The Cobrasnake went to Reading...

... and managed to snap one of the boys.

Alas, I was not there: a mixture of being broke, being sick, not noticing when tickets originally went on sale, having small children to look after [not mine, I might add] and not really being bothered enough to find a way in, all conspiring to keep me in the Smoke, where I spent an incredibly lazy bank holiday weekend sleeping, reading three books in three days, and watching Reading/Leeds highlights on the Beeb. Oh, and writing up last minute Flux mag Joy Division assignments [cue the soundtrack to my weekend...]

In other Reading/Leeds news, I discovered:

1. It's pronounced Max-eeemo [yeah, like emo] Park [I'd been wandering about that for ages]
2. Reading crowds like to throw things
3. What Zane Lowe actually looks like
4. Franz Ferdinand are - sorry - actually a little boring. Maybe it's a being-there thing.
5. Live tv fuck ups are still funny

during the end credits of 'a history of violence':

S: Well the ending was a bit ambivalent. Hmm. I liked it, but it was very violent.

F: it's called A History of Violence, what were you expecting it to be about, puppies??

east london poster poetry

sunday brunch and brief wanderings round brick lane and nearby streets with leith and james and tilda wonderpup and jerry made for a nice break from the ups and downs.

afternoon delight

will ferrell + steve carrell with a side helping of paul rudd = good times.

someone needs to bottle their collective essences and sell it. fuck prozac.

seriously. steve carrell practically makes me wet myself laughing in this film.

time out

there was a baby shower for my imminent godson in shepherd's bush, the party mainly made up of girls we [the mamma-to-be who is my best friend since age 12, and myself] went to high school with. they all started getting broody, and then talk quickly turned to marriage, babies and mortgages [one of them got married in june] and i started quietly freaking out, thinking "when did we all get so old - and more to the point, why are they in such a rush to get even older?" - with the also-unhelpful mantra of "25, unemployed, single, living at home..." running through my mind as they talked about their savings and careers.

that's not to say i'm anti it all. but i feel at 24-25, the age we all are at the moment, it's like prime time for... i don't know, adventures. not settling down. maybe it's just me. cold feet or whatever. but i can't imagine tying myself down to a mortgage. babies are a different thing, they can happen accidentally. love is transient, and falling in love is an adventure in itself. but saying "this is it, this is all i want now" whether it's about a job or home or something... i can't do it. i think i have itchy feet. and a bad case of the don't-wanna-be-heres. we all know i'd rather be in NY, and perhaps if things were happening there it'd be different. but who really knows.

the arrival of my little man, and the trip to NY this fall are all that's keeping me going at the moment...

oh those wacky mental patients

At a family friend's 21st last night I was comparing horror stories about working for the NHS/Health Trusts/Borough Councils, with a friend who had worked within a mental health care team a year or so back. We swapped case stories that had stuck out - the man who'd explicitly told nursing home staff he had to get his mother's placement funded because she was spending his inheritance [nice], the depressive who choked to death on a teabag [seriously] - but then she beat me hands down, with the tale of a patient of hers who, a couple weeks into her job, changed his last name. To Jesus-Christ-Our-Saviour.

Amazing.

birthday antics

My dad's birthday. Just before we sit down for dinner, I'm on a bidness call with Jackie. The conversation turns to Interpol. The third partner in Crash & Boom, Carmen, has been in NY this past week, hanging with Paul and Carlos, who are her bros. Business and chat is concluded, I return my attention to the family dinner.

My dad looks at me, his expression somewhere between amusement and worry.

"So has Jackie been talking to Interpol, or were they talking to you?"

Wow, I think, my dad is more with it that I thought. I had no idea he'd know who Interpol were.

"No, Carmen knows them, she-"

But suddenly, as his face is swept with relief I realise - he's on a completely different track.

"Ohhhh. The band. Not the police."

And suddenly he's back to being the guy for whom Art Brut is merely an artistic movement and Band of Horses is something he'd see in a Western. And who, on occasion, has mistaken my ipod for a cell phone. Old dog, new tricks...

Happy birfday, papa x