Epilogue

It started last night, Tom Snowball's show at the 13th Note. Friends were there, Stoo Drive Carefully, Christina, Uncle Brendan, Aiden, The Naked Chick from Post-It Notes, Katesby.

I chatted with Katesby briefly, she didn't know I was heading south. We hadn't seen each other for weeks or spoken and there was no other comms, no word of mouth, no bulletin. CommanderKeen on the other hand, he knew off of my post on Jockrock, I'll see him again as a useful contact with music and stuff, the Alec Downie of a new generation.

So it was tiday passed, presents and tearful farewells at work, awkward phonecalls with Nastily the girl what I'm seeing. After work, frantic last minute packing and plan changing. Phonecall with the French Girl, already flatted up in London. Lunch pencilled in for Monday.

With Alan at my side I drifted down to NPL. We saw Colin on the way, he was going to a Brazilian gig, free tickets from Mono as Katesby, and he was already clued up about my heading south and Alan's move to Hamilton, we drink and talk together often.

NPL, Adam's there to greet me and the wee guy from the Drive Carefully Crew. Over to the right is Gill, Ad's girlf, Iain Smith, Paul Smith, Dave Pope and that tall chap from uni, coming in just behind me was Katie Pope.

Ahead of me, behind the DJ desk is NPL John, Kevin chatting to himhand over his mouth. I was there at the first NPL, it was darker and the chairs were laid out as a barricade. Sam Babies on the dancefloor, Woodbine too and countless other's lost in time.

The proportions are the same, people I know and people I don't. There's a crowd in the Bowlie corner I don't recognise. Nal and Tara come in and sit a few tables away. Nal's Alan emerges from the Bowlie corner to chat to her. To my left Annoying Brian is joined by his delightful girlfriend. Andy Diamond arrives and soon rips up the dancefloor.

Christina and an Electroluv join us. JennyBelle and Wiggy on the dancefloor, I mutter to Alan about "I love the 80s on tape". Dave Pope comes over for a chat, Jed wanders past, nods and smiles. I'll see Dave in a few weeks when his band play London. I ought to have promo in place ready.

Some of Camera Obscura appear and sit to the left between Nal's mob and mine, another Colin passes by.

No sign of The Naked Chick or Claire or any other Drive Carefully folk.

Time passes and I lose myself in my head. John plays about two songs I know and love, Devo and "100,000 Fireflies". Me and Alan's band play a cover of it in a few weeks when I pop North. Only Love Will Break Your Heart - Saint Etienne.

Some large friend of Rachel's appears and sits at the far side. Fast Eddie moves from right to left. John looks bored. Paul Smith hands out BabyGoBoom and PinUp night flyers, Jed hands out Drunk at the Pulpit ones. I'll never go to either of these again.

Alan announces he's leaving, to hit the internet, hopefully spread the word about the Wolfknuckle gig.

At that exact moment Rachel arrives, stood just behind me and then to my right, chatting to friends.

I focus on the BabyGoBoom flyer, hoping to become invisible. More invisible that I already am. I am not invisible, just thinly spread with possibilities. When you read this, I shall be like Schrodingers Cat, but spread between Glasgow, London and Manchester.

I feel its time to leave, but how? A tour of the room, bidding farewell to everyone I've ever known? People I haven't spoken to for months for years. Nodding acquaintances, "Oh I didn't know you were moving" whose fault is that? Don't I shout loud enough? And what if they didn't give a shit? How soul crushing would that be? I glance round. How would I do a knight's tour of the room and to what end? Singling out those I regret losing touch with from those I loathe?

No Idles here, no Twitch, no Leanne, no Nick, no Paul. I already left. Years ago.

Adam approaches so I stand, he know's its time, maybe he sees my eyes glistening. He knows we'll stay in touch onliune with MSN. We don't know what the future holds, but MSN won't be disrupted. I pinch a smile, and blink rapidly as I put on my old leather jacket, nod to Christine, regret that Naked Chick wasn't here as we'd said hey online hours earlier.

Adam gives my shoulder a squeeze, I glance to my right.

Outside, I'm shaking slightly. This is momentous. NPL isn't worth travelling 400 miles to me, so I may never be here again. These people, these memories.

Rachel's large friend, outside smoking, recognises me. The fifth person I'd spoken to all night.

"I'm moving to London right now"
"Tomorrow morning?"
"No, right now, well, as soon as I get to my car"

A pang of regret again for not telling more people. Folk I used to know, lost touch with. Monkey sphere, drifting away.

