Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! OOOOOOOOH!






Before I get down to everything else, I have to explain something because I may be unable to resist temptation to use it as this entry progresses. Winamp's random mix of everymp3ipossess� this morning presented us with Mass Destruction by Faithless. Alison complained that this meant that the song would be stuck in her head all day and that since the only words she knew were "is a weapon of mass destruction" without knowing the different things that came before them she'd end up making up her own versions.

So, on Friday, I took the afternoon off.

No, on Thursday I took the afternoon off. And I had an interview. An interview with a small company that is still small enough to actually acknowledge the existence of its peons and to actually take an interest in What Goes On� and yada yada yada. It went okay, although I was left with doubt that they'd be able to offer me enough money to match what I'm getting here. And since I still haven't heard anything, I doubt they're going to offer me the job. Still, it's a big step, and a good step.

Friday, I took the afternoon off as well. Alison was taking the afternoon off because we had a hectic weekend ahead of us and a hectic evening and very little time to prepare for either if we both did a full day's work. As it was, neither of us did a full day's work and we still found ourselves making hectic preparations for the weekend.

We somehow ended up going shopping in Leamington rather than getting ready for the weekend, and I fell for a cheeky "3 games for �40" ploy in Game, and came home with Enter the Matrix, Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb and Metal Arms: A Glitch In The System. Thus far I have only played the latter of the three, and it is Very Cool�.

[Special offers are a weapon of mass destruction]

So, on Friday evening, we went to see Simple Minds, playing at Charlcote Park in Warwick. It was one of these picnic type affairs, which I have to say was a bit odd for a rock gig.

The support band were cool. Amongst other things they did a funky hard rock version of Free Your Mind by En Vogue.

Then Simple Minds came on. Hee, so cool. I, probably as expected, just went for it. There were plenty of people around us who didn't. And there was a very drunken 50 or 60 year old Dad in front of us who staggered about a lot and generally made a spectacle of himself.

The set list was as follows:

  • One Step Closer
  • Love Song
  • Speed Your Love To Me
  • Glittering Prize
  • Promised You A Miracle
  • See The Lights
  • New Sunshine Morning
  • Don't You Forget About Me
  • Belfast Child
  • Great Leap Forward
  • Ghostdancing
  • New Gold Dream

Encore:

  • Waterfront
  • Someone Somewhere In Summertime
  • Alive & Kicking
  • Sanctify Yourself

Ghostdancing featured a hefty chunk of Van Morrison's Gloria in the middle and must have gone on for 10 minutes or more altogether. And the version of New Gold Dream that they did was just the funkiest ever. When you consider how many times dance 'acts' and the like have sampled it and mixed it and covered it, that's actually quite a tough feat to pull off. But I had the song in my head all weekend as a result - definitely the highlight for me.

At one point I was accosted by a rather drunk and rather attractive lady who started telling me how wonderful she thought Jim Kerr was, which was rather off-putting but when an attractive woman just comes up to you like that you don't complain too much. You make a point of being very obvious about cosying up to your girlfriend, but you make sure you get a good lecherous ogle in first, LOL.

[Drunken women are a weapon of mass destruction]

I was disappointed that they didn't do Let There Be Love, as that tends to be my favourite Simple Minds song, but I'd never seen Promised You A Miracle done live before so that was a bit of a treat for me. Waterfront, Don't You, Alive & Kicking and Sanctify Yourself are always good excuses to go absolutely mental.

Given that I'd been having blood sugar issues all week, I did really well at the gig. When I'd seen the set lists online for previous gigs on the tour, I'd been a little disappointed that they seemed so short (the gig was about 90 minutes altogether). If it had been any longer, I'm not entirely sure I'd have made it all the way through.

And I got a fucking cool New Gold Dream t-shirt.

There were the usual shenanigans getting out of the car park after the gig - what I don't understand is why places always have stewards in the car parks when you arrive to make sure you all park up neat, but never have stewards there when you leave to stop the car park becoming a total free-for-all. Bollocks. Fuckers.

And so on to Saturday.

We were off to Wales to stay with my Nan for the weekend, and to go with her and my parents to the Last Night of the Welsh Proms, which has become a regular thing for us all the past few years. So, two very different concerts two days running.

