Did anyone hear Monday’s edition of the Jeremy Vine show over on Radio Two.? There was a rather lively debate about the new idea that our beloved Government has come up with. They want to ban smoking outside doorways of offices, pubs et al. Oh lucky us smokers. What a marvellous treat for all those self righteous non-smokers who have the whole run of every public building in the bloody country and then moan about the two seconds that it takes them to walk past a smoker stood OUTSIDE.

I like smoking. I know it isn’t good for me, smells bad sometimes and is anti-social but I enjoy it. I PAY FOR THE CHOICE of puffing on a cigarette and I have not been allowed to sit inside a building blazing one up for three years almost. I have to go and stand outside with my friends who also smoke, in rain, snow, wind, heat and hail. If I wish to find shelter it is usually right next to the door I have just exited out of and you will inevitably pass by me as you leave your smoke free pub that smells of sweat and toilets now. Maybe if you had relented and allowed a smoking area, sealed off, with a fan fitted, that would allow me to smoke inside (which many pubs offered to do but were turned down) then I wouldn’t be stood hundled like a homeless guy, shivering like a burns victim in a doorway full of similarly fettered people. If you moan when you walk past then I shall give you abuse and maybe even chase you down the street throwing dog ends at you.

Actually if you get the chance to hit the listen again page at the Radio Two website, have a listen. The arguement between the sanctimonious little fucker who didn’t even go in pubs and the woman who argues with him is just brilliant. Mr Vine struggled there I think.

Day off today for moi so it appears (well if it isn’t then I am going to be right in the shit for not turning up for work this morning). So far today I have read all my back blogs about Chris Moyles as the b3ta.com question of the week is about annoying celebrities, seems I am not the only person who finds the gert twat a pain in the ear. At least Whiley has been moved off to pastures new now although at the expense of having bloody Edith Bowman taking over her show. Thank goodness for Evans, Bruce, Vine, Wright and Mayo. Radio One seems to be pumping out shit DJs, shit music and there will never be an end in sight.

It seems the year is moving ever faster… it is already one twelth gone.! In five months time it will be time to put the toys back in and get rid of the garden furniture again. Scary thought that. On the plus side it means the F1 and BTCC seasons are getting nearer and nearer. The F1 season is one I am thoroughly looking forward to what with Schumacher’s return, new teams, bigger grid, all Champion BRITISH line up at McLaren. *Rubs hands together with glee*. Sauber and Mercedes do appear to have designed horrible looking cars though. The Williams looks quite respectable, let us hope they pull something wicked out the bag and get their first win since 2004.

Anyway, Jeremy Kyle is on and I have Northern slags to shout at and abuse via the medium of television, so I shall see you all later.

Well Lidl becomes the next victim of the “things that are flammable in Weston”. I wonder if it improved the flavour of their chocolate though.

I was thinking the other day…. it is the first month of a series of twelve (available soon on DVD and Blueray). I wonder what will happen between now and the 31st of December. So I have made a few predictions. Read on you foul minded beasties, you.

January…
Snow causes poncy 4X4 driving mothers to explode as they fail to get the three hundred yards to school. House prices take a nose dive when people find out most of them have been built by Australians. Simon Cowell launches fart factor with Mr Methane and One Fat Lady judging it.

February…
The compensation payout to Thalidomide victims is over paid and recalled but they can’t reach their wallets to give any back. Germany announces army expansion – France surrenders just in case and the Poles start building a campsite. The BBC launches Prancing on Ice where homosexual ZZZ list celebrities mince around on a frozen duck pond somewhere in Herefordshire.

March…
A sudden heat wave melts Jordan as she marries new squeeze Alex reid in Italy. Peter Andre is arrested moments later knocking one out in the bushes whilst singing “Mysterious Girl”. Simon Cowell launches Mex Factor – Sombrero sales treble overnight.

April…
Lewis Hamilton takes early lead in the F1 Championship. Officials fine him £2million and ban him for three races for having a dirty mark on his race suit. Schumacher and the two Ferrari drivers go to the top of the table. Daily Mail launches an inquiry to find out if Princess Diana was actually two illegal immigrant midgets paid off by Prince Phillip in fancy dress. The French dismiss Paris as capital and go with Berlin ‘to save time later’.

