for better and for worse

Dave bought some 'noise-cancelling' headphones. 'I can't hear anything when I've got them on', he said with satisfaction.

So maybe he should send them back then.

Mat was out on Saturday night for Dave's birthday, showing us his pride and joy: a new mobile phone! He points it at the sky and it shows him the stars! Plus, through the miracle of GPS, it was able to tell us exactly where we were: on a rooftop just next to the Swan's back garden, apparently.

Later the three of us who were left went inside the pub proper, where a DJ was playing. If the mark of a true artist is that they carry on with their work no matter what the world's reaction is, then this man was indeed a great artist. Certainly he had managed to recreate the authentic atmosphere of a particularly boring wedding. People did start to dance right at the end but I think they were being ironic.

At least it was better than staying in and watching TV feasting on its own entrails in Fern Britton's new show called something like Now Let's Remember Old TV Shows, They May Have Been Shit But At Least They Were Better Than This One. It only makes one long for the halcyon days (a month or two ago) of All-Star Mr. And Mrs. Bland as it undoubtedly was, it did offer the occasional chilling glimpse into the home lives of celebs. I am pleased to have learned, for example, that Stirling Moss has the house wired up so that if his wife is watching TV downstairs too late (as he deems it), he can plunge her into darkness and silence from the bedroom, at the flick of a switch! It's like something from a modern-day Gothic novel I might one day write.

The Vampire Lovers

I suppose you know you're old when you're watching T in the Park on BBC3 and everyone is going on about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer Karen O and her 'effortless cool' and you're thinking exactly the opposite: you're thinking that she seems to have put an enormous amount of effort into looking really stupid. Like Keanu Reeves in badly-applied clown make-up. Or, in another moment, a sort of Native American Boadicea.

Not that there's anything too badly wrong with the music, even if they did start out pretending to be 'No Wave' and have ended up more like Siouxsie and the Banshees. Ut they ain't; but then who is? Am I the only person in the world waiting for Ut to reform? Everyone else has got back together, even if no-one ever heard of them in the first place. Really there's just Ut and Abba left.

Oh, and the Smiths.

Oh, and Haysi Fantayzee.

I suppose I shall have to look elsewhere for my icons. The other evening I overheard (that's what it felt like somehow - overhearing) an interview on Resonance with Ingrid Pitt, star of many a 70's horror movie. It wasn't all that easy to make out what she was saying, partly because of her thick East European accent, partly because her voice kept alternating between a whisper and a hysterical shriek. It came to me that she was quite gaga, as the young people say, until I realised that she was talking about her experiences in a concentration camp, and could be forgiven for being a bit emotional. Mind you, wasn't this in answer to a question about Hammer films?

Then she was suddenly talking about Elizabeth Bathory. Defending her, if I wasn't imagining it. Bathory could 'speak five languages', apparently. Which more than makes up for all the bathing in virgin's blood, I'm sure you'll agree. I'm thinking of putting Bathory forward as a figurehead for the blood service. We could start recruiting virgins and selling their blood as a beauty treatment. I am already at work on a Powerpoint presentation.

Finally, did Ingrid Pitt actually say that she'd 'killed seventeen Nazis', or did I imagine it? I was actually quite frightened by this stage. But icons should be scary, yes?

The Tenant

And now we have a place, already. It isn't quite Copperfield Gardens but it's close: Mayfield Gardens, just down the road from there. Not a town house, of course, but a maisonette, with the landlord living above. So no more of those wild parties we are always thinking of having. And no more letting the grass grow to seed (not that there is a great deal of grass) - oh no, he'll be out there with a ruler every day, and tut-tutting loudly if it gets beyond a certain height.

It was second thoughts like this that drew me - even after we'd paid the initial unrefundable 'reservation fee' - to view the flat on Cameron Close Dave looked at the other week. He'd been quite positive about it, except for the surroundings. Cameron Close is a small estate near the station that rather resembles my old comprehensive school as it looked in the late 70's. As though to confirm this impression the various blocks are called things like 'Glamis' and 'Cawdor' - nothing like a 'Macbeth' reference to make you feel at home! The estate agent was late, giving me the opportunity to soak up the atmosphere, while the Dead C's Repulsion played on my i-pod, and it started to rain.

At least it's ethnically diverse. There are two Thai girls living across from the flat I was viewing. So the estate agent pointed out, almost suggestively I thought. He also remembered Dave as 'the guy with the use of only the one leg', which seemed a rather roundabout way of saying it. As if Dave still had it locked in a cupboard somewhere, but had mislaid the key.

In the end I felt that living on Cameron Close was really a young man's game. I'm more in the market for sheltered housing. Mayfield Gardens it is then!

Frightmove

Ross has been oversleeping recently. Normally, he explained, he is about to leave the house when Thought For The Day comes on, but of late he has been waking up to Thought For The Day. So his thought for the day has been: oh shit.

Soon, however, Ross will no longer be with us. I don't mean he's going to die, he's just moving out, leaving Dave and I to search for a two bed place. There is no shortage of these. In fact, Rightmove has lately been offering a '750-bedroom house' on North Road Avenue that's well within our price range. That's almost enough storage space for me. However, there is a school of thought that says this is a typo, especially as the photo shows a perfectly ordinary mid-terrace cottage.

I went down North Road Avenue the other day, just to check it out, and every other house seems to be up for sale or let, as though the residents are fleeing the Lovecraftian spatial distortion afflicting the area. Or perhaps it has something to do with the massive cinema they are going to build right in front of it.

I've viewed a couple of places. A flat in 'Melford Place', which sounds like something out of a Jane Austen novel (I thought that it would have made a very nice hotel room). And a maisonette whose bedrooms and lounge were huge, but seemed to have engorged themselves at the expense of the kitchen and bathroom, which were in terminal decline. At this last place, I tagged on to someone else's viewing, but failed to properly explain this to the woman-in-residence, whose look of horror when they left and I remained behind was something to treasure.

By the way, regular readers may have noticed that I have 'lost' an entry. I would like to point out that this is in no way related to news reports of the blogger whose fantasy about the abduction and murder of Girls Aloud got him in trouble (though he was acquitted) recently.

Mine was about the Nolan Sisters. There are some things, I have come to realise, that you just can't get away with.