Mikrofisch - Monsters of the Universe

Right, so this is not actually a Mikrofisch album. It is in fact the last Mikrofisch album (Masters of the Universe!) and assorted tracks covered by friends’ bands. What a marvellous idea indeed!

The result is a mixed bag of various German (and Dutch!! The USA are on here, too!) bands, well, interpreting songs. The resident rave track suddenly has a rather shrill flute on it and what appears to be real drums and possibly an acoustic guitar. The song by the USA is, unsurprisingly, very nice, too!

The Kids Are All Shite (this is actually proving popular in German indie clubs!) got a ravey makeover. I can’t make up my mind whether I like this one or the original better (quick recap, this is the one that goes ‘Fuck the Kooks!’ and ‘Are you gonna be my girl – FUCK OFF!’).

My personal favourite is Sechsundneunzig (eg. Ninety-Six!), which is a translated and adapted version of Let’s Kiss and Listen to Bis. Adapted in that it’s no longer about Bis, it’s about Tocotronic, complete with a bit of a Toco intro and some Tocotronic lyrics strewn around. I never heard of the guy who wrote it but I would very much like to phone him up and thank him profusely, because I do like a bit of nostalgia, ahem. I was there, in 1996, in my corduroy flares and Adidas jacket. I own the vast majority of Tocotronic’s back catalogue. I’ve been to a shitload of Tocotronic gigs, heck I even did the pogo dance down the front. Once we all went on a 5 hour train journey to see them play a gig in a disused railway depot. Oops, going off on one now!

Bizarrely, the cover of Drum Machines Will Save Mankind is laced with acoustic guitars and … oh dear … violins I believe. And real ones, by the sounds of it. Someone managed to Belle-and-Sebastian-ify a song about drum machines. Well and truly astounding.

I reckon everyone should try to get this album. You have no excuse – it’s a free download, dammit! And the Mikrofisches are very nice people. One half ran the rival fanzine in my home town 15 years ago, the other resides in London now and I haven’t seen her in ages!

http://www.komakinomag.de/?label:mikrofisch:monsters_of_the_universe

The Crocketts

Haven’t written anything for a while. Just dug out my Crimea album (Tragedy Rocks! It really is rather nice), because Owen from the Crocketts/The Crimea was running Manda Rin’s merch stall the other week. This got me thinking.

I still have my Nintendo Fallacy poster on the wall. It’s ten years old I suspect. I loved the Crocketts. I really did. Bit weird, because it’s not the kind of stuff I’d usually be into. Ah well ….

I sent them a questionnaire for my fanzine many years ago. They filled it in and even made a little drawing for it. After I moved to London, I went to interview them. I was shitting myself, as I asked for a toothless Glaswegian tour manager at some West End venue, the name of which I can’t remember. Much to my relief, my interviewees were Owen and Rich. Davey Crockett was not present. Phew. Because he was right at the top of my ‘most beautiful band people’ list back then. And ahem, I guess he kinda still is! God knows why, he doesn’t even have a full set of teeth. Oh and here’s a nice piece of trivia, he’s DJ Annie Mac’s brother! Anyhow, where was I? The interview! That went well. And I did bump into young McManus afterwards. I was so embarrassed and starstruck, it was pretty horrendous.

These people also had a habit of popping up at the same venues as me for a while. Sometimes they said hello. How exciting!

Then the Crocketts disappeared and the Crimea came along a little later. It was a delight to hear that voice again (I am a bit of a sucker for damaged sounding young gentlemen), I even had a little tear in my eye. I went to see the Crimea play at the Windmill and a couple of other places. It was never the same as the Crocketts and they seem to have gathered a bit of a scary cultish student fanbase that knew all the words to songs that weren’t even released yet. I felt oddly out of place and, most of all, very very dated. So I stopped going to those gigs. I somehow felt I had no right to be there.

Then, a couple of months ago, something really odd happened. I was on the tube, on my way home. The train stopped at Euston. The carriage doors were just about to close when two guys in leather jackets came bursting in with guitars and amps. One of them was Davey Crockett. I smiled at him, mostly because it’s alwas funny seeing people wedge open tube doors and falling into the carriage with this ‘I did it! I fucking did it!’ look on their face. Then I realised who he was. I would have liked to tell him that a) I wanted to marry him ten years ago b) I still had that poster and c) that I had met him a couple of times before. Albeit, I was too chicken to do so, so I just sat there, bright red, trying not to look, heart thumping. Very, very childish indeed. I’m sure there would have been no harm in saying hello. Somehow, I couldn’t. Dammit.

New pets!

Since I really can’t have a cat in my current living conditions and wanted some kind of pet again … after some deliberation, yesterday I acquired two baby rats! They’re white with red eyes, I can’t really tell them apart just yet, but, let me tell you, they’re a riot! They’re really inquisitive and quite tame already (the place I got them from had handled them nicely). When I open the cage door they come to the door, sniff my fingers and clamber onto my hand. Bless. Very smart, too! I put their little cardboard house upside down, they looked at it and made a concerted effort to push and drag it until it was a) the right way up and b) in exactly the same spot it had been in previously! They like yoghurt drop treats and take them from my hands with their little pink paws. So cute! No really, they are!

Weird thing is, I am petrified of sewer and ‘wild’ rats. Had one in my old flat once, it jumped out at 3am and eye witnesses inform me I jumped onto the sofa and screamed my head off for a good fifteen minutes.

But I like the pet ones! Does that make me a hypocrite? Guess it does a bit, but maybe I won’t be quite as scared next time one jumps out at me from me feed bin at the stables. I hope so, anyway.






Here is one of the little fellas. I think this one is Hubert, but it might be Basil. Hopefully, once they’ve grown and I get to know their personalities a bit better it will be easier to know who is who!

First impression of rats as pets is brilliant! They seem to interact a lot more than hamsters or guineapigs (although I LOVE guinea pigs, I really do!) and I can’t wait for them to be big and fat so they can have a run round the flat (they’re too small and wizzy to keep an eye on them at the moment).

The top whatever (un)romantic songs of indiedom

Milky Wimpshake – Dialling Tone

A close call between this one and ‘I want to be seen in Public with You’ and ‘I Love You, You Weirdo’! But Dialling Tone wins. Because it says ‘Your Boyfriend is so dull, he was probably born on Hull’ and ‘I even have my own record label, so come and sit at my table!’. I can relate to the latter. Only that when I did have my own record label, nobody did want to ‘come and sit at my table’ in that sense! I love Milky Wimpshake!!! They have a knack of putting words to the indie awkardness like nobody else. No really, they do (ok, I’m a bit pissed as I write this, but still …).

Dialling Tone is about wanting to phone someone and hanging up before they pick up the phone. Must have been written before mobiles and the ‘dial 1471’ option. Otherwise ‘they’ know you phoned.

Peptone – Candidate for Wax

I admit this is fairly obscure. It was on a Snakebite City compilation. It has a line in it that goes ‘and you smoke another kingsize as you wait for the phone’. Having done this sort of thing many times, I can relate to that one. I listened to this song a lot when I was waiting for this guy to call. This was over a decade ago. I did go out with said go for a short while, but the fact he was in a Death Metal band meant it was not going to happen. I could not take the embarrassment of having a boyfriend that dressed like fucking Kiss onstage, complete with black and white face makeup and a hell of a lot of leather. Erm, no, I don’t think so!!

I Wish I Was Him – Kathleen Hannah

Yes, that is her of Bikini Kill fame. The song is about Evan Dando. Obviously. And how he obtains his records via mailorder and how he is just so so cool. Its about finding someone so amazing you actually want to be them (I’d rather be Kathleen Hannah than Evan Dando actually, I hear from reliable sources he’s a bit of an arse!).

Marmor Stein und Eisen Bricht – Drafi Deutscher

Drafi Deutscher was imprisoned for exposing himself to children. Nice. Still, I kinda grew up with this song translates to ‘Marble, Stone and Iron breaks, but our love does not’. Odd, I know. Very German.). This was my parents wedding song (yikes!) and my dad played it in the car all the time. It really grew on me, and when I am feeling a bit down/silly I howl along to this at full volume.

Wenn du mich nicht willst – Lassie Singers

Sorry, another German one. Lassie Singers are a vaguely feminist pop/punk group that have been going under various pseudonyms for ages. I like them a lot. This one is about the conundrum that people only seem to like you when you don’t like them (treat them mean, keep them keen, I suppose) and what a shit idea it is to play along with this kind of headfuck. How very right they are. This sort of activity is very stupid indeed and should be avoided. If you have to resort to playing mindgames with people, it’s best not to bother at all.

Will You Still Care – The Crocketts

You see, I was intending on marrying the guy from the Crocketts when I was, well, younger. He has a missing tooth and is kinda cool. I saw him on the tube a little while ago. I had met him ages ago, but somehow I don’t think he remembered that. So I did not say hello when I saw him on the tube. Instead I grinned at him (he was obviously on a way to a gig, for he was lugging a guitar and amp around and got off at Camden), heart pounding (I still have a Crocketts poster on my wall. It marks the release of the Nintendo Phallacy EP and is quite tatty now), heart pounding like mad (I felt like I was a starstruck teenage again. Whoops) and praying to God he would get off soon before I made an idiot of myself.

Anyways, that song! It’s the one that goes ‘will you still care for me – I DON’T FUCKING THINK SO!’. This has helped me get over many a … is it wrong to call them boys now? It’s the sheer angriness of it (and the fact it has the word FUCK! In it!) that makes this such a fabulous tune.

Connie Francis – Schoener Fremder Mann

Another German one. Even though Connie Francis is blatantly not German. She did release quite a few songs in German though. And those made it into the family car’s glove box. My dad used to play this over and over again on the ten hour car journeys to Italy we did every year. Somehow, they got etched int my brain. This one is about beautiful strangers (note to self: don’t write ANYTHING when you’re somewhat tipsy on cider) and rather corny. But I do love her bizarre American accent. I remember the whole family singing along to this in the car (this one and other one about the little Italians – that one was highly non-PC!). Happy memories indeed.

Let’s Kiss and Listen To Bis - Mikrofisch

Ok, I shouldn’t drone on about my friend’s band. Silvia deserves better than being mentioned in some kind of bizarre drunken list of songs. BUT!! This song encompasses the heyday of music perfectly. Back when I did not have a real job. Back when I still did fanzines and things. Back when I listened to Bis A LOT. Admittedly, I don’t think I ever kissed anyone with Bis playing in the background (I probably could have done though, I went out with quite a few people who liked Bis!), but it’s a nice idea. This is one of those indie-reference song – ‘keep Sparky’s Dream alive and dance to Teenage Fanclub’. Awww. Bless. The it goes ‘hold on to the past and let it last forever …’. I wish I could. But I can’t. The second Bis reunion gig got cancelled because they didn’t sell enough tickets …. Dammit!! *I* sure had a ticket!!! Why cancel??

