Saturday 31st May

Bread and Shoelaces

Think of all the animals you've ever heard about - rhinoceroses, tigers, cats and mink. There are lots of funny animals in all the word, but have you ever seen a panther that is pink? Think. A panther that is positively pink? No, me neither, but that's probably because there's not really any such animal as a panther - the name is used to described any one of a number of big cats, depending on which part of the world you're in. All of which, fact fans, signifies absolutely nothing but does serve as an introduction to this belated update.

The more observant of you can't have failed to notice that there was a by-election in the Crewe and Nantwich constituency last week. Actually, I suppose you can if you don't live in the UK. Anyway, this has affected me because I live within the constituency and have, therefore, some vested interest. Unfortunately this vested interest saw me (and everyone else) being subject to a daily barrage of promotional material through the letterbox and regular telephone canvassing. I managed to avoid the door-steppers mostly, thanks to work, but did have a Lib-Dem guy catch me on a rare day off. Luckily , I still hadn't got dressed, so he was reluctant to stand around chatting to a man wearing pyjamas in the middle of the afternoon. Thanks to work (again), I also only saw two of the candidates in the flesh - Tamsin Dunwoody one morning outside Crewe station (when I was still half-asleep and didn't realise it was her until I got halfway down the stairs to the platform) and The Flying Brick (Official Monster Raving Loony) twice on polling day as he was driving around. I did see David Cameron at Crewe station one evening - he on his way home and I on mine - and what was interesting about that was that he was on his own. He didn't have an entourage of fawning Tory party luvvies or a phalanx of bodyguards. I should have taken my chance and chinned him... Ah, maybe not; last time I got in a fight, I lost fairly comprehensively.

Pretty much like Tamsin Dunwoody, in fact, who saw the 7,000 plus majority won by her mother converted to an 8,000 plus majority for the Conservative candidate, Edward Timpson. No great surprise, of course, as the Government shot itself in the foot over the abolition of the 10p tax rate, made a balls-up of extracting themselves from that mess and were also taking a beating over fuel prices and the slowdown in the economy. Without actually having to outline how they'd stop the price of oil from going up (invade the OPEC countries perhaps?) or how they'd persuade banks and building societies to keep lending people money, the Conservatives took advantage of the situation. They were aided in this by the Labour Party's inept and negative campaign, which was mostly based on the allegation that the Conservative candidate was a "toff". Accusations of hereditary privilege that were totally undermined by parachuting in Gwyneth Dunwoody's daughter as candidate, complete with her entry in Burke's Landed Gentry register. D'Oh! And the Lib-Dems successfully relegated themselves to third place by ditching their original candidate in favour of a woman with scary eyes, who paraded the most garish selection of tasteless jackets outside of Elton John's wardrobe. As if this wasn't enough, they also overwhelmed people with junk mail. So well done Teddy Timpson for being the least worst of a bad bunch.

Outside of the main parties, the voters of Crewe and Nantwich also had an interesting selection of fringe candidates. There was the aforementioned Flying Brick of the Monster Raving Loonies. They so nearly got my vote for their manifesto idea that, in order to help the Iraqi government raise the money to pay for the country's infrastructure, we should send our traffic wardens out there to book all the American tanks and Jeeps that are illegally parked there... Alongside him, in terms of coherent policies, was the Green Party. All very nice but, never trust a hippy. Then it started going a bit pear-shaped. There was UKIP (the UK Independence party) who want to pull us out of Europe, the English Democrats, who want us to pull out of the UK, the one-issue Fuel tax protester and the local Independent who had no issues and, judging from his advert in the local paper, no clue either. Worst of all was Gemma Garrett, Miss Great Britain, who appeared to be using the by-election as part of her campaign to move from beauty pageant winner to Z-list celebrity. Heavily backed by the Daily Star and currently featured in a "lads mag" near you (Zoo was the latest one I saw.) So, after all the hype and promo stuff and with that line-up to choose from, I found myself in the polling booth with a very heavy heart - ten candidates and not one of them worth voting for. In the end I went with my political convictions, but I kind of think I'd have been better off writing 'None of the Above' on the ballot paper.

On a lighter note, my brother Mark, and his wife, Kate, came over for a visit a couple of weekends ago. So I gave my house a bit of a tidy before they arrived. well, I say bit of a tidy, but actually it was the first serious tidying since Christmas. After a couple of days struggling with the inadequate vacuum cleaner in the house, I bit the bullet and bought a Dyson. A nice, red DC07i. The difference between that and the ancient cleaner I was using was obvious and after a brief whirl round my little pad it was almost full. (Although that might say more about the regularity of my vacuum cleaning than the efficiency of the Dyson...) Anyway, I still had the stairs to do and the kitchen floor to mop when Mark and Kate arrived an hour earlier than expected. That was slightly frustrating but as we don't see each other often enough I can't really complain about getting an extra hour, can I?

We went out for dinner on Saturday night with my sister Liz and her hubby, Roger. Now, I'm not one for fancy dining (yes, I know that's surprising) so I didn't really have much clue about where to go. I tried to get a table at Oscar's but they weren't answering their phone and were locked up and closed on the evening I went round to try to book in person. (I've since discovered that they've shut down permanently.) I then tried The Residence, which looks swish but they didn't have a table available till late. So, rather than go for fish and chips and a bottle of White Lightning on a bench on the town square, as a third choice I booked us into Bistro Bon Amis, which, despsite the name actually does a range of European fare. It turned out to be first class - the food was excellent and the service was good - attentive without being intrusive. There's plenty on the menu to go at but they also had a large specials board. Unfortunately, by the time it came to order I'd forgotten what was on it and couldn't see from the table (it was round a corner) so had something off the menu. Anyway, we had a great time and the price wasn't that bad considering we'd had a bottle of champagne to start with. Not that the price really bothered me - Mark paid. Cheers, bro'! I'd definitely go again, although I need to find someone to go with.

Following our Saturday night stuffing (ooh-er!) we had a stroll round the Reaseheath College Family Fun Day on Sunday. Reaseheath College has long been established on the outskirts of Nantwich and has grown from being simply an agricultural college to an almost state-of-the-art facility with an emphasis on animal sciences. (In fact, my other sister, Crow, sent me a job ad for a Fisheries lecturer there last week - if only I'd kept my hand in, so to speak, I'd have put my CV in.) Anyway, they have an anual open day, and lay on a load of entertainment and give you the opportunity to wander round looking at the exotic animals. There's also the chance to try your hand at a few activities, although my favourite activity was standing around looking at things, to be honest, and I did a lot of that. The food concessions and the market stalls selling tat weren't cheap but most of the activities were only a quid a go. Anyway, whilst standing around I also took a lot of pictures and you can see them on my Reaseheath flickr set. I haven't includede the hilarious picture of my nephew Will sulking at the end of the day because we had to go home and he hadn't had a chance to have a go on absolutely everything. His bottom lip is sticking out almost as far as that wood carving! Apart from that little paddy though, we had an enjoyable, if slightly long day.

