Stuff

What have I been doing.

Last thursday I went on a sort of date thing with someone I met off t'internet. It was an experience I don't think I'm going to repeat any time soon. Nice enough, but I couldn't quite get over how out of sync she was with the mental picture of her I'd built up in my head. We went for a drink in Camden, before making mutual excuses and heading our separate ways. Actually, she made the excuses, but it's my blog.

The most annoying thing about the night was, while waiting at the top of the escalators at Camden tube, a policeman came over and started talking at me while I was trying to send a text.

"Can I ask you what you're doing sir?"

he enquired.

"I'm waiting for someone" I answered

"and do you often wait for them here?"

"it's the first time I've met them"

"and who might they then"

"it's a date"

"Oh a date is it" he said, staring off at an angle perpendicular to my head. All the time he was maintaining a studied bored monotone, and I didn't much care for the sardonic edge to his voice that suggested all this was the dramatic build-up to some cretinous punchline. He was going to ask me to move, and I found his circuitous route both irritating and irritating.

"look, shall we cut to the chase here?" I asked, wolverine style claws pricking at my knuckles.

"don't take that attitude with me" he said, all traces of flaccid humour suddenly having evaporated "move out of here and stop causing an obstruction"

Which I duly did. What annoyed me was the moment I exited the turnstiles I was duly pestered by various people trying to sell me 'skunks', all of ten feet from robocop, who stood officiously staring at the hall of the tube station, ready to thwart wrong-doing in all its static, loitering forms.

Don't get me wrong, I've nothing against the police (some of my best friends are police) but shouldn't he have been out trying to catch some real criminals? James Blunt and the person ultimately responsible for the 'Tom Tom' sat-nav advertisements are a couple of obvious examples, but I could go on.

Anyway.

This week I've been working at a Corporate Identity consultancy with lots of Germans, which was either miles better than that sounds, or lots worse, depending on your perspective. The grid system was king, and there was no decent coffee – for me at least.

Their offices were in a huge victorian terrace with white walls and wall-to-wall blue carpeting. It was pretty much silent but for the ocasional conference call and the incessant clicking of mice. Every once in a while an insect would stray into one of the uplighters on the wall and perish with a piercing smell like burning hair.

Tasty.

Now it's the weekend. Went for a bite to eat at a Spanish place in Hackney with Sam and Kay, before going back to theirs for a couple of glasses of wine and a game of 'Buzz'. Also bought a copy of the Guardian, soley because today it came with a free poster depicting various types of octopi and squid (and cuttlefish). It's now pinned above my desk and I can tell it's going to be a slow month.

Post 100: Charity Shops

When I finally get around to assembling my 'Fantasy Football' band – 'The London Ipods,'* (consisting of me, Brian Eno, KRS1 and I dunno, one of the Cheeky Girls) my first single is going to be called 'Charity Shops Are Crap These Days', which is basically going to be a wailing lament/torch song about the current charity shop circuit, which as any dedicated charity shop scenester will tell you, has gone well downhill.

When my friend Sam got back from LA recently he was all like "The second hand shops out there are amazing man" he was all like "Dior t-shirt" and "Camper-style-shoes", and "vintage dresses" (Kay's, not his I might add), while I could but sit there agape.

Time was charity shopping here used to be one of my more preferred methods of wasting a Saturday, trawling through bins of mouldering old vinyl, and rails of motheaten old clothes in the hope of uncovering that elusive holy grail (which I'm reliably informed actually happens in a Neil Gaiman story).

Generally I'd operate alone – as dedicated charity shoppers do; you don't want to be sharing the goods with another enthusiast should you actually strike a seam of metaphorical charity gold, nor boring the shit out of those of your friends lacking the shopping chromasome.

Still the times were good, and there were bargains to be had. The shops you were after were those run by two little old ladies who loved cats, (and thats's about it) and who had an absolute absence of what might be termed 'street smarts'. By this I mean they had a howling void in place of anything which could vaguely be termed A: an aesthetic sensibility, B: an appreciation of design merit or C: any kind of nose for value. Sounds harsh? Well that's word to ya moms B; the last record any of these girls bought was probably a waltz on Shellac or a music hall number from the mid-late 40s. Other good signs were if it smelled of some enigmatic cocktail of mothballs and sick (the exact breakdown was never clear), and was for a singularly odd charity such as 'Pigeons for Jesus' or somesuch.

I remember triumphantly purchasing a Phillip Starck lemon squeezer (admittedly a bit of designer tat if ever there was one) boxed, for a couple of quid in the Royal Society for the Protection of Blind Sparrows shop by the Heaton Mersey Somerfield.

"Eh love, you really want to buy this?"

Queried the old dear behind the counter, eyeing the chrome object suspiciously. I did indeed.