I’m pretty sure this song is some kind of pisstake or at least ironic. Still, when I first heard it I wept for joy.

Me and You vs The World – Space

Yes. I know. Space are not cool. I do love this song though. It’s very Bonnie and Clyde. Some sort of boy/girl robbery gone horribly wrong. And it’s quite catchy. So what’s not to like?

Things nobody seems to ever teach you

Washing machines

Did anyone ever take you to one side and explained to you how to wash your clothes without help? Me neither. A whirlwind of trial and error followed. I was 17 and had just moved out from my parents with a friend. We had a washing machine and no idea what to do with it. We settled on ‘everything at 40’ in the end. I still wash everything at 40 – unless I am feeling daring and go for a boilwash. And then realise that yes, the colour of the red top still runs after ten years and I have grey underwear once again. Why is there no crash course for this sort of thing?

Dusting

I have never managed this successfully with a duster. All it seems to do is spread more dust around. This seems rather pointless.

Making beds

Now I know that in theory you kind of flatten or fold the duvet and stick the pillow somewhere at the top. Only to then unravel it all again when you want to go to sleep. What’s the point?

Bleeding radiators

It’s cold. The radiators don’t seem to work. There’s always a male friend helpfully advising you to ‘bleed the radiators’. How the hell does that work? What will I do with all this blood? Is the blood boiling? Is that how they keep warm?

Cleaning windows properly

Spraying on windowcleaner and then wiping the contraption does not seem to work. Windows are left streaky and look no different to how they looked before you got started. How are you supposed to do this?

Excel

I don’t know anyone who has ever been trained on Excel before they used it for the first time. My first time with Excel was at a temping agency interview and I made it up as I went along. Having spoken to quite a few other people, it seems we’re all in the same boat. Nobody actually has any idea what they’re doing.

Look interested

An important skill! But how? Think of something interesting and you will instantly look interested even if you’re not. That doesn’t quite seem to work. Why not have courses to prepare you for those dull parties and boring conversations you will be forced to have in later life?

Things nobody seems to ever teach you

Washing machines

Did anyone ever take you to one side and explained to you how to wash your clothes without help? Me neither. A whirlwind of trial and error followed. I was 17 and had just moved out from my parents with a friend. We had a washing machine and no idea what to do with it. We settled on ‘everything at 40’ in the end. I still wash everything at 40 – unless I am feeling daring and go for a boilwash. And then realise that yes, the colour of the red top still runs after ten years and I have grey underwear once again. Why is there no crash course for this sort of thing?

Dusting

I have never managed this successfully with a duster. All it seems to do is spread more dust around. This seems rather pointless.

Making beds

Now I know that in theory you kind of flatten or fold the duvet and stick the pillow somewhere at the top. Only to then unravel it all again when you want to go to sleep. What’s the point?

Bleeding radiators

It’s cold. The radiators don’t seem to work. There’s always a male friend helpfully advising you to ‘bleed the radiators’. How the hell does that work? What will I do with all this blood? Is the blood boiling? Is that how they keep warm?

Cleaning windows properly

Spraying on windowcleaner and then wiping the contraption does not seem to work. Windows are left streaky and look no different to how they looked before you got started. How are you supposed to do this?

Excel

I don’t know anyone who has ever been trained on Excel before they used it for the first time. My first time with Excel was at a temping agency interview and I made it up as I went along. Having spoken to quite a few other people, it seems we’re all in the same boat. Nobody actually has any idea what they’re doing.

Look interested

An important skill! But how? Think of something interesting and you will instantly look interested even if you’re not. That doesn’t quite seem to work. Why not have courses to prepare you for those dull parties and boring conversations you will be forced to have in later life?

Children of a pretend revolution

Both of my parents are psychologists. Dear God!, I hear you cry. Both of them? By way of background information, I did not spend my childhood in group therapy. Yes, I had an awful lot of ‘educational’ toys and yes, my family talks an awful lot and yes, it’s all rather liberal and democratic.

So far, so good. But one thing I was always encouraged to do is speak my mind. And that it’s perfectly acceptable to talk back at people if they say something you don’t agree with. Or if they do something you don’t like. And yes, the latter did get me into an awful lot of trouble at school.

Another thing I learned is that injustice is not something to be tolerated. Which is why I did give that guy a primary school a black eye because he picked on my friend for being shit at basketball.

Fastforward twenty years. I am beginning to realise that the world does not work like that any more. Particularly not in a working environment. It seems to be ‘put up and shut up!’. But what if you think something is fundamentally wrong. You KNOW it’s wrong. You KNOW it’s not fair and you would really like to throw a mean left hook at the offending party. Only that you’re not allowed to. Because you’re at work. Some people are higher up than others. And you happen to sit somewhere at the bottom of the pile, ready to be dumped upon from a variety of angles. Last time I checked, ‘doormat’ was not part of my job description. And if I wanted to b part of a group email bunfight, I would join an debate group for masochists. I certainly don’t need this kind of activity at work.

You try to speak up and get duly brushed under the carpet. Take the moral high ground! Yeah right, the moral swamp, more like. And I am tiring of sitting in said swamp. I really am. And why can’t I rise from the swamp? Because ‘you can’t do that!’. I know this may sound pompous, but I was under the impression I was an individual of free will and could do what I want, as long as I don’t hurt anyone. That doesn’t seem to be the case. Somebody somewhere along the lines lied to me big time. Doing the right thing does not get you anywhere. Neither does trying to be helpful. And what’s all this bollocks about ‘going the extra mile’ about? You go the extra mile, somebody will lay out another three miles of broken glass you can then crawl over in your own time. Thanks, guys, really appreciate it.

This leaves me and my naïve believe that all you got to do is be nice to people and they’ll be nice also out in the cold. And the theory that working hard will be rewarded doesn’t rung true either any more. If you happen to the in the civil service, you can’t have any sort of payrise, so instead they bleed you dry. Particularly, if you foolishly agree to do every last task someone is trying to foist upon you. Sorry, I don’t live to work, I work to live. I do not want to be loosing sleep over work matters, thank you very much.

So change jobs! Hm, but somehow I suspect it wont be any different anywhere else. Because everything in the working world seems to be upside down these days. Or maybe it’s just me and I am being stupid for seriously believing what my parents drummed into me for all these years was nothing but a big fat lie.

More on the Facebook malaise

It’s hard to imagine now that I once checked my Myspace several times a day. I haven’t checked my Myspace for months now, because every time I do I have a message along the lines of ‘We looked at your profile and thought you’d dig our tunes. We are a trash metal band from Usbekistan …’. Yes, Myspace seems to be music only these days. Which is nice. If I want to listen to some bands that haven’t got any records in the shop just yet. Annoyingly, most of them have disabled the download function, so I would have to sit on Myspace all the time if I wanted to play a demo on repeat. Ho-hum.

Cue Facebook. The supposed grownup option. The grandmother of all Bebos. I gather Bebo is for chavs and kids who like to play with knives/enjoy underage sex rather a lot.

When I first signed up for Facebook, I vowed it would not be like my Myspace and I would only ever add people I actually wanted to add. People I already knew from the outside world (yes, there is a world out there. Hard to believe, but there is). I now have 94 friends on Facebook. Some of them are dormant. Like terrorist sleepers. They lay in waiting, only to suddenly ‘throw a sheep at you’ out of nowhere or try and coax you into a round of ‘Texas Hold’Em’. I keep meaning to rid myself of these. But can’t quite do it. Although they won’t even notice I deleted them. A Facebook Kill is a silent kill. So far, I only disposed of one person on Facebook. This was duly noticed, I re-added. Temporarily. Then I went for the full delete-and-block option. I win.

One thing I do have reservations about is work colleagues on Facebook. With Myspace, it didn’t matter, really because your profile is up for grabs for the world regardless (unless you pretend to be under age, at which point they filter out grownups eg everyone you know). On Facebook, nobody needs to see what I’m up to outside work. Not that I’m up to a hell of a lot, but still. There’s work life and there is life life. Needless to say, my ‘no work on Facebook’ rule soon began to crumble. Next thing I know, half my team is on there. I do draw the line at work people I don’t really know though. What’s the point in having people on there I hardly talk to in the first place. Yeah, sorry I ignored your request. Twice.

Then there is the groups. Joining seems like a good idea at the time, but after the 10th reminder message about a clubnight the other side of the country, you begin to tire of those. And, let’s face it, in most cases, the notification that ‘… has joined IF 25 PEOPLE JOIN THIS GROUP I WILL CHANGE MY NAME TO STINKBOMB’ is the first and the last you will ever hear of said group.

And don’t get me started on the Application junkies. These tend to be the people that greatly enjoy forwarding emails that say ‘send this to 10 people and your luck will change’ or ‘check out these toddlers in bumblebee suits and fairywings’ and other adorable headings. These people will insist you take a test to find out which Disney Princess you are, they will Superpoke you (despite the fact you don’t even have the goodamn SUPERPOKE! Application!), they will add you to their bizarre Top Trumps-esque entourage of supposed friends and, worst of all, hunt you down in the ‘who is online right now’ bit somewhere at the bottom of the page (if anyone knows how to disable the thing, do let me know!). There is no getting away from them. And you can’t even message them to stop this malarkey because their profile will be so cluttered with slow-loading applications (egg hatching, virtual Christmas trees at Easter time, all sorts of kerrazy cartoon versions of them, online fishtanks, entire cocktail bars …) that it will take about 48 hours to appear in the first place. And no, I DO NOT NEED THE PETROL HEAD APPLICATION IN MY LIFE! I don’t even have a fucking driving license!!!!

Still, it’s easy to get all obsessive compulsive over Facebook. I even check mine on the mobile (ahem). Despite the fact nothing ever happens and all I do is delete messages from promoters whose nights I will never go to and decline invitations to aforementioned far-flung gigs by bands I never even heard of. Or write one-liners that aren’t funny on people’s walls. Or saying Happy Birthday to people I have never even met. Or people whose birthday I would have definitely forgotten if it wasn’t for the handy Facebook reminder. If you want to be really crafty, send them a text to say Happy Birthday. It’s then less obvious you found the birthday on Facebook and they might even think you actually remembered their birthdays because you are such a kind and caring individual.

