Monday, April 24

Cathal Coughlan

about one million years ago in a village on the edge of civilisation (I exaggerate slightly, it was in Preston and about 1990ish) I wondered into a tiny cobwebbed record shoppe on Church Street, and when I wondered out I found that I'd bought a tape called "Against Nature" by Fatima Mansions.

I'm not sure if that was before I read one or more interviews with the main dude in Fatima Mansions - Cathal Coughlan. He gives good interviews, including one in which he summed up Bono in three words. But too rude to reproduce here, apart from the copyright issues...

Anyway, I listened to this tape quite a few times (favourite song was the opener: "Only losers take the bus"), and then I met someone (Stacey) who had an album by them too. And this album had great song titles ("More smack, vicar?" and "Look what I stole for us darling")

but the moment when I realised that Cathal Coughlan was a genius was when I heard his cover of "Everything I do I do it for you" and if you weren't subjected to UK music radio/tv in 1991 you can't imagine the pain caused by this awful song spending 16 weeks at number one in the charts. But when I heard the Fatima Mansions cover on the NME ruby trax compilation I felt that justice had been done.

Anyway, not really sure what happened to the band. but Mr Coughlan seems to still be around, and he has some rather fine MP3s on his web site

Unbroken Ones button which plays an MP3 file
We Are The Sinister World Government button which plays an MP3 file

Fruit & veg today? - loads
Exercise today? - i really should do some sit ups
Hours of sleep I'm going to get tonight? - a good chance of eight

Saturday, April 22

I even _smell_ fresh and clean

since the body shop were bought by l'oreal, and because l'oreal are owned by nestlé, I've been looking for a new supplier of toiletries which meets my stringent criteria

  • vegan
  • not tested on animals
  • fair trade
though to be fair I'm not sure how good the body shop was on these, certainly not all their stuff was vegan.

anyway, Lush mark their vegan wares with a green dot, and have always been against animal testing - according to page 6 of this report.
Animal Aid sell vegan stuff which isn't tested on animals. They also sell chocolate and wine - which puts them ahead I think.

Tuesday, April 18

spring bank holiday weekend

the traffic on the M6 was awful on thursday night. by the time we got to the campsite it was dark, windy and raining. the car got stuck in the mud. When morning came we saw we had done a pretty good job of getting the tent up

we set off up coniston old man, the weather was much improved. there was even some tanning going on.

the stone there has a lovely texture

a tremendous view from a spot almost at the top of scafell pike. the lake is called Wast Water I think

If you gaze into your lunch

your lunch also gazes into you.


I think I might be offered a new job soon. More details when they come in...

Sunday, April 9

you can tell it's spring when it starts hailing

hola amigos, it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, I've been pretrty busy lately with looking for a new job. had a few interviews last week and got one second interview out of it so maybe my luck is changing.
been quite a quiet weekend, had a trip round the big button exhibition and few drinks in town with my good friend Gen on saturday. I was going to take a picture too to put a bit of a visual experience into my rather text-based blog. I was poised by the window of the pub, the ferris wheel and the new bit of the Arndale Centre were in my sights, my finger was on the button... but the battery of my camera ran out. So here is someone else's picture of the outside of the pub instead

I repaired the water-damaged board by the kitchen door today. Not very exciting but I know you love the day-to-day stuff. If you didn't you wouldn't be reading, right? And now you've remembered why you don't come here very often, here's the closing stats...


Fruit & veg today? - loads of apples
Exercise today? - nil
Hours of sleep I'm going to get tonight? - 8 seems likely

Sunday, April 2

the big smoke

went to london this weekend, on one of the fancy new pendolino trains. Didn't really seem noticably faster but certainly easier than driving.
in an explosion of culture my lovely gf and I went to the Tate Modern (plastic boxes - yawn) and the Tate Britain. The gothic exhibition at TB was very stylishly arranged with subdued lights and enticing gloomth, but the array of stuff being exhibited seemed quite small. some good stuff though, like "The Nightmare"

(since I'm cheating and posting this the weekend after, I have no recollection about the number of vegetables I ate or the hours of sleep I took. Basically I ate chinese, thai and mmmm, mexican. & I slept enough to feel rested and refreshed)