joie de vision

I’d forgotten to mention that I was acutely aware during Thursday’s gig that this would be the last time I could (legally) smoke in a venue. I’ve tickets for motorhead before the fucking ban but as it’s in the Royal Festival Hall smoking isn’t permitted anyway. Indeed, I’m now very aware that I’m on borrowed time as far as smoking in pubs is concerned; it feels like the end of an era approaching. Balls. I hate change.

Another thing, the swervedriver video I posted in Fridays blog, the red motorcycle (it’s a Ducati 900ss) I used to have one of those. It’s a miracle it made it to the end of the video, mine was more unreliable than radiotherapy.

So, what’s been going down this weekend, yeah, well, not much frankly. On Friday afternoon Myfwt came round for a cup of tea and a chat, it was lovely to see her despite her not feeling on top of the game. After a couple of hours she left to do some work, I did some housework which included fucking hovering, a task I despise out of all proportion. I’d decided that due to the previous evening hedonism that I wanted to share a night with the self, I nipped out to get some tobacco and settled in for the evening. At least my carpet no longer looks like Brighton Beach.

I was an unremarkable night but very much needed. I read, started a short poem and watched TV with a few G&T’s, spliffs and roast chicken wallowing in gravy and cooked to perfection roasted potatoes and steamed vegetables. Jools Holland was the highlight of the evening, it has to be said that if you have any passion for contemporary music, there will always be something to tinkle ones fancy, in this instance Wilco, LCD Soundsystems and surprisingly, Joan Armatrading.

I was woken late Saturday morning with a phone call from Myfwt, she was going away for the weekend so I went back to my pit and slept until early afternoon. After a bath and late lunch I spent the afternoon looking at grot on the PC before watching Apollo 13. Early evening I met Frank up the road for a drink. Our usual venue was stuffed full of no neck cropped haired wankers all yelling at a large flatscreen TV, we decided to leave them to it, it’s wonder their knuckles weren’t wearing shoes.

We convened in this bland wine bar cum eatery and were forced to drink fizzy bastard Carling in lieu of man’s ale. At least the place was quiet. Frank and I discussed Joy Division and this http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2457332 which beggar’s total disbelief. I wandered home after a few pints following a short visit to fucking Tesco, the bane of my consumer life for a bottle of wine and crabsticks that I think I’m addicted to. BBC2 came to my rescue in the form of The Seven Ages of Rock featuring Pink Floyd, Velvet Underground, David Bowie, Genesis and most inappropriately, Roxy Fucking music, or Poxy Music as my dad calls them. What the fuck were they doing there? Utter shit, who did they influence in the 70’s apart from The Yorkshire Ripper, probably. In order to cleanse myself of Brian Fairy and the girls, I bathed in session of progressive rock and metal, which saw me well into the small hours. I went to bed a little squiffy don’t you know.

I was up in time for the Grand Prix on Sunday. Monaco, one of my favourites despite the circuit making overtaking almost impossible. It was an impressive race, if a little samey, due to the two victorious Mclaren’s and the continuation of the remarkable fledgling career of Lewis Hamilton, 19 years old with makings of a world champion, so long as the team orders on Sunday weren’t the thin end of the wedge as far as he and Alonso are concerned. I can tell I’m boring you, I don’t care really. Okay I do.

I met my bro at 5 for a pint at the Sunday usual as he had some dinner appointment with his missus and friends at 7, we drank wine, some quaffable Spanish fare because he’d just had lunch with our folks and had a few glasses on board and didn’t want to mix his poisons. The subject of Poxy Music being on that BBC2 Rockumentary came up, my bro informed me that dad wasn’t impressed either which comes of no surprise. My dad isn’t an aficionado on all things ‘rock’ by the way but he’s fairly well versed in 60’s ‘pop’. I remember when I was about 7 telling him that I thought The Monkees were much better than The Beatles, dad was under the Maxi (he was always under some Leyland design fault in the 70’s) but he downed tools, popped his head out from under the door sill and yelled ‘don’t be so fucking stupid’ so loudly my mum heard him in the back garden. I still think I’m right by the way, fab four my arse, Jerk, Prat, Git and Ringpeice.

