Day 82. Nothing good ever happens on choctaw ridge. (23/3/19)

(Soundtrack: The Craig Charles Funk'n'Soul show on 6 Music.  Basically the only part of the station the BBC hasn't messed up with its recent changes. That and Cerys on Sunday morning, which remains a refuge of hymns and Welsh choirs and is all the better to wake to for that reason. Craig's just played Clydie King though. Her version of Bobbie Gentry's majestic 'Ode To Billy Joe' [which is, in and of itself, one of the greatest tunes ever recorded by human beings], sinuous, slinky, funky as hell.)

Let's talk laziness shall we? We'll get back to politics tomorrow. That's unavoidable. If you're not liking the political stuff you may want to avoid this place for the next couple of weeks, it's going to be rammed with the stuff and I fully expect to be exceptionally pissed off.

(And now, a remix of Eddie Floyd's 'Big Bird'. As with everybody of my age, I was introduced to this through the Jam's cover version. The original is better but thanks to Mr Weller for pointing us all in the right direction on that one. Move On Up as well.)

My definition of laziness is as follows:

Wake up, run 5k, mow the bloody garden - which is huge and seemed like a great idea when we bought the house, got a side garden which doesn't get used for anything at all but still has to be mowed - first cut of the year because it was nice and sunny and fairly warm. Until you were out in it and realised it was all illusion.

Job done though. While J worked far harder with weeding and stuff. I make the garden look level, she makes it look good.

So the laziness is this:

It's Saturday night and I could be going out. But I'm finding it hard to be arsed leaving the house.

I've got friends playing live. Full band playing the Ziggy Stardust album live. I like the Ziggy album. Liked it for quite a while. Best part of forty years. And I like the guys playing it. So I really want to see it.

But it requires leaving the house and I don't know if I can make that effort.

The waters are muddied somewhat by the fact that there's another band playing another classic album live, elsewhere, tonight. Playing two classic albums to be precise. Television's Marquee Moon and Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense. The second is a great album that contains at least four of my favourite songs ever made. But the first is a force of nature. There was a period when we lived in Leeds that J believed any cassette left in the car long enough would turn into Marquee Moon. This is clearly a gag nicked from Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens theory on copies of Queen's Greatest Hits but it reflected J's experience of any tape she put in to play. Didn't matter what it said on the sleeve, the first track would be See No Evil.

(And if you don't know what I'm talking about that's fine but you should probably start listening to some decent music.)

The problem with the second gig? Smithdown Road. A hive of activity, a lovely place, some real creative endeavours going on there at the moment.

But it's in the middle of nowhere.

South Liverpool is a foreign country. Smithdown Road is the most foreign part of it. Swear to god, from ours, I can be in Manchester quicker. (Get home slower though, the one way system in Manchester is designed purely to confuse scousers. They know we only feel safe when we see Porcelanosa on the road out.)

So, going to either gig is a mission, as our Matt's generation seems to say for every distance over a hundred yards.

What to do. What to do.

Tomorrow: the answer to that plus a lot on the difference between the two Brexit marches we've got going on. One trying to sort out this shitshow, the other to validate it. One had a million matching, the other 300. Guess which one that gobshite Farage was at.

Wrong side of history, mate. Nazis always are.