May…
The Queen abdicates and Prince William takes over as Monarch. Three people later arrested for treason for waving a huge banner that says “Show us you’re King Willie” on his Coronation route. Vanessa Feltz explodes drowning Essex in blubber. Simon Cowell bashes out another one… “Rex Factor” as people vie to be the next Marc Bolan.

June…
Lewis Hamilton claws his way to the top again. Ferrari complain to FIA, as does Schumacher. Lewis is hit with new ruling meaning he has to drive with the cockpit full of All-Bran. Apple shows off the new iToilet. Millions of people buy one and THEN realise it is full of shit. Channel four launches Big Brother replacement “Animal Farm” featuring Davina McCall, Dermot O’Leary and a goat. No one can tell who is who.

July…
Temperatures soar as golobal warming REALLY kicks in. Kerry Katona catches alight and fire fighters tackle blaze for 14 hours before she finally goes out. Virgin Islands are swamped by a tidal wave. Thousands of Nuts and Zoo readers prepare to buy boats to row out and help before someone tells them. Simon Cowell releases ‘Susan Boyle Idol’ to find more people who can sing like angels but who look like genetic mutations of Bernard Manning.

August…
Hobbits reopens as a rock club after a mystery man gets the cash out. Huge trousers sales double. Amy Winehouse mixes so many chemicals she turns purple. Ribena offers her a sponsorship deal, cancelling the ill advised one they already have with Shane McGowan for Ribena Toothkind.

September…
Cadburys try to promote their new “Chimp Choc” bars with an actual chimp. Sadly, instead of bashing out “In The Air Tonight” he gets loose, shits on the drums, wanks into the cameraman’s hair and rips the face off the producer. They run the ad anyway to critical acclaim. Manuel actor Andrew Sachs shags Johnathon Ross’s daughter and Katie Perry in revenge.

October…
Jeremy Kyle stabs his entire weeks guest list during show for “Young slags with hundreds of different fathered kids”. Six housing estates are left like ghost towns. Peter Stringfellow hospitalised aftre continuous thirty six hour shag marathon with seven lap dances. Medics described his condition as very comfortable.

November…
Kerry Katona catches alight again at a family bonfire. The firs brigade leave her to burn herslef out. East England smells of rendering fat for weeks afterwards. Russia suffers nuclear meltdown. President Putin denies reality despite having got taller by three feet and growing an extra arm. Lewis Hamilton wins F1 championship despite being made to drive in just his pants.

December…
Simon Cowell found dead, suffocated by his own trousers. Christmas number one is boosted by Facebook campaign once more.  People manage to get Slade to number one. Noddy Holder promises to moon on Top of the Pops. Global warming reverses itself and causes heavy snow falls in Italy. The Italians surrender, as do the French, just to be on the safe side. The Swiss push little flippy knife production through the roof. Fluffy Bunny wins the lottery and hosts the biggest New Year bash since Tiger Woods accidentally invited his little black book full of women over for a coffee morning. Free bar and all the pork pies you can eat.

I wonder if any of that will come true.!?! I hope so. Hehehe.

I just remembered. I noticed I had a comment on an old post “Pulling The Strings Of Your Starter” back from 17/05/2007 but the comment only appeared recently and took the form of a question…

“…please where can I buy a unicorn? ”

Errr… out of all the websites in the world you think MY site is going to be the best place to look Mr BeriadekFealtteW.? I don’t even appear to sell anything on this site o’mine so I am a little bemused you assumed I did. IF you want to buy a mono spiked horse like beastie then I suggest unicornsRus.com, wesellanyuni.co.uk and fakeunicornsmadefromhorseswithcornettosstuckontheirfaces.net. Easy.

So the snow has been and is now almost gone. Why does it keep appearing on a Wednesday when I am on early shift and have to get to work at 7am. Wasn’t so bad last week as the 17.5 tonne lorries were unable to drive across a bed of two inches of snow and so didn’t arrive but this week was a pain in the arse as slushy snow and 200kg cages don’t tend to go together. Bastards.

