test please delete

[Gonzo]

Lunchtime. Then I am off out.

[Zippy]

Lunchtime. Then I am off out.

Byeee

[NickFitz]

So I think that to go again would be senselessly trying to hang on to my youth.

Screw angst - hit the gig

[NickFitz]

There must be some new acts around that I would like so that I don't just have to keep re-living my younger days.

Nah, they're all crap.

Bear in mind that I used to (this time 18 months ago) work at the opposite end of the corridor from the Xfm London studios, and they put gigs on in the big open area downstairs by Classic FM. Before that I worked in the same office as the production staff and DJs of the GCap network's main music-led network show for eight months, and then occasionally during the subsequent fourteen months.

I still know fsck all about modern popular music except that it's product-led: the people who make it are good product, and it doesn't matter if they're good musicians or not.

If you want good music you should find out where the young bands play and go there - unfortunately, they're probably also crap, they just don't have a label's A&R budget behind them.

If there's one thing I learnt from my time in the commercial radio/music industry, it's that music is seen therein as an irrelevance - it's as important as the colour of the smoke that comes out of a factory's chimneys.

[Zippy]

Lady GaGa is quite entertaining
Kaiser Chiefs are good

[Zippy]

I forgot Elbow

[NickFitz]

Who were that mob that did I Predict A Riot?

Load of crap, anyway - all about how it's a bit scary trying to get a taxi home at chucking-out time in Harpenden because the big boys are drunk outside the kebab shop. That's not what I call rock'n'roll

Very polite lads though - one of them held the door open for me as I was coming back from the bog and they were on their way to the studio for an interview down in Bristol, so I won't fault them as people

[NickFitz]

Lady GaGa is quite entertaining
Kaiser Chiefs are good

Hi Zip

Kaiser Chiefs, that's them I think - well brought up bunch of lads

[NickFitz]

Right bunch of silly nonsense on the way back from the pub tonight

There was a car stopped outside Fitzwilliam College (no relation), blocking the cycle path and with its hazard lights on. Just after I walked past it, it sounded its horn a couple of times.

"Bloody students, think the horn is a device to summon their friends" thought I, and continued on my way.

However, the horn sounded again, and the headlights were flashed. This continued at intervals as I carried on up the road.

Eventually, after standing and looking back and seeing this happen a couple more times, I decided to trudge back the two or three hundred yards; as I did so, the horn was sounded and the lights were flashed several more times.

Arriving at the vehicle I banged on the passenger window with my fist, and indicated to the somewhat startled individual within that he should open the window or the door. He chose the door.

"Is there some reason for you sounding your horn and flashing your lights repeatedly?" I enquired of the Blackberry-grasping youth - one of three striplings in the vehicle, counting the driver.

"Yeah, we've run out of petrol and we want our mate who's coming to help us to know where we are," he explained.

I think I exhibited great self-control. Rather than pointing out that if their friend couldn't follow directions to their location on a main road outside a local landmark, and then identify their vehicle as the only one illegally parked in a hazardous situation with its hazard lights on, then he was unlikely to be of much help, I contented myself with explaining that I just wanted to be sure that it wasn't a person in distress.

The imbecility of their behaviour may have been made even more apparent to them by the fact that, just after I first banged on the window, a scooter rider had made a U-turn and come back to them, and was having pretty much the same conversation on the driver's side

Other people's kids, eh. Can't live with them, can't tie a breeze block to their heads and shove them off a punt

[NickFitz]

Speaking of young women having their cars hijacked by mad axemen (that was the subtext of my previous post), twenty or so years ago there was a young woman in Leicester who was, in fact, hijacked by a mad axeman - he jumped into her car as she waited at a set of lights, menaced her with a hatchet, and ordered her to follow his directions.

Having driven some way across the city, she was stopped at another set of lights - one of the busiest junctions in the city during rush hour - when she had a brilliant idea. When the lights changed, she put the car in reverse and shot backwards into the car behind

The sudden backwards motion and the collision were enough to put the mad axeman off his stride; and of course the driver behind immediately leaped from his vehicle and came rushing up, shouting and waving his arms about. The mad axeman was so freaked out by it all that he jumped out of her car and fled the scene