Sometimes things happen that just leave you numbed by there very nature, today is a dark day.

I don't think I'll be blogging for a few days, but I will be back and will explain more then.

Well the week at Niki's Dad's was interesting. The Magic Numbers gig was great and we actually bought a t-shirt that fits us, which was a bonus. We spent some time packing up Niki's studio and have now got it almost completely done. We visited her Dad in hospital about every other day, and I got to meet her sister who I'd never met before, she seems alright but then I don't know her as well as Niki does

I came home from Niki's Dad's on Friday because Scott came to stay for the weekend. Her Dad is not doing brilliantly at the moment he's had three operations now and is a bit fed up of being in hospital. Niki is tired and a bit stressed by it all, but keeps telling me she's fine (why do we both do that?).

Scott came over Friday evening and so did Big Chris who seems a lot happier now than he has for some time, Niki came home on Saturday night after work and was knackered but seemed alright. We had a visit on Saturday night from Blind Lemon Kelly which was great, it's always really good to see him. He came bareing gifts of a video and single by Alexi Sayle which was as brilliant as it was unexpected, thank you Mr Kelly. Scott went home on Sunday and later we had a quick visit from Becca and Lauren, along with cousin Kath, which was really lovely. All in all we had a good weekend.

So now here I sit, Niki has gone over to see her Dad again and help her friend Robin with some work he's got at the studio's. It's strange how sometimes old thoughts stir and old situations start pushing their way back into your thoughts. I'm feeling particularly flat right now and have no idea why, I can feel a mix of anger, depression and fear welling up inside me and I'm fighting not to let it take control. I really have no idea what has started this, not that it's that important, what is important now is to stop it before it gets any worse.

I sometimes look around me and wonder why it is that the older some people get the more they feel the need to play games with others and also why some people seem to revert to almost teenage behaviour, I'm not saying that I act like a responsible adult all of the time and I'm not trying to sound all holier than thou, but these things add to my general feeling of flatness and I just need to get them out of me sometimes.

It's a strange thing that i find hard to understand sometimes but I know that I can't exist without others, I need other people around me to keep me going, and I also know that I have a massive amount of self loathing to try deal with, but sometimes I just want to be alone and not talk to anyone. The thing is that when I had no choice because I was on my own, I hated it and was depressed because of it, but now I sometimes find that I feel like I am fighting for time alone. I hate the confusion and paradoxical nature of my mental state.

Anyway, enough of my grumbling and groaning, I'll see y'all later.

Well here I sit having a light lunch before trying to get far too much stuff to carry accross to the other side of London. Niki and I are going to spend the week at her dad's, because he's still in hospital and her brother is going away for a week, which means there's no one to look after the cats. Given the choice of them coming to stay with us or us going to stay there we chose the later. It's quite helful in a way because we're going to see The Magic Numbers tonight at Hammersmith and it's not far from there to Niki's dad's so that's pretty good, plus we have to go to the studio Niki has and pack it up, as she's giving the place up and we'll have to move it all by the end of the year.

I have a couple of things that I've been trying to find out about and wanted to throw them open to you all to see if anyone could offer any help at all. The first is about a song that i remember from the 70's but haven't got much info about, the song is called 'Nervous Wreck' and it's by The Radio Stars, I don't know any more about it than that except that I'm sure it was on the Chiswick Records lable, so any info would be great especially if you know if there's anywhere to download it from on-line. Here's a picture of the sleeve:-

The second thing is some info to help with my family tree, my great-great-great-grandad (I think that's right) was the landlord of The Angel Inn in Rainham in the 1800's the trouble is that I have found it almost impossible to go back any further than that, I can't seem to trace him being born in Rainham and records before the 1800's seem to be difficult to find, if anyone has either any knowledge of the pub and it's history or where I could find more info without it costing me a fortune I'd apprectiate it. Here's a picture of the Angel Inn as it is now:-

Well, I think that's about all I've got right now, except that I got sent this picture the other day and I forwarded to Old Nick who said you guys might like to see it. It is yet another instance of the picture of Christ appearing in an unusual place (hope this doesn't offed anyone out there). Here's the picture:-

See y'all

It's been odd for me for the last two days, yesterday Niki had to go over to see her dad who is ill in hospital and as she had to work today it made sense for her to stay over there, so she made arrangements to meet up with a friend and go out last night. I'm glad that she's keeping in touch with her friends as I sometimes feel guilty about the fact that she has moved right accross London and left everything behind while I have stayed where all my friends and family are. As far as I'm concerned her friends all have an open invitation to come over any time (as long as they phone first to make sure we're in). Anyway she's gone to see her dad agin tonight and is coming home afterwards, so I don't know exactly what time she'll be home.

It's a strange thing but it seems that whenever I'm down most of the people I know are alright and then we seem to switch places and when I feel up they seem to go through a bad time. The problem is that when there are three or four of your friends all having a rough time at the same time it can be difficult to know how much to give of yourself to each of them so that you support them in their dark times but don't spread yourself emotionally too thin and end up getting back into your own down state.

Getting ourselves sorted in the new house is taking some time, and I know that a fair amount of the reason for that is the fact that I have been finding it difficult to focus and motivate myself to do much, hopefully as I'm feeling a bit more up now than I have been I will do more to help with that.

I wanted to make sure that this entry had something a bit light hearted in it but to be honest although I feel more up than I have done of late, I'm still not really high enough to be laughing and joking on here, so I'll leave that for a future entry.

So, to all my friends, both bloggers and non-bloggers I would just like to say that I wish you all good times and better days and thank you for your continued friendship.

See y'all

I can't believe just how self obsessed and paranoid I am, and it's taken me more than three years of being sober to realise it. I also can't believe just how bad a friend I am really, I make all the right noises and try to say all the comforting things that friends are supposed to say when their friends are having problems but deep down inside all I keep thinking is "What have I done wrong this time? How have I screwed up again?". In my last session, my counsellor said that I must understand that this is all just part of my insecurity and my mental state as a whole, what I want to know is why must I understand that? I don't understand that! I find it very hard to understand exactly why it is that every time a friend of mine is haveing a hard time or has a problem or is suffering in their life, I just turn it all around in my head and make it about me. Intellectually I know that it's not about me and there is no way it can be, but my mind still does it to me every time. I have been told that because it is not something I'm doing on purpose and it is my mind that is making that conection on it's own then it's not something I should blame myself for but that kind of thinking does not sit well with my own philosophy, my actions and reactions are my responsibility and mine alone. Because of this I want to publicly apologise to both Chris's, Nick and Sandy for not giving you all anywhere near as much support and love as I feel I should have and I feel you have all given me over the years.

Well, this has been an odd day. A day in which I have experience absolutely no highs or lows of any kind really, I’m feeling incredibly flat at the moment (not an easy thing to do when you’re my size). Because of this flatness of being I have written a total of exactly 0 words of my novel, whilst Niki (who assured me that she wouldn’t be able to write anything) has written around 2500 words of hers. I just can’t seem to get the muse, as they say, it’s taken me all day to work up to writing this blog entry. Still we’ve got some of the house sorted out, although in all honesty that “we” is actually more Niki than me, and I’ve even been out of the house a couple of times this week, during the day!!!! Which brings me to the main part of this posting which is a review, of sorts, of the gig on Halloween.

Scott and I managed to get to Kentish Town tube a full half an hour before the doors opened and thought long and hard (for about 30 seconds) about getting something to eat but decided not to bother as neither of us were that hungry (the reason for telling you this will become clear later), instead we walked to the Forum amongst the other gig goers. Many of the people there had dressed especially for the gig (although I did get the feeling that more than a few of them actually dressed like that all the time), one guy was dressed up as a were-wolf, there were multiple Kiss fans in full make-up, many people who looked like they had only just woken up and had to rush out with out making the coffin, and a smattering of people who looked as if they had been attacked by the were-wolf guy. There were some people dressed in what can only be described as Viking/Celtic battle dress, some with weaponry and all in full battle cry voice. Then there were the odd ones, people who had come straight from work and were still wearing suits and stuff. Alongside these were people like me and Scott who were for the most part dressed in the normal rock attire if jeans and t-shirt with some band or other picture on the front.

We queued for a while (not too long so it wasn’t too bad) and then we were inside one of the only venues in London that seems to operate a 1970’s security force, we walked, a guy tore our tickets and grunted as he pointed to the stairs we had to go up and that was it, I didn’t see another security person all night.

We decided that before the support band came on we would have a drink. So we had a pint of coke each with three ice cubes that had been made from the purest water in the known world and flown in especially supported on golden threads and carried by specially trained dragonflies ridden by fairy princesses, and a can of Red Bull which was one of only two made especially for the Emperor of China and personally brought to London by a thousand of his greatest warriors. I’m sure that must have been the case anyway because I can’t see any other reason they would have cost £8.90.

And so to the show, and I will start with Lordi and tell you about the support band afterwards.

Having learnt all I know about Lordi from the internet after seeing them on the Eurovision Song Contest, I was expecting a gig that would revolve around over the top stage production and average, but highly entertaining, songs, in this I wasn’t disappointed. Lordi are like the musical equivalent of that varnish stuff they advertise on TV, “it does what it says on the tin”, they and their show reminded me a lot of Thor, the body building heavy metal showman from many years ago, and all I can say really is that they were entertaining and fun to watch.

The support band was a whole different kettle of fish. I didn’t know who were supporting Lordi until they came on stage (actually to be honest I did really know their name until after the gig and I saw one of their t-shirts) and I was not really prepared for what I saw. Now before I explain fully I want to assure everyone that I really didn’t have anything to drink and didn’t take any kind of drug the whole night. The support band was called Turisas and they are amazing. They consisted, at first, of a drummer, bass guitarist, keyboard player, guitarist and singer who were all dressed pretty much like your standard Viking/Celtic warrior with furs, leather, face paint and hair everywhere. These were then joined by an electric violinist and an accordion player who were dressed like Scottish highland warriors, all hair, bare chest, dirt and kilt. The music they play is your run of the mill mix of Viking battle/drinking songs with a splash Celtic folk music thrown in. After a couple of songs they were joined by another accordion player who was painted white with some splodges of colour here and there and was wearing Union Jack y-fronts. They then proceeded to blast through the most amazing cover version of ‘Rasputin’ I have ever heard. They were probably the most incredible band I have ever seen live and, although musically some of their stuff wasn’t to my normal taste, I loved them, can’t wait to get the CD. For those of you that may doubt me please check out there web site HERE and also the songs and videos on their My Space site HERE, you can also see a clip of them doing ‘Rasputin’ HERE. Enjoy!

So then we made our way home and again turned down the choice of buying food to take home with us preferring to wait and go to a place called ‘Angie’s’ near home that we went to on returning from seeing System Of A Down earlier this year. So we make it home and find that ‘Angie’s' is shut and so is everywhere else despite it only being about 12.15. So we think that we will have to go without any food for the night (I should explain at this point that we were sleeping in my old flat that night as it is nearer to a tube station and thus easier to get home to at a reasonable time, plus Scott had to go to school the next day and the old flat is nearer his school, the problem is that they is nothing left there except the sleeping bags and coffee making stuff I had dropped of earlier) and trudge our weary way home. When we get in we discover that one of the local take-away's delivers up to 1am during the week and as it’s only just 12.45 we order a bucket of chicken and chips which duly arrives about twenty minutes later and we pig out and sleep.

On the whole a good night, it was a great gig and I really enjoyed it, in fact I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a gig in the same way since I was about 18.

Anyway enough of this, I need a coffee and Niki is busy upstairs either putting stuff away or writing, so I’m going.
See y’all.