I am assuming you have all checked out my poor, scrawny, half naked body on the old Book of Face (which I was surprised at myself for going through with because it was FUCKING COLD). If you haven’t seen it then just ask and I will plonk it on here.

Model railway news now. The chip shop is almost finished. The next thing on my list is a small terrace of shops which I am going to be attempting to scratchbuild in plasticard. I made a mock up in thick card earlier and it wasn’t too bad at all. We shall see where I end up in a couple of weeks time.

Do you recall the moment in music that they called Garage.? My eyes caught sight of 21 Seconds To Go from the So Solid Crew earlier and it reminded me of those terrible days back in 2001 of songs such as that, Pied Piper, et al. But it wasn’t all that bad was it.? Architects – Body Groove, Mystique and their friends all created a unique insight into a musical world that wasn’t quite house and failed to be trance. I suppose it was the best we could achieve at a time when rock and metal were making a come back via Limp Bizkit and nu-metal buddies. Always was a bit sad that there was never a music scene called Shed.!

I see Messers W Bush and Clinton are going to be helping clean up after the Haiti earthquake. How exactly.? I suppose we could give them a dustpan and brush each. More likely Bush is going to be walking the battered streets dressed as Yosemite Sam shooting rats and gay dogs whilst Clinton attempts to bone any mentally damaged victims with tobacco based products.

Discuss.

I must have a good rant on here sometime soon but I am a little bereft of any ideas (apart from the Government but that goes without saying). Any suggestions on what annoys me (especially those of you who I work with and hear me going on about something now and then which I forget the second I get out the front door). I must be a little less of an angry person as I don’t get these rants out as much any more. Shame that.

Sorry this is a little bit of a bullet point blog but I am copying an old friend who used to jot his thoughts to me as a letter (yes in the days before email) and didn’t have a form to the writings he provided (Ello Doc by the way).

I see the Government has had to say sorry for the Thalidomide arse up back in the 50s. Ok I can see why people who have suffered would like some sort of compensation, that is only natural and it wouldn’t cost the state an arm and a leg to pay it out, I just think there is something horribly unsincere, nay pointless, about having to apologise for an action that occured half a century ago and wasn’t anything to do with anyone. IT all goes back to the slavery thing and Tony Blair saying sorry for shipping Africans home to do the washing up. It wasn’t his fault, or his administration’s, him saying sorry was a bit like Caeser’s descendants saying “Sorry we invaded your country” to most of Western Europe. Grrr. Why does that annoy me so much.?!

Anyway, tis time for a cuppa… back soon England.!

Hello, good evening and welcome to the Stitching Bastards review of the year for 2009. It has certainly been a year of surprises, Brawn GP winning the F1 world championship, Michael Jackson passing away, Hobbits closing it’s doors for the final time and Freightliner ordering the ugliest locomotive fleet ever in the Class 70s.

Let us talk about the high points perhaps, yes us people in the UK had our second F1 champ in two years as Jensen Button followed The Ham to the top spot in a car that made everyone in F1 do a double take and then add a double diffuser to the arse end of their vehicles. I put my foot so far down my neck it was almost impossible to remove when I panned Jensen as “not one of the greats” in the build up to Australia. Talk about eating my words. But very fair play to the guy and also to Mr Hamilton who drove a car that was shit to a couple of wins and a few podiums (having qualified about 16th in the first race), he also scored most points in the second half of the year, more even than Jensen.!

Rage Against the Machine beating Ugly Kid Joe Mcdonalds Worker to number one also made my year.!

And talking of music, my hit of the year, always a great moment in music history, such as Dare (Gorrilaz) and Umbrella (Rihanna)… and this year I am so happy to award it to the best comedy moment I have heard in a long time with a fantastically graphic video and a dead catchy melody… yes, Lonely Island and their “Jizz in my Pants” have whipped themselves into a frenzy and are firmly filling my slot for song of the year. Marvellous.!

There have been a few low points but why should we bother with those as we enter 2010.!?!

and so I will leave you with a defining moment of 2009, Colin Turkington driving his BMW in the BTCC to his first ever championship. Well done Colin.!

and a happy new year to you all.!!!

