cornwall made me

it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. this week has truly been a mixed bag. monday i was very tired and not feeling too great so instead of seeing the amazing OXFORD COLLASPE gig i plumbed to stay in and read my SPLOTT BOOK GROUP book THEN WE CAME TO THE END by joshua ferris with the cat sleeping by my feet. i must admit i'm struggling with this one. i quite like the style, its all written in a sort of greek chorus with a first person narrator who talks in "we" as if the bitchy bunch are one collective, but there isn't much of a story and i think it is a bit overlong. however, i haven't finished it yet and maybe by the end i'll love it. i dunno. we'll see. i should finish it today with any luck. slog.

tuesday was a day of disaster and joy. i started work with an amazing migraine and as soon as i got into work heard that i'd be on my own until 10am then only two of us there all through lunchtime. the day got worse. a very nice lady ordered toast and i burnt it. burnt it and set off the smoke alarm. in front of almost all of the directors. great. i opened the doors and smiled and apologised as the alarm screeched urgently and impotently. this was only 9am. lunchtime we were full of a posh teenagers there for a drama workshop. i really like kids, i enjoy spending time with them but this lot i just wanted to smack on the bum, they were being very irritating and pushing all my class warrior buttons. but then i was distracted from them by a man asking for first aid. i called the site manager but two minutes later his friend asked me to call an ambulance. the customer (a lovely theatre type called james) was having trouble breathing. i did a first aid course and so knew what to do (its always times like this stuff you think you've forgotten reassuringly comes popping up from your subconscious) so called the ambulance, made him calm. the first aider came and took over and i was stuck talking to the ambulance service. they keep you on the phone whilst they send the car. this was in front of a queue that was big and getting bigger. i explained to the queue what was happening and people nodded solemnly. all except for one woman who said "well its on its way, isn't it?! i wanted to order!" stunned i just replied "sorry, i'm on the phone to the ambulance service" "a black coffee" she replied. i just turned around, to prevent some sort of customer service catastrophy, like me having to punch her in the face. i never get like this, i am generally a happy soul. shocking.

in the evening i did some usher training. since i've done this before it really only consisted of my friend cathy showing me how to work the stairlift (fun!) and sat down to watch THE WRESTLER. i have been looking forward to this for ages, i remember it being reviewed with pleasant surprise at the film festivals last year and have heard great things about mickey rouke's performance. to be honest, i was a bit disappointed. he is good in it, its a role that seems to have been created for him, but then i thought that about SIN CITY, that he was probably the best thing about it. i thought this movie was a bit like one of those things you watch on channel 5 with your nan on an afternoon before the kids telly comes on but with more tits and staples. the moments when he was on his own and looking tired and done in were incredible but i felt he had zero chemistry with marisa tomei's stripper character, i didn't believe that relationship at all and without coming over all daily mail, felt that i didn't need to see her naked so much. the daughter plotline too, felt a bit hollow. he will probably get an oscar for it and i think he deserves it, but it just wasn't good enough a movie for me to be interested past his performance.

after this i hot-footed it down to buffalo for the LOOSE gig WETDOG and CRYSTAL STILTS. this is the first time i've seen buffalo since its revamp upstairs. its been opened up a treat, more than 3 people can actually see the band now (not much of an exaggeration) and i really like the layout, with the bar at the back so the talky people can be cosseted off somewhere else and its painted red - excellent choice. but the buffalo branded wank interior design still reigns. there is a massive neon sign saying "what the fuck" as soon as you get upstairs. oh my heart sank. there are also black and white pictures of punks. how original. but like i siad, it is red so i just stared at the ed, doing his soundchecking stuff and the red wall behind him and tried to ignore the crass mess behind me. WETDOG were a little late and seemed to take a song or two to get into their stride but then were bloody amazing as ever. i saw them last at the PEPPERMINT PATTI gig with BETTY AND THE WAREWOLVES in august which was a great night and i think here they were even better. the album is good but great live and some of the songs just made me dance and dance and dance and yelp along with them. CRYSTAL STILTS were good but i was a little underwhelmed. the first few songs sounded like velvet underground verbatim. not necessarily a bad thing, it can be a lot worse, this they did very well, but uninspiringly. they did grab me a few songs in though and became quite endearing with their determined wall of sound drumming and shy mumbling singer. it all seemed quite short, due to buffalo having a hip hop club night on afterwards. we scarpered after saying goodbye to a very dapper-looking noel gardner who was very well dressed, right down to the newness of his trainers. i have to confess noel is one of my favourite people so i take a keen interest his state of dress.

