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bandcamp

If you didn’t play Final Fantasy VII to death in the late nineties then you might not get this. If you did then you and I are kindred spirits and this the greatest collection of songs you will hear all year. I mean, seriously. Fuck yes.

EDIT: So the link stopped working. The bandcamp site for this album is gone.

Team Teamwork’s tumblr offers some explanations. Gutted about the cease and desist on ‘Ante Up’ because that was my favourite.

For those of you who missed it - here is an alternate place to download the album. Do it quick, don’t miss it.

I am up to episode nine. If you decide to read it and you enjoy it, please ‘follow’ it and/or tell your friends about it and how you like it.

This video got lodged in my brain somewhere. When I sit down to write something or play something or whatever, sometimes I need to get into ‘the right mindset’. So I might watch this a couple of times with some nice music on.

It’s got me looking forward to sitting somewhere quiet near a tree when the leaves come back and also looking forward to watching them fall off again.

One year in 120 seconds from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.

Is the British latter-noughties penchant for for bone-china Scandinavian voices and imported fresh-air pop finally reaching it’s zenith with the turn of the decade? Hopefully not for Swedes Janne Kask and Kalla Kåks who together form Lake Heartbeat, Trust in Numbers being their opening shot on scandophile indie –pop purveyors Service.

Immediate contemporary comparisons gravitate towards Phoenix and their seemingly like-minded, unabashed, soft-hitting pop stylings. But while Trust In Numbers is undoubtedly on-the-nose in an era of painfully self-aware post-post-modern inside-out irony, there’s a glassy shell of sadness and that lends this album a certain cloudy-eyed charm.

At Trust in Number’s core is a featherlike melancholy that flutters down like snow on a deserted beach resort.  It constantly thrums under the sheen and sparkle of Dan Lissvik’s midas production. Outwardly a swirling procession of crisp dream pop, under the steady drift is a throbbing kernel of sadness that adds weight, like a solitary, drooping raincloud in a summer sky. Read the rest of this entry »

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This is a photo taken by Sonny Malhotra of Aisha and her friend Eva. I have had this song by her in my head for ages. I keep singing the line ‘Leave the branches bare, we’ll fill them in another year.’ - it’s a beautiful line, sung beautifully. Plant Your Feet is a really, really good song. We recorded it in a basement a while back and while the recording itself is a little rough around the edges, it’d be a real shame to let this sit around on a hard drive without anyone hearing it.

Aisha’s Myspace

Oh yeah I forgot to add – this is from when Art and Things met up with Aisha.

Originally published on The Line of Best Fit.com

Odd Blood, Yeasayer’s follow up to 2007’s All Hour Cymbals is due out on the 8th day of February in this bright, fresh new year. I spoke to Ira and Chris about pop music, visual aesthetics and if the American indie music scene has started to lead the way over the British.

TLOBF: So first I want to talk a little bit about your perceptions of indie in the UK at the moment, because you guys maybe have some early British indie influences but at the moment how do you think that compares to the scene at the moment in the UK.

Chris: I don’t really know what the indie scene in the UK is, to be honest actually. I don’t know if there even is an indie scene here.

See now I would say that East Coast American indie is producing some amazing stuff right now.

Are we East Coast American Indie?

Yes. For the purposes of this conversation, yes.

Hahaha, okay. We can play that game!

Read the rest of this entry »

CHAPTER ONE

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I went to All Tomorrow’s Parties in Butlins the other week. I didn’t sleep much, apart from during My Bloody Valentine’s set. I saw a band called Lightning Bolt play. At the time I wrote a tweet saying that they sounded ‘like God getting kicked in the cunt!’.  This was hyperbole fueled by alcohol and the ever-pressing desire to say something witty on Twitter and get RT’d and become as famous as Asthon Kutcher.

Look at these carefully arranged objects:

I really like this mug. It belongs to my girlfriend but I want one.

Also, check out my camera. Read the rest of this entry »

You should go an vote up this T-shirt design by Sophie Kern. It’s really good and she can win money for it and then we can buy one. Here’s an interview I did with her and one I just did today with her housemate Bryony on Art and Things.

My write up of Crossing Border festival is up on The Line of Best Fit.

This is the selection of some of the words I arranged in a specific order on the subject:

“Here in the UK, the words and music trick isn’t particularly a new one. People like good books and good albums. Or they are at least prepared to feign an equal interest in 1920’s era blues and Dadaist surrealism for the sake of their own sense of cultural identity, which mindless cynicism aside, still has the pretty pleasing effect of bringing together the two art forms to enjoy a very encouraging and useful mutual appreciation. All Tomorrow’s Parties, Latitude, Green Man, Bestival – there’s probably no need to detail them all, there is no shortage of festivals that are now combining music and literature successfully to introduce another dimension to their own cultural displays. The difference with Crossing Border, however, is that rather than giving the distinct impression of a music festival momentarily tipping it’s hat to the traditions of literature (as most British festivals, for all of their intentions, invariably do) Crossing Border feels like a literature festival with a lucrative sideline in gigs. Yes, in case you’re wondering, this is actually a rather good thing. Behind Crossing Border is the definite thrum of a sincere passion for language and melody and this clearly fuels the diverse and consistent quality that the festival provides in both fields. If it wasn’t squashed hopelessly into two nights, like a symphony into a ringtone it would probably be perfect. But touring schedules are touring schedules at the end of the day, apparently.”

Read the rest of this entry »

I should post more writing on here and copy/paste less. I’ll get those shorts done at some point because since I started this novel I haven’t done many at all. (Yeah, I keep changing the theme on my blog and moving this post around because something just doesn’t look right. I think as soon as I nail it, my headache will immediately go away)

This is a doodle I did while watching a really rubbish film called The Transformers (I think) on television one evening. It was full of flashy computer-generated robots. One of them was called Megan Fox.

I’ve recently got back from The Hague where Crossing Border festival was happening. Crossing Border festival is an event with lots of good bands and writers doing readings and performances in some really nice venues in The Hague (and Antwerp this year). I’m writing up the thing for The Line of Best Fit so there’s no need for me to go on about it in too much detail yet. I did see some really good bands and meet some really awesome people (artists, writers, musicians, miscellaneous) while I was there and have a really good time, though. The Hague took us out for meals and tours and things and the festival itself was really good. The welcome pack they left in my hotel room had a kite in it. I’m happy. Extra happy because nobody made me pay for anything (har har har). Read the rest of this entry »

My friends and I have made another zine. It’s the Raw Canvas issue, Raw Canvas are the arts group based at the Tate Modern who invited us to do an event there. If you would like to read this issue of Art and Things please look underneath this paragraph. Thanks.

