Diary of an up and coming sociopath

This weekend marks the first August since 1998 that I’ve not attended a music festival. I mean, it’s hardly a tradition, long standing, since I missed Reading last year, but I somehow ended up at V Festivals every year from ‘98 to 2003, even though I didn’t plan to be at a couple of those. I really enjoy music festivals, and it’s something of a pity I ddin’t go to any, because generally, I don’t go on a lot of holidays and I consider Reading and/or V an adequate reason for that. Ultimately, the bands playing didn’t grab me enough to actually want to go, when I had the money, and by the time it seemed like a good idea, I couldn’t afford it. I’m not exactly upset at missing the Pixies since I got to see the warmup show, but I wouldn’t have minded, say, Placebo, or Easyworld.

Syill, having the festival weekends free has let me explore other avenues. Did you know, for instance, that Coventry has a carnival this time of year? I sure as hell didn’t. Josh, Nikki and I found ourselves in the middle of it on Saturday. At first it seemed like a slightly less shambolic version of the Cowley Road carnival, with dancing and strange music. We passed a few clans of various ethnicities or religions, but we weren’t really prepared for the group of knife-weilding cooks. Clearly, chef awareness is an issue demanding much attention, because I admit that until yesterday I wasn’t at all aware they needed any. After that, we spotted a 12-feet tall grim Reaper floating about the place. Josh got a photo on his cameraphone that I might one day have appended to this entry. There’s something about seeing a Grim reaper float above a Coventry crowd, pointing his bony fingers at people, that seems so utterly apt about Coventry. After that, things got slightly more bizarre with the group of satanist children, who we assume were the reaper’s minions of hell, and then the giant gas-mask tubing gimp, on stilts. He looked a little like something out of a post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi TV programme. Josh also got a photo of that guy traumatising a small child.

Later on taht day, after going to Forbidden Planet, we went, at my insistance, to have a look at where the old Laser Quest used to be. They knocked it down recently, and rebuilt the area, and I’d never seen it, so when I got there I was astonished to see a huge open modern-looking area with a giant bridge-structure monument. It was truly shocking, to see how Coventry had been transformed. Along with the new shopping mall they built, it seems that Coventry might actually be on its way to becoming a decent place to shop. I never thought I’d see anything like this - urban regeneration that’s actually working. It makes me feel bad, though, that Ian, who expressed serious interest in seeing what a shithole Coventry is, won’t get to see the black shit heart of Coventry as we knew it, only the polished up version. Luckily, I’m sure the suburbs are still horrendous places.

This morning, I got to download another new Pixies track, which is a cover version that’s going to be inclued on a tribute album. It’s excellent, as ever. I also downloaded it from quite a nifty MP3 blog thing, Fluxblog. Looks interesting, so I’ll keep an eye on it. Tomorrow, Nikki and I are heading up to the Town and Country festival. it’s been a good 5 years since I last went, and Nikki’s never been, so I imagine this’ll be an interesting day for us both. I forget if they have the pigs and stuff out for this, though…