What I have been doing recently is getting knocked off my bike in various ways. This morning I had the classic ‘car-door-opened-in-face’ and I bounced and rolled into the road like a rubber ball with sore bones and a foul mouth. I have to loudly sing the praises of the man from Argyle Locksmiths (Argyle St, Glasgow) who got me a chair and water, retrieved my bike and made sure I got the details of the door-wielding maniac / actually quite contrite and decent lady. Any lock-related needs you have in Glasgow, that’s the place to go.

When waiting in the Western’s waiting room, if I had chosen things to have with me I would have been reading The Journals of Isabelle Eberhardt, who now tops my list of People I Would Invite Round To Dinner If They Weren’t Dead. Anarchist, Islamist, Sensualist, Journalist, Nomad-ist, Transvestite-ist, whatever. All that, or: Individual. And then drowned in a desert at age 27? That’ll be what they call liviing fast and dying young, but she did this 100 years ago. Beat that Kurt Cobain / Jimi Hendrix / Jim Morrison / all you boring rock icons with your conformist, unknowing self-destruction.

For reasons I’m not going to go into I was in [insert name of big record chain] today. Well, okay, I had to meet friends and I had to swap my IOU for a real live Fugazi ticket so we combined the two. Anyway, for reasons I’m not going to go into [ahem, Kim was really late…] I was there for quite a while and had a browse through the stuff. It’s a long time since I did this and blimey did they have some mental things in there. How can this be the only store in Glasgow to stock Blectum From Blechdom CDs? Why do they only stock old obscure Sonic Youth releases [nothing newer than Washing Machine]? My ponderings were distracted by the magazine stand where I discovered Comes With A Smile, a Copper Press style magazine, very nicely printed with a free CD and based in the UK. That high street record stores know more about cool new UK zines made me feel very odd. I remember similar situations when I lived in Aberdeen as well. I traipsed all round town one day looking for something by this exciting new Godspeed You Black Emperor! band. And which shop was the only one to stock it? Our Price. The world’s a strange place.