Scally's, Weston-super-mare

At last! Another bloody gig!
We missed the last two because of medical malpractise so it seems like months... oh, er, it is months apparently.
Good to be back in this friendly bikers pub on Saturday - it's always been one of my favourite gigs, not least because I get a lift there & back and thus get to make a thorough pig of myself on the Guinness!
Nothing seems to have changed since last I played here 3 years ago - a nice big stage, and loads of jolly bikers who amiably refuse to fill that big ol' gap in front of it until the last couple of numbers...
My only problem with the night was my hearing - I'm now more or less completely deaf in my right ear, due to an unseemly accumulation of wax. This was caused, I'm sure, by a night a few months back when I went to a Granary reunion (http://www.thegranaryclub.co.uk/) at which I spent the entire night leaning on the bar with an old mate screaming into each other's ears to be heard; is it me, or is music louder than it used to be? I guess I really am getting old...
Anyway, I spent most of this gig with my good ear glued to my speaker, trying to minimise the appalling number of bum notes coming out of it - it's no good, I'm going to have to get 'em syringed...

Nice one, Charles!

The horror, the horror...

What are the worst dangers that threaten our children today? Satanism? Drugs? Homosexuality? A culture of violence? Heat exhaustion? What if there was a danger that included all of these? That danger is here, and it’s name is GOTH!

http://redmusic.com/goths/index.html

Now here's a good idea!

The nightmare scenario: You're in a strange town, the gear's all set up & soundchecked and there's a couple of hours to kill.
What do you do? Obviously, you need a pub, but the one you're about to play in is a toilet where mein host last cleaned the pipes in 1977 - anyway, if you stick around at the bar he'll inevitably regale you with the standard landlord line of "You should have seen it in here last week, we had a fantastic band on, marvellous they were..."
Step forward the Good Pub Guide! Just text goodpub to 60300, and they'll send you the location of the nearest decent boozer - genius.
http://www.goodguides.co.uk/gpubmobile.asp

Endorse it in Dorset

This looks like a good 'un - cheers to Steve for pointing it out - Here & Now are playing it, which is reason alone to go, though saying that I probably won't make it for one reason or another...
Ahh, Here & Now... happy memories of a free gig in Meanwhile Park in London, Stonehenge in the early eighties and many, many others... I wouldn't say they were very clear memories, mind you!
http://www.lgofestivals.com/

One small step...

After 41 years of managing to stay relatively intact, I've contrived to break my ankle...
When asked how it happened (in an A&E corridor filled with huge men with horrific rugby injuries and burly bikers holding their severed limbs between their teeth) I was going to pretend that it was a 'Parkour' injury, which occurred as I dismounted from a garage roof with a particularly tricky triple back somersault, as part of my mission to explore the urban environment in new & exciting ways... but in the end I had to mumble shamefacedly that, er, I jumped off the climbing frame in the playground...
In my defence, I was trying to stop Rory from falling off, but in the event he just blinked with surprise before toddling back down the ramp to the ground.
Now for 5 weeks of hobbling about on crutches.
Great.
Still, on the plus side, there'll be half the amount of socks to wash...

We're all gonna die!

Maybe it's just as well we had to cancel the last two gigs through illness - apparently God hates rockstars, and they all die young (phew! Too late for that!)

http://www.av1611.org/rockdead.html

Me, I'm holding out for that good ol' bizarre gardening accident, & Chris is a shoe-in for one I'd imagine - he's the only man I know who's had a ride-on lawnmower explode under him & lived to tell the tale...