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June 28 Get on your dancing shoes, you sexy little swine...Well, it's now three days since I returned to civilisation - however, I'm still very much in the 'Glastonbury zone'!
This is probably because I spent pretty much all of yesterday reliving it all from the comfort of my sofa - as my dad very kindly videoed nine hours of festival highlights for me from BBC2!
Watching some bits, it really did take me back there - so much so that there were various points where I had to fight the urge to run out into my back garden and shout "I'm Spartacus!" at my bemused neighbours!
And one thing in particular that struck me when watching the footage was simply how vast the Glasto site is.
When you've been going for years, you sort of take this for granted a bit - however, when you see it on the telly it does look quite breathtaking.
It's no wonder so many people have trouble finding their tents after they've been out and about all day, watching bands and caning the psychedlic pear cider!
A few of us were joking about this when we were there. Glasto, yoi see, is constantly moving with the times in terms of technology. Indeed, there are actually places at the festival now where you can go and surf the web!
This being so, we were confidently predicting that, by about 2017, most punters at Glasto will arrive fully tooled-up with 'festival Satnav' - which you programme to take you back to your tent.
You can just imagine, can't you?
"Turn right at the stone circle, carefully step over the naked comatose hippy lying face-down in the mud, walk two hundred yards, try not to trip over any guy ropes, and you have reached your destination..."
No doubt you'd even be able to programme the thing so it speaks to you in the voice of the Glasto guvnor himself, Michael Eavis!
So, sterling work then from my dad in taping all the Glasto action for me. And how did I thank him?
Um, by accidentally taking his shoes to the festival with me, and getting them completely caked in mud!
My dad and I, you see, have each got a pair of shoes that are virtually identical. And yes, when I was packing my stuff ready to head off to Glasto, I went and picked up his shoes instead of mine!
I only realised my error though three days after I arrived at the festival, when a text message arrived from home suggesting that I may have accidentally taken the wrong pair!
Now my dad's feet are a size or so bigger than mine - so the fact that 'my' shoes had been feeling a bit more 'roomy' suddenly made a lot of sense!
I duly looked down at my feet remorsefully. By this point, the shoes were in a sorry state indeed - what with me having been wearing them the previous day when I'd gotten caught in a particularly boggy part of the festival site, which quickly became christened 'The Swamp Of Death'!
Honestly, just getting across the Swamp Of Death should be made into an Olympic sport. You couldn't go more than about two yards without the claggy mud making a serious claim on your footwear, trying its damnedest to wrench it off your feet each time you lifted one of your feet to tty and take a step.
It was all somewhat reminiscent of that scene in 'Never Ending Story' when Artax the horse sinks into the mud, never to be seen again - having committed the schoolboy error of letting the sadness of the swamp overtake him!
Needless to say, you'd have thought the shoes would've been a dead loss.
Amazingly though, a quick spin in the washing machine and a new pair of in-soles, and you'd never have known they'd been accidentally taken to Glasto!
Frankly, I think this unlikely recovery pisses all over the resurrection of Jesus!
I may even contact Brasher - for they are the manufacturer of the shoes - to see if they'd be interested in giving my dad shedloads of cash in return for featuring his shoes in their next advertising campaign! June 27 This is the modern way, faking it every day...Well, it's now two days since I got back from Glastonbury.
And it's always a bit strange returning back to the normal world - as by the end of the five days of mud and madness, you tend to find that you've long since forgetten how to behave like a normal human being!
I'm still buzzing off the memories though of all the shenanigans of the weekend - and indeed, there's a few things I forgot to mention in my last update.
First of all, me and the dudes that I camped with showed what a bunch of classy so-and-so's we are by spending the first evening after we arrived drinking Pimms!
And also on a booze-related note, the last day at the festival brought the surprise revelation that one of our gang still had pretty much a whole case of beer left over! Not wanting to have to cart this back to the car, the decision was made to give this away - and so I ended up wandering round our campsite, handing out cans to complete strangers!
It was ace - I felt like Father Christmas or something!
We're hoping that this random act of kindness has earned us a few karma points...
Meanwhile, another thing that's really stuck in my head about Glasto this year is a conversation I had when I met up with a couple of friends, and got chatting with one of their mates who I'd never met before.
The chap in question was a top bloke - and I was enormously flattered when his first words were something along the lines of: "Hi Rich, it's really great to meet you - I've heard so much about you and all the daft shit you get up to..."
What got me a bit worried though was when the guy went on to explain how he'd once 'Googled' me - and duly found loads of stuff about me!
Now it's never occurred to me to 'Google' myself, but the aforementioned exchange at Glasto got me intrigued - and so the other day, I gave it a go. And lo and behold, quite a lot of stuff about me promptly appeared in front of me on my computer screen!