As usual at the proms concert there was lots of waving of flags and lots of throwing of paper streamers - some reprobate managed to throw a load of streamers through the lighting rig so they dangled down from it onto the stage, I wonder who that could have been ;-) Each year it seems shorter, but the format has been changing subtlely for the past few years so that the second half with all its flag-waving and stuff has taken on a much Welsher feel, and the regular audience seem to be getting used to that.

And the honey and ginger ice-cream they sell at the interval is just divine :-)

On the Sunday the main event was going for lunch at my Aunt and Uncle's. My eldest 2nd cousin was there (she's nearly 8 now), and she was being spoiled to bits by her grandparents (as usual). God help us all when she hits her teens.

Then there was a surprise visit from my cousin, his wife, and my youngest 2nd cousin, who is a few months younger than Little Miss. The last time we saw him he was only 9 months old, so seeing as he's now almost twice that, it's no surprise that he's changed a hell of a lot. He was very shy before, less so now. He was quite happy charging around the garden with his cousin, and did quite a formidable (for a 17 month old) lion's roar when prompted.

In the evening Alison and Nan watched My Fair Lady, and I sat back reading my new book, which I had acquired the day before but forgot to mention a few paragraphs ago, Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde. Yes, that time of year again, and it seems like only yesterday I was reading The Well Of Lost Plots for the first time.

Then we started helping Nan sort through some of her old photos. She'd started showing them to us that morning and kept commenting on how she kept meaning to write on the back of each one who everyone was, etc, so we decided to force the issue and sit down with her and go through some. Alison took her through the pictures while I catalogued them on the laptop. We went through a hundred or so photos over the space of a couple of hours, and I did my best to note down the more pertinent details of all the stories she told as we went along.

Nan had a couple of funny turns on Saturday, which she was blaming on the new blood pressure pills she'd been taking (for 5 weeks or so). On Sunday she'd been fine most of the day, but on Monday morning she was quite bad again. I called the doctor for her, and my Aunt and Uncle came over to look after her until the doctor arrived so that Alison and I could head off - we didn't want to leave her on her own, but also didn't want her to feel she was holding us up. It didn't really make any difference to us if we waited with her, but it seemed important for her to feel that she wasn't spoiling our plans, so once Aunt and Uncle arrived we headed off.

When we checked later the doctor had been, taken her blood pressure, and since it was wayyyy too low, had made the quite reasonable conclusion that the dosage on her pills was too high. Nan sounded much more cheerful for knowing this, and we all relaxed a bit.

We called in at Cribb's Causeway on the way home. No actual spending took place, but it was necessary to properly assess the choice of digital cameras available for Alison for her birthday. Having seen this online, we basically wanted to see if anything measured up to it in terms of features for that price (�63 when we first saw it, �70 on Monday). It was a given that nothing would measure up to it in terms of funky redness. I ordered one on Monday evening, and hopefully it will arrive tonight. My Dad will be having the more conventional silver model for his birthday, which strangely at the time cost more than the funky red one.

Oh, and is it me, or is 11am perhaps a bit early for a "Don't Drink And Drive" sign to be lit up? Seemed quite odd. And amusing. And yes, I know driving drunk is no laughing matter. The sign was though. Hee.

[Funky cameras are a weapon of mass destruction]

Then when we got home my parents called in for dinner. They'd been across to Norwich (quite a way from South Wales, LOL) on Sunday and stayed the night, and since they had to go straight past us anyway, it seemed right for them to call in.

While they were there however Mum got a phone call to say that Nan had gone into hospital. She'd been sick and there was a lot of blood, meaning that some form of internal bleeding was taking place. With Nan being a nurse she knew what some of the possible diagnoses were and recognised that it was important to act on it straight away. She's still in at the moment and we're still waiting for definite news on the diagnosis but nothing has yet come up to dispute the idea that its an ulcer, which is good, because it could be a lot worse. Mum and Dad went to see her yesterday and she was doing well, and joking with the nurses and stuff, so she seems to be coping with the experience well.

Yesterday we were back to the same old shit. Work. Stuff.

Oh, and boobs ;-)







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