Apart from my hectic social life (see above) and the distraction of the electoral campaigns, one of the other reasons I haven't posted for a while has been that I've got involved in a spot of DIY. When I moved into my house, the downstairs front room curtains were hanging at an angle. The right-hand side fixture for the curtain pole had obviously fallen out at some point in the past and been bodged back in. It may have been bodged in level but by the time I moved in it was drooping about two inches lower than the left-hand side fixture. However, the repair itself seemed fairly solid and for the last two years it showed no sign of getting worse. Until about four weeks ago, when the whole fixture just dropped out of the wall late one Saturday evening, bringing down the curtains and a substantial amount of plaster. No worries, thought I, just get some plaster, fill the hole and screw the thing back in. I can even use the paint in the shed to cover the repair. Good plan, but the execution was a little flawed. The hole in the wall was fairly deep at one point, so I had to do the plaster in two stages. Then I found that all the paint in the shed had turned to plastic, so I had to go and buy some more. I bought two of the smallest tins of paint I could find (one of primer and one of paint, really) and they still cost me about eight quid! When finally everything was ready, I made the rookie mistake of not putting in a rawl plug, so the fixture just fell straight out of the wall as soon as I put any weight on it. Unfortunately it also pulled out a fair chunk of my new plastering too. Still, lesson learned, this time I filled the hole in two stages, left it a few days, painted and drilled it, inserted rawl plug and screwed in fixture. This time the thing stayed up for about two minutes. I'd now been without curtains for about two weeks and my sister was encouraging me to call the letting agents and get them to send someone to fix it. Well, as it took them six weeks to replace my guttering after that fell down, I had no confidence they'd get my curtains up any quicker. And third time's the charm, of course. So, after another bout of re-plastering, painting and drilling, this time I made sure the rawl plug was snugly inserted into the wall with extra filler around it and added some industrial-strength adhesive on the fixture base to stick it to the wall. The curtains stayed up for about twenty minutes. Well, at that rate of progress, I'd get my curtains to stay up all night by about 2012, so finally, I bodged it by screwing the fixture directly into the wooden window frame. So far, so good. I just need to fill the hole in the wall now and it'll look fine. And at least I know what to do when the fixture on the other side of the window falls out. And that only took about four weeks and cost me about eighty quid for the plaster, paint, drill, tools, brushes, filler, glue and rawl plugs... Bargain.

In between the spells of plastering, painting and drilling I still managed to make time in my busy schedule to pop along to the inaugural day of the CreweLive08 festival. This is a new thing, run over the late May Bank holiday and featuring a number of bands, local and not-so-local, playing in the pubs and clubs of Crewe. Sort of like Nantwich's jazz fest but with rock and indie bands instead. It's a cracking idea and I'm surprised no one thought of doing it before. First band of the day for me was The Lockdown at The Express. Now you know I've banged on about this lot before, but seriously, they are good. They had a bit of a shaky start, but once they got past that, they really took off and won the crowd over. It was the first time in a long time I'd seen a pub band get an encore. Not bad for half past two in the afternoon! After them I hung around for the start of Kick The Cage, but they weren't my cup of tea so I moved on to catch the end of Sgt Wolfbanger's acoustic set at Square One. More on them later. Once they'd finished, it was round the corner to The Bank to see Days of Attrition, a hardcore metal band. They were very good at what they do, but the size of the Bank and the acoustics weren't conducive to staying inside to watch them - they did sound excellent from the beer garden though! Then it was back to Square One to catch Smart Girl and the Traxx. Again not really my cup of tea but there's no denying that lead singer Chloe has a fantastic voice. Wonder if she'd fancy singing on my ukulele album..? From Square One it was a gentle stagger to The Imperial to catch Flux, a band made up of stalwarts of the Crewe scene. They delivered a quality set that went down a storm with the packed pub. As the day was wearing on my money was running out, so I made a quick diversion to the cash point on my way back to the Bank to see The Sumo Kings. Clearly the name was ironic - there was no way any of those skinny indie kids could have won a sumo tournament. I reckon I could have taken them all out at one go. On the other hand, in the dojo of banging, melodic pop, they would give me a kicking. Their set also gave rise to the appearance of the grooving granny. I thought she must be related to the band, but apparently not. She also popped up in The Box, which was my last port of call for sets by Sgt Wolfbanger and The Tommys. Sgt Wolfbanger are the up-and-coming band of the moment in Crewe and you can see why - easy-on-the-ear melodies, catchy choruses and decent tunes, uncluttered by guitar-wankery. They're not earth-shatteringly original but that's no barrier to success. The Tommys are also not breaking any new ground - all girl feisty power-pop-stroke-punk-slash-rock - but are pleasing on the eye and deliver a cracking set. It's a mystery why they haven't achieved more as they seem to tick all the right boxes. Anyway, once The Tommys finished that was it the night was over. I caught the last train home and bought a curry on the way back from Nantwich station. I only managed to eat half of it, but the rest made a delicious cold lunch. I did want to get back to Crewe for the Sunday and Monday performances, but a hangover wiped me out for most of Sunday and then I had other commitments on Monday. Overall though, from what I've seen on Jules' excellent blog, it was a great success and the organisers are already planning for CreweLive09. I can't wait.

Changing subject somewhat; one of my colleagues was bemoaning the state of his car and, with an MOT due, was considering getting rid of it altogether and taking up public transport. His basic theory being that, given the cost of repair as well as running costs (fuel, tax and insurance) it would be cheaper for him to get the bus or train into work. Having never owned a car I couldn't really argue the economic case convincingly, although I did point out that it costs me about £30 a week to get to and from work, which comes to about £1500 over the course of a year, so maybe it wasn't that cheap. Plus, I have to pay to go anywhere at the weekends, for example and I have to carry my shopping home from the supermarket (apart from when my sister gives me a lift, of course) so there are advantages to having a car. Plus, if you go anywhere in a car you're not going to have to put up with random tramps who look clean but smell like they haven't washed in a year, or chavvy teenagers listening to shonky music on their mobile phones at top volume. Unless you pick them up, of course. Of course, you do also get the occasional lovely lady on the bus too, and the entertainment of seeing some other passenger suckered into the strange world of the mad, old bat. But it was on my journey home last night that I realised I'd forgotten to mention the fellow passenger who disgusts me the most - Ear Man. Ear Man gets on the bus a couple of stops after me, invariably sits somewhere within my eye line (not difficult on a bus, I know) and proceeds to pick at his ears for the entire journey. He even rolls up his ticket and uses that as a digging implement. I don't know why this really irritates me but it does. I just want to lean across the bus, slap his hand and tell him to stop, but my British sense of reserve prevents me. Last night he sat in the seat directly in front of me, but I must have been radiating bad vibes because he moved when another seat became vacant a couple of stops later. And he lulled me into a false sense of security by not starting his excavations till we were halfway through the journey. I almost screamed out loud. Arghhh! I think I ought to get on with that learning to drive thing I mentioned back in January...

