Sabbatical

It's been almost two weeks since I last wrote anything here. I was getting a bit sick of the sound of my own typing... the clicks and the clacks began to have an echo of pompousness about them, mocking me and my self importance. Plus the sojourn in Japan had left me way more exhausted than I expected and threw my judgement off... I discovered meaning in everything and wanted to blog about the minute details. This, I decided was a bad idea. Finally I considered it an act of sacrifice to write nothing immediately after my readership increased threefold... what it was a sacrifice to I have no idea, but in my mind I think I imagined it to be the equivilent of doing a freeform jazz album after a rock and roll hit.

Told you I was tired.



So, we flew back from Tokyo on Friday morning on an inexplicably longer 12 and a half hour flight. Being the best part of 6'3" it's rare I fit anywhere anyway, but planes just aren't built for people of my size so I feel justified in saying I suffered for most of the journey. The taxi ride back up to Sheffield was nigh on impossible to survive concious and when we finally got home I blundered my way out the vehicle, muttered cursory goodbyes and had staggered down the street within 5 minutes.

Next day was Dza and Nicki's wedding down in High Wycombe. Dza is one of my business partners in Medlo and Nicki is his beautiful bride - an endlessly patient lady who has more than suffered for the efforts of the Media Lounge over the years. How Dza ever convinced her to marry him is beyond me... the wedding was just how weddings should be - sweet, short, and with drunk teenage celebrities running around. It was a highly stressful day for me, tiredness and jet-lag were at their most prominent and I found all the talking to people in a hot room to be very overwhelming. It didn't help that night when Is and I slept in the worlds smallest bed in the worlds smallest bed and breakfast...

Suffering from extreme fatigue by now, Tza drove us all back to Sheffield via a great Peaks pub called the Three Merry Lads. Here I hilariously bought Isobel a Sunday carvery despite the fact she is a vegetarian. Nice move.

And the so the week continued with a degree of unabashed tired until I found myself sleeping for 16 hours straight on Thursday. The thing is, I thought I was fine... I thought I'd escaped the return jet-lag and was doing just peachy, until Thursday happened. I awoke with just 30 minutes to go until I had to meet Isobel at the station and somehow, including a shower and sandwiche, I made it... we tootled off to Nottingham and watched Rodriguo e Gabriella at Rock City who were better than when I saw them at the Big Chill, and they were really good then.

And so the week turned into two and I still couldn't face writing on this very blog. We had a night at 65s to eat, drink and be merry and say goodbye as they are now holed up in Scotland recording that difficult third album. That very night was also the night of the work Xmas party which I avoided due to my being horribly drunk last year, and so got horribly drunk at 65s instead. Fate had it in for me and my liver that night. Was great to see Andy Digitonal again, even though we only had the briefest of brief chats, and I've learnt that we're off to Poland in May to perform the Shining - that was great news...

This is an old Media Lounge video we made to honour our fallen hero, Warren Zevon:



A few days ago we received an email through YouTube from Crystal Zevon, Warrens ex-wife, thanking us for the tribute. That's about the coolest damn thing that's ever happened to me...

So that's that. This blog is erring dangerously close to an all-purpose email so I'm going to keep an eye on that in the future. More obscure opinions, more hate-filled rants, less day-to-day bullshit... that's the way forward.

Oh, and cats. Mooch (the black one) now thinks he's a dog and loves nothing more than playing fetch with his favourite piece of screwed up foil and Hobbes (the ginger one) has entered a period of depression now that autumn has properly kicked in and he can't go outside as much.

Bless.