Spectacularly crap Morrissey tour pics

Once again the sun shining over Manchester like a big friendly prozac capsule in the sky, poking long marmalade fingers through the windows of my house, and 'sending the shadows scurrying like convent girls menaced by a tramp', as the wonderful Vivian Stanshall once put it. Summer is here. Fantastic! We went out to a deer park in what's left of the Cheshire countryside today, to bask in it. And only two days to go now before the beginning of the the biggest sporting event in the world! Yay! Cold beers, sunshine and wall to wall international football. Things don't get much better. I don't know about where anyone else lives, but around here there's already so many England flags sticking from cars, hanging from people's windows, and tied to pet dogs etc, you'd think it had already started and we were even doing well. As some friends of mine recently moved to Germany, I was thinking maybe I'd try and get over there for some of the games, but as tickets are selling for over £1500, that now seems about as likely as finding a condom machine in Vatican City. Just as well, as I'm too busy. Uncannily, my girlfriend's country, Sweden, are in the same group as England once again, so I'm hoping that's a draw and we both get through just so I don't have to sleep on the couch or something for the next few days.

I'd give you my predictions of who I think would qualify from each group except that I haven't got time.

Managed to get to four of the Morrissey gigs on the ROTT tour (my girlfriend managed five as she also flew out to the Gothenburg one), Manchester Lowry, Grimsby, Manchester Apollo, and Blackburn, the best of which was Grimsby on account of that we had standing tickets for that and got right at the very front where I was able to study Morrisey's nostril hair. Got a bit crushed but I like that, although not in any kind of sexually perverted way, or not much of one, but just because I love the intense, fervent atmosphere of it all when you're being born along in a crowd of seething bodies.Towards the end, a fight broke out a bit behind me when a group of what looked like local lads starting laying into some older guy who crashed into me and eventually had to be lifted out over the barrier by the generally incompetent security staff. Wonder if we'll ever know, is there life on Mars etc. Morrissey came back for an encore and looked over wearing an expression that was a mixture of curiosity, disapproval, and someone wondering 'are these really my fans?' The next day we looked around Grimsby's neighbouring seaside town of Cleethorpes, and although the the people around there were really friendly so I don't want to criticise the place too much, really think it may well have been the inspiration for 'Everyday is Like Sunday'. It looks like it peaked in the 70's and has been frozen in a time capsule, slowly decaying, ever since. I was half expecting them to still be using old money. Yet there's something appealingly romantic about all that shabby, desolate, end of the pier, fish-and-chip-shop-sign garish, moribundity that touches me somehow and maybe stirs vague half-forgotten memories of my childhood holidays at such places before the world went mostly shit.

At the Manchester Apollo gig we decided to go to the pub behind the venue afterwards, which, in the best British tradition, was bloody closed, but next to it, amidst the roadies loading up all the amps and stuff, we noticed Gary Day sat down talking to a couple of girlies, so we went over and said hello and got our ticket stubs signed by him, embarassing though that is to admit.

So that's it for Morrissey for this year! For anyone who is interested, some extremely crap photographs of the gigs that I took can be seen and laughed at below:

The Lowry, Manchester 18/4/06 Crap seats near the back.

Grimsby 4-5-06, good place at the front but crap photos.

Manchester Apollo 7-5-06, even crapper seats near the back.

Blackburn 11-5-06, the crappest seats at the back of all.

The seaside town that they forgot to close down.

Two entries within a month shock!

Which is because beloved has gone over to Sweden to visit her relatives up in the far north for a week, and then to go to the Morrissey gig in Goteborg on the way back here, so I'm all on my own again and I have more free time on my hands and get to use he computer, which she is usually using when were together. God how I miss her and she's only been gone a week!This might be more information than most people would care to read about but my genital area is really itching at the moment after going in hospital the other week and having all my pubes shaved off so they could operate on my groin. The operation went well, if having yourself cut open by strange people with sharp knives and them then putting a big piece of plastic inside you etc can ever be described as 'going well.' Because I have a heart murmur, they couldn't put me to sleep, so I had to be awake for this operation and only have a local anaesthetic injected in my groin so I could still feel them pulling and prodding around in there like they were fitting a new kitchen or something. It wasn't too bad, but not as good as an afternoon spent watching Countdown with a cup of tea and a packet of custard creams. Apart from the first five minutes that is, when I noticed they'd not given me enough anaesthetic. But could they ever have given me enough? Afterwards, I felt like I'd been kicked in the testicles by a horse with hob nail boots on, yet then they gave me some nice pain killers, which were so nice that I just went and got a repeat prescription for them the other day even though I'm not so badly in pain anymore. Other than the general pain of being alive in a fucked-up universe etc, which we all have. So now I take them for that. I took an mp3 player in so I could listen to music, but it was hard to concentrate on it. I wanted to take in a book in but they wouldn't let me. I was reading a good book by Jasper Fforde called 'The Big Over Easy' which I'd recommend to anyone. It often made me laugh out loud, which, for someone who doubled up in agony cos of the stitches whenever he did that, and who is just a miserable git in general, is no small feat. Another good book I read in hospital was a series of short writer's bios called 'Written Lives' by Javier Marias where you can learn such things as how Thomas Mann, author of Death In venice, (in case anyone didn't know that) was obsessed with his bowel movements and kept a journal meticulously recording them, his motions, evacuations, rumblings, strainings etc, for posterity's sake even leaving instructions it wasn't to be read until ten years a after his death. Now there was a man who took his shits very seriously. Something I did myself after the op, on account of them being so painful and all. once again probably more information than you'd care to read, which means I neatly finish this paragraph the way I started it. Good. It appeals to the OCD in me.

