ooh. its dark outside. I can barely see my keyboard
if you go down to the waterfront today, well, yesterday, you’re sure for a big surprise, because you forgot its the first week of university and this is the first night out in their lives for about 700 16-year-olds who can’t see because of the sticky black hair diagonally across their face, which, coincidentally, they’re off, due to the 3 bottles of wkd cider they hid in their shoulder bag. welcome to the memo event of the month – two pairs of twins shouting at you about some nonsense about not being part of a scene or caring about the haircuts they’ve crafted especially its just the music man nobody can tell you what you like alright man its just so your f**kin life man we do this BECAUSE WE LOVE YOU MAN AND WE ALL LOVE MUSIC MAN WE LOVE YOU NORWICH YOU’RE SO AWESOME.
it was all a bit spinal woodstock in a funny way but the ear-splitting screeches of 700 wet students that responded suggested that the feeling was mutual and, this being norwich, as I am wont to point out, anything more energetic than a grunt of appreciation is about as rare as apocalypse sauce. having endured 3, yes 3 support acts who all sounded a bit like a cross between linkin park, stryper and your first band at school who played cover versions of atticus in assembly, madina lake took to the stage well after 10 just as people were thinking about the last bus home. the waterfront is a very funny place to see a band. as its so small, they have to be their own roadies, mostly, so just before they start their pompous stage entrance with gothic backing track and puffs of smoke (and a tiny stonehendge if they could), they’ve already just been on to adjust the screws on a high hat, accompanied by a small ripple of girl squeaking coming from a few people who actually know who they are.
much like I’m from barcelona had got about 15 people to clap louder than they had ever tried to before, madina lake enthused the crowd (who would probably have danced to a pin dropping by this point) so much so that there was even moshing down the front. I mean proper, arms flailing about, throwing yourself at random people in a 2 metre radius with no shirt on moshing. we haven’t seen it done properly here since theatre of hate came in the eighties and monkey brought his crowbar, so it was nice to see. there was also a healthy amount of crowd surfing going on, which, despite the legal notices around the venue, goes pretty much unchecked at the waterfront. notwithstanding all that, we also got a complimentary top-of-the-speaker-stack swallow dive into the crowd from the lead singer and copious bottle throwing. ask yourself the last time you remember seeing any of that happening in any no-cameras no-drinks no-surfing no-moshing no-dancing no-clapping no-standing no-smoking no-exit no-entry no-fun venue you go to these days (geoff, this is a cue for you to remind yourself of some north-eastern sweat hole in the late 70s). I think the music was alright but I can’t remember.
for some reason, everybody who spilled out of the place at the end just stopped outside and hung around like there was something to hang around for. having brought the megane scenic with me tonight, I headed up the road to where I’d left it. I must have passed at least 25 dads waiting on the other side of the road, arms crossed with a bunch of car keys hanging from one of their impatient fingers, ready to take jessica and her new friends home to cringleford. most of them were about my age. I shed a little tear of self-congratulation for being so tragically hip and reminded myself that, if I needed reminding, which I don’t right now, that life is too short. I’ll see you all at editors on monday
“look mummy, there’s those people we saw on holiday last year that we walk past every day” “no, it can’t be” “mummy, it IIIIIS”. and it was. they had also just entered the pit of hell that, on this particular day, happened to be the car park at the eurotunnel terminal. we had made good time from norwich and we might even have been early enough to catch an earlier train under the sea. I mean, we were booked on the 11:50, and it was11:10 now, as we slipped off the M20 and headed for the terminal gates, our windows down, singing songs from the shows, with the wind in our hair and thoughts of aquitaine in our heads.
“what’s this hold up?” “I’m not sure. it just looks like there a few people waiting behind these lorries. see? up there? it says ‘freight delays, so we’re alright” “is a megane scenic freight?” “no, it’s an em pee vee, a car” “so we’ll be alright then?” “yes” mind you, this is taking a little while. it’s probably always like this. “it wasn’t like this when I came before. we just went straight through.” oh. we’ll be alright. we’re early.
we’d already planned our route by sticking lots of stickers we found down the back of the sofa onto a huge map of france that was so big we couldn’t unfold it in the car. our first stop was a youth hostel just outside orléans and mme niceperson had confirmed our family room so that we didn’t have to share a bathroom with any strange people or anything like that. ooh no. we had to be there before 11 at night, however, as the reception would close to keep the wolves out, or something, but we’d be there way before then, anyway, frolicking in the meadows eating runny cheese. but this wasn’t quite right. we got to the terminal gate and I’d already written off an early departure when a sign on a faded scrolling lcd pointed out that, in fact, there was a 90 minute delay on all crossings. 90 minutes? that’s an entire video of fawlty towers. ah well. it’s a nice day. we can probably boy a magazine and sit in a park somewhere, under a communications system that will keep us informed regarding every development.
