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Wednesday 15th December 2004
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Hello. It's M****'s birthday today. Happy birthday, M****. Also, we had a treat at work today. As we were tucking into our 'christmas lunch' on the ground floor in the canteen, who should turn up but none other than one of the hardest working and most professional acts in Britain. Yes, Kwantum themselves!!!! After about 45 minutes (was it that long?) they ran out of Christmas songs and had to start all over, but that meant playing two or three songs twice. I worked out then if I ever go to Hell, this band would be playing the soundtrack. I realised this as I was sat there, bathing in a post-Kwantum after-glow, thinking to myself, "I feel like some part of my soul has been taken away . . . almost as if laughter will now be much less forthcoming . . . " and then I thought, "Do this 'duo' go home at night, after a hard days work and think to themselves, 'Well, another successful and productive day' or do they get back to whatever hotel they're staying in that night, open up the whisky and start screaming, 'Why? WHY?! WHY??! PLEASE GOD TELL US WHY?!?!?! AAARRRRRGHHH!!!!' as they smash their heads against the wall." I just don't get it, I really don't. But then I haven't even explained what they were doing . . . it was a man and woman, playing cover versions of popular Christmas songs (you know the kind . . . Slade, Winter Wonderland, something by Shakin' Stevens, et cetera), the woman largely doing the vocals, the man on guitar and, erm . . . it seemed like they had a keyboard going . . . but from the first floor, where I work, it kept sounding like they were just fading out, as if they too were failing to see the point of what they were doing. Their audience was only captive in the sense that they were simply sat there, eating their lunch. When lunch was over, when there were no more people eating, then the music ended. Almost on cue, when the last 'cranberry sauce' stained fork was put down beside the losing end of a cheap Christmas cracker, there besides some god-awful bit of plastic, vaguely in the shape of . . . lord only knows . . . is that a cherub?
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So, anyway . . . in the evening, M****'s dad came over and we went out for a meal at, erm . . . Pizza Express, the one behind the Corn Exchange. How do you get behind an ovular building anyway?
  Oh, it doesn't matter. There were a few large groups at Pizza Express, one of which seemed to consist largely of women over 50 years old. I think there were three or four people in their late twenties, but that was three/four out of about 12/13. Odd. Anyway . . . after that, a drink or two at, erm . . . Cafe Rouge, I think it was. I like that last picture there. You can just about make out Anna and M****, and it's obvious there's a long exposure going on, but somehow I managed to keep the camera relatively steady. Very unlike me.
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December 2004
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