But. I am sure something else will come along soon.

Rock Lobster

Don’t you hate it when this happens? You’ve done everything there is to do, you’ve even taken some herbal sleeping tablets, everything is ready for the next day, you haven’t played computergames all evening, neither have you been watching too much television. Heck I even own a can of lavender spray. All that’s left to do is sleep, so you get to wake up the next day, nice and refreshed, like a normal person.

10.30pm. You’re all set. Pillows are arranged, gumshield in your mouth (quite disgusting, but at least it stops you from grinding your teeth into calcium flour over night), phone on charger, lights are off. Great. But why is it suddenly too cold in here? Let me find another jumper. Or maybe I shouldn’t. It’s August, after all. No, I think I will find a jumper. Maybe another duvet as well. Two jumpers and three duvets later, what is this now? Why is my foot itching? On second toughts, this pillow isn’t to comfortable, after all. Let me just quickly re-arrange all this. Right, that’s better. Oh, maybe I should go to the loo again. Nah, maybe I should not. Dammit, I will go.

11.30pm. Meanwhile back in my groggy brain, the B52s have launched into a splendid rendition of Rock Lobster. That song is about nine minutes long and they keep on repeating it. Don’t get me wrong, I like this song a lot. But not right now! Why doesn’t brain radio have an off switch? LOBSTER! DOWN! DOWN! DOWN! Here comes the jellyfish! Aoooh-aah-ooh!

12.30pm. Wide awake now. Maybe another cigarette will help. Lights on. Find fags. Find lighter. Find ashtray. Whilst I’m at it, why not start reading the most boring book I own (The British Horse Society’s comprehensive guide to stable management) and have a little read. ROCK LOBSTER! ROCK LOBSTER! I really am sick of that tune by now. IT WASN’T A ROCK! IT WAS ROCK LOBSTER! Stub out cigarette, put book away. Lights off again.

1.30am. Now it’s too warm. I am cooking under an array of duvets. This wasn’t a good idea. Let me take some of these off again. No, too many. Too cold now. Somebody do something! I have to get up again at 7. Supposedly, an adult needs at least eight hours sleep in order to function properly. What if I stop functioning at work? This isn’t good. I could come in for 10 I suppose. Alarm now changed to 8. Good. No need to panic now. … AND EVERYBODY HAD! MATCHING TOWELS! ROCK LOBSTER! I really need t sort out my dire financial situation. Maybe I could get another credit card. Only that they probably won’t let me have one. Hm. Why is it that I am earning more money than I ever had, but I’m still broke all the time? I really must do something about that. Right now would be good. PEOPLE ON THE PLAYA! HAVING FUUUUN!

2.30am. Ok, this isn’t funny any more. I now want to kill the B52s and their stupid LOBSTER! ROCK LOBSTER! Maybe pony Angel is scared in her stable. There’s lightning in the sky now. I hope she’s ok. I wish I had a car. Then I could hop in my car and go and see if she’s okay. ROCK! LOBSTER! DOWN! DOWN! For goodness sake, why am I still awake? The 10 o’clock start tomorrow won’t really cut it any more either. I’ll be a walking wreck. Again. I wish I’d have a better reason to be a walking wreck. If I’d been out clubbing, at least I’d have something to talk about. HERE COME THE STARFISH!!

3.30am. The last resort. Swinny! Swinny is a little toy guinea pig I had since I was a kid. He looks a little worse for wear, but at least I have trained myself to not sleep whilst clutching a cuddly toy any more a few years ago. He still lives in the bedroom though. Is that so wrong? For God’s sake it’s now 4am, I am sniffing a toy guinea pig and am swearing under my breath and am quite angry with myself for being such a loser. Tomorrow will be better. ROCK LOBSTER! OOOOOOH! ROCK LOBSTER!

The Antisocial Socialite

Meeting groups of people I don’t know fills me with dread. Particularly, when the only thing group members and I have in common is that we happen to know the same person. It was easier before the smoking ban. At least you could sit in the pub chainsmoking when you didn’t know what else to do. I am famously bad at starting conversations and used to kick off with openers like ‘gee! Get rid off that beard!’ or ‘I don’t like your shoes!’. NOT popular. I have almost stopped doing this by now and frequently catch myself uttering the dreaded ‘so what do you do?’. Not great either, is it? Particularly when everyone else is already blind drunk and you instantaneously look like a total bore. I have no idea how many hands I have shaken in my life and how many times I said ‘nice to meet you’ when I proceeded to forget peoples’ names in seconds.

I can’t stand this ‘walking into a busy party where I only know one person’ feeling. I am incapable of chitchat and find it somewhat tricky to laugh along with perfect strangers about whose jokes I know nothing about. At parties, I actively seek out the few people I already know and follow them around religiously, because I simply cannot face striking up any sort of conversation with anyone else. I am probably terrified of coming across like a complete prat. On the other hand, not talking to anyone is likely to be even more prattish.

I used to be ok walking into a gig on my own. I even made acquaintances that way when I first moved to London and didn’t know anyone. I wouldn’t go as far as saying I was ever particularly confident (for overly confident people are the most annoying of all), but I did okay. Somewhere along the lines, something must have backfires spectacularly. I tend to sit there, hiding behind a pintglass, trying to look enthralled at a conversation across the table I can’t even hear properly and pray to God I laugh in all the right places.

Either that, or outright hostility towards the unknown. Everyone is dubious until proven otherwise. Now, that is a very childish attitude to have indeed. It should be the other way round. Innocent until proven guilty.

I don’t even particularly care what people think of me. If I did, my life would have probably ground to an abrupt halt a long time ago, because I never really quite fitted in anywhere. I was always to weird, too honest, not dressed well enough and generally too nerdy. So why the heck can’t I be one of those intant socialites? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be one of those idiotic, hollow-brained ‘social butterflies’, because, quite frankly, I hate people like that. I really do. They epitomise everything I dislike about mankind: an obsession with first impressions, an obsession with looks, pub psychology applied to mannerism, a fake smile and a pathological urge to be everyone’s friend. I don’t want to be everyone’s friend! I honestly do not! I pick my battles and friends very carefully.

So why do I act like I’ve just been attacked with a stun gun when faced with a bunch of people I don’t know? I’m fine with that concept at work. I cannot do it in a social context. As a result I look like some sort of arrogant, aloof prick without meaning to. Great. Fantastic. And it’s getting worse by the minute. I can never think of anything remotely interesting to say and seem to have this pathological need to talk about a) my job or b) where I live. I don’t even like my job and it sure isn’t a job to be proud of. Its actually a pretty darn uncool occupation. I used to drone on about records and gigs to all and sundry. Now I fear this is likely to bore people to tears. And to be honest, it probably would. Nobody cares that I have signed Bis vinyl, that I used t write fanzines and promoted gigs. Nobody wants to know about my record label that folded many moons ago. I feel like a lost has-been sometimes. Thus, probably best not to share these things with anyone any more in the first place. Keep trap shut. Firmly shut.

When I had a few, I can get annoyingly argumentative. That isn’t good either. Nobody want to hear my hostile views about certain genres of music, dreadlocks, overly girlie girls and how society is intrinsically sexist.

Once I met people a few times, it tends to be okay. But these days everything moves so fast that nobody ever gets a second chance it seems.

I suppose I am basically screwed.

School reunion - part two

So the school reunion happened without me. Luckily, I seem to be unable to remove myself from the associated mailing list and received a link to page with 297 pictures of said reunion yesterday.

My god. How glad am I that I didn’t attend? Judging from the pictures, only about 15 people came along. Guess what, I hated 11 out of those 15. With a passion.

The girls haven’t changed at all. The majority of the boys are now either fighting pattern hairloss or weight issues. Or both.

There is also a significant number of wedding rings strategically shoved into a lot of the pictures. Hey, look at me! Fat! Bold! And married! Isn’t it great that even gits like me can find a woman?

Here they are, standing in the boys loos at the old school smoking fags. Just like the old days. And I was relieved to see that the roadpaint ‘Abi 98’ (eg school leavers 98) in the school yard is still there, albeit a bit faded.

One of them even sported his ‘Abi 98’ T-shirt. A hideous white contraption in X-large (thank you, Fruit of the Loom) with a ‘street’ logo on the front and a list of everyone in the class (there was 120 of us, it’s a long list, hence the X-large size) on the back. Adorable.

One of those garments was forced upon me at the time. I boycotted the whole thing. On the school leaving fete, I wore it inside out. This is after I had taken some scissors to the seams. I don’t remember much about this fete, other than being hammered and hurling verbal abuse at quite a lot of people, before slinking off early with my friends.

Much to my delight, some of the people really haven’t aged well. The ‘Mr and Mrs’ of the Class of 98 (yes, those blithering idiots even held a beauty contest) don’t look so good these days. She looks gaunt. His hairline is halfway up his head, but he still insists on wearing his locks in a ponytail. It wasn’t a good look then, it sure isn’t now. I think I prefer having average looks and maintaining them to peaking early and aging fast.

And they’re al pretending to have a blast. I am sure they didn’t. Some of these people hated each other’s guts at school, so why are they suddenly sharing drinks? Presumably a crazy haze of fake nostalgia. Nostalgia about stuff that never happened. About a time that was not that great. The big lie that ‘school days are the best days of your life’. Hell they are! In one trench you have powermad teachers taking out their frustrations on hapless youths. In the other trench you get a bunch of teenagers stabbing each other in the back. Doctors’ kids versus lawyers’ kids versus farmers’ kids. Imagine being a psychologists’ child in the midst of all this. It wasn’t easy.

Still, the whole thing reminded me of ten years ago. It seems like a very long time. I don’t know whether I have changed. So let me dig out the Yearbook of 98, where my flatmate wrote a little description of me.

There’s a picture of the whole class at the front. I have short hair that I’d dyed red. And I am growling at my flatmate. I’m standing between her and my friend Conny. Conny and I lost touch a while ago. I don’t think she coped very well with me leaving the country and started to behave rather strangely, before stopping all contact. Shame, really, I liked her a lot.

Anyways, my profile description. There isn’t a picture because I refused to have one taken. It says …

A day in the life of …

One night, Julia is tortured by a horrible nightmare. She is a geometric ball shape and has to draw a line through herself!
This is accurate. I have always hated maths and certainly despised geometry.

