China is here, Mr Burton

Since being back from France I regained my pre-Gallic state of unemployment, despite begging Nick down the phone for a job even just sweeping his office, my pleas have fallen on deaf ears. I really should have gone and signed on again last week, but shoulda, coulda, woulda and hindsight is always 20/20 vision. What ever that means. So I've been filling my time by doing very little in an effort not to spend too much money until I work for York Uni again in a week. I went out on Friday afternoon and met up with Moogdroog for a pub lunch and a film. She's been given time off from her PhD cos she'd written a chapter or something. Actually I have no idea what she'd done as when anyone starts telling me about their PhD my eyes glaze over and I start thinking about Tiger Tanks or the Battle of the Somme. The film we went to see was the new Woody Allen film: Whatever Works. It's hilarious and has Larry David in it, which alone is good enough reason to see it. It's like an extended episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which, you don't need to be told, is the best comedy show ever written (well most of it is improvised, so it's not so much written as ad libbed, but that's all just semantics, you pedantic wankers). The film is a repackaged 1970's script and it does show in a couple of it's dated situations (the bohemian three way relationship and the Southern gun nut turning out gay), but Larry is in fine form, especially when calling the kids to whom he teaches chess 'Inch worms and Cretins'.

That evening was also spent in the company of Moogdroog along with Claire, Helen and a bunch of others I didn't know for Alia's leaving do. About the third of several such leaving dos. Good God, that girl just doesn't know how to say goodbye. She still hasn't left York, either... Town was pretty quiet what with the upcoming England versus Germany game, all the knuckle draggers are saving their money for when we get knocked out of the World Cup finally (Despite not caring about football or the World Cup one little bit, Fidor insists on telling me the scores whenever England play. I'm not sure what part 'I don't care' or 'I'm just not interested mate' he doesn't understand but his steadfastness in keeping me up to date in the latest scores would be quite endearing if it were nothing to do with football...). It was a rather sedate affair, all be told, and I sloped off to bed a little after midnight. I was awoken before the sparrows fart on Saturday morning by the butchers having a rather loud and protracted conversations in Russian outside my window.

So long, farewell, would you ever fuck off?

On Saturday afternoon I met up with Logan Josh and his paddle chums. He was also back from France and bursting with stories of crazy Algerian campsite owners. We spent the afternoon talking about films, music and aeroplanes. Logan was his usual boorish self and he left me after braying and bragging about a Barbecue at his house that was NOT invited to. It seems like the rest of York was going, with only my house having missed out on getting an invitation through the door. Well, I hope he choked on his fucking burger. I already had other plans, I went to meet Vinny down in the Basement, which is not as predatory as it sounds, and I took my leave before calling in at Yummy Chicken, the most inappropriately named take away in York, The food is not 'yummy' by any stretch of the imagination and can hardly be described as chicken either... In the Basement there were three bands on, with a sixties/seventies themed disco afterwards. The first band Russell and the Wolves were by far the best on the bill. Any band that features a girl in a tiger suit playing solos with her high heels and a Elvis lookalike on the other guitar gets my vote. The second band, The Silver Factory were an incredibly lame jangly-shit-pop-Jam-Paul-Weller-wanna-be bunch of pricks. It seemed the only way to get into the band was to have the same haircut as the rest of them. They were the lamest band I've seen for a long time. The guitarist just strummed three chords on his £500 guitar the whole time. He should have saved himself some money and bought the cheapest shit guitar if that's all he was going to do with it. But I guess image was far more important to them than actual music. I don't remember much about the last band except they had come from London. It was probably something to do with the fact I had been drinking for about eight hours solid at that stage and so decided to call it a night. I ended up outside Oki's Mobile Kebab shop eating a chicken burger and listening to some racist cunt telling the guy behind the counter 'you no spit on burgers'. I certainly don't envy those lads having to listen to that shite every Friday and Saturday night, but I still think it would beat having to listen to The Silver Factory again...

Oh, just fuck off!