Bag ... check

We're off on holiday to France in a couple of days so I haven't really settled to much. I do need to get thinking about packing and also to sort out the garden before I go, but I'm on here.. mooching about on Flickr (I'm posting many photos! many of them are crap!) , drinking coffee, eating two (shamefully, yes) penguin biscuits (just in time to add some extra flab for the holiday pool-side strip off).

I bought a shoulder bag yesterday as Anita told me (after, what? 17 holidays together?) that bum bags look crap. But you need somewhere to store your passport/money blah blah so I bought a small faux-army bag made by Diesel. Okay, its actually made by Chinese folk (I made that up as a half baked comment about big fashion brands and exploitation of cheap labour, to aid my right-on credentials for later in this piece.. but then just checked the label and its correct.. china) who get paid by the buyers at Diesel.

It looks groovy but I think I need to wear it with the strap over the diagonal shoulder, NOT hanging straight down off the shoulder that the bag.
I remember being on holiday aged about 14 and one day we stopped at some public toilets and I came out and my dad was waiting for my mum and brother who were still busy in there. He had a little flight bag over one shoulder and even at that age I knew it looked like he was cottaging. Okay, he also had a cravat, as sported by the officer classes in the Air Force which he had recently joined (or maybe he had that because he loved modern jazz and wanted to look chic?) .. so perhaps it was cravat AND handbag combo that killed me.

Anyway, that isn't a value judgement on cottaging, blimey no, I know gay men etc and I wore a diamante earring at a sparkle themed party yesterday and was comfortable with the implied campness and metro-sexual look.. Especially as it went down well with the ladies of the parish gathered there. I haven't worn an earring for years and thought the hole would have closed up, but a gentle push and the advantage of having no feeling in my ear thanks to the recent chopping out of a tumour meant it went in easy.

But I was mortified with my Dad’s bag , he was oblivious and I wouldn't want to make my boys feel the same in some small French town on holiday. So the bag strap goes across the chest and I look like a commando, not a man with a handbag, okay?

Awesome I **** bought that!

okay, easy word play on the new Beastie Boys film that was premiered at the Cornerhouse on Monday night but it sums up the day I had with ar-Kid (Joe son) in Madchester before we saw said movie. I turned into my mum in the 30-degree heat and had coke/coffee breaks every half hour; he humoured me (easy seeing as his old man paid for it all).
We sat outside Urbis (photo below) and they were whitewashing over some of the recent exhibit murals. makes sense butit is still odd seeing artwork eradicated with a big paint roller, I'm guessing the artist takes photos before thier work is removed for ever?
Joe got some new shorts and the new Muse album and I got a new camera dogs bollocks Canon IXUS 750 (based on a deal with the Mrs to sell the old camera on eBay). Muse album is great (couple of tracks bit Queen/Mercury kitsch but still great) , as was the Beasties film.. deliberately very lo-tech fan-generated but really felt like the vibe we had when they were at the M.E.N arena in 2004. The mash up / web 2.0 movement for user editorial and viewer control has reached the mainstream cinema market albeit via a hip-hop channel. Despite our jointly-impeccable hard core music credentials, I confessed on the way in to town, as an old man, that I rather liked the new Christine Aguilera song. And a relieved-to-not-be-alone-with-a-guilty-sectret Joeyouth concurred. Lets ave it.