I was quite surprised to say the least!
Most of the things that came up were features that I've written in the past for the BBC website - some from so long ago that I'd completely forgotten about the fact that I even wrote them!
If anyone's interested, below are links to a few of the features that are available to view to anyone who decides they might want to 'Google' me - though I'm not under any illusions really that anyone is sufficiently interested in me to want to do so!
Apart from, seemingly, my friends' mate who I met at Glasto..!
Click here for a feature from 2003, about me going to Glasto and accidentally starting the Church of Stuart Pearce!
Click here for a feature from 2003, about me going to another festival and fooling thousands of people into thinking I was a member of the Polyphonic Spree! Click here for a feature from 2003, about me recording my own Christmas single! Click here for a feature from 2004, about me going to yet another festival and fooling, um, at least a few people into thinking I was Jack White from the White Stripes! Click here for a feature from 2004, about me taking part in a bongo workshop! Click here for a feature from 2004, about me being a corporate whore and sitting with the hoi polloi at a footy match! Click here for a feature from 2004,about me growing a mullet! Click here for a feature from 2005, about me taking part in the annual Gloucester cheese race! Click here for a feature from 2005, about my slightly odd fascination with shop names with puns in them! Click here for a feature from 2005, about the time when I interviewed the late great John Peel Click here for a feature from 2006, about how I danced on stage with the Flaming Lips! June 25 Oh the boy's a slag - the best you ever had...Well, today saw me arrive back in one piece from my annual dirty weekend! Yes, I refer of course to the annual mudbath otherwise known as Glastonbury!
And it was a bit of a funny one this year.
For one, it was actually the tenth anniversary of my maiden trip to Michael Eavis's farm - which was back in 1997, when I arrived at the festival as a wide-eyed 17-year-old.
I'll never forget how awestruck I was as I wandered round for the first time and took in the sheer size and craziness of it all.
Moving on a decade, I guess by now I'm what you might call a Glasto veteran - as having well and truly gotten the bug on my first visit, I've only missed one Glasto since. I now know the site like the back of my hand... and the place has long held a very special place in my heart.
Moreover, whether it be Radiohead's jaw-droppingly brilliant set on the Pyramid Stage in 1997, or accidentally starting 'The Church of Stuart Pearce' in 2003, it would be no understatement to say that Glasto has provided me with some of the most memorable moments of my life.
It was with mixed feelings then that I turned up at Worthy Farm for this year's festival - as I arrived in the knowledge that it may well be my last 'proper' Glasto.
To enjoy Glasto to the full, you see, you really have to arrive on the Wednesday morning, and stay all the way through until the Monday.
However, if my plan to go into teaching works out, this simply won't be possible in future years - as the festival takes place during term-time.
The best I'd be able to manage would be hotfooting it down to Worthy Farm as soon as work finishes on the Friday, arriving late that night... before leaving on Sunday night in order to make it back in time to be back in school on the Monday morning.
And I'm not sure to be honest this is something I'd want to do. It'd just feel too compromised - and I'm not really someone who tends to do things by halves.
I'm trying to be philosophical about it though. Demand for Glasto tickets is always far in excess of supply - and having been eight times now, I guess I've had more than may fair share of the festival.
Maybe the time has come for me to step aside and let someone else have a chance of going?
Nevertheless, the weekend was pretty emotional. On first arriving and wandering round all my favourite spots - from the Stone Circle to the Field of Lost Vagueness - it felt a bit like I was saying goodbye forever.
But if 2007 does end up being my last ever visit to Glasto - well, what a send-off it was!
That said though, it was very much a weekend of ups and downs.
As with four of my previous seven visits to the festival, persistent rain and zillions of people trampling everywhere led to the whole site turning into a vague approximation of the Somme.
Now in previous years I've never been too phased by such adverse conditions. However, this year something inside me snapped. Suddenly, the mud just started to feel like a joke that had gone too far - and I found myself getting really fed up with the fact that it takes forever to get anywhere when you have to trudge through miles upon miles of sludge.
This situation wasn't helped by the fact that the festival's capacity was increased this year from 140,000 to 180.000. For me, this led to most parts of the site being simply too crowded.
My mood wasnt helped by the fact that, come the Saturday afternoon, I managed to lose my friends that I was camping with. And by this point, I had such a face on that I actually started toying with the idea of packing up there and then and buggering off home.
However, there then came a dramatic turning point - the catalyst being my mate Emilie.
Now I got to know Em about four years ago, as we both used to have the dubious joy of working for Boots The Chemists. She's an absolute scream, and when we first met we hit it off immediately through our shared love of Glasto.
Like me, Em had been successful in bagging a Glasto ticket for this year - and so in the run-up to the festival we were both like "Right, we'll definitely have to hook up for some shenanigans"!
