Sod it, I'm moving to Paris. Obviously I'm not, because I never actually do anything, but I just had a really nice weekend there visiting Jason. More of that later, but first the news you've all been waiting for - my CDs came! 1065 of them! They take up more room than you would think. Or maybe it's as much room as you would think. Either way it's a lot of room. For various reasons I'm not going to release it "officially" (whatever that even means) until the autumn now but I have them at least. I'm really, really pleased with the way they look. I've been too scared to listen to one, but I've been told from a few sources that they sound ok.

So, yeah, Paris. I left on Friday morning, somewhat confused to find that someone had come all the way into my (reasonably big) front garden, presumably at some point the previous night, to leave a Leffe glass delicately balanced on my windowsill.

As I continued towards the gate I noticed another one in the flowerbed.

Does this stuff happen to everyone or do I happen to be round about drinking up time away from a poncy bar? I got to London in plenty of time and stopped off for brunch at McDonalds, hoping to get some more Monopoly cards, but the Kings Cross ones have run out. I'll have to find a new hobby I guess. I'd not been on the Channel Tunnel on one of the passenger trains before (only on a car one) and I've got to say I was impressed - it's really smoooth and hardly takes any time at all. It's pretty convenient that they go from St Pancras too, because it means if you're coming from Cambridge you don't even need toget the tube. The plan was to meet Jason (who's staying in Paris for a while) at Gare du Nord. I was a little concerned because he's not got a phone, so if it had gone wrong then I'd have been a bit stuck, though I reckon I could've found somewhere to stay by waving my arms and going "'otel? 'otel?". I have an odd relationship with the French language - I know loads and loads of words, but I'm completely incapable of actually saying them. It works both ways though - I remember when I was doing my PhD there was a French guy in the lab who could only understand what I said in English if I put on a ludicrous 'Allo 'Allo style accent. Anyway, Jason found me fine, and I found, to my surprise, 100 Euros that had been sitting in my wallet since I was in Munich last year. I obviously did an overenthusiastic cash machine run very late on.

We went for a quick couple of beers in an Irish pub (it was happy hour, so they were only really, really expensive) then back to his apartment. The building it's in is brilliant - the paint is coming off the walls all the way up the bare wooden stairs, and there are loads of wires showing.

Apartments in Paris seem to be pretty small but there's something really romantic about living in a tiny place on the 5th floor of a run down building. I might not think that if I was doing it I suppose.

After dropping off my stuff and recovering from the stairs we went to Séverine's for dinner on the way to a gig. She has the best bonsai tree I've ever seen. I said I wouldn't put the picture I took of it up here, so I won't, but it is a thing of great beauty. Looks kind of like a chicken with leaves. We had pasta with feta and garlic and then went off to see this guy playing songs in a very thin pub on the bank of the river. He was good, and had a more convincingly English singing voice than a lot of English people do. To be honest, things get a bit hazy fairly soon in, but I'm pretty sure I had a grat time, and the evening ended with me and Jason being driven round Paris in a taxi at 3am on a (successful) quest for kebabs.

We were both suffering slightly the next morning, but the coffee was good and we were right as rain soon. The plumbing in the apartment is interesting. The kitchen sink, bathroom sink, toilet and shower are all connected together (and, crucially, the shower is higher than the toilet). This means that if things go slightly awry and you have a shower while the system isn't quite draining properly, the shower slowly empties itself into the toilet, which then overflows onto the floor. You think you're being clever by bailing it out into the sink, but that just drains straight into the toilet again. It turns out. If you're ever in this situation, what you have to do is put the plug in the kitchen sink, bail the toilet out into that, flush the toilet a few times until the water drains from the shower, then disinfect everything. I should imagine.

When the panic was over, there was a bit of a wait for the Metro, so I took a picture of Jason looking brooding and artistic.

And he took one of me looking fat and ugly.

Which was to become a bit of a theme throughout the weekend.

This all meant that we were kind of late meeting Séverine for a day's sight-seeing, but we did eventually, and went to St Sulpice, which features in The Da Vinci Code (it's the one with the "Rose Line" running across it, though the line offends me slightly by not being completely flush with the orientation of the church).

There's a fairly weird sculpture in there too.

For some reason there was a Finnish Festival on the square outside. After that we went to get Krystèle (Jason's girlfriend) who lives near the Pantheon

and went to Notre Dame.

