Radio 2 woke us at five. Usually, Bryn sets it his alarm for 7.15, which is good because there's a feature at that time where an absolutely terrible song, nominated by a listener, is played, which causes him to want to turn it off. At this hour, however, it provided us with "Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman?" by Bryan Adams, which I hadn't heard since I used to listen to Atlantic 252 all the time (which would be about 1995). It’s got stupid sentimental lyrics, but a funchie tune. It failed to compelled me to get out of bed, and proceeded to be stuck in my head all day, until someone at the camp site started playing "Hellraiser" by Suicide Commando on their stereo.

Nevertheless, we successfully assembled all our needed possessions (except a towel, which turned out to be a great pity), staggered through Sittingbourne under the weight of them, and reached the station in a timely fashion. From there, we took the train to ten-minutes-and-two-stops-away Faversham. En route, our tickets were checked. From there, we took the train to fifteen-minutes-and-two-stops-away Canterbury. En route, our tickets were checked. Then we staggered through Canterbury to get to its other station (transport in Kent is ever so easy) and took the fifteen-minutes-and-two-stops-away train to Ashford International. En route, our tickets were checked. I find this quite incredible, since I routinely go from Canterbury to London or vice versa (thirteen stops) and don’t have my ticket checked once, yet I get it checked three times in the space of six stations.

Knowing we were going to set the metal detector off, we put our torn coats through the luggage machine, to make for minimal searching. Anna The Goth and Darren duly joined us in the waiting room, and we boarded the Eurostar successfully, although we were slightly annoyed that ours was most distant carriage from the waiting room. We spent most of the journey talking about Haribo sweets, which Bryn and I had procured (thanks to them, I finally got to give Anna a wedding ring in return for hers, which she ate), passports (Anna, being Belgian, has a spayshul one, and Darren now works for customs so he showed us all the fanciful features of them), and Eurostar (in order to annoy Anna, since she works for them, and has to listen to people going on about how smooth it is all the time).

When we reached Brussels, we met Anna’s brother (who had Anna and Darren’s Eurorock tickets), then went to buy provisions. We caught the train to Lommel (which is on the other side of Belgium, yet a return ticket only cost £2.50! Considering it costs £18 for a return ticket from Canterbury to Nodnol, which takes less time, !!!!! In Lommel, we got on a mini-bus, which took us to the festival. Two observations:

1. Lommel is the weirdest-looking city ever. It seems be consist of a coil of roads with speed bumps in, lined by large houses set well back from the road.
2. The mini-bus really was mini. Since there was a woman with a wheel chair in it, Darren and I had to stand and hold on for dear life, as the minibus hit each speed bump and turned each hairpin bend.

At the entrance to the campsite, they checked our bags, and confiscated all the cans of beer Anna, Darren and Bryn had bought. They were, quite rightly, outraged - we understood why glass bottles weren’t permitted, but a campsite where beer isn’t allowed? Huh?

The campsite was, already, very, very muddy. However, we managed to find a dry spot, although it was right beside a vast puddle), which we thought could well spread if it rained any more. We set up the tents, and discovered something of a misfortune had occurred.

When I bought Bryn a set of audio cassettes containing "Northern Lights" by Philip Pullman, they were going cheap. This, it turned out, was because all the plastic boxes were a bit cracked, but he didn’t mind. Then, one day, I was transporting them from Bryn’s house to mine. They were in a back pack, but it was raining heavily, the back pack wasn’t waterproof (who’s stupid invention was non-waterproof backpacks?) and the cardboard box in which the cassettes were in got damp and torn. Now, Bryn had brought the tapes with him, and kept them in the same bag as a bottle of orange banana milkshake bumph. Which leaked all over them.

Without a towel to clean them with, we just had to let them dry off, and hope for the best. All the plastic boxes had to be thrown away, but it turned out seven of the tapes all still worked . . . only the last one was done for! Argh! The last two tapes can be acquired separately to the others, but they cost £15 - the whole set only cost me £16. But he’s going to buy them anyway.

Could there be any less fortunate cassettes?

Anyway, we retrieved the alcohol, and went into the forest for a drink and bite to eat. Instantly, Darren was bitten by a fire ant (or something) - despite the pain, he quite enjoyed it, for it was a new experience for him. However, on account of this, we didn’t want to remain there for much longer, so we returned to the campsite. Bryn put all the cans in his trench coat, and managed to get them in all right.

We headed for the sports hall, in which the bands were going to play on two stages. Yeah, that’s what I thought - a festival? Indoors? Hmm. We examined various stalls that had been set up outside, which had lots of nifty but tragically overpriced Stoof Of Gothicness. Then we headed inside, where a bunch of DJs were to be playing goth music all night.

I struggled to convert my tickets into wristbands - for some reason, they only gave me one, when I should have had two, and knowing no Dutch and minimal French didn’t help me explain the error. We managed to sort it out, but they confiscated my food and drink, which was, again, rather irritating. It wasn’t that inside was meant to be a consumable free zone, as they were selling waffles (what else?) and a variety of drinks indoors. Smoking was also banned inside, not that that stopped anyone.

The sports hall was HUGE! Its unnatural hugeness really had to be seen to be appreciated, but if it was A Certain Rude Part, its owner would be porn star. And there was hardly anyone it! We danced around all over it (we were more or less the only people to do so). I was at a proper rave, I realised: dancing to electronic music in an over-sized gloomy building in deepest darkest Belgium, fuelled by overpriced spa rein (the only Dutch I know, beside spoorweg). I was so happy to finally be at one. It might have been over a decade after their heyday, but hey, the music was better.

Between dancing, we sat down, and were handed magazines by girls in parodies of school uniforms. Over the weekend, I was given about ten copies of the same magazine - a Belgian summer festival guide. It might have been quite interesting if it was in English; as it was, we ended up looking through it repetitively anyway. There was one event in it called "Pukkelpop", a Bryn discovered he liked saying very much. He called me "Pukkelpop" repetitively over the course of the weekend, for, unfortunately, a month after I met him, he learned that I can’t stand cutesy nicknames, and ever since then, he’s besieged me with "Cuddle bunny!", "Snuggle wuggems!", "My little poo poo" and others.

Only on the train back to Brussels on Monday did Anna reveal that "pukkel" means "zit" and "pop" means "doll". Charming!

More amusingly, the magazines came with stickers that said "Ché" on them. I put the first one in my bag, thinking, "Ok, they’re promoting that Communist bloke. I’m not going to make any political statements, but I’ll give it to Vicky." (My friend who works for the Socialist Worker Party; I forgot that I’m probably never going to see her again.) Bryn, meanwhile, stuck his to his crotch. "I feel slightly embarrassed," he said. Then a group of girls walked past with "Ché"s on their chests. "Now I don’t," he added. Not to be outdone, I stuck one on my crotch and one on my arse.

Then Anna told us that "Ché" is actually a Belgian "Men’s Health" (i.e. pro-laddism softcore porn) magazine, the equivalent of FHM. "So I’m going round with FHM on my crotch?" Bryn said. For the rest of the festival, he wore different less gothic trousers.

Bryn and I grew tired and went to bed at midnight. Only for me to get a minimal amount of sleep, on account of the following facts:

1. Bryn kept snoring, as he does when he’s had a bit to drink. The only way to get him to stop snoring is to hold his nose. This worked, but only for a couple of minutes, before he’d start up again.

2. Every time I was about to drop off to sleep, I heard the sound of a tent zip being pulled up (or down, you can’t really tell the difference). And it always sounded like it was one on our tent!

3. Some female was screaming her head off. Had she been screaming in English, I could have been confident she was yelling "PAUL!!!!! YOU’VE GOT A TEXT MESSAGE!!!!!" or (since she was probably on acid) "EVERYONE, LOOK!!!!! MY EUROS HAVE GONE 3D!!!!!" As it was, she wasn’t speaking English, so I couldn’t help but fear someone was holding a knife to her throat, or something.

Friday 2 August 2002: Are You Ready To Rock? Are You Ready To Eurorock?

Eventually, morning arrived and we managed to get out of the sweaty tent, where I ate some Haribo sweets and felt much better and ready to face the music.

The days were arranged thus: a band would play on one stage, immediately afterwards another band would play on the other, then a band would play on the first stage again, and so forth. This seemed to ruin the whole festival atmosphere a bit - you know, where you never know when anyone’s going to play, and you spend most of the day wandering around looking for someone decent to listen to, before waiting for two hours for your favourite band to take to the stage. Nevertheless, it meant we didn’t miss anyone, so I can’t complain too much.

