and hierarchical world, depicted in a noirish way but with the lushest palette of colours.

What makes it compulsive is the way the approaching 60s subtly, almost imperceptibly manage to filtrate into their world. At first glance it's a world where men are men and mom is leaving a hot apple pie on the windowsill, but the closer you zoom in the more cracks are visible. The advertisers are thrown into panic by the confirmation that cigarettes cause cancer; the secretaries look for broad-minded GPs who will put them on the Pill. The suburban wives are replused (and a little frightened) by the existence of a single mother in their neighbourhood. In the last episode I watched, dynamic alpha hero Don Draper was dragged to a beatnik poetry club and found himself an object of derision. Half a dozen episodes in, it feels like the social changes started out a mere speck on the lens and will get closer and bigger until there's some great collision. Fascinating stuff.

There are very few things in this world that give me more pleasure than the first sip from the first glass of a bottle of champagne. The struggle to dislodge the cork from the chilled bottle, the satisfaction as it concedes its first quarter-inch, the anticipation, the incomparable sound of that crisp, discreet pop, followed by spirals of wispy cauldron smoke rushing up from within, like a genie woken from several millennia of sleep and chivvied out of his bottle, the gushing fizzing music as you fill your glass with white horses and raging angry foam, the demented dance of the countless trails of bubbles as you top yourself up, the smack of the fizz and the richness and complexity of that first taste, like The Rite of Spring on your tongue... the purplest prose doesn't come anywhere near the sensation. Aah, champagne. I've run out of fruit and veg and I can't be bothered to go to the shops, so for dinner tonight I'm spoiling myself and having all my favourite stuff- king prawns in a great big bowl of spaghetti with butter, olive oil, parmesan and dried herbs (but no sauce).

Good weekend; my sisters were in town and I met them Thursday and Sunday. Friday was gin and much dancing at Don't Stop Moving in Camden; nice bar but very supercilious barman. I'm convinced that when I ordered my drink, he gave me the finger swiftly followed by the V-sign as he asked, "Would that be a single or double, Sir?". Johnny's view; "You used to look like a faggot. Then you bleached your hair again, and now you look like an uppity faggot". After a hard day's being the only senior in the library (luckily our customers were soaking up the rays in Clissold), most of Saturday eve was spent in the Noble, my new designated local. Lovely as it is to live 20 seconds' walk from the pub everyone goes to, there are a lot of things wrong with it. I've been there a lot in the past 6 weeks and never heard any half-decent music; only pseudo-jazz and pale Moon Safari imitators, the musical version of boil-in-the-bag rice. And why can't they do pub food instead of nonsense stacked into towers in the middle of tectonic white plates- for £15+ plus service charge (you are not a restuarant!)? On Sunday I was summoned to meet the sisters in Covent Garden for cocktails, and duly negotiated my way through drunken Everton fans to the West End; but my sisters didn't get out of their restaurant 'til after 11pm. Their hosts and entourage were at a loss for local watering holes that might be serving at that time of week, and all eyes turned to me. Like Napoleon marching on Russia, I took a risk and led everyone to Hanway Street. Luckily The Bar was still open for business. Good old The Bar. It's enough of a dump to make Push look luxurious and they're charging £4 a drink these days, but they're always open and serving when nobody else is and the music is usually brilliant (as it was on Sunday).

Around this time of year, when it starts to get warm and sunny, a not-so-young man's thoughts turn to the outdoors. It's becoming tradition that at this time of year I go out running, and after the 2nd/3rd escapade I get fed up and call the whole thing off. My plan is to stop going to bed really late/taking so long get out of bed I'll be late for work if I have a shower, and to get into bed hours earlier with a good book/jump up each morning and go for a jog at 7am. I really ought to know better by now than to think myself capable of any of this- but I managed it this morning. The capital ring walk goes from my doorstep to Finsbury Park so while it's sunny everything's in my favour. Stick some pompous kraut composer on your iPod and it really propels you along; on my first run of the year it took me a good 20 minutes before I was bent double with a stitch, a whole 18 minutes earlier than usual. The route I've been using (into the park, around the little rugby stadium and back) takes 25 minutes and I think that if I can stretch it out to 35 minutes, Mozart's piano concertos would be the perfect jogging soundtrack. When the pain kicks in you've got that mournful, miserable second movement feeling your pain, but the knowledge that a glorious, triumphant third movement was getting closer and closer to drive you through the final strait would be a good incentive to keep at it.