It was about then that I started going a bit crazy with the camera. I've ended up with 170 odd pictures from the weekend. I'm going to put the less bad ones on Flickr, but it's "upgrade to pro account" function is buggered (Yahoo! Really! Are! Crap! At! Everything!), so a lot of them will have to wait until that starts working. Anyway, I kept spotting things that I thought would make funny depressing album covers, and here is the first.

I find it difficult to judge the bigness of buildings once you get past really big, but Notre Dame is really big. Looking round really big churches is one of my favourite things to do I think.

For the rest of the afternoon we walked around the city taking things in, mostly near the river at first, then through the gardens by The Louvre. A picture paints 1000 words etc etc:

I know it's not the same shop and is just a tourist thing, but I'm a big Hemingway fan, so still think it's pretty cool

How many flying buttresses does a single church need?

It was good inside - they had a cartoony model of a fruit market, and a crazy organ whose console had 5 manuals and was on wheels so they could put it anywhere

I'm pretty sure this tunnel featured a few times in the classic era of the Highlander TV series when Duncan was living on a barge on the Seine

Here's the second of my suggested album covers

I know I've used the word already, but the city feels so romantic. In the hugely unlikely event that I ever manage to find a girlfriend again, it has to be pretty high on the list of good places to go together.

There's a bit of modern art just by the Place de la Concorde  that's two great big bits of brown metal. Lots of people had put their footprints on it, so I joined them. That was wrong though we got told after. Dunno what it all means.

After making it most of the way up the Champs Elysee we got some pizzas and wine and went to Stephanie's house to eat, drink, listen to music, and take blurry pictures. Here's Séverine:

And Stephanie and Jason

Right I've wittered on for long enough for today, and run out of space on Flickr for this month. Here are a few things that I noticed about Paris that made me smile.

• They have to have poles along the edge of the pavements to stop people driving on them.
• At any given time about 30% of streets have a torrent of water flowing along the gutter, even, it seems, on sunny days. I'm not sure where it starts and ends or if it's all the same torrent or multiple ones.
• Nobody can see anything funny in the phrase "Crousty Vap"

In a massive stroke of luck (it had sold out by the time I found out about it and you couldn't get tickets online for less that £60) I ended up going to see Explosions in the Sky at The Astoria last night. I remember the first time I heard them quite clearly - I was having dinner in a cafe in Brighton before a gig a few years ago, and I liked the music they were playing so much that I asked what it was. That's pretty rare for me, what with my morbid fear of speaking to anyone. The show was fantastic - it had a similar effect on me to Mark Kozelek - I could have stood there, trance like, buried in it, for the entire night. If it was still going now, I'd still be there I think. I'm not really into instrumental stuff mostly, but what they do is really hypnotic. It's kind of calming and exciting at the same time. Oddly, they had a keyboard set up, which they never used, other than to get my hopes up for an encore that never came. They also looked really cool, apart from the guy on the right who kept doing hippy dancing and taking massive steps everywhere. Afterwards we went to a really nice underground cocktail bar that I would never have spotted in a million years and made me want to move to London. I wish there were places like that here. Maybe there are and I've just never spotted them. I had a Brandy Alexander for Feist reasons, which was girly looking but surprisingly nice, then got the last train back, which, as ever, featured some completely made up stops (seriously, Gordon Hill?). I'm not sure I approve of The Railway's programme of repeatedly building new little stations just to make the last train take longer. 

The gig with Dan at the Barfly on Tuesday was really disappointing, which serves me right for looking forward to it. I guess you always get short shrift when you're first support to touring bands, but they took absolutely ages over their soundchecks (I suspect maliciously, but maybe not - at least they didn't do what The Undertones did when Logan supported them and leave their engineer plugging in and unplugging a cable from the desk for 45 minutes for no reason other than delaying us), meaning that we hardly got one at all (and we had to fight for that) and were generally made to feel pretty unwelcome. Also, there wasn't a mic for my guitar amp, which is stupid and pissed me off, because I had no way of telling how loud it was sounding out the front compared to everything else and anyway, loud as it is, my amp is never going to fill a room that size from on the floor behind a barrier. I think everyone felt uncomfortable/uncertain on stage and couldn't really hear what was going on, and we didn't play well. We were all a bit too angry/fed up to watch the main acts, so I dunno what they were like. Vincent Vincent and the Villains had a lot of drums. Onwards and upwards.

