BEYOND THE IMPLODE 3 - BRITISH AIRWAYS 0

It was another Friday at the Glastonbury Festival! Thousands of revellers were being processed by security as they flocked towards the three-day music event - all eager to enjoy a weekend of bands, camping and sheer unadulterated, mud-splattered hedonism!

"Watch it!" an irate student in wellies hissed as he collided with a girl wearing fairy wings.
"We were here first!" a hippie dad protested as a group of city boys with corporate tickets barged past his wife and kids.
"Let me through! Please! I need the toilet!" an Editors fan wailed, dancing on the spot and clutching at his crotch!
"I'm Colin Clive! I'm the fucking editor of TUNES! I've got an Access All Areas pass, move it you scum!" a fat git in a Blur shirt roared over the din.

Suddenly - an explosion rocked the perimeter fence! Music lovers scattered in terror as security raced towards the scene of the blast. As the smoke cleared, the security plods spotted a dozen humanoid figures, some with dogs on lengths of string, clambering over the wrecked remains of the fence - gatecrashing the festival without paying!

"I don't b-believe it," one of the guards spluttered. "Crusties! They're b-back!"
"It c-can't be," one of his colleagues stammered, feeling a fearful churn in his bowels.
"Don't just stand there!" the foreman screamed. "Get them back here now and give them a good kicking!"

"Yes boss!" grunted one of the guards - an arselicker with a taste for violence! He chased after the fence jumpers, nearly breaking his neck as he tore through the mud and wet grass, catching up with them as they legged it towards the Crystal Rainbow psychic healing tent. "Gotcha!" he gasped as he flung himself at a skinny, dreadlocked white youth in a German army coat, bringing him to the ground.
"Fuck off you fascist tosser!" the kid spat, trying to escape his assailant's bear hug.
"Not likely!" the bullying bastard scoffed. "I'm gonna rip your bleedin' head off, you dirty, smelly tramp! Nobody gets past me without paying! Y'hear me? Nobod---URRGH!"
A size 10 paraboot had just connected with the security guard's mush, breaking every tooth in his gob! He coughed and wheezed as the crusties regrouped and kicked him into a parallel universe - one commonly referred to by the Royal Astronomical Society as 'FUCKING AGONY'. As the guard blacked out, the crusties unzipped their combat trousers and pissed all over his mangled body.

"Fucking cunt!" raged the rasta kid - AKA George Kingsland, undisputed leader of the Clapton Brew Crew! "I've never paid me way in life - and I ain't startin' now! Do they owe us a living?"
"Of course they fuckin' do!" his mates roared with approval.
"Right," Kingsland growled, zipping himself up. "Come on, let's start some fuckin' aggro! All these rich cunts...swanning around in wellies and sarongs, making a mockery of the free festival spirit. Well, newsflash for rich bastards - your capitalist jamboree is over! Let's go fuckin' mental!"
"Revenge for the Beanfield convoy!" his posse cried. "Smash the spectacle!"
"And I know just the place to start," George leered, lighting a roll-up for his dog and cracking open a bottle of Merrydown. "The Post-Ironic stage, Shirley Bassey is playing! I've always hated her and her scampi-in-a-basket showtunes. Let's make her wish she'd stuck to royal variety performances, the geriatric cunt!"

*******************************************************

"Crusties?" Chief Inspector Paul Botox squealed through a gobful of kebab. "Pah, rubbish! They died out years ago. So a handful of yobs used a crude incendiary device to bunk inside without paying. So what? It's hardly worth my while calling out the boys, we're far too busy! You're making enough money off the festival, you'll hardly notice 12 unsold tickets."

"Poppycock!" Roger English thundered, his demented garden gnome face turning mauve with anger! "I've been hosting this festival since the 1970s, and I've never witnessed such a display of brute vandalism as I did today. There's a lad in hospital who'll never walk again, thanks to these scumbags! I demand that you send in the riot squad and extricate this gang before they wreak more havoc!"

