Happy Halloween!
This is my Mum and Dad on their allotment this morning.

If you go out to dinner in Western Australia make sure you only order beer to drink with your meal or this will happen:
(Thanks to well travelled Swiss Tom for this.)

Our lounge/living room/dining-room-stroke-TV-room/comfy room/sitting room/drawing room/salon was painted on Sunday. Pewter it said on the tin. Under the harsh lights of the DIY store it looked like a nice cool modern shade. On the walls of our sitting room it looked dark grey. Not very attractive. We wasted a whole Sunday painting. Sore limbs and paint in the hair by 8pm but we hoped it would grow on us. I came downstairs on Monday morning and walked into the grey room and stopped dead in my tracks. The room looked like the inside of an oven. Or a jail cell in a bad, ‘wobbly-sets’ TV movie. Or Billy Mitchells flat in Eastenders.
We endured Monday evening TV (Six Feet Under and The Sopranos) in the grey room but instead of lingering over the studly James Gandolfini my eyes kept wandering over the grey walls causing me huge waves of despair.
Tuesday night saw me back at the DIY store purchasing brilliant white emulsion (which was the original colour before Sunday). The ovens days are numbered.

The House of Spellcnut
Very strange! And I was not consulted! Courtesy of Mike. Can I now join McQueen and McCartney at Gucci?

New York Stories.
I know where Woody Allen and Diana Ross live.

I also know that:

a Boeing 777 can fly at 710 mph

the view of Manhattan from a yellow cab before entering the Queens/Midtown tunnel can take your breath away

a walk in Central Park on a sunny Sunday morning with my boyfriend and our friend Rob is very agreeable for the soul

you can bump into old friends while cd shopping

those old friends will get you drunk in a Times Square tavern

you will have a NYC sized hangover till the sun goes down the next day

the sun going down over New Jersey viewed from atop the Empire State Building is an extraordinary sight

tickets to a top Broadway show can be bought at 100 bucks a pop

top Broadway show ‘Hairspray’ is indeed fantastic

the movie ‘Rules of Attraction’ is dreadful

the Metropolitan Museum of Art has a much better gift shop than the Guggenheim

afternoon tea at the Plaza is only 30 bucks

three pairs of Old Navy khakis is never enough

a brown stone in Chelsea is a great place to stay for a week

I couldn’t live in a brown stone in Chelsea if I lived in NYC

I’m not buffed or tanned enough to live in a brown stone in Chelsea

you can buy a ‘home enema’ in a drug store

you can’t buy paracetamol in a drug store

the Museum of Sex is very unsexy

the insult ‘bummer’ means very little to a NYC bummer

after at least ten visits in the last twenty years I never tire of being a tourist here.

I shall be out of town on urgent business for the next week. Listen to this while I'm away please. It's my own composition and reminds me of dark autumn days before a storm, of piles of swept leaves and dogs disturbing children and of dented bins rattling down a street in slow motion. Be safe everyone, back in a week.

Well said.
"The vast majority of weblogs are amateur and will stay amateur, because a medium where someone can publish globally for no cost is ideal for those who do it for the love of the thing. Rather than spawning a million micro-publishing empires, weblogs are becoming a vast and diffuse cocktail party, where most address not 'the masses' but a small circle of readers, usually friends and colleagues. This is mass amateurization, and it points to a world where participating in the conversation is its own reward."

There aren't too many women I want to sit opposite on the tube and stare at but she is one of them. Fascinating. And he has met her! Impressed I was.

(Update: He hasn't met her at all! It was all an elaborate plan to impress me! Tut tut Mr J. And me a married man too!)

The three little pigs are off to

this Saturday for a week. We want to see this.

Barneys here we come!

Thats me in red.

Just got back from the movies. Went to see 'My Little Eye' which was ok. I loved the fact that it was shot on cheap DV cameras and that the set designer seemed to take inspiration for the 'grungy' looking house from spellcnut towers. I didn't care a fuck that they all got killed (apologies if anyone was planning on seeing the movie) and none of them were particularly sexy so they probably deserved it. Reviews promised scary but to be honest 'Juwanna Mann' looks a lot more frightening.
Last night at Wembley we saw A-Ha. Who were nice. Not being as big a fan as Darren or Martin left me in the position of only knowing 3 or 4 songs but when they played them I tapped my foot approvingly. We were quite near the front (amid the screaming 30-something ladies/fags) so at least Morten was pleasing to look at for a couple of hours (in fetching beige leather trousers no less). 'Hunting High and Low' was particularly memorable. £10 to park the car, c*nts! (Wembley not A-Ha).