I did think that the little posts with lcd letters were a quite twee little thing. you wait for a letter to appear, and if it’s the same as the one on the cardboard coathanger they gave you at the gate, it’s time for you to go. they didn’t have any letter on right now though. perhaps they only put a letter on there when there’s a new one. “what letter is it?” “there isn’t one, its still just an asterisk” “what’s an asterisk?” “you see that thing there? that’s an asterisk” “no it isn’t” “yes it is. what do you think it is?” “its a star” “yes, well, I suppose it is a star”. we’ve been waiting about an hour now. its a nice day and everything, and its ok sitting on the grass here, as more and more cars come past, to find that, actually, the car park is completely full and so they’ll park on the grass. where you are. there’s not been a letter at all. we should probably see what’s going on. and my sandwiches will be getting warm in the boot. I hate it when my sandwiches get warm in the boot. no, it’s an asterisk. I told you that already. sorry.
inside the terminal building there’s a froth of activity, mainly around eurotunnel employees giving out drinks vouchers, wearing pained expressions. the terminal building is much like any other terminal building in the UK, for any other mode of transport. in other words, its a bit rubbish, and you want to leave. except the information desk is in here, as is whsmith, of course, and I’m hankering for a ginsters and red bull. duly dispatched to the information desk, I wait behind a number of people who are lurching over the counter with what look like steam coming out of their tasteless shirt collars. I’m sure there’s no reason to get quite so emboiled. “FOUR HOURS? WHAT DO YOU MEAN FOUR HOURS?” count backwards. walk away. “they said they delay is now four hours” “FOUR HOURS? WHAT DO YOU MEAN FOUR HOURS?” “that’s what I said” “but FOUR HOURS.” I know.
“we should put some sun cream on.” too late. never mind. by now, cars are actually parking on top of each other and the tuts of the middle class can be heard from four miles away. still no letter. those stupid letters are useless. “it’s still a star daddy. it should be a letter” “ITS NOT A BLOODY STAR ITS A BLOODY ASTERISK YES IT SHOULD BE A LETTER. IT SHOULD BE A LETTER ‘D’ LIKE WE HAVE HANGING ON OUR MIRROR, BUT ITS NOT, ITS AN AS-TER-ISK.” dispatched once more to the information desk, there is now a quagmire of venomous plebs waving ‘A’s and ‘B’s around and saying things like “then why did your colleague sat THERE tell me not HALF AN HOUR AGO that letter ‘A’ would be boarding at THREE?” and “so I have to cancel NOW to get a refund? can I not just cancel it later online? we’re going to get a ferry” and “we’ll have to get our tent our right now, eh girls? nyyyeeeeehahahahaahahaaaaa!”. it says on the magnetic board at the back of the desk that ‘C’ and ‘D’ are boarding. bingo. “no, ‘C’ and ‘D’ aren’t boarding yet sir” “but you’ve just stuck a magnetic ‘C’ and ‘D’ on that board behind you” “hang on sir” … ” ‘C’ and ‘D’ are boarding now sir.” excellent. just time to…oh, not there isn’t.
after four hours, a little queue to get through customs will be alright, just so long as we get on the bloody train. it’ll probably only be about half an hour now, this is the quick bit.
three hours later, we’re still stuck at stage two. stage two is the stage that you definitely can not back out of. its the stage after passport control and customs, where you’re actually stateless and the only way is forward. suspiciously, there was a handy mobile grill stop at the head of the queuing system we found ourselves parked in. as it was now 6pm, we needed the tea we’d planned to have somewhere on the other side of paris, but right now, we’re just on the other side of a checkpoint – we can still SEE the terminal. “um. four of the large sausages” “dave, four?” “er. yeah. thas the last” “yeah four. any drink?” “do you have a cup of tea” “well, we have warm water that we turn brown and add a skin to. that’s a pound” “I’ll have one” “there you go love. four sausages. that’s what you call your BIG DOGS” “oh. right. thanks.” of course, no sooner had we settled down at the side of the vacuous road side under what looked like a military installation of some sort to eat our BIG DOGS and squirt ketchup all over ourselves, than there was some kind squawking noise through some kind of loudspeaker signalling some kind of movement in some kind of direction. in fact, it was, finally, our safe passage to the trains granted, and we followed the languid dutch couple in the toyota celica down the ramp, across the platform, up the ramp and onto the train.
