TRACTOR RAPE CHAIN

I'll often pass a few idle moments coming up with song titles for the once great, now extinct, Guided By Voices. They clearly don't need them any longer and, for that matter, didn't need my help coming up with them in the first place. Nevertheless, it's as addictive as Sudoku. True, it's hard to beat things like Christian Animation Torch Carriers, Jellyfish Reflector and Sunfish Holy Breakfast, but still worth a go.

There's even an online GBV song title generator so you can have a go yourself.

Alternatively, just pick up the latest catalogue from Lakeland. It's full of strong contenders for Bob Pollard's canon:


Hands Free Universal Pan Strainer
Heat Diffuser
Ten Fat Trappers
Swan Neck Turner
Electric Knife Wizard
Mermaid Hard Anodised Flan Tins, and my personal favourite,
Nut Chopper

NO ORDER

I’m ambivalent about the New Order split. On the one hand it’s a shame that they couldn’t hang in there for the release of the new Joy Division movie, Control. On the other, they had gone a bit crap. However, they had never actually split before, just taken long breaks and sent Gillian home. Now, they’ll have to reform, which puts them more in the Take That category than the Rolling Stones category.

TRADE

Had my first dissatisfying eBay trade last week. Some spare glass doorknobs from New York. They took ages to arrive, but that wasn’t really the problem as we weren’t in a rush. Spares, see. However, when they turned up they were too small and quite damaged. I decided to discuss it with the seller in a grown up way, via email exchange rather than by tit-for-tatting adverse ratings for each other. So we sort of agreed to disagree offline and gave each other reasonable scores. Is this the right thing to do, or is this devaluing eBay’s trader rating system?

Anyway, as we can’t use these knobs I’m thinking of sticking them back up on eBay. Some silly sod’ll buy’em.

READ IT IN BOOKS

I’m in one of those ruts where I can start books but cannot finish them. I have the latest Andrew Collins on the shelf ready to go, and they are normally a breeze. However, I’m loathe to ditch the current Iain Banks which I should be loving but is just OK.

I hovered over a copy of Baden Powell’s Scouting for Boys in Waterstones at lunchtime today after watching a Sky Plussed recording of Ian Hislop’s programme about it from last week. Put it back on the shelf in the end along with my square ruled Moleskin. Sometimes I just can’t be bothered.

NO REPLY AT ALL

I’ve been purposefully off the grid for a while. Needed to recharge the blogging batteries as I find it takes increasingly more effort to read and write the things but I can’t quite let it all go.

What can I tell you? Well, we have selected the latest member of the backroads squad and he’ll be joining us in a couple a weeks. A male lhasa apso, as yet unnamed. Current favourites are Wicket, Fidget, Spike, and Gripper Stebson… any other suggestions?

As for the weekend, nothing unusual, we constructed a scarecrow, watched the League One play-offs, had Sky News round to film a piece on planning law (think that hit the cutting room floor as some silly sod torched the Cutty Sark… we are now today’s fish and chips wrappers).

I can’t get my SACDs to play the multi-layer properly, but I have decided to liberate my vinyl from the loft and acquire a new turntable. That’ll be strange.

It’s Chelsea Flower Show this week which looks great in HD. I quite like the idea of gardening.