And records.. not often but ocasionally you'd arrive just in time to snap up someone's collection of disco 12s or Soul lps – an entire crate of sometimes pristine wax for an absolute song (so to speak).

And clothes of course.. retro, ironic, it was all there.

But that was before 'the dark times'. I suspect that there was a golden era of charity shopping towards the arse end of the 80s and beginning of the 90s, when people rushed blindly to ditch their old clothes and records in favour of exciting new fabrics and those shiny drinks coasters we call CDs, little realising the kudos that these scorned artefacts would be garnering scant years later.

With the advent of ebay, and perhaps more so the arrival of the well worn rut of cheap BBC daytime programming – 'Tat Hunt', "Crap in Your Attic" etc, a phonemenon ocurred wherin the same crud people would pay other people to take off their hands a few years back suddenly became as potentially valuable as reconstruction contracts in recently deposed dictatorships; through some mysterious sleight of hand and under cover of relentless jocularity David 'The Real Lovejoy' Dickenson became apotheosised as some kind of sloganeering antiques neo-christ. Things were never to be the same again.

When charity shops got smart, the laminate flooring moved in and the bargains moved out, to be replaced by tat of such calibre I'm genuinely aghast any of it sold in the first place – the kind of synthetic jive St. Audrey would have been ashamed to have in her living room when she was rocking a lace necklace. While these once holy bastions of the bargain buy masquerade as shops, all the good stuff is creamed off in some warehouse to be auctioned for a premium on ebay, leaving me to panhandle through shelves of crap I'd deign unfit to throw rocks at. Now where's the fun in that I ask you?

It has to be said, it may just be symptomatic of the wider malaise that is the rampaging webber-beast devouring the high street, as it's not like anyone's going to root through racks of crackly Kanye West MP3s in ten years time is it? (or is it?). Only the other day I noticed Dixons had got eaten.

GOOD STUFF

Anyway. Here's a top ten of things I'd like to find in a charity shop. Pretty unrealistic I guess but you get the picture.

10. A stack of well thumbed 60s design magazines such as Avant Garde.

9. A load of brightly coloured seventies glass sculptures shaped like fish. They'd look really ironic in your bathroom at a party.

8. A cardboard box full of seventies science fiction paperbacks on the Panther imprint. Art direction on the cover is generally a stylishly shot photo of a lava lamp, or one of the glass fish from number 9 above. Stanilsav Lem might be well represented here.

7. Some cool t-shirts – badly screenprinted shirts from holiday destinations, obscure local businesses, and old computer games such as "Shadow of the Beast" earn extra karma points in the afterlife.

6. A clutch of original Blue Note lps from the 60s, slightly worn maybe, play fine though.

5. A pair of nicely worn in 'Big E' Levis.

4. Some retro electronic 'Grandstand' game, such as 'Munchman'. (Wimpey to Pacman's McDonalds, basically)

3. A couple of prints from the seventies – frame is cracked on one. Maybe from the Moebius 'Starwatcher' series? Yeah that'd be nice.

2. Shit.. I dunno, some Star Wars figures? Actually fuck that.. FUZZY FELT.

1. A Louis Leathers 'Super Sportsman' jacket, brown, size 40" please santa. (ironically, my ex housemate Paul did actually find one of these, it immediately rocketed to my number one and proved there is hope yet)

BAD STUFF

And Now, a top ten of the kind of raw shite you're going to have to wade through in your vain quest to find anything worth posessing.

10. Some James Last LPs. Never heard anything by him to my knowledge, never intend to. The art direction alone elicits the kind of panicked fearful response in me as some dogs have when they walk across the sites of ancient battlefields.

9. Some crappy home decoration book such as "Stencil Your Way To Success!", which isn't even on some ironic Readers Digest type flave. Avoid.

8. A 'Windows 98' handbook, though as Ade noticed the other day, our flat inexplicably owns one of these already (though I suppose I could take it to a charity shop).

7. Nylon shirts. Lots of them.

6. Mid 90s Topman t-shirts bought for the unreconstructed lad by his girlfriend. There'll probably be a faux-distressed picture of a mini on it, or a six-pack of some beer with the legend 'Six Machine" written on it; or (most heinously) the name of a developing country or suitably ethnic quarter of New York: 'Harlem', 'Bronx' etc. n.b. – this 'isn't the same' as the 'tourist' t-shirts described under 'good' in point 7. That cannot be emphasised enough.

5. Same weak assed chic-lit with titles such as 'Chardonnay Wedding', 'Man shopping' or 'Shopaholic Crimes'.

4. Some slightly sweaty looking Nike Trainers in size 6. And no they're not Dunks.

3. A simpsons tie. Though actually, it could be any Simpsons merchandise ie: boxer shorts, waistcoat, bubble bath.

2. Some god awful toy that has been spawned by some corporate sponsored tv franchise, A 'Tweenie' maybe, or that horrible purple dinosaur.