Swarf were meant to play first, but before the curtain went up on either stage, I heard a woman singing a cappella, and I thought, "That’s not Liz." (Swarf were one of the most impressive bands we saw last Eurorock.) And right I was: for reasons recorded here, they were late, so The Dawn Visitors came on first instead. They consisted of a very skinny woman and four equally skinny men, all of whom were wearing tight PVC trousers. The woman sang, two men played the drums and keyboards, and the other two held torches. Flaming ones, I mean, battery-powered ones would be a bit naff. Except they couldn’t get one of the torches to light, so the bloke just stood there with his arms crossed. Oh cool, thought I, before the music began, they’re going to dance. But they didn’t. They stood completely still, throughout the entire set (which was darn good). They moved so little that I started to wonder if I’d been seeing things at the start of the performance, and they were in fact mannequins. But they left the stage on their own accord, and Darren, who’d missed the start of the performance, voiced his amazement - he’d also thought them to be objects. (Weirdly, at the band’s website, the roles of the two torch-holders is called "Happening". They’re Belgian.)

Next we got Swarf. I’d told Bryn beforehand that all Liz’s coworkers, when asked to describe her in one word, had opted for words along the lines of "bonkers". He decided he knew what they meant. The performance was cut short, since the festival was behind schedule, which was disappointing, but also something of a relief, since we were dancing our legs off, and it was a bit too early in the day for that sort of thing.

Afterwards, the guy announcing each band’s appearance on stage said that Swarf would be available to meet and greet at the signing (sign in? Mykos knows) stand. Liz (whose Livejournal I’ve been reading for a few months) had said to come and say hello, so this seemed like a reasonable point at which to do it. It was a bit confusing, due to the fact that 1) Swarf weren’t anywhere to be seen and 2) I didn’t speak any Dutch, but eventually, I realised you had to fill in a form, which meant you might win the chance to meet a band! Beep! So I filled in a form, handed it over to a woman at the stand, and she started moving furniture. Suddenly I realised I could go behind the stand (Bryn didn’t know if he could or not, so he didn’t), and there were Swarf!

So I rambled in starstruck glee for a while (yes, they’re British), before remembering about Bryn and getting him behind the stand too. Anna and Darren had disappeared, alas. Since Swarf have Livejournals and when I bought their EP directly from the record label, I got a handwritten note with it saying something along the lines of, "Hi [my real name]! Thank you! We like you a lot!", the down-to-earthness of everything to do with the band made it feel to strange to ask for autographs, but Bryn gave Liz one of the 2347023423 Eurorock programs he was collecting (why, I don’t know), and I got two hugs. (Off Liz, not Bryn. He hugs me all the time, so it wouldn’t really be worth mentioning if the latter was true.) Squee!

Also, by chance, I found out how much Eurorock was paying them, and since we’re looking at quite a big budget for next year, I started happily scheming about convincing the rest of the rock society committee to beg them to play at UKC . . .

In the meantime, Obverse Reality and The Wounded played, who were also impressive, but after that, we got "Silent Promises", who, despite the deeply goffeek name, were advertised in the booklet as using trip-hop and house in their music. Hmm, not our thang, so we went outside for abeeeet (encountering a rather annoyed Anna and Darren, en route, who thought they were on their way to watch Obverse Reality, not realising their position on the bill had been shifted). After that, we saw half of Manic Movement’s set, which I liked a lot. Bryn was like, "Nah, they’re just like Cradle Of Filth." "Well, I liked them," I said. "Well, yeah. Cradle Of Filth are good, these lot are just similar," he clarified.

At this point, my memory gets a bit hazy. We saw Haujobb, who were one of the first electronic bands I’d heard of (simply because the first time I went to Slimelight, it was filled with bumph advertising one of their performances), but weren’t as good as I’d expected. I think. Then Dimension Seven, who weren’t as interesting as they sounded: "The pumping, sometimes even freaky-metal [sic - there are more grammatical errors in the booklet than there are bands] is live a mixture of hardcore, industrial, nu-metal and old metal." Greenhaus played instead of Illuminate (I think) who were on the bill but had been in a (non-fatal) car accident. I was wondering if Greenhaus were the band listed as "to be confirmed", but I found their playing earlier kind of strange because:

1. When I went to Black Celebration, Greenhaus also played instead of someone else.
2. As two members took to stage, one announced, "We’ve lost two members of our band." One of them showed up after a couple of songs, but it seemed mighty odd to have an incomplete band as a replacement.

Only reading this did it all make sense . . .

But despite their problems, they were not too bad, not too bad, as Goteki would say (of whom more later). Eisheilig were fairly good, Girls Under Glass I don’t remember, nor Oceans Of Sadness, and we left The Last Dance to go back to the campsite. (We went back to the campsite quite a lot, because the toilets there weren’t too minging, and they were free, unlike those in the sports hall, which cost twenty cents? Centi-Euros? Whatever you call them.) The problem was that most of the bands sounded very much the same, so the music, although good, grew tiresome. Those on one stage were black metal, those on the other was electro, without much deviation.

However, we returned for Ancient Rites, the second band of the day I was really eager to see.

My discovery of Ancient Rites is a strange one, for it resulted in my involvement with the goth scene, yet in a most unexpected fashion.

One day - after I’d bought my Eurorock ticket - I was on the Internet (this isn’t the strange part), trying to find some And One lyrics (And One, being a band I’d learned of through going to Slimelight). However, doing a search for "And One" at Yahoo! brings up absolutely nothing about the band, given that it ignores the word "And", and "One" isn’t the most distinctive word in the world. So I went to the section that lists bands . . . and while scrolling down the ‘A’ page, I noticed "Ancient Rites - Belgian black metal".

Sounds interesting, methought, so I downloaded one of their songs off KaZaA, and loved it!

And then I found out they were playing at Eurorock!

And although one good song does not a spectacular band make, the programme went on about how controversial the band were in Belgium, and I figured that if music’s controversial, it has to be popular, and in underground genres, popular bands are good. Also, they were fifth on the bill, which had to mean something . . .

. . . but apparently not. Bryn was impressed by the fact they had a left-handed guitarist playing a left-handed guitar (since he aspires to be the same thing himself: despite my warnings that there aren’t many left-handed guitars in the world, and they’re more expensive than right-handed ones, he is proud of his left-handed-ness, and as soon as he’s learned to play a couple of tunes right-handedly, he wants to learn the other way), but that was about all he was impressed with. Anna wailed woefully, "I don’t think I’ll ever understand metal!" I had to agree that this wasn’t the best introduction to why the genre’s so popular.

I was reminded very much of an occasion in 1995, when, while my family was on holiday, we visited my great aunt, who made us listen to the demo tape of her grandson’s band. (They’re called Tripswitch, formerly Injustice, and they’ve supported Raging Speedhorn.) "I apologise for the horrible lyrics," my great aunt said, before she started the tape.

Our ears were assaulted with noise. And when the song ended, we all looked at each other, thinking, "There were lyrics, horrible or otherwise?"

[For the record, a few months later, when I was arranging a live metal event, a rock soc member recommended Tripswitch for the bill - out of all the rock bands in the universe he could have mentioned! I booked them: their music had become much more interesting over the years and they went down well.]

Now, once again, I couldn’t figure out what was so controversial about sound. But when they played what I eventually identified as "Mother Europe" - the song I downloaded - I realised a fundamental truth about live black metal, which explained why I hadn’t enyojed most of the black metal bands who’d played earlier, nor those I saw at UKC a few months ago: it sounds pants. Recorded, it has beautiful, melodic crystal-clear intricacies; on stage, it all gets converted into distorted noise.

After that, though, we were to have the third eagerly anticipated band of the day: Sheep On Drugs. The four of us pressed close to the stage, while we waited for the set to commence. Someone in the audience started saying, "Baaaaa!" (Sheep On Drugs have a song that consists entirely of baaing, which I learned the hard way, by spending about an hour eagerly downloading it) and a chorus of "Baaaaa!"s and "Maaaaair!"s began.

Eventually announcer bloke appeared and said Sheep On Drugs would be playing later; in the meantime, here were Lacuna Coil.

That was fine by me. Bryn played me a couple of Lacuna Coil songs when I was in first year, and we saw them at Eurorock last year, when they were further down the bill, a performance which convinced me to buy their latest album. So yes, we already liked them very much indeed, and what a performance! Unlike most of the earlier bands, they’d dressed up for the occasion - all the male members of the band were wearing priestly robes - and the two singers passionately yelled at each other. The new material was groovy, so yes, the forthcoming album shall be acquired, and we may start following them around.

Then we got Sheep On Drugs - a novelty in itself, since they hadn’t done a gig for years. My feet were killing me, so I couldn’t dance much, but they had weird (and apparently controversial, although, again, I don’t know why) video footage and each song blended perfectly into the next. But I’ll write more on the spectacle of Sheep On Drugs - Live! at a later date.

When they were done, we were meant to get John Foxx - he, what used to be in Ultravox.