"That security guard who received a pasting was unlicensed," Botox burped. "Apart from defending the odd BNP meeting from communist assault, he had no suitable experience whatsoever for the role of 'security co-ordinator'! Look, between me and you, I was hoping to sneak off for a spot of whoring this afternoon, and I want to catch up on a few episodes of 'Heroes' - so if we could just, er, sweep this under the carpet, I'd be much obliged!" the bent cop winked.

"Not on your nelly!" English whined. "How am I meant to guarantee Peaches Geldof's safety in the VIP tent with these animals running wild? I want heavy-handed policing and I want it now! Oh - and if any of the corporate sponsors pull out as a result, I'll sue the bloody force, God help me!"

Botox creased up with laughter. "If only the kids could see you now," he mocked the hip capitalist farmer. "Yapping about corporate sponsorship and shitting a brick at the thought of lost turnover. It's hardly the stuff of anarchist legend! Robert Calvert must be spinning in his grave!"

"Guffaw all you like, " English retorted. "I'm still an anarchist at heart! But things are different now - Virgin, Sony, Coca Cola and Apple aren't the same capitalist concerns they were back in the bad old days - they've proved that they can adapt to the times and inspire a bit of revolutionary thinking themselves! Now, get your boys out there and arrest these bastards!"

"Talk to the hand," snapped Botox. "I fancy another kebab! See yourself out."

"Actually," English mused, a sneaky grin crossing his chops, "now I think about it, maybe they weren't crusties. In fact, I'm convinced they were Muslims. One of them had a backpack!"

"Wait right there," Botox yelled, picking up the phone. "All units! Proceed to the Glastonbury Festival site immediately! Suspected terrorist alert - proceed with caution! And make sure you're fucking well tooled up!"

**************************************************

"Got a quid?" George barked at a young couple who'd just been grooving to Paulo Nutini and were heading back to their tent for a kiss and a cuddle.
"No, sorry mate" the male smirked, nudging his girlfriend. "Why, do you need to buy a bar of soap?"
Two seconds later the joker was face down in the mud, minus three teeth. "Right, love," George threatened the girl, popping his fingers down his throat. "Either gimme a quid - actually, make it two - or I'll bleedin' vomit on ya!"
"Here, take it," the terrified girl whimpered, passing George a tenner. He put the boot into her boyfriend for good measure and rejoined the Clapton Brew Crew where they were lolling around in the mud, shouting abuse at passers by, swigging cans, smoking skunk and priming their dogs for pickpocket missions.

George wore his Crustiness with pride. He'd had a hard upbringing - born a faceless, middle class bore, the only child of a doctor and a teacher, in some leafy suburban hell. After 13 years of bland subservience and piano lessons, he'd chanced across a tattered old newspaper called 'Underground', featuring the legendary CRUSTIE MANIFESTO, written by Matt Fuller. George was converted on the spot.

Running away from home, he'd immersed himself in Crustie culture. He'd had MAKE HOMEBREW NOT WAR tattooed across his forehead, ANARCHY IS OUR DREAM - DON'T WAKE US UP inked across his chest and VICTIM OF THE DSS carved into his plonker - the markings of a man devoted to a lifetime of blissful indolence! He'd proudly fought alongside the Model Militia, kicking the shit out of the few punks, goths and 'normals' who'd dared to show up at New Model Army gigs. He'd rucked the Old Bill at the Newbury Bypass protests, and got himself expelled from Hunt Saboteurs for being too violent. Other youth subcultures were pathetic, he reasoned. Even the most rowdy 'punk rockers' actually cleaned their foreskins before a date! In contrast, George liked his birds to be as yeasty as possible. It wasn't his fault that skinhead blokes were prissy little wimps who couldn't handle the pungent, fishy miasma of a Crustie babe's cunt.

The gang finished larking around and headed for the Post-Ironic stage, jostling terrified indie kids as they went. Bassey was due onstage in 15 minutes! Absolute mayhem was about to break loose - and by God, George intended to be caught up in the middle of it!