Fuck this is getting boring.. but you get the idea. Any ideas for the number one gratefully accepted.

ps: Hey-yah. One hundred posts deep. I'm popping the Chandon as I write.

*Apple's lawyers allowing.

Woah

Proving that my mum's blog is more interesting even than mine, here's my uncle kissing a certain stoney sea-lord somewhere high above the streets of London.

She gets all the scoops.

Ol' Brown RIP

I'm cat-sitting in Hackney at the minute, which makes for a change. The cat's nice anyhow, and so friendly you could mistake it for a dog. It was mewing and scratching at the bedroom door the other day so I let it in, thinking it would just sleep on the bed. Instead it stood on my chest rubbing its face against mine and pacing up and down incesssantly until I ejected it from the bedroom of eden, to the wasteland of the hall outside.

I got in quite late last night, having sat outside the Hermits for a bit with Marv and Gregg, who was stranded in London having missed his coach. As I was crossing a junction in Shoreditch the bag I've owned for nine or so years caught on a railing by its strap, which prompty ripped in two. There were a couple of hipster girls crossing the road behind me: "nice" commented one in passing, as they strode by.

I mourn its passing. In it's short life it's carried weighty tomes of critical theory from college and back (often largely unread), stacks of vinyl and cans of lager to parties, and socks and t-shirts to weekends away across this green and pleasant land.

Back in Soho again this week. This place has got air conditioning too, which after last week, is a godsend, especially considering the weather today was like a hot day in Spain. Shame to have to work, really.

I'm tring to sort out a tax return for 2005. I don't want to. I keep getting stern looking letters off the Inland Revenue urging me to get it in soon or else.. Or else what? You sent it to me late for starters.

When I tried to fill in the self assesment form I found that you have to send off for a subsiduary form about employment – which has just arrived a week later. To save time I tried to register to self assess online, and when my password didn't work, rang the IR helpline up to confirm it.

He said he'd send it in the post, as they don't give out such details in the post. And it'd take about a week. Sigh. What gets me is all this password would enable someone to do is potentially complete my tax return for me. If anyone fancies doing mine, they're welcome to it.

Escorcha

Well, Dunc's finally gone and done it, and as of last week he's shipped out to pastures new in Barcelona, where he'll no doubt be reducing himself to penuary on a strict diet of women and gin (or San Miguel).

Tuesday night was his 'testimonial' at the Hermit's Cave, and his loyal fan base turned out in droves to witness it. At one point there was at least ten of us, though the pub was unaccountably busy (that might have been the boxing, though).

One source – close to Camberwell's now ex premier liquid drum and bass exponent said: "move over Dunc, I want to get past".

But his leaving is a blow. As of tomorrow I'll be putting an ad on the notice board in Tadims, and in the ads section of the Southwark weekender for a new drinking buddy (and them tings don't come for free you get me?).

D-Func. D'func. DJ Phase. D Unit. You shall be sorely missed. Our thoughts are with his housemates, who've now got an estate agent moving in to replace him. Though he's actually alright.

Then the weekend was good. So good that the psychic trauma of a few days soulless freelancing for an unnappreciative gaggle of Mac slaves in Chealsea Harbour coudn't even thwart it. Friday I went out to the Crypt under St. Giles's Church on the recommendation of Al 'Scot' – Stockport's very own answer to Herbie Hancock. It's always a good night as you get to bump chairs with lots of cool and not so cool types, the beer is cheap, and there is a real live vicar wandering round. On this ocassion they had quite a big name on 'on the scene' apparently, so it was extra busy.

Saturday was almost surreally hot. Surreally in the sense that it was naturally hot without someone in my flat putting the heating on in the middle of June. I proudly donned birkenstocks and outsized Aviators (they make you look like a cross between Tom Cruise and a fly) and headed to Highbury park to meet Sam and Will.

There was a group of lads throwing a frisbee quite near us. It seemed to have an inbuilt random trajectory that rendered it completley unpredictable, and hence impossible to field. The otherwise farcical attempts of the players to actually catch it were lent something of an extra frisson by it repeatedly nearly burying itself in the heads of passers-by and children. We sat and smoked, and Will told us the reason you don't see white dog turds around anymore is because dogfood manufacturers don't add bonemeal to dogfood. That clears that up then (heh).

Then we went and ate at a surly Greek restaraunt on Upper Street called Mem & Laz. The food was alright, but the service sucked so hard it's still slowing down time in some areas of the solar system.

Then on Sunday went for a walk, up to Burgess park, and back down through Peckham Rye along where the old canals were. Spurning ice creams on the way back we popped into Gabby's for one of their excellent Patties (no saltfish though).

