Dom's Rambles

My current reading and reference bookshelves, as rearranged this evening when the creative muse was sadly absent.

posted by Dom  # 9:55 PM 0 comments links to this post

Like the title of this post says, it was a splendid night at the The Anthony Nolan Trust fund raiser in the pub last night – and on a number of levels. First off the sheer number of people who I hadn’t seen for years was staggering. I still liked a certain Mr Hill every bit as much as I always did and had another old pal introduce me to his friends as, “…the wittiest person I’ve ever met.” Which bolstered my ravaged self-confidence somewhat!
I was also pleasantly surprised to discover that Perfect Helen’s best friend from back in the day was a major Down & Out… fan. “I knew who Helen was straight away”, she told me. “And the villain too – that evil bastard!”
In the summer of 1983 the villain, i.e. that evil bastard Stu Llewellyn, as I called him in the book, had held a loaded crossbow pointed at this girl’s then boyfriend’s head.
I was also able to get the last major weight off my conscience. A girl I call Chloe in chapter nine, who was the one Sally and I originally split up over, was out too. And if any of my old flames had a legitimate reason to hate me it was this girl. I’d wanted to apologise for my disgusting behaviour for nigh on twenty years but the last time I tried – which would have been early Nineties in Vienna’s nightclub - she’d just blanked me. Last night she accepted my apology with a gracious smile and the relief I felt to finally be rid of the guilt was so overpowering that it made me feel quite lightheaded.
The only downer of the night was that I drunkenly crashed my mountain bike on the way home and twatted my face on the floor - which hurt like all hell!

posted by Dom  # 8:42 PM 0 comments links to this post

I went to see the movie Breaking Glass with one TN back in 1980 and at the time was far more interested in getting my tops and fingers than watching a film! Something I found more than a little unsettling about our T was that her arms were always covered in scratches and bruises and she once met me wearing her arm in a sling! I discovered after we had split, via an old classmate she had confided in, that she used to get beaten up by her old man – which explained all kinds of things about her weird behaviour!
But I digress.
I watched the movie again a few years later and found it so excruciatingly embarrassing that I could barely peek through my fingers at the thing. A take on the punk scene lifted straight from the Society pages of The Guardian, populated by contrived working-class stereotypes so patronisingly romanticised that it would have made a member of the Socialist Worker Party blush. I found the only two saving graces to be the criminally underrated Phil Daniels, who is always brilliant (check out his performance in the series Outlaws or as the sleazy drug dealer in The Long Firm for a master class in acting), and Wesley McGoogan’s hauntingly beautiful saxophone solo on the track Will You? No matter how many times I hear that it still makes me go misty eyed and is one of the very few pieces of music that really does take me to somewhere else.
This girl captures it nicely.

posted by Dom  # 9:10 PM 0 comments links to this post

...with another favourite song of mine.

posted by Dom  # 9:02 PM 0 comments links to this post

I always loved this song. I think it's another of those tunes that epitomises the sheer joy and exuberance of the late Eighties hard rock scene.

posted by Dom  # 8:20 PM 1 comments links to this post

Here's a picture of Mrs Fiend (of Alien Sex Fiend fame) that I found online tonight. I've posted it for no other reason than I find her incredibly sexy. I think it's the almond shaped face that does it for me.

posted by Dom  # 8:17 PM 0 comments links to this post

I can never find guitar straps that are long enough. I like to play with my axe slung at groin height which necessitates extending a standard strap by about four inches (and before anyone starts waxing Freudian, yes, I'm perfectly well aware of the phallic connotations of a low slung guitar - especially one with a rather blatant willy bit like my Iceman). I’ve thus far done this with a length of shoelace but circumstances now require a more secure - not to mention less scruffy - solution.

And here it is. A trimmed down leather belt from Poundland. You know, sometimes I even amaze myself with my resourcefulness in the face of adversity!

posted by Dom  # 11:43 AM 0 comments links to this post

Another one for the potential covers list methinks!

posted by Dom  # 10:29 PM 0 comments links to this post

And what a beauty it is too, lightning fast, light as a feather and such a metal sound as you wouldn't believe.

posted by Dom  # 10:20 PM 0 comments links to this post