Hooking up with people at Glasto is actually a lot more difficult though than you might think - even in this modern age of the mobile phone. The mobile networks tend to get so clogged up that it can take hours for text messages to get through. And when you try and ring a friend to arrange to meet up, the law of sod states that it'll invariably be at a point in the day when they've switched their phone off to try and save battery power.
Or, if the person's phone is switched on, the chances are they won't be able to hear it - due to either the noise of the music, or the fact that they're lying unconscious in a hedge somewhere after drinking too much of the lethal pear cider!
Meanwhile, even if you do manage to firm up a time and place to meet someone - well, with so much going on at Glasto that it's very easy to get completely waylaid and end up suddenly thinking "Shit! I was meant to be meeting Random Dave by the Joe Bananas blanket stall three hours ago!"
A mixture of these sorts of things saw me fail dismally to hook up with Em on either Wedneday, Thursday, Friday, or the first part of Saturday.
On Saturday night though, I switched my phone on... and within 30 seconds it started ringing. It was Em - and it turned out she was in pretty much the next field!
And so it was that I spent the rest of the night hanging out with Em and her mates - a big gang of girls from Loughborough! Apart from Em, I hadn't met any of them before - but they were all cool and all in very high spirits... not least because one of them had had her fella propose to her earlier in the day.
Aww!
Happily, the Loughborough massive all welcomed me instantly into the group - and it turned out to be one of the best nights I've ever had at Glasto.
It all started with us watching two bands that I hadn't, in all honesty, been all that arsed about seeing - namely The Kooks and The Killers.
As it was though, I ended up really enjoying both bands.
Being one of the festival's headline acts, The Killers were the last band on on the Pyramid Stage - with their set finishing sometime around 12.30am. The previous night, I'd seen the Arctic Monkeys do the same slot - and after they'd finished their blinding set, I'd simply staggered back to my tent and gone to bed.
After The Killers had finished though, the Loughborough massive decided unanimously that the night was not so much young as a mere embryo - and so I duly joined them for what turned out to be an epic bender!
And it was great! Armed with enough booze to sink a boat, we headed for the Field of Lost Vagueness - which is probably the craziest part of the whole festival.
Any description I give will never do Lost Vagueness justice - but 'Alice in Wonderland on acid' may give you a fair idea! There are always loads of weird and wonderful characters walking around - and attractions there this year ranged from a ballroom where you can have a silver-service meal, to a Happy Days-style diner where you can sit and have breakfast in a fairground dodgem!
There's always a real sense of deviance in the air at Lost Vagueness - especially after dark. Just being there feels slightly naughty!
We ended up whooping it up in a small marquee where a crazy bluegrass band were playing. In the sober light of day they were probably a bit rubbish - but being as hammered as we were, their efforts sounded like the greatest music we'd ever heard!
We even managed to give the band a name! Towards the end of their set, you see, their singer was like "Thank you, we've been XXXXX*."
However, he then went on to explain that him and the rest of the band didn't really like their name - and duly invited the audience to shout up if they could think of any possible new monikers.
Funnily enough, we'd actually been playing the Thinking Of Great Names For A Band game only an hour so earlier - and so we were immediately able to offer a suggestion.
"Corporate Whore!" the Loughborough massive and I all yelled in unison!
"Thank you to the guys at the back," the singer dude retorted. "We are now called Corporate Whore!"
After having a surreal drunken conversation with two blokes dressed up as a pimp and a pirate respectively, we ended up in the stone circle to watch the sunrise.
The sunrise was actually a bit crap, but the area around the stone circle is always good value at dawn - as it's here where you tend to find the most wasted people on the whole site, all of them staggering around like zombies and gibbering like the drug-addled lost souls that they frankly are!
This year, the stone circle was actually flanked by an amazing sculpture by the infamous guerilla artist Banksy - a giant Stonehenge made out of old portaloos!
The fun and games ended somewhere around 7am with me passing out somewhere that, um, wasn't my tent! A great night then, and one which really 'rescued' Glasto for me this year.
The only real low point was a certain incident during The Killers' set. We were quite near the front when they played, and a certain member of the Loughborough massive - who shall remain nameless! - suddenly found nature calling!
The crowd was so dense where we were stood though that she'd never have made it to the toilets in time - and so she was left with little choice but to squat down right there!
Not very ladylike - but I guess a woman has to do what a woman has to do.
What she didn't have to do though was accidentally piss all over my feet!
I mean, call me a boring bastard, but I'm not the sort of bloke who really gets off on having a woman piss on him!
Still, the fact that I had such an ace Saturday night meant that I was buzzing throughout all of Sunday. And even after five days of mud, I was sorry to leave when we cleared off as soon as the final band of the weekend, The Who, had finished.