The kittywits are all out and about now. Most days are spent with me painting, listening to Noel Coward & Tim Buckley records, whilst they are scurrying about the place playing kitty-tag with each other, their heads several times too big for their bodies and little tails waggling about behind them. God, they are so cute, I can watch them for hours, Especially as it means I get to stop working. I can't see how I'm gonna be able to part with them, but we'll end up with a house full of five cats if we don't so guess we must. If only they were human children then I could gladly sell them on for medical experiments or something. In fact, I'd insist on it. I guess a few more days on turd-cleaning duty and I might be more up for parting with them. After they've scurried about for a bit they all go to sleep together for an hour in a big furry ball. What a life! They've provisionally been named as Werewolf, Lumi (Finnish for snow), Blackey and Tortoise. Okay enough about kittens. I'll be watching Pets win Prizes next, if I carry on like this.For anyone interested, here's an update of what they look like now.




Just one thing I've noticed about them though, is even already they all have totally different personalities,and Werewolf, for example, is very nervously sensitive and shy, yet I can say with some certainty that nothing traumatic or distressing has ever happened to him/her so far, which kind of suggests that all those years we humans spend in various kinds of psychotherapy etc, trying to find the causes of similar propensities in a traumatised childhhood etc, might just be a waste of time, and we're simply born like that to a large degree, although a troubled upbringing can certainly screw you up too, but perhaps it's not always the cause.

Well, only 3 weeks now to the Moz gigs! We mananged to get tickets for 2 of them here in Manchester, The Lowry and The Apollo; also 2 for nearby Blackburn, and 4 for Grimsby, 2 of which are no longer needed, so are now for sale at face value to anyone (fans) who wants them. Grimsby is one of the smallest venues he's doing (500 people or so) and all standing, so that might turn out to be one of the best, most intimate gigs.

Another thing I'm looking forward to is the World Cup. Call me optimistic to the point of psychotic delusion if you wish, but I really think England are going to win it. In fact, I'm certain of it! I just know. If they don't, I'll obviously now look a right cunt, presuming it's possible to notice that amidst my general propensities in that direction anyway.Okay, enough for now I'm off to clean up several kilos of cat shit.

Photos of Heptonstall & kittywits

Shit, once again over 3 months have passed since I had a chance to write in here, despite loads of things happening that I wanted to rant, rave, or just comment about. Like that pretty shocking news item a few weeks back about how the Americans bombed the village of Chipping Sudbury is Wiltshire killing 20 people as they were sat in their houses watching Emmerdale Farm on the telly simply because they thought a terrorist was living there. Oh wait, no, sorry it wasn't Chipping Sudbury, it was just a village somewhere in Pakistan, so I guess it doesn't really matter, and wasn't that shocking after all, which is probably why America still hasn't even bothered to apologise for it.Still, enough about how shit and full of maniacs the world is and more about meeeeeeeeeeeee and what I've been doing lately!A few weeks back, after watching the not so very good film Sylvia on telly, about the poet Sylvia Plath (in case there's a chance in a million there was someone who wasn't actually aware of that fact), we decided to pursue one of my hobbies of visiting the graves of famous dead people and went to her grave in Heptonstall (where Ted Hughes comes from) up on the lonely moors just about 40 miles from here in Manchester. We stayed a guest house in Hebden Bridge, a pretty little town in the valley Heptonstall looks down over, full of 'alternative' new age type shops and cafes etc and which is famous for being the Lesbian capital of the uk, or at least it is on the Hebden Bridge website (http://www.hebdenbridge.co.uk/). Didn't see that many dykes myself, which are of course, easy to spot because they wear tweed suits and pencil in moustaches on their faces. The churchyard in Heptonstall where Sylvia Plath is buried, is really beautiful in a crumbling Yorkshire gothic kind of way and some pics of it, the grave, and some weird pervy kind of guy spotted lurking about up there, well alright, me actually, can be seen here:




Also a bit ago, we adopted the next door neighbour's kitten or rather it adopted us and when we took her to the vets to have her spayed were told we were too late as she was already pregnant and now she has had a load of kittywits which are living in a wine box in my painting room, and just starting to venture out. So the house is full of cuteness and little squeaking noises at the moment. Unfortunately though, one of the kittens seems to be a werewolf as can be seen from a picture of them here:

Cute, aren't they? I hope we can find homes for them otherwise we will have to sell them all for medical experiments.

Gotta say I was amazed to see Loafing Oaf has actually printed a sensible speech I agree with 100% for once, (The Right to Offend by Ayaan Hirsi Ali Feb 15)about the cartoon of Mohammed, although I can't help wondering why if he is in favour of free speech so much and the right to offend therein, he censors people leaving comments on his journal. But apart from that, good speech!

Well, that's that. What was the point I'm now wondering and I'm sure you are too.

Okay, I'm off now to get cut up and have my interior organs prodded about with in the local hospital. I'll try and write again in another three months, if I survive, for anyone interested.

Some more crap Pride pics (at Bobmozza's request)

3 crap Pride pics

There you go, Ken lad, or rather lass.

St. Annes Square No. 2, Manchester. 40x50cm acrylic on board.

Uncle Moz