We’ve had a squirrel visiting us, coming to our back door, to rummage through a bag of veg. We put the bag there in readiness for putting it into our Worm Farm .

Our cat remained firmly asleep on the bed, and Binky-Bonky, our neighbour’s cat, sat passively gazing at the squirrel a couple of yards away.

I managed to take a few photos without moving too much. I was only about 3 feet away from him so didn’t want to alarm him. Only two pictures came out in focus and in one of those he had his back to me.

Earlier Vic had seen a blue tit outside our kitchen window, and there have been swifts whizzing about in the sky. Summer must be here.

Last week, I signed on for benefit for the first time since I started university, 19 year ago. The whole experience was a lot more pleasant than I expected. The staff at the job centre were all friendly, polite and helpful (despite having givenme the wrong claim forms, not once but twice!). Vic signed on at the same time, and we used our new Job Seeker status to get reduced price tickets to see Shaun of the Dead

Got a nice surprise from the Inland Revenue, in the form of a cheque for a tax rebate (I overpaid quite a bit last year due to only working until October). With no salaries coming into the house, that certainly helps, as does the dole money (I know you’re not supposed to call it “dole money” any more).

On Friday, I took to the roads once more in a slightly less scary, and slightly more competent driving session. And this time it wasn’t followed by a biblical-style downpour.

Saturday saw a brief trip to Borough Market, followed by some lounging in preparation for an evening out. Cedric, Vic and I had tickets for the “Carling Live 24” gig at Brixton Academy.

The first act on were the execrable “Queens of Noize”. Basically, two girls playing records and dancing like drunken loons. They don’t even make an attempt to mix the records. I’m sure they’re terribly funny on some sort of ironic level, but I wish they’d just bog off and leave a space for someone with an iota of talent.

Next up were the real headliners of the night, the Scissor Sisters They had already played in Wembley supporting Duran Duran that night, and were due to head off by helicopter to Nottingham as soon as they came off stage, but still put in a tremendous performance, opening with their current single “Take Your Mama” and the show carried on in a similar bouncy fashion. Great gig and the band all looked like they were having a great time.

The last band on were Lamb who we’ve seen several times before. Really liked their first album but haven’t been as enthusiastic about anything since, and live I’ve always found them disappointing and slightly annoying. Saturday was probably one of their last UK gigs (they’re doing a couple of festivals), as they’re taking some time out and may call it a day. Unfortunately, the performance lived down to expectations with a couple of songs being okay but most being irritatingly jazzy and to top it all, Andy, the bloke who writes the music acts like a complete arse on stage, apparently believing himself to be the second coming of Bono with all his speaker climbing and imploring calls of “Hellobrixtoniseverybodyhavingagoodtime?”. We stuck it out to the end though which, being a late-night gig was about 2:30am.

Grimsby Town are attempting to astound their fans by surviving the season without being relegated from Division 2. Their safety from relegation is now in their own hands, following their 1-0 win against Brentford on Saturday. Another win on Saturday at Tranmere will see them safe, with the prospect of some local derbies next season following the promotion of Hull and Doncaster from Division 3, and even Lincoln are likely to make the play-offs. So here’s hoping for a decent result on Saturday.

I had my first refresher driving lesson this afternoon. It’s amazing how much you can forget in 16 years. Still I didn’t hit anything, and only stalled a couple of times. I think I might need a few more lessons before having the confidence to go out on my own.

Towards the end of the lesson it started to rain. By the time I got home and into the flat it really started to rain hard. Then it started to hail, and then lightning, thunder and absolutely torrential rain. The hailstones were the size of those old-fashioned acid pip sweet and covered the back garden. Apparently, central Brixton got quite wild, with water almost a foot deep flowing down Brixton Hill, and some flats being hit by lightning. I suspect this was some sort of warning that I should keep off the road, but I’ll defy it!

The flat sale is dragging along. We went to Bromley to prove my identity to our solicitor on Friday, because having my passport and two bills isn’t enough, apparently (even though that’s all they asked for). It would seem that the vendors now want to complete in the middle of June. Not ideal as we’d hoped to be out of here by the end of May, but we’ll cope.