I also found some old records in a yard sale type affair across the road, including an Ohio players lp and an amazing 7 inch from 1984 that mashes up Billie Jean with 'Do It Again' by Steely Dan. Special.

We finally ended up on Ed's roof eating charcoal coated falafel, and 'chicken' burgers. Chicken in the sense that chickens exist and so do these, though they look more like the shingles off some vast improbable monster. The roof itself looks like it's covered in lead, but it transpires it's actually concrete painted silver. Pretty fucking funny concrete as you have to intermittently move chairs or they start sinking into the surface. The super-heated disposable barbecue also made quite a good bid for freedom by going 'China-Syndrome' through the roof of the flat. I think we managed to catch most of it in our lungs though.

Right. This week I'm out in Chiswick, then Covent Garden. I'm also flat sitting (or cat-sitting) for Sam and Kaye, so it'll give me the chance to explore 'ackney and 'oxton a bit.

Tube Dog

On Saturday I finally ended up going to Angel, to hook up with my friends Will and Sam, and give Sam the artwork for the business card I designed her. We went to Bierodrome for a bite to eat where I had the burger 'special'. Special by virtue of an added slice of blue cheese. It also came with a serving of fried onions that were devilishly tasty, but hugely salty. The portions were certifiably adequate. Any more and I would have shrivelled up like a frog on hot tarmac, for sure.

Went for one at the Hen and Chickens theatre bar before jumping on the tube at Highbury and heading home. These days when heading home on the tube I've got into the habit of staying on until Oval, then walking back – rather than getting off at the Elephant. It's a bit more expensive.. but miles nicer. You get to walk by such locations as 'The Miliki Spot' and, Mr Dandy, as well as the business park were I spent two days stapling together invoices for a builders merchants last year, so full of happy memories.

On the stop before Oval there was a couple sat opposite me. A black dude with short dreads and a white girl in a grubby tracksuit. The bags under her eyes marked as the 'frequent flyer' type. They had an English bull terrier with them that (I presume it was it anyway) emitted a sour fart of such a pitch to make your eyes water, before winding back behind their legs and collapsing under the fold-down seats.

Got back and my housemate and his friends showed up from the Funky Munky - to play music at volume.

Now it's Monday, and I've just gone and eaten at The Jungle Grill. Set Veggie breakfast 5. Very nice. Marvyn, Gregg and Mandy have gone to the pub. Good luck to them.

Saturday

A flat fuorescent monolith has manifested at either end of butterfly walk, seemingly overnight. A bit like the monolith at the beginning of 2001, except this one probably doesn't herald some kind of quantum leap in human evolution so much as direct you to a load of crappy pound shops selling flimsy plastic artefacts.

I'm a bit hung over. Ended up in the Hermit's Cave last night talking bollocks until closing. Ed was laying out a proposal for his new quiz show. So far as I remember it it's going to be called 'Good Cop, Bad Cop" and the pitch is that one contestant has a secret that presenters Fern Britten (good cop) and Andy Crane (bad cop) have to extract from them. There's also going to be a torture section where Tony Robinson gets beaten to yield evidence.

I think this all came about because we were three of us standing aound a circular table that felt like a gameshow prop.

Anyway. Bank holiday weekend. Not sure what to do tonight, but in the interim I might go and look in some charity shops.

When Fashion Attacks

This week I was working out in Chiswick, which was a hike. Nice enough in a semi-suburban London sort of way it seemed to be mostly populated by average Italian sandwich shops and.. yeah. Nice tube station though.

The work was quite interesting, though I was working on a grumpy Mac that might as well have been carved out of soap considering how responsive it was. It was a 19 gig cube G4, which had 700mb free.

It wasn't fast.

I managed to speed it up by doing some housekeeping (deleting some of the crap of the desktop and backing up some stuff) but nontheless, it didn't work particularly well if there was more than one application open, and seemed to take its own sweet time even then. Oh well.

Other than that the week was fairly uneventful, though on Thursday I did go to be Launch party for the new Diesel Store on Bond Street, courtesy of Deven Miles. It turned out to be stuffed to the rafters with some of most scary fashion types this side of Naomi Campbell's birthday party, which wasn't really surprising I suppose.

Now don't get me wrong, I like me some clothes - I used to get regularly lynched round Stockport by groups of rat faced Rockport clad youths for my eccentric choice of attire, but I was left standing here.

It was held at Victoria house, and I'm not sure what it usually looks like inside, but they had partitioned off the interior into lots of separate rooms linked by corridors, which was a bit like a cross between The Cube and one of those mazes they feed lab rats into. It was also unspeakably hot.

The music was good though, and there was a free bar. Apparently Brian Adams was there earlier, though the only semi famous person I spotted was Trevor 'Playgroup' Jackson. The It's Bigger Than were also in effect, posting it high by the decks, but I ended up leaving after about an hour, as I was absolutely dead tired and felt like something out of a George A Romero film. Being constantly elbowed by the beautiful people didn't help my mood either.