*****************************************************

"Tell us about your new album," Jo Wiley simpered in front of the BBC2 camera crew.
"Well," Paul McCartney began, "I've been thinking about...war...and the environment...and, I guess, I just wanted to...write about what's going on...you know...what's really going on. Not the media lies, the distortions. And I think...the medium of Glastonbury...it's just such a positive opportunity to...you know...like, really...connect with people and ...WOW...you know?"
"Mmm" Wiley nodded like a retarded puppy. "Now, Sir Paul, as we all know, you went through indescribable pain following the death of your partner Linda - to many of us, one of the bravest and most passionate women who ever lived."
"Yes," McCartney nodded, fixing her with a solemn glare.
"I just wanted to know," Wiley continued, "do you think that Linda's legacy lives on at events like these? Because, watching the Killers earlier, I just thought - this is what Linda was all about. This is Linda's weekend as much as it's any of ours."

Oh, why don't you zip it, you pencil-faced shithawk? fumed Roger English as he ponced another free beer from the rider. Ticket sales had gone through the roof this year, and the Jazz Stage had been particularly swinging. But he remained concerned about the crustie invaders and knew he wouldn't be able to get pissed and enjoy himself until they'd been apprehended. It froze his blood to think of tanked-up Amebix and Disorder fans rampaging around the fields after nightfall. At least the police had turned up in strength - though, apart from dragging a few stoned Sikh kids from their tents, the cops had mostly spent the day at the food stalls, wolfing down burgers and chips. The evening sun was slowly setting - and with it, all hope of locating and extracting the crustie troublemakers!

"..perhaps even more so than Diana," McCartney sobbed. "But the deal with Starbucks...it's really revolutionised the whole music-making process...you know, look at myspace.com...it's a wonderful-"

"Sir Paul, we'll have to stop you there," Wiley rictus-grinned at the camera. "We're going live to the Post-Ironic stage, where Shirley Bassey has just come on! Enjoy!"

*************************************************

"SHIRLEY! SHIRLEY!" the crowd whooped in appreciation. The Welsh diva had just ripped through a cover of "Moonraker" and everyone was tripping out on the zanyness of it all.
"This next number's dedicated to a real entrepreneur, and an outstanding promoter of true talent," Bassey announced. "I am, of course, referring to our good friend Roger English, without whom this festival might never have been! And the song is called...HEY, BIG SPENDER!"
"Fuck off you crazy old bat!" George Kingsland howled through a megaphone he'd just snatched from a member of Youth & Student CND. "Roger English is a cunt! He's been grassing fence jumpers to the cops since 1977, all he cares about is making a tidy profit! How can a fucking farmer be pro-Animal Liberation? Wise up mugs - he's taken you to the cleaners!"

"Shut up, damn you!" a 30-year old financial advisor in pre-ripped jeans snapped at Kingsland. "You're ruining this wonderful, historic performance with your nonsense! If you don't like Glastonbury, you should have stayed at home - simple as that, matey! Now put that megaphone down and leave us to enjoy Shirley in peace!"

"And you can fuck off too!" George raged. "Trendy fucking cunts - ten years ago you'd have been poncing around in wine bars, talking about Massive Attack, 'Men Behaving Badly' and Manchester United! Now you think you can squeeze into some Top Shop punk shirt and strut around here, pretending to be festival veterans...pissing on Wally Hope's grave! Fuck the lot of ya! Your festival is a sick farce and we're here to blow it up, burn it down and kick it til it breaks!"

"I won't allow you to spoil this event!" the financial advisor persisted. "I paid £180 to enjoy this weekend! Give me that megaphone immediately, before I...AARGGH!"

Kingsland slammed the megaphone handle into his critic's temple, causing the whining, posing tossbag to collapse into a crumpled heap. "ATTACK!!" George screamed - the signal for the great unwashed of the Clapton Brew Crew to charge through the crowd, kicking and punching anything that moved! A hail of Merrydown bottles, filled with piss, rained down on the stage, drenching Bassey and her backing band. The crusties' dogs sunk their fangs into Fratellis fans, while a group of Young Conservatives, who'd travelled all the way from Inverness just to catch new indie sensations The Monday Club, cried out in torment as paraboot after paraboot pounded against their vital organs.

Roger English was bricking it. He hid on stage behind a wall of Marshall amps, desperately clawing at his mobile phone. As George Kingsland's savage mob stormed towards the VIP tent, cutting through the crowd like killer sharks, English could see his corporate sponsorship sliding down the shitter. He dialled Paul Botox.

