overlap

Above you see the view from inside my office just before I was leaving this afternoon. And you also see the result of my first efforts playing around with my new digital camera - it's been a long time coming, and it means my flickr account is likely to be getting a lot busier.

Seems fairly clear that although I have both toothache and sinusitis*, the combination of the two is where the real trouble is. Got to sleep in the very early hours, got to work nearly two hours late and spent a lot of the day with my head over varying quantities of hot water. If nothing else, I should have lovely steam cleaned pores now! And new additions to my pharmacopia. * and the web-enabled age means no hypochondriac can ever be without a self-diagnosis or three

Not my words, and I can sort of understand their point. As it is, I'm sat up considering my further pain relief options; I believe it's a combination of tooth pain and a clogged sinus, with the drawback that in any position other than sat upright, the sinus adds pressure on the nerve in my cheek and gums. I'm not that soft, I'm used to a bit of discomfort but this is pain like I've never eperienced before. Now, what's in the cupboard?

Not to be busy at a football match or otherwise occupied on a saturday afternoon is a rare experience for me, and generally I look forward to sitting swearing at the computer while enjoying my hometown local radio station's commentary on the match brought to me down the optic fibres. This afternoon I spent hours watching the rain turn to steam on my bonnet as I sat in a queue of traffic going absolutely nowhere. And of course I'd expected I'd be back in plenty of time, so I didn't even have the radio in the car. That sort of situation says a lot about the human condition - you can spot a mile off where people are getting impatient and frustrated, and you can see where taking the initiative and leaving a gap for people to get through helps everybody on their way much more quickly. But the thing that surprises me the most is the way people are apparently happy to spend so much of their own time in this way - this isn't 1975 any more, and shops are open for a lot longer than they are closed, so it really didn't ought to be that hard. I could have used the time better too, but I did end up achieving what I set out to do, otherwise it would really have been a waste of time. And now I can watch a bunch of videos I haven't seen for years, at my leisure. Which must be better than shopping for sport!

A historic debt cleared this morning - it's hardly all that exciting as my final university year was only the first year of student loan introduction, but all the same it's nice to have the box ticked and to move on. Of course it would have been paid off years ago if I'd just been able to have the bank put the trifling amount on my overdraft  - the total loan value behind the debt I have been dragging around for many years only equates to a week's gross salary now, and that's certainly not because I'm being paid footballer wages.

Entirely by coincidence, my student days are neatly referenced in my visit last week to the university that I nearly went to - it lost out as my second choice on remarkably non-academic grounds - so revisiting that campus for the first time in a very long time provided for the odd interesting moment. And similarly a few days later I was in the bar of a student union building in the north-west, and not alone in commenting on how much the facilities appeared to have changed.

But whatever the financing mechanism, I'm very glad for the provision of the nearly full grant I benefited from. There would have been very little room in 18+ education for me had the current regime of fees, loans, top up fees and so forth pertained when I was leaving school, and I have every sympathy with anyone looking at that prospect now.

Damn I love playing further sale reduction poker!

I'm led to believe that 'But you saw them last night, why do you need to go again tonight?' is a familiar domestic refrain in some parts, and today I have something of an answer.

Every show is slightly different and has something to make it stand out from all the others - sunday as the first night I made on this tour and a return to a city I haven't visited in a very long time, on which note more in the next week or so. Wednesday was a cracking show, in another city I've not been to in ages, and extra memorable for the unusually ambitious drive home.

Tuesday will stand out as the one where I found myself in that little bit of extra unfamiliar territory; sure, I've been on guestlists, and in soundchecks, I've been backstage and in dressing rooms, and I reckon I've got a pretty good idea how the whole thing fits together outside of the hours on the stage itself.

And if you take the four main players in the three bands on this tour, I've seen getting on for 120 performances of ten different incarnations of bands involving these people, so I know them a bit, they know me a bit but that's just a function of the amount of time we've spent in the same places, it doesn't make me any kind of special.

On tuesday night I was backstage before the doors opened, and I was pleased to find I've not lost the childish enthusiasm that stops the whole thing becoming no more than habit, and for a brief moment I touched a guitar which was later used for one song only that night, one of my favourites.

Still my guitar hero indeed!

Labels: Amsterdam, Dolittle, gigs, music, The Wonder Stuff

Nobody would be fooled were I not to post this, so the bare facts are as follows: left Manchester at 11pm, passed midnight giggling at a rather poor attempt at intimidatory and aggressive driving just south of Stoke, at 1 am I was singing along with MC Solaar and after three and half hours and 190 miles, I stepped out of my car at home.

There will be a post or several to follow, but at a time when that doesn't stand between me and my bed. It was a good night though!

Labels: Amsterdam, Dolittle, gigs, music, The Wonder Stuff

There's nothing quite like the first show of a tour. Even if in the web-enabled age, news is reported before it's finished happening, and the surprises tend to lose a little something in the process, but despite having a good idea what to expect, it's always nice to be reminded why dusting down a few familiar old songs was going to be a good idea.

Great to see a few friends of mine, and two of my favourite bands, and with the third one joining the tour in a couple of days, throat lurgy willing, I'm looking forward to the next couple of weeks. But in the meantime, it's bedtime - all rock and no sleep makes too many broken cliches turn into a mumbling mess, and I have to be at work in not many hours.

Labels: Amsterdam, gigs, music, The Wonder Stuff

It's been a short while since I last drink-posted, but by this point I am rather less than concerned about that. It's also quite some time since my legs were this smoothly hair-free, but they feel great. What is actually going to happen in the next week is anyone's guess, but what is certain is that I shall be on my travels and getting around the country, so if you are around Nottinghamshire/Leicestershire or between there and Manchester (or indeed between Manchester and the M50) in the middle of the forthcoming week, I'm probably going to be passing by. I've got a few people to go and see on the way, but there's always room on my list... The length of time this post has already taken suggests I should not think about extending it much!

I got sent a postcard from the organisers of the hilly local bike ride I did last summer, and this is the picture on it. We went down this section of road, at a comfortable 30+mph - it would have been easy to go faster still, but less easy to do that under sufficient control of the bike! But that's the joy of gravity when you've just slogged your way up something. It's long overdue that I look into the details of entry for this year, though I seem to recall there was a suggestion of going the other way round this route. Which would make for the potential of 50+mph going down the other side of this, and that's an interesting prospect to say the least!