As a 28-year-old who quite frankly is starting to look his age, I cannot fathom why supermarkets expect me to bring my f*cking passport with me if I choose to pop a bottle of prosecco in with the spinach, goat's cheese, wholewheat pasta &c that constitute my innocuous middle-class weekly shop. Our society has become very sick. I think we badly need a change of government and that if they have any sense/conscience, the Conservatives will base their campaign on overruling much of the surveillance, nanny-state, liquids-in-a-clear-plastic-bag, guilty-until-proven-innocent bullshit that we have to put up with.

So a few months ago, I did posts where I copied some other people in bands by listening to my records and recording my thoughts. They were preceded by a flippant comment about the impossibilty of the albums ever resurfacing or getting put on iTunes. But as a result of the post, Angular offered to put all the albums on iTunes and they're out there now, soon to be followed by a new singles-and-rarities compilation and a brand new single. As the one that came out this week was the third album, I'm going to finish off what I left unfinished by listening to that one. I have chardonnay, I have strawberries and I have patience. I'll bloody need it.( Read more... )

With the legal battle and a job interview (came 2nd as usual) amongst other things, it was a taxing week last week and I started getting that classic symptom of stress, the wobbling eyeball. So it was up to Cambridge for the weekend, and the symptom disappeared as soon as I left London. I'm used to catching the Cambridge train mid-morning or afternoon, either pre-practise/post-gig, and it's an odd experience to catch the train on a Friday night, when everyone from the grim surrounding towns is heading into Cambridge for their big night out. Although the fens were blighted by their typical wind and rain all weekend (legend has it that wind blows into Cambridge direct from the Urals), the boys were in nothing heavier than short-sleeved Ben Sherman shirts and the girls in considerably less.
I stayed with Susan; on the Saturday we headed out to the Fitzwilliam Museum, which I'd been to once many years ago as a philistine student. Got a bit more out of it this time around. The front hall must be the most lavishly appointed room this side of the Doge's Palace and for a fairly small town, the collection is remarkably good; Egyptian and Assyrian artefacts, Renaissance Madonnas with child, and some fine paintings by Brueghel, Hogarth, Hiroshige and Renoir amongst others.
The afternoon we spent in the St Radegund, a pub I'd never been to before. There were two pubs opposite my college's houses; the Radegund was the favoured drinking hole for the toffs and us state school kids tended to congregate around the rather more common-or-garden Bun Shop. When we walked in, one wall was covered in photos of rugby teams, rowing teams and Cameronesque drinking clubs from my college, and I instantly remembered why I'd never been there (to their credit, the centrepiece of the Jesuan shrine was a portrait of Laurence Sterne, the one good thing to come out of the place). But it's a rather nice pub in which to pass your afternoon; the kind of bric-a-brac filled, eccentric little place that seems to have been largely purged from London. They have signs notifying you that as a "silent order", they impose an obligatory donation to RNLI upon anyone whose mobile phone goes off. In the evening, we met the rest of the gang at the Flying Pig, another charming little pub out near the Junction.
Last night I watched The Watchmen as, being sick of 90% of Johnny and Alex's conversations being incomprehensible to me, I'd read the original a few days before and liked it very much. The film is as faithful as they all say; a few good things are dropped, like the sailor subplot, but it still runs in at nearly 3 hours. Extremely glossy and balletic, it sometimes veers into the very silly (a Leonard Cohen-soundtracked sex scene) and the downright tedious (ethical debates interrupted by yet another punch-up) but all things considered, they've done a fairly commendable job.

Many thanks to everyone for all your birthday salutations/legal advice last week.

Went to that new Picasso exhibition at the National Gallery. It focused on his relationship/competition with the past masters of art history, showing how he did new things with all the old staples (portraits, still lifes, nudes etc). The centrepiece of the exhibition was a room with cubist/surrealist remakes of classic paintings; Dejeuner sur l'herbe, Velazquez etc, the components stripped down and then rebuilt in Picasso's own style. I enjoyed them and thought them rather like the painting equivalent of a radically different cover version- something like Propaganda doing Josef K, or (dare I say) Vichy doing Nirvana. The same subject painted from the same angle but it looked nothing like Velazquez and it could only be Picasso.
One of the most startling paintings was a Guernica-esque female nude, painted in metallic grey. She had the same distorted face of the cows and horses of Guernica, breasts like unexploded bomb shells and a coin slot for genitalia. As impressive as the main room was, the little things have stayed with me more- the impressionistic blur of dancing girls in the background to portraits of Parisian society, a smiling retarded child cooking fried eggs. As a souvenir, when I go to these things I like to buy a postcard of my favourite painting: I think I liked this lady because her face is like the Spurs' 125th anniversary shirt.