Someone pointed out to me that my entry about Toronto made it sound like it wasn't fun, so I thought I'd say that, even with all that stuff going wrong, travelling around playing music is still better than pretty much anything else I can think of. So there. Anyway, we left Toronto in search of breakfast...

... which we found in a roadside place an hour or so outside the city. And what a breakfast it was - amazing fried potatoes, toast, pancakes, sausages, bacon and eggs over easy. I'm ashamed to say it defeated me, but only because the pancakes were so outrageously massive. They must have been 9 or 10 inches across. And there were 2 of them. Jason gave me some important advice - to not let pancakes get cold before eating them. I'm not sure what happens if you do. Maybe they're just less nice or something.

The rest of the day was spent on the road, flicking through various radio stations, most of which were stuck in the late 80's, early 90's (get in!) and watching the landscape get colder (but stay pretty flat).

When we finally made it to Montreal we went to Kaya's parents' beautiful house to drop the bags of and have a beer, before going off in search of the venue. There was a bit of trouble finding it, mostly because the only signage they have is the name of the place "Le Cagibi" in very small joined up letters in the glass of the door. It turned out to be a lovely little place though, warm and dimly lit, and full of extremely attractive people all reading or writing stuff. It may have left me with an unrealistic picture of Montreal, but it seems like a great city.

I think I did my best set of the tour - I was relaxed and really into it and, for a change, said decent things in between songs. Everyone was very polite, but I couldn't really tell what they thought. I managed to spill some beer on a girl in the front row shortly before going on while trying to save her from a falling mic stand. I'm not sure if she realised what was about to happen, or if she'd have prefered the mic stand over the beer anyway, but she was nice about it so I guess it was all alright. Setlist (approx): Edinburgh, Watertight, Alabaster, Ball and Chain, So Finally a Love Song, The Easy Way Out, Radio Silence.

Jason went on after me, with Chris switching to bass, and was great again. None of my photos of the people playing came out and I can't be arsed to trawl facebook trying to find other people's for the moment. Kaya played with Jonny on drums and Jason on bass, and that was excellent too. Then we piled back round to chez Fraser where everyone else had pizza and I fell asleep. It's surprisingly tiring sitting in a car all day doing nothing.

The next day we had delicious fruit pie and bagels for breakfast, then wandered round the neighbourhood looking at food and buying booze for the evening. It amused me that KFC in Quebec is called PFK (Poulet Frit Kentucky, I think, with Kentucky pronounced in an outrageous accent), while Burger King is still Burger King. I didn't get a chance to ascertain whether Quarterpounders at McDonalds are called Royales or not.

Once we'd repacked the car we drove through the centre of the city, looking at sights...

...on the way to the World Famous Schwartz's Deli...

...for World Famous Smoked Meat Sandwiches...

World Famous Pickles...

World Famous Fries and World Famous Cherry Cola. The guys had been talking about it since I got there. It was a Good sandwich. I couldn't move afterwards.

There was an amusing incident on the way where a guy came up to the car at some lights and mimed washing the windscreen. I don't know if it was performance art or he was just a weirdo. Someone suggested that we mimed giving him some money, but in the end we just kept the windows closed.

Yesterday was the best day yet. I've been here long enough to have completely relaxed. I managed to keep my sobriety on Thursday night while all around me were losing theirs, and Jason has a comfy sofa, so I slept well and was feeling pretty good. I went along for the ride while Jason and Chris (his guitarist) picked up the hire car (the guy in the shop was disturbingly cheerful in his work), then we went for breakfast at a diner. I sampled peameal bacon (I'll get pancakes later in the week) and some incredibly nice fried potatoes, and got a lesson in how many ways there are to cook eggs. I always wondered what 'over easy' meant. Jason had to work in the afternoon, so I hung around at his playing the guitar and trying (without success) to make my phone charge up. It's a long time since I just sat around playing the guitar, I should do it more.

There was a serious amount of stuff to take to the venue - oh how I've missed sitting in cars with guitars on my lap. The PA needed picking up from a music shop on a busy street, which a parking officer pretty much chased the car down, allowing a couple of minutes loading in a series of locations. Bit odd.

