vin_petrol | Simple Weekend Update (Reply)

Friday night out drinking and talking with

everild and Trash (WINOLJ). We went to Oscars, which was very mellow. Due to lack of any smokers in the group we sat in a very pleasant non-smoking area.

Saturday morning I tried to fix my pedal cycle. For various long and tedious reasons, it had ended up chained up outside The Barbican centre on Tuesday night. Some scrote had tried to steal it by levering the padlock off. However, the padlock was extremely heavy duty and had laughed at their pathetic attempts to break it. Unfortunately, they chose to lever against the front gears, which got a bit bent out of shape. I bent them back, but discovered one of the front sprockets was a bit bent too :-( I had heard there was a bike repair place in the village, so I set off in search of that. Found it in the form of a lovely "little old man in a shed" type place. He said all sorts of disparaging things about the condition of my chain and sprockets ("they're all completely knackered") so he's fixing all that for me...

Saturday afternoon a long-term friend of Trash's from Birmingham (Jane) arrived with husband (John) and two year old daughter (Lydia). Scary Brummie accents echoed around the house. We took Lydia out to the Knavesmire, where she could run around as much as she wanted to chasing birds. I hid in a tree with her and we played "sticks" for a while - a simple game, which just seemed to involve finding sticks for her to pick up, carry around, and throw away.

Watched England vs Macedonia. Tried to get annoyed at farcical aspects of England performance, but as a Boro supporter found it all too familiar, and felt familiar feeling of doom and gloom overtaking me.

Cooked gorgeous roast beef for dinner on Saturday evening. Recipe pinched from that bootleg "Naked Chef 2" Word file doing the rounds on the Internet. The roast potato recipe that goes with it (roast them in olive oil with rosemary, garlic, salt and black pepper) was very nice too. Served Brummies Yorkshire Pudding as starter, as that's how Trash always had it when she was a sprog. We seem to have loads of roast beef left over - I'm eating it in sandwiches now. Fortunately, roast beef never goes to waste when Razzle the cat is around ("come not between Razzle and his beef, as his claws are sharp when beef is available"). Drank too much red wine (which is more than two glasses for "non drinking" people like me). Fell asleep and tried to call it "performance art", but no one believed me.

Sunday morning Lydia woke us up early (hmmmm, common thread for children staying with us there). We took her down to the University to feed the ducks, which she enjoyed greatly. Wandered around the campus admiring the new buildings. Whilst her parents packed to go I ended up watching The Fimbles with her, which sent me into some form of trance-like state...

With my sleep levels low, and a night out in Leeds beckoning, I decided to "stack some zeds", and spent the afternoon in bed. This worked a treat: I got about three hours sleep and even after a late night last night I'm feeling fine at work today.

So Sunday night was Psychophile and Screaming Banshee Aircrew. Traveled over with

gothgrr,

smorgasbord and

steer. I went to

gothgrr's first, and delivered some roast beef to Bryn, who vaguely liked it (but not to Razzle cat levels of love).

Got to Leeds just in time to see Psychophile. I like them, but as is well established I have a weakness for *cough* curvy goth women. Especially ones in tight PVC who ... er ... dance around in an attractive manner. Anyway, I quite like the music too. :-) I had already bought their CD at April Whitby when Lucy threatened to throw me through a window if I didn't... An interesting sales technique but it worked. Later, I had to kiss "The Mog".

mistressmalaise appeared in her fantastic corset. Also chatted to Howard from Bradford for a bit.

Screaming Banshee Aircrew were as fun as ever.

ant_girl looked tiny compared to the big bass she was playing.

mister_ed was off wandering around the crowd at every opportunity. A fantastic, unfeasible cover of NMA's 51st State. I seem to have bought a t-shirt off

ant_girl at some point - with no threats of being thrown through windows involved, either :-)

After

steer left a large, hairy, bearded sailor appeared. This sailor had a huge anchor tattoo on his arm. He was asking after

steer and seemed disappointed when he found out he had already left.

smorgasbord and I tortured

gothgrr all the way back by speaking like pirates ("arrrr! The A19 turnoff be a'comin' up to port now").

A great night out, but it did remind me that I do enjoy 'intimate' gigs like this a lot more than huge gigs in a field. Dunno what I'll do when SBA are playing Glastonbury... :-)