I thought I would write a review/diary of T in the Park. I went there this year as a group of us from the band were working there. Good work Stu.

We got there fairly late and the staff campsite was already brimming with Scotch folk and some people that Stu knew. The Bens in the band were planning to share a tent. I wish I had taken a picture of the tent they were planning to share, because it is funny in a way only a picture can describe. If I just say "the tent was 'two-man' but could only fit two men if they slept a lot closer together than either of them could reasonably expect or should reasonably want to", that would be an accurate description but not really enough to be as funny as it was.

Throughout the pre-amble and journey and pre-festival chat I was referring to Scottish people as 'the Scotch', an idea from Lee and Herring origin. I was hoping that by saying Scotch enough I would manage to make one of the group use the word Scotch, preferably in front of someone Scottish, the resulting encounter hopefully being humourously confrontational. Stu put up some resistance, which probably came naturally after my previous failed attempts throughout the year to get the band to try "18 minute post rock jams" and "punk covers" using a similar technique. This method of repeating words or ideas in an attempt to get others to copy them has worked before - I had once managed to get one of my classmates to say "Plutto" instead of "Pluto" in front of the whole class. I was 11 years old.

The work was a twelve hour day of exchanging tickets for wristbands. It was long, cold and dull. It was a low point.

The next day, despite threats of more work, we got to enter the arena. Some of the posse were doing the thing of filling of their festival timetable with stuff to see for the whole time. I couldn't be bothered especially as T has a rather large arena to walk around - not quite as big as Glasto but bigger than Reading or Leeds as far as I could tell - so I just picked three bands that I really wanted to see and was lazy the rest of the time. It worked well.

The first band were Kula Shaker. I saw them. They played at T in the Park. Thats where I was. So I went to see them. They were good. This is a picture what I took of them.

Then the next band were the Go! Team. They were also at T in the Park which is where I was so I went to see them too. They were good. I didnt take a picture of them.

The last band was Sigur Ros. They were at T in the Park too. Which is where I was. So I saw them. They were good. This is a picture what I took when they took a bow at the end.

I saw other bands too and other stuff did happen.

That is my review of T in the Park 2006. Good eh? Will I return for 2007? Probably not unless theres some bands I really want to watch.

I think two is my lucky number. Witness these events.

Last week I won £100 on premium bonds. But not a single £100, I was sent two lots of £50 which technically means I won twice. Aces.

Today for lunch I ate some bacon, a fried egg and some baked beans. What was weird about this was that my egg had two yolks that came from the same egg. Normally I would be sceptical about that sort of thing, but to be honest I sort of looked at it as a good thing and appreciated the added value. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get a picture, but I have done an artists impression to give you an idea of what it might have looked like.

This next one is the oddest and it didn't happen to me but I read about it and I think that counts too. In Ohio there was a kitten born with two faces (on one head). Thats quite odd. In some ways, odder than having two heads, cos although two heads would also have say four eyes in total as well, each head would have 2 eyes whereas this kitten has 4 eyes all to itself giving it a wider field of view, probably an advantage over two headed creatures that have to share their eyes between them which would only have half each. And so on. It meows out of both mouths in unison.

http://www.nbc4i.com/news/9506448/detail.html

http://www.nbc4i.com/news/9527078/detail.html

My car broke down again. Not a disaster but pretty annoying. Car incidents have provided a lot of blog material for me, maybe because my car tends to go wrong when I am driving on my own and there is no one around to tell my new anecdote to. Its not really much of an anecdote - I was driving along and the exhaust decided to fall apart, bringing my journey to a rather noisy halt. Having a car has been good but to be honest its really fucking annoying sometimes, especially when it does stuff like that. If it never broke down again, I would gladly put up with its quirks such as the clock only working when the car is moving, or the radio display being broken or even the right indicator flashing twice as fast as the left.

To be honest, that reads more bitter than I actually am about it. I did miss the England game though which was annoying. Not nearly as annoying as listening to loud people asking what the score was on the train on the way back.

I was heading back for an interview in London. I managed to get home in good time so despite my car's best efforts, my plans weren't disrupted, although Midland Mainline now has rather a lot more of my money than they deserve.