it is wednesday. to london! my friend james proudly announced a couple of months ago that BLACKBOX RECORDER were reforming for a couple of shows and we pretty much leapt on the puter to book tickets there and then and booked the megabus to boot. at the time i wasn't sure if i would still have a job so it was a very rash thing to have done. i'm very glad i can go to london and not have that hanging over my shoulder, chapter is a-ok. so some time for cat cwtching and a hearty breakfast before the long journey with a book and a doze and here we are! we got in about 3.30pm so headed straight for the TATE MODERN where they had a constructivist exhibition. this we sadly missed. £10 too much. but we did see the INVASION exhibition at the turpentine hall which is set 50 years in the future where a big brother-style screen flashed disturbing and beautiful images, an arresting set of sculptures in a huge scale (spiders, apple cored, mouse skeletons) and hundreds of bunk beds with books laying dogeared on the bases. it made me uneasy. there was a set of storybooks when i was little called STORYTELLER and one of the stories was about a family who lived on the moon. one day a dynamite blast opened up the surface crust of the moon and underneath were these giant sea creatures. the crust rapidly started to sink and the moon was taken over by the sea and these creatures, who had been sleeping underneath all along took over. i remember being terrified of this story and had dreams about it and the turpentine hall took me right back there. i am almost certain that DOMINIQUE GONZALEZ FOERSTER did not have this story in mind whilst working on this, in fact i have never met anyone else who collected the storyteller series, but the idea of humans deceiving themselves in their importance in the world is one that always surprises, we are so used to being the number one predator. after this we went upstairs to see "poetry and dream" the surrealist exhibition that i visit every time i'm in london (it slays me every time) and checked out the contemporary room to gaze at the CHRIS OFILI "no woman no cry" and note down some new artists.

next up, food and tube. we headed for kilburn to the LUMIERE to see BLACKBOX RECORDER. i was very impressed with the lumiere. only 4 doors down from the tube stop and a nice size (intimate without being cramped) and it had signs by the bar saying "shut up. if you want to talk to your pals go to the pub. this is a live music venue and no-one wants to hear you". at last! talking through gigs is a major irritant of mine and i was so happy to see someone take a stand. i'm such a fascist i would have people barred from talking through gigs if i could. i excitedly texted james to tell him that john moore from the 80s t-shirts were on sale and then set out to watch MADAM. apparently there are usually five but here were two: guitarist singer lady and a lady cellist. they sung songs of loss and disappointment and made the world seem like a heartbreaking place until the in-between song bit where the singer would uncharacteristically start giggling and saying how nervous and excited she was supporting blackbox recorder. i do like it when people arn't too cool. it was a very exciting thing. i used to love blackbox recorder when i was a teenager. in amongst all the bluster of britpop they were a cynical weary bunch. luke haines, who had already scared me a bit with his lyrics in the auteurs; john moore, thin and spikey; and sarah nixey, superior and clever posh totty. it was grown up music before i had grown up. i had been into the beautiful south since i was about 12 so i seemed to make a study of being old before my time at that age. i was never really into hedonistic young music, everything had an edge of regret at time served. odd child. i had a very good spot, right in front of the stage right in front of luke haines. steen pointed out that he is looking a bit like a victorian villain at the moment and amen for that. he leered right at me. they were really really good. the excitement in the crowd was palpable. me and steen were amongst the youngest there. there were a few under 30s there (probably riding on the back of his recent britpop memoir) but mainly it was blokes in their late 30s / early 40s who knew ALL THE WORDS. all the blokes in the band were wearing lord lucan ties and sarah nixey was looking very glam in a red dress, all hair and pout. they played everything i wanted them to but "england made me" was a triumphant snarl that was the best of the set. it begins with a verse about being a child and trapping a spider in a glass and watching it trying to get out. the spider looks at her, begging for escape but you know the outcome as the next line is "england MADE ME". you know she just sat there, watching it die conditioned by her culture to bully the weak. fucking fantastic. after all this time it hadn't lost its bite. the band all looked gleeful, having a great time playing together on stage for the first time in nearly 10 years. i had a grin on my face that lasted all the way home.

we stayed with our friend jack and the next day we went to the angel, islington (of monopoly fame) for an amazing breakfast at a place called THE BREAKFAST CLUB and then record shopping. jack is probably will's best mate, their friendship solidified in the weekly ritual of going down to divinyl and spillers on a saturday morning when they used to live together in cardiff so it was lovely to see them going out to play together again. luckily record shopping is one of my favourite things to do also so it was an enjoyable kid-in-a-candy shop hour in FLASHBACK RECORDS. i bought an anti folk compilation cd and a pink vinyl album "lovesick" by VVM. neither of which i've had time to listen to yet so still excited about those and kept the spend under a tenner, i could have spent up to a hundred without even noticing.

i got back to work work work but its CHAPTER so i don't mind it too much. a LGBTA do where 10% of the attendees got really bloody drunk but were loads of fun and then had to work through skelley and dc's first gig with STRANGLIN' BILLY and RIGHT HAND LEFT HAND which i was sad about, especially as will was djing. but then saturday night came and work was over for a few hours so i went to see the DIRTYFITGRANNIES do a performance of their excellent physical theatre piece MR AND MRS LAMPSHADE in the llofft in chapter. they had laid out tea and biscuits and the whole performance was an extended dance piece which reminded me of watching a cartoon, graceful and sad.

after that i dashed out to catch YELTZIN at barfly. god i hate barfly. it is a bloody hole and the sound is crap and i always end up with my ears ringing. now someone has put an ugly riot barrier on the stage which with the peeling paint and the stains on the floor make it look like a crack den-come-youth club. YELTZIN are not really my bag but very good at what they do. a tight band who make the most of the singer alex's screams and a big grungy sound. i liked it best when they upped tempo and played it fast and urgently, the slow bits seemed to chug along with no energy behind it. one of their songs in particular was very quick paced and made me dance my socks off. but i'm going to give it more thought cos i might review them for the joy collective since no-one else from "joy" was there.

tonight sees my first pedigree falcon gig for a while if i can keep awake. next week is less hectic, more cat less gadabouting.