She wakes up and cheers herself up with a healthy portion of indiepop. This can be heard from her room from 7am onwards on a school day. By 7am she is ready to go (once various pink and glittery items have been attached and the hair has been flattened by brute force). This is after she complained yet again that her hair looks like a Playmobile figure.

Damn right it does. Still.

On arrival at school, she obtains a sticky sugary pastry and proceeds to draw on any available surface in biro and markerpen (trousers, books …). To be accurate, she isn’t drawing, she is writing wry, cynical comments on the world. Like when she called a complicated chemical drawing a worldwide tubemap and also mentioned that the whole contraption wasn’t getting us anywhere. She even invented a story to help people remember cell division in biology …

Yes. I remember it well. A ludicrous tale of someone going to the supermarket, making up telephone numbers and eventually turning into a donkey.

Back home, she immediately makes a beeline for the letterbox. Because only a day with mail is a good day. Because she needs at least a letter a day to be able to converse about the truly important things in life (music).

Her profound geographical knowledge (isn’t Hanover near Munich?) didn’t help the phone bill either. Because of this, it’s safer to write. Better check that letterbox again. And again. And Again.

I still do this. Only with emails, texts and social networking days. I get quite frustrated when nobody contacts me.

If there still isn’t a letter, she gets quite annoyed. To fend off total melancholy, she is writing a fanzine (Zosch!) – a one-woman publication in A5 she uses as a weapon in the forced conversion of us philistines.

Suddenly, the phone rings! She is petrified of fires in the home. Where do I put that fag? Simply put it out? No way, that wouldn’t e safe! She swiftly empties the cold contents of her coffeecup into the ashtray and launches into a desperate search for a pair of scissors. Once these are located, the burning fag end is swiftly hacked off and mixed in the with cold coffee, resulting in a fireproof substance. It is now safe to answer the phone in the other room.

Her hamster is currently living in the cupboard, to ensure it’s dark and quiet.
She often gos out in Munich, where she enjoys a good dance in these indie discotheques (requests for dancelessons are taken for: air guitar, indieshuffle, shoegazing, stirring style, hammer style and saw style. Beginners and more experienced participants welcome! Well worth it!).

Nope, I still can’t dance to save my life. I enjoy it though!

Once she got through another exhausting day, she can kick back and gaze at the array of rather younglooking popstars in the posters on her wall (who look like 11 but she swears they’re at least 25!). Asleep at last, she dreams about pink candyfloss, Helly Kitty and London … London … London

… So here I am. In London. So screw the lot of you stupid people from school. I may be perpetually broke. I may find life in the metropolis difficult at times, but … at least I followed my dream. At least I gave it a bloody good go.

Pick me up before you go go

Just when I thought I’d seen it all, I discover there is a whole weird new world out there. The people in it call themselves ‘pickup artists’. And yes, this is as bad as it sounds.

Successfully master meeting and attracting beautiful women.

The pickup artist, no matter how hideous they are, claims to be able to get any women he wants. Jolly good. And how exactly do they think this is going to happen? Oh sorry, I forgot. Women are but pretty creatures with peroxide for brains. You just need to find the on switch and the off switch and they’re all yours. They don’t think for themselves, have no taste and are just waiting for someone like you to pick them up. Sure thing, dude.

Now, I know people can be shy. And I know people can be clumsy. I also know some people find it very difficult to meet women and, like, talk to them. What I did not know is that it is now unacceptable to be a social retard. People like you or I shouldn’t even exist.

The pickup artist’s philosophy is based around the bizarre idea that all women are attracted to him. By default. Like these self-esteem tapes that tell you you’re beautiful, successful and everyone likes you.

What I can’t get my head round is why all women are supposedly attracted to these people. Correct me if I’m wrong, but when did chatup lines become fashionable again? Does anyone actually still collect girls’ numbers as a hobby/to get laid/show off their address book to their mates? Quantity is chosen over quality. Women have become phone numbers. And phone numbers collectable.

Pickup guru Craig Hendleman (who, incidentally, is an Essex lad) even goes as far as claiming that when it comes to women being attracted to men looks aren’t important. Whilst at the same time droning on about blondes, nice asses and supermodels. He gets to pick and choose. Girls are apparently too thick to notice and physical features of any male, as long as said male is buying into the pickup philosophy.

Common sense tells me that beauty does indeed lie in the eye of the beholder. Nobody needs to have a ‘type’ and I am certain most of what the media tell us is ‘beautiful’, the vast majority of people find pretty hideous. The pickup artist, however, is with the media on this one. Big tits! Cue ballscratching. Cue some male gorilla style bonding experiment. For peace and quiet’s sake/adding insult to injury, Hendleman actually goes as far as saying he was ‘with some very unattractive girls’. Yeah, and? You didn’t find them attractive, but there will be a number of people out there who find these ladies drop dead gorgeous.

Coming back to the shy types, the recluses, the geeks and the pathologically clumsy, pickup school is supposedly targeted at them. If I was a man, I would fall into all these categories. But I would also be quite happy with just the one girl. Not an array of shags and phone numbers. If someone happens to be on the introvert scale, revving them up and sending them out to streets and clubs armed with dodgy chatup lines won’t help them. They’ll be acting their socks off, but will no longer be who they are. There are so many different personalities and characters out there, why not find a girl with a personality to suit yours? Why pretend you are something you’re blatantly not? And how long can you keep up the pretence? What do you get out of the experiment? Oh yeah, phone numbers. And you might get laid by them. Well done you. But are you any closer to your quest of obtaining a girlfriend? The hell you are. Instead you treat women like pretty ornaments that had a lobotomy. Oh yes, that’ll get you real far in life. Everyone will take you ever so seriously.

And if someone walked up to me in the street telling me how amazing my legs were or if they could try my shoes on, rest assured my reaction will not be pretty.

Where do I stand?

Right. I’ve been working in what is effectively a complaints department for over three years now. I think I had enough. It’s not even supposed to be a complaints department. ENQUIRIES is the thin disguise used to make people feel a bit better about their workplace.

In reality, more than half the ‘contacts’ are from deranged, angry citizens. Fancy spending seven hours a day reading about how ‘disgusted’ people are, how ‘ludicrous’ the world is, just how much they hate their phone provider and how everything is a conspiracy by thee such-and-such ‘brigade’. The use of the word ‘brigade’ makes me particularly angry for some reason. What do they think this is? Who’s in all these brigades?

I particularly despise the old ‘I pay your wages you do as I say’ trick. Jesus, did you really think civil servants are exempt from taxes? Have you any idea how crap our pay actually is compared to the private sector? And do you know how many times I have heard this bullshit today alone? Ah no, you do not. Because you are one of those ‘retired white male caukasian’ people that make up the readership of the Daily Telegraph and you haven’t had a reality check for about a decade.

And why would you want to send an email ENTIRELY IN CAPITALS to get your POINT ACROSS? And why is any old shit suddenly a MATTER OF UTMOST URGENCY. And why do you keep addressing your letters to ‘the manager’, ‘the chief executive’ and the ‘head of complaints’ plus a whole host of invented titles, when you know damn well that any large organization has a whole host of people manning an Enquiries department dealing with this sort of thing? Like the blithering idiot who threatened to sue an admin person at Virgin Media for supposedly STEALING a letter that he addressed to Richard Branson HIMSELF and responding to it WITH A PACK OF LIES? How naïve are you? Do you really think the world is going to stop, just so you can get your godforsaken toaster repaired? By Richard Branson, preferably. My God.

Don’t get me wrong, I can be very helpful indeed. But only if you act in a civilized fashion and aren’t a raving lunatic droning on about taxes, the freemasons and whatnot.

Do what you like but remember, like Adam Sandler in the Wedding Singer I HAVE THE GODDAMN MICROPHONE! And if I choose to shove your stupid complaint at the bottom of the pile., I bloody well will do.

Time to find a new job, methinks ….

Personal Services Required

Looks like Wifeswap spawned a whole new range of these household documentaries. Where we take a peek into Joe Blogg’s home and watch ‘people like us’, as opposed to the nutters on Big Brother. Or so I thought. Personal Services Required … just where do they find these people? Did they advertise in Nouveau Chav magazine? ‘Wanted: Essex couple with mansion. Must be New Money. Spraytans optional’.

I am absolutely gobsmacked. There really are people out there with nothing better to do than thinking about how twelve cushions should be arranged on the bed during the daytime. Now, bedmaking is a waste of time in the first place, but, surely, if, for some reason, you’re into this sort of thing, does it really require 20 minutes with a ten minute inspection following? I can’t even decide who I feel sorrier for, the poor sod applying for a live-in housekeeper position or those sad freaks who wish to employ a housekeeper. The first is well on her way to become some kind of modern day slave, the latter … well … they might as well take their hedgefund and jump off the nearest bridge. For there is nothing left of their lives. They have outsourced everything. Including the careful folding of toilet paper. Who would do such a thing?

Interestingly, they also offer a handsome salary to whoever is willing to move into their house and be at their every beck and call. It’s almost like buying a Grandmother, albeit a young, healthy one that isn’t your mother.

A friend of mine is a professional Nanny. She refuses to take on live-in positions. Because it’s only a job. As opposed to selling your entire body and soul the spraytanned lady of the manor. Mind you, not having to pay rent and bills sounds handy. But would you really want to be sharing a house with your boss, who may well inform you that there is a fly in his bedroom at 3am?

Having watched Personal Services Required twice now, I am absolutely horrified at some people’s need to wield power over servants. To even tell them what they should and should not be wearing. And to show them off to friends and family like novelty pets.

And I can’t make up my mind who was worst. The headhunting, orange couple who asked this guy to wear chauffeur’s livery to Tesco’s or the middle-aged, chavy but loaded single mother who spent the entire program drooling over the young, male Au Pair? The latter acted almost like she was a female sex tourist in her own home, for goodness sake! Mind you, the one who informed her budding new Au Pair that she was ‘going to mould her’ wasn’t that pleasant either. Mould her? Yeah, sorry, you are but a spotty nothing, but I am going to make you a star, my dear. You are but an empty shell and I will make sure that I brainwash you into total submission.

Where do people get these powertrips from? I suppose it is to do with money. Money can buy you pretty much everything. I am loaded, therefore I am. Now I will invest in some new friends, a big house, some kids. I will buy into being admired and liked. Because I am the one paying. What these people didn’t quite realise is that the one thing they don’t seem to be able to purchase is anyone’s respect. How do you respect someone with an unhealthy obsession with polished faux brass lighswitches?