Yesterday, dinner with Sarah & her beau at a place underneath the Waterloo railway arches, followed by a bit of NFT. My starter (baked goats cheese in filo, melted right through) was the best thing I've tasted this year. The film was In The City of Sylvia; slow, quiet artwank, nothing happens, about 3 minutes' worth of dialogue; in other words, right up my street. Pretty boy goes to Strasbourg, sits at café terraces drinking beer and people-watching, then picks a girl and starts following her through the winding little streets of the old town. Very Vertigo in its repetition, and indeed one of the blonde girls he ogles does her hair up into a Vertigo bun. Barely any music and only one pop song- Heart of Glass, when the stalkee knocks him back and he wanders into a grim indie disco to pull a goth. Felt like what Before Sunrise might have been like if the American never talked to the girl, and had just walked around Vienna alone all night. It was slight and diffident, but when plot and talk and all that are discarded, the little things you would never notice in other films come to the fore and take on importance; the rhythm of a city's daily life, random passers-by. It's a question of scale and detail. In this age of bombast, it's nice to have the occasional film which leaves lots of loose ends and space to fill with your own interpretation.

As Picasso went through his Blue Period, I seem to be entering my Gin Period. Vodka and whisky have been treasured companions to me all through the past decade, but I was never a fan of gin. I don't know if it was its particular taste, but the stuff just never clicked with me. But in the past month, I've been offered gin at a few people's houses -Susan, Rob, Ciaran- and got a bit of a taste for it. In fact I'm hooked. Nothing other than a G&T will do for me at the moment. I rescued a litre of Tanqueray from E5 and it's just divine stuff. On days off I find myself watching the clock and wondering when I can permist myself the first heavenly sip.

K wasn't allowed pets in her new flat so these days, I find myself responsible for Sashka the dwarf hamster. It's not that bad being a single parent. I wonder if I could get tax credits or child allowance. She's always been very tame and placid with me, no problem with being picked up or eating from your hand or anything. Until this week, when I realised her cage needed cleaning out and fresh bedding. I thought the first thing to do would be to wake Sashka and transfer her to her travel box, so I started lifting up layers of bedding until I found her. She stood up to her full height of two inches, bared her mighty fangs and started making the most horrible noise. It was somewhere between a whirr, a click and a hiss, and I'd never have dreamt the little thing could be so loud. It was like something from The Exorcist.

Trip to the Lane on Wednesday; Spurs won 4-0 and we were all very happy. Lennon, Keane and Modric passed through Middlesbrough's leaden defence as if they were in MarioKarts. Now, we need to make performances like that the norm rather than a twice-a-season thing if we're ever going to disturb the big boys at the top of the table. Not sure about my best transport route from the new gaff so I walked back to Seven Sisters and caught a quite heavy cold, just in time for Thursday night's gig.

After the insanity of the college ball, it was most reassuring to be back on the home turf of the Portland. Things got off to an inauspicious start when I covered Andrew's duvet in blood. We were having a run-through the set and I was playing with the ringpull from the fizzy drink Andrew had given me. I didn't feel any pain or notice a cut, but at some point I looked down and my hands were soaking with bloodflow from my fingertip ("Jamie, I know we're playing a R*E*P*E*A*T night but you don't need to be quite so overt with the Manics references").
We must have done something right at the gig because Rob said it was the best we'd played in years and three people bought our albums afterwards (not at all usual). One of the other bands said that '...Open Relationship' had the hairs on their neck standing on end.
The Resistance headlined and it wasn't quite as astonishing as the last time I saw them, when they basically demolished New Hall College bar, but we still got violin-smashing, Susan and Matt twatting each other round the head with tambourines, a punch-up with the soundman, and a great big plateful of fine Marychain/Velvets rock & roll. Got the train to London with Susan this morning as he's off to Liverpool with Sarah. Walking back across the cycle bridge this morning we were greeted by bold black grafitti: MICROPENIS ARE PUNKKK ROCK AND YOU ARE NOTHING. God love 'em.

