uea nostalgia trip

December 20, 2006

for those of you currently watching the countdown timer on bloc party tickets on ebay or even watching the countdown timer on countdown, a small distraction in the shape of the gig nostaliafest has been put together by those good people at the uea. while you have 20 minutes to wait to see if cheesehelmet67 has placed an automatic bid on BLOC PARTY TICKETS 2!!! SOLD OUT NORICH UEA!!! that will trump your 80 quid at the last second, head over to the uea box office link and check out 1981. if you roll all those groups together into one uberretronostagliaplagagroup you end up with bloc party anyway. merry christmas!

for those of you like me who already have your bloc party tickets and actually thought you might as well get a feeling ticket as well while you were on the phone (see 17 mar 1982), take a little while to check out the list and after you’ve got past the october 1981 section to remind yourself about that u2 gig you went to where the whole of norwich apparently crammed into the lower common room at the same time based on how many people say they were there then have a browse at the rest of the eighties to remind yourself how rubbish/brilliant it was. I mean, there was only so many times you could go and see the thompson twins or tears for fears, but john martyn, the damned and killing joke in the space of 4 day? genius.

you are allowed to vote for your best of all time from that list, but it will just be for you own amusement.

a billion isk please

December 13, 2006

if you want it you can meet me at the place wherever I am that which I can no longer remember even what but if you find me it’ll save you a year’s worth of chipping up rocks with galactic shovels or chasing guristas around with F3 F4 F5 and F6. I’ve also got rubbish marines and some spare part or other that you can probably use to construct a prototype toilet on some dreadnought or other which only exists in a forum thread somewhere but I can’t sell for toffee. oh, and about 127 shuttles which were funny once but are now just like annoying bead curtains hanging in the doorway of reality. give me my 14 euros back. it’s christmas.

jessica simpson nintendo wii hell

December 12, 2006

there. in the woods.

who’s that at this time. ah. parcelforce. I’m not yet awake but already I’m dribbling onto my slippers as I wrap down the stairs where a small green peasant fills the door frame looking like an algorithm through the frosted glass. it matters not a trifle what therein lies but to a trojan horse its a numb colostomy of sponges that pop and crackle as you lose the fight to hold up your trousers. it might be the poster print of jane asher or maybe the children’s business cards but whatever firebox is unearthed with the flick of your stanley it’s the stuff that counts. pop. pop. to the bathroom.

if there’s a community webspherical for squeezing cats in jars then it’s no small wonder that the forums are agog with blather about pack. brain squatters have been ranking until their remote arm hurts. video. rank. submit.

wrong paper

December 11, 2006

naahaaahah. when you struck your spatula over the hind legs of my donkey you started an exodus from the left wing which left me cold for eight years and flipping teacakes into the channel I mulled over the crab sticks to find that inside its alright to be rubbish but when you have to spoon out cesar to mongrels in the shallow end you might as well be morris dancing on london street for all it matters. half a john bull please. that’s thirty pence. I know.

but somewhere in the gaping expanse of the eighties hugh cornwell left and we had a bottom shelf full of marzipan but little did we know it would still be on the telly when they counted down the hundred best marzipans while a wafer-thin paper boy put the guardian into 184 and knowing its the end simply makes his way to the malthouse to mash up the pavement with his little dayglo sack whereupon the pelicans begat puffins and we all strained our necks as the number 25 took out debenhams and the painted lady on the clarins counter neary blink’d an eye.

old school

December 8, 2006

funny how they pop up. following the failure of an entire backroom, I was apparently lost in ether, until I was so conspicuous regionally that I could not be avoided, and from that point on, we had that conversation just this morning about not getting email directly and here is one about being friends and, by the way, here’s Andrew, so fancy that.

there’s a curious certainty about the misplacement of time that I’m sure serves as theme and fantasy. it’s round in the end, of which, of course, there isn’t one. look behind you.

oh please

December 7, 2006

it’s like the only saturday ever, so like, you’re not gong to let me take it because I’m so, like, indispensable, that you pay me 6 grand to stand here being polite to people who should really stick a pencil in their ear, like, you know? well that’s about it really I suppose so, like, I’ll just be a misery all day and then write some kind of like angst-ridden song about your middle-aged hair and licking bottoms and stuff, like, so, like, when you read this you’ll know, right. you’ll so know it, right.

except it wasn’t like that. we didn’t talk like that then.

snatch

December 5, 2006

while its apparent I have 15 minutes to gloss over the calamity of non-attendance it will surely be bafta talk when the first productions are screened in assembly although apparently she missed a vital bit and he wasn’t completely taken with the final cut after his collaborator snipped in with the effects and made everything random but it’s only half a morning and after we’ve dropped in to essex for a quick list of things not to get we’ll mash up the remains and make a video pie for the unfortunate children in the street.

I did one of those marble paintings once and a rather nice drawing of a woodpecker.

living/dead

December 1, 2006

The man over the road who runs the pub dropped dead the other day. 43 years old. I just saw the funeral party drive past as a CityCare leaf-sucker winds his way up and down the path outside our house, waving on terrified pedestrians. Everyone is arriving for the wake. They look pretty smart in their black suits. Some of them are quite enjoying it, as they nip into M&Ms to get a few more fags, while others can’t quite let go, and are gathering by the car park, not quite sure what they are supposed to do next. The black Mercedes is leaving. It’s reversing into everybody who’s just come down from the cathedral.

Then they’ve all gone. Except for the few who outlived him and don’t understand why, who are slowly being aided down the road, walking sticks lightly poking the leaves that haven’t been sucked yet.

It looks like Jim has revised his priorities. I just got off the phone to someone who’s working hours at Sun are killing them. The leaf sucker is doing another run across the front of the Black Horse. He’s very good at it. I’ll read Karl Minns later and everything will be alright. I don’t overdo anything. I’m not even here half the time.

you were out

November 30, 2006

and we knocked really hard. but I was there. I just wasn’t listening. I rather like the idea of driving for 30 minutes to the single sorting office on the other side of town to queue for a further 340 minutes behind people from newmarket road trying to understand what the gentleman behind the counter with the ponytail is trying to tell them about why their enormous package to charles in new zealand never made it because they didn’t put a customs stamp on and about 17 hearstsease girlfriends doing returns to argos and freemans, as old mrs miggings struggles to comprehend that size really does matter and that A4 envelope is not a letter at all but it’s an enormous unwieldy parcel which some poor delivery driver will have to break their back simply lifting it to a letterbox and so that’s why it costs twice as much as last time, dear.

it’s exciting, I can’t deny it. but then, I don’t get out much. I even like going to chapelfield, because it’s got people in. except house of fraser, of course.

publish to global

November 29, 2006

that’s what it’s there for so as you meander through the troughs of plebian and lob a few camels into the traction engine of doubt you might spare a diatribe for the demented bucket wielders over the catflap factory as they never get sat down before the bus pulls off where it’s too blinken late for none of that bloody books and stuff but good lord you can’t believe we’re peering over the lip of winter with angels at our tails and all you can talk about is sausages.

for amongst us she pined as was deft o’er the platitudes whereupon we did stumble lest we dropped our faces and she were to trip lightly through the shattered remains of our ignoble trenchant jaws that nay dropped like stones as she parted the air with presence alone.

ere. that’s a single. you’ll have to buy a return. and another single. what do you think this is. christmas?

Things what I writ