After the Bromley on Friday, we went to The Water Rats on Grays Inn Road to see some bands. The first band on, Picture Center were by far the best, really cool original sound. They have some MP3s on their website so go have a look. LP2 in particular is good. The other bands were The Fits (from Majorca) and Eye. Wasn’t very impressed by either of those. Nice to go out and see a band again though. Vic, Cedric and I are off to see the Scissor Sisters on Saturday, with The Queenz of Noize and Lamb as support.

We popped up to the Computer Fairs near Tottenham Court Road on Saturday to see if we could sort out a new phone for Vic. She fancied a Nokia 6310 , not the most recent model, but it has a reputation for being very reliable. We were lucky enough to find a second-hand one for £85 which was 40 quid less than any others we’d seen.

I got my usual cheapskate haircut at Mr Toppers (£6), and we then had a look round some camera shops as Vic has a hankering to start taking some photos.

She’s ended up getting a Canon Ixus 430 off Ebay for £230, and having had a quick play with the camera, I’m quite taken with it.

My own camera, a Sony DSC-P1 that I bought in November 2000 sounds like it’s on its way out. Vic is over in France for a few days visiting a friend, and, because her own camera hadn’t arrived when she left, she’s borrowed my camera and it’s started playing up (not displaying pictures, showing images as all black etc). Chances are I’ll need to get another, a pity as it’s a good little camera, if a little long in the tooth by digital standards. The battery life isn’t great (less than an hour per battery), and the DC connection cover doesn’t fit properly, but it still takes decent pictures (or did last time I used it).

Vic’s due to return from France tomorrow night, and I’m hoping to meet her at Waterloo, but an emergency meeting of Urban 75 techies has been called to look at moving the message boards to a new hosting service, so I might have to leave the meeting early. Looking forward to some nice French cheese, mmmmmm!

Well, the time has finally come. After a very long time (like 17 years) I’m finally going to start driving again.

I’ve booked a double driving lesson with the AA for the week after next (earliest they could do).

I’ve never owned a car, and haven’t driven one since about 1987. Living in London for the past 19 years, I’ve not really needed a car, and parking, insurance etc would have cost a packet anyway.

My main problem now is that I find the prospect of a) driving and b) driving in London to be very scary. Steering a ton of metal going at 30mph near to other people and vehicles just seems a damned dangerous thing to do to me. I know thousands of people do it everyday, and that I’ll probably pick it back up quite quickly but I’m still quite frightened.

The reason that I’m going back on the road is that we’ve sold our flat (subject to contract), and Vic and I fancy doing a bit of a UK tour before and after Glastonbury, and we’ll need a vehicle to do that. We both like the idea of buying a campervan of some description, as we can live in that as well, saving hotel bills without risking a drenching by camping.

What sort of campervan? Well, though it’d be nice to have a 70’s VW Kombi thing they tend to be a bit pricey for a decent one, and they’re generally petrol engined, and we’ve been advised to go for diesel. Vic fancies a Winnebago but they’re a little out of our price range (yes, even the ones on Ebay so we’re more likely to go for something smaller

But I have to learn to drive again first. Fairly quickly too, I guess.

More tickets available here at the time of posting anyway. Good luck anyone who needs them!

Updated at 20:30: All sold out again. Less than 1,000 tickets went on sale.

Something I wrote on Urban75 a few days ago regarding the Glasto ticket fiasco:

I hope that Aloud have to repay any comission they got for every single duplicate ticket which it turns out they haven’t really sold. The sheer number of people reporting cancelled duplicates and cancelled due to insufficient funds makes me wonder whether they really will be able to absorb them all without a resale? The tickets took an hour longer to sell out than last year, and I don’t remember anyone reporting having accidentally ordered 4-5 times last year. “Unprecedented demand” – maybe if they’d had systems that actually responded then people wouldn’t have had to make hundreds of attempts each in order to try to get some life out of the poxy system, which I suspect is the real reason for the much higher demand on the web and phone systems. Same number of people, but no feedback results in repeated attempts. Very poor performance by Aloud, and frankly, I think GFL should refuse to use them again or at least not without a large financial guarantee that this huge foul-up won’t happen again.
It looks like Simon at XRRF has had similar thoughts and the people responsible are trying to make out the whole thing would have been impossible to manage satisfactorily.