Notorious Norwegian homosexuals

We're off to Wembley tonight to see A-Ha. We'd heard a rumour that Brother Beyond had reformed to support A-Ha on this stadium-nostalgia-fest so we snapped up some tickets pretty sharpish. We've since learned that this was a cruel hoax played on us by Martin who merely wanted a ride in our car to Wembley. A-Ha were the Nordic pretty boys sporting bleached and slashed denims and rippling muscles who very nearly became the biggest thing of the whole decade and were certainly untouchable in terms of squeal factor and hitmaking during one six-month period, finally knocking Duran Duran off the pedestal they had clung on to for years. Anecdotes of how this unassuming trio had to live in a dingy Oslo bedsit eating nothing but mousetrap cheese are legendary, as 'hunky' God-squad crooner Morten Harket, alleyway-faced guitarist and chief scribe Pal (pronounced 'Paul' and with a circle over the 'a', but I can't do that with my keyboard) Waaktaar and curlytop keyboardist Mags Furuholmen had to wait, pennyless and pissed off, for their flagship song "Take On Me" to be released for the FIFTH time before MTV showed the video and it rocketed up to No.2. That video, although almost too 80s for the 80s, was way ahead of its time and remains technically one of the greatest made, with the tearful story of how a girl enjoying a coffee in a caff while reading a comic finds herself being drawn into the story by the Morten as he battles against a bunch of gay motorbike boys. Happy ending ahoy (except for the cafe owner, as the girl disappeared without paying for her frothy coffee) as the dismal girl watches Morten batter himself against the walls of her unfeasibly large bedroom (ripped off from Ken Russells 'Altered States'), sweating and screaming (and yet not waking her parents at all) in order to shake off his inky cartoon existence and join the human race. The song told far less of a story than the flick, but it was more than enough to make A-Ha the biggest band in the UK for the next 18 months. Hit after hit followed, including their solitary No.1 "The Sun Always Shines On TV", the oddball “Train Of Thought” and the genuinely poignant "Hunting High And Low", which also monikered their first album. The domination continued through redoubtable pop catchies, namely the ultra-drummed “I’ve Been Losing You” and the awesome “Cry Wolf” until they went weird and pretentious with “Manhattan Skyline” which was notably their first single not to reach the Top 10 and suffered from Waaktaar’s over-confidence with the English language. There followed the worst-ever Bond theme for the worst-ever Bond film "The Living Daylights" in the death throes of 1987 and the rest of the decade was spent just missing the Top 10 before the 90s kicked in and Waaktaar made them all ludicrously aloof with songs like "Seemingly Nonstop July" which the public duly ignored. Their 1990 cover of "Crying In The Rain" was awesome, but from '89 onwards they had become a single-every-two-years band of what-might-have-been proportions, which continues to this day. Their place in pop folklore is eternal, however, thanks to that first video which is still more than watchable and admirable with age.

And so the 2002 riding season comes to a polite stop in the station, seatbelts are unfastened and lap bars are raised. Here are my top 5 rollercoasters experienced this year:
1. GE Force - Holiday Park, Germany.
Without a doubt the greatest steel coaster in Europe and probably the world. On a sunny Saturday during the World Cup this baby was flying through the trees like shit off a shovel. The most fun you can have with your pants pulled up.
2. Gwazi - Busch Gardens, Florida (see pic above).
A massive mess of twisted timber that reaches awesome speeds on banked corners that look highly illogical and extremely deadly. Not for children.
3. The Hulk - Islands of Adventure, Florida.
If this beauty was entered for the Turner Prize it would win. Stunning to look at and staggering to ride. It's green, it's mean and ever so dramatic. Like me.
4. Rock 'n' Roller Coaster - Disney Studios, Paris. (pic taken before ride was put into a dark building)
Heaps better than it's cousin in Florida. Smooth and fast with a breathtaking launch.
5. Grand National - Pleasure Beach, Blackpool.
For air-time there's no better woody around today. Older than my Mum and Dad but aging so much better.

Thanks to Darren for riding all these with me. Next coasters should be LA and Vegas in Spring 2003.

He's got his own business deconstructing classic bikes and cars in California. He's about to marry this porn star. He's got two kids. He's the star of a new show on the Discovery Channel called 'Monster Garage'. He owns two pit bull terriers. His skin ink is marvellous. Thank you Jockohomo for bringing this stud to my attention.

I returned from the frozen North to gifts from him. A lovely t-shirt from hip shop 'Plum' with a decal of a graffiti artist spray painted onto the shirt. He's an eye for gifts has our kid. Actually it wasn't cold at all in Northumberland or Blackpool. Indian summer they call it. Took my coat but didn't need it. Two days with my parents passed uneventfully. Two days in Blackpool passed in a fury of house hunting and rollercoaster riding. Has no one in Blackpool heard of the house doctor? I viewed dump after dump, moving from room to room making the obligatory complimentary remarks; "ooooooooo, I love what you've done with that woodchip wallpaper!". Saw one excellent home in a smart area of the North Shore so may go back for another peek soon. Friday morning saw me running round the Pleasure Beach riding all the coasters (13 beauties) in an hour and a half before my lunchtime train to London. It was a lovely sunny morning and the views of Blackpool from the top of the Big One were stunning.
Twas lovely to be back in London this weekend. Got drunk last night at the local dump of a gay bar which was packed to the gills for Pam Ann. Except Pam had cancelled earlier in the day but the doorman was failing to point this out to people as they payed £4 to get in. Much bemused looks when Paula Pure (ex Kajagoogoo backing vocalist, oh the dizzy heights of showbiz) walked out to find a packed crowd expecting 'chicken or fish?' jokes from Pam. What a dump.
Saw 'One Hour Photo' today. Disappointed. I got a bit excited when they showed a trailer for Danny Boyles new zombie movie '28 Days Later'. Any 30 somethings out there who remember a BBC TV show called 'The Survivors' from the 70's? Looks a bit like that.