Saturday..........

So, what do you do whilst you're waiting for your album to be finally, eventually ready?

Sulk? Pine? Moan?

Get motivated?

Ah, motivation....

I could start working on the next album.... but, to be honest, I've already started doing that (more of which soon) but that's another story....

Instead, I found myself at an enjoyable loose end.

Mmm...

What I did on my free Saturday (pt1)

I woke up early and had a breakfast few beers with my sister and her husband. Tomorrow they fly back to Uganda to continue with the project they are working on. Here's a link to their blog (it might look familiar)

http://www.softpowereducationcentre.blogspot.com/

Before they left my house they dumped approximately 100 kilos of childrens football equipment into my basement. The idea being that Nicola and Dave are helping set up a Football League for kids in their region of Africa - There is currently no organised inter-school sport in the region and they hope to change that. My end of the bargain (I'm told) is to raise the necessary funds to ship this bunch of stuff out there at a cost of about £500. I will be calling on the better natures of the residents of Moseley to make this happen.

After that I went and did my recycling. Recycling in Birmingham is a total pain in the arse and it's no wonder that people can't be bothered. This lot used to collect outside my house but now they don't. Ho hum. Anyroad, I spent an unpleasant 15 minutes feeding beer cans and bottles into boxes whilst a wasp tried to sting me.

I don't blame the wasp.

After that I went to meet my friend Andrew Dubber in Jibbering Records for a coffee.

Prior to my arrival he had been joined at his table by a lady who can only be described as a fucking nutter and I found Andrew cowering behind his coffee with a pleading look in his eyes. Mistakenly thinking that the lady was a friend of Andrew, I made the grave error of engaging her in conversation. Her opening gambit was to admire my cigarette papers and to ask whether they were vegetarian (!) before fishing out of her bag a portable version of the classic board game Cleudo. Things went downhill from there.

There was temporary respite when my sister and her husband arrived, shortly followed by Andrew's wife and son. A bloke at the next table (who turned out to be the current tour manager for Mistys Big Adventure) also helped to return some semblance of normailty to procedings..........until we all got on to the subject of vegans.

......the long and the short of it is an entirely sweeping statement. And here it is:

We all agreed that vegans are humourless muthafuckers and that their diet was probably to blame for this.

Eg...

Vegan 1: "What's for dinner?"

Vegan 2: "Brown Rice, Pulses and that"

Vegan 1: "Again?"

Vegan 2: "Yep"

Vegan 1: "I see"

(pause)

Vegan 1: "Would you like to hear a joke?"

Vegan 2: "No"

Vegan 1: "No, me neither"

Anyway...

After the 7 of of us had thouroughly trashed vegans and thier culture for a good 10 or 20 minutes, the long forgotten strange lady spoke for the first time in a while. She said;

"I'm a vegan"

..........

Oh man....

I tried to bite my tongue.

I really did.

But I couldn't help myself, and I desperately wanted to prove the group hypothesis.

So I asked her to tell us a joke.

She obliged.

What followed was an extraordinary stream-of-conciousness anti-catholic rant that involved (if I recall correctly) the new Pope Benedict getting two nuns out of the bath in order to berate Britian's attitude to just about everything. At the point of the joke in which Pope Benedict questioned the Nuns' attire, the lady stopped abruptly and looked at us all expectantly, as if she'd just told the perfect knock-knock joke. She said nothing afterwards. Nothing at all.

We paid for the coffees and left.

Visibly shaken, we retired to the nearest Alehouse to calm ourselves down with a variety of alkyholic drinks.

By 2pm normality had resumed.

At 3pm I went to watch Aston Villa get beaten like a red-headed stepchild by Liverpool. I don't wish to discuss this further.

Then I came home and, as I write this, I'm watching X-Factor....LIVE!

(I'm not going to edit any of this after the fact, I'm writing this with our friend in the record shop earlier in mind - i.e. thoughts, straight off the top of the dome.)

Here's the first...

X-Factor is fucking brilliant.

Here's the second....

The main thing that strikes me about X-Factor is that if Louis Walsh thinks you'll suck his cock in the car park afterwards then you'll probably get through.

That said, if there is any (non-car park blowjob related) justice in this world, then Leona will win. She's so beautiful I'm even prepared to forgive the fact that she's a Mariah-Carey-a-like.

Eton Road are fucking rubbish, by the way. Honestly, they're shit. That lad with the cheekbones should sack the rest of them and carve out a career carving stuff with his cheekbones.

........

Now, after some food, I'm going to have a kip and then later I'm going to a house-warming party.

It's all go!

Saturday Pt 2 will follow.....