Saturday was Guy Fawkes Night and the birthday of the Missus. We had a quiet day indoors. I tried to capture some fireworks with my camera, but it didn’t quite work out. Instead, I caught a flash of yellow light. I’m not sure if it is a firework or the streetlights in the distance. Looks cool and very arty though:
We’ve got a new game at Chez Lock. It goes something like this: the Missus chooses a recipe from a book or newspaper, buys the ingredients and I cook it. Yesterday, it was Jamie Oliver’s “Chicken, Leek and Mushroom Hotpot”.
Don’t worry – it tasted very nice. The secret ingredient was plenty of cider to give it some kick. Oh yes!
Look at this. This picture is a picture of the dirt and dust from under our marital bed. God we live like heathen slobs. Great, ain’t it?!!?!?!
And finally, the obligatory “aaah, ain’t he cute shot” of Alex the Wonderdog. He seems to get all the comments these days, so here’s the little blighter doing what he does so well…sleeping. Trust me, this is what he does 98% of the time when he ain’t grumbling for food or taking a constitutional in the garden.
Today, I left the house early to walk to the local Woolworths to purchase the new Kate Bush album “Aerial”. I am currently listening to it as I type. It’s very good and I am enjoying it a lot. Her best album since “The Hounds of Love”.
Also, tackling chapter 14 of “Dead Rock Star” and I have decided is what the occult really needs is a children’s pop-up book of total evil and damnation.
Category: Diary
Today, on the eve of the birthday of The Missus, we spent the day out shopping. The Missus didn’t see much she like (she had an ‘off’ shopping day) while I satisfied myself with a copy of the XTC “Apple Box” CD compilation. Lots of traffic, but the music was good.
For some reason, I am feeling tired. The Missus said it was because I’d had too much excitement for one day. Possibly true.
The weather has been appalling. Meanwhile, Alex the Wonderdog is walking with a pronounced limp. In fact, he has started to hop around the house like a smelly kangeroo. There’s something not right with his rear left leg. I had the vet look at it the last time we were there but he couldn’t spot anything. I guess we’ll have to be a bit more persistant the next time we go.
In the post: a birthday present for The Missus, concert tickets for Greg Lake and the new Peter Gabriel “Still Growing Up – LIve and Unwrapped” DVD.
The past couple of days, I’ve been working hard on “Dead Rock Star”. The last couple of chapters have been difficult and this is a good sign. When things start to become an effort that means I am poking my stick into the right anthill, as it were. The first pass at chapters 10, 11 and 12 are done and we are upto 40,000+ words, which is surprising as I wasn’t expecting to hit that word count to around chapter 14/15. Anyway, lots of forward momentum, the introduction of the goth band, the ghosts of Abbey Road demonstrate how clueless they are and the reunion concert at the Shepherds Bush Empire is blighted by a plague of ghosts. So far, so good.
Here’s a little taster of the events at the Empire as the ghosts run amok and ruin the concert:
True enough, to the left of the stage were the presences of Jamail and his band of children, a ghostly Fagin directing his little demons to create mayhem and disaster. The amorphous traces of the spirit children darted across the stage, busying themselves with the various pieces of equipment that were used by the band. The first noticeable problem was with Geoff Simms keyboards as loud squelches and burps could be heard over the PA system. Somehow the children were scrambling the circuitry inside the keyboard and making it misbehave. Geoff could be seen adjusting knobs and buttons on his instrument before switching it on and off. When he realised that it had stopped working completely, he began to signal to the roadies off stage. The remaining members of the band hadn’t noticed Geoff’s technical difficulties and continued to play with guitarist Jon Woodworth stepping forward to take a solo. As he began to play, ghostly hands ran over the tuners on the headstock of the guitar detuning the guitar, rendering the subsequent solo tuneless. Woodworth heard himself making an out of tune racket and immediately stopped playing. The spirits surrounding him loosened his guitar strap and all of a sudden the instrument swung free, the heavy ash body of the Fender hitting him square on both feet. The force of the impact caused him to literally topple over in pain onto the stage.
Malcolm Anthony noticed what was happened and did what every good drummer would do and launch into a blistering drum solo. David Seymour looked around the stage and noticed that his colleagues had suffered various technical difficulties and found himself panicking about what to do next. As Malcolm pounded his drums and worked his way around the kit, he was oblivious to the spirit children unfastening the bolts on his drum seat and as he reached the full momentum of his solo, the seat collapsed and the drummer completely disappeared from view. The music had stopped and David Seymour was left to make an announcement. He stepped forward, but as he reached forward to grab the microphone, he was completely unaware of the spectral presence that had been tinkering with the circuitry of the microphone. As damp skin touched metal, perfect conductivity had been reached and Seymour had completed the circuit. Before he could even open his mouth, a significant voltage surged out of the microphone and down his arm. With a scream, he was propelled backwards across the stage and hit the drum riser with an audible thud. The impact caused the drumkit to topple forward and Malcolm Anthony’s schizoid face adorned bass drum landed squarely over Seymour’s head with a crash, framing his unconscious body with jarring precision. The audience fell silent and then somebody screamed. The lights went out and people began to panic.