And I think that'll do for now. I was going to mention the football, but after Crewe's dismal finish to the season, it's probably best to gloss over that. Although I must extend my congratulations to Nantwich Town who achieved a second successive promotion and will be playing in the Unibond Premier league next season. For those of you who want more regular updates then worry not, for the promised June Carry On marathon begins tomorrow. I shall watch all the classic Carry On films in order, one a day and upload my review-cum-opinion. I'm calling it my CarryOn-athon. I bet you can't wait.

Go on, stick your oar in:

Wednesday 30th April

Burning Questions

Just for a change, I thought I'd answer some of the questions that I've been asked over the last couple of weeks. And share my thoughts on some of the subjects discussed at work and in the pub.

Why isn't anybody going to Glastonbury?

Firstly, let me just point out that 100,000 people are already going to Glastonbury and that's plenty of people, even in a 900 acre site. Bad weather, Jay-Z and too many of "the London set" (whoever they are) have variously been quoted as reasons for the failure of Glastonbury to sell out in a day or so. And whilst some of it might be true, there has been too much made of the fact that Jay-Z is headlining. Let's face it, he's not the first hip-hop act to make the main stage, is he? And bad weather? Well, the weather hasn't been particularly good at Glastonbury on several previous occasions and that's had negligible effect on ticket sales. I think the real reason that the festival hasn't sold out as quickly as previous fests, is simply because the complicated registration process pretty much eliminates the possibility of selling on your precious Glastonbury ticket. Yes, having put up the fence to stop you getting in cheap, they've now found a way of stopping you getting in over-expensively. Simply, they've found a way of stopping the touts. So all those bleedin' students and middle-class chancers who would otherwise be flogging their tickets on e-bay in order to fund their two weeks in Faliraki or Goa, or wherever, have switched their focus to the other festivals. Indeed a quick search on e-bay for V, Reading/Leeds or Download festival tickets, shows this to be the case. Of course, there's not much of a story in a successful ticketing system stopping touting though is there?

Is Max Mosley really a closet Nazi?

He's a powerful old man with a strange sex life. And he's not the first member of the upper classes-slash-Establishment to have been caught out like this. I've only seen the edited highlights posted by the News of the World, but as it is heavily-edited and does not contain much dialogue, it's inconclusive. There's no obvious Nazi regalia on show (that I could see) and the "concentration camp prisoner outfits" worn by two of the participants look like the generic stripey prison uniforms we've been seeing in films since the Keystone Kops chased their first criminal. Mosley is, of course, son of Oswald Mosley, who was once, I believe " the most hated man in Britain" and leader of the British Union of Fascists. It does not necessarily follow, however, that he inherited his father's political beliefs. On the basis of the evidence available I'm not convinced he has. That said, he has been made to look a bit silly and if I was advising him, I'd suggest a tactful withdrawal from public life for a while, especially if he's going to take legal action.

Where are you going to be on Saturday?

This is a fairly specific one - on the forthcoming Saturday, 3rd May, both Crewe Alexandra and Nantwich Town are at home. Crewe play their final game of the season still needing a point to be mathematically certain of not being relegated. Nantwich, on the other hand are playing host to Sheffield FC in the play-off final to determine which team will be promoted to the Unibond Premier League. Having split my time fairly evenly between the two clubs over the last couple of seasons, it was a bit of a dilemma. But then, to thine own self be true and all that, and I've been following the Alex a lot closer and a lot longer than I've been watching Nantwich. So in the end there was really no dilemma. I'll be up there at Gresty Road, cheering Crewe on as usual. Anyway, my mates Ian and Lee (true Nantwich fans) will be there, so they'll be giving me text updates. I hope.

Where's that Unofficial Guide to Nantwich Town FC banter that you keep promising me?

To be honest, I keep telling you I 'm working on it, but really it amounts to nothing more than a few phrases jotted down on a notepad at home. A notepad that I keep looking at and thinking that I ought to be working that up into a webpage. Maybe I'll get round to it in the footy-free summer. Don't go holding your breath though.

Why the cryptic headings to your posts?

They're not all cryptic. In fact, I often try to make them relevant to the following post and refer (albeit obliquely) to them during the post. It is true though that some of them have referred to in-jokes that I haven't exaplained. For example, "Hale & Pace and The Anthill Mob" referred to a couple of things that arose during the course of a Nantwich Town home game. The first was the uncanny resemblance of one of the Nantwich stewards to Gareth Hale of aformentioned comedy duo. And the other was the lack of height in Nantwich's team leading to the suggestion that from the next corner a few of them were going to gang up to form one big player, in the style of them animated gangsters, or indeed the Bash Street Kids. I'll try to remember to explain them more often in future.

Those embedded youtube videos are breaking your W3C validation, are you going to fix that?

Yep. I've got some valid code but it seems to automatically start the videos when you load the page. As soon as I've worked out how to get round that, I'll post it up. If the videos aren't showing up, a search for 'Wedding Calypso' on youtube will turn up one, which has a link to the other.

Are you meant to be broadcasting that on your flickr site?

Err, no. Oops. What a lamer, n00b mistake-a to make-a! All dealt with now, I hope. I'll never be a l33t h4x0r though...

Why don't you update your site more regularly?

Because I'm a lazy so-and-so and I haven't got a decent software program that'll let me do it all automatically. I've had a play around with a few things but I've not found anything I like yet. So, I have to do it all by hand and it's hard work. As a result, you only get something when I can knock it up in my spare time or have done something really worth posting on the site.

Are you going to do any work today?

Er, fair point, boss. I'm just, erm, going to get on with that now. As soon as I've had a cup of tea. Do you want one?

Go on, stick your oar in:

Friday 4th April

six deep at the bar

I've got to wonder what sort of grumpy old man I'm in danger of turning into. I saw the weather forecast for the Easter weekend and thought "Good, that'll limit the numbers turning out for the Jazz Fest." As it turned out, despite being freezing cold and there being a half-hearted attempt at snow during Sunday, the town seemed just as packed as it was last year. If not, more so, because everyone was trying to get into the warm pubs, rather than standing outside, freezing their proverbials off. Anyway, undeterred by the cold weather myself and armed with a bright yellow wristband, purchased from a booth on Nantwich square for a mere five pounds, I went out on Sunday morning to see The Sugardaddies playing at the White Horse. Even despite the relatively early hour of the aftwernoon there were plenty of people milling about. Having had a couple of refreshing beers and a listen to the band, I headed off to The Railway to have a gawp at the Manchester United vs Liverpool game. Again there were plenty of people about and getting a beer was a time-consuming process. Fortunately, Liverpool played so badly that I left at half-time because it was obvious they weren't going to get anything out of the game. I had a wander back through town but there wasn't really anyone I wanted to see playing and the numbers of people crowding into the pubs rendered the idea of a lazy Sunday session on the ale a bit of a non-starter so I nipped home for a bite to eat and a kip, hoping the crush might die down later in the evening. I was, of course, wrong. Things seemed even worse when I went back out to town. However, I managed to get into the Talbot to see an ex-colleague's band - the Slowhand Blues Band. The queue at the bar was horrendous early doors but even so I made that rookie error of ordering two pints when I finally got there "to save queueing again" and then drinking them in half the time. D'Oh! Later on, the bar cleared as people moved on to other venues and I took advantage to the extent that I was somewhat overly-refreshed by the time the band finished. Still, the music was excellent (what I remember of it) and if you're a fan of the blues, I thoroughly recommend you check them out.