Follow me on the Stitching Bastards official twitter feed (yes I relented as I am getting a lovely new mobile soon and want to exploit the opportunities to make stupid comments and intrude into your lives as much as I can… my tweet is @stitchinbastard so go add me and wait for the supposed hilarity to begin.! (bear with me if it starts off a bit slow).

Some people watch the Queen every year, I have to admit I do have it on in the background through a wave of reading new books and the smell of sprouts working their way through my digestive system, others ignore it as a throwaway message of nothingness that is no longer relevant to the country. Either way, it’s a bloody good bit of TV I think. Plus it’s like having an extra grandparent who you don’t have to buy a present for.! Which is always good.

I do apologise that this is the first blog of the month and exactly one month from the last but after spending 10 hours a day (fag breaks and throwing a sarnie down my neck excepted) hoying toys into plastic bags and then hoying more (neatly) onto shelves, well, I am more shagged out than if I was dressed as a woman and on Tiger Woods’ contact list. Has been a lot of fun at work though, tiredness aside, but as usual I feel as festive as a Hindu sat on Santa’s lap.

The last time I felt Christmassy was when Heart radio played Band Aid in July 2008. Tch, even the advert for Toys ‘R’ Us didn’t slip a little tinsel into my tushy. Oh well. One day I will break out of retail and not be ruined every year when I want to be happier.

Actually this year there has been a little Christmas ritual that since the year 2000 has been a rather big pile of mouse turds. That is correct, the Christmas Number One Single in the good old chart. Now as an 80s boy who was brought up on such classics as Bohemian Rhapsody, Only You by the Flying Pickets and Cliff Richard Christmas Classics, I used to enjoy the moment when the number one was announced. Through the 1990s there wasn’t one I didn’t enjoy… until 1999 when those goblins in slacks, aka Westlife, took the slot for the first time (preventing any Spice Girls quad of hits which we all know I love).

From then on it was downhill. Robbie and Nicole “I’m from Hollywood so I am obviously annoying” Kidman, that awful Depeche Mode cover by Gary Jules that made me want to punch things AND prevented the Darkness getting the first DECENT, proper Christmas song to number one for bloody years, Band Aid 20 with every pop muppet and that terrible rap from Dizzy Bloody Rascal and then X Factor…. X Factor and more fucking X FACTOR. Simon Cowell turned the race for the top into a prize in a second rate reality TV show. It was like Cowell was saying “come here, sing, make me money, cry a bit, dance a bit, make Ant and Dec look intelligent, pretend to not be gay, make Cheryl Cole look intelligent, make me money, have a number one, here’s the P45, welcome to Pizza Hut, please wash your hands and wear the hat at all times”. It was (was.? IS.!!!) inane pap TV at it’s worst.!

But this year, no one reckoned without the power of the people (and the surprising power of Facebook). I certainly never realised just how far behind the shining shite of this year’s “McDs team member of 2010″ would be saleswise at the end. Half a million sales for Rage Against the Machine as opposed to four hundred and fifty thousand for “Ugly Kid” Joe. It was the first time I have sat on my bed and listened, gripped, to a chart run down since about 1996.! Of course the chart show is no longer Mark Goodyear or Bruno Brookes so I had to put up with Scott Mills, a man so woolly he would make a sheep itch. The daft twat padded out a full 15 minutes with text read outs, stupid bits of trivia about UK Joe and pointless waffle. I actually had my fingers crossed and when he said “and at number two…………

…..It’s Joe”. I could have bloody well stripped off all my clothes with glee and run around in the road waving my plonker at anyone willing to have a gander. Oh the joy. I know it made Cowell a few more pennies. I know it was all a bit pointless and the song wasn’t very festive. I know Cheryl Cole doesn’t really like foreign people, especially in nightclubs (allegedly) but FUCK ME GUV, I am so glad it worked out like that. Plus Journey at number ten.!!! As someone pointed out, if we get ourselves sorted out now, maybe next year we could fill the top forty with Hobbits Classics.! Maybe the top five would be Korn, Slipnott, Audioslave, Nine Inch Nails and System of a Down (not necessarily in that order). Simon Cowell described the loss of the number one to a group with some music history and real fans who understand music as “stupid and cynical”. In the words of my boss, Poke it Cowell. Fucking poke it.