The venue was really quite impressive. I don't think I've played at a place with a balcony before, and the stage was huge. I took some photos which I'll upload when I get home. There was even a fairly luxurious green room, and a staircase from it to the stage, so that you could appear from the wings. The entertainment correspondent from the London Free Press (who is quite a character) did the compering, which added a touch of schmaltz. I went on stage at the same time as him to tune up, but he had more to say than I bargained for, so I ended up standing there feeling a bit silly for a while, but I enjoyed my set a lot - everyone was really polite and the sound was great (it had seemed a bit echoey in soundcheck, but was fine in when some people came in). On the minus side, fingerpicking felt slightly weird because my strings are still covered in sticky dried blood from the Portland gig, and I do have a feeling that people don't understand what I'm saying a lot of the time. I'm going to try talking really slowly and clearly tonight. Or have some kind of system where people press a button if I need to repeat something. Setlist: Edinburgh, Watertight, The Easy Way Out, So Finally a Love Song, Ball and Chain, A Folly or a Fortress, Soaked to the Skin

I was in the green room unwinding with some beer and swig or two of bourbon for Kaya's set, but you could hear pretty well down there and it sounded great. Both her and Jason's CDs sound really, really good too. I'm a little bit jealous. I had a moment while I was watching Jason's set when I thought 'I'm thousands of miles from home, playing music with people I really like, for people who seem to like it, this is brilliant.' and felt actually properly happy for the first time in ages.

After everything was finished and the gear had got put into about 4 different cars (God knows where it all is now) we went off to a bar so I could compare vocabulary with people, followed by another (livelier) bar (I estimate that a glass was broken every 145 seconds), followed by a Baconator from Wendy's, which was amazing. Especially as I missed lunch. 2 prime beef patties separated by cheese, topped off with 6 strips of bacon. Oh yes. There used to be a Wendy's in Oxford Street for a while, I remember going there with my dad once, but I think it failed because we weren't ready for square burgers. They should have another go at the British market. Eric, the sound guy, was saying that you can ask for as many patties as you want in your burger. What a concept. I was tempted by a 3/4 lb one, but The Baconator had a cooler name.

Right. I'm going to read reports of Cambridge United's 5th straight victory, then get a couple of hours sleep before we head off to Toronto, because I'm still a bit fuzzy headed.

You can tell it's nearly "back to school" time. At any given moment there are at least 3 TV channels showing adverts for head louse cures.

I seem to have virtually no spare time at the moment. I shouldn't really be writing this now, because I could kind of do with some sleep, but I'm going to be on the go all the way through until at least Monday night and I have things to record for posterity.

So... I was working pretty much every waking moment last week until I finally took the day off on Sunday. It says a lot about my life at the minute that I got quite excited when I realised that Tesco have started separating out the reduced meat from the rest of the reduced produce. Anyway, Dan came over on Sunday to do a bit more recording and have a Mario Super Strikers and Pizza Hut (why would they put it so, so close to my house?) marathon, and to point out how much less good Bryan Adams is than he even used to be. On Monday night Mike and I had a Mario Super Strikers marathon, and flew his remote control plane round the living room for a bit. I want to post a video of that, but I've not made it happen yet. I will. On Tuesday I went to watch United send Grays Athletic and their referee back to Essex with their tails between their legs and then went home for a Mario Super Strikers marathon. 

It's been 48 hours cold turkey on the Mario Super Strikers front now, because I went to Norwich yesterday to play at The Winelight Club. The evening didn't start off too auspiciously as I was accosted by a particularly cheeky beggar right outside the station, who guilted me into giving him a couple of quid (why is it always the highest value coin that comes out of your pocket when you're trying to make a show of only having small change?) and then, rather than being grateful, got angry that I wasn't about to give him more so I ended up having to shout at him. It still makes me a bit angry thinking about it. Then it transpired that rather than printing out a Google map with the venue marked on it, I'd printed out a google map with what Google regards as the centre of Norwich marked on it. On a road called Tombland. That is a good name for a road. Luckily I eventually found someone who knew vaguely where the place was, though I would still never have found it if someone else hadn't taken pity on me as I wandered folornly round the market square being too proud to ask again. It's funny how all the best gigs seem to start off with things going a bit wrong, and so it proved yesterday. The club has a slightly unusual format of 4 acts each doing 2 short sets (like the Kashmir Klub used to), which I think is a great idea because it means that even if the audience has only come to see one act, they have to sit through at least a bit of everybody. I suppose the audience might not think it's such a great idea. Tony who runs the club, and all the other acts were ever so friendly, and I really enjoyed watching them all too (which is pretty rare). And to top it all off I think I broke my (admittedly, not excatly stellar) CD selling record. I certainly had a pleasing amount of money in my pocket this morning. Good times. I meant to take some photos of the venue, but all I have are a load of a surprisngly convincing plastic palm tree that I think I may have got  bit obsessed with.