"Hello," the copper greeted him. "My, that's noisy! Sounds like the crowd's going utterly bananas! Good day so far?"
"Are you joking?" English whined. "It's bloody war! The crusties have gone berserk, they're heading for the VIP tent. There's at least 100 unprotected celebrities holed up there, they don't stand an earthly's! I warned you this would happen! We need the riot squad down here, pronto! Where the hell are your men, anyway? You said you were sending 200 down, all armed!"

"We did!" Botox shouted. "But they're all down the local hospital! Food poisoning, all 200 of 'em, thanks to the muck you allow those shonky burger stalls to peddle on your land! I ought to break your face! They don't know which end to hang over the bowl, the poor sods!"

"B-but security have scarpered!" English wept, as a dead cow rocketed over his head, crashing into the back monitors. "Can't you call any of the neighbouring forces and get extra men sent in?"

"Now, listen here," Botox snarled. "I was well up for a bit of whoring today. There's some lovely new Latvian girls down the local sauna, and I thought, what a nice way to wind down after a busy week's work. But, oh no - you put paid to that, didn't you? Couldn't let a man enjoy a decent illicit thrill, could you? Well, fuck you, Roger English - you'll have to police your own event!"

"Please!" English blubbered, as a chorus of ghastly wails and a plume of black smoke signalled the crusties' arrival at the VIP tent. "I'll do anything!"

"Tell you what," said Botox. "I've got the number of the local Hell's Angels chapter somewhere - they should be able to impose a bit of Altamont-style order on your event...oh hang on...no, now I think about it, we banged the Angels up years ago! Oh well, have a nice weekend! Bye!"

English cursed and dialled the number of a contact at the Ministry of Defence - an old friend he'd met during national service, back in the 1950s!

"What's that?" the mentally ill ex-colonel snapped down the line. "Bomb Glastonbury, you say? Certainly, Roger! Anything for an old mucker! I.."
"Who is that?" a stern female voice came on the line.
"What's going on?" English whinged.
"I'm Mr Craptree's nurse," she announced. "You shouldn't be ringing him after his evening medication, he normally goes to bed after 6pm. You can visit him tomorrow if you wa -"

Roger's phone cut out - he'd forgotten to charge it and the battery had packed in! The game was up. Glastonbury had been destroyed by the very free-spirited punters it had set out to entertain all those years ago! As English watched decades of business go up in flames, he pulled the shotgun from his coat, slid the barrel into his mouth and shared the fate of so many farm-owning victims of the 2001 Foot & Mouth crisis.

THE END.

He sits and surfs, sits and surfs: night bleeds into day, his eyes water, the beard grows and greys, his infant son shuffles awkwardly in the gloom. His boy is putting on weight.

He thinks his son is a wimp, it disappoints him, he worries about his own genes. He knows men should be strong and tough and he feels as if he's drawn the short straw. Another dad scammed, an expired warranty. He wonders if the boy's mother would holler and growl, spit in his face, tell him to drum some manly values into the brat. If only he knew where she was. Some online dating agency, behind his back - or so she thought. But he'd learnt to unearth every secret, discovered how to trawl the URLs for clues, how to track and trace the tendrils of loneliness behind the monitor. Maybe she was now shacked up with a man who'd once used underscores and numbers in his name. Or lying in a brown pond, throat cut, behind a dumped Tesco trolley, a polluted hell where even shit-eating ducks fear to prowl.

Sometimes he feels like giving his son a back-hander, a good, solid crack across the cheekbones, as payback for all the grizzling and tears. But then the thought of brute violence against vulnerable and kindred DNA chokes him into shock. It makes him feel like a vicious arsehole, a stay-indoors slob with Superbrew for brains. And then he hugs his son and kisses his greasy scalp, and wishes he could be a better father. But there's always work to do -

"There's a virus in the inbox," the child sobs, his voice high-pitched. "A worm's been detected! A worm, papa!"

