Off to Blackpool tonight after work. Supposed to be a sunny bank holiay weekend *must pack the bucket and spade* Listened to Sade's Lovers Rock this morning. Forgotten how stunning it was. That album meant the world to me in 2001. Traumatic end of relationship stuff merged with elation and the sheer wonder of regeneration with Darren. Her smoky voice sounds so good on this sparse hip-hop set *must remember Sade album for car journey tonight* King Of Sorrow, pah!

The Go! Team play their biggest headlining shows soon (they are doing bigger venues on the Basement Jaxx tour though). Good luck to them. They're a ramshackle experience live but never less than exhilerating and bouncy. They always make me smile. We saw them three times last autumn, the last time in Stockholm. I took this shot that night.

How can you not love a band that has two drummers? The Go! Team, Bow Wow Wow, Adam and the Ants, Pigbag, Mouth (actually they had four drummers). Here's a pic I took of the cute Japanese girl drummer from The Go! Team.

The Blue States also played at that show but they were a bit dull in that awful Embrace way. Nice bass player though. Here's Darren drunkenly telling him our room number (despite that gummy image he did actually have a full set of nice teeth).


This ad in a mobile phone shop in Stockholm tickled my fancy as it contained two reasons to smile. 1 - it says 'fart' and 2 - there's a picture of a rollercoaster on it. Small minds eh.


We turned a corner and discovered these beautiful deserted steps. While looking up at them a large red balloon appeared and began to bounce and descend the steps slowly. Before it reached us it burst with a bang and we jumped. I turned round convinced I would find Ingmar Bergman and his film crew.

The balloon bit was a lie.

It was wet and cold most of that weekend in Stockholm but it was still a beautiful city.


We looked at weirdy art.

We explored lots of gloomy, wet and dark alleys.

And warmed up in here.

We slept here.

And this message on the window of the huge Kulturhuset summed up our trip.

Dang! There's a festival in June but we'll be in New York when it's on. Could have been the ideal time to tick Idaho off the list. On second thoughts.

Tina, ya lard, get some food!

Gosh! Napoleon Dynamite came out on DVD today. We got it and watched it and laughed a lot. I saw it twice on the plane to LA and laughed like a drain and Darren told me to shush. It's warm and comforting too. Idiots!

We've moved locations at work. Same floor different view. I'm back to overlooking St James Park and Liz's back garden. There are crates to unpack, computers to reconfigure and I've just received two very interesting packages (one from Zandra Rhodes and the Other from Andrew Logan, what could they possibly want?).

I just tipped my new keyboard upside down and retrieved a big pile of crumbs for my lunch. Hurrah!

Last night while we watched Gosford Park (again) Edward heard/saw something suspicious in the garden and burst through his dog flap at 80mph taking half of the flap with him round his neck like some Leigh Bowery costume for dogs. So, today has been taken up with a trip to a pet superstore to purchase a new one (medium sized this time) and then fitting it. The instructions say it's a doddle to fit but that is clearly a big fat lie as I have pulled out what hair I have left in frustration. Never mind, it's fitted now and he's skipping in and out of the garden putting the flap through it's testing phase.

We just bumped into Nic at the supermarket. In the dripping aisle. Actually it's also the aisle that houses the 'out of date soon' stuff (value Witch will be pleased to note that we bought reduced price lamb casseroles for lunch today). As we enetered the supermarket a Sainsburys employee was trying to get folk to buy the Daily Mail "with a great free cd". I told her that we wouldn't keep that Tory rag in the toilet even when the bog roll was running low. She saw The Guardian in Darrens hand and said that she wouldn't let her dog poop on that newspaper and that Mr Blair was a poodle! Excellent retort which made me laugh out loud at her wit. She started spouting stuff about immigrants as we pushed our trolley towards the magazine racks ("this is not a library you know").

That 'moody' pic of me below was taken by Mario Testino you know.

Fish and chips at The Cottage, new shirts from the YSL sale, Pizza Hut, a sunny day out to Cleveleys with more fish and chips, Fleetwood, early morning beach walks, finished reading this (recommended) so bought this, discovered Fentimans ginger beer and so begins a new obsession, bought a blender and a big bag of bananas and made smoothies, painted the kitchen, finally put tin toys bought in Japan into display cabinets, hot baths, gas fires, Doctor Who and British Sea Power.

That was a dogs ass of a good weekend.

Gone to Blackpool. Back on Wednesday.

We watched 'Spirited Away' last night. Excellent film. It quietly asked me 'who are you?'. Here's a picture of me with a monkey on my back.

I don't know how long I've been into spanking. Perhaps it stems from a holiday at Butlins in 1966 when the girl from the chalet next to ours forced me over a beach ball and whacked the poop right out of my nappy.

Where is Darren's left hand and why is Pluto's tongue hanging out?


Isn't Robin Hood foxy looking! Grrrrrr!
Typical of Darren to capture the hunky security guard that we were following round the park before the plushies came out to distract us.

There is a new rollercoaster under construction at Disney's Animal Kingdom. It will tower over the park and is called 'Everest'. Here's a pic I took in December 2004. It will open in 2006.

Let's hope it's as good as the other Disney 'white knuckle' coaster on the West coast, California Screamin'.