No Miss, I have not been smoking in the girls toilet!

My contract says no smoking in the flat. I ignored this, of course. Next thing I know the agency announces that ‘our regular inspection is coming up’. Er, okay. Not that you mention this to me at all. Not in the contract either. Flat smells like a working men’s club before the smoking ban.

Panic. Must get rid of smell. But how? Stop smoking in there immediately. Okay, that didn’t work. I resorted to smoking in the bathroom. After the event I realised my bathroom has no windows. Oops. Next stop, Oust! If it works for badly dubbed Dutch housewifes, it’s good enough for me. I settle for the ‘Outdoor Fresh’ variety. Pfffft, there goes the can. To my surprise I woke up the next morning, delighted I had not manage to gas myself over night. Death by chemical pine – not great. The can says to not use on fabrics. Febreze! I need some Febreze! Two hours later I am spraying double. Febreze pointing on the carpet, Oust! Towards the ceiling. Bubbling away in the bath is half a tub of Vapour Rub I am cunningly steaming with boiling water. Nice one, Julia. If hell was on earth, it would smell of fake pines, menthol and fresh Febreze Cotton Scent goodness.

Then it hits me. What the hell am I doing? I feel like I am 15 again, standing in the girls loo at school, clutching an air freshener. Have you been smoking in there, Julia? No! So why is there smoke coming out from under the door? I have no idea. And why is there a fagbutt floating in the toilet? No idea. You can’t prove anything!

Or the time when I seriously thought half a packet of Strawberry Hubba Bubba would ensure my parents would not detect my fags and beer breath after a night out on the town. They knew, allright. But they took great pleasure in leaving me to squirm for a year, until they ‘officially’ caught me smoking. Only then did they tell me they were most aware of my filthy habit from day one, but they thought it’d be more educational to have me come down to earth with a bang all by myself. Thanks, guys.

So why on earth am I thinking the letting agency won’t notice the fact I’ve gone crazy on unusual smells? Why not just let off a stinkbomb and claim an upset stomach, no further questions asked? I am 29 years old now, I should not have to be doing this. I hold down a perfectly respectable job and I am technically speaking a grown-up. Admittedly, I live like a student, but … those tatty band posters have been with me for over a decade. I like them. And that signed Stereolab poster is irreplaceable. So are the He-Man toys. So there.

Don’t touch my bikini!

(By the way I’m not being weird, that is a quote from a song by the Halo Benders)

For I shall be going on holiday soon, it was time to take stock of any available swimwear I had. Three mismatched bikinis and one that appears a size too small later, I decided I may have to invest in a new garment.

Off I trundled to the Westend. It’s June, there’s loads of shops and there appears to be a sale on. Finding suitable attire should not be a problem.

First stop, Primark. An urban hell hole of a shopper’s warzone. Ladies are tearing at T-shirts and jumpers. I get confused and end up in the lingerie section. After feeling up half the bra section, I realise these are not for swimming in. Ooops.

Onto the beachwear! Locating something that does not consist of three strategically placed triangles and a bit of string is proving difficult already. God, if I wanted to show off quite that much of my dubious physique, I would have booked a week in a nudist camp! Do people really walk around wearing what is effectively a set of nipple tassles and a figleave? Hello? Less is not more. It is less.

On to H&M. Luminous colours seem to be very this season. I spot something that looks halfdecent in design, but, sadly, it appears to be only available in neon pink camouflage. No doubt it’d be great for hiding on the beach. Hiding amongst all the other neon camouflage ladies that is. By now I am harbouring a deathwish. It gets better: there’s a sign telling me that if I buy a bikini top, I shall get the bottom half thrown in for free! As opposed to what exactly? How many people are currently out frolicking on beaches bottom- or topless? Actually, I’d rather not know.

Next stop BHS. Ah, this is better. Sensible bikinis. Ones were you don’t end up with three quarters of breast tissue hanging out the sides. With matching bottoms that consist of squares rather than triangles. Needless to say, I found those in the ‘middle aged ladies section’ and they are thirty quid a pop. I will have to give that a miss.

Topshop! Two floors worth of organic, ever so urban pretend-vintage later, I finally spot the swimwear section. And there is it. A silver man-kini (or is that a woman-kini?). It’s so bright it has a halo. It looks like a fucking space suit. I haven’t seen such an exquisite alignment of lycra since the last cocktail party on Dallas. Better still, two women are actually picking the things up and take them to the changing room. I’m intrigued. They’re not actually going to … I hang around by the changing rooms (creepy, I know. But I had to know!). Both parties emerge victoriously and … take the silver shockers to the till! I am now convinced there will be an alien invasion soon. The kind where the old tinfoil hat just won’t cut it any more.

And all I wanted to do is acquire a bathing costume.

When the kids are re-united …

Yesterday I received an email inviting me to a school reunion. Ten years since I left school. Oh my. The sender I instantly recognizes as the irritating, overly sociable little git who constructed his own lie-down bicycle at the tender age of 15. In the ‘TO’ box, I soon spotted various irritants of my formative years. Funnily enough, the entire ‘in crowd’ is on there. And yes, I am still puzzled why it was sent to me, for I was never a member of this ‘in crowd’, Quite the contrary, I was with the weirdoes. The ones who did not live in Replay! And Chiemsee jumpers. The ones whose jeans were not made by Chevignon. If you have never heard of these brands, I suggest you pat yourself on the back right now.

Whoever invented the idea that school years are the best years of your life is a big liar. They are not. They’re the years you spend getting picked on, laughed at and smoking in the girls loos. The years with the ‘us versus them’ attitude, where you get the weird kids in one corner and the brand wearing offspring of the local surgeons and lawyers in the other. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t bullied as such. And I did have friends. I just didn’t get on with the majority of these, well, people and I certainly did not enjoy school. Who’d enjoy a powercrazed megalomaniac at the front of the room telling those at the back of the room exactly what they should and should not be doing? Exactly. And lessons were not ‘fun’. And those ‘hilarious’ pranks the class jokers played on people weren’t all that funny. And I doubt they’ll be funny ten years down the line either.

‘Remember how we used to … whatever … in the chemistry lessons? Wasn’t it such a laugh?’. No, it bloody well was not. Chemistry lessons sucked ass. And so did PE. We were only there because we did not have a choice. I, for one, ditched chemistry as soon as I got the chance to.

The email is accompanied by an itinerary and a questionnaire. The itinerary consists of a champagne reception in the school hall (and I am, in fact, surprised the decrepid building that was my school hasn’t collapsed entirely yet), then a tour of the school (why would I need a tour? I spent nearly ten years in that school!), followed by a ‘bavarian buffet’ (think Emmental, think Pretzels, think large sausage platters, think no more) in the café of the nearby park. For this I am asked to pay 35 Euros. I don’t think so. I have an excuse. I’m out of the country. Permanently.

The questionnaire is disconcerting, to say the least. The email tells me that those wanting to save themselves from 120 small talks should fill in and return the questionnaire. Hang on, if there won’t be any small talk, why would you go to a school reunion. Without a half-arsed ‘so, what have you been up to?’ ice breaker, this is going to be a very silent affair indeed.

‘What have you been doing over the last ten years?’

Left the country.

‘This is what I remember from the last day at school celebrations?’

The only thing I remember is that, during the headmaster’s speech, I plucked up the courage to talk to this guy in my year I had a crush on for ages. He was a bit strange and I had never spoken to him before, He told me he secretly liked Abba. I haven’t seen him since and I doubt very much he would turn up for the school reunion. He never spoke to anyone at school, collected war memorabilia and most people were a bit scared of him.

‘This is what I always wanted to say about my final week at school’

1.Yes, I was stoned out of my brain when I turned up for that last biology exam. 2. Yes I did indeed burn the book in which absences were recorded. 3. Yes, I did nick about 50 air fresheners from the toilets during my last two years at school.

‘This is what still links me to Regensburg’

Not a lot. My parents live outside of town. My sister is transient between Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin and Munich and my friends got the hell out of that town.

‘This is what I imagine myself to be like for the 20 year reunion’

Jesus, they’re planning another one? I have no idea, to be honest. Still alive, I hope.

Please take your items

Picture the scene. You’re in the supermarket. You’re hungry. You’re in a rush.

After repeating your order at the cigarette counter three times (what is it with non-smokers working at these counters?), you’ve filled your little basket and it’s payback time.

Queues, glorious queues as far as the eye can see.

You try to be smart and head for the self-checkout. To check yourself out. Up goes the little basket. Have you swiped your Nectar Card? As you fumble in your purse for the godforsaken card (that never seems to get you anything but vouchers for nappies you don’t need), your bloodpressure begins to rise. Card Accepted! Fabulous! You swipe a yoghurt and put it in your bag. Please place item in bagging area! I just bagged it! No really, I have. I don’t get it. On the one hand they are begging you to bring your own bags, on the other hand the robotic checkout girl throws a wobbly if you try to use anything but their bags. Please wait for assistance! Here comes with personal Checkout Captain in the shape of a spotty youth with a nametag saying ‘KevinHowCanIHelpAreYou21?’. Well, I am. Young Kevin certainly is not.

Onwards! I scan the next item. A packet of Heat Patches. The box states these do not contain any kind of actual painkiller. Still, Authorisation Required! Please wait for assistance! Now where has young Kevin gone? I decide it’s probably best to get the Ibuprofen ready also, since this is likely to cause another approval scene. Just in case I am planning to cut my shopping life span short with the help of 16 painkillers and a Heat Patch.

By this point my blood pressure has reached dangerously high levels and I am ready to throttle the screaming baby in aisle number three. Heck, I’ll throttle the teenager mother, too. That way she won’t be able to bring any more screeching, hairless little numpties into this world.

Shit. Now my bag is full. I fumble with plastic bags. A queue has formed behind me. Unexpected item in the bagging area! Yes, that would be my hand. Authorisation required! For my own flesh and blood. What is this? Some bizarre consumer assault course? I could be home by now, had I queued up behind the baby in aisle three.

At last! Insert payment! Only that the robotic check out girl does not like my 20p. The coin returns time and time again. I try the thing where you rub the coin on some metal (who came up with this idea? People do it in phone boxes, too. It never helps.). To no avail. Change of plan, I’m giving them a tenner. The tenner doesn’t want to go in either. Did I put the Queen’s head the wrong way round? Eventually, the machine eats my tenner and proceeds to spew out my change in a randomly located tray. Coins on the floor. I am beginning to sweat profusely, the queue behind me is getting restless. And so am I.

