Due South

Remember me complaining that I didn't get any of the new St Judes beer from Ipswich at Leicester? Well, I've now got the full bottled range sitting in my kitchen, alone with some "Suffolk Gold" cheese, made in Coddenham, just down the road from where I grew up... plus a nice lump of Wensleydale and Yorkie blue cheese, and a big bag of seeds to low-calorie-snack on, don't know where I got that idea from. Yum. I've found a new deli/local suppliers shop in Ippo, so knocked my way through another big chunk of beer tokens on good tasty things. Thank you Yorkshire for re-energising my tastebuds, there's not been such a devastating effect on my wallet since I learned to shoot in '92. Was never solvent again.

Pointed Christine's hellmouth engine in an approximately southerly direction on Monday night, having booked some crash space at the hospitable house of Kev. Journey was.... well, rush hour A16 is never going to be pleasant, the weather was snotty and Boston was hell but suprisingly made it back to hometown more or less on schedule. The reason for travel, going to see Brian Ferry in concert with me 'muv. Scooted from where I left the car, a shortcut through Withipoll Street, across Christchurch Street, all the old rat runs, and down beside the Regent, although they've put big fences up to block the short cut beside the theatre wall. Had a pint, fought my way through the fortysomething once teenyboppers who once swooned to Roxy Music, ran into a guy from Harwich that I used to work with before he quit the job to go into law, and took my seat. Brian Ferry.... lounge lizard, crooner and father of idiotic upper class Jeremy who's convinced he's the national angry young man - twat. Now, Ferry's just released an album of Dylan covers. It's interesting to hear Dylan done by someone who can actually sing. He kicked off with one of his own, surefire Roxy crowdpleaser "Incrowd" before doing an eighty minute set. If he can't do a decent set by his age he's never going to, and he did a decent set... the obligatory miniskirted backing singers, eleven piece band.... more old stuff than last time I saw him, and because he's flogging his Dylan album, a lot of stuff that most people know so all in all, a worthwhile use of petrol. And of course it's nice to catch up with my mum!

Night via Kev Towers, morning via breakfast in a cafe in town (yum, civilisation... was a time I'd have made do with a cold kebab); tea and conversation at Kaz's house; lunch with my mother in a restaurant with broken gas supply so pasta and salad it was (healthy...) and home via gran's. Incapable of passing either mother or gran without a massive free resupply of food, don't you just love your motherly rellies... so impressively laden down, pointed the pointy toothed hellcar north through snowstorms and eventually made it back to what I laughingly call home.

A jolly trip... I'm thinking that I need to take a southern break, a week or so. Grounding time. Life's getting a bit mad, need to reconnect with the essential me. A few nights in the Fat Cat and the Dove, connecting with good old mates, and a trip to the deep south... a night on the beer with Ginger Chris calleth. Trip time.