There seems to be a tradition in this house that birthdays expand to fill as much of the month as possible. It’s certainly true of Bobbie (whose birthdays are legendary and pretty much span the entirety of June), and Jake, whose third 16th birthday party is this afternoon. The first one was us taking Jake [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Clutch came over this afternoon for a couple of whiskies and to play musical join the dots – a game in which I play a song from my collection, then he plays another from his that is connected in some way (the rules are a bit vague). Bobbie was upstairs with the laptop watching something [...]
Categories: Whisky
We finally managed to get Jake a drumkit. It’s in the garage, which we’ve sort of carpeted (up the walls as well as on the floor) and it’s all set up. It looks and sounds the business. So great to hear him practising at home again. That’s birthdays and Christmasses taken care of till he’s [...]
Categories: Music
I tried a new route to work yesterday. I was trying to maximise the proportion of the journey that I could spend along the canal, and minimise the amount of time spent dicing with death along Stratford Road. So I took Rusty to the bike shop for a bit of new kit, and some advice [...]
Categories: Birmingham
Tagged: Bicycle, Birmingham, Cycling, Google Map, Personal
This is Rusty. He’s my current preferred mode of transportation. Or at least he would be, if he had one more component: a bicycle chain. He did have one when I bought him. He cost me £15 at the city markets. Worth every penny too. I’d had nothing but trouble with that other bike I [...]
Categories: Birmingham
Tagged: Aston, Bicycle, Bicycle chain, Birmingham, Cycling, Personal, Sports, Sports Direct
I’m in Manchester at a music industry conference thing called UnConvention, and I’ve been hanging out and going to some pretty amazing gigs with lots of really interesting people. Musicians, independent record label people, music managers and so on. There are quite a few people here I have met before, and it’s been really good [...]
Categories: Music
Out on my bike instead of blogging You may not have noticed, but I haven’t been blogging recently. I don’t know how many of my blogs you read, or if you regularly read any of them, but if you routinely read two or more of them (and by my calculations, that would make you one [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
I did a radical de-friending exercise on Facebook last night. I went through the list of people I’m connected to and realised it was far too long, and that it made the site less than useful. Unfortunately, I was a little over-zealous. There were some people who were kind of attached to being my friend [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Number 3 is too young… I was watching some old episodes of Never Mind The Buzzcocks. Really old episodes. Mark Lamarr was hosting. And when they did the lineup, the question was ‘Which one of these is Paul Gray – the bass player from Eddie and the Hot Rods?’. I know him! He works for [...]
Categories: Music
Reading room at the British Library I’m writing a book. I know I’ve done this before, but this is different. This is one of those ‘the book I always meant to write’ books. It’s big and ambitious, and I don’t know how long it will take me or whether it will even ever be, in [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Personal