Now Ultravox were my favourite band when I was eleven. I know now that when you’ve got a favourite band, it’s normal behaviour to spend all your savings on limited editions of items in their back catalogue, and find out and memorise every single shard of information about them at all costs. But not me. My fannishness consisted solely of listening to nothing but their greatest hits album for about six months, and mentioning them in some shape or form in all my novels. There was a (later deleted) scene in "Sneaky And Crafty" based on "All Stood Still". Crafty’s girlfriend in "Crafty And Sneaky" decided to do her science project about Ultravox, since the teacher, unwittingly, said they could do a project about anything. (It's set in 1982.) In the prequel to Double Fault, Helen and Roy decided to get engaged when they heard "Dancing With Tears In My Eyes" at a disco. (Oh, to still have my weird imagination of yesteryear!) But the only things that I actually knew about Ultravox were that "Vienna" was their biggest chart success and their singer was called Midge Ure.

And although the name John Foxx is familiar, thanks to me spending too many hours of my teenage years pouring over Pete Frame’s rock family trees, when Bryn told me over AIM, "John Foxx is playing at Eurorock!" I was like, "Who?"

And so, since he’d left the band before Ultravox got any chart action, we weren’t quite how much we’d like him, or indeed, whether he merited to be placed so high up the bill simply because of his longevity in the world of electronica. I now know how positively blasphemous I was in my ignorance, and as I type this, I’m hunting down his music on KaZaA, but my attitude then couldn’t be helped. My feet hurt and I wanted to go to bed.

But announcer bloke said, "Unfortunately, John Foxx will not be playing tonight, on the grounds that Eurorock advertised him in some places (like on the front of the programme) as ‘Ultravox’, which he hasn’t been part of for fifteen years and he feels misrepresented." (23 years, surely, but whatever.) At first I was like, no! What a geen! Because in spite of my misgivings, and my tired feet, I hadn’t really known what to expect from Gary Numan the previous Eurorock, whose work I hadn’t heard since the "Cars" and "I Dream Of Wires" era, but I was very impressed. So I was prepared to be impressed again.

But then I thought about it, I could well imagine the partly ignorant crowd chanting "Vien-nuh! Vien-nuh! Vien-nuh!" when he was meant to come back for an encore, and him just thinking "Beep this" and leaving. Well, probably not the word 'beep', precisely, but you get the idea.

However, announcer bloke said, "Lacuna Coil and Sheep On Drugs will be available for meet and greet shortly." Anna and Darren decided to go over, and me and Bryn thought we’d follow suit. Most of the bands had been there for the meeting, but I decided it was a bit awkward to meet bands I knew next to nothing about, but I knew something of both these outfits, so over I went.

Since they were both rather higher up the bill and better known than Swarf, I wondered if I’d actually get through as I filled in the application form again. But we were all ushered behind the table.

We asked Lacuna Coil to sign our programmes, and for the rest of the festival, Bryn had to be careful to keep the right programme out of the 7023479234234234 he ended up with. Now, we got their autographs last year too, but then, they only performed as a five-piece and now there were six! Also, this time, we got to have an actual conversation with a couple of them too! And, for a three-album band who are very popular among fans of goth metal and angry female vocalists, they were completely down to earth! Squee!

Lee from Sheep On Drugs - who had a top 40 single, for Mykos’s sake (Mykos being a very appropriate God whose name I should take in vain right now) (it only got to number 40, but so what? They’re famous! I’d heard of them ten years ago!) - was also just as personable. He signed Darren’s t-shirt and my tie, and told us to come to the gig in London in August where we could talk at greater length. Squee! Anna and Darren instantly made up their minds to do so, and Bryn and I decided to do the same a bit later.

The last band of the day was Corvus Corax - another group whose position on the bill I wondered about, since I’d never heard of them before. Nevertheless, they earned my respect by turning out to be exceptionally weird. They were dressed up in purple minstrel attire, playing what could be described as psychotic high-speed bagpipe jigs with a dance beat pounding away in the background, distorted guitars and chanty vocals. We liked the idea but we got the idea, so we left to go to bed.

"Oh beep," I said, when we got back to the campsite. (And I probably did actually say 'beep'.) "I left my food outside the hall. Oh well, I can get it tomorrow."

And with that, we slept!

Saturday 3 August 2002: One World! One Sky! We Live! They Must Die!

On Saturday, Bryn and I woke up to the sound of rain. We continued our tradition of Doing Something Dodgy On The Saturday Morning Of Eurorock, only to find, in the middle of the post-coital come down, that the tent was leaking! Which was probably not helped, if not brought on, by the fact that we’d just been unintentionally kicking it.

Outside, the scene was not pretty. The "lake" had doubled in size, and although it remained some distance from our tent, the ground around it now had a high enough squishiness quotient for me to wear my trainers until I reached concrete. We put all our possessions into Anna and Darren’s spare tent, should the leaking continue, and prayed for no rain. We didn’t get no rain, exactly, but the tent stopped leaking and didn’t sail away, which would suffice.

The musical weirdness continued with Cirrha Niva, which featured an elegant vampire-like bloke singing while sitting in an arm chair and some extras having difficulty lighting candles (where’ve we heard this before?) before swinging them around for a while. The music was pleasant enough, v. progressive.

Goteki (them formerly known as Sneaky Bat Machine and several other different names) were very bouncy. I liked them, Bryn found them annoying, but it’s him that’s trying to download their stuff off KaZaA, in the hope of getting the line, "Go, go, Goteki! Not too bad! Not too bad!" out of his head. I considered meeting them afterwards, simply because Ben (the one I was at Primary school with) reeeeeally likes them, and I wanted to make him jealous, but I chickened out.

I have no recollection of what most of the day's bands were like (I’m writing this nearly a month later), but Letzte Instanz were quite good, and Inertia were annoying. Now, I didn’t like Inertia anyway - not because of the music, which is quite good - but when I saw them at Eurorock last year, the female drummer was prancing around in miniature flimsy clothes, shaking her bits at everyone, and I'm told she expects to be treated like royalty on account of her celebrity status.

And before they came on today, announcer bloke said, "After the performance, the female drummer promises a kiss for everyone to go over to the signing stand. And she’s real cute!" Oh Mykos, I thought, how desperate for approval is she? She then appeared on stage . . . dressed like I had been the previous day. Black blouse, black PVC skirt, and tie, except my tie was red and hers was pink. And hers didn’t have the Carlisle Youth Concert Band logo, toothpaste and Lee From Sheep On Drugs’ signature on it. I didn’t know whether to be flattered - to be considered to have taste in dress by someone famous, whether she dressed like me knowingly or not - or distraught, to have such a geenic woman dressing like me. Needless to say, I decided against going to the signing stand after the performance. My "starbeeping" knows *some* limits!

Overall, though, Bryn and I got a bit bored with the majority of the performances - once again, there wasn’t a great deal of variety between the bands.

At about six, I decided to retrieve my food from the entrance to the hall. It had still been there earlier on today, I’d noticed. But when I arrived, it was nowhere to be found, and I learnt, through broken English, that anything left their yesterday had been thrown away. (It could also have been stolen, I supposed.)

ARGH!

The problem? Absolutely no food was sold at Eurorock, except waffles, burgers and ice cream, and I didn’t eat any of them. Last year, sweets had been sold, which I could have happily lived on for a couple of days, but not this time. And there was no way I could survive on nothing.

Bryn suggested we walked into Lommel to get some provisions, but we realised by the time we got there, it would be 6.30, and the shops might well be shut. Since it was raining, and In The Nursery were going to be on fairly soon, it didn’t seem worth the effort. But what was I to do? Tomorrow, the shops would be shut as well.

The only option was to ask Anna and Darren if I might have some of the bread they’d bought two days earlier. The problem was, it was already pretty stale-looking. Needless to say, the last thing I needed was to hear was a band called Ravenous, singing about Dark Matters. That said, they were fairly good.

Dragonlord, I believe, were further unlistenable black metal. In The Nursery, however, who we’d seen before, supporting at a VNV Nation gig, were quite brillig, and they did a funchie cover of "Love Will Tear Us Apart". Behemoth proved to be even less accessible black metal - although I’m sure it sounds fine recorded. Hocico, as I’d predicted, were fun. The Gathering, I’m sure were good, except I sat down during their performance, to save my energies for the last band of the day - Covenant - and ended up sleeping through the entire set.