Set list: Edinburgh Alabaster, Watertight, Ball and Chain (I broke a string so curtailed it slightly). So Finally a Love Song, A Folly or a Fortress, The Easy Way Out, Soaked to the Skin.

Tony was good enough to let me stay over at his and we stayed up fairly late listening to music I'd not heard before (Tina Dico and someone Hayes stood out - I wish I could remember his first name) and trying to get his DVD player to play a "Thunder Live" DVD, and then trying to get it to eject a "Thunder Live" DVD, with no real success on either count. He has the world's most comfy sofa. It was like sleeping on air.

Tonight Hannah came over to do a bit of singing on 'Closure' and 'Losing Out to Bullethead'. They sound good to me now, and hopefully will still sound good tomorrow. My headphones, which have lasted much, much longer than any other headphones I've ever owned in terms of still playing music, have got a bit broken in terms of being an adjustable size, so we had to pad Hannah's head out with a rolled up wollen hat:

I'm supporting Tom Conway at The Portland tomorrow. A whole month without playing and then 2 gigs in 3 days. They're like buses. Or wasps. I really hope enough people come to make it worth his while.

I can't believe I forgot to mention the best thing about Munich - I flipped 49 beermats. Count them. 49. The world record is 65 I think. I could've had it too if we'd not have to move on. I'd rate it as easily the single greatest achievement of my life to date. I should spend more time practicing that kind of thing - it would be good to have a properly useful talent.

Rob Styles has managed to get to the top of my "people it would be better if had never been born" list, closely followed by John Terry. What a jumped up little moron. I hope he feels really stupid today.

I'm just back from my friend Ciaron's stag do in Munich and feeling surprisingly good. Saying that, I suspect I'll have a bit of an early night. It feels like we were gone for about a week. I love it when I get to burst out of this little rut I've got myself into - it makes time stop whizzing past for a while. I believe that most of what happened there is covered by some kind of non-disclosure agreement, but there was an awful lot of laughing (it took me a good 2 hours to get over the word einfahrte), quite a lot of walking (though not a lot of sightseeing really), a lot of (big) beer, some horrible schnapps, a lot of sausages, a lot of accordians (for some reason 80% of the buskers have them), a fair amount of silliness, a couple of incidents of fountain abuse, some cheese that smelt of cow shit, and, best of all, no computer use. Annoyingly, my left hand (which still hurts from failing to catch that American football last week) is slightly covered in cuts. Not sure what happened there. I accidentally took my Cambridge season ticket along in my pocket left over from the (excellent) game on Thursday. I was going to take pictures of it next to various landmarks, but I thought it might be more prudent to leave it in my bag. Some locals had a good laugh about how expensive they are compared to German ones.

Anyhoo - here are the photos that are fit for public consumption.

Munich is a pretty place...

The cathedral is REALLY big.

There's quite a lot of street entertainment in the centre

This guy was weird - he's playing open strings on a cello and blowing a duck whistle, seemingly attempting to make a noise like a set of bagpipes. Check out the tache.

Even statues need a break...

Big beer.

Ciaron, Tony, Dave and Ross.

This was pretty cool - there were people surfing on a big wave in the river that got generated by it coming out from under a bridge. They could go surprisingly fast.

Diesal and Jay, having learnt their lesson...

Ross's pants. How old are we?

I want one of these. I suppose I'd need a urinal first.

I wonder if they ever actually need to have 30 odd trains next to each other at the same time.

They were showing us the pictures of that plane catching fire in Japan while we were in the departure lounge this morning. Pretty good choice I thought. I really like the new frisking technique they're employing at airports, it's like a massage or something - I felt really quite invigorated. I shall have to look as shifty as possible next time I go somehwere.

