Well I guess it's been a pretty eventful week.

Last weekend I went home to see my family, we'd only been back in the new office/job a week but I'd already booked the time off months ago. I lost contact with the people I knew in Oxford years ago, so I never really do anything there apart from hang out with my family. That's nice in itself though, I always find it quite relaxing to visit Charlbury as I can sort of clear my mind of worries about my life back in Lancashire and chill out.

I came back on the Tuesday, meeting up with Paul in Preston to go and see Goldie Lookin' Chain perform at the swanky new Preston venue 53 Degrees. Then we went out to the indie night thing at the Warehouse after. I quite liked the venue, people have said it's kind of big and soulless and they're right... but so what? It's meant to be a big venue. If you go to Manchester Academy it's exactly the same, only grimier. The sound was okay and the booze was cheap so I wasn't complaining. The GLC themselves were fun but I didn't find it as exciting as the time I went to see them with Paul last year, even though I was drunker this time. I guess as a joke band they may be a joke you can only hear so many times until it stops being funny. I still enjoyed it anyway. The Warehouse after was okay, I got to spaz dance to some good tunes on the top floor. I also spent too much money, especially in light of later events.

On the Wednesday I finally dragged myself vertical from Paul's sofa to meet up with Dave and skedaddle to Manchester to see the mighty Arcade Fire. I've been listening to the 'Cade (as I have from now on decided to call them) since Autumn last year when Dean first got me to listen to them. Funeral is probably my favourite album of 2004, there's just such a grandeur to it. Anyway they've toured like crazy fools round North America over the last year but had only done one gig in the UK to date (which was in London, and sold out in like five minutes, natch). But last week they did a little UK tour at last, and I bagsied some tickets to see them. I'd actually bought three intending to give two to some friends as a sort of peace gesture I guess, but apparently peace gestures aren't as much fun as angry rants so I found myself with some spare tickets. So instead I got Dave and Pete to come, which turned out to be a really nice night. I would have tried to persuade them to come anyway I think, they hadn't been my first choice though as Dave hadn't really liked Funeral and Pete hadn't even heard it... As for myself I'd been hyping the band up in my head for so long, reading reviews of "life-changing" gigs and the like, that I was worried that they'd never live up to my expectations. So I headed off to Manchester with a little trepidation.

Well, surprise surprise, I needn't have been nervous as they were fucking amazing. Easily one of the best gigs I've ever been to. And perhaps more importantly Dave and Pete both really dug it too. And it may indeed be "life-changing" in a way because it's affected the way we all think about the Superkings and how they should progess. Not that we're now going to morph into some sort of Canadian-odd-rock tribute band, but it is kind of inspirational to see a very unmainstream band get received so rapturously, and see the way they perform with both real passion and subtlety. And motorcycle crash helmets and pretending to be a giant clock.

The gig was made extra exciting (for me at least) as their support was the lovely Final Fantasy, aka Owen Pallett, whose album Has A Good Home I have been much digging over the last few months. He does this whole crazy thing where he constructs songs out of just playing his violin by himself and then sequencing and looping bits over each other while he's playing, with a load of buttons at his feet. I think the best part of his set was where he revealed that his next song "is based around Divination, which is of course one of the eight major schools of magic in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. I'm planning to write a song about each school". What a star.

Speaking of the Superkings, by the way, the Feedback gig with Jeffrey Lewis is on this Friday (friday the 13th!), I'm quite excited by it. I went to a band practice for the first time yesterday and hearing the cello working away with the (all new) violin was fucking ace. I'm really glad to be getting more involved with the band and I'm looking forward to maybe taking a more active part in the not-too-distant future. Rockin'.

Well after all the superfun I finally got back to Lancaster on Thursday to enjoy the remainder of my time off. And it was at that point that I got phoned up by my manager and told that I'd been fired. Nice!

Basically the old company I was working for kind of morphed into a new company but I was left floating in limbo, sort of employed but not officially. So as on paper I was made redundant a month ago, and haven't signed any new contracts or anything, they didn't have to bother giving me any notice. The technical team I was part of at Bowmac was at one point seven people, then they knocked that down to four, then three. I guess I should have been more aware that at some point they might happily knock it down to two and heave me out into the street. I suppose I thought I'd just get more warning about it. Ah well. I'm tempted in some ways to get back at them for it, the salespeople got up to a lot of cowboy shit with clients in the past that could possibly come back to bite them on the arse if old clients became aware of their new location. But I can't really work up any enthusiasm for that, it feels too petty, I'd rather just get on with my life and try and find another job sharpish.

Of course on Thursday it was also election day, so I went and voted. I went for Lib Dems, unsurprisingly. I find it hard to imagine I'll ever vote Labour again, but I guess they could be completely different in a decade so you never know. But the current pathetic line-up of sell-outs and panderers does nothing for me. Of course, they're still better than the Tories, but that goes without saying. It's like saying you'd rather have Franco in charge than Hitler. I don't know if there's ever going to be a realistic chance of the Lib Dems getting into power, and if it looked like that time might ever come they'd probably start getting as compromised and two-faced as Labour and the Tories, but in the meantime they are the party whose policies I most agree with, so they're the ones I voted for. Simple. I find all that tactical voting lark disappointing.

In the end Labout got through, but with a much reduced majority, which I think is a pretty good outcome. Hopefully now they may be unable to push through some of their loveable cryptofascist plans like compulsory ID cards. Oh, and watch this if you haven't seen it already.

So that's all there is to tell really. I didn't get up to much this weekend, I went and hung out with Sian on Friday night as Christian and Paul were off having fun at their No Liams Club. We ended up watching telly, drinking way too much booze and staying up till 6 in the morning. Heehee, it was fun but I feel like my body is starting to send me subtle messages that it's not up for this sort of behaviour anymore, the next day I felt like my eyes were going to liquiefy and explode out of my head. Youknowsit.

One last bit - one of the best things I've ever seen, and one of the worst.