zotz | Odd meetings.

Thursday and Friday were fairly calm.. I visited a friend during the former evening and went to the pub the latter. During the day, of course, I went to work. Thursday morning was probably the interesting bit. I was late into work because NTL were coming round to move their wiring. The technicians arrived thinking that they'd have to replace the cable all the way from the road, but I pointed out the cable arriving at the house and emerging intact from its conduit inside and they agreed that it was going to be a much smaller job. An hour later they were finished and leaving. Magic. Next stop, carpet. Which is going to take about another ten days or so, but finally there's been some real progress. In the evening I was to see Sarah the Pilot, and we discussed mostl Calling-related things, over hot chocolate with Chartreuse. Rather nice. Very civilised. Late on Friday

duranorak was in the pub, as she was visiting

kboyd for the weekend.

Saturday a couple of interesting things happened. First, I got a notice from the Roadmender in Northampton, claiming that they've got NMA playing on Friday.

!

Then I went to the carpet shop (as detailed above), got a paper, went back and had some breakfast with aforementioned paper and then went to the KSR to play pool with

grahamb. As it happened,

darkgoblin was there as well, with a couple of parentaloid creatures. Pool was played, Zotz was thrashed . . . no surprises there. After this it was decided to go and see

shekhmet preparatory to getting a bit before the evening. She was hanging around down by the river (Granta, remember) watching people in punts and hoping they'd fall in. We joined here there. Some time later a work colleague of hers floated past with an unfamiliar American onboard. They stopped for a chat and the subject of weather and climate came up - it being summer and all. This, of course, brought up the matter of my Texan friend (Hi!) who moved to Oregon last year. I mentioned her by name.

He knows her. From some years back. The world is too incestuous. Alternatively, as the good Captain (no, the other one) said, "There are forty people in the world and five of them are hamburgers".

After this - which I was more than a little thrown by, I have to say - we repaired via a food emporium to Shekhmet's place, where we listened to doubtless pirated music and hate. And got ready to go out in couple of cases. And went out to a concert. By

alixandrea's band Skelliga, who were as good as the reviews suggested. I wasn't very taken with the first band, for various reason which I won't burden you with, but the second was The Positives, a local punk band who've come on a fair way since I last saw them quite a bit back. Good fun. And they've got a song about drinking in the KSR. As they say, wrote about what you know. Skelliga themselves were better. IMO. They sounded surprisingly nice in such a ropy venue and i managed to blag a demo CD off the very generous Alix after they'd finished. I hadn't seen them before, but definitely will again. Good too see she hasn't been wasting her time. Recommended.

Today's been quiet. I read the pepers, toyed around with the idea of going out, decided I couldn't be arsed, connected my turntable, amp and speakers together (using the new rack and concrete flooring) and listened to some Hugo Largo, which sounded suitably godlike. This was closely followed by Yo La Tengo and Madder Rose. Tomorrow I may try some early Swans. Furthermore, I did a quick kernel compile as a part of moving to a new alsa version.

Errr . . .

That's it, I think.