Nevertheless, it was worth it. I’d seen Covenant before, but that performance was a bit lack-lustre. This set one only had one not-so-impressive song; the rest was blinding. And! Earlier on in the day, Bryn had noticed an ickle sign saying, "By attending Eurorock, you agree to be included in a Covenant video." Hmm, this was the first we’d heard of this agreement. Not that we minded, because we’re fame-whores, but mefeels it was a bit dodgy, especially since they only announced this on an ickle sign in the hope that no one saw it. Anyway, they played their new song (which was funchie) and various cameras filmed the audience from the stage. We were a few rows back, so not, perhaps, altogether visible. However, after the song, all the camera people came into the audience, and started filming the stage. They stood right in front of us, which was not good, because we couldn’t see very well, and had to dance carefully so as not to hurt the cameras. But then they started turning round and filming the audience. And since we were then right in front of them, they filmed us! Even though I’m sure they won’t want any footage of my face, especially not by that stage in the weekend, I’m pretty sure one of them filmed my skirt and sticker, and garish tights.

This is going to be a weird video. And since Covenant aren’t the most commercial band in the world (although "Dead Stars" could have been in the charts if it was recorded in the 80s, and "One World One Sky" could have rocketed them to fame in about 1997), I’ll probably never get to see it.

[Bryn Of The Fast Internet Connection has since seen it at their website, says is looks groovig and is fairly sure my purple bracelet features in it.]

Between the set and the encore, the audience started chanting a monotonous "One-world-one-sky-we-live-we-die" over and over again, which got slightly tiring. However, the band put us out of our misery with "Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen" - very appropriate, because they’re probably really sick of "One World One Sky" and wishing they never wrote the flipping thing - and then, of course, "One World, One Sky".

Again, we got a good night’s sleep, and I managed to survive the following day on three pieces of stale bread.

Sunday 4 August 2002: "The Next One's Called 'Vampire Erotica'!" "What A Surprise!"

The most interesting thing about the first two bands on Sunday - God’s Bow and Final Selection - was that they’d won a battle of the bands in order to get to play at Eurorock. (So had The Dawn Visitors.) Darren said, "If this is what the winners are like, my band can definitely win next year." W00t! I meant to watch Prager Handgriff, who were next, as I gathered they’re quite well known (on the front page of the Eurorock booklet, they’re listed as the fourth biggest band of the day - Suicide Commando are fifth), but I ended up sitting in the food tent with the others and missing them.

Since I wanted to buy something at the stalls - I had to have something to show for my time here as well as some illegible autographs on a crumpled programme - I investigated the garish tights. Only to find that I didn’t even have enough Euros left for even one pair! Well, they were more expensive than they are in England, so I didn’t mind too much, but it was a bit pathetic. Instead I bought ten stickers. Last year, I managed to buy ten postcards. Next year, I’ll probably have to make do with ten . . . programmes. Anyway, there wasn’t quite space for them on my skirt, so I’ve put them on my computer instead.

I don’t remember what the next lot of bands were like. There was no more black metal, but on account of this, they were even more samey. The most interesting part of the afternoon was acquiring a bunch of stickers with "Studio Brussel" on them, and sticking them to my skirt as well. Then I encountered a little boy, who was head to foot in Ché and Studio Brussel stickers, which I couldn’t really compete with.

(While we’re on the subject of kids, two were going round in Really Big Headphones, to protect their sensitive ears from Big Blasts Of Noise, and two were accompanied by an extremely punk bloke, presumably their Dad. It was cute, but they'll probably grow up to be trendies as a consequence.)

The first act of interest was Inkubus Sukkubus, who, although not exactly diverse with the subject of their lyrics, had about the most traditional goth sound we’d heard all weekend, which was a welcome oasis in the electronica desert we’d been crossing all day.

Culture Kultur I don’t recall, if indeed we watched them. Vive La Fête were funchie - they did a very interesting cover of "Jesus Christ Superstar" (!!!), "Popcorn", and "A Forest" by The Cure. Then it was Suicide Commando, who I’d also seen before (at Black Celebration), but they weren’t very good then. This time, I knew their work a bit better and their equipment was giving them grief, which resulted in them doing a super angry super heavy set - excellent!

We sat at the back then walked around during Anne Clark - she’s better live than recorded (her voice gets on my nerves, but it's more pleasant with louder accompaniment) but still not really my cup of orange squash. Noisex were appreciated - they were the first seriously heavy industrial band we’d heard all weekend, but my feet hurt too much to stand up, and sitting on the floor, I started to feel nauseous, so we went outside for the second half of the set. Finally, there was Front 242, who again, I couldn’t remain standing for. Since Bryn was as dead as I was, we left half way through, only to hear them playing Soft Cell covers from the campsite. (Soft Cell were meant to play, but Front 242 were enlisted instead.)

Oh well, we were looking forward to a nice long sleep . . . only for all the festival goers to return to the campsite chanting, "One World! One Sky! We Live! We Die!" then crank up "Hellraiser" on the tape decks.

Anna and Darren explained. On the last three days, there’d been after parties (or, on the case of Thursday, the evening party had just been continued) till 4am, to entertain everyone who didn’t feel like going to bed when the bands finished. Unfortunately, the town’s mayor had complained about the noise level, and so tonight’s after party was off, meaning everyone had returned to the campsite to party instead.

Monday 5 August 2002

We eventually slept, before returning to Brussels. Bryn and I went to a confectionary in the station to get some sweets for the journey home. We set about trying to gather ten euros worth of pick and mix. When we’d got all the sweets we wanted, we gave them to the woman working there; they came to 6.66 euros. "Cool!" I said.

"Argh!" said the woman working there (who spoke English). "I can’t charge you that, here, I’ll only take 6.60." Heh.

Bryn and I had tickets for a later Eurostar than Anna and Darren, but since we didn’t really want to hang around, and Anna (our Dutch speaker) offered to get them exchanged for the same train. So we embarked.

On the journey, our tickets and passports were checked (Mykos knows why, as they were checked at the station). Bryn and Darren, who have both been forced to cut their hair since leaving university, and have both been into the metal and industrial scenes respectively so long they don’t bother dressing up anymore, got no hassle. My skirt (which I’d had the sense to remove the stickers from, but it was still covered in sticky gunk) and tights were hidden by the table, so from the waist up, I looked fairly respectable in a velvety top. Anna, meanwhile, was wearing necklaces in her hair, and got questioned endlessly. (She was rather annoyed, since her ticket indicated that she was a Eurostar employee, and consequently meant to be assumed trustworthy.) But she escaped the ordeal.

Somehow Bryn and I made it back to his house, the only problem being that I left a carrier bag containing my passport among other things on the Canterbury to Faversham train, but fortunately, a station official gave it back to me before the Faversham to Sittingbourne train left. We had proper food, showered, and slept.

Saturday 10 August 2002

Plenty happened between 6th and 9th August, but none of it's really worth mentioning, other than the fact that Bryn and I did manage to see "Men In Black II" in Sittingbourne . . . but it showed on screen 1, not screen 2. Bryn was most distraught. The film was seriously pants, too. Somewhat enyojable, but really bad.

Today, Bryn and I went to Canterbury where he bought me, as birthday presents, the first six books of A Series Of Unfortunate Events, some fudge, a dwarf cannon and a gyrocopter. Yoj! We returned to Sittingbourne, where I procured a backpack liner (whose foolfaced idea was it to make backpacks that let the rain in?) and a packet of polystyrene tiles with which to make Warhammer hills which the miniatures can stand on without feeling suicidal urges.

Sunday 11 August 2002

Happy birthday to me!

Spent the day watching cartoons, listening to spoken word cassettes of "Northern Lights" by Philip Pullman, and making chain mail. It was not the most exciting day I've ever had and far from being a twenty-first birthday blowout (Smill hired a nightclub for hers and sent me a RSVP invitation six months beforehand), but it was quite enyojable nonetheless.

Since I have nothing else to say, I will share the bad poem Ibid wrote for the occasion:

It's now your 21st
I trust it is not your worst
have a very happy day
Zoob will love you come what may
trusting this mail is welcome
and Bryn will make you (ahem)

Bryn also wrote one called "Love Is Death". He is the most charming boyfriend ever!

Monday 12 August 2002

Not sure what I did during the day, but in the evening, surprise surprise, I hastened to The Beercart Arms, to rescue Nisha, who was cowering behind the DJ, terrified by 1) the evil violent fourteen year olds who have invaded our beloved pub since I was last there, 2) her ex who was giving her evil looks and 3) hardly knowing anyone. As a token of her gratitude for my heroism, she married me. We also both married Mykl, who I'd never spoken to in person before (to the best of my knowledge), just on the Canterbury Rocks mailing list. He was wearing purple PVC trousers avec many pointless zips. So yojful were they that I intended to steal them, but he had to leave before I could concoct a suitable evil plan. My only solace was in that he got very hot and uncomfortable while wearing them, as the place was packed and consequently sweltering.

