I said ah welcome to the show!

I may not have been at Glastonbury this year, but I was very happy everywhere I was.

This afternoon I watched fledgling swifts loop through the air above me. It'll be another three to four years before they touch land again. Below them a pachyderm parade of Canada Geese followed their Colonel Hathi down the river whilst a grebe gargled at them and the coots shifted themselves out of the way. They look to be down to three squeakies now.



Listening to Def Leppard's remastered Pyromania

When you meet a stranger

The best advice I've ever been given came from a white Zimbabwean. After letting us out at our destination, having bought us lunch, drinks and keeping us in stitches for the entire journey, he left us with these sound words:

"Don't get too drunk, don't fall out of your tree and NEVER take your clothes off in public."

I've failed in all 3 at some point or another.

Today delivered some new wisdom:

"Go to the pub. And buy something pretty."

And why not.

Listening to Bat for Lashes

bitter hands broken glass

It's good to be in April. March has not been one of my finest months of late. For most of it I've been a bear with a bad head. Which I tend to keep down when I'm feeling like that. I'm not great company. Not very talkative.

52 Mondays ago I sat at my desk at The Archives for the first time. Doesn't feel like a year. The work-life-balance-ometer might be swinging a little too far in the wrong direction right now but I still love what I do. And if you're going to wander in to work on a Saturday, then it's much more pleasant to trickle down to Kew than trek up to Tottenham Court Road.

Spring: the chance to wash the coal dust out of my life for another 7 months, finches stopping ever so briefly, sky filled with birdsong, mallards gang-raping each other, and the gradual increase in the numbers of lumpen-headed-pointless-fuckwits (determined to get from one end of the river to another as fast as possible without pause to realise that they're oxygen wasting morons) going by my window. The kind of folks who should be spending time in an environment more suited. Like Jupiter.

I'm listening to a lot of Pearl Jam. The remastered Ten is wonderful, the additional disk of remixes almost better. Beautiful, hopeful and angry. Suited the mood.

And the men who hold high places must be the ones to start...

I must do something about the lack of Rush in my music collection.

So to recap.

It's been a busy old year so far.

I've added to the list of things I'd never expected to do at work: drawing all over meeting room walls. Which has been fun. I spent six weeks immersed in some risk analysis work which somehow managed to span 11 000 words, more post-it notes than I care to remember and two meeting room walls. It kinda took over for a while, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and I hope I managed to sit back and let the rest of the team slice it all up with good grace. I'm looking at a couple more tough weeks and then.

More busy I suspect.

Which'll be fun too.

I've had the requisite bouts of flu and sickness, the consequences of which were mainly missing an old friend's birthday party, apparently with naked dancing. Now I've never been at a party with naked dancing in before (and I'm hoping it was naked female dancing, but that's probably just me), and I suspect opportunities for such are rapidly diminishing. I must get up to Cabbage again soon.

I did manage to make it up to Nottingham to see the best show I've ever seen Metallica play. Funny to think it's been 22 years and 6 shows since Dan and I first saw them together. An auspicious start to the gig year, with The Broken Family Band, Blur and Neil Young to follow. So far.

I haven't looked at my Facebook page in almost three months now, but have managed to catch up with a few of my fellow 6+ billion inhabitants on our spinning rock.

And I finished a Monopoly game that's taken over a year to complete. Damn it, Darth won.

I watched Watchmen. Which was about as good I suppose as any of us had reason to expect. Beautiful looking, focused, brutal, occasionally a teensy bit boring. And utterly pointless since it brings nothing new to what lies on the pages of the book, other than successfully illustrating why Alan Moore doesn't believe his work should be filmed. Still, I can't wait for someone to have a bash at Lost Girls. The Wrestler, Gran Torino and Man on Wire have all been movie highlights. Twilight, on the other hand, might possibly the worst film I've ever seen. I'm all ranted out on how bad it was but since we're here. For the record I'd rather smear chipotle sauce under my eyelids and slice my ears off with toenail clippings than have to watch that tedious stench of teen angst tedium again.

I've had a Kingfisher fly past my face, all streaky electric blue and orange and I've felt elated watching the morning sun bounce of the gold leaf as I've run past Hampton Court with Hans Zimmer's soundtrack to The Thin Red Line poddied into my ears.

But best of all.

I've seen light in what have been dark places.



Up to speed again. Don't leave it so long next time huh!

This terrible drone is the sound of a thousand machines

I'm watching the Brits.

Thoughts:

I now dislike the new U2 single eve more than before. Which is saying something.

I want to see more of The Hoff stalking the polka dot wearing hyena attempting to be amusing whilst barking at the award winners between segments. It's the funniest thing so far.

There are unsurprisingly few surprises.

Robbie didn't join Take That on stage, even though they were in a Dave Lee Roth cast-off spaceship.

Paul Weller didn't turn up.

Duffy keeps winning stuff.

No one's actually very funny.

I do like the way they put a little sign up to tell you when they've blanked the sound. Just in case I thought my reception was going again.

Are Kings Of Leon just a teensy weensy bit FUCKING BORING?

The set looks like a cheap Dairylea commercial.

Iron Maiden win best British Live Act. Fucking justice at last, c'mon the Irons!

Elbow win best British group, Coldplay look disappointed. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha... etc

Girls Aloud look even more pissed off when they don't win something. Keep the camera on grumpy Ashley Cole please, I want to watch him squirm.

They're very gracious when they do win something though.

Only kidding, they're not.

And their fan dance was rubbish.

Coldplay win nothing. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha etc. They do put on a good show earlier though. Still a rubbish song off their most average album yet.

Brandon Flowers is wearing roadkill. I think he's actually 12 years old.

Neil Tennent's hat is too big for him. That's probably on purpose though.

I think Lady GaGa is actually one of those 2D cut out paper dolls my sisters used to clip cut out paper clothes on to when they were young come to life.

Thank fuck it's over.

No it's not. Duffy's on the ads. Not any more, I've committed an act of personal censorship and turned the telly off.

**UPDATE**

What the hell was Kanye West talking about in his acceptance speech?

Why did BBC breakfast not mention the Maiden win?