Pig Sty Avenue

Dano: You're cool, so is your cat. John: I was a hooker! [And how does that sentence read round your way?] Peter: Can we borrow a lorry? Transporting five tons of horse shit from central France to Geordieland would be a wonderful adventure.

...Tomorrow. Monday, that is, inshallah, I'll vault out of bed and say "I'm sick of hanging around the house, I'm off to the allotment!" Which will be most necessary, because, whilst the last week's rain has been much needed, all the weeds will appreciate it as much as everything else, so it'll be monday, a man and a hoe. And The Old Man told me the other day (as I was sitting with him in The Long Bar, after a morning at Hebburn Marina photographing tall ships, and allowing my cold to ferment and attempt to paralyse my legs), he's found a fourth glass dump as he's been double digging his way through the uncultivated areas. So I need to sort that out. We surmised that the allotment's previous tenants weren't really bothered with growing stuff, they would just dig holes to dump glass in, and hang around drinking beer. It's clear that most of it hasn't been cultivated for years. Generally, it wants a lot of lime, hard work, and s...

Not kidding. They feel like they weigh about a ton each. Feeling too sorry for myself to blog any more today.

This blog is, amongst other things, a ‘post-industrial malarkey’. Jarrow is a town where once were built an astonishing number of ships at Palmer’s Shipyard. All of that came to an abrupt halt in the 30s, and the resulting unemployment and Crusade became iconic in British working class history. Before Palmer’s there was coal mining. There were steel mills too. Railways. It’s all gone now. There are light industry sites. ‘Bede’s World’ by Jarrow Slake. A big deal is made of this being ‘Catherine bloody Cookson Country’. There’s a nature reserve on the Don. Maturing trees everywhere. Despite this, it’s still Jarra. The culture of independence and distrust of authority is in our bones, bred in by generations of hard labour and refusing to be bossed around. And now there’s Flickr – perhaps conceived as a means to share wedding photos with your relatives in Australia, say, but, as so often with the internet, it’s developed into something else, into a means to illuminate the w...

I will explain when I've had less wine. It's been a good day.

Here's two Royal Marines in a high speed launch. But the detail that appeals is that wee house near the river bank. Nearly derelict now, surrounded by wasteland. What was it once? A Shipyard Manager's house? Surely it was a house. Look, it's got a chimney. But maybe it was an office, Victorian offices had fires and chimneys... But I'd like to think that it was once a house, and children once peered out of those windows, across to where I took the photo.

...Or is it a schooner? Or a sloop?

Went by Metro, via Pelaw, to Hebburn. Very few people on foot, but queues of lazy sods in cars. Got to Hebburn Marina by a little after eight, and the Parade of Sail began to come by half an hour later. This picture of the people there I took around 8.30am. It got busier later. There was a PA system and some blokey commenting. He couldn't pronounce the name of this Polish ship, and I can't remember it. I like this one of Mir, Russian of course, but built at Gdansk, with the cranes of Walker. I've always been fascinated by this giant crane, with the little crane on top of it, and it's great in perspective to the masts on this ship. The last photo I took was of the British hopeful, Prince William, as she departs, going by the frigate being built at Swans. We still build the occassional ship round here, you know.

Been researching start times tomorrow, ringing the Aged Parents and God knows what else, and I'm going to get the bus down to Hebburn and stand on the bank there with my camera and big umbrella from 8.30ish. The APs complaining about all kinds of organisations on the make with parking charges.

Here's a picture I didn't post yesterday.

There's no escaping the fact that, at this stage in its development, fermenting fruit is entirely unattractive. The grapes are the greenish ones, strawberries, naturally, reddish. Herself doesn't like the smell, and she has a point, in a flat as small as ours. It's a smell reminiscent of very ripe bananas. When I stir the must, it fizzes like anything. There's already just a hint of alcohol from the smell of the strawberries - which is a day ahead of the grapes. That's because after the first 24 hours, the grape must was frothing of its own accord, that is sans yeast: this meant there was some kind of wild yeast present. I had researched campden tablets meanwhile and found that their job is to kill off unwanted naturally ocurring yeast, so I crushed up 5 and stirred them in, and waited a night and a day for it to do its stuff afore adding the 'true wine yeast'. Now they're both on their way. Another week and they go into demi-johns. According t...

