Sweet Nothings

I saw The Cribs at the Forum in Kentish Town last night. The last gig I'd been to was Noah and The Whale a couple of weeks previously, where from our position at the back we actually couldn't hear some of the quieter moments because so many people were bloody well talking. Why pay to see a gig if you're going to natter with your mates the whole time? And even if it's on a freebie, don't bloody go if you're not that into the band. Anyway, as you might expect last night was the polar opposite. The Cribs are a band you really have to jump around to, and despite my advancing years I assumed a position near the front and braved the headbanging hordes. Is headbanging the right term? I was going to use the term "mosh pit", but it somehow sounds a bit old-fashioned. Surely da kidz must have invented a new phrase by now... Speaking of kids, and taking nothing away from the Jarmans/Marr performance, by far the best moment of the night was the sight of an achingl...

I was in my local library earlier - a man walked up to the counter and said to the librarian "Can I have a pint of lager please?" "I'm sorry," said the librarian, "but this is a library." "Ok," replied the man, "Can I have a pint of lager please?" Of course not - that never happened! But this "joke" may not make any sense at all in the future if libraries carry on the way they're going. For instance, the one in Crouch End has one of those electronic organ type things (I'm not a musical expert, can you tell?), where patrons can sit, headphones on, bashing away at the keys like Geoffrey Rush in a particularly OTT outake from Shine. I can't explain why, but the sound of keys being struck with no music coming out was far more irritating than the sound of actual music would have been. We are still at the stage where libraries are essentially "quiet" places - I remember an incident a few weeks ago where a ...