My artist collective, Diy Womp did an event at the Tate Modern on Halloween night. We did a special issue of the zine and got loads of art and I ran an acoustic stage. It was fun and I’m glad people came.

Here are some photographs that Sonny Malhotra took. Read the rest of this entry »

Political activism zine ctrl.alt.shift have collaborated with a exciting assortment of writers, artists and other prominent British creatives to create a really amazing comic book, featuring a true stories about the horrors of corruption wordwide. I’ve read it. It’s wicked.

I spoke to British writer and comic artist Woodrow Phoenix about his involvement in the project.

Is confronting serious issues in your work something you personally feel passionate about?

I treat everything I do seriously, in the sense that I am passionate about doing good work that speaks for itself and doesn’t waste the readers’ time; work that has something to say and says it elegantly, energetically, in an interesting way. I don’t feel everything I do has to be “issue” based – I like lots of goofy things and a lot of my work is cartoony, silly, unreal jokey material. But I don’t feel I have to choose between being funny and being serious. I think you can be entertaining and also ask questions that mean something to you. You can use humour as effectively as drama to examine the world we live in. I like both kinds of material equally. What the message is decides how I’m going to work with it. Read the rest of this entry »

Memory Tapes is the latest project from Dayve Hawk, combining his work on previous projects, Memory Cassettes and Weird Tapes. A full length Memory Tapes LP called Seek Magic is out via Something In Construction this week. I asked Dayve a little bit about Memory Tapes and if we can expect a visit from him and his own brand of intelligent, super-smooth dance any time soon.

So Memory Tapes is a combination of previous projects to make one new, shiny one. When did you decide that marrying the two together would work for a whole new project?

Well I was bored of using samples (Weird Tapes) and pitch-shifting my voice (Memory Cassette) so was ready to change what I was doing anyhow, especially when I started getting approached by labels. Dealing with peoples’ confusion about the different projects was getting a bit much so I just dropped both and combined the names. I thought that would make it simple but now people just say I have 3 projects. It never ends!

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Art and Things. Hello to you Chris. Tell us what started you as an artist.

What influenced you in your early development?

In a classroom, in Ontario, in 1995, a Canadian instrumental band practiced in a classroom with the words Do Make Say Think pinned to the walls. Presumably intended as some sort of vague philosophical inspiration for a class of Canadian eight-year-olds, this loosely related configuration of four verbs inadvertently became a piece of Canadian post-rock history when in 1999 the band (now called Do Make Say Think, obviously) released an instrumental album entitled Do Make Say Think that was bursting with intelligence and personality.

Fourteen years later, Do Make Say Think are also the names of the four tracks on their sixth studio album Other Truths, which, perhaps rather spookily, contains some of the most likable work the band has produced to date. It would appear that these four words posses some sort of mysterious power. A bit like The Numbers from Lost, but with actual meanings, not just made up ones to keep you watching a-secretly-really-rubbish television show.

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There’s a lot of D. H. Lawrence I like and a fair bit I’m not keen on. I’m into the whole modern framing of archaic aesthetics, romanticism, reverence of nature and stuff in art and music at this very moment. The sight, smell and print of this artifact are nice inspiration.

For God’s sake, let us be men
not monkeys minding machines
or sitting with our tails curled
while the machine amuses us, the radio or film or gramophone.

Monkeys with a bland grin on our faces.

Go on, read a poem today.

Smashing Pumpkins and this 90’s aesthetic were a ‘major formative influence ‘  and continue to influence me. The grainy, hissy VHS this was ripped from only adds to the romance and makes me want to downtune half a step and play guitar for a few hours.

You know what you should do today? Buy a Kaki King album.

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The resurgence in the file sharing ‘debate’ since Lily Allen said something or other is interesting and amusing because everyone is wrong.

Although ‘heyyy you big meanies! downloading hurts small artists’ might be a point, to a cynic like me it just seems a more convenient heartstring puller than ‘file sharing hurts overpaid exploitation experts who have never played a note of music in their life and cynically exploit a creative discipline for profit and listen to U2 in their Mercedes SLK’s.’.

People who want free music without admitting to stealing v greedy major labels.

They can both fuck off.

But of course, major labels and pop stars have always given oh-so-much-of-a-fuck about the plight of struggling young bands up until now. Fuck that.

And of course if you download it and like it you’re definitely going to go to a gig and buy a t-shirt and three copies of the self-released EP the artist has had to release after the album sold 1,000 copies and they got dropped. Yeah, cause you’re a real fan with 800gb of music on your external HD that you never listen to. Well done, you prick, enjoy standing at the back and talking.

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Originally published on thisisfakediy.com

DIY doesn’t have to mean clawing your own way out of the cesspit of the Monday night pub circuit and into the cleansing light of popular recognition using solely your own guile and determination. It might be admirable, but it sounds horrible and nine times out of ten it probably won’t work.

DIY is about collaboration, a collective attitude. You and your talented friends coming together to actually make stuff happen. It’s setting up your own label to record all the amazing bands you know that don’t have deals, making a makeshift rehearsal space because they turned the old one into a car park, or putting on a better folk night because the one down the road is rubbish and the promoter is a bastard.

The philosophy is co-operation over exploitation, it might sound all warm and fuzzy, but it actually works too. Martyring yourself while you wait for someone to notice your material as a business prospect is for the unimaginative. Use what you have and push forward. Read the rest of this entry »

This is what I wish my nightmares looked like. They’re amazing.

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I finally finished tinkering about with diy-womp.com and aatmagazine.co.uk this weekend.

Other bloggers sometimes say nice things about this blog and link to me. I usually respond by simply soaking up the goodwill like some kind of ungrateful, passive sponge with a blog. So here starts a TLP series about blogs out there that deserve a bit of a nod from me, maybe I can be redeemed for how selfish and malevolent I’ve been in the past.

Code For Something

I aspire to be a better blogger. More updates, better content, more commitment. Amber is a real blogger. She’s probably the best blogger from New Zealand (I’m 70% sure she isn’t the only blogger in New Zealand) She carries this netbook around in her handbag and just blogs and blogs. As a direct result her blog, Code For Something is significantly better than this blog.

Amber has bothered to properly design her blog, she’s got a real mind for the details. She even puts these neat little things inbetween paragraphs. It’s full of ideas to steal for this site, which is something I would’ve started doing ages ago if I wasn’t so fucking lazy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Can you draw good? Do you like whisky and money? Enter this then, there’s loads of both on offer plus they’re actually threatening to slap the scribblings that fall out of your brain in Time Out magazine which is a magazine that literally loads of people read. Click here, you pencil-weilding booze-hound.

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Hey, you. You like Iceland? You like things like spending a summer evening listening to the vinyl re-issue of Start Breaking My Heart and drinking Asahi from the bottle? Sure you do, you’re cool, you listen to music on blogs and stuff.

You know what else you like? This track called Yfirskin from the  new Kippi Kaninus album called Happens Secretly.

Kippi Kaninus Myspace.

I AM HAVING A NICE TIME

I rate this very highly.

Wildbirds and Peacedrums are a Swedish husband and wife duo. Andreas and Mariam make intense, bluesy, stompy indie music. I first met/saw Wildbirds and Peacedrums live last year on the Bella Union Stage at Wireless Festival. They made an incredibly impressive and spectacular noise without loud guitars, bass, violins, brass, harps, synths or any of that guff. They’ve been a favorite of mine since. Here’s an interview with them I did the other week.

Hi, Andreas. You’ve got a compelling energy onstage. Do you try to distill that into the records? Is that a challenge?

To perform live and in the studio is two completely different things. We have tried to have the same input in the studio as we do live but it’s just not possible – try to talk to an microphone the same as you do to a human and you’ll see.

You’ve been doing a lot of travelling recently. Do you do a lot of writing when you’re out on the road?

Actually nothing, it takes to much effort to perform and travel that there’s almost no energy left to be creative. So we can brag with not a single new song in over a year!

Indie fans in the UK have been really enjoying a lot of bands from Denmark, Sweden and other areas of Scandinavia for a while now. There’s a lot of good music coming from your part of the world at the moment, do you feel like you’re part of something special in this respect?

Sweden has a great history of artists that are doing creative music and finding ways to go international with it. We have had great opera singers, an amazing prog-scene (Träd, Gräs och Stenar) and then bands like The Knife who’re doing great because of their originality and independence. I think the creativity comes from a deep urge to get away from our small towns…

There’s a really nice friendship community of Swedish bands that you guys are part of, which must be enriching in a lot of ways. Do you find there are specific ways in which having a diverse group of talented friends really helps you when it comes to being creative yourself?

We are very fortunate to have such an inspiring and supportive friends (not just musicians), but it is not at all like a collective or any like that, everyone is more into experimenting in their chambers hiding secrets from each other. I love it. Read the rest of this entry »

Sing Along to Songs You Don’t Know, a new album from Icelandic experimental pop collective Múm is due out on the 24th of August. I was keen for a few hot tips on Icelandic music and curious about how the Múm project was developing. Örvar Þóreyjarson Smárason kindly answered a few of these queries for me.

Congratulations on the new album.  From your own perspective, how would you say it’s different from your previous works?

Well, it’s lucid and straightforward…. not that our other albums haven’t been that, but maybe this one is spoken in a simpler language. Go go smear the poison ivy and Summer make good were quite complicated affairs. Even though it might not seem like it. Hmmmm… to tell you the truth, I don’t know the answer to this question and I’m just pretending. It’s calm, that much I know, but it’s still on different level and layers and dimensions.

How have things changed creatively as people have come in and out of the Múm collective?

We thrive on that, we come from a big group of friends of musicians in Reykjavík where the biggest influence on everyone is each other. This might sound incestuous, but it is a great situation. Everyone is always trying to entertain and surprise each other and this is mostly the base for what happens in our múm musician collective, we all feed of each other and it’s a creatively dynamic relationship.

Múm  always seem to have interesting ideas and projects on the go, what kinds of things have you been up to between Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy and Sing Along to Songs You Don’t Know?

We did some radio theater, which we enjoy very much. It’s a dying form of art and we enjoy working in it, because it fits very well to the way we do things. We also recorded some old múm songs with a mixed choir called Balsis in Riga, Latvia. We recorded at the National Radio and it was a magnificent project and now we are pretty much waiting to see what we do with the recordings. We would also like to do this live with a big choir at some point, so we are waiting for the perfect opportunity to do it.

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After taking a lengthy break, Engineers have finally released their new album Three Fact Fader. I met Mark from the band one warm summer afternoon as they were gearing up to support the release by playing their first concerts in two years. Oh btw, the album will blow your useless brain to bits, so go find it.

It’s been a fair old while since you last had a record out. What’ve you been up to?

Well we finished this album or kind of nearly finished it at the end of 2006 early 2007 but then the record company we were with – Echo, stopped being a record company and became just a publishing house. So rather than wait around for another label to come on board we decided just to have a break.

A few labels approached us in the meantime but we just decided to wait until the right one came along, which happened last year, Kscope approached us and it seemed right, the right ethos, the right attitude.

The conversations that we had were more about us as a band as opposed the album as a product. They didn’t even know that there was another album when they approached us, they’d just heard the first album and thought that we would be a good act to have on the label.

So you’ve avoided that feeling that perhaps you could sign to a label, release the album and then find yourselves out in the cold a bit?

Ha, well there’s always a potential for that, I mean the business is what it is these days, so I’m not living under any illusions of being babied for the rest of my life, but…

Sure, but at least Kscope seemed to be interested in the act itself on the whole.

Yeah and also I think what the act means from an artistic perspective instead of just… y’know number crunching.

Sure, sure. So what’s happening on the gigging front?

Well we’ve been rehearsing but we haven’t actually played a gig yet. We’re playing on the 10th of July to follow the release on the 6th.

Read the rest of this entry »

My frankly amateurish and decidedly dodgy drawings are creeping tentatively onto this blog much like a badly realized character that gets introduced halfway through a film and brings the whole thing down.

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Murmurings about the The Low Anthem and their fantastic live performance started to rise into a unified chorus of excited hyperbole of late. They recently played at the amazing Union Chapel and gave another stormer, I met them for breakfast the morning after the epic night before.

Hey guys, did you enjoy last night?

Yeah!

So you were playing like a telephone theramin thing how did you come up with that?

Ben: I was walking down the street talking do to a friend on the phone and it was one of those weird moments were talking without realizing that were were walkig on the same street. So I run into the guy, we’re still on the phone and he says ‘Oh hey, look at this’, takes the phones and puts them against each other and they make this sound. It actually sounds different over here because of the mobile phone networks.

I also heard that you guys had an organ duel at one point…

Jeff: Hahaha, that’s like the only time that’s going to happen! What happened was… it was our first trip over to Europe, we needed to get an organ to play so we ordered a second hand, but then we also decided to get a new one just in case the second one didn’t work. But it turns out that they both worked so we thought, hey we’ve got two…

Why not use them?

Jeff: One was ordered from a historical organ store and another was from ebay for £26! The cheap one was completely out of tune and Ben went in the night before the gig and tuned it up.

Uh-huh, how long did that take you?

Jeff: Ben got sick afterwards, he came down with like the Black Lung… because this organ was like 100 years old.
Ben: There was dust in the bellows. Right? And I opened up and there was just all this…

Dust inside! Of course!

Man, I was sick for weeks after that.

Ohh, man! So you caught a disease from an Organ.

I love doing it though, I mean it’s just so beautiful, the workings and inside, the craftsmanship.

Breakfast arrives, including sausages.

Ben: Do people say sausages for mike checks over here?

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The Bella Union Stage is back, a bastion of talent and musicianship in the depths of er, the Wireless Festival.

This year, Bella Union showcase an incredible lineup of Bella and non-Bella bands on a comparatively tiny bandstand, bobbing gently on the ocean of corporate sponsor tents and within earshot of the intermittent ‘performances’ from the nearby UGG boots fashion show installation. (Yes, really. There’s ripe for parody and then there’s just rotten.)

Jesca Hoope

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Yo La Tengo have an album called Popular Songs out in September.  I’ve listened to it and it sounds bloody fantastic. The veteran trio were recently in town to play at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and I caught them before they flew home, to talk about playing in the UK, keeping it fresh and popular songs.

Hey guys! Did you enjoy last night?

Georgia: Yeah it was kinda strange but that’s part of the deal I guess, you never know what it’s going to be like…

I heard the acoustics were pretty strange…

Ira: Yeah it was fine while we were playing, it was just the interactive portion of the program that was an unexpected challenge.

You just couldn’t hear the questions?

Ira: Yeah

Georgia: I don’t know if you were there but we had a lot of people ask us questions so and sometimes when we do this people will be raise their hand and it’s much easier but like all corners of the room were yelling stuff back! And there were so many accents!

Ha… so a Mancunian stands up and it’s like ‘…. One more time?’

James: We’ve been doing this sort of show all around Europe and I love that once we finally get to the English speaking cities, still nobody understands a word that anybody says.

Don’t worry, I’m the same. Anybody North of London and it’s “HELLO!? Would you like some shortbread?”

Hahaha…

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This time it’s post from Korea. And it’s FULL OF TEA. Wonders, joy! Bamboo tea! (?)

My friend teaches in Korea. He’s a writer too. I lived with him. He beat me at Uni but I don’t mind because he’s pretty good at writing. Here’s a story of his.

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Lauren Summers was one of the first people we ever interviewed for Art and Things. She has a new site up at www.laurensummers.co.uk – take a look at her work, it’s really, really nice. I think Lauren’s going to be at my reading later and maybe if she gets a few click-throughs from here she’ll be one of the people who doesn’t scream at me to ‘Get the fuck off!’ halfway through.

My top searches are showing that while an encouraging amount of people are actually out there searching google for my blog, there are still a number of people who are mostly interested in pictures of tits.

To log on to the internet in search of boobs and somehow end up at my blog must be the online equivalent of walking into in an ice-cream parlour and somehow leaving with a bowl of human shit. I’m not sure how these people are even doing it.

“the less permanent,  tlp marketing,  less permanent blog,  thelesspermanent,  nipples photographs, big juicy knockers”

I swear, one day I’m going to draw something without totally fucking it up. I sketched this out quickly because I wanted to draw a collection of my favorite animals together with my favorite sections of poetry. I did this and then destroyed it with ink. Liz coloured it. I’ll try again later. Read the rest of this entry »

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Want one?

Cover by Darren

I’m doing a reading next week and since I’ve slipped this into the latest issue of Art and Things I think I might read this. Illustration by Shiv.

Ten months ago, as spring broke, the four of us went away to the seaside. Siofra’s eyes had been glassed over by grief for weeks, an uncharacteristic silence descended upon her like a blanket of snow. She spent the compassionate leave granted to her by her job sat on the worn living room sofa, thumbing through paperback novels (sticking exclusively to ones she’d already read) and filling the ashtray with half-smoked, laboriously hand-rolled cigarettes.

Bryan and I would return home from work to find her in her usual spot, day after day. Her father had finally succumbed to his cancer, her mother had refused the short flight from Geneva, where she lived happily with her new family, to attend the funeral. Siofra’s mother did not like to acknowledge the shards of her past-life, her now-dead ex-husband and grown-up, lesbian daughter were a mess she had tidied behind four hundred and sixty-five miles of land and sea. Days after Siofra learned via a phone call from the hospital that she had missed those crucial moments of passing, as one life that had created hers evaporated, a letter arrived in a familiar crisp, elegant hand. Full of graceful, formal condolences, at it’s crux was a firm and curt message- ‘I’m sure you’ll understand my unwillingness to attend the service, after all that’s happened.’ she wrote. She enclosed a cheque for two-thousand pounds “to help with any funeral expenses that might arise”. Siofra understood, all too well. After her father was safely tucked into the earth she vowed (tearlessly) never to think lovingly of her mother again, and in the space of a month, at the age of twenty-four, she had lost both parents for good.

None of us had seen her cry yet. I began to feel as distant from her life as I did my own. Siofra was frozen in ice. All of the elements over which I had no control were wrapping around me. Soon I would be trapped. I could feel things beginning to turn dark.

Someone else, to my own good fortune, also felt shadows lengthening as Siofra shrank away. To Laura, Siofra had always been the older, bolder, wiser sister that she had badly missed growing up. Until the light inside her began to flicker, this was a role that Siofra had accepted gladly. It was Laura that suggested that she, Siofra, Bryan and I leave the city for a few days to “Take a break. Together.” I was relieved.

And so we took Laura’s decrepit, rusting Citroën to the road, it carried us reluctantly to the blustery coast, we stopped in a depressed and lonely town, wet and salty with rows of severe, mournful looking buildings that looked like they were waiting for the sea to come and claim them once and for all. A strong, cold wind blew and Christmas lights still hung limply from the lampposts, shimmering half-heartedly in the wintery spray. We rented rooms in cramped bed and breakfast with dark carpets and musty pillows.

It was impossible to say that Siofra wasn’t beautiful. She was in perfect balance. Her handsome father’s dark hair and light eyes, her mother’s elegant bones and olive skin. Beauty like hers seemed to be the perfect excuse for anything, That’s more or less why imagination creates such contrasts in the world and why the mind allows it. Beauty was invented so that we’d have a light to crawl towards. Within my own thoughts I couldn’t look away from it. Without Siofra there was darkness. It’s true to say that I loved her. Against all reason, I found it impossible not to. As pointless as it seemed, my love for Siofra could at times allow her to eclipse the universe.

Indeed, for a variety of reasons, each of us needed Siofra back, lest we be plunged into eternal blackness.

We swam in the icy sea at a point where it crashed playfully onto a shingle beach. We whooped and cheered as wave after freezing wave crashed over us. We bobbed up and down in the surf telling jokes and laughing loudly. Laura sat on my shoulders, Siofra on Bryans and the two contested to push each other into the water. Her soaked t-shirt clung to Siofra’s belly and her chest, the wet fabric revealed her belly button, her nipples. She laughed and screamed as she fought to keep her balance. I couldn’t look away.

The bed and breakfast had a general-purpose living room. We were the only guests and that night we played cards and worked through a bottle of whisky. Eventually Laura fell asleep in Siofra’s arms. I noted with shame a pang of jealously shoot through me. I blamed the alcohol. After Siofra dosed off, I lost repeatedly to Bryan at Palace and had to pay him ten pounds.

The next day we climbed a steep hill in the heart of the town and stopped for breakfast in a café with a large, grubby window and a view of the whole area, of the cobbled streets and clusters of huddled houses and shops, the outlying scrublands and out to sea. We drank tea from stained mugs and ate omelettes and toast. Laura shared stories about various misadventures Siofra and Laura had shared, including one in which Siofra’s father made a brief appearance. The mention of his name hung in the air, dampening the conversation. Eventually Bryan proposed a toast with a chipped purple mug.

“To Siofra’s Father.” He said.

We all took a hearty gulp of lukewarm tea, while Siofra merely wet her lips. A half-smile froze on her face and she gazed out of the window for a long time.

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Me v Joe from Black Lips:

Alright, what brings you to England?
Obligation

Hahaha!
Contractual Obligation. No no no! Ha, we’ve been trying to focus on the UK. Because a long time ago we, uh, the very first time we came over to Europe was like 2003 or 04… it was like an underground tour and everything was going decently enough over there but as soon as we came to the UK for a week it bankrupt our tour, we were getting like £15 a show and like no food, no accommodation, no anything and we got really discouraged by that and gave up on the UK for a very long time. Until recently, the past two years, I guess about two years ago we started coming back, giving it another chance and ATC [management] are helping out with co-ordinating everything so now yeah we’re back.

Things are different now that you have a label and management to pay for shit now?
They are.  I mean we’re still broke! But at least people come to the shows.

And you have guitars that work and stuff now…
Yeah yeah, that always helps too!

So do you have things you like to do when you’re here?
Erm, we don’t always have a huge amount of free time when we come here but it’s always fun to hang out in East London, Shoreditch and Old Street over there, that’s always a lot of fun. Lots of pretty girls to look at and talk to, always a party going. It’s always a pleasure to go to Glasgow, great people, always a rager, heavy night when we’re there. I usually leave hungover! I wish I had more time to stick around and check out museums and things but y’know we’re usually pretty busy while we here, it’s always pretty intense.

So you’re doing gigs at the moment…
Oh we have about four weeks coming up, two weeks are in the UK plus one show in Ireland and then to the continent. We used to hit areas around the Mediterranean a lot more which I guess we all enjoyed because y’know, great food, awesome people who love to party and the weather is beautiful most of the time but we haven’t had much of a chance to do that as of recently although we are going to play Primevera in Spain which is going to be fun we did that about two years ago and we did Benicassim, we had to fly to Spain do Benicassim and then fly straight to Russia, which was awesome because it was kind of a dream for me and I guess we got in there at just the right time before the economic collapse because I wouldn’t recommend anyone go there right now, it’s a little bit dodgy.
Was it a bit crazy?
As usual, yeah. I mean we were in the centre which is kept clean and free from homeless people and freaks and things, so we didn’t get to see too much of that but. There are people out there who just don’t seem to have much to lose or just don’t give a fuck.

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New York post-folk chamber-pop merchants Grizzly Bear’s second full-length studio albumVeckatimest is finally out on Warp records next week, and the band were recently over in Blighty to play Jools Holland and ATP v The Fans. Between these two things I met them on a fresh spring afternoon on Shepherd’s Bush common to talk about Veckatimest, touring with Radiohead and Twitter.

All tomorrow’s parties this weekend. That’s a cultural experience in England, going to a Butlins in Minehead, really.
Haha, yeah?

Do you guys have anything like that in the US?
There’s nothing where you stay there… I mean 6 flags America has hotels nearby….

Chris Bear: Yeah but nothing out in the country like that.

I’m going to the Breeders one, I’m gonna miss you guys.
It seems that they do so many of those now there’s like every week or something! There’s a Halloween one? The Christmas one. The programming with the bands is crazy awesome.

I’ve been following Ed on twitter.
Oh, okay…

What’s this Snoop Dogg thing?
We… we really just wanna hang.

Yeah?
Chris Bear: We just really think he’d be cool to hang out with.

Is it because maybe he could do a rap with your band name? Like Grizzle Bizzle something…
Yeah that would work really well…  hanging with the bizzle.  And all that business.

Chris Bear. Yeah that could work really well.

I just like his phrasing! it’s just like… soothing… in a way.

Edward Droste

He got banned from the UK for a while.
Oh really?

Yeah I think there was some shit about drugs or something…
Oh that’s horrible, I just think it’d be cool to hang with him… He seems like a cool… I mean in terms of huge cultural icons, I think that he’s got a good vibe and I think it’s pretty admirable that he just remains like really mellow and stoned, like all the time. Like on the television. Read the rest of this entry »

Here are some more google searches that I’ve been getting.

theesinglespy,  “my bra aside”,  stephanie dosen,  stephanie dosen snowbird,  kaki chess

This is the first result you get from googling “my bra aside”.

I quote. “Lifting the black bra to my face I can feel the material that was earlier against her skin. I can picture her nipples inside hard and erect, perhaps for me one day. I begin to smell her deodorant and the special kind of smell of her boobs. I get it myself. The heat of the day can make your boobs kind of sweaty. Nice sweat. Horny sweat. The magical smell spurns me on. I begin to play with my own tits right now. Pulling my bra aside I moisten my fingers and transfer some of my saliva onto my tits. I love the feeling of my moist nipples being tweaked and played with.”

This blog is hovering over the cesspit.

Anyway, here’s how I wasted £8 worth of throw away camera on deliberately shit photographs in a vain attempt to be ‘arty’.
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I’m back on my mission to make ‘viral campaigns’ for things that are worthwhile but not as popular as they should be. This week I thought I’d make up a slogan and campaign poster for being quiet, which is a lost art. Have a look.

Do you often say the wrong thing in social situations? Do you offer your opinion on things that you know nothing about? Do people often seem irritated by your presence? Here’s a simple, effective and trendy idea to help you through!

Be fucking quiet!

Being quiet is a craze soon to sweep the hip urbanite youth population. It makes you look calm and mysterious and often helps you avoid making yourself look like a total dick!

Try being quiet in these ideal situations and watch your social standing sky-rocket:

• In a lecture when people are trying to listen.
• On the tube/bus.
• At a gig when everyone is trying to listen to the performer and not you chatting to your stupid mates.
• In the pub when discussion turns to something that you have no valid opinion on.
• In art galleries.
• In the cinema.
• When your housemates are trying to sleep at 2am.
• When you don’t have anything to say.

Being fucking quiet really is the new way to impress all of your peers. Try it out today!

This weekend I was at the Camden Crawl with Anika.

We saw some bands, some good, some bad. Banjo or Freakout were bloody awesome. We went to the pub with Alessi, The Ark and friends and family on both evenings which was nice, and really helped the weekend along. Alessi’s Ark were fantastic. Above is a picture I took of Alessi onstage with a disposable camera without looking through the viewfinder. Originally it looked bad, but then I ran it through Photoshop to make it look even worse.

Anyway The Horse is an really nice song. Watch the video. Read the rest of this entry »

Today I sat outside and read Arcadia by Jim Crace and looked at the blossom on all of the trees. Blossom is brilliant. I did this quick drawing of some flowers because I was inspired by the spring. I fucked it up a bit but nevermind . Then I went for a run and did some press-ups.

I’ll be twittering for TLOBF (www.thelineofbestfit.com) from the Camden Crawl all day tomorrow and on Saturday. I’ve got a ‘guest pass’ which means I don’t have to queue (which makes me feel special). Because of this I’m going to try to actually go to every venue and have a drink and see a band and make it a proper crawl. I’m a bit worried though because the safety information on the Camden Crawl website says to ‘go with at least one mate’ and not to get too drunk. I’m living dangerously.

I stopped putting those creative shorts up on my blogs for a reason, but I’ve forgotten what that reason was. I might do more and put them up. Or maybe I’ll do a proper short story and get it published and show you all how clever I am by linking to it here.

I’ve also masterminded my next viral campaign and I’ll be drawing up the slogan as soon as I get a minute. This one is sure to become a ‘cult phenomenon’.

I’ll be talking to Camera Obscura on the phone this week too. I like Camera Obscura and I’m looking forward to asking them questions. I’ll be sure to tell you what we talk about.

I’ve booked a ’solo’ gig for June. I’m going to write some new songs for it. Maybe if I can get a few people together to collaborate the gig might not be so solo, I’m not sure.

This is by far the worst update I’ve ever done.

Hello. I hope you had a nice easter. I thought I’d share my ‘Top Searches’ with you. These are the things that people have put into websites like google in order to end up here.

‘Less Permanent’

‘thelesspermanent’

‘dan brantigan kaki king evi’

‘i think she knows’

‘kaki king sendspace’

‘hard nipples poking through top’

‘poked through’

Looking through these has given me a good idea.

BIG SOAPY TITS, KNOCKERS, NIPPLES R US, WOBBLING MAMMARIES.COM, WANKTASTIC CHEST GLANDS.

Hit spike, here I come.

UPDATE: These have cropped up recently.

thee single spy,  bad habits of facebook,  slogans on books,  marketing and exercise,  shit slogan

and it turns out that most of it’s invisible anyway. I’m now running late. Am annoyed.

Might as well use it as promotion for the new issue of Art and Things. If you want a copy, send me a postal address.

Shiv drew the actual bits, not me.

I’m still not sure about ‘life blogging’, but people seem to be reading it and after a couple of weeks I can save up enough interesting stuff to say so I don’t feel stupid by writing nonsense about what I’ve been eating. I’ve included information on at least one thing I’ve eaten in this post.

The other day I went with friends to see Kaki King at the Jazz Cafe.

She has a new EP floating around called The Mexican Teenagers EP. If you don’t know Kaki King, you really should. I’d stream a song of hers but a) It would take forever b) It would eat up bandwidth c) I’d probably end up getting sued.

It was the best gig of the year so far for me, better than Animal Collective last week. She played with a drummer and Dan Brantigan on EVI. When they played ‘These Are The Armies of the Tyrannized’ I nearly exploded. Read the rest of this entry »

My efforts continue to provide a much needed ‘pr boost’ for things that are good but suffering from an ‘image problem’. My last ‘viral campaign’ has been quite successful, with other people taking up the idea here and here. Hopefully this one will take root with it’s ‘key demographic’ too.

2. Exercise.

A lot of people think is exercise really boring and tiring. This is true. Also, the exercise scene is full of twats. However, carrying around 20 stone of fat until you die of a heart attack at 53 is also not very good. A lot of young fashionable people are terrified of waking up one morning as a fat, dead 53-year-old. These people are the market ‘niche’ demographic.

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A couple of posts back I mentioned that Tess had sent me some post complete with a little project to do. I did it the other morning. It was fun and a great example of why people should sent each other more parcels.

Here are some pictures.

As per Tessa’s guide, I had to make the sea. I filled up the sink with warm water.

Then I put the blue tissue in the water. I thought it was going to make the water blue by bleeding into it, but it actually just dissolved. I got blue all over the place. The sink was now full of this awesome blue slosh, I should’ve filmed the way it washed around, it looked really cool. My sea was complete.

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While we’re on the subject of receiving post – Charlot Webster sent me something a while back. She’s a musician, one of those people that plays everything, sings and writes songs,  the girl everyone wants to be in a band with. Her material is really good, it’s ‘melodic’ and ‘elegant’ and ’steeped in her fluency in the language of beauty’ she’s like Brighton’s answer to Feist/Cat Power or something. Have a look at her myspace. After the ordeal of uploading that Single Spy track earlier I didn’t bother to ask Charlot for a track, just click the link instead.

Anyway, as you might’ve worked out from that photograph up there, Charlot does a mixtape exchange which is a brilliant idea. I spent a whole evening sitting in my room recording my favorite tracks off of CD onto cassette tape, getting them in the right order. Then I packaged it off and sent it down to Charlot. I got a tape back from her a few days later. It was probably amazing, but a couple of days later my amp broke so I can’t listen to tapes any more (or my records or my laptop on the big speakers). Anyway, never mind. The point is you should look at her and maybe send her a tape. (Charlot, if you’re reading this and you get a load of tapes dumped on you that you didn’t want, sorry.(I’m sure she does want your tapes really))

POINT ABOUT POST NUMBER TWO.

Amber got the spoons I sent her.

I like sending post. It’s good to paint the envelope and put little extras in there too. Post is fun. Incidentally, the word Amber on that jiffy bag was exactly how I pictured it in my head. I fucked up the SPOONS bit though.

Never mind.

Oh yeah, I forgot to say I went to see Animal Collective last night and it turned out to be pretty good. That felt important enough to add.

Right, so I made a post about this artist called Rosie Roberts who I interviewed for Art and Things maybe a week and a bit ago. Loads of my readers on here have been viewing the post and  people have been e-mailing/facebooking/talking to me about how much they like her.

So here’s some more, the art that she did for the Thee Single Spy album cover ( I took a couple of shots of it to fill space):

(In hindsight I realize I should’ve taken a picture of the back, not just two of the front. I’ll update this tomorrow)

I met their frontman Alex and interviewed him for Art and Things a couple of weeks ago. You can learn more about them and how to get hold of one of these wicked little vinyls (for free, I think) on their myspace – (if that turns out to be lie just e-mail him- what do you want from me?)

You can listen to an awesome track called Smoke That Tea by Thee Single Spy by clicking the play button below this paragraph. Make sure you listen to the whole thing because a) it comes together beautifully about halfway through and b) Alex sent it me in .wma (fair enough) but it ended up taking me ages to get this uploaded and to work properly. Like hours. So listen to it and make it worth my while. Please.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Tessa is an artist. She lives up in York. She’s got a website called LittleYellowDrum.co.uk. I first met her in a pub in North London when I’d just come off of the alt albion tour and I was buzzing (very ill) from all of the Red Bull I’d been drinking that week and she listened to me talk really fast without telling me that I was a ‘weirdo’. Tessa is tip top.. And now she’s sent me this amazing parcel.

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This week I went to the pub with Anika. She reviews gigs and takes photographs and does comics of her days. She keeps them all in this amazing little book that she draws straight into in pen. This is her blog. She drew the day she met me.

Here is my attempt at something similar, but without pictures because a) It wouldn’t look very good next to Anika’s cute drawings and b) I’m feeling really lazy tonight.

Last night I went to Brainlove’s room at Koko because Rich Thane from The Line of Best Fit.com was DJing there and he’s my bff. I metLucy Johnston there who is a brilliant photographer. Andy from Fuck Buttons DJ’d too and then we all danced. Rich told Andy that his twitter feed made him feel nervous about meeting him. I hope someone tells me this one day.

We all danced some more. I feel like my dancing was more embarrasing than everyone elses, but truth be told it was all pretty ropey. Then this man started swearing at Rich Thane while he was djing and called me a “fucking idiot”.  Lucy took photos of Napoleon IIIrd while he was playing (really well) who was kind enough to give me a 5am beer when we got back to John Brainlove’s flat because we’d missed the last train.

Rich ate three bagels from a local takeaway and felt sick. Everyone teased the cat, who nearly went mad. My alcohol induced second wind got me home (although my friend Liz nearly died on the bus) and when I got home I stayed up and ate toast and watched The Wire until I fell asleep at about midday.

… Mine isn’t as good because it’s mainly just a whole paragraph of name dropping. Which isn’t cool.

I am going to publish some of my ideas to market stuff that needs a ‘pr boost’.

1. Books.

Apparently the publishing industry are worried about the new Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle. I don’t think they should make a such a fuss, because both of those things are currently really shit. But I have come up with a clever strategy complete with slogan and logo to help push books to the 18-29’s. See below.

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I have to stop high-fiving people. High-fiving can make anyone look like a complete shit head.

Normally a high-five involves you and a friend saying something ‘funny’ or maybe finding that you are both pretending to like/remember the same obscure early 90’s studio sit-com. It’s easy to get carried away in these kinds of situations, but it’s never an excuse for a high-five. This is something I have to learn. I’d advise you to do the same. High-fiving needs to die.

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Welcome to My New Website.  Thanks to Amber from Code For Something for hosting me. Amber is awesome. This site is new, but it’s got my old blog on it too. I wont be blogging in the same way that I did on the cat blog, I don’t think. I’ll probably fuck around with the design for ages too.

I never thought that ‘life blogging’ was a good idea because I’d feel like a twat telling the internet what I had for breakfast and didn’t really expect anyone to give a shit and I didn’t think it was very ‘professional’. Apparently, though,’ life blogging’ is popular with ‘hits’. I don’t know if I care about hits, but then I don’t know what the fuck I’m trying to be ‘professional’ about either.

This morning for breakfast I had mushrooms on toast with a poached egg. I made it myself and cooked the mushrooms in beer and nutmeg. I made two portions, one for me and one for my girlfriend. It was nice. I had it with coffee. I didn’t take any photographs. I’m not a cunt.

Spring is coming. I know this because of four things.

1 . There are daffodils and tree blossoms everywhere.

2 . The weather is nice.

3 . my hayfever is killing me.

4. it’s March.

Spring is my favorite time of year.  It’s nice outside, it’s pretty and after it’s over you get Summer. I went for a walk along the Thames and fed swans today. I didn’t take any photographs of this either, but I think I should do a post with some pretty spring imagery so maybe I’ll take some photographs and try to paint something this week.

Any-way.

I did an interview with Rosie Roberts. People really seem to like Rosie Roberts. I like her too.

I’ve done an interview with Sophie Kern on Art and Things.

The more I do these interviews, the more I think I might fuck off to art school for a bit.

I need to buy more scratch cards.

She told me that her name was Raphael, which immediately struck me as a completely unsuitable name for her.I asked her if it was the name that her parents gave her. She said that she assumed so. I wasn’t sure what she meant but I let it drop. Maybe she was an orphan. My mind automatically flicked through a few scenarios to make sure that I didn’t find the fact that she might be an orphan sexy. I didn’t.

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You’re out having a good time with some friends but it’s getting late and you’re about to miss the last bus home.

a) There’s no point in making a choice, resisting fate is futile. Things will just happen the way they are supposed to. I’m just going to keep drinking until something happens to intervene. 6 points
b) So what if I don’t go to work tomorrow? The choice is essentially meaningless, I might as well have another drink and have fun before I die and rot away. 7 points
c) I have to go to work tomorrow. If everyone else bunked off of work it would be a nightmare. 10 points
d) Fuck it. I’ll DRIVE. WHERE’S MY CAR? 2 points
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and has been deleted.

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I’m touring the UK on alt albion.co.nz

Yeah, I’ve been to Loch Lomond, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester. Back to London tomorrow.

I can’t leave this post alone. I think this video has tapped into a really dark corner of my mind.

  Read the rest of this entry »

Her eyes were still partially open. Her eyelids didn’t quite meet. You could see a tiny slice of pale blue through her eyelashes. She wasn’t wearing any make-up. I stood by the bed under the strip light biting my index finger hard. My mouth was hot and dry. Read the rest of this entry »

The flat was in one of the worst areas of London. The estate agent drove me along the depressed high street, all of the buildings were grubby and tired-looking, newsagents advertised long-distance phone cards, run-down shops offered fruit and vegetables in untidy stalls opening out on to the street. The people, descendants of numerous exotic cultures, all hunched and shuffled along the pavement in shades of grey and brown. This was Greater London, the bowels, hung between the glamour of the city and the sterility of the suburbs.

The estate agent was called James Coles. We went back a bit- I’d known him since secondary school. We’d never got along much. After half an hour of forced conversation, James suddenly wrenched his small hatchback down an almost impassable side alley and stopped in a seemingly disused car park.

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The reason Martin England was so feared by his peers, the reason that he so richly deserved his undisputed title as The Hardest Kid in the School is because he was not (unlike his contemporaries in the scene) careless with his threats.

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Hi it’s me.

At the moment I am looking at my options for a masters degree. (oh by the way can you please give me six and a half thousand pounds?)

I’m also writing lots (oh yeah I’m doing a novel) and I’ve been playing the guitar (I have a new ebow).

More posts to come

Love

P

Oh yeah and thanks for reading and sometimes commenting on my really really stupid blog

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There’s a very thin, invisible membrane somewhere inside of me that holds my personality in. Often, it bulges and swells painfully and threatens to split like an overflowing colostomy bag. Sometimes holding it in is a gargantuan effort. Other times I feel as though I should allow it to burst, allow myself to be splattered all over anybody who happens to be standing nearby. On bad days, when the strain gets to be too much, there’s never any sound. It’s just silence, as if I were under water. I can almost tell things are about to happen before they do, everything is the answer to a question that was just on the tip of my tongue the whole time. Then I’ll do something and it all falls apart. It’s a fairly useless form of precognition, like turning to see a bus just before it hits you.

I like to buy the papers. I’m still there, on the radar. Y’know? Caring.

I had to stop to vomit in someone’s front garden. Sorry. I’m going to the shop. Going to get a milky bar, a can of red bull and the papers. Got some news to read.

For quite some time now, my life has been a fake. No crude imitation, but an intricate forgery, crafted delicately with the most diligent attention to detail.

It’s an astonishingly realistic little piece of art, something that could easily be considered the work of a true genius were it placed in a gallery or on a plinth. It’s allure is ironically foiled only by it’s glassy perfection; when investigated closely (although perhaps more closely than is fair) it radiates cold.

Cold. An inexplicable by-product that leaks out of my perfect little crystal existence and is (regardless of how hard I try) impossible to ignore. I can often feel it in the icy morning air that claws at my bones, the thick taste of sleep still upon my tongue as I drag my unwilling body out of bed and into the frost. The more I am aware of it, the more it betrays it’s presence everywhere. It’s the cars sweeping grumpily past on the dark streets, those hissing rivers of aluminium and rubber that are never far away, the twisting in my stomach, the constant effort of keeping my face turned upwards.

I’ll never be warm.

It’s on the coldest days that I’m acutely aware that  I’m in a future that never really happened, that splintered off into chaos and out of existence and is gradually freezing. Grinding to a halt.

Hi ***

I’ve been travelling through Cambodia on my own for a bit now. I’ll cut right to the chase and let you all know what I’ve been up to recently.

1. Arrived in Cambodia from Saigon. Waited for an eternity at the border for a bus to come and pick us up and take us to Phomn Penh. When it eventually arrived I was delighted to find it was a mini bus and that there was room to put my feet up. Wasn’t so delighted by the state of the roads. Eventually had to bribe a border guard to get into the country because I temporarily misplaced some paperwork. The wrong thing to do, I suppose, but my options were limited.

2. Just this second rented a motorbike. A British guy just hobbled in and out with bandages on his arms and legs, a broken arm and nasty cuts and bruises. The traffic here is probably the most insane yet.

3. A Firing range. Fired an AK-47 and 9mm semi auto handgun. Now I’ve done it I don’t think I’ll bother with it again, but it was an experience. I didn’t realise the shocking power of those things until I fired them.

4. The killing fields. All I can give is a literal description of what I saw there, which is a little pointless. Basically I saw a sickening number of skulls, in age and sex order and mass graves, filled in but still clearly visible. I also found myself stepping over bones jutting from the ground and I could see the clothing that these people died in. There was also begar children. Lots of beggar children. 

5. Got the bus down to Shianoukville and watched the England game in a bar owned by a couple of Brit guys called Red Snapper. Shianoukville was a really nice beach town with plenty of bars, restaurants and guesthouses around but it pissed down non stop for the 2 days I spent there so I decided to come back to Phnom Penh.

6. Watched England throw away the game against France the other night.. many of us lapsed into fits of drunken swearing. Wild accusations of blame flowed through my head, eventually decided to blame myself.

7. Arrived back in Phnom Penn, explored the city, drinking in a few of the bars. Moved myself this morning to a guesthouse by the lake where I shall stay to observe the next England game.

Anyway, I am off to find something to put on my mozzie bites, they’re killing me. I hope you’re well.

 Love

 *****

P.S. Off to Angkor soon. Will send photographs.