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).