Anyway. Dunc/D-Func/DJ Phase's birthday party and leaving do tonight in just over an hour. If the storm clouds can hold off long enough there might even be a barbeque on his roof terrace, but looking at the sky outside, that seems unlikely.

'Stenders

I find that my TV watching habits are kind of a barometer of what's going on in my life. If I can give good account of recent events in Neighbours, say, it's a pretty good indication that I've not been working and am probably to be found drinking tea and staring moodily out of my living room window at coach loads of Polish tourists thundering past on Camberwell Church Street. Same goes for Countdown – except that's good, of course.

One thing I do seem to watch regularly though is Eastenders, and I say this with very little pride, as I realise that the programme is, put simply, car-crash tv.

It is quite amusingly bad though, and there are a few reasons for this. The most obvious one being that it depicts a London that is utterly nonexistant, except in the fevered imaginations of the shows producers. A vision as authentically 'London' as Dick Van Dyck's accent in Mary Poppins, only less so. For starters, if this is supposed to be the East End, shouldn't it be a bit more, shall we say, ethnically diverse? Rather than the token asian and black characters crudely shoehorned in to for appeasement's sakes, where are the African characters, The Bangladeshis, the Northeners (and don't say burt).

And jobs.. never mind all this market stall nonsense, surely anywhere in London is going to be home to at least one web designer, a couple of grime DJs, a freelance journalist and some recruitment consultants. Oh the recruitment consultants. Some shadey landlords as well, charging small fortunes for shoeboxes overlooking the high street, and taking two months to fix a tap. Then putting up the rent.

But one thing Eastenders does pride itself on, is its portfolio of 'hardmen', who are about as intimidating as yoghurt, only less useful in a fight. The most obvious being gurning 'double trouble' slapheads Phil and Grant, (brought back in in a vain attempt to boost ratings and proving, ultimately, that no-one ever really leaves the square – they just do a series of 'Ultimate Force' instead). Other than that though, notable villains include the 'pathetic gangster' – a post last occumpied by Johnny Allen. Pre-requisites for this role are simple really, you just have to be bereft of gravitas and supremely unintimidating, so having a receeding bouffant hairline and having sung in Spandau Ballet won't harm your chances one iota.

And the storylines... watching a storyline emerge in Eastenders is a bit like watching a ship sink – incredibly slowly. There's an awful inevitability to it in its sheer crashing unsubtlety and contrivance. One thing that always makes me groan inwardly is when two of the characters start talking at each other at cross purposes, and you realise that this is only the beginning of a tedious 'comedy of errors' that will take weeks to unravel, and won't even be that good when you get there. A bit like worrying away at the yards of grubby grey cable tangled behind your pc, somehow you realise it's better left alone and it will still be like that in six months time anyway. Something else that isn't exactly hard to spot in the 'Stenders is the way they introduce new characters – in short, they talk, unlike the hosts of extras who generally potter round mutely in the background like animated bit-players in some East End fuzzy felt diorama.

What is problematic with this, is that the programme's vocabulary in terms of its players is so limited that it's frankly ludicrous. Everyone has got, or had, such beef with other residents of the square that it's hard to see why anyone still lives there. An example of this that Will pointed out to me was how on Steve Owen's stag night, everyone put aside their differences for a night of leering and carousing in the E20. Why would you invite your enemies to your stag do? Because they're the only people you know of course, because no-one else in your neighbourhood talks! Jesus it's like some kind of Beckettian dystopia round here.. let's get down the queen Vic and roll out the barrel.

Eastenders is spiritually bankrupt too. Everyone always ends to scewing someone over over (both literally and figurtively) so in the end, everyone is as bad as each other. There's no moral compass in it whatsoever, unless you count Dot Cotton, and frankly, even she was being kinda snidey to the guy from Dad's Army who Pauline's shacked up with now. And far too many people end up sleeping with Pat Butcher, though, I did hear she was shacked up with Moira Stewart so maybe anything's possible.

All thus aside however, I can't pretend I don't watch this shit, and there's something peversely enjoyable about it. It really is utterly brainless, powdered soup for the mind, which is just the ticket for a Monday night. It also offers up a plethora of characters it really is quite fun to be irritated by – I'm thinking of Phil Mitchell's meeping drip of a son Ben at the precise minute, but there have been, and will be others.

But it has gone downhill since Big Ron left. Next week: Hollyoaks (joke).

I bid thee..

Go forth and educate your ears by going to

http://www.optimo.co.uk/

and downloading the 'first hour mix' from the 'goodies' section.

It's got a reggae cover of the Coronation Street theme*, and a reggae cover of Apache, as well as lots of other top stuff, so what's not to like.