Usually at Glasto I don't tend to leave till the Monday morning - however, we'd decided this time to make a quick escape in the hope of avoiding having to queue for hours.
As it was, it still took quite a while to get out... not least because the car kept getting stuck in the mud. On each of these occasions, my mate JHH and I had to get out of the car to give it a push while Paul - who was driving - hammered the accelerator.
Given that we were among the earlier leavers and yet still had these problems, I dread to think how long it must have taken the Monday morning departees to get off the site.
In balance then, a great Glasto! Needless to say, there's so much more about the weekend that I could bang on about - not least some of the other bands I saw. Two of the surprise highlights were Shirley Bassey's set on the Pyramid Stage, and an appearance in the Cabaret Tent by Four Poofs and a Piano - the house band from Jonathan Ross's chat show!
As anyone who's ever been will tell you though, there's so much more to Glasto than just the music. And it's often the more random things that happen that end up being the things you remember most fondly.
One of the most random things that happened this weekend was the fact that I ended up going to a Pagan mass wedding on the Sunday afternoon!
This came about when I got chatting to a couple while watching a band. It turned out that they were among those getting hitched - and they duly invited me along!
I was going to go along in a suit and everything - as in the Field of Lost Vagueness, there is actually a place where you can hire crazy outfits!
Alas though, the Saturday night bender meant I only actually woke up about 15 minutes before the ceremony was due to start - so I ended up hotfooting it there still wearing the previous day's mud-splattered clothes that I'd passed out in!
I was only sad that the happy couple didn't put together a Glasto-themed 'wedding list' - where, rather than the usual stuff like toasters and kettles, the guests can choose from items such as tent pegs and thermarest sleeping mats!
Meanwhile, in other randomness, I also went to the Hare Krishna tent at one point during the weekend and blagged some food! The offer of free scran is a gimmick that the Hare Krishna dudes use to get people to come in - and as you sit down to eat, they start doing all their chanting and suchlike!
I was a bit worried that I might end up getting brainwashed - though at the point of my visit I was so monged on pear cider that I think I was beyond being corrupted!
All in all, looking back at everything that happened at Glasto this year, I only have two real regrets.
The first of these is the fact that I never managed to pay a visit to my mate Aron at his campsite - and I say this because him and his mates had decided to splash out and hire a luxury winnebago, complete with hit shower and flatscreen TV!
The second regret meanwhile is that I missed a chance to be able to say that I've performed at Glasto - as there was a small marquee at the festival this year where, at certain times during the day, you could play Singstar!
For those of you who don't know, Singstar is a game you can get for consoles such as Playstations and X-Boxes. It's pretty much like karaoke - however, it has the added excitement of giving you a score based on how well you sing!
It's absolutely genius - indeed, the Singstar-based shenanigans at my 27th birthday party last year are still the stuff of legend among my friends who were there!**
Alas though, I never quite managed to make it to the marquee at any of the designated times...
Still, I'm not under any illusions - in the grand scheme of things, I'm sure me singing 'Ace of Spades' by Motorhead wouldn't exactly have gone down in history as one of the all-time great Glasto moments..!
* Erm, I was so trashed that I can't remember the original name of the bluegrass band!
** Some footage of myself and friends playing Singstar and desecrating various pop classics is available to view on YouTube. Click here for links..! June 14 There are places I remember...Though I've unleashed a small flurry of ramblings this week, a lot of people have commented on the fact that I haven't really been updating this site a great deal since I returned from my travels.
"I went on your site today, and the last blog entry is about a week old!" people have grizzled...
There is however a good reason for this. Yes, now I'm back from my adventure and back to living a relatively humdrum life, I simply don't have much to say really!
I mean, I could write an update every day if I really wanted to. However, I'm not sure whether entries along the lines of "Today I went to the shops, and then sat and read the paper" would really make for particularly scintillating reading to be honest!
I'm pleased to report though that help is at hand for those of you who have been checking for updates and found that there haven't been any. Yes, rather than simply logging on every few days to check, this site does actually have a function where you can subscribe to receive 'alerts' via email!
Yes, every time I add an update, you get an email to tell you! Which is quite clever really...
To sign up for these 'alerts' - well, there's a little box on th front page of the site, tucked away below my profile on the left-hand side. And in this box, you can click on various commands - one of them being 'Sign up for alerts'.
It's that easy!
Meanwhile, while we're on the subject of feedback I've had about this site, a few people have said that my updates during my travels came so thick and fast that they couldn't keep up with them!
If that was you - well, in chronological order, I've set up a list of direct links to my witterings about some of the more exciting parts of the trip... so you can click on them and read them at your leisure without having to trawl laboriously through my archive of updates!
