10:12 AM
I was asked to list my "musical history" yesterday, for a band website somebody's planning on putting up. It was quite a fun exercise. Here are the bits of my life I can still remember:

• Peyote Fly the Chillum Egg
  (1986-7)
  Played a few godawful Hawkwind covers gigs at friends parties. Frightened a lot of people away who had really wanted to come and enjoy a good party.
  
• Light & Sound Department
  (1987-8)
  Played a few pubs in the West London area, including the Clarendon, Hammersmith, which was knocked down one week later in our honour (and to make way for an inane over-grown mouse with too few fingers). Used to support the Senseless Things and Los Bastados quite a lot.
  
• Toxic Avengers
  (1988)
  Played at a couple of squat-gigs, including the bordering-on-the-Spinal-Tap "Hanger Henge" (a polystyrene stonehenge in somebody's back garden on Hanger Lane) and "Henge Revenge" (the same polystyrene stonehenge transplanted to the living room of a squat opposite Kew Gardens). Sadly the following party in Kew "Subterranean Enterprise" (decked out like captain Kirk's starship, complete with big armchair covered in TV bits & switches) was brought to an end by police before we got to play.
  
• "Kevin's Band" (well, we never had a name, but Kevin was our leader)
  (1988-89)
  Pretty proggy stuff, Kevin used to write some amazing little tunes but we never made it our of the rehearsal studios.
  
• Vibronaughts
  (1989-90)
  After our first gig the headline on Bristol University's student newspaper read "Riot Baker" - we had played at Hiatt Baker hall of residence and, err, started a riot. Future gigs (mainly at student venues, but also a couple of Bristol pubs) went in a similar vein - lots of Iggy & the Stooges & Motorhead covers, people spitting & throwing glasses(biology students throwing the left-overs of their day's dissections), and promoters cutting off our power supply before we could cause too much real trouble.
  
• The Adavasi
  (1990-3)
  Never a real band, just a vague name (invented by me for my own purposes and never really used by anyone else) for a loose bunch of us who used to meet up in lofts & garages and jam out pseudo-Ozric Tentacles psychedelic dub rock nonsense.
  
• Tommy Jazz Quartet (actually, we never had a name, but that one will do)
  (1991-2)
  Erm, great musicians but we never seemed to do much aside from get stoned and practice in one anothers' living rooms.
  
• Gulch
  (1993-5)
  Played lots of parties & North London pubs.
  
• Caustic
  (1995-2000)
  Played lots of North London pubs (Bull & Gate, Hope & Anchor, Dublin Castle, Red Eye etc.) & released 6 tapes & 2 CDs
  
• Cathy Ray
  (2000-now)
  Played the same places before & released 1 CD.
  
• Bone Turtle
  (2000-now)
  "The Agency Band", i.e. bunch of people from work playing covers. Rather fun gigs at the agency Christmas Party (Sound Republic, Leicester Square) and the Clapham Grand (in aid of the Red Cross)
  
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9:45 AM
I read an amusing spin on the usual virus hoax today, courtesy of Lockergnome

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11:02 AM
Remind me not to try cycling again with my laptop and my bass on my back. Or at least not through London rush-hour traffic. On the hottest day of the year. Still, I made it in one piece (just)

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2:43 PM
Just went to Peter Jones to buy some new bedsheets... well, I've been promising myself a trip to the laundrette for so long, to be honest this seems like a much simpler way to get clean sheets. Didn't realise at the time but, according to Mark, the guy standing next to me at the counter (and kicking up a fuss about his bed sheets) was James Hewitt. As Mark said, if there's someting up with his sheets then it serves him right for writing such a crap book.