And here endeth the lesson… tis but an hour and a quarter to the birthday of a very special person. So happy birthday Annie Lennox… oh and it’s Christmas too (which is lucky as I am watching the Christmas version of House).

So go and enjoy it you lot.! Happy Christmas, very very Happy Christmas from all at stitchingbastards.co.uk.

From a simple ten minute channel hopping adventure on the music area of Sky tonight I have discovered the following things.

1, Esmee Denters can fuck off.
2, Avenged Sevenfold are not as good as they used to be
3, Paolo Nutini has failed miserably if he was attempting to copy Jackie Wilson and his Reet Petite (which always sounds like a Geordie trying to describe a thin woman, why-aye man, she was reet petite etc).
4, I would probably do Queen’s Roger Taylor but only if he was wearing his outfit from “I Want To Break Free”.
5, Welsh rap peaked with the GLC.
6, Shakin’ Stevens should have avoided that pullover in “Merry Christmas Everyone”.
7, There are only so many times you can watch a video on channel AKA where one person sings, ish, and the rest all dance around behind him purely to get on the TV.
8, All Saints – Never Ever, still a bloody good bit of pop history.
9, The X Factor “stars” with You Are Not Alone can fuck off.
10, Florence and the Machine have DESTROYED one of the greatest dance tracks off all time (You Got The Love, courtesy of Miss Candy Statton) and turned it into yet another indie kid tune by a band that should never have got out of the college recording studio it probably started in. Oh and they can fuck off as well.
11, If it is so easy to find hot, young ladies in my area by text then when I was 14 where the bloody hell were they all.??
12, Mud, Lonely This Christmas, one of the best things about this time of year… but play it in May and people look at you weirdly.
13, 30 Seconds From Mars and their 300 cyclists are mostly breaking the Highway Code by having flashing LED lights attached to their bikes.
14, Watching East 17 sing “Stay Another Day” is like watching a gang of ‘yoofs’ karaoke “When A Child Is Born” whilst carrying big knives.
15, The Darkness were sooooo good for one album (Permission To Land) and two songs (One Way Ticket To Hell And Back, Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End)).
16, Why can’t black people keep their hands still when they sing.
17, If it’s female, singing and hairy then it’s Nelly Furtado
18, If it’s male, annoying and rapping then it’s wearing a crap hat and being 50 Cent.
19, Cascada looks about 15 years older than she is but she can still belt out a reasonable dance track.
and finally…
20, La Roux can fuck off. All the way off, not just a little bit. If I wanted a high pitched woman to whine at me then I will date the squeaky one off of Will and Grace. Please just stop, you are turning quickly into Robin, who started off so well about a decade ago and now produces predictable pop shite. Take your hair, take that bloody car and piss most considerably off.

Well that does feel better. Music really seems to have lost it’s way though. Makes me sound rather elderly but it’s as though everything nowadays is so easy that no one bothers trying anymore. Autotune, 160 track overlays (even Oasis were bad for that), reality TV shows promoting the worst as well as the annoying, it is all falling off the edge of the world. Years ago dance music did that. Then rock. Then pop. Now EVERYTHING is heading towards the abyss in the same way the world is heading to oblivion. Maybe it doesn’t matter then…

…oh but it does. The trouble is that the people pulling the strings are Dani Minogue (much as I love her music, she isn’t exactly the best qualified to dole out musical expertise), Simon Bloody Cowell, Cheryl Fucking Cole (who is about as talented as lice) and Louis Walsh… who brought us Boyzone for goodness sake.!

Might I suggest a murder/suicide pact Mr Cowell.? I will ever buy you the vodka and tablets.

PS. I missed a few…

21, Dizzee Rascal, for what you have done to ‘Dirty Cash’, I hope someone pushes a tuba up your rectum and you become part of a Salvation Army marching band, ommpahs and all.
22, More bands should copy Slade’s idea of using Brummie spellings on their single releases.
23, I do hope all these ‘Bad Boys” Alexander Burke keeps singing about take her to the cleaners.