( our set )

To the Curzon Soho, to see Woody Allen's latest best-film-since-the-70s (he seems to be The Cure or The Fall of cinema these days, as every new film gets lauded as "his finest since [last genuinely great one]"). Vicky Cristina Barcelona is beautifully shot, beautiful locations, beautiful cast and an all-round feast for the eyes. I've been to Barcelona but I didn't recognise his Barcelona at all, because it was the Barcelona of the obscenely wealthy (just as the London of his Match Point, where a shopgirl can afford her own big period flat in Chelsea, was utterly alien to me). More Eixample than Barri Gotic.
Critics are comparing it to Rivette but I thought it was much more Eric Rohmer; the characters are well-acted but they're consciously and overtly set up as mouthpieces for a particular philosophy. A gawpy Scarlett Johansson and her best mate (forget her name but she's very good, a brunette with cute freckles) are basically opposites in their approach to relationships; the former a would-be boho bedhopper, the latter Miss Monogamous/Domesticated/ Sensible/Prudish. Each goes ahead, ploughing their own extreme and living life according to their strict philosophy. Surprise surbloodyprise, they find it doesn't suit them after all and they long for a little taste of what the other's got, and that's about it. Sermon for moderation. It has some insight into the unpredictability of the human heart and the inconstancy of our feelings, and the story unfolds cleverly; not very many gags but I suppose he's been trying to get away from those for a while. Penelope Cruz has a ball playing a caricature of a tempestuous, whirling dervish of an ex-wife and is very entertaining.

On Friday I fancied going to the new Picasso show but it was sold out. Instead I bought a ticket for one of those cheesy candlelit concerts at St Martin-in-the-Fields, then sat in the Lord Moon with a Laphroaig until 7.30. The concert was good fun, greatest hits of Handel, followed by Mozart's Eine Kleine and a couple of symphonies. Good cheerful fare. Everyone around me was German, clearly making the most of our now worthless currency.

On Saturday I moved house! I like my bedsit but it is stupidly tiny. Not many bedsits have a washing machine and a private bathroom and those were what swung it for me, really. There's nowhere to keep the bike so I'm chaining it to the railing on the road; so far, seems like it's more at risk from rusting in the rain than getting nicked. When it's gone I shall get a folding bike. As I'm getting a bit old for band posters I bought a couple of framed art prints off the Internet; DIY disasters to ensue no doubt, I'm hopeless at anything involving nails/hammers/masonry/measuring things. So far, everything else just about fits into the place but a fair amount of things are under the bed and inaccessible. I had to choose 25 or so of my favourite books and consign the rest to oblivion, and the DVD situation is a bit farcical. Still, the change of environment is enormously welcome and I had a lovely cycle to work this morning in the blazing sunshine; through Finsbury Park, down a quiet stretch of Green Lanes and through Clissold Park. It's much nicer than the constant pile-ups of school run cars, food delivery lorries, bendy buses, lollipop ladies and SUV-sized buggies on the narrow confines of Church Street. On Saturday night, on to Feeling Gloomy where we saw a band who were basing their whole schtik on the Manics; eyeliner, military jackets, leopardskin, stencilled spraypaint, scissor-jumps, turgid pub rock. It was like going back in time. However grim the landscape looks these days, 1999 was worse.

While I'm here, well done to Spurs (the bloody dreadful Pavlyuchenko excepted) for giving Man Utd a much, much harder game than I thought we would.

Jolly good night out on Monday as the elder of my little sisters came to London for her flatmate's birthday; she was staying in Clapton with the new rave pop group Ha-do-ken and a girl who's been picked up by Radiohead's management and is being groomed as a less rough-looking Kate Nash, or something (Lyd is designing her album sleeve). I was a little dubious about going to Hackney Wetherspoons but we practically had it to ourselves and I'd forgotten how damn cheap Wetherspoons is; they're actually doing 99p pints at the minute. Doubles and banter flowed like tap water and a great time was had. And when I got home, I learnt that for the first time in a good two years, Spurs had won an away game against a predominantly physical team from up North. Triffic 'Arry!
To the second leg of BBR last night; almost the same set, plus Deverell Twins and Goodnight Kiss. Both gigs were very enjoyable and the band seemed to be having fun too. Good banter at this one, especially before The Art of Driving.
Nixey: This one's a pre-divorce number. (Moore grimaces)
Haines: Brutally candid.
Moore: Is there anyone from Heat magazine in tonight?
Haines (looking around): I think that's a no.
Surprisingly they don't have any record label interest for the new album (why does anything still surprise me, ever?), but I'm sure this will be put right in due course.
After the gig I was supposed to meet my sister's party in the Roxy off Oxford Street, where they were going to Panic (Alex and I tried to count how many indie clubs called Panic, all separate from each other, there have been across the UK but I think we lost count). Back in the day I used to go to Roxy on Mondays for Val's club, and I'd been taken to Panic once (like Val's club but with three times the crowd). Stopped on the way for an overpriced panini and noticed that Piccadilly and Shaftesbury Ave were swarmed with people in AS Roma scarves. I briefly wished I had the Watford Bastards with me, so we could teach these communist swine not to walk around my city like they own the place.
Anyway, I get to the Roxy and everyone else is significantly younger than me. I'm in a black suit and everyone else is in American Apparel. There's a long queue but it moves fairly quickly, and as I get to the front I notice all the students are wielding their student IDs. Soon it's my turn.
"Where's your ID, mate?"
"I don't have any ID with me.. but I am 28 years old."
"For fuck's SAKE! I've had this all fucking NIGHT! You are not. Getting into. This club. Step aside."

