Observations of an Innocent By-Stander

Last night I was stood in the queue at Willy's, minding my own business whilst observing everyone else's.

I'd been on a run with Bonzo, the need to get back into a fitness routine after a week's worth of English food immediate.  Still sweating, hair glued to my forehead and a beauty of an outfit that was made up of a training hoodie and Jen's jogging shorts, I most likely didn't look very punk rock.  Still, despite the look I felt pretty good about myself, having got straight back into training after my trip.

I almost always choose the wrong line at the supermarket.  If there are two equal lines then I will undoubtedly end up behind an old lady with the contents of her piggy bank, a complaining bastard returning goods, filling out an unfathomable amount of paperwork, a forgotten pin code or a broken till.  Not on this occasion though.  On this occasion I was delighted to notice my queue smoothly flowing along whilst the queue opposite was held up by a leaky carton of milk.

In the line in front of me was a couple who looked to be in their late forties, maybe early fifties.  The nosey bastard inside of me was scanning through the items they were purchasing and I noticed they didn't have any meat products.  This caught my attention because it's not very often in this country that you find someone in the mainstream population not buying meat.  Sweden is a country of meat consumers, one of the biggest meat consumers in the world in fact.  It's a habit of mine to check out what people buy at the supermarket and inwardly scoff at the array of horror on the conveyor belt.  I know, I waste far too much energy at the supermarket...

Anyway, I was checking out this couple and wondering if they were vegetarians.  They kind of looked like vegetarians.  She had long dark hair and looked like she could have been a hippie in her younger days and he had mildly ruffled, mildly long grey hair and professor-like glasses.  In actual fact, I have no idea what a mainstream vegetarian looks like, by this I mean anyone who isn't a crust punk.. It's funny, before my mum met Jen she said she could tell she was a vegetarian after seeing a single photograph of her.. Fuck knows how she knew.  Her eye must be a little more trained than mine.

As all these thoughts were whizzing about my mind and I was placing my items on the belt, waiting for the professor to pay up, I happened to glance up and catch sight of the guy's wallet.  Inside of it was a photograph of his wife/partner wearing nothing but her pants.  The guy wasn't exactly trying hard to hide it, it was right there in the little plastic photo pocket.

The nosey bastard inside me found the whole thing quite shocking.  Funny what you see when you're out and about, minding your own business.

Saucy vegetarians.

The Great Crash

Things have been a little inactive around here recently.. Being a dad is of course taking up a lot of time, and with little sleep and that thing called work, there hasn't been a whole lot of anything left over for writing. Something I intend to fix.

Of course, there hasn't been a whole lot of touring either, so the main ingredient for this blog, the tour diary, has had little in the way of fuel. That will remain the case until I'm finished with paternity leave next year and Polly is in pre-school. To be honest, I can't even imagine being away from her for more than a few days right now...

But there are of course other things to write about, and I will continue to bash out at least one article per month, I do write pretty extensively as you might have noticed, so once a month should suffice for the time being. Any more than that you can consider a bonus..

So, you can imagine my frustration when I finished up writing my last article, a continuation of The Crew series, a whole seven fucking pages worth (that's A4), when during the spell checking stage the hard drive on my not so trusted laptop, died a horrible death. Gone.

Or maybe it's not. My old friend Mole, who I will meet next week in England, is a computer wizard of sorts, and he will attempt to recover my files for me. It's not only my blog stuff, there is my record collection inventory (I know...) as well as a fair few photos of Polly and other delightful things. Hopefully, hopefully, when they're recovered and my computer fixed, I will post the lost article.

One thing is for sure, I will not be attempting to continue to write on this iPad.. It doesn't aid much in the way of flow... Infuriating how often I miss the space bar...

Anyway, we are playing Fuk Reddin' Fest in London this weekend with D?B! There will be a report to follow. Funny, ten years ago we played thee Reading Festival, main stage, with Speedhorn, in front of twenty thousand people. I'm very happy to say that after this weekend I will have fully explored both ends of the spectrum. Funny thing is Gordon Speedhorn is working Reading this weekend with Funeral For A Friend.

Funny that.