Ha, I've just remembered that I phoned some poor German bloke by mistake because I didn't have a +44 in front of Bob's number in my address book. Twice. We spent a while going "Bob?" "Wass?" "Bob, is that you?" "Wass?" "Bob, are you taking the piss?" "Wass?".

What on earth is going on with Paul in Neighbours? I've not seen it for a while and he's gone all funny. Is that Fox guy a Fight Club style imaginary person? Oh, he his.

The news reporter just accidentally called Phillip Lawrence's widow his "widiot". Oopsy daisy.

So, Dan and I were sitting eating our dirty chicken in my garden at lunchtime today and this happened on my side of the picnic bench.

I'm a bit concerned I may have a splinter in my arse, but I can't think of a sensible way to find out. It makes me think I should cut down on the dirty chicken.

He'd come round to do a bit of recording and, like last time he came round to do some recording, it turned out much better than anything I've ever managed. I'd like to say it's because things that bother me about recordings of me don't bother me in recordings of other people, but I think it's because he makes nicer noises. You can hear the result on his myspace page. It's called "Millionaire" and sounds great.

I had an absolutely brilliant time at the Secret Garden Party over the weekend. We had a great time last year, but we were there in a bigger group this time, all the little problems they had because it was getting popular had been fixed, the music was in a different league and the food was just awesome. All I would say is that they were much stricter on taking alcohol in than before. Which was a shame, and must have doubled the price of the festival (for people who had to pay for tickets).

We got there on the Thursday to get a decent camping spot and into the festival spirit well ahead of time, having stocked up on essentials on the way.

Once we'd got the tents up and had a beer or two (outside the site), we had a wander round, looking at some of the strange things that were dotted about, and running into people we knew.

Later in the evening there was a fire parade, where a series of campfires were lit by guys dressed as vikings who were carrying around flaming torches and a bucket of paraffin. After they lit the one we were watching some guys dressed as cats try to fan the flames to such a degree that they went out. Some enterprising people got it going again though with the aid of some rather damp litter.

Friday was mostly spent watching music, which I'm leaving till the end to talk about (sorry this post is quite so long - be thankful I'm not going to bother recording last week's exciting adventures) and was a really good day.

This photo of my friend Joel with salami in his mouth isn't really relevant, I just thought it needed showing.

Saturday was all about the music in the afternoon, but the night got a bit crazy after we won a pub quiz in the main bar (at last a decent pub quiz - hard questions that we happened to know) and they gave us a bottle of not overly nice tasting champagne, which I put my share of in my pint. We also got forced to stay in the bar by the rain. If you see my list of bands below you'll notice it ends at Hafdis Huld, who was on at about 5 I think... She was adorable by the way - they shouldn't bother with the pop songs and just release records of her saying stuff. I'd buy that for a dollar.

Sunday was all about recovering enough to do my set at half 2, which I thought went really well - the audience seemed to be on our (Jody and me) side from the moment the power went as soon as we got up there (or maybe because between us we knew a fair few of them), so didn't seem mind the odd cock up or stupid comment, of which there were legion. Dan came and sang Hannah's parts on "A Folly or a Fortress". He was going to play tambourine (I even bought him a substandard one for £5 from an ethnic instruments stall) but bottled it. Damian Mercer who I've run into before and is a terribly nice man, lent me a plectrum, because, as ever, I forgot to take one. He also taught me the correct way to hold them.

Setlist: Edinburgh, Alabaster, Watertight, Ball and Chain, A Folly or a Fortress, So Finally a Love Song, Soaked to the Skin, Phosphorus Burn.

I got a fair few people saying nice things to me about it as I walked around the site afterwards. Which makes me very happy.

As far as the music goes, the programme appeared to be describing all the bands in 5 words so I've done the same with the ones I saw. I'd have written what the programme said to compare, but I lost mine on the Saturday night. I've missed out people who are friends of mine - take it as read that they were great.

Friday:

• Battle: Very enjoyable, if not inspirational.
• Hicks Milligan-Prophecy: Genius if odd. Creamy Windows.
• The Zoltan Kodaly School For Girls: Recorders never sounded so good.
• The Hoosiers: Did I even see them? (seriously, I thought I had, but I can't remember anything about them - even having checked their site for some kind of hint)
• The New York Fund: Nice enough. Think Del Amitri.
• Foy Vance: Would be a decent busker.
• Echo and the Bunnymen: Sounded like the Lightning Seeds.
• Little Barrie: Boring. I actually fell asleep.
• The Noisettes: Better. I still fell asleep.
• Alabama 3: Very good fun, as usual.