* Apparently one of the dudes from Optimo is a big 'street' fan, or so Deven Miles tells me.

Shoes. Goats.

"The shoes? It's gotta be the shoes"

When it comes to footwear I'm down with Lords Of the Underground on this one. I'm sporting me some new brogues, and goddamn it if they're not pimping. I'm feeling them hard. Now, I just need to get my dads old 70s tan leather Austin Reed jacket repaired, and I'll be S.U.P.E.R.B.A.D.

I'm working back at M&C on some ongoing freelance with a view to becoming permanent. Apparently. Hope this gig works out as I had to burn some bridges to get here – bridges of the recruitment agency form so no huge loss, but still, I hate letting people down.

Twas It's Bigger Than on Saturday, so rolled up there. Ade and Dunc were absent having drunk themselves stupid at the Shaun Goater testimonial match at Southend. Their cousin had originally planned to bring along a live goat, then a load of toy ones before finally opting for twenty quids worth of veg, which he handed out to people with the instruction "feed the goat". No-one was allowed to take it in the stadium though, so the entire thing sounds like a bit of a waste of veg really. Maybe they should have bought a goat for a village in Africa or something. Just a thought. Anyway, I digress. IBT was good, though I was disappointed as Kaye didn't bring glowsticks like she said she was going to. Ah well – they'll keep to her and Sam's wedding I suppose, and in all fainress I left the vicks at home along with my hi-vis jacket and smiley shirt.

Went to the blogger meet up at the Sun and Doves yesterday, and chatted with the guys from the Flickr group. Nice bunch. I want to get more involved but for that I really need a camera that takes more than like, two photos per charge.

My head hurts today though. Realised how misguided my boozing adventure when I awoke this morning feeling like my brain had been dropkicked into a ditch full of asbestos. I should win a prize for how I feel, seriously. Still I'm getting through it. I had a fluorescent salad from Itsu before consisting of seaweed, shredded carrot and pumkin seeds, so that's gotta count for something, right?

Horrid day too. Lukewarm torpid weather with a sky the colour of grey milk. There was a fire alarm here before. Everyone swarmed into the square outside and milled about.

And now I blog. Can't wait to go home.. and Lost's on tonight too, so I'll veg out a bit too. Got a spot of design needs doing first, mind.

..............

10 PRINT "ANGRY"
20 GOTO 10

Bank Hol

I'm sipping grey coffee in a studio in Clerkenwell. The same creative services provider that ran the last studio I was in, incumbent in CHI off Oxford Street.

It uses some software called Twist, which some guy ran through me very quickly with me. As far as I can tell it's like an extension that generates different pdfs simultaneously. I think - I'm not sure. I'm quite tired and will probably ask the guy again.

Last week in Wales seems a million miles away. One thing I didn't write about then is that my mum and dad are plagued by a pheasant, that I think by rights should be a cartoon character a la Woody Woodpecker. Its thing is making a 'bwip bwip' sound a bit like a car alarm being deactivated – followed by a whooshing sound a bit like a flame thrower. Great at four in the morning – I think my dad wants to wack it.

Bank holiday was good. Stayed in on Friday and watched Layer Cake – which was alright if slightly convoluted. Also had some interesting freelance doing some illustration for a magazine in Ireland and working on a logo for a friend. Ironically a few things have happened at once, so a third bit which was also in the offfing had to sidelined, really, as it was spec work, and the other stuff is paid. Shame.

Saturday went to my friends Sam and Kays', and they cooked some food – some nice gnocchi and tomato sauce. Then went to Tea Bar in Shoreditch, where some guy was spinning techno. I recognised some of the tracks from a set by Jerome Pacman.

Awoke on Sam's couch in East London and went and ate eggs benedict at a cafe on Hackney Road. Think it was called 'The Premises'. It's under a studio anyway, and the walls are adorned with signed mugshots of musicians such as Roy Ayers, Miss Dynamite, and um, Charlotte Church. Ms Church's beaming photo was directly opposite me with the caption "Lush stirfry! You guys are stonking!" then something in Welsh.

The weather was good so I rather excitedly arranged to go and sit on Clapham Common with Ade – which was a cue for the weather to change and slate grey clouds to swarm across the sky. Went to the Tim Bobbin in the old town instead, before finally ending up back at Ade's listening to techno until the wee hours.

Felt weak on Monday, so spurned my friend Helen's offer of a roast and went home instead. Didn't do too much except watch a couple of episodes of Darkplayce.

And now it's tuesday. I'm pretty tired. I just finished a book called Post Office by Charles Bukowski. Its pretty funny, and having worked many a bleak summer job (and indeed temped for the NHS more recently) his depiction of 'bleakjob' (tm) rings very true.

