New kitchen electrical work means no leccy, which means no site. I’m sure you’re all devastated.

An Irmine in the wild

Regular readers (ha!) might wonder why there have been few posts recently. Well, visitors to the house would twig straight away: currently the dining room and kitchen are completely gutted, ready for the shiny new ones. This includes removing the dado rail in the dining room, which some twonk decided were in need of a two inch number eight screw every three feet plus half a gallon of mastik.

I swear the gang that did the house up before I got my hands on it must have had shares in the company that made Mastik: it was everywhere. The most sweary moments of the project so far were when we started pulling up the soft as shite pine floor which was stuck to the screed in the dining room floor - I kid you not, there must have been half a tube of Mastik per plank. Two wrecking bars and a lot of brute force and ignorance pulled each one up. The only problem: it took the damn bitumen screed with it! Nasty problem. Either I have to learn about screeding in a hurry or we have yet another bill on our hands, and the worst kind at that: one we didn’t expect.

Eyes on the prize: shiny, shiny kitchen!

No, not like that. It concerns a matter of much greater import than mere sexuality.

What to Put on Your Chips

For years I’ve clung to the belief that vinegar is the lovejuice of Satan and that it wasn’t getting anywhere near my place on any account. Then N visited a couple of weeks ago, we shared some chips that had been liberally sprinkled and you know what? I liked it.

I liked it, yeah
I really liked it
I liked it
I really, really, really liked it
I really liked it
I can't believe it.

(For those who aren’t in the know that’s “Johnny Feelgood” by Liz Phair, of course. Um. Perhaps I shouldn’t be using the lyrics from a song about a woman liking it a bit rough when I’m talking about chips.)

In a hole. Stop digging.

We met today for a memorial service for a colleague who died at 53, except that I didn’t make it in time: apparently 5 hours isn’t enough time to allow to get from Cambridge to Manchester. Damn the M6.

Still, tonight should be good, catching up with K. No doubt she’ll have words about some of the music I’ve been getting into recently…

Downloading a Billy Bragg retrospective (nope - still don’t like him on the whole. At least I tried. Like sweet potato) got me on a late-eighties music kick just now. On this album he massacres “Back to the Old House” so naturally I had to go and listen to the Smiths original. Then I thought what the hell and played the whole of “Hatful of Hollow”.

One thing led to another and now it’s The Wedding Present, The Go-Betweens and next it’ll be The Sundays. Every generation has its bands that it takes oh-so seriously and will claim for evermore that nothing was proper music before or since. These are mine. Except that I’m one of the spods who still buys music like nobody’s business long after the spotty, earnest lyric-quoting phase has passed. Still, there’s always a place in my ear for these songs. Good songs.