The Boy Least Likely To

hay fever is so embarrassing. as are all allergies. even though some of them are obviously very dangerous and frightening. hay fever is embarrassing because it's a sign of my body being totally oversensitive to something that is actually innocuous. it's scared of something that isn't really scary at all and just goes totally mental about it. i can't believe that my body is scared of pollen. and not just scared, it actually thinks it's dangerous. dangerous enough to start rapidly activating white blood cells to fight it. and my brain knows it's just pollen and dust particles, but my body won't listen to my brain. it's the equivalent of seeing a spider and calling the police. and every day the police turn up and i have to explain to them that it's all been a big mistake and that it was just a tiny spider and nothing for my body to worry about. and then my body wakes up the next day and sees the same spider and immediately calls the police again. it makes me so angry sometimes that my body won't listen to me. it's such an idiot.

thank you to everyone that sent me suggestions for treating my hay fever. all very helpful, although i'm still nervous of the advice from someone that suggested i take a whole mouthful of tablets every day. and someone else suggested moving to germany, which might be taking things a bit far. everything else i will try though. except it's been raining for the last two days anyway so i haven't really been suffering that much.

one of my favourite bands from the last few years, lucky lucky pigeons, have put up some new songs on their myspace page, and they've made it so that i can download them all for absolutely nothing. it says they're songs off their new album, bird flu. i thought they'd split up because there'd been a blog post that mentioned them doing their last gig ever a couple of months ago, but then these new songs appeared and they're fantastic, especially 'no lips on locos', which sounds a bit like what vienna by ultravox would have sounded like if it hadn't been shit.

there are other things i wanted to write about and maybe i will later. i know i should write more often, but i just haven't been in the mood recently. i think this month might be different, but i always think that.

x

"i built that challenger by myself,
but i needed money and so i sold it."

if i had to choose one i probably couldn't. i'd have to be allowed two. the thing is, i've always had 'thunder road' as my favourite song by bruce springsteen, but it doesn't seem complete somehow without 'the promise'. it only seems like half the story. a bit like that episode of friends where phoebe finds out that her mum never showed her the ends of sad films to protect her from the painful truth. if you only have 'thunder road' you only have the hopeful bit, where it's all rolling down the windows and letting the wind blow back your hair. you only have the beginning of the dream. it doesn't seem true unless you remember there's every chance it'll end up like springsteen does in 'the promise', sleeping in the back seat of a borrowed car with the tyres rushing by in the rain.

x

"we all of us somehow caught. we born this way or that way and we don't know why. but we caught anyhow... me is me and you is you and he is he. we each one of us somehow caught all by ourself."
- carson mccullers

it's thursday morning. last night it was wednesday, and it was unexpectedly big. but then i wonder if perhaps wednesday nights are the big ones now. it used to be fridays, and it was thursdays for a bit after that. but i don't get excited about thursdays the way i used to. in the sixties and seventies i think it was saturdays, but i wasn't alive so i can't be sure. it just always seems to be saturday nights in films and books from then. it's never been mondays as far as i know, and sunday nights are always going to be subdued, especially now that itv have moved midsomer murders to eight o clock, which effectively means the night's over by ten. which only leaves tuesdays and wednesdays, and tuesday gets lumped in with monday too often for it to amount to anything much. so i guess it's wednesday nights that are the big ones now.

tuesday night was not big. it was very very small indeed. i ended up getting involved in a jigsaw. actually it was two jigsaws. two double sided clangers jigsaws. two hundred pieces in each. i didn't think it would be much fun at first, but i kind of became obsessed and i forgot myself and it was like nothing else in the world mattered to me until i'd finished them. although sadly, one of the jigsaws only had one hundred and ninety nine pieces in so it will never be finished. i've taken a photo of it though, and if by chance anyone has got the same puzzle and doesn't care if they never finish it again, then could they send me the piece i'm missing. i'll send them a swap in return. i don't know what it's equivalent swap would be. perhaps a barbie or something. doing a jigsaw was a surprise though. i think people should do more of them. you can always drink and take drugs while you do them.

we're playing at the innocent village fete in regents park in august. i'm quite excited about it. i've never been before, but apparently there'll be welly wanging, morris dancing, duck herding, dog agility, ferret racing, cream teas, a coconut shy, dancing, homemade cakes, funfair rides and a big farmers' market. which obviously just sounds like any other weekend in the village i live in, so it won't be that special for me. but i imagine that for people who live in london it will be quite exciting. tickets are available from ticketmaster, and we're playing on both days.

i read an article in the paper yesterday about someone who's been creating knitting patterns for dr who characters and then putting them up on her website so that other fans can knit from them, and the bbc have told her she has to take the patterns down or face the threat of legal action. it all came about because someone else knitted some of the monsters from the patterns and put them up for sale on ebay, and the bbc felt obliged to protect its trademark. it seems kind of ridiculous to me. it's a bit like if someone typed up the lyrics and the guitar tablature for one of our songs and then posted it on the internet so that other people could learn the song, and then someone else recorded a version of the song and made a cd and then put it up for sale on ebay. i suppose it would be normal to expect to be paid properly by whoever performed the song and recorded the cd, but it hasn't got anything to do with the person who put the lyrics and the guitar tab up on the internet. i suppose it's not that simple, because if someone recorded a version of one of our songs and made a cd and then put it up for sale on ebay, i'd just be really flattered and try and bid for it myself. lots of people have made models from our artwork out of all sorts of things and i've always thought it was a lovely thing for them to do. i love it that they like it enough to do that. anyway, i thought that i should probably show some sort of solidarity just because we're into knitting things now. i couldn't find any pictures of a knitted ood though, but here are some of a knitted adipose. whatever that is.

i think i'll have to get some knitting patterns done for our website.

anyway, i must get back to whatever it is i do.

x