You can view this list by clicking here. Also, I'll leave it for the foreseeable on the front page of the site - on the right-hand side just below my photo album. Enjoy! June 13 You're poison runnin' through my veins..!Summer is a time of year that well and truly kicks arse! And one of the many reasons this is so is because the weather means it's often possible to have barbeques!
I attended my first BBQ of the summer at the weekend - at my own house!
And it was ace...
We had loads of family round and it was a right laugh. There was even a bit of debauchery, with a feature of the afternoon having been a certain uncle who shall remain nameless making regular forays behind the smmer house, in order to chuff on a series of suspiciously sweet-smelling hand-rolled 'cigarettes'!
In spite of these outrageous high-jinks though, it was another uncle who proved himself on the day to be my most rock'n'roll uncle.
Enter Uncle Mick, one of my dad's older brothers...
Now when I was really young, I used to genuinely think that Uncle Mick was actually Mick Jagger! And looking back, there was definitely some logic in my thinking.
After all, they were both called Mick - and when you're three, you don't really have much concept of the fact that there are lots of people in the world with the same name!
Plus, Uncle Mick always seemed to be hammered whenever he was round our house - so obviously, that meant he must be a rock star or something!
Of course, there came a point when I realised that Uncle Mick was actually Mick Fisher rather than Mick Jagger!
However, a story Uncle Mick told us at our BBQ, which I'd never heard before, suggested to me that he's nevertheless up there with the venerable Rolling Stone in the rock'n'roll stakes.
Uncle Mick, you see, has a mate called Jonah, who's a bit of a local legend around the part of Nottingham where I live. And around 15 or 20 years ago, the two of them managed to blag tickets for a music event that was being broadcast live on television - and recorded, for some reason, in Nottingham.
The name of this music event escapes me - however, there were loads of big names appearing, including David Gilmour from Pink Floyd.
And as you do, Jonah had decided to go along dressed up as Alice Cooper - full make-up and all!
I'm sure this must have been quite a sight! The thing that's truly funny though is that Uncle Mick had rushed to the event straight from a building site where he'd been working - and so in stark contrast to Jonah, who had presumably spent hours getting ready, he turned up wearing dirty jeans, work boots, and a hard hat!
In other words, it must have looked like Alice Cooper turning up with the bricklayer guy from the Village People!
Amazingly, Jonah's Alice Cooper get-up was so convincing that him and Mick were ushered past the crowds waiting outside and straight into the venue where the show was being recorded.
Yes, the organisers thought he actually was Alice Cooper!
That's not the best bit though. When they got inside, Jonah and Mick were watching David Gilmour doing his soundcheck - when they suddenly found themselves being approached by Jonathan Ross, who was presenting the TV coverage of the event.
"Hello Alice," Wossy trilled enthusiastically.
However, Jonah quickly stopped him in his tracks by saying: "It's Mister Furnier to you if you don't mind" - what with Alice Cooper's real name actually being Vincent Furnier!
Amazingly, this actually led to a grovelling apology from Wossy before he skulked away,tail well and truly between his legs!
All in all, I'm sure you'll all agree that this is a pretty funny story. Certainly blows my own tale of rock star impersonation out of the water - namely, the time back in 2003 when I managed to fool thousands of people at a music festival into thinking I was a member of the Polyphonic Spree!
I actually wrote a story about this escapade at the time for the BBC website that's still available to view online. If anyone's interested in having a look, simply click here... June 12 Come make my dreams honey, hard as it seems, loving me is as easy as pie..In my last update on this site, I wrote about how much much I've enjoyed catching up with friends and family over the last few weeks since I got back from my travels.
And to follow on from that, today saw me have a proper chat for the first time in months with one of my very dearest mates, Mr Andrew Best - or simply 'The Lothario', as many of you may know him!
Now The Lothario is a character who I would not hesitate to describe as a legend. The adventures that the two of us have had together in the six or seven years that we've known each other could easily fill a book; and whether it be arriving fully 'blacked-up' at a fancy dress party having decided to come as Barry White*, or simply performing his party piece - a hilarious impersonation of Rolf Harris having sex - he's a dependable font of hilarity to all who know him!
Sadly, The Lothario is someone I just don't get to see enough of - as like most of my best friends, he lives bloody miles away!
Whenever I don't happen to be gallivanting round the world however, we do try and speak regularly on the blower - and my phone conversations with him are always entertaining. In fact, we usually end up rabbiting on for hours, like a pair of old women!
And this latest chinwag was utterly priceless - not least due to a piece of news that The Lothario chose to share with me about a new job recently started by his fiancee, Amanda.