Trevor (a rock society member who's just about to start a second degree at UKC) was there for the first time ever. He's been meaning to go since it started (bear in mind, this was in November and it's been on every week since then), but the feat had never been managed until now. I didn't recognise him at first, since he had gone super-goth since I saw him last. By way of explanation, he said that on his way to Canterbury, he passed through London, got lost and ended up in Black Rose in Camden. This is really quite an achievement, since it's very hard to get to Black Rose even when you are looking for it, and I once had to give up in despair. Despite not knowing anyone there at first, he had a good time, and he managed to impress the evil violent fourteen year olds and the DJ alike, by keeping the moshpit in check (he's rather big).

The music was good: they played Ministry and sommat off "Further Down The Spiral" and a Megadeth song I hadn't heard since the late 80s when Noj was into metal and lots of other goodness, old and new. Unfortunately, the moshpit soon became too violent for the likes of Nisha and moi - when people start standing on my toes (which are five inches off the ground), I get worried.

We married Sarah, and I married a friend of Matt, who called Mushroom or something like that. Matt and Anna The Goth, other wives of mine, was most distraught by my polygamy. I was most distraught by the fourteen year olds asking me if I'd been to the rock night before. $?#%! I put up posters about it, have been there at least thirty times, was practically the first person to hear about it and decidedly the first person to set foot on the dance floor! And my psychotic dancing there is unmissable. The ignorant youth of today!

Anyway, me, Nisha and Trevor went back to Nisha's. Gee got there a bit later (he had to work) and he spent ages trying to make me unburnt toast under the over-enthusiastic grill. The others watched the two Bill And Ted films, but I fell asleep half way through "Excellent Adventure".

Nisha later dreamed she got off with the DJ ("ewwww!") and me and Trevor were trying to kill her. Serves her right for letting strange people stay in her room!

Tuesday 13 August 2002

I had to leave Nisha's at an ungodly hour, because I had an appointment at the medical centre at UKC at 11.10. Let it be pointed out that UKC is about three miles away from Nisha's house, all of which are up hill. Let it also be pointed out that it was so hot that most of the males in Canterbury were shirtless, I was wearing a trench coat, and the town centre was full of Beercartians I didn't have time to talk to. I walked briskly and jogged, and still arrived five minutes late. Fortunately, I hadn't missed my appointment, but it didn't happen for another ten minutes. Grr, all that hurry for nothing!

Afterwards, I went to the campus travel agent's, to find out how much it would cost to go to Eurodisney in December, as that's what Bryn and I want to do. (We will have been together for over twenty six months by then, without having been on a proper holiday together, as Eurorock doesn't count.) It would have proven fairly cheap, except they couldn't book us into a Disneyland hotel, and Bryn insists we stay in one, so we'll have to use a non-student travel agency instead. Grr.

After a little catching up with my friends' page, I went to the careers centre, to go, "Argh! Help! Woe!" a lot. Fortunately, as soon as I talked to the careers adviser, all my doubts about my future went byezebye (temporary as their disappearance may well be), so back to plan A - applying for three M. Sc. and two Ph. D. courses starting in September 2003 - it is.

After that, I bought a load of groceries, and staggered back down to Canterbury with them, the blazing heat consuming my energies and my dying New Rocks tearing apart my feet. I hoped there were still some Beercartians hanging around, that I might leave my load with while I bought some other stoof, but none such luck. So I collected my pills, bought Bryn a polystyrene cutter (to help him make the Warhammer hills), and bought myself a pair of fishnet tights (since I'd turned my old pair into a rather groovy fishnet top the previous day) and some UV bracelets. Fortunately, The Leather Clothing Company eventually agreed to take in my trench coat to deal with the rip in it. Fortunately, because:

1. I first noticed the rip on 10th June, in a service station, on my way home from Canterbury. Since returning, I had taken it to The Leather Clothing Company three times. The first two times, I was told, "Our seamstress isn't in today, come back when she is." The second time - when I went to Canterbury for the specific purpose of getting it fixed - I got rained on a lot, and they said, "Oh no, we can't take it in when it's all wet." So I was starting to lose hope of them ever accepting it, but finally, they did.

2. I really don't think I'd have made it back to Bryn's house if forced to keep wearing or carrying it.

Eventually, I headed for the station and encountered Anna The Goth on the way. She was quite alarmed, because she'd suddenly felt an inexplicable need to go for a walk in that area, and it had been rewarding after all - she'd encountered me. I can't see how running into me could possibly be rewarding, but I was flattered all the same.

I caught the train back to Sittingbourne, did a few more errands for Bryn, before trudging back to his house (which is also an uphill journey). On the way, a kid in the park yelled, "Are you male or female?" at me.

Despite all the signs that indicated femininity - long hair, shortness, large breasts, wearing a skirt, a rather female face - he decided I was male, and started alternately yelling at me, "Batman!" and "Ozzy Osbourne!"

I rather liked that, actually.

Back at Bryn's, as I took my boots off, I thought, Tomorrow, I will have a nice relaxing day.

Then Ibid phoned, to ask if I was still coming to Nodnol to hang out with her and Soppygit. Beeples.

Thursday 15 August 2002

Yesterday, I went to Nodnol, to meet Soppygit and Ibid, for the latter was unable to go to Finland without torturing me by making me look at loads of keweliez stoof I can't afford saying goodbye to me in person yet again.

Expenditure:

£0.99 - Plasters, for my New Rocks and feet, since the former were killing the latter.

£9.65 - One-day travel card.

£0.00 - "Mr Nice" by Howard Marks (the biography of a famous drug dealer) - a birthday present from Soppygit.

£0.30 - Mars Bar.

£1.00 - Dark purple nail polish, since it was on sale.

£0.00 - Bubble wrap. Ibid stole some for me from Marks And Spencers.

£8.00 - "Porno" by Irvine Welsh. May I have permission to abuse the word "squee"? Ta Kenneth. Squeeeee! According to Amazon, it's not coming out until 22nd August, so I was most delighted to find it either days earlier. (For those of you who didn't know me in 1999, I am an enormous fan of Irvine Welsh's early work. I didn't like his last two novels a great deal, but that's not stopping me from reading the latest offering. If I don't like a band's latest album, I generally won't buy the next one, because their musically direction has Changed Irrecoverably. And with ultra-productive writers, like Ann M. Martin, R. L. Stine and all those responsible for Sweet Valley books, once their work turns from enjoyable trash to annoying trash, I give up on it, knowing it will only grow worse. But authors that publish at a reasonable rate, I give the chance to get back on form. Besides, "Porno" concerns the "Trainspotting" posse - am I meant to be able to resist?)

£1.00 - "Awaydays" by Kevin Sampson, which concerns football hooliganism in the late 70s. I first noticed this book over two years ago, but I didn't know if I'd like it enough to justify spending £5.99 on it. But it was on the clearance shelf of a second hand bookshop Ibid dragged me into, so it had to be mine.

£3.00 - "Rasputin" by Prince Youssoupoff (the bloke who killed him). Ibid pointed this out to me, in the same bookshop, and since I'm obsessed with Rasputin, and was unlikely to ever find such a tome again - much less at this price (it was hardbacked and printed in 1934!) - it had to be mine.

£6.00 - "The Stranglers Song By Song" - Hugh Cornwell. Found in another second hand bookshop. As The Stranglers are another obsession of mine, I would have bought the book at the original price, so the opportunity to have it for £7 less was not to be missed.

£1.00 - Shag bands. Shag bands, for those of you not familiar with the term, are jelly bangles; if someone breaks yours, you have to shag them. Naturally, the only person I want to shag, I will get to shag, bracelets or no, so I bought them solely because they look funchie. Krysten gave me a pink one; Anna The Goth gave me a black one, and now I own a neon pink one, a neon orange one, a neon yellow one and a neon green one too. I hope they're UV reactive.

£150.00 - Extremely Big New New Rocks.

As mentioned earlier, my Old New Rocks are trying to destroy my feet. The plasters succeeded in temporarily thwarting their evil plan, but after walking around for a couple of hours, my soles were undergoing further torment. Though The Old New Rocks will doubtless serve me faithfully on a day-to-day basis, there was no way on earth I could survive Sheep On Drugs followed Slimelight on Saturday in them. So new shoes had to be sought, and since I can't stop wearing platforms avec springs in them (I'm addicted to height and being shouted at by strangers), I thought I might as well get some super funchie ones . . . they have six buckles and come up to my knee!

Yoj! Comfortable and really scary knee high boots! When I got back to Bryn's place (in relative comfort, considering they were new), he approved tremendously, although I think I scared his great aunt, who was visiting him for the first time since he was four.

(I also got two free pairs of spare laces and two New Rock key rings. I've got one keyring already, so I gave one to Bryn, as he lost his when his keys were stolen.)

£12.00 - Hair slide with jewelled butterfly on - a birthday present for Soppygit.