What on earth was going on with the weather today.? There was a mini tornado along my road a few hours ago, very scary, with the wind and rain and hailstones going in all directions accompanied by leaves and bits flying through the air like someone had got a big bag of stuff and was scattering it in front of one of those large fans they use on Casualty to make Charlie’s hair blow around when he looks pensive in outside shots.

Talking of television, the BBC has been told off for their story line on “Waterloo Road”, the iffy Grange Hill-esque programme about life in a school (not a patch on Teachers though). You see a group of pupils in the programme got pissed up on neat ethanol, a stupid thing to do, which resulted in much pain and sitting in Accident and Emergency for a while to regain their sight and sober up.

Now the reason the BBC (one of those companies that always pisses me off, maybe it is because they insist on keeping shit DJs like FUCKING MOYLES on Radio One) got a bollocking was because a group of real life kiddies, having watched said show, got hold of a bucketload of neat alcohol from a school science lab (which in itself is ridiculous, what ever happened to locks on cupboards, in my school days you couldn’t even get a piece of chalk without three tumbler locks and a padlock the size of your hairy fist being opened by some Lab Assistant). They then copied the programme and mixed it with Ribena, Toothkind I hope so it doesn’t rot their little tossie-pegs, and then drank it.

The BBC were lamblasted as being irresponsible because they showed the act of necking stolen chemicals and the aftermath of such stupidity. No one appears to have pointed out that these dumb fucks in real life obviously watched the programme but chose to ignore the implications of pouring neat alcohol down your gullet.  Why has no one mentioned that there is a cause and effect thing going on there. They saw it, they copied half of it and then moaned when they became ill. It’s a bit like Mr Ap Rees moaning “Oh no one told me that the Tropicana would fall through again”.

Thankfully, for them but not for me as I am a taxpayer and their hospital stay was paid for partly by me, they survived. That is the trouble with the modern age, medicine to prevent the culling of stupid people by nature. If this was 1930 then they would have heard about it on the wireless and then removed themselves from the gene pool of England by 3.30pm the following day.

and on the subject of bad gene pools…

…Jeremy Kyle, from the 20th of November. Words fail me. That last story about the 63 year old guy who was fed up of his 25 year old girlfriend beating him up, lying to him and putting it about. Fucking hell, did you SEE that woman.? It was like something from Little Britain. She was the chaviest, most offensively faced sponger that the world has ever bought into being. Greasy lank hair, bright pink slacks, she looked like a slappy bulldog chomping on a brick covered in wasps and nettles. He was getting annoyed because she was shagging men and women in his bed and couldn’t get it into his skull that she was only in it for the money. He kept saying “I want to help her, she has had a bad life”…

… how.?? She obviously hasn’t worked a day ever, she spends it drinking cider in a park somewhere, she fucks every guy in sight and is a typical council estate princess from ‘oop north. She is loving every bloody second of her life, all at the expense of us and him, the dopey old git. Now in a perfect world she would be knocked down by a speeding tax inspector as she leaves the studio, but alas, I bet that never happened.

And now as the rain lashes down once again and I turn my heater up a little, listening to what appears to be fireworks but could be someone shelling Cardiff (or Korma induced wind somewhere in Weston), I must be off.

“Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain”.

PS thanks to Hwang, as usual, for his moving the site to a new and faster server… seems to have done the trick. Maybe I should upload some home movies from the household of Kerry Katona to say thanks… or not.

My letter in the Mercury…

“Hands up how many of us foresaw the Henry Boot deal falling through and “other less ambitious proposals” being considered, eventually.?
Perhaps I am psychic. I predicted the Mace deal going off the rails and now I have predicted the Henry Boot plans failing. Maybe I should get a job on television, move over Derren Brown.
 
In all seriousness though, what was Mr Ap Rees and his motley crew over in the Council thinking.? Well over a decade of nothing, deadlines being put back again and AGAIN and everything comes crashing down at the end. This whole debacle is the economic equivalent of throwing balls at a coconut that is nailed to a pole, perhaps sense will prevail in the near future and someone will fill the place with water and stick a roof on the top.
 
I am still baffled by the blinkered nature of our mighty leaders with regards to this matter, even my pet rabbit could have seen this result coming. Might I suggest the Council hire a new cleaner, their crystal ball appears to be dusty.”