“are we on the train now?” “yes, we’re on the train now” “ooh, it smells funny” “I need a wee.” eight hours after we arrived, we departed. we’d missed all our sticky checkpoints on our unfoldoutable map and so we were just making it up now. in the end, we’d actually get as far as orléans, just eight hours late, whereupon we would check into hotel de sleaze and start itching. we had apparently been caught up in ‘operation stack‘, following an outage in one of the rail tunnels and so there had just been one train going backwards and forward all day. some people were actually stuck IN the train, IN the tunnel for three hours, so it could have been worse. of course, not a single person from eurotunnel at any point told us anything about anything that was going on the whole time we were on their property, and I expect those stupid lcd posts have STILL got STARS on them.
significant areas to cover. should you have references to the amalgam of maps that determine your focus then we can use those to render the brickwork of your future and there’ll be time at the end to squeeze a lemon. its always feeling like there’s an assumption that you’ll be chartering the biplane of self-help and you’ll find that this time its particular to late entries. I was wondering if because I’d already like paid for it myself it would be nice if it was possible that I would mute myself and get under the wire fence.
you do this every week. you’re not listening are you. its not enough that you have to print it out at the end of the day but this time it’ll all have to fit on one page with a picture of a moose on it. while you’re philandering around on your social network I’m quietly sacking you via text message. if we all think hard enough we might just be able to contradict ourselves before we know what to say and by the time the ready meal is ready we’ll have poked our fingers into the pie of marketing and pulled out a plum. I’ll rearrange for next wednesday. can you make it?
there’s nothing inconsistent about it. its supposed to be like that. I’ll have to go over the whole thing in a minute but if you’re reading this now you already know that so join me on facebook and I’ll poke your eye out but that’s alright you can throw some cheese at me.
would that I be bound for barrack street but there’s too much of me to go around and I have some lifting to do in the please allow me to introduce myself department. so instead I’m slatting down heigham rud with a scenic full of clart headed for citycare towers wherepon the st petersburg of the north west awaits with a tractor and a shovelful of whiff. on any given sunday its possible to identify 17 species of grass from your car window as you crawl into the chamber of 2 doors as half of costessey pass by grunting under the weight of manky carpets and old fridges that they did actually bring in the back of their sierra but they can’t be bothered to wait in the queue. I saw a 5 year old carrying a bin bag full of magazines up the road past ace waste the other week getting slapped up the ankles because she wasn’t carrying fast enough. I turned the radio up and saw a vole run under the wheels of a nissan terrano. then a huge balloon crashed into the wensum and the lights went out in langleys who coincidentally were giving away spelling tests for under 8s which was about right but we already had ‘accept’ and ‘except’ so just took a sylvanian family off the shelf and legged it up the castle where we lobbed them down the mound like they were paratrooping neil and christine hamilton.
steam doesn’t start again if you restart it. you have to start it again. there’s hundreds of way you can get it, but its not the one you get that kills you its the one after that so I’m still deciding which way my money’s going although I know that’s a very good cause but I’m not deciding while you’re stood on my doorstep if you’re not prepared to leave anything for me I can’t decide can I but I already give a lot away each month I’m choosing wisely I’ve got to go up to tip later it can happen to anyone 2 pound a month it is happening thankyou.
there’s a queue up the road which means I’ve missed the ambulance. you’d think the newsagent down unthank road would have a copy of GQ to take up the hospital while the bones are being oiled, but as I’m fingering around between ‘large ladies’ and ‘inevitable juxtapositions’ up on that very high shelf I’m beginning to think its just not there. there’s nuts, but I don’t think it would be appropriate. I’m even tempted to have a quick marie clare and be done with it, but I’ve spent so long on this shelf now that I’m thinking I might have to actually buy something from it. curiously, model train making is up here, but I can’t bring myself to cough for that, so as a bead of sweat rolls down my forehead and I’m jangling the change in my pocket, I pick up a copy of ‘grunt’ and head over to the counter…
not really, of course. I went up the co-op and they had GQ in there, but by the time I’d queued behind the man with a vegetable and a switch card and then legged it back up the road, a pickfords van was poking into the carriageway and there was a sizeable pile up back up to the elms. better run. too late. as I turn the corner, the ambulance is pulling away and I can just about make the handle of the wheelchair through the back window. I kind of wave a bit, but it doesn’t really mean anything and a deviant in a polo gives me a brow-furrowed grin which makes me trip over my own stupidness.
