“So which do you prefer?”
“don’t mind”
“The Green or the Blue?”
“Honestly, I don’t ca…er…couldn’t decide between them”
“but …”
“ok, the green. The green ones are better”
“oh. not the blue? I think I prefer the blue”
“well, get the blue then”
“but you liked the green”

Conversations of this ilk can continue ad infinitum or until a sulk ensues. Rarely do they end
well, particularly for me.

“I really really really honestly don’t care which pair you get. I’m a boy. They all just look like shoes”
“You COULD take an interest, you know”
“No, I could PRETEND to take an interest. They’d still just be shoes and I still wouldn’t care but I’d also be a charlatan and a fraud for pretending I did and would you really want that on your conscience? would you?”

The day-off-to-go-shopping was going pretty well, all things considered. Trip to Aria for most of a new PC, followed by a blood donation and a trip to Fopp to recover. Nothing eases the pain of a needle wound so much as an armful of cheap CDs. Maybe that’s why musicians sometimes end up as junkies.

The shoe selection crisis was navigated succesfully and we headed home.

“So which do you prefer?”
“eh?”
“The Green or the Blue?”
“I thought we did this already?”
“No, the eyeliner. Which eye looks better”
“Seriously?”

I’ll make a reallllllll effort to keep updating this, so expect lots of mindless nonsense until i get back in the swing of it. After that, mindful nonsense

Manchester ground to a halt last Tuesday and is still not back up to speed. The trams have been appearing at even more random times than usual. The buses aren’t bad when they arrive, apart from an increased level of blue language from the driver’s cabin. Cars on the road are mostly there for comedy effect.

Walking is downright masochism. What looks like nice, crunchy, step-into-and-chuckle snow turns out to be lumps of rock solid ice which will break your foot, if stomped on.

This is a bit of a bugger, as part of my cunning new year plan to make about one third of myself disappear in a puff of calories was to walk more. I’ve even been contemplating walking home some nights. Given that walking to the bus stop currently has me swearing like a trooper with piles, my sanity may be permanently damaged by a 2 hour walk.

It’s almost like there IS a higher power and it WANTS me to be a porker.

It’s been pointed out to me that nobody could add comments to blog posts here. I’ve had a look at what’s going on and put a new elastic band round the engine so it should be fine now.

Let me know if it isn’t

Fiona had decided to use her love of Making Stuff into a method of funding more Stuff to turn into other Stuff by selling her wares at a Craft fair. I had been drafted in as dogsbody and security. Mostly I ended up getting in the way. I attempted to size up the opposition

“Their stuff’s not very ‘crafty’ – and that one’s rubbish”
“Shhh”
“well, it is”

Craft is probably The Next Big Thing. That nice Kirstie “Location x 3″ Allsop was on the other night making stockings and blowing her own baubles, which sounds like an entertaining evening.

Fiona, it turns out, is a dab hand at the sales chit-chat, largely because she was among her own people. There were discussion which i think related to buttons and crochet and ribbons but beyond that it all got too technical. I skulked and hoped no-one asked me anything tricky

I can confirm that the mulled wine stall was most excellent.

Recently saw the aforementioned on The Culture Show re-discovering his folk roots, or returning to his true musical love, or paying respect to the music of his forefathers or whatever reason he’s giving for pretending to like folk music, by playing an acoustic guitar and singing in a bar with some proper folkies (Kathryn Tickell for one). Things is, when they zoomed in on his moody mug, he appeared to be using in-ear monitors, the fancy-pants headphones you wear on stage to hear yourself over the noise of big amps and drum kits and fifty thousand adoring fans screaming your name. Not something that has any place in an empty bar when playing with other, unamplified musicians.

Unless of course you’re an egotistical rock star completely out of touch with reality.

And a twat.

I’ve been listening to the soundtrack (which i also recommend) and was slightly disturbed to hear the following:-

“How a maid can milk a bull
and every stroke a bucketful”

good lord.

“Yes, yes, I HAD remembered to signal, I was just waiting until I was past that other entrance as it can be very confusing to other road users and/or pedestrians. It’s important to be considerate and clear in your signalling to avoid confusion. As an experienced driver, I’d really have expected you to know that”

“indeed. And you’re signalling left because … ?”

“bollocks”

Fiona was “quite keen” for me to share in the driving. Having passed my test 10 years ago and driven about 4 times since, at least 3 of which were in a car with the steering wheel on the wrong side, I decided to have some lessons first.

They went surprising well, the last one actually involving a jaunt on the motorway where I hardly cried at all. Since then, I’ve been tootling around Chorlton and Sale and even did some of the windy, fiddly bits in Yorkshire. Fiona seems to be loving it, too. Whenever I’m driving, she grips the door-handle in excitement, emitting little screams of delight and keeps her eyes wide, wide open so as not to miss any of the scenery.

I’m not planning to buy a car, but I did have a look at some second-hand one on a few websites. Being me, I got distracted and ended up trying to decide whether I would rather have a Tank or a fire engine. Or a cadillac.

Wonder how much the batmobile would cost … ?

This is my 100th post. I’ve been trying to think of something big to say but can’t really come up with anything so … Woo Hoo!

back to posting shortly …

Excitingly, the next post will be my hundredth so i’ll need to actually write something interesting for that. Or at least something with some actual content.

Any suggestions?