We got off the Metro at Gateshead and walked down to the river and over the swing bridge. We walked along the quayside, but the crowds were somewhat oppressive, and we didn’t get as far as the millennium bridge, given Herself’s Interesting Condition. I got this picture of the Police launch in pursuit of a jet ski. It’s something that can unite diverse folks anywhere near water: what useless nuisances these jet skiers are. All they do is whiz around noisily, having fun and going nowhere and pissing off all and sundry. Later, we had a pint in that Lloyds Bar, a bit further upriver, and saw the really fast Police launch hunt down and tell off some more jet skiers. I watched the River Copper waving his finger at the hapless nuisance as if he was saying: “Listen, if anyone’s going to fuck about at high speed on this river, it’s going to be us. Right?” I'll have some proper pictures of really TALL ships soon, honest.

This Booya has pictures, humour and a sense of place... We're off to the Quayside soon, hopefully to return with dazzling and profound digital images. We were to go to the theatre afterwards, a last night's decision, but we rang this morning and The Bodies is sold out. Hmm. This was more Herself's thing than mine, she being the French literature scholar in our house, so I've mixed feelings. Here's a picture of French people to show what I mean.

Simplicity's what I'm after. And the last template really was a rather disturbing colour. I've gone for a 'minima' template, so as to start from basics changing the html - but not yet awhile. And I've demoted a blog from the 12 Merries, because of inactivity. I've been stumbling around the blogsphere for a couple of hours to find suitable blogs, without success. Any suggestions would be most welcome. What I want is a blogger with a digital camera who gives some insight into life as it's lived round their way. Dawdon's a good example. So is Life in Alaska . I want a bit of insight into the way people really live around the globe, and a bit of humour with it.

We went to South Shields this morning on what my Mam still sometimes calls 'a message', (= an errand; shopping; visit to the pub; 'mind your own business' - , a marvellous word to flummox small children). Anyway, the message concluded, we went down to the ferry landing in the hope of seeing a Tall Ship sailing in. It was drizzly, so we went into the 'Alum Ale House' as it's now called, though it used to be 'The Ferry'. It was once a dreadful pub. On an occassion, some time in the late 70s it would have been, I was in there, and a couple were actually having sex, standing at a corner of the bar... You know how it is when you're trying not to look but can't stop your eyes drifting that way? That was then, now it's ever so nice. We sat in that left hand, lower bay window you can see in the picture. I had a pint, Herself coffee (REAL coffee, in The Ferry!?), and as we left the lad behind the bar was asking if we were here for the Tall ...

As he took the trouble to read several months of The Avenue's archive recently, here's a picture of my mate Peter. That's him on the left, Padraig on the right. Ugly pair of bastards, aren't they?

I bought 100 of these yesterday for the wine, and used them as per instructions. But does anybody know what, precisely, they are, and what they do?

The strawberries got mashed with the tattie masher. The grapes, I'm not detailing the methodology, 'cept to say it's a bit of an old joke about how grapes get mashed, I believe it still happens, largely as a tourist spectacle, in parts of Portugal, and I washed my feet first. I spent ages trying to persuade herself to do it: the wine could have been some sort of Rab Burns special, grapes pressed on a July night, by an Ayrshirewoman, heavy with child... Instead of which they were pressed by a porridge faced geordie fella. It was great fun. 2005. What a vintage!

A highly succesful morning so far. The Old Man came round early with a load of parsley plants, two 'parsley planters' and a bag of compost. We really need parsley, because I use a lot of garlic in cooking, and parsley makes heavy garlic eaters a little more socially acceptable. Then we moved a load of baby trees from his allotment to mine. 20-odd fig trees and a dozen or so lemon trees, the result of my buggering around with fig and lemon seeds a couple of years ago. The figs will go on the allotment. The lemon trees... Christmas presents for houseplants, perhaps. Then we went to the back of the fruit shop in Jarrow. What happens is, when stuff is past its sell-by, it has to get thrown away. It's a sin, really. So Dad's got a deal with the shop manageress to get greens for his hens, and I tagged along this morning, and Oh my God! Pounds of grapes waiting to be sent to a bliddy landfill somewhere. Strawberries ditto. SO we loaded the car up and brought them ba...

"This telly's rubbish again tonight. I think I'll just go to the bingo."

Found this on a CD. Took it a year ago.

