Separated at birth

My pal Gerry wandered into the office just know, and picked up my copy of The Word. It's the only music magazine which occasionally features a living musician or current band on the cover.

The latest issue isn't one of those: yet again, it's kneeling at the cult of Keith Richards. Lo and behold:

Update: now to be published in next month's edition of the magazine!

More Map Twat adventures

Rest of the pictures are here, click on these ones for larger versions.

Twins of Evil

Juvenile puffball. My grandad used to fry these for breakfast for us. Mmmm

Crow over church/farmland

Distant kestrel

Brokeback geezers

Struggling up Corndon Hill

Rod Stewart is alive and well

At last, it's Monday

Good morning, and a happy Monday to you all. Saint Monday, by the way, was the icon invoked for people wanting to take Monday off. I'm taking the morning off - sort of. Going for a swim.

The weekend was full - building more bookcases with Neal on Friday, not getting my washing machine fixed (gits), going for a Thai meal with Neal in gratitude, an Open Day (farcical) and playing on Laura's Wii Fit and eating chocolate while I used her washing machine. Iustin very unkindly filmed me doing very badly on various balance games… I reclaimed my Moulton bike from my old house thanks to Gerry and Mark, then I spent the rest of Sunday finding new places to hide books, drinking from proper cups and saucers, and eating guinea fowl (delicious, by the way).

What did you get up to?

Our house, in the middle of our street

Welcome to another week in the fun factory.

It's been a momentous and hugely expensive weekend for me. £3000 later, I've moved house for the first time in 9 years and 10 months, from the cramped room in which I wrote my PhD (occasionally) to a city-centre apartment. It's now piled high with boxes of books and my beloved vinyl records - I'll post some photos tomorrow, but I've cleared a space on the bed at least.

I'm now persuaded that going to the pub, then to a nightclub and dancing until three a.m. is not the ideal way to prepare for a weekend of heavy manual labour. Still, it was fun.

Taking down the old room was weird. Mostly joyful, but very hard work, and I kept finding things which touched off odd memories. My madeleine moment was finding photographs, and a load of band t-shirts from the mid-nineties, when I was rake thin: they were mostly skinny-fit and cool: Velocette, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, Silver Sun, Super Furry Animals, Catatonia, the Belle and Sebastian 'Study at Stow' shirt from 1995, my 1970s Adidas v-neck shirt, a C+W embroidered shirt, alongside my old biker jacket, which will definitely appear in public again. The t-shirts, despite forming a significant role in my cultural development, will be awarded to the girls I know who can squeeze into them. Despite all the swimming, I won't be seeing a 28" waist again unless I develop some horrendous disease. Anyone know of a good one?

Anyway, I need to say a massive public thankyou to: James (who used the excuse of driving the big white van to air his most reactionary views: the Daily Star on the dashboard was the piéce de resistance); Gerry, Mark, Dan, Neal, Anita and Howard. They all overcame their various disabilities to shift massive, heavy things for almost 12 hours. Nothing was broken nor lost, and nobody complained, despite the intense provocation afforded by my half-arsed organisation. I'm not, it's fair to say, going to have a second career in logistics.

I also saw Cynical Ben on Friday. Having explored the delights of Walsall and Willenhall for the day (he's a local lad) he texted to cancel going out for a drink with the words 'Fuck the Midlands, I'm off. The idea of spending another 3 hours here is giving me the fear. Sorry'.

He relented, and sat in my first-year poetry lecture, and had the good grace to not openly mock or heckle, so thanks to him too! He even met Zoot Horn, which was all a bit postmodern.

Ode to the Vole

Comrade Gerry has written a poem in honour of The Plashing Vole. A rhyming dictionary may have been consulted…

The plashing vole

has its eye on the goal

it scoffs at those

that would console

and from its knoll

it exerts control

with a hard blank eye

upon your soul

 - oh no, sorry, that's the plashing pit viper I had in mind...