So I sauntered off to my night bus, sorry not to see my sister but quite relieved to have it confirmed that I do not belong in a student meatmarket club. I need to get out of the house a little more and I will, but some scenarios have a whiff of desparation about them.

To the Luminaire on Wednesday for the first leg of the BBR reunion. Hadn't been there for a long time and they've really pulled out all the stops with those "Don't talk over bands" signs. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but it gets results. Last time I saw Haines play there I was about six rows from the front, and the acoustic Future Generation was still ruined by the two idiotic women in front of me screeching away at each other. This time even the support band (an acoustic set by Madam, with guitar and cello only) are met with hushed reverence. Their songs are alright but it's brooding, wee-small-hours music, and I'm more in the mood for, well, Chas & Dave.
Which is why BBR do not disappoint. They play in front of a Union Jack with 'ROCK & ROLL NOT DOLE' written across it in gold. Luke and John are wearing those little Colonel Sanders ties and Sarah remarks "It's nice to see that at least some of you have made an effort with your attire this evening... though no-one looks as good as my two teddy boys". The set is very heavily tilted towards the first album and its B-sides (well, it is the best one). I recall a lot of my friends bought the first one because they liked The Hit and were a bit disappointed, thinking the first one "skimmed milk". I would always say that the first one is the absolute essence of BBR and the follow-ups were them playing at entryism.
English Motorway System, the best song from Facts of Life, gets an airing. It uses that whole autobahn thing as a metaphor for bored people, coasting along in habit-based, autopilot relationships. "The English motorway can be quite hypnotising/You achieve a zen-like state, as if someone else were driving/Become detached, observing colours and straight lines". Needless to say I have a good chuckle at my own expense here.
My favourite bit was probably when they broke out the early B-sides. I'd forgotten most of them and they're really, realy good. During Wonderful Life I was grinning so wide the top half of my head almost fell off. "Have an affair, get a new interest/Go into debt, go on the sick list/Study at your leisure in your home". Then there's Brutality; "Whatever happened to drinking and driving/And doing the decent thing?/Hiding out on the continent/Getting over a nervous breakdown". Say what you like about them but they created and inhabit a worldview that's utterly theirs and bloody great fun. It's a celebration of the sinister.
Two new songs from the just-written 4th album are very much in the BBR vein but completely eschew the discopop of Facts/Passionoia. ( Setlist )

Thursday is Operation Move Kate, with a bit of help from the legendary Bill. It's ironic that
I'm moving straight into the Scum Park area and she's living just off White Hart Lane (albeit the N22 end). Perhaps instructive too that we chose polar opposites; my bedsit is in a great location for pubs, friends, transport but it's the smallest bedsit in all Christendom. Kate's place is so far out that they get the Enfield/Barnet Yellow Pages, but it is very spacious and more like her house in Manchester than it is any Zone 2 flat I've been in. Huge rooms, gardens, three flatmates, all that. I'm certain she'll be a lot happier there. After unpacking we check out the sheer horror that is Wood Green Shopping City. I buy some golliwog mugs from a tacky ornament shop that has statues of the Pope and Kate buys some flat-pack furniture for her room.
Opera on Friday; bloody brilliant. If indie bands heard 'Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen' performed live, surely they would all give up out of shame. The orchestra was tip-top, the set was stunning; moving effortlessly from the Queen's demonic lair to thick forestry to the Masonic temples. The odd thing about the opera (apart from the Freemason stuff and the bonkers story) is that the hero and heroine are a bit dull; I noticed that by far the largest ovations at the end were for Papageno and the Queen of Night. Papageno stole the show with great comic acting and, curiously, an exaggerated Yorkshire accent- every time he was off stage we waited for him to come back.
Now, more packing.

Would anyone like to come to Mozart's Magic Flute at the ENO Coliseum this Friday? Dornan has a Jasper Carrot Affair gig which takes precedence. I don't think you get ticket touts at the opera and it's going to waste otherwise. The good news it will cost you nothing, the bad news is you'll be sitting beside me.

I wish Iain Sinclair would stop plugging his book on Radio 4 because we get very irate phone calls every time he tells his Golden Goose anecdote.