There was something on mangetout's lost gloves about what, exactly, are "riggers' gloves". Well, this afternoon I was having a pint with The Old Man and uncle Jackie and they agreed, vociferously (as they do), using the F word many's the time that, under no circumstances could a rigger use a glove. Gloves would be deadly in that profession because, they could catch in a winch and: "away's your finger, your hand, your arm... You!" As Jacky would have it: "From the fuckin Arctic to the fucking Tropics to the Antarc-fucking-tic, you use your bare fingers. Look!” If you'd been there, you would have seen.

"And NOW are you sorry for all those smutty remarks about candles?"

Circle through a day and night in Italian places . Strangely beautiful.

Too young to be grumpy posted this morning about the Stumble enhancement from Firefox. It’s a scream. It’s a brilliant idea. You give it some parameters and then it finds you random yet popular sites within those parameters. Great fun. (If you haven’t got Firefox, it’s easy enough to google and get it free. It’s a very much better browser than Internet Explorer.) Behind the Name is a handy site for expectants. Yesterday was a garden day, today’s been a business kind of day, writing letters, banking, job searching – all from the comfort of my laptop, of course. No jobs going. Not round our way. And we’re not for moving or being apart at this juncture. Spending far too much time in cyber space. When I’ve not been doing real things, or clicking on the Stumble button, I’ve been putting The Avenue on to blog indexes. Why? Blogging can be like heroin. I found the rooted man on traedays . That's me, that is. Except I'm fatter and don't smoke tabs. Hmm.

To get away from lime green.

I googled my way to that picture in response to Jay's 1970/lime green remarks. Like Apprentice , I'd love to have one. I remember being a young teenager in the early 70s thinking how cool, how modern they were. They cost more than the bog-standard phone to rent from the Post Office, who organised our telephone system back then, (seems like ancient history now), and Mam wouldn't let us have one... They are hard to get now because of all these TV programmes, spin-offs of Antiques Roadshow, which have alerted punters to the value of collectables. You'll search charity shops and car boot sales in vain. There's a shop in Newcastle sells this sort of stuff for a mint. By Jingo, though, I hate walking by that shop in Grainger St. Seeing everyday objects from my youth selling for 1000% of their original cost, and presented as quasi antiques, makes me feel like a quasi antique myself...

hello garry im really happy because you send message to me and all the students always ask me about you.....they recommended me to say hello to you..today we had the final test...it was so easy .....we all miss you.............best wishes..write soon please hey there is something else i want to ask you about newcastel team did bring new players to the team or it still same old .....take care of your wife she need you especially in this period....lol relax I wish I'd spent a bit more time on punctuation.

The blog tour continued this morning, to the detriment of the allotment - or the benefit of its weeds, depending on your perspective. Africa! I googled to Blog Africa , and started to trawl the hundred or so links there. No doubt statistics are available somewhere, but I think we can be pretty sure that there is a very much smaller number of people with internet connections in Africa than in the 'first' world. Thus, less bloggers. A lot of the links were dud. A lot were to now-finished blogs from Americans 'doing' Africa. A lot weren't in English. A lot were packed with ads (I was thankful, whilst searching, for up to date spyware). Few blogs fell within the parameters for the 12 Merry Blogs (recent posts, rooted in a place, pics, humour, a sympathetic philosophy, no ads or cats...) Anyhow, here's the fruit of a morning's 'work'. Kenya Today has a journalistic view of that country. No pics. Interesting, though - a bit like a Kenyan equivale...

Walked down to the allotment this morning. I took the horse and ducks pictures at the Primrose Nature Reserve. Did some more weeding. Then The Old Man gave me a lift to return the strimmer to the hire place. We went to the Long Bar for a quick pint, and talked about marauding foxes and allotment arsonists to a couple of his old shipmates. As we were leaving, one of them shouted, "Have ye got any casting-off coppers?" Dad explained that, when they were embarking on a voyage from the Tyne, kids would hang around the quay because it was customary for the departing sailors to give away all their loose change. A former 'colleague' from Libya, of whom it can only safely be said that we did NOT see eye to eye, wrote of me in an email to a third party, (who naturally and gleefully forwarded it to me): Can't say I'm sorry to see the back of that dour porridge faced lump of shite from Geordieland however, to be crudely honest with you! How you stuck weeks with him...

Life in Alaska has potential: it's interesting to get words and images from somewhere so far away. He might even get into The 12 Merry Blogs. Ay Cristina is a collection of links she's found. And that Little Gwion 's up to his unfathomable antics again.

