A miseryguts writes…

Happy Monday you lot! There used to be a tradition called St. Monday in Northern cities, including Stoke. A heavy weekend required a day off - a religious festival. In industries with highly specialised skills such as pottery, enough individuals absent meant that a whole crew couldn't do any work - so men took turns a few times a year. This is how I feel today, except that I'm at work and absolutely nobody else is other than the cleaners, who are always very cheery.

It's hot, sticky and horrible, yet I've already seen one student (advice: don't nick your resit from the internet and characters with speaking parts usually aren't dead in Renaissance literature). I've got to write a conference paper for Wednesday ('O. M. Edwards, Travel Writing and Definitions of Welshness' or something similar and the beer festival is still weighing heavily on my guts.

We all had a good time, without getting hammered. Except for Mr. Radford Sallow, who arrived many hours late and proceeded to catch up in spectacular fashion. Poor old man isn't used to drinking. He took the pledge in 1934…

Many of you seem horrified that I'm indifferent to Michael Jackson's oeuvre. Sorry, I just didn't listen to much pop at that formative age. My parents didn't believe in radios in every room, and they listened to mainstream classical, bits of folk, and a lot of religious music. Dad's concession to Irish culture was a U2 cassette and one by the Dubliners, and Mum played a lot more music than she listens to.

If it's any consolation, I watched Blur's performance at Glastonbury last night. All the presenters were talking about it being a seminal, wondrous, amazing set. I didn't. I thought they were quite good. Maybe I'm just getting grumpy. Wonder how the Nightingales went down? The BBC didn't see fit to broadcast any of their set.

On arrival at university I owned a cassette of Automatic for the People given to me by a schoolmate. A few days later I walked into the fabulous Recordiau Cob Records in Bangor and opened up a financial vein which flowed freely for many years to com. I bought two interesting looking records: Gorky's Zygotic Mynci's Patio and Tindersticks Kathleen/ E-Type Joe, both on 10" vinyl - not bad for a random pick. Henceforth, I'd go in on Thursday and pore over the list of next week's releases, making a list. On Monday, I'd collect several groaning plastic bags, to which the helpful gimps behind the counter would add 'some things we thought you'd like'. Years later, I realised that this meant 'our own records because nobody else will buy them [hello, Ectogram] and anything we've ordered in and realised won't sell'. Add to this the stuff I bought because I trusted the record label and all the secondhand bits, and you get the beginnings of my 30,000 collection, surprisingly little of which I now regret. Except for Cast's album: played once, put away for ever. I had to sell some once - 250 7" singles to Norman's Records simply to survive one summer. very depressingly. The collection is now like a smile with several teeth missing.

Sat-Nav

Hello all. As it's a holiday weekend, I won't be troubling you with too many ramblings, opinions or links. What are you all doing with the break? I should be marking projects and writing PGCE essays, but as I accidentally left my Mac at work, I'll have to find some other ways to fill in the time. 

Friday saw the ascension into the firmament of Keiti Gachevska, who handed in her PhD thesis. If there's anything you need to know about organised crime in Eastern Europe, she's your go-to gal. Needless to say, a modicum of alcoholised liquid was taken in celebration. 

Saturday was also a long-awaited day - the arrival of the Cheese Boat at Norbury junction. Our motley crew (Emma, Neal, Dan and - eventually - James) converged on Gnosall (love those anglo-saxon names), walked for a couple of miles to stimulate our appetite, then set of (with a minor detour to a pub) for the junction, another couple of miles down the canal. We saw herons, a yellowhammer, lots of flowers, ducklings, and great views of the Wrekin. I'll post some photos when I get back into the office. 

The Junction hosted a rally of canalists, who are clearly divided between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as us landlubbers. Some went for beautifully painted narrowboats, satellite dishes, those horrible painted cans and twee names. Others opted for functionality - black paint, scuffed and marked, logs and battered bikes slung over the top. 

The Cheese Boat saw us coming. Apart from stiffing me for the pickle I paid for, we were pretty impressed by the interesting variations on cheddar, and very impressed by Perl Las and Perl Wen, two organic Welsh soft cheeses. Needless to say, we bought a massive amount, and washed it down with beautiful buttery bitter (Junction Best) from the pub. 

Already suffering from tendonitis, I added sunburn to the injury list - not the last wound I'd suffer that fateful day either. Thanks to my interestingly-pale (or pasty, as my 'friends' put it), I'm a bit paranoid about sunburn, as I blister in the presence of candlelight. However, yesterday looked overcast and I forgot my hat and factor 50. Thus by the time I returned to Wolves ready for Irina's party and Blast Off, I looked like a tomato with eczema - as a disconcertingly large number of former friends pointed out. 

We made a cameo at the Bulgarian-and-assorted-computational-linguistics do, then determinedly headed out to the Civic for Blast Off, Wolverhampton's best - and only - indie night. I'd prefer more Gorky's, Tindersticks, Stereolab, Field Mice and Neu! personally, but it's pretty good. One of my media students kindly mixed me a decent cocktail and James, Neal, Emma and I added to our walk-related injuries by dancing like loons until 2.30. Somewhere along the way, I added to my injuries. Finding something determinedly attached to the sole of my Doc Marten (of course), I tried to yank it off, only to discover that it was a large and jagged chunk of glass - cue much blood. Thanks to the Civic's security and First Aid people - kind, friendly and efficient, despite the absence of a pair of scissors. I was soon 'bopping', as I believe the young folk call it, to Hot Chip as though major haemorrhaging was nothing worse than a stubbed toe. 

The only downside to the day was Stoke's battling defeat at home to West Ham, only slightly balanced by Emma's beloved Munster getting hammered by unfancied Leinster.