Whilst talking of the Jazz Festival, I have to admit that this year, there weren't actually that many bands that I wanted to see. And prior commitments (i.e. football) prevented from catching one of the few acts I did fancy seeing. Not that it really mattered in the grand scheme of things - despite the grim weather and the wristband scheme there were still around 30,00 people in the town over the weekend and the vast majority of them had a good time, regardless of whether they went to see some music or just enjoy a day's drinking. There were nine arrests over the weekend, which is probably six or seven more than a usual weekend but given that were ten times the usual amount of people in the town, that's not bad. There were also some complaints about wristbands not being checked and pubs letting in people without bands on but as with all new schemes I'm sure that was just down to teething problems. I certainly had mine checked everywhere I went, but perhaps that's because I was on my own. Whatever, the wristbands will be in force next year, apparently. so if you fancy braving a crush at the bar and catching some decent music for a ridiculously low price of five quid for a whole weekend, make sure you've got next Easter free.

Still on a music tip, I went to see The Young Knives playing at The M Club in Crewe last Friday. My younger brother, Eddy, got me on the guest list and I took my brother-in-law, Roger. Well, Roger took me actually, as he was the one driving. And actually, I wasn't on the guest list, but luckily Eddy was and we got in free anyway. We arrived about three-quarters of the way through the first support band, who were apparently Lucifer Over Lancashire but from here on will be referred to as The Ray Winstones because all their songs involved a lot of shouting, or more accurately "SHAARTIN'!". And that wasn't a good thing. Once the Ray Winstones had finished, we were treated to Norwegian prog-rockers Ungdomskulen. I was almost prepared to forgive them their bass-heavy, feedback-laden indulgences on the basis that they're from Norway and the 21st century probably hasn't permeated their music scene yet, but they comprehensively drained my goodwill by turning into Hawkwind after about two songs and then slowly mutating into a sort of angular-riffing Converge-cum-Dillinger-Escape-Plan-mathrock band, minus the shouty vocals. They don't sound quite as heavy a proposition on their website but clearly the live experience is a different beast. Anyway, once they were done, it was time for the headline act, The Young Knives. They were, quite simply, excellent. Obviously influenced by '80s indie guitar pop, they take their influences and weld them to some magnificent songs. Curmudgeonly types might point out that we've heard this stuff before (and I did spot songs that sounded like Pere Ubu, Gang of Four, Teardrop Explodes, early James, and Orange Juice) but I don't think I've seen one band re-hash ALL of them in one set. Further curmudgeonly moans could be had about the comedy banter on stage, but hey-ho, they're young, they'll learn. I hope. These things though are just minor points. If you want good songs, with hummable tunes and decent lyrics, you can't go wrong here. Top stuff

Sticking with the musical theme; last weekend my sister, Liz, and her new husband, Roger, held a party at Nantwich Town Football Club to celebrate their recent wedding. They actually got married a couple of weeks ago, on a beach in Antigua, but sensibly waited till the Jazz Festival was over before having a party back home for friends and family. My wedding present to them was to book Disarm, who put on an excellent show. (And polished off all the brandy in my sister's house at her after-party party.) You can see a brief clip of their performance below.

I then undid all the goodwill by accompanying Roger's dad on my ukulele for his wedding calypso song, which, I believe should also be embedded below.

Apologies if that's spoiled your browsing experience. And if you can't see it, you can watch it on youtube.

Anyway, as is usual at wedding parties, much drink was partaken and many photos were taken. Some of which survived to see the light of day. Apologies to all those who were there though, as the vast majority seem to feature some combination of me, my siblings and partners and Disarm... Anyway, just five years after everyone else, I've signed up to Flickr and have uploaded my photos there. So get your bad self over to My wedding party Flickr page to see the pictures and read my amusing captions. They took me ages, you know.

The actual party went really well, apart from one or two aged relatives finding the band a bit loud (hey, that's rock'n'roll) and everyone seemed to have a great time, despite the ukulele... Liz certainly had a good time, as you can see from the Sunday lunch picture - she was so rough she had to go home and have a lie down before we got to dessert! The only downside of the entire weekend was finding that, with typical efficiency, my Dad had booked a Sunday lunch party and totally forgotten to invite my brother Mark and his wife Kate, despite including them when counting the numbers. D'Oh!

After all the drinking, chatting, entertaining and running around of the weekend, I was glad that I'd booked the Monday morning off. I'd fully intended to have a bit of a lie-in and then spend a lazy day updating the site. Well, I managed the lie-in bit OK and the lazy day bit, but only got about a third of the update done. I spent far too long faffing about with the video and pictures from my camera and as a result never got them uploaded. To be honest, my video processing capabilities at home are fairly limited and in the end I had to use my work PC to sort things out. I really ought to buy a new PC for home, because they are fairly cheap these days, but at this very moment in time, I'm still hankering after some recording gear...

Having had my lazy day on Monday I was back at work on Tuesday, and then on Tuesday night, got a lift from my mate Lee up to Northwich to watch Nantwich Town take on Altrincham in the Cheshire Senior Cup. Altrincham are a few divisions higher in the league pyramid so a tough game was expected. We weren't disappointed. In a first half that was long on effort and short on true quality, Nantwich had the majority of the possession and created more chances, but Altrincham took the lead against the run of play. In the second half, Altrincham started quickly, looking for the second goal to kill the game off. Nantwich got back into it slowly and then came the pivotal moment. Emerging from the bench, to much general apathy, Pavol Suhaj, turned the game round for Nantwich. First up he bundled the ball in to the roof of the net when finding himself unmarked at a corner, and then he latched onto a through ball from Andy Kinsey and slipped it past the keeper to put Nantwich ahead. The Dabbers (that's Nantwich) then had further chances but spurned them and paid the price when Altrincham equalised just as three minutes of injury time were being announced. Into extra-time and 'Pav' put Nantwich ahead when holding up the ball on the edge of the area, turning two defenders and then curling it in to the far corner with the keeper stranded. Sadly, he was then forced off through injury and Nantwich were back to hanging on. They just couldn't manage it and Altrincham levelled again in the second half of extra time. Altrincham then nearly pinched it, but Nantwich scrambled the ball away and it was down to penalties. Nantwich went first and Andy Kinsey scored to put them ahead. The Nantwich keeper Lee Jones saved the first Alty penalty. It was nail-biting from then on as each side scored their penalties but, with Nantwich ahead from the off, it was left to Danny Griggs to bang his spot-kick home and win the cup. I've got a few pictures that I took on the night, that I've put on my Cheshire Cup Flickr page. Enjoy.