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8:31 AM
Two suits came and plonked themselves down opposite me on the train at Loughborough. Which is far too early, as normally I get the table myself until at least Market Harborough. Not only that, but one of them sat opposite me, and not content with preventing my legs from extending their natural length, he proceeded to kick me and tread on my feet for the next five minutes. I laid down my newspaper and tried to grab an hour-or-so's sleep, and the two of them started conversing in an irritating almost-whisper, loud enough for me to catch most of what they said, but with enough sub-audible gaps to render the conversation uninteresting and incomprehensible. The only exception to this was when one of them answered his phone, and raised his voice to a traditional Dom Joly-level bellow. Grrrg. Had a very uncomfortable half-sleep (more like a 33.3333% sleep) and arrived in London irritable.

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8:27 PM
I've never been too keen on ironing. Extreme Ironing may change all that. But then, I've never been very keen on extreme sports either, so perhaps not.

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4:36 PM
Thank you Amazon, for finally delivering the most amazing cookbook in the world - The Millennium Cookbook, possibly the most amazing set of recipes I have cast my eyes over, and every one of them Vegan. Seriously considering a trip to San Francisco just so I can visit the Millennium Restaurant and try this stuff in its natural habitat.

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11:34 AM
I walked and walked, circling outwards from the suburbs of Sheffield. As I emerged into countryside, I discovered tribes of Indians camped out in the fields, Adavasi-style dressed in loose Rajasthani cottons with faded dye. Climbing under & over a gate to enter the first field, I somehow ended up with dogshit right in the centre of my sweatshirt. The tribe's washermen grabbed me and bundled the garment over my head, before adding it to sackloads of multi-coloured fabrics which they loaded on a huge wooden pallette and carted off to some river to clean.

I traipsed through field after field, finding a different tribe in each, subtle changes in dress and attitude. But all had one thing in common - the fields they lived in. Every one started almost flat and sloped gently up. The main dwelling was in the middle, straddling a moderate slope. Beyond this, the hill became ever steeper until it was almost vertical. The tribesmen danced and flitted up to the top of the field and back again, but struggle as I might I rarely passed the 3 quartile. It was like flying through treacle in a dream - so hard to get off the ground, I put more effort into it than I ever would have done when awake, but still couldn't quite get there.

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1:11 PM
Had myself a ball reading through Kibo's road cone gallery.

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2:57 PM
Been meaning to write about Belgium for ages now. It's been almost a month since we were there (in fact, it has been a month now). And I'm coming to accept the fact that I'll never finish writing about it. So here is a smattering of what I wanted to say, a work in progress:

Recently spend a wonderful week in Belgium. The country has something of a bad reputation. Well, perhaps more of a lack of reputation. I remember a radio item recently joking that serial paedophile and murderer Marc Dutrouc was the only famous Belgian that most people could name. Well, there are actually quite a few famous Belgians - Rene Magritte, Ruebens, Bruegel spring to mind among others. I didn't realise until looking at the list above that Django Reinhardt and Hieronymous Bosch are also members of the club.

Anyway, the country's reputation has generally been as a place to avoid - not because it's dangerous, well... if you do see Belgium and die then it's generally assumed that you'd die of boredom. The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy lists Belgium as the one word that is still viewed throughout the galaxy (with the exeption of one small planet far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy) as unspeakably rude. Shame that it's author died on the day we came back to England.

So, to dispel such myths, and because it's hard for me to summarise a whole week's experience in anything shorter than a book, here is my hitch-hiker's (well, OK, car hirer's) guide to Belgium:

Landscape: Well, OK, so this part was fairly boring, as far as I could see. But then, we didn't really escape the cities, except by motorway (which, incidentally, were quite pleasant - lots of trees along the sides & up the middle - far greener than their British equivalents).

Cities: Now you're talking. Brussels we managed to miss, with the exception of the airport and the ring-road. Ghent was very pleasant in a sort of historical-building-y-studenty-city-y type of way, although I'd probably get bored there if I spent much more than the 2 days that we usefully happened to be visiting the city for. Antwerp, on the other hand, I could easily live in (if only I could afford one of the magnificent 16th century buildings that pack the old city).

