Category: Journal

Myself, Fliss, and a friend went to see the australian comedian at Manchester Academy last week, and it proved to be a good evenings entertainment. However, at the start of the gig, when he asked how many people had been to one of his shows before, we were among the 80% of the audience who put their hands up. This seemed to be the green light for Kev to recycle a lot of old stuff – most of which we could pretty much recite along with him from watching his video.

With the songs, though, that’s mostly the point of the show – audience participation is pretty much a given, and singing along in a crowd to classics like Do you fuck on first dates? and Dicktaphone was a great laugh. Kev and his daughter Jenny were available to sign merchandise after their performances, and it took quite a bit of will power to talk myself out of buying a 20^th Anniversary CD at ?20. In the end I decided that it’s not the kind of music you could listen to often without getting tired of it, so I abstained on this occasion.

He’s touring around the UK for the remainder of the year, and if you’d like to see the legend in action, check out the Kevin Bloody Wilson site for dates. Not as polished a show as Bill Bailey was back in May, but I’d certainly recommend Kev’s show as part of a beer fuelled night out.

The sad news this week that the NFL Europe league have closed down operations of the Scottish Claymores has left me feeling disappointed to say the least. While I didn’t make it to too many Claymores’ games due to either financial or geographical reasons, I did enjoy the ones I attended over the nine years they existed. Getting to see real NFL players, albeit ones who were mostly back-ups on their respective NFL teams’ roster, was far closer to real NFL football than the usually run based domestic teams could offer.

The domestic scene is alive and well, though, and maybe the demise of the Claymores will return the focus to the amateur leagues here in Britain. Maybe the NFL could make ammends for the decision by re-instating the Brit-Bowl off-season showcase events that fueled initial public interest here, back in the mid-80’s, too.

This morning on the way to work the fuel needle in the car was so low that I bottled it and pulled into the local Tesco to fill up. Normally I fill the tank at the Shell station along the road from us, but being too eager to get home the night before meant I couldn’t be bothered with the diversion and decided to gamble on being able to get to and from work on what was left. But when it came to it, I didn’t want to risk it. I don’t know how much of an idiot I’d feel if I ever let the car run out of petrol, but I don’t want to find out if I can avoid it, either.

So I found myself queueing with all the other commuters, some filling their tanks to the brim while the driver behind tapped his steering wheel impatiently, others just there for a splash and dash – ?5 worth and off they went. When my turn came I decided that ?10 of fuel would get me through until late next week – just enough to last until pay day when I’d treat the car to its tank of Optimax. I used to treat the car to Optimax all the time, but with prices rising swiftly over the last year it only gets the good stuff every third fill now.

I realised that while I’d been pondering the petrol prices the guage had crept past ten. Shit. I paused, before noticing that it was reasonably cheap petrol; ?82.9 a litre is about the cheapest around here right now. Given that cheapness, I decided to carry on all the way up to ?20 – a good two weeks worth at that price. Once paid up and back in the car I began to realise just why the stuff was so cheap – I had hardly any acceleration – it felt not only like I had left the handbrake on, but like I’d also removed the gearbox.