£0.90 - Stupidly expensive mineral water. Because it wouldn't be a proper trip to Nodnol without it, would it, Daine?

Total expenditure: £193.84

Warg!

£80 of it was birthday money . . . however, I was expecting to have negative £700 by the end of the summer. So now it's negative £800. My student loan is only just going to get me back in the black.

And there's so many other things I want! I was going to buy a fluffy skirt from a market stall in Camden, like the one Daine got, but I didn't have any cash on me. I found interesting tights at half price, resisting only because they were a bit too elegant for my punky/metaller-goth image. I would have bought Bryn a present, if I'd found anything suitable. I would have bought some beads that spelt out "I am funchie", except there weren't any 'A's, 'E's or 'I's - not very helpful. And more books, of course! I must start going to shopaholics anonymous meetings.

Oh well. It was an enyojable day. The best part of it was, in Foyle's The Giant Bookshop, there were a load of signs saying, "These books are not for sale". Brilliant! Ibid stole one for posterity. (She also contemplated half-inching a tome entitled "Steal This Book", but decided she'd committed sufficient kleptomania for the day.)

Saturday 17 September 2002: Fifteen Seconds Of Fame, Fifteen Seconds Of Fame!

To belatedly celebrate my birthday, on 17th August Bryn and I went to Nodnol to see Sheep On Drugs and go to Slimelight. We arrived at Victoria station rather early, so Bryn passed the time by torturing me by dragging me into W H Smiths and making me look at all the wonderful books I want but won't be able to afford for a zillion years, warg! I did my best to look away from the Young Adult section, but he kept pointing things out in it! Fortunately, I already owned them, and the contents of the shelves weren't any more exciting than Harry Potter (got 'em all already), His Dark Materials (ditto), A Series Of Unfortunate Events (ditto), Jacqueline Wilson novels (ditto), Artemis Foul (hardback, and therefore avoidable), and that series about teenagers into Wicca (urgh). Still, while he examined the computing books, the neighbouring popular science section filled me with temptation.

(Peter who signs my guestbook sent me a £15 Amazon gift certificate, so I could use the money I'd save on books from it to renew verbalvoodoo.org. Unfortunately, I instantly spent it - on "The Guinness Book Of Hit Singles", since I've been telling myself since 1993 (which is when the edition I own came out) that I could buy a new version in a decade's time - and since the next edition won't be realeased until 2004, I thought I may as well get this one now.)

While walking around the station, we kept passing a weird-haired en-New-Rock-ed couple. The bloke was wearing a Bauhaus shirt, so I said to Bryn, "Do you think they're going to see Sheep On Drugs too?" Indeed, I noticed them again at the concert. And then, when I woke up for the second time at Slimelight, I noticed them sitting at the same table as us! Eep, we got stalked!

When we descended to the tube platform, Bryn encountered a former rock society type, who, at some point, had the same Park Wood room as Bryn had last year!

It's always interesting to meet people who've slept in the same bed as you.

When we got to the venue, about the first person we saw was Danni, who I met at the Covenant gig! And as we were dealing with our tickets, Nicki The Super Goth walked past. As an indication of the extent of her gothicness, she was very pleased, as she'd just got a job at Cyberdog (the Cool Beyond Measure raver shop). This meant I was going to know nine people out in Nodnol that night. Quel novelty!

The venue, which I'd never been to before, could best be described as cozy. Not knowing that doors opened at 6.30, not 7.30, the first band, Mechanical Cabaret, had already started when we arrived. They were good.

Then it was - cast your mind back to the Eurorock entry, and take a wild guess at who the next band were - yes! Greenhaus! Making this the third time I'd seen them, which means I've seen them more than any other band, and I don't even like them that much! This time, at least, they were supposed to be playing, not just standing in for someone else. Yet they were *still* missing a band member! I suppose when you do a gig every day, it would seem, the members have to take it in turn to have to take time off, but you would thought you could make time for gigs when you're actually on the bill.

Anyway. And then there were Sheep! On Drugs!

The cool bit: Sheep On Drugs have a surreal series of images showing on a video screen throughout their sets. At one side of the stage, there was a computer; Duncan took photos of the audience, then transferred them to some imaging program - and towards the end of one of the songs, the video screen displayed a photo - and I was in the background! Wahey! Now I have been in a Sheep On Drugs video! I'm far from having had fifteen minutes of fame yet, but I think I'm well on my way to fifteen seconds' worth.

The annoying bit: half way through the set, a moshpit began. I know - what the beep? The gig appeared to be solely attended by goths, and goths don't headbang, much less mosh. Stranger still, it was more moshy than the Cardiacs gig I went to, and the Cardiacs, if they can be classed at all, are a punk band - certainly, quite a few of the crowd were punks, and punks are renouned for being dangerous. It was quite scary; I got elbowed in the back of the head and I had to hold onto Bryn, who was in front of me, for dear life. Fortunately, he realised I couldn't handle much more and pushed me to the front, where he could protect me. He was soon thrown into the speakers though, and it was hard for me to keep a grip on the rail at the front. The "hold on tight" lyric of "Motorbike" suddenly took on new relevance.

This really wasn't a good time to get menstrual cramps.

The funny bit: During "Fifteen Minutes Of Fame", Lee started leaning over his equipment to shake hands with people in the front row. But before he reached me, the equipment fell over and all the sound stopped! The lyric "anything can happen" took on a new leash of meaning too. After it was restored, we got the full song again, and the bloke whose hand it had been got up on stage.

Afterwards, we were supposed to be meeting the band again, but it looked kind of unlikely, so Bryn and I set off for Slimelight, where Anna, Darren, Matt, Dennis James, their friend Helen and Sarah joined us a bit later. W00t, that's the most Canterbury types we've had at Slimelight at once, methinks!

I was very tired, and slept for a few hours. I was looking out for Abbykatt, and I think I saw him, but I'd just woken up, and couldn't work out how to form words, and then he vanished. The music was pretty good - apart from the fact they played the Marilyn Manson version of "Tainted Love"! Argh! "Tainted Love", yes. Any other Marilyn Manson song, yes. But not that! How dare they? The blasphemous geens! That's the last time I go there!

Well, maybe not.

Sunday 18 August 2002

Bryn and I spent a portion of the day recovering. Then I had a shower, felt better, and we watched Dragonball episodes 40 and 41. Since 42 hadn't finished downloading, we ended up, er, (too much information alert!) doing other stuff, for the first time in ages, since I've been bleeding for the fifth time in two months. Unfortunately, for the second time in my life, I got walked in on (by Dave), and er, activities had to be abruptly aborted.

This was only the start of the day's pantsness, however. Dave asked if he could borrow Bryn's hard drive (why, I neither know nor want to know), and Bryn unwittingly agreed. A few hours later, we learned that the hard drive didn't work in Dave's computer, and no longer did in Bryn's, either. The following day, Dave took it to Computers Plus, who declared it would be a week before its fate could be determined, but the likelihood of recovering the data was small.

On Bryn's hard drive, in addition to the 41 episodes of Dragonball, are 39 episodes of Dragonball Z (over half of which we haven't watched), a dozen episodes of Dragonball GT and Angel (none of which we've watched) and zillions of MP3s and music videos. Now we could download them all again, but since it's taken over a month, with the computer switched on non-stop, to get them, the prospect is not appealing.

To combat our boredom induced by being computerless, we decided to make chain mail while listening to the last two "Northern Lights" cassettes. I was getting really into it . . . only for the last tape not to work. I've read the book before, but that was over five years ago, and I wanted to enyoj the ending again, beepit.

So we (re)watched a Saint Seiya episode on Bryn's parents' DVD player, before A Cunning Plan occurred to me. The previous day, while killing time in Sittingbourne before the train arrived, we'd gone into a shop that sells ex-rental videos [which sadly shut down within the next year], and I'd found a copy of "The Virgin Suicides" for £1. So we could watch it now, and Bryn agreed that this was indeed a fine plan.

And here the day took a turn for the better. I liked it a lot, and we had a long talk and the best, ahem, dodginess in ages afterwards. Maybe I should have periods more often, instead of less often?

Monday 19 August 2002

I spent quite a bit of Monday getting lost in Sittingbourne, while I searched for Sainsbury's. Then I read lots of Porno. Porno The Irvine Welsh Novel, that is. Then, in the evening, believe it or not, I went to The Beercart Arms.

Although I've not had much trouble walking through Sittingbourne before, I was a little bit worried about crossing the park at 7.30 - i.e. while the kids are still out, but their parents aren't - dressed as I was: fishnet top, I Hate Slogans t-shirt, tartan mini skirt, purple and black tights, new New Rocks. But I didn't know how to get round it - literally.