I hurriedly stuff my wares into bags and scuttle outside. Turns out one of the bags had a hole in it. There’s egg on my face, there’s egg on the floor. I am now very angry and kick the nearest dustbin in projected frustration. This swift motion causes me to drop bag number two. A milk bottle now decides to leak. I feel a one-woman rage coming on. Breathe in. Breathe out. For God’s sake, BREATHE. Walk away calmly. And stop pulling those horrible faces.

A Woman's Weekly

I think I am addicted to weeklies. It all started quite innocently with fishing out a copy of Love It! Magazine to read in the bath. Next was Take A Break, followed by Real People and there isn’t an end in sight.

Now, I consider my self a reasonably educated semi-feminist. I have no understanding of cosmetic surgery or the latest weight loss fad. Neither am I a 15 year old single mother with hoop earrings and hair scraped back so tightly my eyes have started to wander towards my temples.

But, how could I resist the riveting weekly story about someone having a sex-change? ‘My Groom is a Bride’! ‘How I became the first pregnant man in Bolton’!.

For the more harrowing tales, paragraph one will set the scene and force the reader to like the tortured protagonist. Hence, a lot of ‘I smiled’, ‘I cupped my baby bump’ and ‘I giggled as I stuck the last bauble on our Christmas tree’.

Inadvertently, some form of disaster will strike in paragraph number four. ‘Dwayne only had four weeks left’, ‘I was about to loose my baby’ or ‘I just didn’t feel comfortable as a man any more’. Luckily, good friends are always at hand to ‘soothe’. I could write a whole book on the overuse of the word ‘soothe’ in human interest stories. ‘It will be okay’, Stacey soothed, ‘Don’t worry, he only lost both legs, an eye and a kidney’, Jayneesha soothed …

After much soothing and despair, a solution will present itself in the shape of a ‘hunky mechanic’ with ‘rippling muscles and eyes like saucers’, accompanied by a picture of a grinning, hideous male with two litres of hairgel on his head, a gold earring in his nose, fake tan on his shoe and a shifty glint in his ears. Chavboy to the rescue! First thing chavboy will do is impregnate the protagonist, because then she will be able to do all the smiling and bump-cupping from paragraph once again and everyone is happy.

Should there was a baddie in the story, a picture of Baddie (no matter what Baddie did, if they’re male, they will always look like a pedophile) will appear at the end, with a caption saying ‘Bruce refused to comment, but did say he had never met Stacey in his life. Sadly, we could not interview him properly because he is currently imprisoned for petty theft or GBH’.

Another staple requisite for the likes of Love It! is the weekly plastic surgery story. Entitled ‘I hated my ugly hooter’ or ‘Bullied for my spaniel ear boobs’, this will explain to the hapless reader that a restructured bodypart can buy you eternal happiness. It also reminds you that anything smaller than a D cup will ruin your life (Oh no, better go hang myself on my A cup bra right now! I can’t possibly go on like this!). To reinforce the point, ‘before and after’ shots are provided. Before: blurred picture, bad hair, misery all around. After: big smile, full makeover (which tends to evolve around blond highlights and a low cut top or bikini), lens no longer blurry lens. Flat chested BAD. Big tits GOOD.

The cunning editor also manages to consiostently feature the amazing weightloss story right next to the one entitled ‘My Bulimia Hell’. What now? Am I meant to loose weight or gain weight?

Particularly annoying is the ‘You’ve Got Male’ section. Where do they find these people? Building sites? The job centre? They’re always topless and look like they’re likely to reappear in next week’s issue as an axemurderer. If I see another bronzed sixpack on some semi naked fireman I am going to puke.

Thumbs up for the Reader’s Tips page though (‘Carly’s Top Tips’!) though. Did you know there was ten useful things to do with the little net bags washing tablets come in? And that you can satisfy your neatfreak cravings by sticking clingfilm on the bathroom wall above the sink so you can just peel any toothpaste stains off the wall without actually having to scrub it? Did you know that your goldfish just loves frozen peas and that you can make a perfect gardening kneeling pad out of ‘an old showercurtain’? I don’t know about you, but how many old showercurtains do you have knocking around at any given time?

I can’t wait for next weeks issue. ‘I love my fake 32G boobs!’!! ‘I stole my best friend’s wrinkly dad!’!! and the much awaited ‘Cheryl Exclusive’!!

Hooked

I have come to the gruesome realization I am addicted to doing things I should not. Nothing major, but things like smoking in my flat when the contract clearly states I am not allowed to. Picking my nose on the tube a little bit when nobody is looking. That sort of thing. Now I’m planning to give up smoking but have every intention of getting a little furry pet, despite the fact my contract states ‘no pets’! And since I am considering of getting rats (would love a cat but I don’t want to be keeping a cat indoors and if I let it out, people in my block would know!) eg every landlord’s worst nightmare.

If the letting agency have to come round in an emergency, I’d be screwed. They won’t do that very often, but shit happens. Mind you, I am an experienced keeper of pets who won’t tell her parents about them. A friend once said ‘You never lie, apart from pet-related lies’. And he had a point there. I don’t lie to people and I do mean what I say, even when I’m saying stupid or inappropriate things, I am usually brutally honest.

So what is it with the excitement of doing stuff I’m not supposed to do. Why did I take the plug for the bath tub with me when I moved out? (ok, guess I wanted to annoy my old flatmate). Why did I badly paint the hallway of my old flat in the vain hope nobody would see the great big bike tyre marks?

Weirdly, despite the fact I am very strong willed, I do seem to have a very addictive personality. I obsess over stuff. I smoke. Thank God I never took up drugs and am a lightweight drinker. Instead I obsess over little things, like how coffee should be, what chocolate is good, strange bags and morning routines. And if anything or anyone disturbs my routine, my day shall be ruined from then on. At least until lunchtime. Probably not quite OCD, but somewhere on that scale.

Bye Hun

Three temps left the Office today. It’s an epidemic. And I don’t blame them. Would you want to work for six-odd quid an hour if you had something better lined up? Neither would I.

#1

Celebrated her 22nd birthday in the Office by crying because she missed her mum. Her mum was back in South Africa. I got her a miniature pack of crayons for her birthday, she was very impressed. Once I swapped her over to someone else’s team (she was petrified of nasty phonecalls, which doesn’t help when you’re supposed to be manning the enquiries line of a large-ish Government body), she was eternally grateful. I also equipped her with Monster. Monster came in a Happy Meal and cheered her up no end. One we put her in charge of filing, the stationery order and away from horrible callers, she was having a lovely time at work. In fact, everything was ‘lovely’. Every phonecall ended with ‘lovely’ (apart from the nasty ones, those ended in tears).

Anyhoo. Today was her last day. I went over to say goodbye. Next thing I know she had burst into tears and is crying on me. I think this was her first job ever. She said she would miss everyone (I doubt that! She is off to work on a cruiseship in the Mediterranean sun, why would you miss rainy London?). I nearly cried myself. Just out of solidarity.

#2

Was with us for a couple of months, but didn’t get a permanent position so her temping agency found her another job. That pays better. Apart from constant singing/sighing, she also delighted with a bewildering array of Darth Vader breathing noses (once her cold had cleared up this stopped) and some very strong opinions on God. She tried to convince everyone to visit her church. Hm. No thanks. We bought a cake for her today. The idea was for her to share it with the rest of the team. We even gave her a little knife with the cake. Somehow, she missed the point, thanked us profusely and proceeded to stuff the whole cake box and the knife into her bag. How awkward. For a split second I toyed with the idea of mentioning to her that she was supposed to share the cake with us. Then I thought of the major embarrassment this would cause, so the cake stayed in her handbag. I hope she is enjoying it as we speak.

#3

A very sudden demise. It is Friday afternoon and she announces via email that she won’t be back on Monday. The email was worryingly entitled ‘News Flash – This Social Butterfly Is Leaving’. Is being a ‘social butterfly’ something to boast about, when you turn up at work in miniskirts and fuck-me-boots on a regular basis? The social butterfly also indulged in overzealous greeting procedures (normal work greetings are somewhere between a friendly grunt and ‘morning!’). HEY HUN! HOW ARE YOU, BABES?. First thing Monday morning, that is a lot to take in. And Hun always makes me think of Attila. Today someone suggested I should have hired an actual Attila The Hun outfit and greeted her back with ‘yes, that’s right’, before offering to make a cup of tea. Worse still, she also called everyone ‘HEY BEAUTIFUL!’. I wasn’t beautiful last time I checked and adding ‘hey’ won’t change that fact either, I’m afraid. And don’t get me started on ‘TA BABES!’. I have left the baby stage about 28 years ago. I am not a baby. Let alone a ‘babe’. Like in ‘A Pig Named Babe’, maybe but in a screeching, belching, stinking and gargling newborn sense of the word. I think not. A rather nasty person suggested drawing a butterfly being squashed with a large hammer on her leaving card. But that would be just plain nasty. So nobody did.

Of course they all promised to stay in touch. Yeah right, as if. I’ve only ever stayed in touch with people from work if I actually liked them. Which is why I sometimes go for lunch with a girl I temped with years ago. That’s because she is good fun and I have a lot of respect for her. I would never stay in touch with work people for the sheer sake of it. I don’t even want them on my Facebook if I don’t actually like them on a social level.

And if I have to ever see another ‘Forever Friends’ greeting card, I am going to kill somebody.

Even more on estate agents ....

Dear Mr and Mrs Estate Agent,

(… or shall I say ‘Dear Mr and Mrs I. Diot’?)

THANK YOU!

Thank you for taking a massive holding deposit off me on the proviso that I would indeed be allowed to kill myself in the privacy of my own home via cigarette smoke. Thank you for assuring me of this fact in your letter I received last week. I do appreciate the fact you assured me this was not going to be a problem, when I asked you about this three times. Thank you for offering to remove the non-smoking clause from your lovely prefab tenancy agreement.

And thank you for then turning round, a week before I’m meant to move in, and announcing that you’re now not so sure about that part of the contract. Gosh, aren’t you ACE? Thank you for reminding me I am a filthy nicotine junkie and crazed addictive personality. And thanks for putting my holding deposit at stake here. Gee, I do love you for this.

THANK YOU!