Halfway home, Sounds of Sweden Stacy, Sarah the foreign girl, and Kate the Australian pass by, nods and eye sparkles in salutation.

"Was it that bad?" asks Kate
"I have a long drive ahead"

How could I have run my life and told anyone? Who would care? Why are we spread so thinly now?

**updated**
New blog here
Update yer links

Crikey, I was in tears when they gave me the leaving card at work, and the presents and stuff. They'd even been in touch with Nasterly to find out my poison.

Right, I reckon this is a neat end to Volume 12. Its going to be a rollercoaster over the next few hours, days and weeks.

Necking the Angostura rum Chris'd got me and playing an old bootleg of Cracktown playing Wimoweh, packing up my computer right now.





Gilmour out

Hi everyone,

Its going to be a bit hectic. I've still got another few loads of boxes to take to the storage depot, but right now I'm about to head off for a final Deep Fried Wolfknuckles rehearsal, Luigi's ill, but we'll soldier on without him.

Then two days left of employment in Glasgow. Friday's going to be a case of slinging all my remaining possessions, clothes, and 'puter into my car, heading to Pop League for a lone drink, an embarrassed nod to friends I'll be leaving and quick baggy shimmy on the dancefloor, then back in the car to head south.

Indietracks this weekend, a load of the bands playing are ones I've reviewed on my gig review website, Last Night From Glasgow Indie Eyespy, so I feel strangely obliged. I'll be wandering about with my notepad trying to write coherently about all the bands and people and things and stuff.

Then, Monday morning head into London, into an internet cafe to find suitable accomodation on Gumtree, and frantic driving round Middlesex to find a place to call home. Maybe I'll spend the night there, before heading to Manchester to pick up whatever stuff I left, and back to London.

I've got a fortnight to get on my feet before starting work for Roksan, so there'll be gigs to go to and pummelling Facebook for people to meet for coffee.

Its been fun, ten years in Glasgow.

Well, my flathunting jaunt to London was a bit of a disaster, not very successful, my phone ran out od juice, all the rooms were taken and my car ran out of oil.

But it does help to focus the mind.

Only one week left accomodated in Glasgow, but the sun's shining.

Everything is like walking through treacle today. I got home late last night, not late enough, I missed the last few songs of a gig.

For the past few months, I've been waking up really early, 5am ish and dozing to the soundtrack of my flatmates getting ready for work. I only need to get up at 7:30 oe 8 so I'm missing hours of quality REM sleep. I've been hitting the sack later and later too, trudging home from friends and gigs in the dark.

I think this long term sleep deprivation could have some effect on my mental health, at the moment enhancing my creative output at the same time as increasing my resentment and rage.

I'll be running on vapours by the time I finish this weekend's trip to London.

What if I sleep and crash and die on the motorway?

Ach, at least I'll be going out on a high. Its a shame that no one's responded to Otto Wolfknuckle's post.

It could be my parting shot.

I, for one, am filled with terror. Just when I thought interest in my subversive art website was slowly dropping off after the excitement of last week, it gets discovered by several northern and eastern european countries.

It made me $0.09 today already

More piccies from Hull

Not that I'm one for bad-mouthing my own friends, but Otto Wolfknuckle ain't really the best at promoting gigs.

Here lieth the thread about the last ever Deep Fried Wolfknuckles gig with me as the guitarist. What he ought to have said is who The Deep Fried Wolfknuckles are, what we sound like, how we set your soul on fire, and how we're back by public demand.

A few links to videos and gentle reminders as to where you've heard them before would have been neat too. Just vanilla links to myspace pages don't cut it anymore. Photies, needs photies.

From a stylistic point, we're not really a surf guitar band, we play rockabilly, Billy Childish and Magnetic Fields covers.

I'm pretty sure at one point we'd agreed the band was called

The Deep Fried Wolfknuckles

rather than

The Deep-Fried Wolf Knuckles

a bit of consistency goes a long way.

Look, here's the video Lydiapond took of them at their debut gig


and a couple of Last Night From Glasgow shows



Sure this is all things and stuff and information that people would get if they click through, but if they don't then they'll never know, and never care. Not giving it to them straight up in the original post just show's contempt for the medium.

Admittedly I already have contempt for the medium, but that's mostly personal against David Kitchen for banning me, but not against my friends and gig going colleges in Glasgow. I love those guys and I'm going to miss them, so I need to say goodbye properly, at this gig.

Even the other bands on the bill ought to get more of a mention, does anyone even randomly click on these things any more?

