I’d like to apologise for being away on holiday and not posting here going ‘woo, I’m in the south of France!’, cos now obviously you won’t believe I was really there. And I can’t even say I was so much in the middle of nowhere that there wasn’t an internet cafe as there were two in the wee town I was in. So I’m afraid it was entirely that I was enjoying myself too much to give you all a second thought. I did find the time for some record shopping though during a day trip to Bordeaux and thanks to Hugues for giving me directions to a rather ace record shop called Total Heaven which was filled with lots of UK, US and European vinyl. Not to mention a nice big box of local band releases and a big display of fanzines [all in french, sadly for me]. They’re on the Rue de Candale so go there if you’re ever in the vicinity. Shopping in Bordeaux was probably the most exciting thing I did in France but wandering about the alleyways of Sarlat, driving through some staggeringly beautiful places, visiting castles, caves and water gardens and seeing my mother for the first time in months wasn’t exactly un-exciting.

Nor indeed was my return to the UK where I hopped on a bus to Oxford and spent a hugely fun weekend there for Audioscope. Despite being robbed of all but a few hours’ sleep by Fighting Red Adair and their talking all night antics, I had a great time tending the Appliance merch stall and stumbling over to photograph the bands. You should be hearing more about Audioscope in the next issue of the diskant ZINE but suffice to say it was a fantastic day, both in terms of the bands and the amount of money they raised. Top bands for me were Cat On Form, Appliance, Souvaris and Dustball. Hello to everyone I met at Audioscope by the way, especially Jill and Jamie for making me feel like all this time and energy we put into diskant is actually appreciated by real people.

Well it’s been a while again but I do have excuses. Besides considering I’m sitting in an internet cafe in Crete writing this I feel that any previous non-blogging action should be forgiven. Last night I spent the early hours half cut sitting on my balcony and enjoying the Hot Snakes; Explosions in the Sky; Tarentel; Codeine and Jet Johnson. It was shall we say as close to heaven as it was possible to get. Anyhow with a veritable glut of tours coming up like Explosions in the Sky for example and also Fugazi things are looking pretty rosy. Plus Audioscope in Oxford sometime in early September looks good and with many diskant staff turning out iyt should be a laugh. Anyhow got to go buy some nail clippers before another day on the beach. Ahhhhhhh…

I moved from Reading to Oxford, and celebrated by, err… spending a day out in Reading. And now the good things begin: as I waited to buy a selection of obscure indepedent records from the local friendly second-hand record shop, the nice guy who works there, and knows my obscure independent interests, said ‘oh, I sorted out a pile of stuff you might be interested in, it’s over there’. That’s nice, huh? So I take a look through and I’m exceptionally pleased to find the 4 TUNNA BRIX 12″ by Sonic Youth, which I’ve been after for, like, YEARS. It’s the bootleg(ish) 12″ of their Peel Session of Fall covers from 1989. ‘How much?’ I ask. ‘To you mate, five pounds’. Hurray! I think. So much less than the fifteen quid I saw it on eBay for, yesterday. Of course, I know there’s a 7″ of these tracks out there somewhere, too, so now I have to find that…

I just got back from Portugal a few days ago. It was great! We found an Iron Maiden tribute bar called Eddie’s Bar, apparantly Iron Maiden used to stay in Portugal loads. Someone idiot told us that Eddie, who owned the bar was an Iron Maiden roadie for 6 years. We asked the girl at the bar if we could speak to Eddie but got funny looks from everyone as the girl tried to explain that Eddie was the fictional zombie mascot of Iron Maiden. We felt very stupid.

I was roasting for the Interweb when I got home and was dead pleased to find the following headline on Yahoo: Pie overload threatens baking tradition.

We went to see the Breeders last night. They were on top form and dead funny. It was ace.

I have been here for less than 8 hours and I love it. I’ll get to sleep on the roof of my hotel which overlooks the square where there’s folk playing mental Gnoua trance and dancing at half10 in the morning.

So why am I in the dark typing? It’s hot, I’m teaching a kid to count in french (but only up to 15) and I’m lost and don’t want to have to walk back through the market yet…..

Got the first useful piece of MovieMaster JunkMail, too! Or it would be if I actually made films.

so i spent last weekend hanging out with marceline and nicolette in glasgow. of course, it rocked. i’m only getting round to writing about it now because i’ve been recovering. but that’s not because i’m a wuss, of course.

highlights were seeing american analog set, who were absolutely delightful, being involved in possibly the biggest diskant meet-up ever, seeing john and steve from bis, who looked absolutely upstaged and starstruck when they realised the diskant crew were in the house, watching instrument, the mighty fugazi video & finding out what it really means to be punk, playing with candles, and watching an hour’s worth of ‘metal anthems’ on mtv2.

oh yes.

since that weekend i’ve been listening a lot to american analog set’s ‘know by heart’ and getting all sappy and nostalgic. bah.

I got a letter from Central Trains today enclosing a £28 travel voucher in apology for cancelling my train home from the leeds festival and making me walk three miles in the middle of nowhere. Result! The letter reads like it was written by a team of over enthusiastic robots so everything is said three times in a slightly different way. I actually had no idea what the point of the letter was until the last sentence about the travel voucher. Now I have to find a reason to travel somewhere in the Central Trains region. Hmmmm…

Incidentally, I never said Chris Leo from The Lapse was a sex god. I said he was ‘not unnattractive’. I should be going to see bis, Melt Banana and Les Savy Fav this week and I can’t decide which one I’m most excited about. I’ve possibly already reached my excitement pinnacle for the day though after discovering me and david finally got a mention in the news page on trailofdead.com. About time like.