"Aye lad", he chortles, as the child quakes behind his back. "A worm, alright! A big, slithering worm that'd crawl up your backside and never come out! But don't cry, lad. I'm here to snip the head off the worm! No worm's got past your pappy in the last two years, and none's getting past now! What do you make of that, lad? I'm the worm-batterer! I kill the wee pests all day long, don't I!?"

Old URLs expired. Domain hosts who couldn't possibly care. Abandoned blogs and no-comment holes. He'll kill the fucking worms; all the fucking hackers and spammers in the world. The Nigerian conmen and the sneaky, cowardly trolls. The anonymous hordes and their malicious comments. "DON'T THINK SO, GET CANCER YOU CUNT" //"I'M GLAD YOUR DAUGHTER DIED YOU NAZI BITCH" //LOL//404 after 404, where do they all go? // WHAT A PATHETIC BUNCH OF GAYLORDS WANNABE POSERS 'AWAY CREW' MY ARSE // "Perhaps you should try zipping up and getting a life instead of misinterpreting Zizek - oh hang on, you went to Retchford Poly, what the fuck would you know beyond 'Semiotics' anyway?" // DAMN GIRL UR HOT! Link me, not them, me, me...

He types like a maniac and squeezes the mouse til it pops, he won't let them get away with their crimes. Not this time. The chatroom abusers and the corporate slugs who clog up perfectly decent Superhighway lay-bys with their brands, site maps and Flash. A distantly remembered site dedicated to submissive kneesock fetishists fades into lists of fantasy football leagues, archived from autumn 2000. The Friends Reunited entry who suddenly realised it was a bad idea, and never logged back in after registration.

The boy rustles through the fridge, grimaces as his milk teeth scrape against the red wax, cries as he tries to get at the lump of cheese beneath . I should let him go outside, he thinks, I should let him mix with the other kids. Let him take in fresh air and exercise. But the things you hear...he knows the perils. His son's too precious to make it, he couldn't survive out there, he'd be a carp out of water. A target for every paedo monster and bullying scumbag. He's safer here, he can eat, sleep and learn; learn the lucid art of the Internet Drifter, become the sentinel, the bulwark against the filthy slime that permeates the WWW.

Fancy that...rounding off the final paragraph of the incredible 120,000 word BTi INDUSTRIAL EXPOSE' - THE DOCUMENT THAT SUNK AN ENTIRE SUBCULTURE!! - and accidentally hitting DELETE POST right at the end. Oh well! As Tripitaka once said to Monkey - life sucks, get a helmet.

Anyway, don't fret. I might have just buggered up 4 months of painstaking research with one mouse click, but Uncarved blog has the latest dirt (courtesy of Stewart Home) on Tony Wakeford, Sol Invictus' pinguid nazi frontman. Apparently Wakeford has severe trouble purging his bowels without leaving an unholy mess all over the toilet seat - and if you think THAT sounds vile, you've obviously never had a pint with the Young National Front gobshites who drink in the Packhorse in Markyate (incidentally, why doesn't someone just firebomb that dump?) I mean, neo-nazis muckspreading in the privacy of their own lavs is one thing - but the bogs in this pub had dung dribbling down the URINALS, for Christ's sake... The bonehead regulars used to nickname this hellhole 'The Bunker', though I'm inclined to believe the much repeated story that a disabled 5 ft Asian walked in one day, snapped "I'm having a drink, anyone got a problem?" and outstared the startled clientele as he slowly downed a pint at the bar.

Anyway, back to Wakeford. Now, if you're one of the many cherished BTI Goth readers who've bought into all this neo-folk nonsense - WISE UP, MUGS. Pour yourself a snakebite & black and consider how much freedom YOU'D have to laze around listening to Alien Sex Fiend, Bauhaus, Southern Death Cult, Sisters of Mercy, Love & Rockets, Killing Joke and Specimen if a maniac like Wakeford ever seized power! One thing for sure, there'd be no BTi BLOG and nobody reading it either- we'd all be frogmarched, at gunpoint, to the nearest pressing plant, and forced to toil over the manufacture of World Serpent CDs 'til we literally croaked of exhaustion!

