Blog: Home Is The Hero

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Hello everybody, I'm back from my holidays - it was BRILLIANT. Myself and The Times On My Itinery had a Double UK Citybreak (OH YES) featuring Newcastle and Glasgow, both of which were FANTASTIC. We travelled between them in The First Class Carriage which (look away now, GHOST OF SWELLS) was GRATE. Man alive, that is THE way to travel - comfy, quiet and the only thing to disturb the relaxfulness is people giving you cups of tea. And biscuits - REALLY nice biscuits. It was something of a CONTRAST with flying Easyjet I can tell you.

Newcastle was a bit of a revelation - I've only been briefly before, but this time we both fell totally in love with it. On the first day, in roughly this order, we saw the: Open Top Bus Tour, Millenium Bridge, Sage Centre, Hancock Museum, Laing Gallery, Angel Of The North, and Baltic Museum. BEST was the Angel of The North, MOST SCANDALOUS was the Hancock, which we went to especially to see Sparkie The Budgie, famous talking BIRD formerly owned by one of Mrs E Pattison's relatives. He was still in the museum but - SHOCK - wasn't even LABELLED, he was just stuck in a large glass display case (NB he is very dead, don't worry) with a bunch of other NON-CELEBRITY birds, NONE of whom have had Michael Nyman write an opera about them (NB Sparkie HAS). I was disgusted!

Next day we went out to see Hadrian's Wall, which was I think the best thing of the whole holiday. We saw Housesteads fort at one end and Vindolanda at the other too, the latter being PARTICULARLY MIND BLOWING. I'll not go on about it too much, suffice to say it was pretty much THE MOST INCREDIBLE THING EVER. We spent the whole visit and much of the rest of the day just saying "AMAZING!" because it was... well, AMAZING. It's an incredibly well preserved Roman settlement where they got all those letters and postcards from - WIKI IT, i would recommend, it is FANTASTIC.

Meanwhile in Glasgow we did further sightseeing, particularly enjoying The People's Palace (LOVELY) and The West Brewery (DELICIOUS) before heading out to Mugdock Country Park, where we saw not one by TWO Castles and ALSO walked the length of The Khyber Pass. It looked very MUCH like the one in the Carry On film too, there was even a British Military Base along the way. On the Friday evening I played a gig too at Pinup nights - they'd advertised it as The Pinups Festival and had gone ALL OUT to make it so, with stalls, bunting, tents, a Meeting Point and Hay on the floor. It was GRATE!

My GIG bit felt a bit odd - the room was organised so that people STOOD in a central arena, seperated from the stage by a raised platform, walkway, IRON RAILINGS and a concrete post, so I felt that i was struggling to COMMUNICATE a bit as I did THIS:

The Peterborough All-Saints' Wide Game Team (Group B)

I Did A Gig In New York

My Boss Was In An Indie Band Once

(theme from) Dinosaur Planet

Being Happy Doesn't Make You Stupid

Do The Indie Kid

The Lesson Of The Smiths

It was OK, but MUCH more fun was afterwards as we sat and talked to The Brothers Urquhart, which was a GRATE LARF as ever, and then went to do my DJ set. This was IMMENSE fun, especially when Martin Plimpton came and helped and we did DANCING to GET THE FLOOR MOVING. I am proud to say we got COMPLAINTS for playing George Formby - this NEVER fails, the Godfather Of PUNK is still upsetting people!

And then we came home, and here we are - not exactly rested (as you can probably see, we did a LOT) but CERTAINLY funned up. And now: back to work! WHOO!

posted 28/6/2009 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

Thanks for the pub tip in Brighton, The Evening Star was a magic place...and much needed after the extreme heat on the streets and sitting at a dull, earnest conference.
posted 3/7/2009 by gary

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