Having just begun in this post, Amanada has been busying herself reading all of her new comployers' policy documents. And one of them contains possibly the greatest 'typo' I've ever heard.
"Staff are strictly forbidden," the document in question reads, "from leaving the premises during their shit"!
Oh, how we laughed!
That said, The Lothario's attempt to ring me hadn't gotten off to the best of starts - as initially, he'd actually dialled a wrong number!
Amazingly though, the Nottingham landline number that he'd rung - which turned out to be just one digit different to mine - did actually put him through to a house where someone called Rich presumably lives! We know this much, because when The Lothario said "Hi, can I speak to Rich?", the woman who'd answered the phone replied "No, sorry, Rich is away at the moment - he's been playing at a music festival this weekend."
The Lothario duly tried ringing me on my mobile, successfully dialling the correct number this time - and when I answered, he proceeded to baffle the hell out of me by quizzing me about this mystery music festival he fully believed I'd been playing at!
I don't know who was more confused to be honest - me, because I had no idea what The Lothario was on about... or The Lothario himself, because he'd been lulled into believing that his mate Rich, who he'd previously thought not without good reason to be completely tone-deaf, had suddenly developed sufficient musical wherewithal to be taking the festival circuit by storm!
Of course, between the two of us, we worked out what must have happened.
Though that's by no means the end of the confusion! For at some point in the near future, some Nottingham musician who happens to share my name will arrive home from his triumphant festival appearance - and will no doubt be utterly baffled and possibly even a bit scared when his 'other half' tells him "Oh, and by the way, some bloke called The Lothario rang for you..."
* If you want to see for yourself photographic evidence of The Lothario dressed up as Barry White, simply click here. It's not for the faint-hearted though..! June 11 Sometimes I feel my heart will overflow. Hello! I've just got to let you know!So, I've been back home in Nottingham for nearly two weeks now. And it's just ocurred to me that I haven't really said much about what it's like being home.
Well, it's certainly felt a bit weird. Funny as it may sound, the fact that I've been able to go about my daily business without having to drag a huge rucksack around with me has actually felt quite strange.
I'm starting to get used to it now- but at first, I felt a bit like a snail without its shell.
Which I suppose is a slug, technicallly!
I also realised that I'd started to think about Nottingham with increasingly rose-tinted specs while I was away.
Don't get me wrong, I love my home city, and I know that it's far from being the worst place in the world.
However, it dawned on me very quickly that it's not quite the leafy oasis that I'd started deluding myself into thinking it was.
Just one of the negative things that I'd sort of forgotten about, but which I was confronted with as soon as I returned, was the sad fact that the city is full of fucking chavs!
Mind you, while you often feel threatened when there are a load of chavs lurking about, my attempts to catch up with what's been going on in Nottingham while I've been away suggest that the biggest potential menace locally is actually Chris Tarrant!
Yes, some of you will know about this already - but for the benefit of those of you who don't, the 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?' host was actually arrested a few weeks ago at a curry house in the city, after he got into a row with some other diners and ended up lobbing a spoon at them!
Without doubt, this is the funniest story I've heard in ages!
If you want the full dirt, click here!
Another crap thing about Nottingham is the fact that the city unquestionably has the most miserable, charmless bus drivers on earth. For instance, I tried to pay £1.30 to go into town the other day - not realising that the fare went up to £1.40 while I was away. And honestly, you'd have thought I'd keffed right in the driver's face by the way he scowled at me as I fumbled around in the pockets of my jeans for the extra ten pence.
Tossbag...
Meanwhile, another crap thing, though not anything directly to do with Nottingham, is the fact that I ended up spending about half a week ill in bed within days of arriving home.
I'm still not sure exactly what was wrong with me - but I just felt exhausted, and was aching all over.
The popular theory among my immediate family is that my body was simply in shock from actually sleeping in the same bed for two nights running for the first time in ages!
Still, I'm fighting fit again now - and apart from those few days in bed, I've actually been quite busy since I got back... albeit in a 'man of leisure' kind of way.
So what exactly have I been up to?
Well, I've been to two weddings, and also went down to London with my mate JHH to watch the England footy team play Brazil - our esteemed national team's first ever match at the new Wembley Stadium!
And it was great!
Just walking up Wembley Way made me feel incredibly nostalgic, as some of my fondest memories from childhood are of the numerous occasions when I walked up that very same stretch of concrete with my dad, on our way to see Nottingham Forest play in various cup finals, back in the dim and distant days of the early 1990s when Forest were actually still quite good!
Less happier memories from those games however are of the toilets at the old Wembley, which were infamous in their inadequacy at being able to cope with tens of thousands of bladders full of over-priced lager. By half-time you'd literally be wading through small rivers of piss.