There's a restaurant at Disney's MGM Studios called The Prime Time Cafe.

As you would expect from the masters of themeing this eatery has exquisite design.

The idea here is the perfect 1950's family home at meal time.

Vintage TV's play vintage shows like 'I Love Lucy and 'Leave It To Beaver' to add to the atmosphere.

You need to make a reservation for lunch or dinner as soon as you enter the park in the morning as this place is very popular. When you return for your meal you are directed to the lounge to soak up the ambience or maybe have a cocktail.

The servers are all 'cast' as your cousin, sister, aunt, mum, brother etc and are annoyingly good at playing up the family meal atmosphere. We've seen diners getting applauded for joining the 'clean plate club' and we've seen others getting the 'open wide' treatment when they don't eat all of their vegetables.
When your meal is over 'Mum' sits at the table with you and explains that "you're a big boy now so you need to give me some money for groceries" then hands you the bill. On our last visit our 'Mum' got a little flirty with us which threw a kind of sick twist into the scenario. Eeda-puss-shmee-da-puss.
The food itself is superior quality comfort food in enormous portions and the desserts are stunning. Here's the menu.

This place gets two spellcnut thumbs up.

It was very bright and sunny at EPCOT in December last year. It was so bright that I was forced to purchase some sunglasses (I gave up buying them years ago as I always sit on them or lose them 12 hours after purchase). I bought these in the gift shop at Mission Space (the best simulator EVER and I was not nauseous afterwards).

In the gift shop mirror I looked cool and a bit 'pop star-ish'. In the gardens at the Canada pavilion an hour later I just looked silly and 'a bit twat-ish'. So I took them back and swapped them for the ones below. Much more middle of the road and now kids didn't point at me and laugh.
I even splashed out an extra $2 for that little bit of string that old people use to keep the specs around your neck which has made it impossible for me to sit on them.

Coincidences and six degrees of blah blah blah
I was sitting on the tube the other morning minding my own business. I looked up from my book (Man About Town by Mark Merlis) and the book being read by the chap opposite me caught my eye. He was a fairly ordinary fella. Tall, grey hair, plain looking and about 50 years old and he was reading ‘Keep On Dancing (My Life And The Paradise Garage)’ by Mel Cheren. I knew this book existed and I knew it would have a fairly cliquey readership but I had never seen a copy (let alone a hardback version like this chap was reading). Not that I’m a big disco fan you understand (though I did have a Studio 54 phase a few years ago and bought a shed load of books about that place but I was never really keen on the actual music). Anyway, we all know the importance of The Paradise Garage in the larger scheme of things (don’t we?) but the real reason my interest was pricked on the tube was because Mel Cheren owns the hotel Darren and I Stay in when we visit New York. It’s a lovely Brownstone in Chelsea called The Colonial House Inn. That crackhead from Brookside, Jimmy Corkhill, was also a guest when we were last there.
Here’s Mel doing a disco laugh with Grace Jones.

While I'm on a rollercoaster tip I think I'll bore you with tales of riding one of the greatest wooden big dippers in the world (imho). Ghostrider at Knott's Berry Farm is enormous, so enormous that it stretches out into the car park and you get to drive under it's 2nd huge drop as you enter the park (this made me squeal like a two year old in the car).
That building with the spire to the right in the picture above is a full size replica of Independence Hall in Philadelphia complete with Liberty Bell. Anyway, I digress, Ghostrider scared the bejesus out of us. So much so that Darren refused a second go. The entrance to the ride is marvelous. You walk through an underground tunnel just like an old mine then through a pretty cactus garden and then into a huge barn where you climb the stairs towards the station.




The climb to the top of the first drop takes forever cos this baby is huge. And the view from the top of the first drop is stunning (and by view I mean the view of the track below not the view out over Orange County).


At the bottom of that first drop there is no speedy climb up another incline as on most woody's. This evil twister has a banked corner at the bottom of the drop before it speeds up the second hill. The g-forces in that banked curve (at 60mph) are horrendous and from then on you know that you are in for a relentless white knuckle two minutes.


I remember Darren shouting at me half way round (as well as being very fast it is also very noisy, truly multi-sensory) "it's fucking broken and we're going to die!" We didn't die of course. I went straight back on and Darren had a sit down.

Alton Towers (nice new website) opened their new rollercoaster on Easter Monday. Rita Queen Of Speed was officially launched with a car full of drag queens. Theme parks are sooooo gay.

James Murphy on the cover of Wire.

Very nice.

We had a week in Los Angeles before we went to Las Vegas.


We stayed in Orange County and explored the beach towns.


The walk along the beach from Newport to Balboa was thirsty work.


And, being a right pair of nosy buggers, we loved peeking into the posh houses lining the beach path.


It's not in Orange County but we had a lovely day in Santa Monica.


There's a 'monument' on the beach to American soldiers killed in Iraq since the war began. There is also a sign explaining that if they placed a cross on the sand for every dead Iraqi there would be no beach left to walk on.


The original Muscle Beach was in Santa Monica near the pier.


The new location is in Venice Beach. This tattooed stud begged me for a date.


But I had to turn him down as we had dinner reservations that night at In And Out Burger. Classy!