...and then we went to mauschwitz

Oh well.

Either side of getting the mice taken care of were gigs, mighty gigs. The first was YOB. Support came from Dark Castle, who were nice and doomy but somehow lacking something; and then Kongh, who sported some powerful Viking face hair and played a set that sounded like a musical timeline of the first ten years of Electric Wizard (this was, broadly speaking, a good thing).

And then of course, YOB themselves. On record, these doom metal titans sound like they are smashing their guitars together to create the sound of the universe exploding very noisily and in slow motion. Live, they were much the same; except louder, and with more tattoos and hair. Thanks to the hypnotic nature of their psychedelic rumblings (or possibly all the Red Stripe), I don't remember much of what happened; but I'm pretty sure that it was awesome.

And yet somehow still not as awesome as Enablers the following night. The gig took place at the Cube Microplex in Stokes Croft, a curious little tumbledown independent cinema run by beatniks in non-ironic cardigans who found the business of mixing drinks somewhat challenging. Support came courtesy of Beginnings and Finglebone, who were each perfectly lovely in a guitar noodling wall of delay sort of a way. They were rendered completely irrelevant the moment that Enablers took to the stage, and all conscious thought was obliterated by gravel-throated reflection and loathing, swirling tendrils of post-doom guitar, and the creeping realisation that my gin and tonic had been made with lemonade.

Not the gig we went to, but...

Just super.

Shame the mice had to die.

ipso fatso

Induction week for my shiny new grown-up job was largely a test of endurance in the face of relentless PowerPoint, interspersed with the occasional site tour. These site tours largely involved being led from one large and impressive building to another equally large and impressive building by one of the previous years recruits; and on arrival at each building some other chap would attempt to explain what the heck was going on there. So we were not in the slightest bit perplexed when some fellow outside a particularly large and really very impressive building indicated that we should gather around and pay attention. Levels of perplexedness peaked sharply as soon as words started coming out of his mouth.

He: Can you see me?

We: er... yeah.

He: Do you believe I can travel through time?

We: um... what?

He: Have you heard of CERN? They made a particle travel faster than the speed of light this week. So now time travel is possible.

We: er...

He: Here, take this. (the guy hands a Chinese newspaper and a used cinema ticket to the person standing nearest to him). Read this; high tide is at three. I'll come for you then...

...at which point our actual guide proclaimed that we didn't really have time for all this, and led us on to the next large and impressive building.

That was a few weeks ago; since then things have settled down and become somewhat slightly more normal. It's not awful.

Meanwhile...

Mouses are generally noted for their talents in three distinct fields.

1. Eatin'.
2. Poopin'.
3. Gettin' cancer.

My mouses, having spent the last year excelling at the first two, recently decided to have a crack at the third. Tetsuo has a pretty lumpy ginger armpit; but Kaneda is very nearly more tumour than mouse, so she wins.

Sort of.

holiday

We went to Santorini.

Santorini used to be a volcano; then it erupted, and some Minoans built houses on the newly formed rock. Then it erupted again and most of it fell into the sea. Eventually, the ancient Greeks built more houses on the top of a mountain.

Ancient Thera is around 400m above sea level. It gets a bit breezy up there, and the ground underfoot is a mixture of loose stones and big rocks polished smooth by the tread of many weary tourists. Fortunately there are at least a dozen lengths of thin rope at ankle height dotted about at the edges of the most sheer drops, and so the chances of being dashed against the jagged rocks far below are quite minimal.

We also visited more contemporary ruins in the ghost town of Mesa Gonia. It used to be one of the major villages on the island, but was abandoned after a massive earthquake in 1956. It now has a population of around 30 people, living in houses that look somewhat incongruous amongst the remaining ruins.

We did a spot more pottering about, but mostly we stayed around our hotel and beach resort and enjoyed the novelty of having nothing to do but read and get skin cancer.

We also drank a lot of cocktails. Our cocktail bar of choice was the Love Boat; partly because of their questionable taste in music but mainly because they often served up a free shot of something tasty/deadly/on fire as you got close to the end of your drink, like some kind of alcoholic end-of-level boss.

Sadly, my sunglasses (lovingly purchased for the princely sum of £1 from the women's accessories department of Primarch) did not survive the trip; Poseidon claimed them on day five. They were replaced that day with another pair of aviators even more fabulous and mirrored than before, and now I can dress up like Cochese.

So fuck you, Poseidon.

We have decided that we like holidays.

about three quarters of the way up the street actually

The whole moving house thing wound up being being pretty easy, largely because we seem to have some of the best friends in the world.

The Pixie hadn't seen the house at all until the day we picked up the keys, so it comes as some relief that she doesn't hate it and that we we are all settling in quite nicely. So far the only unforeseen horror has been in the cupboard under the stairs, where we found an old wooden box containing a single child's slipper and a rusty saw.

Which is hardly horrifying at all, actually; and far less disturbing than our pet Frenchman's collection of sinister foreign foodstuffs.

Soupe?! What the hell's that?

Those labels could say anything, and there is literally no way of finding out.

cumulonimbus

Went to see The Death Of Her Money at The Croft last week. I didn't get to see them straight away, of course; there were the obligatory support acts to wade through first.

First up was Pus, who were loud. Loud and to the point. Loud and to the point and thuggishly sludgy. Thudgy? Sluggish? Probably the second one. For the first thirty seconds it made some sort of terrible brutal sense, but after a minute or so it was starting to get tiresome. Then they played for another twenty minutes.

But then came Winston Egbert, who were charming. Self-proclaimed underdogs of 80s thrash, Winston Egbert are a boy/girl duo where the girl plays drums and the boy plays guitar and they both do a bit of singing. Kind of like The White Stripes. Except that they sound nothing like The White Stripes. Because they play 80s thrash.

Jesse Ventura (not to be confused with Jesse "The Body" Ventura, American wrestler and 38th governor of Minnesota) were apparently playing their first ever show, but looked like they'd been doing this kind of thing for years. It was all very reminiscent of Gay For Johnny Depp's homoerotic hardcore - they even had a song dedicated to "a man that's important and influential in all of our lives, and surely all of yours too; Patrick Fucking Swayze." Ones to watch.

And finally The Death Of Her Money, who were of course spiffing. I first/last saw them almost three and a half years ago, in what used to be The Junction, and dimly recall them sounding a bit like Isis and/or Pelican. On reflection their seismic riff dirge is more comparable to Godflesh without all the mechanical sounding frippery, but in truth they don't sound like they're trying to sound like anyone else; TDOHM have carved out their own doomgaze niche, and are bloody masters of it. Good stuff.

Meanwhile, it was my last day at the Big Gay Department Store last weekend. It is, in every sense of the word, the gayest place that I have ever worked. I think that I shall miss it slightly... but I start my new job at the end of September, and in the meantime I could use a few Saturdays off for things like sitting around in beer gardens, going on holiday and moving house.

We got keys to the new place on Tuesday, but don't have a van until tonight - so there has been very little moving of stuff. Instead we have been playing an odd version of Tetris using bits of squared paper cut out into the shapes of items of furniture.

If only we had spreadsheets and gantt charts to go with it all, Matt would be really proud of us.