More intriguing was the post-interview activity. I was meeting up with a couple of friends who were being very mysterious about the afternoon's activity that they had planned. I say mysterious, but they just refused to tell me until we got there, no other factor contributed to the mystery.

It turned out that they were going to a Fine Wines and Port Auction at Christies. I was somewhat confused at first but it was ace. The woman on reception congratulated us on our choice (I say our, I had no say in it but I claimed my share of the choice regardless) of auction to attend in probably the poshest voice I've ever heard ever. Thats right, ever (to use a lazy journalistic device). We then made our way through several big rooms filled with ludicrously valued items due to be auctioned that week, including a chair with speakers in the cushions and Dali's Rose on the back.

There was a tasting session of the wines and stuff on auction. A lot of old men who looked like they knew about wine were swilling it about in their mouth and spitting it out. And they were tasting wine too, haha. I've never been wine tasting before so I felt out of my depth but at least Keith and Hamish were too. It took a few tastes (of wine) before I had the courage to spit it (the wine) out in front of people but that just made it all the more satisfying. In the auction we bid on some whisky and won.

I was stopped by the police for the first time the other day. Me and my housemates were off to Attenborough nature reserve because Claire had a project that meant she had to go and check something there. Little did I know that I would fall to a similar fate to R Kelly's character in Trapped in the Closet. I too would be stopped by a police officer whose redneck wife was having an affair with a midget. I feel R's pain.

It was quite a nice day. I was going along a main road when all of a sudden up popped a police car that started flashing their lights behind me. I didn't actually know what this meant, having never been stopped before. I thought they wanted to overtake me, because I had done nothing wrong to my knowledge. In hindsight, the amount of time it took before I realised they wanted me to pull over must have only aroused suspicion. Rather helpfully, when I asked my housemates "What do you think the police want?" their response was "What police?".

I stopped. A female police officer marched over to my car and asked if she could "borrow me". I briefly had visions of the bit in Days of Thunder when Tom Cruise acts as if the police officer that searches him is a stripper (with hilarious consequences) and thought it might be funny if I did the same. These visions stopped when I saw she had a gun and kevlar vest. I can't remember if Tom Cruise's officer had a gun. I'm sure he made a joke about a gun though. I was actually really shocked that she had a gun at all.

Anyway, she asked me something about seeing my driving licence (which I showed her) and I made an extra special effort to answer in the most upper-middle class voice I could muster. I don't know why but I thought this would help. It seemed to. I was considering mentioning that I shopped at M&S and making the distinction between a 'supermarket' and 'food hall' and how this made me a better person but this didn't seem relevant. The officer said that there had been reports of a yellow car driving erratically in the area. To be fair, I had been slightly indecisive when choosing a lane to go in, but I had only been on the road for about a minute so its not likely that it was me.

My upper-middle class efforts paid off, as she then said that I was not the sort of badboy racer that they were looking for, probably because I hadn't told them to fuck off or tried to shoot them and could actually string a sentence together. Upon saying the words "badboy racer" all my housemates laughed out loud (or LOL if you will). This helped my cause. Despite this, I was slightly hurt and for a second I wanted to show her my windscreen washers with blue LEDs but thought better of it. I think it would have impressed her though.

We went our separate ways. At the nature reserve there were some kids feeding the ducks and swans. It seemed to be mating season because the swans were "attacking eachother".

Recently we finished off the tunes we recorded in January. Listen here. The band also had a gig in Birmingham recently and I was going to do a hilarious blog of the day with pictures but my housemate still had my camera and he was nowhere to be found on the day, so unfortunately no pictures. Apart from this one.

Anyway because of the lack of material for my intended blog I think I will write about the R Kelly 'album' called Trapped in the Closet. It is an RnB soap spanning 12 tunes with accompanying videos - R Kelly narrates and sings all the parts of all the characters. It is essentially a tale of guns and adultery with a surreal twist here and there. Highlights include R Kelly's interpretation of the white trash woman character's accent and a man called Tron. Part one is here and it is definitely worth persevering with later episodes. It is one of the funniest things I have ever seen. It might be worth noting that this will do nothing to change most opinion's of R Kelly (i.e. he is still a twat) but this can be appreciated on some levels.