People: Universally wonderful, the ones I met anyway. First there was Michael & Auriea, and Michael's kids Marcel & Martha, who we visited in Ghent. Very welcoming, very laid back, very nice lunch. Shame they didn't do "going out" but nonetheless we spent a pleasant evening together in our hotel room over a bottle of wine. Then, moving on to Antwerp, we met Guy. Of course, I've had a few wild times in London with Guy, but had been looking forward to seeing him on home turf for a long time. Unfortunately he was not 100% on form, but still I'd rather spend time with Guy on 50% than with most other people on 50%. Oh, and Gill says that he has the sexiest voice in the world.

Food: Also pretty cool. I was disappointed at having so few days in Antwerp, because the old town seems to be dotted with just the kind of restaurant I like - modern, a good selection of interesting food, but not too fussy. The kind of thing you might find around Shoreditch or Clerkenwell. Time & knackered childred prevented us from sampling too many, but we had a bash anyway and weren't too disappointed. Also refreshing was the fact that, even in a place that looked like a shabby old pub-meal-style diner, the meal I ordered (which the waitress translated as "Two pieces of fish. Salmon, and a white one") came neatly served and was surprisingly tasty.

Nightlife: Who knows. I didn't go out at night. Except for one late drink & a chat with Guy on the cobbles outside Witzli Poetzli.

Daylife: Cool. A nice zoo in Antwerp (not quite London zoo but then... only London zoo is) and some excellent theme parks. And lots of shopping.

Shopping: Yeah, OK, I didn't mean to bring that up. Very easy to spend money in Antwerp, especially if you like clothes. Every other shop is a clothes shop. And every other other shop is a shoe shop. And every other other other shop sells kids clothes. The rest just sell chocolate and other goodies. Financially, I am much poorer for my trip, but sartorially so so much richer.

Money: A nightmare man. What kind of country has 61 of its currency to a pound? I mean, 61! That's not the kind of figure you can do easy maths with. It meant that everything initially seemed really expensive but then I found myself thinking "nah, sod it, it's probably really cheap. Now, 1,000 francs, is that just under 2 quid or just under 20 again? Ah, who cares, it's all Monopoly stuff".

Language: Likewise. First time I can remember visiting a country where I didn't speak a word of the language. Not even yes/no please/thank you hello/goodbye. Nada. Which meant that conversations in shops etc. took place in a kind of mumbled apologetic English (of course, everyone spoke pretty good English anyway, but that didn't do much to temper the embarrasment of not even being able to make an effort. I mean, if I could have said "do you speak English?" in Flemish then that would at least have been a start). We did venture into the French-speaking part for a day, which was quite surreal after being among... (waddya call em... Phlegms?) for so long. The French seemed somehow ruder than the Flemish, more distant. On returning to England, I showed off my Walter Van Beirendonck Aesthetic Terrorist T-shirt, which Mark then mentioned to a Belgian client. Being from the French side, he opined that "all Flemish are terrorists or perverts". Perhaps he'd met Guy?

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2:50 PM
2 weeks ago I woke up with a dead arm. Not just numb, buzzy, pins & needly stuff, a genuine dead arm. I thought I was gonna have to get it amputated. I slowly lifted my head off the pillow, tried to pull my right arm out from underneath me so I could prop myself up with it, and experienced a total lack of response from that part of my body. I pulled myself up using my left arm, and felt this fleshy thing dangling uselessly down my right-hand side. So I tried to lift my right hand up using my left, which was the scariest feeling ever. My left hand could feel squishy flesh, but the hand that was being held felt nothing. Just like hanging on to a lump of meat. I kept trying to move my right arm, but could only get as far as swinging it from the shoulder, like a cow carcass hanging in an abbatoir. I sat there terrified for nearly 10 minutes before feeling and movement gradually started to creep back in. Still gives me shivers thinking about the way it felt to hold that dead arm.

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2:46 PM
Had a great time last night, hanging out in the Front Room bar down the Kings Road with Mark, Keld, JC & Adam. Unfortunately JC scrawled "♥ PORN" on my mobile phone, using his nuclear-attack-proof graffiti marker. Ah well.

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