Thankfully, this was an issue that the powers-that-be addressed when they decided to fallen and rebuild Wembley - as the new stadium is said to have more bogs than any other building on earth. Around 2,600, apparently!
And talking of the beautiful game, I've also played five-a-side myself a couple of times since I got back!
My first game was literally the first time I'd booted a ball in about six months - though I'm pleased to report that I scored a goal with practically my first kick!
Obviously then, the old magic's still there! However, it wasn't long before it dawned on me that my time away has left me shockingly unfit!
On a more general note, it's certainly been fun catching up with friends and family over the last few weeks... and of course Doris, my parrot!
A lot has certainly been happening among my circle of late. As well as the two aforementioned weddings, I actually have another friend who got married at the tail-end of May - only I didn't quite make it back in time to go along to her bash.
I did manage to get a telegram sent to her and her new husband though to wish them hearty congratulations - whilst I was in Russia! How smooth am I?!
Various friends have also been busy making babies - with much hilarity surrounding one of the new arrivals!
The arrival in question, you see, was a third boy for proud parents Mick and Bronagh - who are great friends of mine who live over in Northern Ireland.
Coming from a good Catholic family, Mick and Bro naturally set wheels into motion immediately after the birth to arrange a christening for their new baby. However, this hit the skids when they couldn't find any priests who were available to officate the ceremony!
All was not lost however - for at this point, Mick's brother Zippy enters the story!
"You can't find a priest?" said Zippy. "Well that's no bother - I'll just become a priest myself, and then I can do the christening!"
Some of you reading this will have met Zippy, who's also a great friend of mine. For the benefit of those of you who haven't - well, in the nicest possible way, the guy is a complete nutcase!
If you don't believe me, click here to check out of this video I stuck on YouTube, which shows Zippy interupting a bongo workshop that was taking place at a music festival we went to last summer - by leaping into the middle of the drum circle, and unleashing some crazy dance moves!
Now given Zippy's trademark craziness, everyone thought he was just joking when he suggested that he himself was going to become a priest.
But oh no!
For Zippy went straight off to a computer - and found an online church that, for a small fee, will ordain you as a priest over the web!
Yes, he's now officially Father Zippy Kearney! And he's adamant that he'll be making his debut by conducting his new nephew's christening.
Bonkers!
Possibly even more shocking though was a revelation from my brother Al.
As some of you may know, Al and I are of the view that the video to 'Hello' by Lionel Richie - which you can view on YouTube by clicking here - is one of the funniest things of all time. So last year, when I heard that the cheesy balladeer had announced a live date at Nottingham Arena, I promptly snapped up a pair of tickets and presented them to Al a few weeks later as his Christmas present.
I felt quite pleased with myself at having come up with such a great idea for a gift. Oh so I'd thought!
Yes, upon returning from my travels, one of the first things I asked Al when I spoke to him was how the gig had been.
"Um, I dunno," replied Al slightly sheepishly. "I decided I couldn't be arsed to go in the end, so I flogged the tickets on eBay"!
Honestly, with that sort of gratitude, he's definitely getting something crap like some socks next Christmas..!
So what else to report since I got back?
Well after all the excitement of my travels, I've actually been taking great joy in just kicking back and taking pleasure in really mundane things. Watching EastEnders, stuff like that. Though I can't quite get my head round Dot having a baby - did Bradley's dad shag her and get her pregnant or something while I was away?
He certainly seems to have shagged everything else that moves in Albert Square..!
I've also been enjoying catching up with what's going on in the world of music - something I lost touch with whie I was away.
As documented in my last update, I ended my recent gig famine last Thursday by going to two in the same day!
Also, just before I left to go on my travels, I arranged to have the music magazine NME sent to my mum and dad's house every week - and so the last few weeks have seen me slowly ploughing my way through the last five months' editions!
There's certainly been a lot of good albums come out while I've been away. The perilous state of my bank account at the moment means I can barely afford to buy any of them, obviously - however, thanks to my dad, that hasn't been an issue!
My dad, you see, is pretty canny when it comes to computers and stuff - and so a few weeks before my return, I sent him by email a fairly long list of albums, asking if he'd mind downloading them for me!
Now I'm sure you'll agree that he'd have been well within his rights to tell me to piss off, and possibly even call me a cheeky bounder as well! Fair play though to my dad - for not only did he download everything on my wish list and burn it all onto CDs for me, he even printed up sleeves for each album with the cover artwork and tracklistings!
I'm particularly enjoying the new albums by the Arctic Monkeys and the Arcade Fire. Can't wait to see both bands play at Glastonbury in just a few days' time..! June 08 From Michael Owen on the telly to my black Kawasaki, wine in my wellies and a sack of wacky-baccy...One thing I've really missed over the last five months whilst being away from the UK is having regular opportunities to see live music.