Thank you for sending me a long letter about checking out of my old flat. Thanks for reminding me I should really splash out on having the carpets professionally steamcleaned. Despite the fact they were not freshly steamcleaned when I moved in (you helpfully stated on the inventory they were cleaned six months before I even set foot in the place) and despite the fact your amazing contract merely states that I have to pay for them to be cleaned if they are ‘soiled’, whilst at the same time assuring me that ‘reasonable wear and tear’ is not a problem. And thanks for recommending a whole host of cleaning products to me (we recommend that you use products such as Hob Brite for cleaning ceramics and Shiny Sinks for stainless steel sinks). What would I do without you? I’d be polishing off the windows with toothpaste. And thanks for reminding me that you will retain £250+ of my deposit if I don’t have the carpets steamcleaned. You even provide me with the mobile number of your nephew, who happens to be in the carpet steam cleaning trade.

THANK YOU!

And thank you for patronising me over the last year and a half. Thanks to you I know the dangers of suspect leeks in my bathroom. I also know to be alert at all times, because your staff just love to pay a surprise visit. It’s nice to nip downstairs to make some tea to find one of you is already in my kitchen. He even helpfully asked me what I was doing there. Thanks for reminding me that I do still live here. And thanks for your lovely follow-up email to this unannounced viewing exercise. Gee, I had no idea one can utilise a Hoover for anything other than pest control. And a big thank you for losing my original contract and then asking me to hand over my own original copy to you. That’s way better than having to lug four pages of A4 paper to the recycling bin. It really has helped me a lot.

It makes me very sad that our fantastic partnership won’t last for much longer, because, unfortunately, I will have to gauge out your eyeballs with a wooden spoon now. Terribly sorry, but the voices in my head make me do strange things sometimes.

The Last of the Secret Agents

Good morning, I’m ringing about this flat in Whetstone you’ve got advertised ….

No, we’re updating our web site!

Okay. Er, the one for £155 a week.

I SAID, we’re UPDATING OUR WEBSITE! What are you looking for?

A flat. In N12 or N20. Like the one you have advertised.

Are you not listening? We’re updating our web site!

Does that mean you haven’t got that one any more?

No, now are you going to tell me what you’re looking for or not?

A flat in N12 or N20, LIKE the one you no longer have!

Only one I got is £230 a week!

I have had many conversations like this one in the past couple of weeks. Estate agents are complete cunts. I knew that already. But I didn’t realise they got worse. Now they’re advertising flats as Unfurnished and then refuse to take out the manky old sofa bed, table and chairs and horrible pine cupboard that’s already in there. Their ages seem to average out at 19. Like the one whose phone went off with some gangster rap ringtone during the viewing of a ‘lovely, cosy, good size studio’ (6ft by 6ft). It’s the missus. She hates that ringtone..I am not surprised. It sucks!. This is after he spent ten minutes trying to open the door to the flat and I had to help him prop the door up in the end. That little shit probably earns twice as much as I do. And he has a nice car and a little polyester suit.

These people enjoy nothing better than laughing in your face when you inform them of your budget. A studio is now the price a two-bedroom flat was a year and a half ago. I shit you not. Presumably landlords are freaking out over the supposed property price crash and rising interest rates and have decided to take this out on those who can’t afford to actually buy anything. Nice one. But don’t you laugh in my fucking face when I am offering you my business. And for God’s sake, stop patronising me like I’m some kind of imbecile. And don’t call me on my mobile three times in a row going ‘Ah, hello? Is that Mrs Vergho?’. Firstly, you spoke to me five minutes ago on the same number. Secondly, this is a mobile phone. They’re likely to be answered by their owners and thirdly, what gave you the right to assume I was married?

And don’t say you can do a viewing at 6pm and then go on and on about how inconvenient this is for you and how you have so many better things to do. Either you can do this time or you cannot. You said you could, so stop fucking guilt-tripping me. You’re an estate agent. You need people like me.

And don’t get me started on your trick photography of studio flats. You appear to be using a self-timing camera that’s sunk in a hole in the wall, facing some kind of mirror. How else could you give the impression a 6ft by 6ft hell hole was ‘large’?

And why instruct five different agencies to find you a tenant? The same two flats have appeared on the usual property web sites up to 10 times. This is very frustrating. I have seen both of them already. One was the 6ft by 6ft joke, the other wasn’t all that nice either. I used to live in the same house, I know these flats well. Could someone take them off these web sites, please? It’s confusing me.

So thanks to you and your inflated prices, I am currently thinking about taking on a flat I can barely afford. And it’s not even in the location I had in mind. I’ll be spending nearly half my wages on rent. How can a fucking studio be 700 quid a month plus bills AND be in Band C for council tax?

Your arrogant demeanour has had me in tears of frustration, I have lost sleep over bastards like you. You make me feel very small and like I am at your mercy. I don’t understand. I have a good job (for fuck’s sake, I’m a civil servant, I should be every letting agent’s dream!), my wages are okay (or so I thought!) and I’m trying to give you money. Why do you hate me so much?

The USA @ The Industry, Shoreditch 27 March 08

First things first, The Industry is a shit venue. The Upstairs is full of irritating yuppiesque architect types, drinks are expensive and Plum Promotions have their sticky little fingers deeply in the pie. It seemed that tonight wasn’t promoted at all. The USA came over all the way from the Netherlands to support another band. Said other band pulled out. As a result, there was about five people in the audience. What a crying shame! What a CRYING SHAME!

I hadn’t heard of The USA before and came along because my friend's band will be going on tour with them soon. First impression: wow, there’s a toy robot onstage. And some nicely naff looking keyboards. Unsurprisingly, they were really rather good! Aforementioned keyboards were put to fun use, the robot (I have since found out he is known as Emilio The Friendly Robot) was clutching a comic and his eyes flashed every now and then. I think he even said ‘Thank You’ once. Hooray! Every band should get one!

I have since looked The USA up on Myspace and learned that they’re brother and sister plus a girl from another band (The Cuties, if I remember correctly) who joined them to play drums for the tour (and a girl drummer is always good to have). They used to be in a band called John Wayne Shot Me (possibly the best band name I have heard in ages!).

http://www.myspace.com/wearetheusa

Nine Years!!

Yesterday it has been nine years since I moved to London. Nine years since I boarded that plane to move into a room above a Hoover shop in Acton with my friend. Said friend left again after six weeks. I was pretty much on my own. Quite scary when you think about it. From a village with 600 people, a bakery, two restaurants and a bank straight into the big smoke. But, I’m tougher than I look and managed to make some friends, found a flatshare and a job. The only thing that was a bit iffy was going to gigs on my own. But I soon realized it was always the same people at these gigs, so I got talking to them. I also dragged Tom along, whom I had bonded with over Chicks on the Bis message board. Bless. Then I met Andy, because we were both trying to peddle our fanzines at a Brassy gig.

Has London been good to me? Overall, I suppose it has. If you discount the crime rate (there is no crime where I come from. Seriously, my parents habitually leave both the car and the front door unlocked overnight), the extortionate rents and the fact everywhere takes about an hour to travel to. I only meant to stay for six months. My friend Connie drove me to the airport. She had made me a mixtape (note: Connie was into completely different music, on the tape I found Run DMC, Roxette and a few other supposed gems) and was holding back the tears (Connie doesn’t do crying in public). So was I, because deep down I knew that this wasn’t just for six months and that my life would never be the same again, that I would only see my friends back home sporadically at Christmas and that people would move on. I felt quite bad for leaving Connie behind. We’d been friends for years and years and she didn’t really have many other friends. Which is why she lived on my sofa for quite some time, after her parents turfed her out for being gay. And now I was just going to leave her there.

In those nine years I have learned quite a lot about the world. And me. I learned that I hate baked beans, that flats never have their actual size advertised, that estate agents are evil liars, that the market research crowd is not for me, that terrorism appears to exist, that I can hold down a job and that ‘see you soon’ does not necessarily mean you will see these people again in a hurry. And I learned how to speak English. When I arrived in London, my English was based around what I had learned at school and on MTV. This wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I realised that having an obvious German accent locks a lot of doors, people make assumptions and, let’s face it, Germans are not the most popular of tribes. It is all a bit schizophrenic though, because at the end of the day I am from that village. I tell people I am from Munich. But in fact I am from this village that’s 15 minutes drives from this town that is another hour’s drive away from Munich. I’m not really from Munich at all.

When I go home at Christmas, I realise it’s not quite home any more. I have spent all of my adult life in London and the experience has been more useful than all of the time I spent at school combined. Because school is useless and doesn’t teach you anything useful. All it taught me is a healthy hatred of authority.

I have moved house more times than I care to remember. I have had my heart broken 1.5 times (and nearly broken another 1.5 times). The first and last time I actually pulled at a gig was in London (a mindboggling experience at a Gel gig at the Astoria). And I acquired a horse in London. Who would have thought it? I have met lots of other Germans but soon realised that the only thing I had in common with most of them was a shared country of origin. Not very useful.

I have lived with flatmates from hell. Like the Spanish guy who left his yellowing Y-fronts out to dry all over the flat. Or the quiet Japanese guy who made me tell people trying to visit him he wasn’t in and later informed me they were just ‘fuck friends’ and he had no desire to see them again and could I please tell them to go away?

Then there was uni. Where I made all of two friends. One is now back in Finland, the other I am no longer on speaking terms with.

Worryingly, I don’t think I have grown up much at all over the past nine years. I still have the same posters in my room, sleep in the same dubious duvet covers (I suppose when you’re 28, a Thundercats duvet may not be such a great idea, ahem), still collect He-Man toys and obsess over music. I think the only thing that has changed is that I am now more wary of people. People sometimes say one thing and mean another. It took me years to work that one out, and I still don’t understand the logic behind this. Why don’t people just say what they want to say? Or people who say they will do something and then they don’t? Why bother? This has happened so many times now that every time I encounter new people I view them with a healthy amount of suspicion. I wasn’t like that nine years ago and merrily took everything and everyone at face value. Only to find myself disappointed with the world time and time again. I suppose this could be misconstrued as having turned bitter and cynical. Hm. No, I think I’ve always been cynical.

But, on the whole, I still like it in London. It’s way better than back home and well worth the sacrifices.

Blur!

Today I had the urge to listen to Blur. Only to discover I had already stashed all my Blur CDs at the bottom of boxes I packed last weekend. Had to download them instead.

I LOVED Blur ever since I first saw them on MTV. I was 15 and still a bit confused about what music I actually liked. I had dabbled in Arrested Development (who nobody will remember, they were like an eco-friendly hiphop collective), Bjork and Jamiroquai. Bjork is okay, but Jamiroquai? Whoops. Then there was the ghastly rave stuff most of my friends were into at the time (and I had already been forced to attend a couple of raves. I was way too young to do so, one time there was a police raid and we had to escape through a toilet window. I am not fond of raves.).