I might go and buy some shoes in a bit.

Out of town

"so i be ghost from my projects
i take my pen and pad for the week and hittin' L's while i'm sleep'
on a two day stay, you may say i need the time alone
to relax my dome, no phone, left the 9 at home
you see the streets have me stressed something terrible.."

Nas – One Love

Ok so I haven't got a nine, and I actually took my phone (though I might as well have taken one of those snake shaped draught excluders for all the good it did me) But the last few days were spent on a hillside in Wales.

I was literally surrounded by green, but neither of the crisp folding persuasion, nor the sticky kind that makes you laugh at crap films and walk to the garage at two in the morning to buy a twix. No it was the rather more prosaic form of green that sheep/cows eat, though there was lots of it, and it was probably partly to thank for the lovely fresh air that I got to imbibe for the duration of my stay; it's been a veritable tonic.

So I've done bugger all really, save walk aound, check emails, chill and read books (Truecrime by Jake Arnott, great, and Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosely, almost finished). I also recovered a few bits and pieces that were languishing in my mum and dads' garage, thou not a great deal really – my Orb 'live 93' poster being one of them, along with a Henri Lloyd jacket that had a busted zip the last time I saw it (from my 26th birthday when I ended up getting bitten by a drunken Isrish man, don't ask).

And now here I am, back in babylon, staring down the barrel of another bank holiday weekend, and more immediately, a house meeting tonight. Can't wait. Got to don my 'Victor Mature' hat to talk reasonably about cleaning rotas and the house cleaning kitty. Then I might go to the pub afterwards to moan about it to someone else.

Celebrity Spotting

I saw Gail Porter in Marks and Spencer in Soho today.

Other celebs I've seen whilst in London include the guy who plays Martin Fowler in Eastenders outside the cafe across the road from the John Snow pub (I overheard him say something like "I dunno, I don't even know the geezer" as I strolled past, ears burning) the guy with the really flat profile/wonky nose who was in Holby City and that Smirnoff Ice ad where he's got off with his mate's mum at a party – he in a pub in Clapham junction, and Brian Dowling, who I saw strolling along just north of Oxford Street clutching a Louis Vuitton bag.

Pretty good eh?

I'm off to Wales tomorrow, where the only celebrities I'm likely to meet will probably be prize winning livestock.

Friday

All quiet on the western front.

Things I saw on the way to work this morning:

Two police support officers removing sheathes of those postcard sized chatline cards from a phonebox on the Charing Cross road.

Went to the Blues Bar on kingly street last night, and drank lager in the presence of Gridrunner and man like Zeon Cosini. Saw a guy there amidst the crowd that lived, or still lives in all probability, in Muswell Hill with a girl I saw last year. Couldn't remember his name though, so there really didn't seem much point in saying anything to him.

Then went to The Coffee House round the corner, which is, according to a clipping above the bar 'the pub where regulars go to be insulted'. They don't dissapoint either, and the guy behind the bar kept yelling "lightweight!" at me because I was trailing Ade in beer consumption. Also, last year when I was having about three pints on my luch break before nearly missing a flight to Corfu, the wizzened old guy kept whistling the Scooby Doo theme at me (I had long hair and a beard – I think he was implying I looked like shaggy).

Then went home and ate noodles and internetted.

Things I can see from my desk:

A photo of a a fat, gormless looking grey cat staring at me from the divider between the desks. I think it belongs to Carole who usually sits here (insofar as cats belong to anyone).

A stapler with 'Kate' written on it in black marker on Carole's desk.

Um, my hands?

That's not it obviously, but those are the things that stand out right now.

Well, another bank holiday weekend, and this time my brother's in town, so I feel I should really impress him with the glory that is London – go and do something interesting say, rather than drink in the Hermits Cave. Drink in the Joiners Arms maybe?.

I'm bored. Straw poll: what's in everybody's right pocket?

I've got:

Two pound coins

Some Wrigley's Sugarfree Gum (peppermint flavour)

My Wallet.

That's it.

zz

Really tired again; yet more no sleep action. Frankly, I feel slightly pissed (and no, I didn't drink last night). Maybe this would make a cheaper alterntive to boozng in the future? When aware of an impending date where alcohol is to be consumed in quantity, I could simply stay in and give sleep a miss for the night, and, hey presto! posess the glassy eyed torpor of the post-inebriated, but with a healthier bank balance and liver. There, that's my 'top-tip' for the day.

On a happier note I just hade a look on ebay, and a Futura 2000 print I bought in 2001 is going for nearly five times what I paid for it then. It's not even that good quality a print to be honest, as the stock is very thin and the screenprinting slightly dodgy. But still.. nice to know some baggy jeaned hipster somewhere's willing to pay big for it (and there were 29 bidders when I last checked).

