Some Good Times Were Had 💜
There’s a hat at The Imaginarium – a colourful trilby type hat. A festival hat is what I suppose it would be to some people. It’s been used as decoration, and occasionally worn. I recently apprehended someone, and asked them to please not leave with our hat. It holds sentimental value insofar as it’s travelled … Read More
A Few Scattered Thoughts
The Imaginarium It’s quite mad to think that it’s been a year and a bit now since we opened The Imaginarium. A lot of that time was consumed by situations that meant I couldn’t really enjoy it all as I should have, but finally now I am. It’s been a real treat to have some … Read More
A Bit of Spoken Word
I was going to perform at Prismatic tomorrow, but I don’t dare. There have been relatively few things ever that I’ve not dared do, so this got me thinking about why that is. I suppose the first thing is that it’s something quite far away from anything I usually do. I’ve only ever been to … Read More
Preachers, Predators, and Prima Donnas
This post originally appeared on Hideous Things In the summer, not long after restrictions had been lifted, a friend of mine posted a long rant on social media. He’d provided the equipment for a gig, and he’d had to change the mixer something like five times (it may have been more). Basically, a mixer for every … Read More
Still Friends, in Spite of it All?
I’m not generally in the habit of deleting people on social media. I have done it before, but circumstances need to be extreme. Or they did. Now I find myself considering it a lot. It was different a few years ago. Things just weren’t so much like this. Brexit and Covid have changed everything and … Read More
The Last Plastic Carrier Bag at Morrison’s
I meant to write this post for Global Recycling Day, but, as is often the way, I was too busy. The images I’m sharing with this post are by ScapaJoe. For Global Recycling Day, we shared their piece ‘Inside My Head’ on SHSO – a creative blog I run along with my mates Joe Haze … Read More
Tales from the Covoid
It’s been sunny. I have stuff to do. The restrictions are being relaxed. I feel a lot better now. Almost good in fact. But things did get quite grim for a while. I was listening to a radio show back in January, and the DJ spoke about not having been particularly productive during this last … Read More
Remembering Andrew Weatherall
This post originally appeared on Hideous Things It’s been a year today since Andrew Weatherall died. A long, strange year. Because of everything that has happened since, it seems, in a way, like a long time ago. But also, because nothing has really happened, it has passed like no time at all. I remember that … Read More
A Few Good Things
It’s not all been bad… It’s undoubtedly been a difficult year. A horrible year even. But… there are some things that weren’t shit for me in 2020. Here’s some stuff (in no particular order and with no particular theme) that have made me smile in the weird year of the pandemic. Some of it is … Read More
The Year That Wasn’t
This post originally appeared on Hideous Things I also share my writing on Medium *** I’m half entertained and half spooked by the fact that I titled our first blog post, back in February, ‘Sorry Guys, Do You Mind Not Dancing?’ At the time, everything that has happened since would have seemed unimaginable. Five months … Read More
Lockdown Diary (Part Five)
I’ve not written one of these for a while. Lockdown has got less strict and less weird, I’ve been busier, seen more people, felt better. In what I would deem as a responsible way, I’ve broken the lockdown since it began. I was dropping some post at a friend’s house at the beginning of lockdown, … Read More
Lockdown Diary (Part Four)
I want to go somewhere mad. But nowhere is open. Anywhere. A weird consequence of globalisation that none of us were expecting. The world is small and quiet. Tomorrow it will be six weeks since I had a beer in a bar. It’s been six weeks since I rode a bus. I’ve sort of lost … Read More
Lockdown Diary (Part Three)
I’ve not written for a while. I read my last post back and I felt that it was very negative and I didn’t even end up sharing it on any social media. That was quite early on in the lockdown. Since then I’ve been a lot more upbeat, and assuming that this doesn’t go on … Read More
Lockdown Diary (Part Two)
I think I dealt with the first part of this pretty well. In some ways I was even weirdly glad of it all. I wouldn’t be left homeless or completely broke and, after months of little free time, diminished amounts of work meant that I would have more time for creative projects. As the weekend … Read More
Lockdown Diary
Two weeks and two days ago I was sat in a bar, just next door to where I was living, planning many things for the year ahead. I went down to Outlaws Yacht Club, as I did most days, where one of the owners had kindly offered to help out with advice about licensing our … Read More