Of course, this will all change with subsequent editings and revisions.
The mushrooms I photographed by the front gate have gone rotten and only had a life of just over 24 hours. I am glad I photographed them when I had the chance.
In the post: The Simpsons Series 6 DVD box set (Digipak Edition). I’m a sucker for the Simpsons. I make no apology for it.
It’s mushroom season round our way and with the recent damp weather, wonderful wild mushrooms are popping up everywhere. I took a few snaps of these fantastic funghi. The first shot was taken outside a house on some open grassland. These almost look like the closed-cup mushrooms you get in the supermarket.
The next pictures were taken of a very small, exotic looking clump of mushrooms that have taken root by the base of our front gatepost. Now you wouldn’t notice them if you didn’t look down, but I am an eagle-eyed type of guy and spotted them, grabbed the camera and took some shots. I think they look great.
I returned to the bank yesterday afternoon and went to the teller to ask for a new bank card. Apparently, there was some kind of block on my account and a new card may or may not have been dispatched but was never delivered. They couldn’t be any more specific. I asked the whens or whys of this, but you might as well talk to your own open palm. I don’t blame the worker, they are just the frontline. So the teller got me to fill out a form stating that I had changed my address (I hadn’t. I remember filling the same form out 5+ years ago when I moved into the area). When I presented the form and my various forms of indentification, she told me that she could order a new cheque book for me there and then, but if I wanted a new bank card, I’d have to go home and call a number and speak to someone in India for them to order it for me. What kind of twisted logic says that this is a better way of doing things than getting this woman, to whom I have presented my three different forms of ID, to press a few buttons and order the card for me. At the second window, a woman was trying to order a new bank card for her severely disabled brother, who had communication problems.
“How the hell is he supposed to use the telephone to do this?” she asked, “You people have no consideration for disabled people.”
Meanwhile, I notice my teller lowering her head and smirking everytime the man groaned and gesticulated to his sister in order to relay his wishes. Pathethic, I thought. So I left in a huff, returned to Woolworths and got my DVD replaced with one that actually had the discs in it and headed home. I phoned the number to order the card and spoke to Sanjeev, who dealt with my request with no problems. This was the first time I’d ever dealt with a Indian call centre with any degree of success. Either they must be getting better at understanding my East London patois or I am getting better at understanding their rich Indian accents?
With the firework explosions getting louder and increasing in frequency, Alex the Wonderdog is looking for new and more secure places to hide from the barrage. Yesterday, he decided to try and sit on my guitar equipment.
Hey, this is quite comfortable…
It’s one of those days. You know, a day when things conspire to annoy and irritate. So I needed to deposit some money into my bank account. We have two accounts and my personal account is for all my income tax money, so when the taxman-cum-highwayman comes knocking I can handover the goods sharpish. So I trudge in the damp and the drizzle to the bank and put in my card into the ATM machine, type in my pin, get the envelope, put the cheque in the envelope, type in the amount and then press ENTER. The sodding ATM rejects my card. As a result, I decide to deposit the cheque in our joint account with no problem. I look at my bank card and discover that it is out-of-date. It had expired in September, but somehow the bank didn’t think it was important enough to inform me of this or send me a new card for my account. I look at the bank queue, realise that I don’t have the obligatory ID to deal with the bank (you know, passport, driving licence, utility bill, vial of freshly drawn piss for toxicology reports, a blood sample for DNA anaylsis, etc), so I head outside, vowing to myself to return later, fully equipped.
So I decide to console myself with a visit to Woolworths. There were no CDs that I liked the look of, so I decided to purchase the new Star Wars III DVD (I know, I know. It is a guilty pleasure – I enjoy that sci-fi dross, OK?). I am feeling a little better because at least the journey resulted in a little bit of retail therapy. The guy behind the counter doesn’t give me a bag to put my DVD in, so I mutter something about service and retreat, the sealed DVD in my pocket, protected from the drizzle.
After 15 minutes of walking, I am back home, coffee in hand, homemade chicken and stuffing sandwich at the ready and I am ready to have a little preview of my new purchase. I rip the protective polypropylene sleeve and open the case. There are NO DVDs inside.
Oh well, it looks like I’ll be returning to the bank and Woolworths this very afternoon. Whoopsie fucking do!
Meanwhile, it is getting closer to Guy Fawkes Night and the locals are letting off rockets and other noisy fireworks. Alex the Wonderdog isn’t a particular fan and has been seeking protection in the small space under my legs between me and the computer table. It’s a tight squeeze, meladdio.
“I hate those pesky fireworks”
Just saw the glorious sunset and thought I’d share it. I love my digital camera!