Fluffy Bunny, News at Ten, Weston-super-Mare

Well it’s hello from me… and hello from him. So nice to have a split personality is it not? Yes? Good, then I have instantly doubled my reader base. Anyway, enough of that shite…

…I have rediscovered two things this week.

Firstly I have been listening to the delightful Brothers In Arms album from one of the all time greats, Mark Knophler and Dire Straits. Released back in 1985 it contained the first CGI video (for the Money for Nothing track) and gave them their highest ever chart hit (Walk of Life). As usual it is the less commercial tracks I focus on and aside from the sublime Brothers in Arms (which almost makes me want to sob for past memories, both my own and imagined, everytime I hear it) it’s Your Latest Trick that bounces in with a wailing saxophone and plenty of soul. Hearing it after a good few years, properly end to end at least, did prick up my ears to a few of the little elements I had never realised were there though. The slap bassline is straight from the mid 80s and familiar to those of you who enjoy the work of Japan (the band not the little dudes blowing up American battleships). Also the unlikely, I think, influence of reggae makes itself known here too…

…maybe that isn’t so odd as the ska movement was just beginning to fade out and reggae was becoming it’s replacement as the 80s moved on.  Regardless of my feelings, if you haven’t heard the album for a while, or ever, then go and bloody well hear it.! Try out the other albums as well, plus his solo work.!

Secondly I rediscovered my love of kippers. Smoked fish is bloody marvellous. Not something to be eaten before going out though, unless you desire smelling like a lesbian with a forty a day habit.

The Tropicana deal has failed. Again.  Hands up who couldn’t see that coming… *looks around* ah Mr Ap Rees and your other fellow “cunt”cillors, well done. Have this award I have suddenly came up with… it is called the David Blunkett Award For Not Seeing Anything. Ever.

COME OOOOOON, I mean, how bloody obvious does it have to be to these esteemed persons.?? I sent a snotty mail to MACE when they pulled out asking why the hell they bothered, no reply came back, I can only assume it was the faeces smeared across the letter in lieu of a signature. I wanted to know why any respectable company would tit a community around for so long. As soon as Henry Boot (wish we had told them to shoe… sorry) arrived on the scene it was like MACE had run off, put on a false moustache and come back again and what happens…?

…the “cunt”cil bends over, lowers it’s trousers and bellows “MORE PLEASE” through gleeful teeth.  How come little old Fluffy Bunny, underpaid, overworked, retail team leader with no real qualifications, can spot the one chilli in the box of chocolates but a group of men and women paid to make decisions and with far more life experience than my tender, young self seem unable to give birth to the concept that a large company that is only interested in filling it’s bulging cheeks with all the nuts in the forest might grab all the nuts and then order a pizza and a curry at the expense of the people “employing” it. I can only assume that the whole band of bloody fools is sat around a table, stoned off their collective tits and the smoke rising from their many reefers, bongs and pipes is obscuring their view. They also seem to forget they are dealing with a development company… and they are generally as honest and truthful as a bag of lawyers covered in a Tony Blair sauce.

It’s bloomin’ crazy.! Maybe now they will build something that WE in Weston actually want and not some 83 story monolithic slab of concrete that would be more at home in Stalingrad during the 1920s that is designed to squeeze out as much revenue as possible for the “cunt”cil like a well baked turd from a dockers backside. Ap Rees (a man who has now taken over the Crockford-Hawley mantra “As welcome as dysentry in a rowing boat”) has said they will now “entertain smaller ideas” in other words ‘I am sorry we couldn’t build a hotel that looked like a multi-story car park, but now we can bulldoze it and replace it with a new building so scag heads and pissed up Londoners who have failed rehab can hang out somewhere new and clear the town centre’.

I am just watching Jeremy Kyle (and talking of the aforementioned ladies who dine at the Y) there is a 17 year old girl who is trapped in a girl’s body and wants to be a boy. I was trapped in a 17 year old’s body once… but a little Vaseline helped me out.

Bye all.!

Saturday the 31st of October marked the end of a special era in Weston. Hobbits, the most homely and friendly nightclub I have ever had the joy to enter, closed for the final time.