Crewe Alexandra news now, and, with perfect timing, no sooner had I suggested in my last update that Huddersfield, Yeovil and Hartlepool could get dragged into the League One relegation battle, than all three teams have picked up enough points to ensure they'll be safe from the drop this time round. My own little smashers, Crewe, also picked up their form and briefly managed to open up a five point gap on fellow strugglers, Gillingham. However recent results have gone against them and now we're only ahead of them on goal difference. With just four games to go now, it's squeaky bum time for us, Gillingham and Millwall. I think that if any of the teams can manage more than one win, they should be safe. Of course, having mentioned that now, you can rest assured that both Millwall and Gillingham will win their four remaining games! I'm not sure the Alex can manage that though and they might have to rely on other teams doing them a favour. One of those other teams could be Bournemouth, who are facing the very real prospect of being the first club to go out of business during a season since Aldershot in 1992. If they fold before the end of the season, their record will be expunged and all the teams that have taken points off them, will lose them. Which is good news for Crewe as we've only played them once and lost, whereas Millwall and Gillingham have both beaten Bournemouth once, so would lose the three points for that win. Not that I'd want that - I'd rather Bournemouth stayed in business and the Alex managed to stay up on their own merits. Fingers crossed they can manage that...

On a final musical tip - I've got two new albums this last week and both of them are brilliant:

• REM -Accelerate Quite simply the best thing they've done in ages. They've stopped sounding like a bunch of tired, old, men and re-discovered the spark that made albums like 'Automatic for The People' and 'Document' so vital. Most of the songs are uptempo and guitar-based and the band sound like they enjoyed playing them. Well worth checking out, in my opinion. I like it so much I might yet change my mind about seeing them live...
• Disarm - By Any Means Necessary Not officially available till June, apparently, but, in a shameless plug, this is the cracking new album from Mexborough's metal monsters and all-round nice guys, Disarm. Top quality sleazy, metal.

And that'll do for now - it's taken me more than a week to get this done and even so there are bound to be some spelling mistakes in there and some things I've forgotten. I haven't explained the references to Hale and Pace and the Anthill Mob in my last update, for example. On the other hand, you'll be reading this in stages if I keep going on and on. I'll try not to leave it so long till the next update, but I ain't promising nuffin'.

Go on, stick your oar in:

Thursday 6th March

Hale and Pace and the Anthill Mob

I've been a busy man, alright? Well, actually, I've not been that busy but I have been doing stuff or working late or recovering from hangovers; all things that take up my valuable time. First of the things that have been occupying my time was a trip to sunny South Yorkshire for a family gathering to celebrate my Dad's 70th birthday. It was a lovely day - the weather was fantastic and there was a decent turn out. The usual suspects were missing although Eddy did at least have the excuse that he was in France. We had a lovely, long, relaxed lunch at the Holiday Inn, Warmsworth and you can see pictures of the day on the February 2008 pictures page.

One of the other things that kept me occupied for a weekend was Roger's stag do. The aforementioned lucky man is due to marry my sister in eight days, on a beach, in Antigua, as part of their cruise. Roger's parents have paid for the cruise and are travelling with them - the rest of us will have to make do with an official photograph or two. Anyway, in the tradition of these things, Roger had a stag do which involved a minibus full of his workmates plus me and his brother-in-law on his sister's side, traipsing up to Manchester for an afternoon-slash-evening of alcohol-related japery. Roger had to wear a dress for an hour or so and we did a grand tour of quite a few pubs, including one not far from the Manchester Wheel. Buggered if I can remember the name of it though. We all eneded up in Jilly's Rockworld where unfortunately, Roger got thrown out (he was an innocent bystander in the whole affair though) and I fell asleep standing at the bar. The whole thing is a bit of a blur, to be honest, and I couldn't manage another drink after about 11pm, although I hardly helped myself by having bombed down to Birmingham the night before for a stupid number of beers in a short space of time with a couple of ex-colleagues from my JBA days. Needless to say, I had to spend the following Sunday recovering. Anyway, there are a couple of pictures of the motley crew on the February 2008 pictures page. Enjoy.

Well, who knew? Apparently, using your credit card three or four times more than usual will flag you up as a potential fraudster. Having used it sparingly in the run-up to Christmas and then spanking it a bit for the festive season, I then used it a bit more in the post-Christmas period, splashing out on a few personal items (making the most of the belated payment of the Christmas bonus). I bought a couple of mp3 players, a few albums that I wanted and some DVDs (more of both of those later) and even put my Pa's 70th Birthday present on it. It was whilst buying said present that I got the first inkling that something may be awry. After entering my card details the shop had to ring and get authorisation for the transaction. The following morning, entirely coincidentally, I received a letter from my card issuer asking me to call them about my account. (They'd been trying to contact me urgently apparently - so urgently they didn't bother trying my home phone in the evening or my mobile...) Anyway, I called them and the upshot was that my increased card usage had been flagged up as potential fraud, so I had to confirm that the last few transactions were of my doing. Even so, it is clearly easier to cancel my card than get the "potential fraud" flag removed, so I've ended up with a new card and account number. Luckily they were quicker to send out the card than they promised, so I wasn't without plastic for too long. Not that I've used my new card yet - I'm torn between getting a digital camera and an 8-track digital recorder and can't decide which I want first...

Anyway, as mentioned, I've splashed out on a few CDs, mostly ones that I've been thinking of/hankering after for a while:

• British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music? The latest one from Brighton-based indie merchants, which bears as much resemblance to Rock Music as their previous offerings. It's had mixed reviews in the press and after having lived with it for a few weeks now, I can see why. I'm not sure this one has as many memorable tunes as the previous two - sure 'Raving Fags', er, 'Waving Flags' will be the festival anthem of the summer and 'No Lucifer' starts off with a beguiling chant of "Easy! Easy!" but a lot of the songs seem to go nowhere in particular. It is perhaps harsh to criticise the band for doing pretty much the same things as they've done on their first two albums, but this third one seem to be lacking the hooks of the previous outings. Perhaps I made the right decision not to go and see them live...
• The Fall - Complete Peel Sessions One I've been promising myself for a long time and I finally got it at a reasonable price. Six CDs containing 24 sessions for the late, great John Peel, spread over 26 years and comprising 99 tracks in total. From the primitive garage rock of 'Rebellious Jukebox' all the way through to the er, primitive garage rock of 'Blindess' via all points high and low in the The Fall's long career. Not one for the faint-hearted or beginner, but a valuable an interesting historical document for Fall aficianados.
• Cocteau Twins - Garlands The first album from a band whose music will forever be labelled "ethereal", due to the chiming, bell-like guitars and swooping, almost unintelligible vocals, which (for me) reached a pinnacle on their third album 'Treasure'. This debut finds them laying down the foundations of their trademark sound, although Liz Fraser's vocals are more conventional here and the guitars are less treated so the end result is a sinilar to that of Souixsie and The Banshees, but without a less dark undertone. This original re-release weighs in at just over 35 minutes long and doesn't spoil us with any added bonus tracks.
• Cocteau Twins - Head Over Heels Minus original bass player, Will Heggie, but before the arrival of Simon Raymonde, Liz and Robin go further towards what became their trademark sound, although you can still make out most of what she's on about on this album. Walls of shimmering, treated guitar, throbbing bass underpinning it and on top, Liz's extraordinary voice. Plus a whole album full of slightly esoteric song titles. Just over 37 minutes long and no bonus tracks to dilute the experience.
• Wolfhounds - Lost But Happy Proper indie, as those of us old enough to remember the 1980s would describe it. Jangly guitars, straight 4/4 beats and angst-ridden vocals. Again, it's one of those purchases that was on the back burner - mainly because I'm only familiar with two tracks by them - 'Anti-Midas Touch' and 'Rent Act', both of which I first heard on John Peel's show. Still, when you've got money to burn you can afford to indulge. To be honest, those aforementioned tracks are probably the best two on the album, even though it is a 'Best Of..'
• June Brides - Everyday Conversations. More indie from the Eighties. This time of the gentler, strummed guitars variety, with winsome vocals and added trumpet. Sadly, forever tarred with the brush of being a C86 band despite not appearing on the original cassette. It's a double CD and to be honest, it could have been trimmed - a lot of this sounds the same. My personal favourite though is 'This Town', another track I remember first hearing on John Peel's show, and it's probably worth the reduced price of purchase on it's own.

Likewise, I have also splashed out on a few DVDs, although this really is my usual mix of cheap tat from the supermarket and the odd full price purchase...

• A-Z of ITV Wrestling Picked up cheap in the supermarket and thank the Lord for that because if I'd paid the full retail price I'd be demanding a refund. The main feature is an A to Z run through the characters from ITV's decades of covering the British wrestling scene. although most of the action seems to come from the late 70s/early 80s period. For each letter of the alphabet there's a bit of chat and highlights of the chosen wrestler in action, mostly action from one bout. As a massive fan of classic British wrestling, I was very disappointed with it. There's no depth to it at all, and not much focus outside of the main characters (Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks and Kendo Nagasaki) In fact, there's very little on here I didn't know already. Worth the £2.50 I paid for it, but no more.
• Chopper - Eric Bana's breakthrough role as the eponymous Australian "crimmo" in this rollicking bio-pic. Romanticises the grubbiness and brutality of the small-time crook's career but still compelling viewing.
• Accion Mutante - those crazy Spaniards. Produced by Pedro Almodovar and directed by Alex de La Iglesias, it a sci-fi comedy-cum-morality tale, set in a near-future world where the beautiful are rich and the poor are ugly. Leading the class struggle are terrorists Accion Mutante, but with their charismatic leader in jail, they're proving to be somewhat inept in the kidnap and extortion game. Leader Ramon returns to lead them on a high profile mission but it all goes a bit wrong. Amusing and with a social comment too.
• Day Watch -very disappointing - not a single hint of Pamela Anderson or The Hoff in the whole two hours... No, of course, I did n't get confused. This is the sequel to Night Watch, a Russian take on the struggle between Good and Evil. Moving on from the first film, the uneasy truce between the two sides is once again in danger of being broken and Anton is being fitted up to take the fall for it. He must somehow prove his innonence and reverse the chaos that is about to ensue. I won't give away the rest of it except to say that the end might not make much sense if you haven't seen the first film.
• Carry On Box Set - YESSS!!! All the classic Carry Ons plus the That's Carry On clips compilation, Thirty films to watch and review - definitely a one-a-day project, to be saved for June, when the footy season is over and the long, light evenings stretch ahead of me. Not that they need reviewing, really, as everyone is surely aware of the plots and characters, surely? On the other hand, no one has had the benefit of my analysis yet though.

Moving swiftly on to football matters - it's been a somewhat disappointing end to the month for both my teams. Crewe Alex picked up unexpected points against Swansea, Leyton Orient and Leeds and then lost rather tamely to Carlisle. Any other result and they would have climbed out of the bottom four. A decent draw at Northampton (who have been on a decent run) was of little comfort as the other teams around us picked up points. The Alex have popped up out of the bottom four though thanks to Gillingham's midweek defeat. Luckily for us, there are three other teams fighting to avoid the final relegation slot and Huddersfield, Hartlepool and Yeovil could also yet get drawn into the dogfight. Not only that, but once we get past Nottingham Forest on Saturday, we only play one other team in the top half of the table during the last ten games. But it always good news/bad news with the Alex and unfortunately though, Nicky Maynard has got himself injured again and will be out for a couple of weeks or so. We're having a lot of trouble attracting players to come to the club, so may depend on Pope, Moore and the rest to score the goals required to keep us up. Oh joy.

In other Crewe-related news, I went to the AGM last week. I've been to a few before and all that usually happens is that the board present the accounts and the shareholders vote to accept them, there's a bit of A.O.B. (Any Other Business) and then the meeting is thrown open for a general Q&A session. This year, with yet another series of loans being made out of the club accounts, the balance showing a small loss despite the sale of Luke Varney and the team performing poorly on the pitch there were plenty of questions that needed asking. Unfortunately, none of the questions really got asked - the board were prepared for anything that was likely to be thrown at them, and pretty much torpedo-ed any questions on financial integrity by revealing they'd been given a clean bill of health by the FA Financial Compliance Unit. There were plenty of other pre-emptive strikes in the reading of the accounts and in the end, the questions, when they came, were fairly tame and easily dealt with by the board. The board also made sure that there weren't too many awkward financial questions by having the football management team on hand to answer the footy-related questions. Most fo the footy questioons centred around why we are doing badly and what measures the management were taking to improve the situation. There was some interesting stuff about the long list of players we've tried (and failed) to get in, the goalkeeping situation and the development of Eugen Bopp, but largely it was the usual questions, which elicited the usual answers.

Nantwich Town have been up-and-down. They managed to win their much-postponed Cheshire Cup tie with Cammell Laird and have had mixed fortunes in the league but the real blow came after they spanked the botties of FC United in the Unibond Presidents Cup, only to get themselves disqualified for fielding an ineligible player. An ineligible player, who came on late in the second half when they were already 4-1 up. Still rules is rules and if the proper paperwork hasn't been done, it hasn't been done. Very disappointing for the fans, who enjoyed a terrific atmosphere and fantastic win and for the team who played as well as I've seen them this season. Ah well, there's always next season. Besides, they're concentrating on the league...