Those Welsh ones were all rubbish, really, weren't they? Must be a good Welsh blog out there, but it's not on britblog , anyhow. I'll keep my eyes peeled for one and welcome suggestions the while. There's a queer happenstance regarding that Chav's Mum . I was reading a review of a novel called Incendiary by Chris Cleave , which had these lines written by the working class bereaved mother and narrator: "The middle classes put up web sites about us. If you're interested Osama just look up chav pikey ned or townie in Google". Doubly spooky because I got an email from someone called Osama last night. The novel presages last week's bombs. It gets trebly weird: this morning I referred to last friday's Newsnight Review, which reviewed an exhibition of WW2 art. One of the paintings was done in 1938, called 'Prophecy', and was a London montage, which included two buses, the 77 and the 30. (No image on the www, sorry; the one I've p...

hello garry I am Osam from libya im your student you have been teaching us english here in Zawia city I would like to thank you for everything you did for us and I wish so many good things for you ...I wish all your dreams comes true...by the way whats about your wife how is she now does she borned or not yet....my best wishes...good bye

According to this , the baby will be a girl. Hmm. Don't Get Me Started on gender politics this morning. It's a minefield. I mean, one of the contributors on Newsnight Review the other night was a T.V. in a very Polly Anna frock, and the remarkable thing was that it wasn't remarkable. But we wouldn't put our baby boy (assuming that Chinese chart is wrong) in pink. Not round our way. You could put a little girl in dungarees, say, but not a boy in anything frilly. And I'm sure that applies in Islington as much as it does in Jarrow.

They're actually about five foot high, and look rather noble now that all the other weeds have been strimmed away. Goldfinches will love them this winter. Bees love them now.

The idea is to get twelve blogs from all around the world. They need to be rooted geographically. Today I'm in Wales. Singlefin gave me a smile, briefly. Some blogs which go on about politics are, perhaps, kept by people with daft ideas who use the blog as a much-needed outlet because they were for ever being punched for airing their views in the pub; so avowedly newsy/political blogs should be treated carefully. According to TANKERx... might be one such, but I'll keep an eye on him. Being up one's own arse is a disqualification for being linked, but despite it's being so ("ponderings on a personal mythography", oh, please!), A Life in Wales is intriguing; good images, anyhow. Chav Mum 's more my cup of tea, but I wish she'd get a digital camera. One of these might make their way to 12 merry blogs. The Blog Tour of Britain and Ireland is done for now. Tomorrow, the World!

Big thanks to Apprentice for chalking the formatting problem. Tweaking wasn't doing it, and it turned out a thorough overhaul was quicker and easier. Wants a slap of paint mind, when the welds have cooled.

Today was the day when the garden at the flat was sorted out. I had mixed feelings. It had gone somewhat wild because I've been away so much, but that wasn't so bad: I was thinking of all the insect and other life. But the neighbours and the council, and (as the last straw), Herself were looking askance, so this morning I hired a fuck-off strimmer for £25 quid the weekend and cut it all down. And also pruned the feral rose bushes so that now they're domesticated rose bushes again. As a concession to the plans for a wild life garden I've put all rose bush cuttings in the log corner where creatures should find a place to hang out. I'm leaving all the grass, dock, nettle and other trimmings on the ground to mulch in and provide yet another habitat. AND I've left two huge thistle plants standing alone, big (six foot) as shrubs, food for bees and goldfinches, and like two fingers to the manicured-lawn fans. Another compensation was the industrial size strimme...

I don't know... There's something poignant here.

This mangetout has a thing about lost gloves, so I've sent him this picture I took last summer. Herself and I had been to The Lakeside for something to eat and it was lying there in Durham Drive on the way back - it hadn't been there when we'd walked the same way in daylight earlier that evening.

Oh; well, in that case, I'll be brief. Got to the garden this morning to find the Old Man there: the council skip was on it's bi-mothly visit, so we went like mad fellas to wheelbarrow broken bricks and miscellaneous rubbish up to it. Then he had to dash off to a funeral, a common occurence at his age in these latitudes. Then I got all of the tatties weeded, and made a start on the same treatment with the onions and leeks - should finish that tomorrow, whereupon I'm caught up with maintenance. I took the sage pic 'cos I've posted on NGs to get advice with what to do about harvesting the seeds to sow next year. The poppies are the prettiest weed. More on the revamped blogroll later, but it'll all make sense if you've been following my blog-related cogitations... Don't worry, I haven't really been paying attention either.