My advice to you all is to take your entire Death in June / Current 93 / Sol Invictus collections down to the Music and Video Exchange and swap them for a copy of THE LEATHER NUN's "Slow Death" 12". This record is PROPER Viking Industrial, the sound of AIK Solna's infamous Black Army waving aloft the freshly decapitated skulls of failed folk musicians, bureaucrats and barmy mystics (ie- pretty much everyone in the Third Reich) as they roar forward on their Kawasakis of Ragnarok, kicking the beejayzus out of anyone caught playing with runes or indulging in 'sex magick'! The frenzied bootboy snarl of No more talk of politics / No more master race tricks / No more silly rules, no more law and order! on the Motorhead-meets-assembly-line explosion that's "No Rule" pisses all over Wakeford's soppy, pseudo-apocalyptic twitterings about blackbirds and weeping lovers - and for that reason alone, the Leather Nun remain Sweden's best loved musical export ever! Well apart from disco chanteuse Leila K. Runes are for goons!

Anyway, bollocks to all that, let's talk about culture. I decided to whizz over to the Whitechapel Art Gallery last Friday, as XYLITOL was playing some Plan B Magazine-sponsored evening called 'Secret Landscapes' with a couple of other turns. You can't beat gigs in art galleries - for a start, you don't get indie kids pee-ing all over the toilet seats ((or neo-folkies poo-pooing all over them, arf arf! Right, that's the last from me on Tony Wakeford - as if it's my ruck anyway. Philippe Fichot from Die Form had better watch his back though, the big nonce...)). They also seem to operate as autonomous zones for true freedom of expression. Presumably this is why an Irish student type was wandering around the gallery beforehand, asking everyone if they wanted to hear his poetry. He only seemed to have one poem, which he repeated to several people, including the bar staff - it went like this:

Roses are red
Violets are blue

You're dead

See, you can get away with this twaddle in a gallery, because nobody'll turn round and lamp you one. Whatever. Anyway, XYLITOL came on at around 8.30pm, with the windows of the Freedom Press building opposite, festooned with anarchist and anti-war posters, serving as a backdrop. Jim kicked off with "Marike", throwing some metallic drum pad clatters and WIND CHIMES into the mix, and it sounded skip dandy. "Site" and "Lull" also got warped airings, the former sounding more danceable than ever. Unfortunately, his cover of the Oppressed's "Joe Hawkins", while faster, narkier and bouncier than I've heard it before, was slightly plagued by microphone problems. It later transpired that the bloke at the sound desk had been press-ganged into this job by the loathsome 'Steps to Work' campaign - he later confessed that he'd only manned the desk to avoid having his benefits cut and that he "didn't give a fig" for modern music! Subsequently, Xylitol's sound levels yo-yo'd as the gig progressed.

There were some excellent new songs, best being a darkcore rave meets early DAF slow-boiler which absolutely fucking killed it, and a bizarre electronic piece with a vague reggae beat that sounded like...er...the only description I could really come up with on the spot was "High Life broadcast from a remote Scottish lighthouse to a Japanese Bird Demon's council flat". So yeah, if you can dig what I'm getting at there, well done....the set ended with "Glass", again augmented with extra electronic drum splinters and wind chime-jiggling, an improvement on the original.

A couple of things that are now becoming patently obvious: 1) the sheer diversity of the current Xylitol set puts 99% of all this one-dimensional, lazy 'Ghostbox' garbage to shame. While lesser show-offs wallow in their 60s BBC drama fantasies (Pan's Garden indeed!) Xylitol's music is far too relevant to 2007 and sonically immediate to backslide into futuro-retro wanking (fingers crossed this remains the case); 2) Xylitol are as difficult to pin a label on now as the Vacuum Cleaners were in the 1990s, which is to be applauded and encouraged. In fact, this performance had more in common with the spirit and texture of Grime than did last year's completely over-rated Burial album, and yet, at points, you could swear you were standing transfixed in some illegal disco shebeen, a brick's lob from Checkpoint Charlie, in 1980.


Well, that's what I thought anyway! Were you there to make a better assessment? I'll give you fucking Roses are red...oh, don't mind me, I'm off the fags again, three weeks so far.