Painted the living room completely white yesterday, and it looks great. A vast improvement on the previous sickly yellowy rent-a-beige anyhow. It took me Marvyn and Cecilia about four hours to do, and was actually quite enjoyable as some relatively no-brain jobs sometimes are. We listened to music as we were doing it – Animal Collective and Hi Records soul compilations, mainly, which I'd heartily reccomend to anyone doing likewise, and the time flew by. I got a pair of 'designer' paint spattered jeans out of it too.

It almost might not have happened too, as Cecilia went to get the paint rollers in the morning, Camberwell Church Street was cordoned off by police 'Do Not Cross' lines due to a shooting at the bottom of Grove Lane. This kind of thing seems to happen slightly to often for my liking on my street – Flashback to 2005 when me and Jess were talking in the living room only to hear rauccous sounds outside. What's this? Oh it's a phalanx of black suited police wih machine-guns wrestling two yardies to the ground. With dogs. While being filmed by CID. Oh. The best bit was that both the rudeboys were staring straight up at us from the ground when we looked out the window. Special.

Anyway. Too much merderation for my tastes. I laugh at Camberwell's eccentricities sometimes, but these eccentricities have as yet to pull a shank on me at the bus-stop, so I do so from a admittedly privileged position.

Top-tip two's probably keep your eyes out then, seen?

G'night G'bless

I'm sat up, it's twenty to five, the last of whichever housemate it was's syrupy orangle licqeur(?) is gone. The last Dire Straits tune fades to silent on my iTunes. Might be painting the living room tomorrow. Goodnight.

Good Friday

So just what is it that makes good friday so different, so damn good?

No work for starters, all tickety boo thus far then.

But what exactly do people do with their Bank Holidays? Anyone not involved in traditional bank holiday pursuits such as going to B&Q or the pub might like to do what I've been doing. "And what's that?" I hear you scream with such intensity that your spittle temporarily blinds me.

Well. Woke up this morning and read a bit of The Incal 2, by Moebius, then ate breakfast with Marvyn watching some Second World War comedy film thing called Ensign Pulver. It's a kind of shades of Sgt Bilko type affair set on a ship, and not actually that good. Most of what I saw involved the hapless Ensign Pulver ogling a bevvy of nurses stationed on the island they're anchored off – and comic hi-jinks ensue etc.

Then went and bought a scanner in town on Tottenham Court Road. Going to test drive it in a minute. I also got the latest All Star Superman by the team of Grant Morrison and my fave 'drawerer' Frank Quitely. He' really is almost too good. There's so much detail in each of his panels that each issue demands a reread just to drink up the little touches dotted around. We3 that they also collaborated on is also rather splendid. cyborg pets in exo-skeletal armour – what's not to like?

And now, I'm writing this, obviously. But just before then, I was staring at assorted bits of paper relating to banking, and trying in my own limited way to make some sense of them. The ongoing saga of me setting up as a limited company gets more tortuous each passing week. At the minute I've got a load of tax stuff from the Inland Revenue, who've managed to mis-spell the name of my company – a company I've as yet to invoice anyone for any money with, I might add. I really want to get this moving, but at the minute I'm just waiting for the final documents and information relating to it all to arrive. The woman I've dealt with at HSBC said she'd leave the relevant papers at the Baker Street branch yesterday, which I duly hiked to from Tottenham Court Road on my lunch break only to find she hadn't. I duly wheeled 180 degrees and trudged back – and that was my lunch break. Anyway. Also emailed Amnesty International to bitch at them about one of their shifty tabard wearing street people.

And later? who knows. Probably involves food at some point, but what I'm not sure exactly. I think the oven's broken now. but nothing in this fucking flat works anyway. Not even me today! Hah.

Just bought a Kinder Egg, which contained a 'haunted tree' which was something I never thought I'd need, but there you are.

Alright chaps, have a good un.

Tired

Man I'm tired.

I slept for two and a half hours last night, which combined with five or so the previous night makes for about seven hours out of the last fifty whatever. I actually went to bed early (for me) at 11, and fell asleep to at two, only to wake up at half four, and not be able to get back to sleep.

This has been going on for a few weeks now, and it's really starting to wear me out. I just really want to sleep a good nights sleep before work, but am seemingly incapable.

I feel wired, and somewhat stupid. I keep on making really crass mistakes, and am almost too tired to care. Yesterday on leaving the office I kept pushing on the door until the girl on reception gently said, "just pull it sweetheart".

I realised I'd been reading the "push" printed graphic on the outside of the glass (in reverse, of course)

Mentally, I feel on the level of watching lots of daytime tv, and that's about it. Countdown would probably seem as tough as quantum physics right now though.

If I can just get through tomorrow, I might just hibernate over Easter and not leave my bed.. In the meantime though, any sleeping tips?

This is getting trippy.