I went out and bought Parklife. I listened to it incessantly. I must have spent two month not listening to anything else. Annoyingly, I could not buy the other albums anywhere. Not even the import section of World of Music in Munich had them. I found Modern Life Is Rubbish on an exchange trip to France eventually and mailordered everything else I could find.

Then, rather excitingly, I found out Blur were playing in Munich! In a small venue (couple of hundred capacity) called Tilt! I made my friend tag along (who was into New Model Army, Deep Purple and the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the time …). Off we trundled to the ticket shop to buy out beautiful Blur tickets. None of this Ticketmaster printout crap. Those were real, shiny tickets with the album cover printed on them. I still have that ticket in a scrap book somewhere.

We got the train to Munich way too early. Then we couldn’t find the venue for ages. Then we arrived there at 4pm. As in waaay to early (this was NOT an underage show … but then, this is Munich, people didn’t really check how old you were). Only to find people were already having some kind of picnic outside the venue. Turns out some of them were from our hometown, and the other two were from a village next to the village I am from. Lasting friendships started on this very day. One of them I moved to London with years later. She then moved back home because she ran out of money. We have since fallen out I think. Although she is now back in London and I bumped into her at Camden Sainsburys a few years back. She is going out with the guy from the Sneaker Pimps that noone has ever heard of (possibly a session musician!) and we never met up again.

Anyhow, back to the gig (Echobelly were supporting, by the way!). I had a Blur T-shirt on which I acquired on a trip to London I did with my parents a couple of weeks before. My T-shirt had UK tourdates on it! How cool was I (ok, not very actually … the thing was X-large!)? The doors opened, one of my new friends decided she had to RUN to the front and went smashing into a pillar. Very amusing it was, too.

The venue was small, there were no barriers or anything like that! I ended up in the second row. It was absolute mayhem. Damon Albarn was wearing a green-blue stripey T-shirt (as could later be seen in one of those life-size posters from Smash Hits. The sort that came in 4 pieces you had to collect and glue together). People were jumping up and down, people tried to grab Damon Albarn’s leg (and succeeded for a while. Then a bit of his trousers ripped off and the people let go), there was screaming, someone passed out and I was so, so happy. This was brilliant. Even though this was … god … shit … in 1994 I think (Jesus Christ that’s 14 years ago!!) … definitely one of the most memorable gigs I’ve ever been to (and I have been to quite a lot since then). I can still smell that gig when I think of it. And I got half a setlist. I meant to get the whole one. But as I was picking it up, some stupid girl, who was a lot louder than me, a lot bigger than me and a lot stronger than me tried to snatch it from my hand and ripped it in half.

This gig was the beginning of the beginning. Suddenly I had friends that liked the same music as me. We went to the international press in the train station together to buy the Melody Maker and the NME. Q and Select we erm took for free because we hid those inside the Melody Maker.

Then, a penfriend of mine (who wasn’t into music at all) somehow telephoned a radio station (I think it was a programme about people looking for likeminded friends?) and announced that her pen friend (ie me) would like to meet more people who liked Blur (WTF?).

I then received a letter (at this point I had no idea about this radio program or that my name had been bandied around!) from a guy from a town near Munich. This guy then turned into the best friend I’ve ever had (I know this sounds slightly OTT but he really was). After I moved to London, he visited a couple of times, but we had silly arguments and we rarely hear from each other now. Sometimes I really miss him a lot.

We did all sorts of bizarre things. He had a car, so we’d go to gigs together and he dropped me off home afterwards (this involved a two hour detour for him). We even ended up following Blur’s tourbus once (shameful, I know. It was all perfectly innocent though. We just really wanted to meet them) and ended up drinking Bacardi and Coke with Graham Coxon in a hotel bar (for the record, Graham Coxon is a lovely man! Alex James is an arrogant shit. Damon Albarn is a lot taller than you’d think and Dave Rowntree is so averagely normal it’s almost painful!).

Oh I nearly forgot my trip to Colchester now! Me, my friend from my village and my friend from town went on a holiday to Colchester. Most of Blur are from Colchester. We spent ages trying to find the house Graham Coxon grew up in. We even found it in the end. Along with his primary school. Once we were there, we weren’t sure what we were meant to do. So we took a photo and left very quickly. Embarrassingly, we did show those photos to Graham Coxon at a gig soon after. He looked worried. I don’t blame him.

This all seems to crazy when I think about it now. All these gigs where we’d turn up at the (very small) venue at 5pm, hoping to meet bands (again, I repeat, this was all very innocent as far as I was concerned. I just wanted to meet them. My friend, on the other hand, managed to shag one of the Bluetones and Placebo’s something or other technician. I was quite pissed off with her, because I genuinely was only there because I liked the music and I thought it was really stupid of her. I love music but have little time for groupies. I find them tedious and annoying. Most of them don’t even buy the records. Losers.). I have a whole selection of photos of bands outside that same little venue in Munich. And it all started with this one Blur gig.

Somehow, I lost interest in Blur after Think Tank came out. I didn’t even buy it, because I wasn’t keen on the direction they were heading into. I like fun pop songs. I don’t like semi-experimental weird stuff that much.

I still have a soft spot for Blur, but it all seems like another world now. I have moved away, lost touch with most of the people I was hanging around with, that venue in Munich has long closed down, I never got to see Blur in a small venue again. The other gigs were quite big, there were barriers and stuff … I don’t like big gigs as much. I still have my scrap book though, with tickets and that ripped set list in it. And the signed pictures. Sometimes I look at it and wish I was still 16.

Thoughts I had today

Shampoo!

A friend helpfully provided me with a link to ALL Shampoo songs recorded (or so he said). Fantastic! I downloaded the lot, even the ones I already had. The live ones are (as would be expected) a little, er, ropey (ok, they’re ropey as fuck! I don’t think Shampoo ever claimed they could actually sing!). Still, hooray! Feeling a bit nostalgic now. I had a T-shirt that said POW! On it, too! And me and my best friend at uni bonded over Shampoo in the canteen queue (along with her home made Kenickie T-shirt!). Said friend disappeared into thin air years ago. We had lived together, which led to disaster, because I got a bit fed up with her alcoholic girlfriend who was around all the time. The 4am ambulance calls because said girlfriend had drunkenly slipped in the shower weren’t that fun either. Neither was the puke all over the bathroom … carpet!

Listening to Shampoo reminds me of that friend. Particularly when we got bored on a Saturday night, drank Absinthe, played Cluedo and howled and danced along to Shampoo. And Catch. And Kenickie. I miss those times. I guess I’m too old for that sort of thing now. Or my friends are. Maybe everyone is. I don’t know. Still, I miss doing random things. I can’t remember the last time when I did something really random and silly.

Work

Had the big annual feedback performance report meeting at work today. Part of this is getting written feedback from my team, peers and random people across the office. I was a bit worried about that, because I’m a notorious worrier who thinks everyone hates me. To my surprise, the feedback gave a very strange view of what I am like. Or rather, what people at work think I am like.

Approachable

This is odd. Because people who know me from outside work and have nothing to do with work (ie my friends) seem to think the opposite. I’m generally quite rubbish at meeting new people (especially in group situations) and my pathological shyness gives me an annoying aloof (sometimes arrogant, I am informed) air. But I seem to be good at hiding this at work, it’s almost like some kind of bizarre game.

Caring

My team claims I care about them. Bless. A few Good Mornings seem to go a long way. Mind you, I did not have myself down as ‘caring’. I’ve been let down so many times at work, in life and so on, that I am fucking careful as to who I care about. And it takes me quite a bit of time to be like that with newly acquired friends, because I need to assure myself I’m not wasting my time first. But then, I do think I’m very loyal to my friends (not to be confused with acquaintances), even the ones that screw up. Heck I even have some sort of loyalty to various ex-boyfriend who were less than nice to me, because I think that, some time ago, I really did care about them. I may not care as much now, but still.

Knowledgeable

This one scared me. People think I am some sort of font of all knowledge at work. All it is that I have an excellent people memory. I could probably still list all the people I went to primary school with, their first names, their last names, where they lived and what their parents did for a living. I never forget a face either. And I figured out which bits are important to remember at work. That does not mean I am interested in economics (quite the contrary!) or consumer credit. I can reel off bits of consumer law, but most of it means nothing to me at all. It’s like I am watching myself in a strange movie called Work.

Friendly

Similar thing to ‘approachable’ I suppose. Why wouldn’t I be friendly? I’m at WORK, for goodness sake. Nobody really wants to be there, but why make my work life difficult by being an arse? I have blown my top at work on several occasions (like when I yelled at my then-manager and told him that ‘I had the right to be FUCKING ANGRY if I chose to be!!!’ and ‘If that bastard is still here tomorrow, I’ll FUCKING WALK!’). People don’t seem to remember that. Good. Most of my work-related fury I save for friends, anyway. Or I sit down somewhere quite where nobody can see me, stick my walkman on really loudly, chainsmoke, kick some dustbins and return to my desk as if nothing happened.

Copes brilliantly under pressure

Again, a mere pretence. I do not cope well under pressure. Only that nobody at work knows this. Because I pretend to be perfectly fine at work. The fact I seem to have developed insomnia and find it increasingly hard to switch off outside work is something they’ll never find out. Neither will they ever find out that I actually chucked up in the loo after my last job interview, because I was so fucking nervous. Some things are better left unsaid.

My mum!

My mum sent me the annual Easter parcel. It’s stuffed with chocolate. And hay. The latter is to keep it authentic and make me feel like I’ve just been to an Easter Egg Hunt in the countryside. I wasn’t. I picked it up at the local post office. Sometimes I worry that my mum still thinks I’m eight years old. I am 28. But still, I like my Easter parcels’ contents. Sometimes I think I should see my parents more often. I go home once a year for Christmas. They visit about once a year. I know they miss me. That’s why I get a lot of postcards and newspaper clippings (look, Julia! The local paper has something about Damon Albarn in it!) sent by my dad. His postcards are works of art. He likes to cut’n’paste weird stuff onto paper. I guess me and him have a lot in common there. Much as I love my dad to pieces, I am not sure I want to be exactly like him. I’m the spitting image of him visually as it is, and we have a lot of character traits in common already, and I’m discovering more of those as the years go by. My dad always knows exactly what is going on in this fucked up little brain of mine. Which is a bit disturbing at times, because it is meant to be MY brain.