Back from All Tomorrow's Parties completely knackered.

I managed to see every band over the first two days, but let the side down a little by being so hungover on Sunday that I couldn't stomach any live music until about six o'clock.

Highlights included the full-on rock of Bad Wizard, the insane eclecticism of Need New Body, and Deerhoof's jazzy madness. I also liked The Naysayer - she was funny and self-deprecating (hence mightily engaging) and her line from Pure Beauty - "your dick is like a stick of pure beauty to me" - must have been the lyric of the weekend.

Bad things included Mark Kozelek pulling out from Sunday's bill, being too hungover to see King Kong, and getting charged £115 for a dent on the easycar we hired. The rough, the smooth and so on.

Slint were incredible.

Chest x-ray this week. Woo.

Why is life good?

1. I have the next ten days off work. Ten. Whole. Days.
2. Tomorrow, I go to All Tomorrow's Parties. Three days of cutting-edge alternative music and entertainment awaits.
3. As I'm no longer on antibiotics, I can enjoy 1. and 2. with extra added booze.

Great stuff.

This, however, is not such great stuff - in fact, it boils my blood. Whoever this lunatic (Stephen Green) is, I hope his star falls once Jerry Springer: The Opera finishes its UK tour and he drifts back into anonymity. A Christian group threatening to picket the premises of a cancer charity because they don't like where the donations are coming from? Unreal.

My inner geek spills out once more...



I am excited.

I went to the doctor and guess what he told me, guess what he told me.

"You might have TB". Sinead never sung that did she? In with a bullet.

It's true. Apparently, as well as the throat infection (thankfully gone) I have something else wrong, but we know it isn't glandular fever. According to my blood test results, I have 'unusual lymphatic activity'. Who knew?

I'm now waiting on a call from the hospital inviting me to have my chest bombarded with radiation to help rule out the possibility that I caught a respiratory disease while I was on holiday in the 1950s. Marvelous.

I'm off to Wolverhampton to sing some songs. I'm performing at a friend's birthday party tomorrow night. I might buy a new t-shirt.

All fresh and ready for the morning, here's your Friday music thing.

I'm becoming a publican, I've decided. Yesiree, pulling pints, foxy barmaids, lock-ins - that's the life for me.

But I have one dilemma. I need to fill the jukebox. Now, I'm sure I could fill it with all of my favourite things, but I'm not convinced that would go down well with everyone - I'd like my pub to be a populist cornerstone of the community, as far as possible.

So I'm extending an offer to you all. You can each have an album in my pub fantasy jukebox, but you'll need to justify its inclusion. What's yours going to be?

I'm going for the second Stone Roses album, so I can drunkenly declare it 'not that bad' before collapsing comatose behind the bar.

From: neil's.friend@multinationalglobalcorp.co.uk
To: neil.oeillade@wewilleatyoursoulplc.co.uk
Subject: Jon bon boring

They're having a Bon Jovi day on Virgin. I've heard four songs today and two in the last five minutes.

Run come save me.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: neil.oeillade@wewilleatyoursoulplc.co.uk
To: neil's.friend@multinationalglobalcorp.co.uk
Subject: RE: Jon bon boring

Mate, you need to bring attention to the issue. Raise Your Hands and tell them that radios in offices are a Social Disease. Stick To Your Guns, you're right about this. Bang A Drum and Never Say Die, someone's got to make a stand, and If That's What It Takes, it's got to be you. I had a similar problem myself once - my boss was playing her old Arthur Lee albums, four in a row. Now, I like his band, but three hours was enough, even for me. I went berserk and had to be restrained. "Don't Lay Your Hands On Me," I cried, "You Give Love A Bad Name!" It was all to no avail. Still, I know what you mean, so you know I'll Be There For You. Whatever you do, don't let them Blame It On The Love Of Rock & Roll.

Keep The Faith, brother...

neil

I was sat channel-surfing last night when I bumped into Farscape on BBC3.

"I always liked Farscape," I thought to myself. "It reminds me of Chris Claremont's run on the X-Men."

I AM A GEEK.

And so is anybody who knows what I mean.

Go here for the funniest Valentine's Day thing I've seen for many a year.

Alas, I have been neither sender nor receiver this year, so I've come home to scoff half a tube of Pringles, watch a Richard Curtis rom-com, drink a bottle of wine, listen to some Marvin Gaye then it's off to bed for a big wank.

It's a new thing. I'm calling it 'self-romance'. Reckon I'm in tonight.

The swelling in my throat has got worse rather than better despite the antibiotics - I haven't slept more than half-an-hour in four days without waking due to the fact that I seem to reach a certain point of sleep and start choking, or the pain wakes me up. I am absolutely fucking sick of it. All I've done this weekend is lie on the sofa drifting into fitful sleep before being wrenched out of it again.

I'm supposed to be singing a few songs at a friend's party next Saturday, and it's All Tomorrow's Parties at the end of the month. The former I'll skip, but the latter I really don't want to.

A good patient, I am not.

Last night, had I not been a bit unwell, my friend and I were going to go here. Am glad we didn't, although it could have been worse - we might have ended up here.

Now I like inexplicably-named cheap pine furniture as much as anyone, but come on people...

Regarding Tuesday's post, it might be a throat infection or possibly glandular fever. I am currently stuffing myself full of antibiotics and giving up lots of blood for testing.

Oh, and your Friday music thing. Alternative BRIT awards, please. A couple of starters - My Front Page Of The Sun...Really..? award goes to Pete Doherty while Athlete are the runaway winners in the Band For Whom The Word 'Turgid' Was Invented category.

So tell me, is finding a lump in your neck about the size of a third of a golf ball necessarily a bad thing?

My my, wonders will never cease. After three long months since moving, my housemate and I have finally removed our fingers from our respective arses (not each other's, obviously. That's not a picture of domestic harmony) and got our broadband sorted out.

So, after one or two false dawns, I'm properly returning to the blog place. As of now.

Definitely now blogging again.

If only I had something to say.