God dammit, I can’t do it. There’s no solution. This is no NP-complete problem.

It was the weekly-ish phonecall with my mother, I’d been out of Sunday night, and out again all Monday, so today she’d tried calling the flat, I was out so she texted me and when I got in from the supermarket the flatmates told me she’d called so I phoned her. And we blethered and chatted and I was sat in the hall, with my feet up blethering, and she was pottering about putting the tea on, putting her shopping away and she fell over. Whilst on the phone.

So I can hear her writhing in agony. Mum are you okay? Yeah, she’d tripped and fallen into the garage, banged her ankle and her shoulder, bruises on bruises. And I’m two hundred and ten miles away and there’s nothing I can do. I can’t drive down, she’ll be in bed by the time I get there, or still up pottering about on her ankle, waiting on me. There’s no one I can call, there’s nothing I can do.

If she’d been sat down nattering to me, she wouldn’t have fallen. But its too late cos she has.

It wasn’t my fault, there was nothing I could have done.

There is now, I can insist whenever we chat on the phone that she’s sat down, and hang up if I suspect she’s pottering about whilst blethering.

Of course, just over to the left in a parallel universe I abandon moving to London and instead move to Manchester, quit any kind of job or career and become a full time carer for mum. But the growing resentment in such situations would lead at least one of us to kill themselves. Its what usually happens when I try to suppress myself.

Its hard being an engineer, not having a soul.

Knowing when there’s nothing you can do, so that’s exactly what you do.

Crikey, what an action packed and fun-filled weekend. Friday night brough frantic Just Joans CD manufacturing and subsequent delivery via Baby Go Boom at the Woody, and then a text message from Robbie taking me to dinner. I staggered into Asia Style on St. Georges Road, about half an hour late, twas a gathering of Glasgow-based internet folk, rather pleasant, if a little drafty. I had beef porridge, which was unpleasant, the duck and shredded beef on the other plates looked nice.

The Scooby Gang moved on to the Bon Accord on North Street, which was nice cos Nastalie was serving and recommending which beers would suit.

I'm going to miss these internet folk, Steph and Tom, Colin and Jed. Hopefully I'll still see people from time to time.

The next morning, me and Robbie piled into my wee car with fine beer and dapper suits and headed south. The going was easy, we made a detour to hit the pie shop at Westmorland Farm Shops and cut across the picturesque villages of Yorkshire, and traffic jams around York. Music was provided by Motown Chart Busters, Kraftwerk and Pere Ubu. The KLF brought us into Hull city centre, helping us get lost and find the way. It would have been helpful if Robbie had the directions message from Astrid or even if anyone had known I was coming.

I'd tried asking Toffle and Robbie to clearly state online and confirm my attendance, but a wee mention of Poesia Urbana, a long-forgotten alias, slipped by unnoticed. My first few hours were awkward despite Jonny's warm hosting and grand tour of the house. They had a staircase which goes both up and down, depening on which end you're standing at, amazing.

Familiar company was pleasant. I was reading through a client's Single Shared Assessment at work today, there was the phrase "...doesn't engage with people he doesn't know," which I think sums up my attitude at the party, chatting with Sandy and Justin and few others.

Its funny how time passes, I was talking to Justin about west and east african elephants last time I was temping between proper jobs, before I started at Linn Products, maybe six years ago.

Time passes.

The music was loud, Kevin wresting people away from the DJ booth, Herr Kitchen demanding to know who I was text messaging. Four out of five conversations were about Bowlie, with the fifth being JamieC saying "So, Robbie, I hear you drive a Smart car."

When the party was done and people were forraging for corners to sleep in, I headed outside to my usual away from home sleeping spot, slumped over onto my passenger seat, under old big blue.

The next morning, the party ventured out for coffee, I took my usual Sunday Telegraph and pondered my survival.

It was evening when I arrived home, barely enough time to upload photies to flickr before heading to the Cottiers for Viva Melodia.

The next morning Nasters was bombarding me with text messages to come round, it was a Bank Holiday here in Scotland and we were going for a picnic.

Loch Lomond in the rain with a friend Gillian and Amy the dog, possibly called Amie, I was convinced it was a Sharpy, but according to String Bean Jen commenting on Flickr its a shar pei. Rather relaxing and refreshing, especially in the pub when the sub came out, and too tired to walk, we just sat and read books.

It was late evening again when I arrived home, my packing is still going painfully slowly. I've resolved to just start giving away my stuff rather the figure out how to put it in storage or transport south.