It was back in 1995 that myself and a few college mates first popped into the Richmond Street original place (where Liquid Lounge is now, interestingly the former home for the reception office of the transatlantic cable) and got used to the small club, legendary sticky floor and dim lighting. Sounds awful but that was exactly what made it great. Saturday nights were always packed so you had no choice but to meet new people as you brushed up against them in the queue for the bar or to request a song from the DJ (ah the days of Born Slippy, Alanis Morrisette, The Fugees). I spent my 18th birthday in there, mostly so drunk I was sat on the dancefloor trying to get the music out of my head, but it was still brilliant.

At one point we were in there EVERY night it was open (all week save for Monday I think) and it would just be a few of us, dancing like loons to old Britpop numbers. It still felt like home after the few months I didn’t go there during 1999 and the last time I went through those doors and up those stairs back in 2001, two weeks before it closed, it was still home. The music was still great, the people still friendly, the trouble that infested other clubs rare if at all apparent.

So then I was introduced to the new Hobbits thanks to Sexy Dave. I was so fed up of places like Time and Voltz but didn’t know anyone who went to Hobbits anymore. Thankfully Mr Matthews did and one night I appeared, he made me welcome, introduced me to a lot of people and suddenly I was home again. I belonged somewhere.  I wasn’t constantly looking over my shoulder wondering which tracksuited buffoon would wonder if I was looking at his badly tanned, underdressed, whore first. I could dance, drink and be merry among a group of people who were genuinely nice. Was fun to be popular for a bit too.

And now it has ended. Saturday night was great. I have never stayed so late in a club and I was so tired I just missed the last few minutes but I was there for the last time… and it will never be the same. I am glad I have so many photos over the past few years that I didn’t have from the first club, it will be a lasting memory to an important era in my life and so I would like to say thank you… to Hobbits, to that dance floor which I often covered in beer whilst swinging around madly, to that bar where I stood and waved money in return for strong liquer which I saw again later, to those badly lit toilets and doing my eye liner in the reflection in the sink, to the VIG area pre-refurb and watching bad horror films and Saddam’s execution on TV, to the chairs where I stood with Dave and Andy Moss reviewing the people on the dance floor, to the stage which I helped pack away so I could get on with that dancing thing…

to Mark (keep getting better mate, you are doing a wonderful job and thanks for the bat SO much), Mark, Emma W, Helen, Mike, Dom, Magna, Derrik, Baz, Tony, Colin, Paul, Pete, Merv and all the staff who made the place like it was and to all the people I met, let me see how long I can make this list (and in no particular order)…

…Hwang, Chilli, Pouty and Stu, my Dear Brother – Paul, Christina and Rich, Mike and Harry, Ben D, Joe D, Joe A, Carl W, Rose B, , Angel, Jim, Emma D, Giles, Paul, Jade, Monkey, Sexy Dave, Marie, Dave V, Sam U, Beth L, Hally, Stacey, Justine, Kryssa, Andy M, Zoe, Craig, Charlie, Charmian, Chris R, Matt H, Ria, Andy, Kate B, Kate S, Sarah H and Mark P, Nat B and Rich, Russ and Robyn, Mel H, Miss Lily Rogers, Jamie L, Katie B, Mark H and Hannah C, Lemony, Caz, Justin, Matt, Brownie, Blondie (and all her friends), Mr Cheek,  Dory, Alex K, Bluey, Bugsy, Keith and Becca, Jon R, Colin, Kitten, Katie, Lil Oddy, Brem, Emma H, Emma D, Lexi, Danny H, James, Chris and Kate, Chris S, Terri and Terri, Gay Dan, Hannah, Baz, Sam S, Doc Robbins, Thongy, Kev, Dave C and Natalie, Adam W and Ginge, Lorna W, Claire ‘T’, Rachel W, Neil, Del, Flea and Claire, Lindsay T, Gem, Row, Nick, Lovechild, Bob G, Monkey Boy Jim, Seb, Neil, Dan R, Wayne, Sarah H, Stephage, Nay, Pugs and anyone I have missed…

… you all made those times when Hobbits could have been so like everywhere else, like NO WHERE ELSE.

Hobbits, you are not gone, merely closed until “tomorrow”.