I don't know where the time goes - updating this site is like doing the washing-up - when I've just done it I always feel that it's done for good and it comes as a surprise to find that it needs doing again. Not that I'm complaining because if I wasn't writing this rubbish I really would be doing the washing-up, or more likely unblocking the sink. My house is in a complete state and I've got the garden to the point where, apart from a lack of gearboxes, it has that worst family on the estate chic. I've recently compounded this effect by digging up the drains to unblock the soakaway. Now it looks like an archeological digging site. But the drainage is working much better now.
Inside the house, which I'm sorry to say isn't the house on the front of Bungalow Hi, there's recording equipment everywhere - I've just traded in my old sixteen channel Enertec Schlumberger mixing desk for something smaller, more efficient, ultimately less groovy to look at but much easier to use. I spent a year recording Bungalow Hi and putting up with erratic wiring and broken down equipment, and now I'm fixing it before I start recording again.
And in between doing all this I've had to re-build a six foot high garden wall that turned into a kit-form version of a garden wall and was strewn all over my garden. (Someone leaned on it and it fell over.) I've been doing gigs too, with a cold that seems to have turned into bronchitis. I had a strange time in Scotland the other weekend - the management of the place I played in Glasgow decided to turn people away, telling them that the event wasn't actually taking place so there were less people than there should have been. An odd way to conduct business. The next night was at the Bein Inn in Glenfarg which is in the middle of nowhere. After the soundcheck I went out with my daughter, Luci, to get some batteries - a six mile drive down the road. On the way back the clutch lever arm on the car snapped on a dark road in the pissing rain, about twenty minutes before I was supposed to go onstage. The car finally rolled to a stop outside a Hammer House Of Horror type of house with big wrought iron gates. There was a light in one of the windows so we really didn't have much choice but to knock on the door and ask for help. Actually we did have a choice - we could just have sat in the car and phoned the club on one of our mobiles and just got someone to pick us up, but you don't think of these things in a crisis. I was sure the door was going to be answered by Diana Dors in one of her aging crone roles, if we didn't get savaged by dogs on the way there. The man who did answer the door was initially a bit of a disappointment but when he helped us move the car off the road it soon became apparent that he was a bit of a nutter, and obsessed with how fast and dangerous the road was. Fortunately we rang the venue and someone came to pick us up. We got back in time for me to stroll on, a bit wet and bedraggled, and deliver the set to an audience sat in rows on dining chairs. It went rather well and the next day the AA fixed us up with a hire car to get home in.

I had to hire a van to move the mixing desk and that gave rise to an email I sent out about the latest live dates. It seems that a lot of people didn't actually receive the email because it had the F word in it, which I took to be Brian MacFadden who has the UK number 1 hit single at the moment. If I include the email you'll understand how I know this, so here it is:

Recently I've been driving around in a lot of hire cars for one reason or another. They never have a CD player, just a radio cassette, and as I never have any cassettes, I'm stuck with the radio. My my, isn't that Brian Macfadden good?! - though I can't see what's more real about football on TV than a bunch of dying flowers in a dressing room. I don't know if you're on my mailing list Brian, but the dying flowers are much more real to me and you shouldn't complain because it's the thought that counts and anyway, you're fucking lucky to have a dressing room. I won't have one on Friday night in Grimsby which is the point of all this nonsense - I'm supposed to be telling you about the up and coming dates.

I got an email from someone called rudewords:

Offensive Language Warning

The message you sent contains one or more words that are
not permitted on this system. Your message is returned below
for your information.

Please refrain from any further abusive or offensive
language; repeat offenders will have all mail from their
account blocked by this server.

It's nice to know that somebody's reading this stuff. In future I'll do all I can to eliminate Brian Macfadden from the system. That's what real to me, right on.