everything was alright though, even though they were a bit surly about lifting it down the stair. its health and safety gone mad or something. I’ll go back later and spend 4 hours getting 2 computers to talk to each other but in the meantime I’ve eaten too much birthday cake and so I’m just sitting here until I shrink.
while two heads were as good as one I wandered wearily through the back of the cultural quarter past reclaimed tv studios and old kebabs there was a sniff of arcade fire although only 27 people were witness. a man from london town squawked in tune and had polite guitaring reflects in his glasses which were thick and heavy with the age of twenty but he’s good, hint he. by the time we’d scratched together about a hundred of us, they were tying balloons to mic stands as we were mysteriously clouded by diagonal hair and man bags from the metropolis. I was almost anticipating
avoiding the inevitable comparison with the fire, they were a bit like the fire, except they didn’t have wasps in their trousers and faces like the revolution. in fact, they had faces like the magic roundabout. in particularly, the man with the pink air bed crowd-surfing into security had a face exactly like the organ player at the end of the magic roundabout and everything. also, they didn’t sing about northern hemisphere middle class angst scenario back catalogue art rock student philisophy, but they sang about chicken pox. in fact there wasn’t really much comparison, except there were about eleven of them, which, at the waterfront, is like a telephone box trick (smile if you’re over 30, oh, you all are) and all the song sounded the same. most impressively of all, by the end, they had those there present all baying like a pack of mad pigeons for more for a full 3 minutes, which, in norwich, is as rare as 5 fingers, after which they encored straight into a laptop dj set which had 79 people in a circular conga (I was kind of wanting to leave by then, but I had to wait until someone fell over a crisp).
I’m off to the amazon when I collapse my spreadsheet. tiny cracks.
after reaching critical mass on distractions and not having enough money to buy a new smashing pumpkins cd we all need a bit of direction to get us back onto the treadmill that we’d inadvertently stepped off while we went looking for a pie. many times I’ve entered ‘spatula’ into google just to see what happens and then taken a life-changing decision based on a recipe for drizzle cake which normally involves going down the road and getting a paper but its small steps that change things – you don’t have to have a terrible year, although that helps.
I can occasionally seek out some hidden meaning in a the way I trip over a pile of school shoes at the bottom of the stairs or forget to let the guinea pigs out but in general the path that leads me is pretty short say, about 12 inches from my face to the screen. sometimes just looking out the window is life-changing enough. I have to move my head and everything. and sometimes there’s somebody walking past. with a dog. I saw 2 dogs once and they were barking. that kept me going for a couple of weeks.
so, how serendipitous that we should receive a plastic helicopter from china. within and without the packaging are the very words which have shown me the way the truth and light and my chosen path is now bedecked with flowers of eternal hope and lit by the effusive glow of a million sparks of imagination. its not much, but within the blue border and tabulated for clarity, the lord god almighty of slave labour spake thus onto me:
MOST NEW CATENA TO BE HIGHLY PRAISED AND APPRECIALED BY CONSUMING PUBLIC. TO ADOPT ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY. TO ASSURE YEARS OF TROUBLE-FREE. HANDSOME APPEARANCE. SIMULATING A TRUE STYLE SUPEREMINENCE
never a truer word has been spoke. I have no idea what catena might be, but its just right for me. and its most new, which is a bonus. I say this catena to myself everyday now as I flagelate myself with a copy of custom PC and praise the coal burners of the orient. I think I’ve reached my epiphany.
I got that new template the other day which is a bit like the old template except now you can have multiple curves because that’s what’s there and insert picture from file here its some beach huts in southwold but it doesn’t matter copyright on brand I think. now I have to add another orange box which is fine but I rather liked the symmetry of those four across the middle but hey five is just as nice in fact it breaks up the three below in green marvellous (red underline?). can’t really understand why the spell checker thinks a block of text on a box only has one word though when there’s clearly seventeen. I’ll happily put an ampersand in there but spell out twelve numbers, yes, its a style I’ve been doing it for 15 years & I’m happy with it and I’m not going to change it now
only speaker notes. I’ll make the font bigger so it lasts longer. everything in hare 50 pee.