Okay, so that's not entirely true. There were opportunities.
However, call me a narrow-minded imperialist, but Mongolian throat singing, interesting as it is, is simply not really my cup of tea. And Russian pop music, frankly, is just shit!
Yesterday though, I started making up for lost time - by going to two gigs in the space of one day!
What's more, I didn't pay to get into either of them!
How rock'n'roll is that?!
The first of these two gigs was actually a free in-store appearance yesterday evening at Nottingham's premier record emporium Fopp, by the singer Nick Harper, who's currently promoting a new album.
Many of you probably won't have heard of the boy Harper. Indeed, I would probably never have heard of him were it not for my good friend Mikey B, who invited me along to go and see him play in Birkenhead of all places back in 2003.
A bit of background then - Nick Harper is actually the son of Roy Harper, a famous folk singer from the 1960s... who was immortalised in the Led Zeppelin song 'Hats Off To Roy Harper'.
This is by no mean though some kind of hapless Julian Lennon figure though, trying to forge a career in music off the back of daddy's name. No, though he doesn't have the huge record sales to show for it, Nick is fantastically talented in his own right - and if you're into your music, I'd strongly advise you to check out some of his stuff. He's been releasing albums for around a decade, and there's quite a few tracks from his back catalogue that you can download for free from his website.
It's in the live arena though where Nick truly comes into his own. He usually performs on his own with just an acoustic guitar - though if this conjures up the terrible image of James Blunt and his horrendous ilk, I'd like to stress that Nick as about as far from the archtypical Drippy Twat With Acoustic Guitar as you can get.
In stark contrast, Nick is often referred to as 'the Hendrix of the acoustic guitar'. And yesterday, he he proved that he can turn on a mesmirising performance even in the rather soul-less surrounds of a record store.
The set was short - just six songs. Nevertheless, it was amazing to the few of us who had actually popped in to Fopp purely to see Nick.
And as for those who'd unwittingly stumbled upon the scene - well, goodness knows what they must have made of it!
One song, you see, that Nick usually always plays whenever he appears live is called 'Guitar Man'. And in the middle of this track, he always throws a snippet from 'Whole Lotta Love' - where, thanks to a load of effects pedals, he somehow manages to make his acoustic guitar sound like the rumbling bowels of satan himself, as he jams on the aforementioned Led Zep song's famous riff!
Then, as if proving he can out-Jimmy Page Jimmy Page isn't enough, Nick allows the song to disintegrate into a deafening roar of feedback... before unleashing an ear-splitting scream that Page's Led Zep co-pilot Robert Plant would be proud of!
In Fopp, this made for an amazing spectacle - not least because of the dumbfounded reaction of various old biddies present, who'd probably just walked into the shop to buy a Michael Ball album!
And their was actually one young child crying and covering her ears!
Priceless..!
Meanwhile, after playing a few songs off his new record, Nick finished with a riotous version of his song 'Love Junky' - and with his guitar being connected wirelessly to the speakers, this culminated in him leaping off the stage into the audience, and spending the last few minutes wandering around the store whilst riffing like a mofo!
Nick - you rock! So much so that I've just joined the 'Nick Harper, son of Roy, is a unique musical genius' group on Facebook!
So that was the first gig - and arguably more than enough rock'n'roll shenanigans for one day!
Later in the evening however, my mobile phone beeped. It was a text from my mate James - who's a reporter for our local evening newspaper here in Nottingham.
Now as a perk of his job, James gets to go to quite a lot of gigs for free, in return for then writing a few words about them for the paper. And his text read "Got 'guest list plus one' to go and see the Concretes tonight at the Rescue Rooms. Fancy coming along?"
Well, I'm never one to look a gift horse in the mouth... plus, I've not seen James in ages either. So I quickly found myself hopping on the trusty number 45 bus into town to meet him.
It was kind of weird being back at the Rescue Rooms - as the last time I was there for a gig, just before Christmas, I actually spent part of the evening on stage myself!
This was because the gig in question was 'Clough Aid' - a night of live music by local bands that I partly organised, to help raise money for the Brian Clough Statue Fund. And in my capacity as co-organiser, I did end up going on stage on various occasions to address the crowd - although sadly I never managed anything as eloquent as Bob Geldof's infamous cry of "Give us yer fookin' money!"
There are actually some photos from Clough Aid buried somewhere on this site if any of you want to laugh at a picture of me looking slightly sheepish in front of around 350 people.
You can view them by clicking here...
But enough of Clough Aid - what of the Concretes? Well, I'm pleased to report that they were really good - though gig of the day was undoubtedly the boy Harper.
At the bottom of this entry, you can see a couple of pics I took with my mobile phone of his appearance at Fopp... |
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