Saturday:

• Frank Turner: I Really Like Frank Turner
• Anton Barbeau: I Really Like Anton Barbeau
• Candi Payne: Alright I guess. Nice legs.
• Hot Puppies: Much better than Candi Payne.
• Hafdis Huld: Can I keep her? Please?

Sunday:

• I'm From Barcelona: The best thing I saw.
• Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan: Good, but don't talk enough.
• Martha Tilston: Alright. Not really my thing.
• Kate Walsh: Better. Not really my thing.
• Terry Reid: I think he was drunk.
• This is Seb Clarke: Fabulous. 5 piece horn section.
• Soko: That was a joke, right?
• Of Montreal: Good music, really cool acrobats.

A couple deserve more than five words. Frank Turner was excellent again, though I'd have liked to have heard a few quiet ones I can see why he kept it pretty upbeat, being on the main stage. Anton Barbeau was perhaps the best I've seen him, maybe because I've not seen him with bass before. Hicks Milligan-Prophecy and The Zoltan Kodaly School for Girls were both delightfully weird - the former having two singers (one of whom was in a brilliant African Explorer hat) who took it in turns to perform such classics as "Pro-Celebrity Prostitution" and "Creamy Windows" and the latter dressing up as schoolgirls to perform contemporary hits (and Rock Me Amadeus) on 3 recorders and the same model Yamaha keyboard as I have had since the age of 12. Genius is not too strong a word.

This is Seb Clarke were also fantastic - so full of enthusiasm and team spirit and matching suits. The horn section were all yelling along and throwing themselves about whenever they weren't playing. at one point there was a drum solo and the rest of the band crowded round him clapping and egging him on. It's not the kind of music I listen to really, but I'd go and see them again in a second.

I'm From Barcelona also had me grinning like a loon. I'd heard them on the radio quite a bit, and thought it was stupid, but live, complete with at least 9 members who make no contribution other than grinning, dancing, clapping and occasionally taking pictures of other members of the band it was incredibly uplifting. They should've gone on last. Except I'd have missed them then because I had to go to bed extremely early on the Sunday.

What a difference a week makes. I've been downgraded from "unusually happy" to, "alright I suppose". I had a day off on Monday which was spent generally pottering about town, going to Gourmet Burger Kitchen (I thought I'd not been before but I'd had one in London about a year ago - I remembered when I saw their tomato shaped ketchup dispensers. The food was the same too - the burgers don't taste of anything, presumably because they're all natural and stuff and the chips were crap, but my blue cheese sauce was nice, if a bit hard to control, and the milkshake was gorgeous - I quite fancy one now - McDonalds will be fulfilling all my burger related needs for the foreseeable future though) and having a quick round of par 3 golf at The Lakes. I'm really bad at golf.

We did the pub quiz again on Tuesday, but only managed 2nd this time. The questions weren't really any better than before. There was an absolute classic, but I can't remember what it was. "Which super hero got his powers by being bitten by a radioactive spider and can shoot webs and do whatever a spider can as if he was some kind of cross between a spider and a man, a "spider man" if you will?" or something.

I actually got some recording done on Wednesday night. Well, mixing. I think "So Finally a Love Song", "A Folly or a Fortress" and "One Off" are pretty much there now, though I might change my mind again. "60 Miles With a Slow Puncture" isn't so far off. Though I might redo the guitar and singing, and maybe the drums. A lot of other songs are an acoustic guitar away, but I had to change my strings last weekend, so it'll be another couple of weeks of constant playing before they're in a fit state to use, but you never know, I might get this done by my latest self-imposed deadline.