After Xylitol came BASS CLEF, who's a bloke who plays Dubstep with an amplified trombone over the top. I'm afraid that I spent most of this set making loud-mouthed remarks to You Are Hear's MAGZ HALL about how rubbish it was, but in retrospect it wasn't bad at all ((I blame the Bass Clef fans who sank to the floor, cross-legged - way too school assembly. For the love of Allah, are your calf muscles that weak you can't stand for 45 minutes?)) ((PS- I plonked my arse onto a comfy sofa and stayed there for the rest of the night)). Bass Clef (the bloke) was steeped in concentration and got the most cheers of the night, I think about 20 people had turned up specifically to catch him. Maybe he's really good on vinyl too.

Oh, that I'd joined that 20 as they beat a steady retreat to the White Hart! (yeah yeah, the pub where me and John Eden met the two posh birds - see, it's all coming full circle) Last on were KNIVES OV RESISTANCE, who absolutely fucking sucked. Without a doubt, one of the most crap bands I've ever seen - and I've seen Elvis Patelvis ((not remotely as 'so bad it's funny' as the name suggests, more like cringeworthy soul death)) and The Pets ((ha! ha! see the career went well, you preening bunch of sneering, arrogant, thoroughly unpleasant indie cuntbubbles! This must be the first time anyone's mentioned you in seven years!)) so we're talking really bad. For starters, one of the guitarists came on stage in a white shirt, unbuttoned to the belly-button, pre-distressed jeans and flip flops - he looked like a South African estate agent on the pull in Covent Garden. Sorry but, as regular readers will testify, I'm with Idi Amin on the flip flop question - the answer to which can only ever be THE FIRING SQUAD.

"Oh, leave him alone," tutted Magz, as I fantasised about jumping all over his feet with a pair of biker boots. The cheek of it! The set was terrible too. It made that Pink Floyd gig in Pompeii seem like 15 minutes of the Ramones at CBGBs. The other guitarist sat cross-legged on the floor ((what the hell was all this slouching about? Fucking flip flops...)) and tickled his guitar strings with a violin bow. The third member of the band tinkled some bells around. I found myself drowning in lethargy...my eyelids drooping ...hypnotised by this dross and the seven bottles of Bulmers I'd just knocked back...

I entered The Octoploid public house in New Cross, and ordered a pint of Guinness for me and a babycham for Tripitaka. The androgynous boy priest had been making himself ill with Buddhist speculation recently, and I reckoned a touch of Scandi Disco would sort him out. Leila K was on stage, doing a raucous version of "Ca Plane Pour Moi". Tripitaka was trying in vain to rationalise the Swedish diva's performance and reduce it to some smart-arse quote about the futility of existence, but I swear I saw a smile crack the little sod's chops.

Suddenly - GEORGE, the Hofmeister bear, burst through the front door, accompanied by three of his gurning, bonehead mates. "Oi! oi!" he yelled, as they barged through the crowd, scattering Friday night revellers."Follow the bear!" screamed one of his entourage, as they pounded their way to the bar - sweeping Tripitaka to the floor!

"You fucking show-offs!" I yelled, lunging at George and knocking the furry cunt's hat off, trying to retrieve my holy pal from the beer-sodden boards. Leila K threw down her mic in disgust as it all kicked off. I booted George in the crotch as he warned me he was going to "fuck my sister". The landlord leapt into the fray and started indiscriminately cracking punters over the head with a bottle of Archers. The left side of my face suddenly imploded in a white hot bolt of agony, as one of the Hofmeister gang whacked me in the mush with a pool cue. However, said thug also accidentally swung it into a girl's eye, and ended up getting his head stoved in by her squaddie boyfriend. Suddenly, George pulled a gun from his ski jacket, aimed it at my bonce and

Lord have mercy - Knives of Resistance were STILL droning on. That flip flopped trotter jabbing at an Electro Harmonix effects pedal! Enough was enough - it was time to flee the gallery before I lost the plot altogether. I haven't got any funny taxi driver stories as I actually made the train home this time.

Well, that was worth the wait, eh? Eh?

Oh, go and sit on the floor. Sorry to have kept you up.