And by Islands I mean the British Isles, and Don't even Get Me Started on the political correctness or otherwise of that term, let's just say the collection of islands at the north western edge of Europe where they mostly speak English and several kinds of Celtic. The reason why was clarified by IrishEyes writing about Time Names Best Blogs. Which in turn completed a train of thought set in motion by something I'd read in blogshares about 20% of blogs getting 80% of the incoming links , just as 20% of humanity own 80% of the cash. I'll name no names but there are a number of British (English, actually, come to think of it... Southern English, indeed...) blogs which have masses of links-in, loads of comments, but which are crap. Just as IrishEyes traced the US ones back to Time, so most of these can be traced back to a Guardian Online 'Best UK Blog' stunt in, if I recall, 2003. Some of those blogs like Call Centre Confidential are gone now, and some a...

AH SURE YA KNOW YERSELF. Nice pictures; apparently not a nutcase; can spell. I seem to be on some kind of a blog tour of north west Europe. Not sure why.

This morning was one of those mornings where I woke up at 4am and lay awake until 5 and then thought "sod it" and got up and made a cup of tea. Feel like the lingering jet-lag/Libya-lethargy has been shaken off. Back to the allotment later this morning. Rain stopped play there yesterday. I did manage to free the sage from weeds, but not much else. When it was clear the rain wasn't a passing shower I walked into Jarra, got a Grauniad and a pork dip, and took them to the Buffs to have with a pint. The paper had a wee article about can't find it on google . I've had a look this morning and it's got possibilities: scratching around there I came across the picture above, which gave me a smile. Last night we went to the Prince of Wales , where, midweek, you get two meals for the price of one. I'd naturally decided to celebrate Bastille Day with claret, or any French wine in default of that, but all they had was something called 'White Mountain' which wa...

Karl Marx has won the In Our Time Greatest Philosopher Vote. It's a surprise, because he's not part of our consciousness the way he was only twenty years ago. And as it says on his tomb (though you can't really see it on this picture ), "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." There was an interesting comment on this in today's Guardian. This is food for thought, especially for those of us who misspent our youths standing on street corners shouting "Get a copy of this week's Socialist Worker! Only thirty pence!" (How much does it cost now, I wonder? Years since I've seen any of the comrades on the street, though they pop on telly at demos regularly). Marx's understanding of the world of capitalism is now as valid as it ever was. But we're still far away from knowing how "to change it". It was interesting to google ["in our time" bbc "karl marx...

A nice comment from Apprentice regarding Dawdon , linked me to Swing's Weblog ; what a great idea for a blog! I've loved the swing bridge for as long as I can remember. When I was little, I remember it used to feel gloomy yet strangely exciting down at that part of the Quayside. Now of course it an entirely other, post-industrial, world. A year or so ago I was having a pint with my mate Jim at that upmarket Wetherspoons on the quayside, and noticed that the bridge opened frequently, to let - as I remember it - those sightseeing/boozing ferries up the river. In an hour or two, I saw it open and close more than I had in years previously. More explorations at britblog have unearthed this dark little cloud from over the water, and by way of contrast, this from Wales. I've realised that I've accidentally embarked on a tour of the British Isles (that purely geographical term, mind), so far as the blogroll goes. I started on the garden at the flat last night and oh my God! T...

...is what I am by this blogshares. Some fella from this spacecoastweb blog has GIVEN me 25 shares, at a hugely inflated value, and then 'restructured' and took four back? What this means, exactly, I cannot ascertain, especially because the blogshare site seems to have crashed. Scoobied is an interesting adjective: it seems to have started life as a noun, from Scottish rhyming slang (a scooby doo = clue ). "Give me a scooby and I'll guess". The interesting thing for me is that the meaning has become inverted in the transition: to be scoobied is to be clueless, not clued. Here's an example of its use in Welsh's Trainspotting .

Those horsetails are bastards, aren't they? Survivors from the cretaceous, apparently. Bastards, anyhow. Bullying my fennel, bothering my onions, and pissing off my potatoes. Dad's been keeping things together for me, but turn your back for a few days and the weeds start owning the place. The good news is, thirty of the black currant cuttings I put in last winter have taken, so there are thirty new bushes in the offing. A dozen elder trees, ditto. I'm knackered now, only a couple of hours work. That's because I've had no real exercise for the last two months. Ah well, schwey-schwey. New blogroll policy: twelve blogs. Anybody gets irksome or boring, then away they go. Greengalloway , for example, looked promising, but posted nowt for a week, so he's away. Incurable-hippy , on the other hand, has a fantastically unexpected post on Christian tattoos . Brilliant. And Dawdon has such good pictures, and such a homely feel.