And my fears turned out to be justified. As soon as the kids saw me, a battle cry went up and they started charging at me. The boy who reached me first asked if I'd marry him. For the first time in my life, I turned down a proposal. "Why?" he kept asking. "You're a bit young," I said. He was maybe ten. Then he grabbed my arse!

The . . . I can't even get my head round it! I knew kids these days had no respect for the elders, but I always thought it was adults that sexually harassed kids, not the other way round! I threatened to set Bryn on him, and marched away as fast as my boots would let me.

Sittingbourne's strangeness wasn't over, though. At the station, a chav girl awaiting a train to Sheppey asked me, "Are those really tights?"

Of all the things that could be said about my appearance - where did you get your boots, I like your skirt, "I Hate Slogans?", how did you make your fishnet top? - why comment on the tights? And why wouldn't they be tights? Due to the shortness of the skirt, it was evident they weren't stockings, and they were too transparent to be leggings. You can clearly never underestimate the intelligence of the average Sheppeyite.

Fighting the urge to say, "Nooooo, they're bottles of Jif Micro Liquid", I said yes.

When I walked into The Beercart Arms, I was surrounded by strangers, and got scared that I didn't know anyone. For the first time ever, Matt wasn't there, and Nisha, who I'd protected last week, wasn't there to return the favour. But I went over to the DJ, who pointed out Sarah The Vice Goth, and then Anna The Goth appeared, so that was a place to stay sorted out for the night. Trevor was there again!!! And Sleeve was present, for the first time in ages. Actually, there were quite a lot of people I knew, but I ended up spending most of the night outside, having my boots admired by some black metal kids I'd never spoken to before, because it was horribly hot indoors. I danced a bit though, with Claire, in a corner, for we feared the once-again too violent moshpit.

Afterwards, I sat by the river for a while with Anna, Sarah, Sarah's ex-boyfriend, Goth Chris and his mate for a bit, then went back to Anna's.

Tuesday 20 August 2002

Anna and I spent the morning dissing Kerrang. At noon, I realised it was time I set about the day's business, so I went into Canterbury, collected my trenchcoat, bought tickets for the Neil Gaiman book reading / signing that night (Anna wanted to go too), and got roped into doing a survey about bath products. "Do you use any of these products?" the bloke taking it said, showing me a list including "Soap". Well, duh! If he'd been conducting the survey in Glasgow, maybe some people would answer "No", but . . .

I went to campus, meant to get on with investigating postgraduate options, but ended up catching up with my friends page (recall that I'd been computerless the previous day) and writing a journal entry. Then I went to the bookshop, and waited outside for Anna, as arranged.

It started to rain. Luckily, I wasn't the only one in this predicament - some goth-ish teenagers were in the same situation - but they contacted their friend on her mobile phone. Anna doesn't have one.

Eventually, I convinced the bookshop people to let her in when she arrived, and went upstairs for the reading. It was quite amusing, since it was advertised as a children's event, and I'd been worried I'd be the only adult to turn up (other than Nat, who I knew was going too). In actual fact, there wasn't anything resembling a child in sight. The reading was good (although I couldn't totally concentrate, as I kept looking out for Anna), the question and answer session was sadly short. As always seems to be the case at book signings, I ended up near the back of the queue, watching Neil signing entire series' of Sandman. (Ok, not quite, but most people brought several books.)

But my turn came. Despite all my recent meetings with celebrities, I couldn't think what to say, but when I confessed to this, he said I'd fared fine, better than people who prepared speeches and then couldn't get them out. He also said he liked my t-shirt. Squeeble The Lactic! (An appropriate God's name to take in vain, since she takes the form of a small pink mouse, and Neil drew a mouse or rat in my book. Well, in everyone's book, but it was still cool.)

I spoke to shoeless bloke who goes to Anime soc, then went to the station, where I switched on my mobile phone. I had a long apologetic message from Anna saying she'd lost track of time. I told her I'd got her a book signed, then called Bryn, asking him to meet me at Sittingbourne station, since it was dark and scary.

He did and then I had to pack. See, Bryn thought his parents were getting back on 22nd August, but his grandparents and brother said nein, they were coming back on 21st. And so, I would have to leave the next day. Mimph!

Wednesday 21 August 2002

And so the next day I left. I got as far as London, and then I was confronted by a choice.

The problem with getting trains from London to Carlisle is that if you don't have a seat booked (not knowing which train I'd get, I didn't), it can be very difficult to find one. The sooner you can get on the train the better. There were two trains: the earlier one went from Euston straight to Carlisle; the later one went from King's Cross via Newcastle. And so, in the interest of grabbing a seat, I went for the latter option. Anyway, I'd never travelled home via Newcastle before, so I thought it would be keweliez.

Well, it was kind of keweliez, going through York and Darlington and Durham, but in general, ha! King's Cross Station is the most confusing place ever. Far from getting to attempt entry to Platform 9¾, I was panicking, trying to find out information about the train I had to get. Eventually, after getting on the wrong one, a cleaner told me which one I needed, by which time it was full of people. I managed to get a seat, but it was a close thing.

And then, when I got to Newcastle, I learnt that the train drivers on strike, and there wouldn't be a train to Carlisle for over two hours. Beep! Since I had no desire to wait that long or lug all my stuff around the Newcastle shopping streets to pass the time, I phoned Noj, asking him to pick me up.

Nevertheless, I had quite a while to wait, and nowhere to sit, apart from a window ledge outside the station café. While I was there, a grown man threw a crumpled bit of paper at me. ARGH! What the beep's wrong with people?

To make matters worse, Bryn sent me a text message saying, "Good journey?" I replied, "No!" and told him of my predicament. He answeared, "Well, it said on the radio this morning that there going to be a strike." I was too concerned about what had happened to the missing girls to take any item that clearly wasn't about them in, but afterwards, I'd told Bryn I was planning to go via Newcastle - thanks for not mentioning / reminding me of the problems, pal!

Eventually, Noj took me home (after we got lost on the outskirts of Newcastle for a while), and there, my luck improved. I had a letter from United Press Ltd, saying two of my poems were going to be published. YOJ!

More annoyingly, I spoke to Bryn on the phone, and he revealed that he was right and everyone else was wrong - his parents were coming back the following day, after all. So I could have had an extra day with him and avoided the train difficulties. Blarg.

I then called Tony. "Are you going to The Wheel tonight?" he asked, and although I was exhausted to the point where I'd spent half an hour asleep on the train, I said yes, and agreed to give him and his friend Ruth a lift.

So we went, and I ended up getting hit on by three men. The first one didn't actually do anything dodgy, but he seemed dodgy, so I was glad when a song came on that I wanted to dance to so I could get away. The second was seriously dodgy. He looked about forty, I told him I had a boyfriend, and he must have heard me, because he asked, "When are you next seeing him?" but he started trying to touch my arse - gah! Luckily, the old woman who sells chips said to me, "Your friend didn't pick his chips up" so I dashed off to try and find Tony (without success). Dodgy bloke asked for my phone number and since I couldn't bring myself to say, "Excuse me. I hardly know you and have no interest in amending this situation. Why on earth would I want you phoning me?" I told him I didn't have space on my phone for any more numbers (which is completely true) so I couldn't take his, which is a terrible excuse, but he said, grudgingly, "Good excuse" and left it at that. And bloke #3 wasn't dodgy at all, except for the fact that I told him I had a boyfriend too, and then later on, he said he'd been trying to pull me. Ack, why do so many men believe women subscribe to the "out of sight, out of mind" philosophy?

Anyway, at about 1.30, it seemed that both Tony and Ruth disappeared. I waited until the night ended, and then hung around outside until the place emptied, but neither of them came out. I thought Ruth might have gone home with a bloke she was getting on rather well with (this was indeed true), and I wondered if Tony had gone with them, because he was friends with the bloke as well. (Not for a threesome! Just in the "staying over at a friend's house" way.)

So I went back to the car, only to find Tony passed out in front of it. I told him to wake up. I shook him. I kicked him. I blasted VNV Nation at him through the car stereo while I took my boots off (I can't drive in them). But he wouldn't wake up. I couldn't get him into the car, so I had to go back to The Wheel. I asked a strong non-dodgy-looking bloke for his assistance, and it turned out Tony had done the same thing the previous week and *he'd* had to take him home. So him and his friends got Tony into the car. Tony regained enough consciousness to say "Yes" constantly, but no other words, so of course they asked all sorts of questions along the lines of, "Are you gay? Oh, hang on, that's no fun, since you really are."

I played VNV Nation all the way home, but still he didn't wake, so I left him in the back of the car, under a duvet. I slept very badly for a few hours, discovered he'd woken up, and we went round to his house. One of his teeth was causing excrutiating agony, though, so I left while he went to the dentist's after about an hour. The dentist managed to fix it, though.