We went out for my friend Ciaron's birthday last night straight from work, which got a bit messy - we didn't get to CB2 for dinner until 10 or so. The food there is amazing these days. Well, the chorizo and black pudding salad and the sausages and mash are at least. I got a bit obsessed by that Derek and Clive song about making someone jump from a burning building by pretending to have a blanket to catch them in. A few of us went to The Kambar after. Other than to get my monthly reminder of how dreadful Larrikin Love are (were?) I don't know why. It's always the same, and they always make you queue for ages to make it look busy even though it really isn't. I ended up having a discussion about whether, other than the Derek and Clive one about making someone jump from a burning building by pretending to have a blanket to catch them in, any properly good (to the standard of "Powder Blue" by Elbow, say) songs had been written before The Smiths. I don't think we managed to come up with any. Oh, I suppose there's "Ode to Billy Joe". I unwisely had a stab at writing this blog when I got in, to kill some time before "Linc's" came on Paramount Comedy, because I quite like it and it only seems to be on at half 3 in the morning (actually, maybe it's not so great - it's a pretty easy slot to fill as all you're up against is live roulette, and I'm pretty easily entertained at that kind of time) but fortunately I got distracted and wiped the page before posting it. I think it went along the lines of "Jump you fucker, jump, I'll catch you in this blanket and you will be alright... Bah, women... Bah, bad timing... Jump, you fucker jump... Bah, my inability to take my chances... Then The President called and I said "Hello Mr President"... Laugh? We nearly shat... That Larrikin Love song is the worst thing I've ever heard... Ahhhh soles." 

My right hand side barely moves at the moment due to overWiiing on Thursday. I am now a pro status at bowling and have a spangly ball, but I'm not as good as Mike. He's taken the Wii with him for the weekend, which is probably a good thing because my body needs time to recover, though I'm a little worried that I'll lose the knack.

I'm off to Hitchin in a bit to do a gig with Summerhouse at the Rhythms of the World Festival. It was really nice when I did a solo set there last year so I'm looking forward to it, despite my fuzzy head, but it looks a bit like it might rain.

I've accidentally started watching Big Brother (just for today). What a bunch of thickos. Ha! Good word!

I wish people would stop contacting me thinking I'm Paul Goodwin, the moderately famous conductor and accomplished classical oboe player. You'd think it'd be reasonably obvious from my website (which they always come through) that we're not the same person. I'm thinking about turning it to my advantage and starting an orchestra - I've had enough people wanting auditions.

I've just got back from a "business trip" (night out) in Bath, which is a really nice place - a pretty town surrounded by impressive hills. I went there a few years ago to do a gig at the Porter Cellar Bar (where we went for a bit towards the end of last night, and had a drawn game of table football (quite unusual)) and had a great time - I should see if they'll let me play again. Unlikely I fear. For some reason we ended up playing Monopoly in the hotel bar until quite late (rock and roll). Monopoly never ends well does it? There's always some kind of act of God that means that the houses of the person who's winning mysteriously vanish. I fell asleep with the telly on, so had a slightly odd night's sleep, with dreams interspersed with news headlines. I quite wanted to go to the spa thing that uses the hot spring this morning (it hadn't quite opened last time) but there was too big a queue and we had to get back (and I wasted too long trying to find some swimwear in bhs that wasn't kind of skimpy - just as well I didn't find anything because it'd have been wasted). It's a very picturesque part of the world, but the only photo I thought to take (other than a slightly crap one of the Royal Crescent) was of Phil in Boots:

I should grow up.

The drives there and back were pretty cool - Phil has a very fancy car. I've not been in a convertible before I don't think. It has little jets of warm air by your neck so that you don't get cold when the top is down. Here's a picture I was trying to take of the countryside, that turned into a me nearly dropping my phone due to a sudden burst of acceleration.

Today is exactly a year since Logan's last gig. Bit weird. It seems like a different lifetime. I guess quite a lot has happened since. I really do quite miss playing loud widdly guitar. Who'd have thought it?

I'm pretty tired after all my excitement, but I reckon I'll do what most English people do on March 17th and inexplicably drink Guinness while singing Dubliners songs. They've toned the novelty Guinness hats down a bit this year, though they were getting a bit overblown.

We saw this notice on Mill Road the other day. Someone has a lot more of a social conscience than I do.

Oh God, I've accidentally started watching "Choose a Eurovision Loser". Leggy scouse bint from Atomic Kitten is doing "Son of a Preacher Man" but with less words and more legs. And acrobats. I'm quite curious to see what Justin Hawkins does. He seemed to be dressed up as Elton John. Oh God, there's a panel of judges. Oh, but it's Mel from Mel and Sue! I love her. She was great on Light Lunch, and even though her career of late does seem to consist of going on reality shows and being bad at things, that's quite adorable too in it's way.