Killer Bs

I spent a lazy day yesterday reading books and newspapers and watching rugby but I felt no guilt as I reckoned I deserved a fallow period of ennui and mellow contemplation. I did rouse myself to stroll round the house, visit all my various listening posts and gather all my CDs together. I then had a huge sort out of my collection and placed all my discs on the dining table in separate alphabetical piles depending on the artist’s name. I noted, with interest, that ‘B’ was by far the largest pile thanks to my loyalty to Blur (and, heck, they deserve my ongoing patronage), Boards of Canada and Belle & Sebastian. My double live Burning Spear CD helped ‘B’’s cause no end as well as cameo roles from, inter alia, Vashti Bunyan, The Blue Nile and The Be Good Tanyas. Well done, ‘B’. After my letter by letter sorting I placed all CDs back in my IKEA cabinets only to discover that all my Christmas and birthday presents as well as other purchases has meant that I require a new storage unit so the likes of The Waterboys and XTC sit forlornly atop the right hand unit. My message to Messrs Scott and Partridge: worry not, I will soon purchase a resplendent storage space worthy of your boundless talents and song writing acumen.

I have collated the eight CDs that S has leant me over the past year or so and will return them this week with warmth, humility and gratitude. I think I have had three of his XTC recordings for, well, about 18 months now. However I believe he borrowed my copy of The Dead Kennedys’ Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death about five or six years ago and I think he was graciously presented with my Gang of Four Peel Sessions album not long after that. But who’s counting?

I woke early this morning with a migraine, the flickering spectrum of doom impacting on my dreams and slumber and rousing me towards the medicine cabinet at 5am. I inserted my headphones and tuned into some BBC7 treats, not least Garrison Keillor's Radio Show which always proves a whimsical and gently humorous listening whenever I have stumbled across its quaintly old-fashioned Americana. It is a welcome antidote to the worst excesses of the greed, selfishness, boorishness and arrogance that I normally associate with that rotten nation. Keillor’s deadpan delivery of wry humour and introduction of fine folk and traditional music always pleases. A little later I listened to the omnibus of a radio soap called Westway about a health centre. I had imagined in my murky and muggy migraine melancholia that it had lasted for hours but on checking the schedules just now, I note it lasted a mere 55 minutes. It was dreary.

I shall watch England take on France in today’s football match but with little enthusiasm. The match has little meaning. England are rebuilding with a coach, Andrew Robinson, who appears to guess his way through reasonably important matters such as team selection and tactics. I have no affection for this humourless, scowling little berk who cheated his way through countless Gloucester/Bath amateur/professional mismatches in the 1980s. Phil Vickery MBE starts for England but I fear the prop’s career is steadily declining and I have come to resent silently the way that he always seems to play better for England than the infinitely more important team that plays a mile or so down the road.