Sunday 25 August 2002

Between Thursday 22nd and Sunday 25th, I hardly did anything. It was too hot to do any writing, so I read and I kept dozing off and waking up groggy. I looked at thirty university websites writing down all the details of taught masters courses. Now I just have to narrow it down to three to apply for. And, you know, make the applications. Ack.

I spoke to Bryn on the phone a bit, since he's still sans computer. I talked to Twi online for a while, but got restless. I called Marion and Smill but got no answer. I phoned my online friend Helen, from whom no one's heard in ages, and was told there was a good reason for this, but she wasn't ready to explain just yet.

Oh, yeah, and I went to visit my Grandad, to thank him for the birthday money he sent. He went on about how bored he was, as was quite evident, from the fact that he told me, "My lunch should be here in the next half an hour", then said, about ten times in the next fifteen minutes, "Where's my lunch? What's keeping them?" The boredom, he believes, stems from not having Grandma to take care of anymore, and said sometimes he considered giving up. %&#£! I mean, while it's nice to suddenly be considered old enough for grown ups to confide in you about their problems, you really don't want to know that one of your relatives gets suicidal impulses.

Anyway, yesterday, while I was talking on my mobile to Bryn, the landline phone rang. Twas Tony, apologising for lack of communication on account of drowsiness caused by treatment for his tooth. He invited me to a "gathering" that evening in Tindale, so I said I'd go. I'm not altogether good at parties, especially when I hardly know anyone, but I force myself to accept every invitation to socialise I get, because if I reject any, I ph33r I'll soon become a total loner. After so much enforced solitude, it would be an easier path to take than plunging into potentially awkward social occasions, but the prospect of being lonely again, as I was in my Gap year, is impetus to accept challenges.

So I drove to Tindale, a settlement that I'm not sure merits a name because there's so little there - about five houses, occupied by aged hippies, and some disused quarries. It's in the middle of nowhere, six miles away from Brampton, up narrow winding roads that lead to a bunch of miniscule places no one's ever heard of. Surprisingly, considering my non-existent practical geography and the fact that you get half a second to notice the turn-off before you have to take it, I got there all right.

But as I didn't know which house I was meant to be going to, I called the number I'd been given on my mobile, and the mother of the girl who'd arranged the 'gathering' said she'd come outside to show me where to go. A woman emerged from out of one of the houses, accompanied by a rather enthusiastic dog. At the same moment, a man strolled across the fields, also accompanied by a rather enthusiastic dog. The dogs enthusiastically fought each other. The people shouted at them and talked to each other. Since I'm neither totally at ease with dogs or strangers, I held back. The woman set off towards the house, saying, "Come on." Not sure if she was talking to the dog or me, I followed at a distance. When I reached the front door, she said, "Are you ok with parrots?"

"Yeah," I said. Why wouldn't I be? She opened the door a fraction, ushered the dog and me through it, entered herself then shut it behind her. Almost instantly, I heard a hideous shrieking and an angry fluttering of feathers, as a bird swooped towards me.

Ah. Uncaged parrots.

The woman directed me to her daughter's room, and I ducked as two pairs of tearing talons barely missed my head as I made my way up a flight of stairs with a bunch of wooden planks resting on them.

The daughter, Rowan, directed me to the room up some more stairs to where everyone else was, and I entered a small room painted purple, decorated with magenta fluff. What was even cooler was that it was full of people in black! Admittedly, it was a small room, so this didn't take much doing - when Rowan came upstairs and Ben arrived, there were only ten people there. But still! Ten goth / metal / indie ish people in one small room in the absolute middle of nowhere! And some of them were seriously alternative people! Rowan's boyfriend had on a hoodie with the name of a black metal band I'd never heard of, and her sister had some big New Rock boots, and Ben had fluffy trousers! Quel novelty! And it wasn't just me being over-excited! Rowan was also amazed to have five blokes with long hair in her house at once.

So we talked and listened to music and ph33red / tormented the parrots and walked around the fields. It was quite phreaky, because me and Tony and some bloke called Matt were walking along this grassy track that seemingly led to nowhere, and a car came up it!

I'd planned to go home at about eleven, but I decided that the prospect of driving along scary narrow twisty hilly unlit roads with poor headlights was not enticing, so I'd wait until dawn. At about half past midnight, I managed to fall asleep on the sofa, but I woke up about an hour later, and then couldn't get back to sleep for the rest of the night. Eventually, at six, it was light enough to go, so I did. Despite the fact that this was the sensible thing to do, my parents were not best pleased.

Wednesday 28 August 2002: Isn't It Funny How Everything Works Out?

Events of interest since the last entry:

On Wednesday 28th August, I went to The Twisted Wheel. Since I was wearing a partly-see-through top and The Very Short Red PVC skirt, I decided to take anti-getting-hit-on-measures, by wearing all the spiky jewellery I owned, including The Vast Red Arm Band, which two random girls (independently) said they liked a lot.

To a large extent, my plan was successful. But there was one bloke Tony was trying to pull. The bloke turned out to be straight, but looking to pull, so Tony helpfully introduced him to his female friends, including me, despite the fact that I wouldn't be interested. Of course, it was me he took a shine to.

Now, he was obviously drunk, but that can only really be expected when the music's so bad and it costs £1 for a double vodka and Coke. Especially when it actually costs more for a non-alcoholic drink. But there are different forms of drunkenness. Some people get happy-drunk. Some people get aggressive-drunk. I, personally, get miserable-drunk, which is why I don't drink. This bloke, however, got irritating-drunk. He asked me a zillion times whether I wanted a drink or not, to which the answers were a series of "no"s, each more emphatic than the last. He kept saying he liked my glasses, even though, of all the things I was wearing, they were the least likeable. He kept saying he liked me a lot, which I never know how to answer, and when I pointed out that I had a boyfriend, he kept saying, "I'm not trying to pull you, honest." He asked me if I wanted to dance, so I said, "Ok", thinking he meant dancing with a group of people. But he said, "You're not interested, but you're willing to dance?" Oh, gack, no, in that case, and if you're so surprised, why did you even ask? And then he kept trying to get me to dance with him, so I had to feign extreme tiredness and pretend to sleep. Argh!

***

Bryn went away the following weekend, but I didn't miss chatting to him, for I managed to accomplish a never-before-achieved feat: I was in Cumbria and I was out, past midnight, on both Friday night and Saturday night!

Admittedly, neither was a particularly exciting evening. On Friday, I went round to Tony's, where we watched "Addams Family Values" (which I'd never seen before - shame on me!) and on Saturday, I went round to Marion's, where we watched "Heartbreakers" (which I enyojed a surprising amount) and "Shrek" (which I'd seen before).

Actually, scratch that - Saturday was incredibly exciting, because I SAW MARION!!!!!

Most of you are probably thinking, "Who's Marion?" and quite rightly so. Marion was my best friend for six years of school, but when we were in sixth form (which is when I started keeping my online journal), she hardly ever came to school. Since then, she has remained just as elusive - I think the last time I saw her was Easter last year. We generally arrange to meet every holiday, but she tends to cancel at the last moment. But for once, I actually saw her! And it was very good to do so! W00t!

But I agree, my weekend doesn't really sound all that exciting. However, such levels of socialness have never been known before. 99% of all weekends I've ever spent in Cumbria, I've done nothing more exciting than go shopping in Carlisle, so getting to go round to TWO people's houses in the space of one weekend is truly incredible!

***

When I was in my first term at UKC, I filmed a lot of stoof. However, only recently did I get round to transferring all the footage to video.

I asked Noj's assistance (since I'm a technofool). He attempted to copy the stuff from one little cassette to video, but it didn't work, and - completely by chance - after he'd fiddled with some wires, he succeeded in accessing the stuff on a *different* cassette.

On the latter cassette we discovered "Zed At UKC", a highly originally-titled documentary I started to make for my parents'. During my first Christmas holiday, I attempted to show it to them, but couldn't find it anywhere, and here it was!

This wasn't the biggest relief though. The following day, I discovered what was on the cassette he'd originally planned to copy.

Now I'm fully aware that you don't want to know this, but since I had a camcorder, and we thought it would be interesting, Bryn and I filmed ourselves doing Dodgy Things. But once we'd watched the tape (the picture was really fuzzy, which was weird, because the camera's worked fine for everything else I've ever filmed - I think it must have been trying to tell me something), knowing that the people most likely to end up watching it were my parents, we recorded over it, with a very exciting shot of the lens cap.

What we didn't think of was the fact that it was also recording what we said, as we filmed the lens cap. And, of course, we were discussing what we'd just done!

And then, on the recording, Bryn asks me to do something dodgy! And I agree! And then you can hear faint sounds of us being dodgy!

And this, of course, was on the cassette Noj would have seen, if he'd got his wiring right originally! Argh!

Needless to say, I instantly made a documentary about my house, to record over *that*.