Following last instalment's news of the cock-up and farce surrounding the Acoustic Festival and Phil Martin's attempts to provide an alternative, I'm delighted to announce (or at least share with my readership, most of whom have probably read it elsewhere already) the news that McFly and Girls Aloud are both headlining gigs in the slot earmarked for the Acoustic Fest. Well done, Mr Martin for getting that calibre of headliners on. No word on who else is on the bill on either of the days, but you can follow the links for McFly tickets or for Girls Aloud tickets. Only £25 each day, it's a right bargain and no mistake, guv'nor.

Unlike the 45 quid REM are charging to see them on their forthcoming tour. Regular readers will recall that I went to see them a few times on their last tour. (Newer readers can check out the archives from summer 2005.) Unfortunately for me the nearest gig will be at the Lancashire County Cricket Ground in Manchester, which was my least favourite of all the gigs I saw that summer - too hot, too crowded, too big a queue at the bar and the sound wasn't particularly good where I was - so despite liking the single 'Supernatural Superserious' and looking forward to the album, I might give it a miss. I can't say I'm overly excited by the other venues they're playing at in the UK either, so I might miss out on them altogether. They are playing at the Royal Albert Hall in a couple of weeks and that gig will be broadcast on Radio 2, so I'll probably end up listening to (and possibly recording) that and then change my mind. On the other hand I have got comedy capers with my mate Kev to be thinking about this summer instead.

Go on, stick your oar in:

Monday 4th February

Carry On Catering

Well, so much for my resolution to get to more gigs this year - I managed to blow out both the gigs that I had lined up. Firstly, following the onset of a very heavy cold, I decided to skip the Rig Up Explosive gig and then I just couldn't muster up the enthusiasm to battle the vagaries of public transport to get up to Manchester on Sunday night for British Sea Power. On reflection, not going to the Tuesday night gig was a bit wimpy, although I did feel pretty rough at the time, but the Manchester gig turned into such a faff - there were no direct trains between 3 and 6 from Crewe and the return train that I thought left Manchester at 11.30 turned out not to run on a Sunday, so I would have had to leave the gig about 10 past ten to get the last train, or book a hotel. All of which I could have coped with if I'd found it out before Saturday evening, but for one reason or another I didn't get round to checking travel arrangements till then. Arse.

To tell the truth, I wasn't really in the mood for going anywhere anyway, as I'd been to see my mate Muzz, up in the psychiatric ward at Leighton Hospital and that had put me on a bit of a downer. I've no idea how those wards make you feel if you're mentally troubled, but it made me feel really low. To be fair, it probably wasn't the ward that did that to me but the state of my old friend. I've known Muzz a good few years now and have seen him through the good times and the bad, so it really shouldn't have affected me so much, but he seemed so remote and disconnected and at times he just drifted away, not listening to the conversation I was trying to have. He just seemed to be back in the same place he was almost twenty years ago, after his first breakdown. It's not all bad though - he's been fairly stable for a while and they're moving him on to a rehablitation centre in preparation for him moving into his own home - so I could have just caught him on a bad day. I'm going back to see him this week, so hopefully things will be a bit better.

Anyway, enough of the misery, here's some relatively good news - my corrupted Word document turned out not to be corrupted at all. I made a copy of the "corrupted" .docx document and changed the extension to .doc and it opened perfectly. Not sure why that should be the case, as I converted the document to docx format ages ago and had had no trouble with it previously. That said, when checking the Save default in my Word settings, it was showing "Save as Word 97-2003 format (.doc)", but I'm sure I changed it to save as .docx... Ah well, I saved the .doc and created a brand new .docx document and copied everything except the last paragraph mark into this new .docx document. (The last paragraph mark in your Word document includes a hidden container in which Word stores all document properties including formatting information, fact fans.) I even attached the updated .dotx template I've been working on. I had to go through and re-apply some formatting and stuff but there was no major damage in there. This has saved me a week of extra work and so far, touch wood, I've had no problems.

I note from my recent shopping trip to Morrisons that Heinz appear to have started giving all their new products faintly rude, carry On-style names. Hot on the heels of the Red Hot Balls, come the Big Saucy Bangers:

Ooh no, missus! "Fancy some Saucy Bangers, Sid?" "Not 'arf, but aren't we going to have something to eat first?" Complementing the range are the slightly less racy Beanz with Balls. Oh, stop mucking about!

And whilst we're on a slight food tip have a look at this egg I fried up for tea the other week.

Now I like a good yolk, but clearly that went two far. It's clearly in-eggs-plicable. Sorry, I just got over-eggs-cited there, perhaps I'd better make a swift eggs-it.... Actually, I think a couple of the other eggs in that box were also double-yolkers, but I boiled them up so it was a bit difficult to tell.

Quiz-wise, team Amanda Huggenkiss have carried on their winning ways and picked up a few more free beers, all for the simple art of knowing things. In fact, in one case we won for not knowing something. We didn't know who was the first British woman to win two Olympic gold medals and after some fierce debate plumped for Dame Kelly of Holmes. Luckily, that was given as the right answer, but the real answer is, of course, Not-A-Dame Shirley of Robertson who won golds in Sailing at Sydney and Athens, capturing her second medal before Kelly had won her first. Not the first time the quiz has been wrong, of course (they asked us to name the five countries that have borders with Poland when there are, in fact, seven) and probably not the last. At least this time the wrongness worked in our favour.

And thinking of wrongness, what on earth is going on on up at Nantwich Town's ground? Yes, there has been a fair bit of rain over the last few weeks but since New Year's Day, the club have had EIGHT postponements due to their pitch being waterlogged. And bizarrely, six of those postponements have been against the same opposition, Cammell Laird. Firstly their meeting in the Unibond Presidents Cup suffered four postponements before going ahead at the fifth time of asking - Nantwich emerging victorious by 5 goals to 1 on a pitch resembling Blackpool beach. Secondly, the two team are to meet in the semi-final of the Cheshire Senior Cup and this game has already suffered two postponements. Next home game for Nantwich is a meeting with FC United of Manchester in the quarter-final of the Unibond Presidents Cup, which is due to take place on Friday night (Feb 8th, 7.45pm kick-off), but unless there's absolutely no rain between now and then, I think that may be called off too. Still, at least they're not in any danger of slipping to a second relegation in three seasons, unlike my proper team, Crewe Alexandra. To be honest, they've been fairly poor and even when playing equally poor teams they've shown no creativity and rarely threatened the goal. With just one win in twelve, it's relegation form and I can't see where the next win is going to come from. Still, I won't be joining the call for Steve Holland to be sacked. After all, if we can give Dario Gradi three years to prove himself, then the least we can do is give his successor a similar amount of time.

Anyway, to round things off, I thought I'd go back to where I started - talking about gigs. First up, when I mentioned the list of gigs that I wanted to see, I managed to neglect the annual Nantwich Jazz Fest. I was reminded of it when one of my former colleagues at MDS e-mailed me to let me know that his band are doing a Sunday evening slot at The Talbot. As usual there'll be dozens of bands on, plenty of interesting free gigs and a few thousand extra people thronging the streets of Nantwich on Easter Sunday. This year they're trying to limit the numbers by introducing a wristband policy, but I'm not sure it's been that well-publicised. Last thing I saw about it was that unless you bought a wristband (for five quid) you wouldn't be allowed in to any of the free gigs. I could be wrong about that though - I'll have to go and look it up when the website is working.