I'll have to get a job. Been home nearly a week and I'm more or less Blighticised again. By 'Blighticised' I mean the mood swings from elation to despair (always a strange and unsettling phenomenon when I've just got back from Libya), have settled down, and I've got over the unfortunate urge to go into any pub just because it's there. The point is, I found Libya so alien, so dull and inhospitable, it takes several days back in Blighty to feel normal, at home, BLIGHTICISED. I suppose it's a wee bit like getting out of jail. Though we only go away for ten weeks. Anybody who's had their liberty restricted for any longer than that, for whatever reason, has all my sympathy. (Well, not quite anybody obviously, some people who've been in jail were there for good reasons, and DON'T get my sympathy… I'm rambling, aren't I?) Anyhow, that was a diversion: I know I need a job because I've just spent a good chunk of the afternoon in futile sur...

We've decided to look for a bigger place to live. This flat is really too small for a family, which is what we'll be soon, God willing. Which means postponing my elaborate schemes for the garden. They were always fraught with difficulty anyway, Upstairs claiming it as a 'shared garden', though that claim has been inspired by cupidity rather than owt else - been watching these garden make-over programmes on telly, I'll bet, and seeing the pound signs. Hmm. May as well move on and get a bigger place and leave the 'shared garden'. (I'm using inverted commas 'cos it's shared so far as house-prices go but not vis a vis working it). I've planted nearly 40 trees, and if we move in winter they can all move with us. This heat! Who would have thought it, but it's too hot for the allotment - which is in desperate need of weeding. So I've put off going until the early evening.

This is an excellent piece of writing. The Grauniad at its best.

It's great to be back on Christian soil!

... but this woman farting gave me a snigger.

This is quite an interesting way of keeping up with political life. Thanks to a hack's life for the link.

To the Buffs to have a pint with Dad and his mate Alan. I had forgotten that it closes at 2pm, so arrived a bit later than custom demanded. Then I walked back in the direction of home through a wonderfully, unusually hot afternoon, via first the garden, which wants some serious weeding (and I noticed some weird stuff with the garlic mustard, more later), thence to the Robin Hood , where I met Herself. We had an interesting but actually really obvious game of cards/bingo there: They give out wee hands of 13 cards for a pound each and then somebody shouts out the cards from a new pack and the first person to go through all of their own 13 cards is the winner, as in bingo. There were 57 players and the winner got £57 - how obvious is that? Then came a pub quiz so we went to the Prince of Wales for a decent dinner of sausage and mash (me) and Kashmiri Chicken (Herself).

Said herself vis a vis blogging. Hmm. I've deleted the Jarrow Review of Books and the MA blog - they were means to fill my time whilst I was in Libya only. And the blogroll's been tidied up.

That's the effect of two years absence on my garden at the flat. I'll get to grips with the perimeter over the next few days, clearing the weeds to allow the embryonic hedge to breath. And leave some of the giant thistles for the goldfinches over the winter.

This arrived from one of my students this morning: Dear Garr how are you and your wife they are happy in england I'm fine can you correct my address Ihave abautiful girl friend can you send to me see you soon Any beautiful girls who want to write to a charming Libyan should apply to Pig Sty Avenue.

That Little Gwion's been on the move, too. I heard he'd died of drink. Or that he'd married a Venezuelan barmaid, and gotten blinded by her sister in a misunderstanding involving a small dog and a bowl of chillies. There was another story that he'd got work as a hang gliding instructor in Georgia (or was it the Ukraine?). Yet again, that he'd bought an identity and was selling fitted bathrooms in Godalming...

...isn't quite working, is it? It's brilliant, mind, to be able to do a few clicks and publish pics straightaway, without all the tedium of Hello and Picassa and what have you. But the problem is on the page: in both IE and Firefox there are dirty great gaps. They compact somewhat with each new post, but even so... Maybe there's a way to tidy it up if you know more HTML than I? Mind you, I'm doing HTML baby steps now: the blogroll's quite snazzy, I reckon.

Just caught the last part of this recorded concert on R3. One should be able to get to it through the Listen Again later today. Wondrous. This is a link to their new album. The picture's Gigi, the singer.