Whistle Past the Graveyard

Dear Daniel,

A rather excellent weekend over here. Unfortunately, I don't have the time now to go into it too much. Fortunately, this will serve to stop me getting all grandiloquent on yo ass and stick to the facts.

Friday: Aborted a trip to a bar which had promised to add a cocktail designed by me and two colleagues on to their menu when we discovered they hadn't bothered. Instead, had a tequila cocktail designed for us by Leeds best cocktail maker in a better bar around the corner which was EXCELLENT. The only thing that was more EXCELLENT than that was when we didn't have to pay for them.

Saturday: The Duels comeback special; Live at Leeds; good crowd. They sang The Slow Build back to us. I closed my eyes and imagined I was Freddie Mercury on stage at Wembley at Live Aid (I didn't, that was for your benefit).(Actually, I've just remembered it was for the Ethiopians.)

Sunday: Brother's 30th birthday. Wonderful lunch in a pub slap back in the middle of the countryside to the north of Leeds which was once owned by Louis XIV because he liked the colour green. Pushed it very hard with red wine and port. Retired to the sofa to watch the snooker final, and indulged myself to extreme levels by watching Iron Man between the afternoon and evening sessions.

Monday: Went to the wonderful Hyde Park Picture House in Leeds, an ancient and tiny cinema, to watch Jeffery Lewis and the Junkyard during the afternoon. Very entertaining. He didn't either of my two favourite songs but he did play the above - which I love the lyrics to - and he did his history of punk, which is excellent; a very good Crass cover and a couple of his own "music videos".

Today I went to see In The Loop, which is a great film. I'm going to see my Grandparents for dinner tomorrow. Frankly, those fuckers better be entertaining - I'm on a roll here.

Dear James,

I could lie and pretend I had a similarly excellent weekend and that it's taken me till Thursday night to recover, but then I posted a video below of some people dancing round a maypole and told you I'd spent the weekend translating a play, so you'd see right through the pretence, you wily old fox.

While you were sleeping, I installed a clever Google tool on this blog which tells us how many readers we have. It's 37 at the last count, although minus the various computers we use to blog from and it goes down to 32. Will you be delighting our diminished readership with the full cocktail recipe? Hang on, this just in: 50 unique vistors have now visited our blog! In fact, today saw a record high of 10 visitors in one day! I'd like to see Jeffrey Lewis and the Junkyard beat that.