Dubversion also did an excellent piss-take on the scabby types trying to sell non-legit tickets on Ebay:

NB. These tickets aren’t actually official and won’t guarantee entry into the Glastonbury Festival but you are welcome to go and see if you can fob them off as the real thing. We reckon they look pretty kosher, right down to the hologram which we made out of a bit of tinfoil and some sticky-backed plastic.

Vic and I have been married for six months now. And it’s all been great fun.

To celebrate we had a weekend away in Brighton, staying at the “Seattle Hotel down by the Marina. We had a good time, some very good meals (at the hotel’s Cafe Paradiso, the Dorset Street Bar and Bella Napoli and enjoyed a clifftop walk back to the Marina from Rottingdean.

The Glasto ticket farce continues. There are still occasionally tickets going on sale at the Aloud.com site, despite a statement on the official Glastonbury web site that no more tickets would be going on sale. WaterAid have been allowed to auction some hospitality tickets on ebay and they’ve gone for suitably silly money.

Messrs Blair and Blunkett continue to push the whole ID card fallacy I’m sure that compulsory ID cards would have prevented almost 200 people dying in Madrid… Oh, they have compulsory ID cards in Spain ? Well, I’m sure the British ones will be much better ?

It’s been another busy week. Vic finished her job on Tuesday, and we celebrated with a very good meal at Chez Manny in Battersea.

On Wednesday we headed over to the cafe at Dulwich Picture Gallery to meet up with Helen who works there. After another excellent (and free) meal, we moved on to The Albert on Coldharbour Lane in Brixton for a few beers. We were joined by Cedric and an evening of drinking ensued. Helen and Ced are coming to Glastonbury as well so we had lots to talk about.

Thursday was spent recovering from the usual hangovers, though we did watch Chopper and Dark Days

Today we ventured up to Rococo on the Kings Road to buy a supply of chocolate for Easter, and then took a long, slow bus trip over to St Paul’s from where we walked over to Borough Market to pick up some more meat and veg.

On Sunday it will be 6 months since Vic and I got married so we’re popping down to Brighton for a weekend at the Seattle Alias Hotel My brother’s coming down to stay while we’re away, but I’m hoping to see him briefly before we head south.

We had to make ourselves scarce early on Saturday morning, as the purchasers of our flat wanted to come around to measure up. We decided to head up to Borough Market because we’ve never actually been while it’s open.

It’s not like a “normal” town market, more of a slightly posh farmers market. We wandered around a bit, eyeing up the produce and stalls, before going around again to make our purchases. We picked up a couple of loaves of bread, some sausages, various vegetables and fungi, cheese, cider and some dry-cured back bacon. We had the bacon for breakfast this morning and it was very good, much tastier than the standard supermarket fare. Lots of customers who looked like they had come straight down from Hampstead in their Barbour jackets, and the prices weren’t really cheap, but as a kind of large deli, it works well.

After we’d finished shopping, we snacked out on Frankfurters with Sauerkraut and Senf, followed by a cup of hot, spiced cider. We drank the cider sitting outside Southwark Cathedral where I was engaged in conversation by a very pleasant Special Brew drinker who regaled us with tales of living on stolen yoghurts and visiting his brother in Redcar.

It looks like we were very lucky to get our Glasto ticket orders through. After the success of the 2 orders on Thursday night, I managed to book another ticket for Vic’s friend Eyi who is currently in Nigeria. Looking the tales on Urban 75, E-Festivals and the BBC News it looks like a lot of people had complete nightmares trying to get tickets, and quite a few regulars weren’t able to get successful orders through, whereas others managed to get up to 5 duplicate orders processed. The whole 113,000 tickets sold out within 24 hours, actually slightly longer than last year, possibly due to the limit of 2 tickets per person, possibly due to the fact that more than 95% attempts to purchase tickets failed. How I managed to get 3 orders through while others were unsuccessful, I don’t really know. Good luck? Using Firefox ? Just plain persistence? Who knows? Glad I got it sorted though, as we had a great time in 2002 and 2003.

I first went to Glastonbury in 1997, when it rained – a lot! That put me off a bit, as I spent the weekend cold and wet, wandering through mud, avoiding the lakes of brown muddy water and generally wearing myself out.

It’s not going to rain this year though, is it?