One thing I wasn't wrong about last year and definitely won't be going to this year is The Acoustic Festival of Britain. After the washout last year there were promises of refunds and then promises of replacement tickets for the festival, which would be coming back, "same time, same place, next year." In the meantime there were rumours about the co-promoters falling out, monies not being paid to the venue on time and other bits of sharp practice. Citing the disastrous weather as the reason, the promoter has taken the opportunity to move the Festival (supposedly guaranteed to be held in Nantwich for three years minimum) to another venue and a different date. Frankly, it all looks a bit suspicious to me, but I can at least sleep easy now, knowing I won't have to face the trauma of accidentally seeing or hearing Jethro Tull in concert... Luckily, for those of us with more refined music tastes, local promoter, Phil Martin (the force behind the Jazz Fest) has stepped into the breach and is planning a series of Picnics In The Park, at the same venue (Dorfold Hall), the first of which features Katherine Jenkins. Haven't seen or heard any further announcements yet, but I await news with bated breath.

Go on, stick your oar in:

Monday 21st January 2008

Stop holding your breath

Clearly none of my new years resolutions involved updating this website on a more regular basis...

Slowly, ever so slowly, I drag myself into the 21st Century. No, I haven't yet got round to getting a decent computer or even downloading a software package to make my blogging easier, but I have finally bought an mp3 player. I spent the grand sum of fourteen pounds and ninety-nine pence on it, from Woolworths. It's very basic, being as it is, a USB key with some additional controls on it. There's no screen, no fancy scrolling wheel no shuffle button or anything like that, but it does have 1GB of memory and that's more than enough for my needs. All I want is something that has a bit of music on it that I can listen to either at work or on my way to/from there. And that's what I've got. If I do have a complaint about it, is that it's a little too big for me to plug into my PC without unplugging the other USB devices. And it eats batteries like nobody's business. Wait, that's two complaints. Anyway, in order to solve the first problem, I've picked up one of these for a tenner from Amazon. I'm sure it'll take less than a week for me to turn the sound off but having had a play at work, I've got to say it sounds so cool. Every home should have one. In order to solve the second one, I'm looking at getting some rechargable batteries. The initial outlay is a bit off-putting but I'm sure I'll recoup the cost in the long run. In the meantime here's a blurry picture of the beast in action:

As part of my plans for this year, I have decided to go more gigs this year and have already lined up a couple for this month. First up there's my new favourite band, Rig Up Explosive at the The M Club in Crewe tomorrow night. And then on Sunday night it's off up to Manchester to catch British Sea Power, touring to promote their gorgeous new album, Do You Like Rock Music? I quite fancied catching Robyn Hitchcock on his current mini-tour but he was only doing two gigs I could get to and one of those clashed with BSP. The other is the night after and I can't manage two gigs in a row without taking some time off. Later in the year, old mates and young turks Disarm set out in May to promote their debut album, and hopefully REM will be doing some UK dates to promote their new album, which is due at the end of March. There's also further good stuff to look forward to at the M Club, including The Buzzcocks and Nazareth and I daresay there'll be a few other gigs that catch my eye. Not to mention my determination to put The Civic back on my itinerary as a regular thing. Of course, I really ought to be saving my money, I suppose - I'll need to pay for driving lessons and there's a few other big events coming up. There's my Dad's 70th Birthday, my sister's fiance's stag do, my sister's wedding party and my big gay trip away with me old mate Kev. Perhaps I ought to stay in and save my money instead?

(Actually, I mention my sister's wedding party but I've only just had an official invitation, and that after more than a month of subtle and not-so-subtle hints. My siblings, parents, various aged relatives and cousins had all been invited, but not me. Do you think she was trying to (not) tell me something? It's just as well my diary isn't swamped with social invitations otherwise I might have had to decline anyway...)

In a swift change of subject, we've all had this problem, eh lads?

I mentioned in my last post that I was fed up with getting spam in my Hotmail inbox and that I'd set up a separate account to receive all e-mail addressed to fatfakir.com. This secondary account has done it's job and now I don't have to spend ages wading through crap to find the two or three e-mails that I want to read. I was checking this additional account on a regular basis and deleting the crap out of it but it seemed a bit pointless as I wasn't deleting that much spam. So I didn't check it for a few days. Imagine my delight then, when I opened the account yesterday to find that in the ten days since I'd last looked I'd received more than 12,500 e-mails. Yes, that's TWELVE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED. 12,584, to be precise. A lot of them were returned mail/bounced mail messages, which shows me that someone is spoofing my domain name in their spam. Which is kind of annoying because my domain will soon be listed on spam blockers everywhere, but not that annoying because I never send e-mail from my domain. If you do get anything purporting to be from fatfakir.com, you can rest assured it hasn't come from me. I've had a quick look at some of the spam reporting sites but I'm not sure what I should do next, to be honest - if anyone's got any tips they'll be gratefully received.

A quick mention of football, but only to gloss over it quickly. My little smashers, Crewe Alex continue to stumble along, with the recent gloom only briefly lifted by a dramatic 4-3 win over Tranmere on New Years Day. This bright spot came after 8 winless games and has been followed by two further defeats. My vision of the team being in the drop zone by the end of January looks like coming true. On the other hand, there are still plenty of winnable games before the end of the season, if Crewe can re-discover their scoring touch. Sad to say, at the moment the best we can hope for from every game is a 0-0 draw because we just don't look like scoring. By way of contrast, scoring is the least of Nantwich Town's troubles. Having banged six past Alsager at the start of the year, the continued wet weather has seen several postponements at the Weaver Stadium this month, as the pitch has become waterlogged. To be honest, unless the rain stops tonight and the sun shines for the rest of the month I can see Nantwich not managing a home game for another few weeks.

I try not to mention work on here too much but I have to report that today, a mere 5 months after upgrading to Office 2007 at work, I came across my first corrupted Word document in the new .docx format. I'm at a loss to explain why it's corrupted because I haven't made any changes to it in the last fortnight and the two other documents I saved on the same day are working perfectly fine. (Although thinking about that - I might have had it open when we had a power cut at work and didn't recover it at the time.) Most annoyingly, the only way I can rescue the document is to strip the text out, thus losing all the formatting and all the screenshots. I couldn't find a tool on the Interweb which could do a better job than the Word tools, which just added to my frustration. Antyway, looks like I'll be spending the next few days putting the whole thing back together. Fortunately, I've still got all the screenshots stored separately and a printed copy to look at. And it could have been worse, this document is the smallest of the User Guides that I've written and is only about 60 pages long, so shouldn't be too difficult to reconstruct. I could have been looking at re-doing something almost three times that size...

Go on, stick your oar in: