This morning I dropped the girls off at ballet and drove to Comet in Dunfermline to get a new 4GB flash drive. During last week's radio show I'd put the flash drive in the PC under the desk, only to kick it at some point during the show. When I saved my show and pulled out the drive, the plastic casing had been smashed to pieces by my clumsy feet. It does still work but rather than risk it I got a new one. Having seen a SanDisk product on the Gadget Show do so well against more well-known opposition, including Apple, I plumped for their inexpensive 4GB drive. The Integral one I had before would've been £21 to replace and this one was only £8.99.
After the amazing night on Thursday, I enjoyed a long lie-in on Friday, although it was somewhat enforced on me by a sore back ("the pleasure with the pain"). I had prepared a long To-Do list and raced through it. I popped into Dunfermline to get my haircut. The girl cutting my hair (4 on the top, 2 round the back and sides) enquired, as they are want to do, what I was up to that day. I told her I was recovering from last night's wondrous gig. Naturally, she hadn't heard of Edwyn Collins until I "sang" the chorus of "A Girl Like You". She tried to convince me that it couldn't have been a better gig than an "amazing" Red Hot Chilli Peppers gig she been to. She's young, she knows not what she says. Haircut, £5, £1 tip, check.
Next stop was the Alhambra, Dunfermline's newest venue, which is gradually beginning to attract some bigger names to Fife. My mate Martin had sent me a text saying that The Charlatans would be playing on Saturday 19th December. Now I like The Charlatans but I don't know if would even travel to Edinburgh to see them but I suggested to the good lady wife that as they would be on our doorstep we could use the gig to have our Christmas night out. Fine, she says. I had e-mailed the venue on Thursday to find out when tickets went on sale and how much they would be. No reply.
I walked the 100 yards from the barber's to the venue. Unusually the Box Office, which according to their website is open from 9 until 4 between Monday and Friday, appears to be up a stair at the side of the venue. I'm only surmising this because I had to press a buzzer first to get in. I also noticed a sign saying "Cash Only". Surely not, in this day and age. Anyway, I pressed the buzzer and enquired how much the tickets were and when they'd be on sale. I was told they would be £22.50 but the venue wouldn't get their allocation until Monday because Ticketmaster would be selling them first. I couldn't believe it. Another venue had soul its soul to Ticketbastard. I don't like Ticketmaster, as regular readers will know, with their spurious fees for anything and everything. I decided there and then we wouldn't be going to see The Charlatans after all. You can say what you like about the Carnegie Hall in Dunfermline but at least they don't charge you for nothing. I went to see Davie Scott and Norman Blake, supported by The Vaselines. The advertised cost was £10 each. How much did we pay in total? £10 each. That's the way it should be. We're going to spend the money at Kushis instead.
After the disappointment of the Alhambra I headed off to Tesco to get the week's "big" shop. K had prepared a list. I'm usually quite strict and never veer "off list" but a 5CD box set of "100 Hits - Northern Soul" just happened to fall into the trolley. It was only £6 and while I had many of the tracks already there were enough new ones to make the £6 purchase a worthwhile one. Today I uploaded the tracks onto Windows Media Player and while I doing so I noticed a strange message in to the "Album Artist" column. It says, beside every track, "edit this crap"!! I checked the other CDs and it's the same for each of them. Maybe I'll e-mail Demon and see what they have to say for themselves.
Is it just me or are there times when you're at the checkout in a supermarket you feel the checkout girl (it's always a girl) tries to make you look slow at packing, just because you're a man. Sometimes I think females checkout assistants scan your purchases as fast as they can so that they pile up and you don't have enough time to put them in your bag. This is a veiled attempt to make the male shopper look really stupid. This annoys me because I'm no slouch when it comes to packing a shopping bag. I'm certainly more organised than most. Would they do it to an older person or another woman? I doubt it.
As I unpacked the hastily-packing shopping when I got home I put on the radio, which lives in the kitchen. It's a DAB I won in a competition on Forth One. It was still on BBC 6Music from when I tuned into Andrew Collins on Wednesday who was subbing for a Mercury Music-ligging Steve Lamacq. Anyway, as I unpacked the messages (Scottish word for shopping) I heard this dreadful whining noise coming out of the DAB. It was George Lamb. Come the Judgement Day award ceremony the nominees for Bastardisation of the English Language will be Paul Merson, Jamie Redknapp and George Lamb. Thankfully he was finishing in 10 minutes. File under "Loves the Sound of His Own Voice and Isn't As Funny As He Thinks". See also Jonathan Ross.
During a spot of lunch, I watched a couple of programmes from Sky+. Monday's The Gadget Show and Derren Brown's lottery prediction show. I really like the Gadget Show and not just because Suzi Perry was wearing high boots and a short skirt! Their weekly competition prizes are amazing and this week's includes a car that they'd "pimped" to include a PSP 3 and a projector screen under the bonnet! Ooh, ooh, pick me, pick me. It's the only text competition I do.
There's no rest for the wicked and I took advantage of the weather to cut the grass on the front and back lawns. The back lawn had been left uncut for so long that there were Japanese soldiers in there thinking the war was still on. Both jobs were completed just in time to collect Flick from the After School Club. I hadn't even had time for a shower. K had caught an earlier bus home so she did some weeding, I tried pathetically to repair some scratches in the car (check me Mr Pleasant Valley Sunday) and Felicity cycled up and down. At one point she told everyone what our car was but that her favourite cars were Kias and BMWs. She informed the other kids that she was saving for the latter!
Also picked some bad news late yesterday afternoon that our childminders had ceased trading! The Scottish Care Commission had initially informed them that the number of children they were looking after wouldn't include their own kids (there are two childminders) but now the Commission has changed their mind. With K and I having changed our working hours and fitted in around Flick's school times, we're now left without a childminder. Apparently the Scottish Care Commission informed the childminders that a weekend was more than enough time for the parents to organise alternative child care!! Unbelievable! As soon as I finish this blog entry I shall be giving them a piece of my mind.
Just when you think everything's sorted...
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