by the time its gone into the collabspace (red underline) I’ll have grown my hair back. the revised version is here if you have any questions let me know it occurs to me that in the current context the expectation is pretty low it doesn’t really matter how far we go. on the way back we talked about everything and so now it’ll end up in arial 24 but nobody will know because you stripped out the meaning which is perfect you can’t fail basis of mediocrity but look you’re still there you can hide forever if he can do it and still progress to that level there’s hope for all of us remaining just where we are I’ll do that forever there’s 2 minutes of this outro.
stop it. stop looking over my shoulder. go on, you’ve got a nice macbook you don’t need to peer at my ferrari while I’m creating this unimpressive community presentation for a meeting on thursday. you must have something more exciting to do like twitter or facebook or something. maybe you’re updating records in the british museum or something with your brain the size of a planet. oops, didn’t know you had company.
hoofed out of the office by the wholesale replacement of our electrical supply, I’m suddenly in need of internet access as I actually have something I need to do for work which actually can’t wait because I’ve left it to the last last last minute this time notwithstanding the fact that I spend most of my time these day just propping things up. I have my haircut. I take my laptop out. I sit in the forum cafe and actually write a presentation. I mean, I’d never get around to it at home. I’d be uploading laughable photos of my own head or something while I’m supposed to be working, but here, I can’t really do anything quite so ridiculous, as most of cafe marzano are sat watching me because they can’t quite believe how ostentatious my laptop is and what an idiot I must be. they’re even looking as I write this, so I’ve made the font really small so I don’t really know what I’m saying, but that’s no different to normal, of course. what is surprising me, however, is that this is quite a pleasant experience and that I’m quite productive. I’ll have another americano in a minute and lose it completely, but until then, I feel another email coming on
norwich has the largest open free wireless network in the world or something, so it’s about time I used it. I’m going to sit on the caste mound tomorrow and do a little parcour while I’m waiting for the collabspace to upload something I just made up. I’ve got backache. these chairs are horrible. I can’t get a coffee because I can’t leave my laptop. that person is annoying. you, you’re really distracting. get off your phone. stop tapping your foot. and slapping you thighs. YOU. GO AWAY.
he missed the click track. I didn’t notice, but kelly jones bit his head off and spat it into a bucket. it was all good natured head biting off though and after half way through the set everyone was laughing at the funniness of everything – here we are in the 1500 capacity UEA with the stereophonics, who start a real tour in november in stadiums with 25000 capacities but somehow they took a wrong turn on the way to nottingham or something and ended up here which if fine because you’ll never see them here again and very rarely see them outside of a stadium tour so here we are on a sound system obviously creaking at the seams as local boy in the photograph wails out and 1500 people or shouting back and you’ve never quite heard so much noise after a song here, well, for about 10 seconds, but this is norwich, so of course after that 10 seconds, notwithstanding the fact that this band is huge, there is a period of silence punctuated only by a bemused lead singer walking up to the mic and saying er, yeah, thanks very much, thinking he must have missed 5 minutes of his life somehow, and a couple of stoners in the pit shouting YEEEAH, GOORN THEN, PLAY SUFFUN!
they did play suffun for about an hour and a half and finished up with dakota which made some young girls collapse in front of me. I met up with a couple of friends there who had secured a place on the steps in front of the mixing desk, so they had a nice time. I spent the evening in the pit with my ears bleeding, as usual, so by the end I was stuck to the parquet watching the lights come on as everyone rushed to the car park. when I eventually got back to the megane scenic, someone had left a couple of stereophonics tickets on my windscreen, which I tried to work out all the way home. I was parked as far away as possible and was pretty much back to my car before anyone else in that part of the car park, so they must have been put there either by someone who had left early, or by someone who had found them on the floor near the scenic and thought I must of dropped them and so, like you do with gloves, they put them in the most visible place near to the scene of the find, which happened to be under my windscreen wipers. if the latter was true, 2 people didn’t see the stereophonics, and one of them had probably been beaten up by the other for being so stupid as to just put them in their back pocket so that they fell out when they got their mobile phone out to check for a text they hadn’t got. they missed a good show. I lost some ear cells apparently, as that’s what ringing means, I know that because I watched children of men the next day and when the cafe explodes, clive owen’s ears ring too and someone else tells him that means his ears are dying but I can’t remember who it was that said it probably his old girlfriend.
I’m from barcelona tomorrow night. I mean, that’s who I’m going to see. I’m not going to be from barcelona. obviously. or maybe not.< no, wednesday. what day is it. isn’t the football on then? oh.