It’s worth noting that since Friday evening it’s pretty much been raining constantly. The upshot is that I’ve been forced indoors for virtually the whole weekend and bank holiday, save a few trips to the pub to see Frank and my bro. The flat is now entirely spotless; I’ve even had time to purge my clothing rail. Actually, I’m bored fucking shitless, I especially wanted to take the black bitch out for a ride. On the upside my head has been farting out ideas, I wrote a poem and after an hour of drunken deliberations over a succession of evenings concluded that all art was the subjective manifestation of projected thinking. As I type this it’s Monday afternoon, I’m meeting Frank for a pint in a couple of hours then home to eat and watch a film.

I’ll leave it to Ian and the boys to provide today’s entertainment. (I think Ian may be on drugs, maybe if he’d read that story in the link he’d still be with us today)

dogs

Virtually every morning, as I’m unwrapping my black bitch for the journey to work, this short middle aged woman purposefully strides past me, she has short grey hair and big glasses that make her look like an officious prat. There is nothing remarkable about this woman in any shape or form save the fact she’s always accompanied by the biggest dog I’ve ever seen.

It’s a blonde coloured Alsatian and it quite literally comes up to her rib cage, its the size of a small pit pony and has something of a docile, supernatural air about it. For every step the dog takes, she takes 2 so as they pass, one gets the impression that she’s perpetually trying to run past it. This in itself isn’t peculiar, yes, it’s a fucking massive dog being operated by a small peevish woman but what irks, the rub of this situation as it were, is the women is always carrying a bright orange plastic bag full of the dogs turds.

The dog doesn’t seem too fussed about this, fair enough, it’s not him waving them about (though I don’t think I’d be overly delighted if I was being followed by a person clutching a substantial quantity of my cack) but she doesn’t seem to bothered either. She’s walking down the street with a bag full of fucking dog shit, what’s the matter with her…

This morning she didn’t have her bag. I was in the process of stuffing my m/c cover into the van and the odd couple appeared in my peripheral vision, I instantly knew something was amiss; the balloon of orange with the heavy, heavy base was noticeably absent. The pair approached and just as they became level with me and the bike she and the fucking dog suddenly halted approximately half a foot from my feet and without any warning (can’t they fit these things with claxons?) it dropped it’s rear half down on to the pavement, lifted it’s fucking tale and uncoiled a good stone of dog eggs right at my feet.

In a flash the women had produced the orange bag like Debbie Magee, bent down and picked up the whole collection in one foul-swoop. Standing, watching in eye popping horror, she gave me the once over and looked at me as if I’d fucking done it. Without so much as a ‘pardon’ or ‘sorry’ the bastard was led off by her considerably lighter dog leaving me on the brink of being sick into my crash helmet. What a cunt.

Speaking of Cunt. Nirvana last night, sorry what I am I saying, Cunt trying to play Smells Like Teen Spirit. This isn’t the first time he’s tried to tackle this song, even the thought of him thinking about Mr. Cobain is offensive enough let alone the deliberate action of slowly raping, torturing and disembowelling a classic with toneless Neanderthalism, his arm with angular irregularity punching his knuckles into the strings as his fat tongue hangs out of his mouth sucking up air to subsequently return it in the form of a gormless guttural protracted fucking honk, this wasn’t part of Darwin’s agenda, surely…

As I was walking to the pub yesterday I passed his cadaverous girlfriend in the street. Her face is no more than a collection of long teeth and weary, listless eyes; she was pushing the emotionless automaton that passed for a baby in a buggy. The baby looked at me without a flicker of anything resembling life and she asked me if the child was disturbing me. I kept my mouth closed, it’s not the child that disturbs me (it does but not in the way she meant) I wanted to say, but I suppose I didn’t have to, she already knows. She lives with it.

You need to turn this up and the sound isn’t great, thought they are, and he was