As Pipkin would say, "It's time....<brrring, blong bling>", to update the blog. Well, blog didn't exist then, or internet, or computers beyond Acorn. But if they did, I'm sure Topov would be on it like a sonic. Brainy monkey bugger that he was.

Good to hear from you Pietro; I like your co-incidence and am happy to riposte with another iPod related incident. I rather optimistically headed off to Tesco at about 11.30 last night looking for a USB to Ethernet adapter (yawn). I was listening to King Geedora on the way to the car then decided to switch to The Killers and scrolled to the title and clicked the play button as MF Doom said "killer". Seems a bit tame written down, but it was quite unnerving at the time. Anyway, I have a better one...

On Friday on the way back from work we went past a pub that has a big fish menu and they were offering moules and frites for £8, which made me think of a Belgian chain of restaurants that I was aware of that I always wanted to visit but never did. A quick Google refreshed my memory that they were called Belgo. Sarah didn't remember them, but I said we went past one when we went to The Roundhouse in London to see a performance, by Cirque de Soleil about 6 years ago. Still a blank face from the beloved wifey. On Saturday I managed to read the paper almost entirely and was finishing off The Guardian's Guide when I saw an advert in the Performance section for Fuerzebruta at The Roundhouse, which is the new show by the people that created De La Guarda, which was actually the performance I had mistakenly attributed to Cirque de Soleil the day before. Happenstance corrected my mistake by coming full circle, but it's still only a co-incidence!

I just remembered another. Watching Lost Season 2 Ep 17 (Lockdown) on Thursday evening and I thought I recognised in Lock's flashback, that his girlfriend was the woman who played Deanna Troi in Star Trek: Next Generation. My mistake was realised on Friday evening when my parents came over with my sister and she started flicking through the digital channels to watch Married With Children and I noticed that Al Bundy's wife (Katy Sagal) is actually the actress that plays Lock's girlfriend. Spook! But, it is only a co-incidence.

Then I saw that she also provided the voice for Leela in Futurama and that there's possibly a Futurama movie being made. Or maybe just episodes. Or maybe just straight-to-DVD episodes - it's a bit confused at the moment. Bonusk.

haha whoops,forgot I was meant to be writing something on this here blog thing

So...it's been a long time...and what's new? In the case of my fellow blogger very little by the sounds of it - still going to Notting Hill record and type exchange? Must admit I felt a faint whiff of nostaglia when i read that,I passed many a pleasurable hour down in the basement,nothing but a damp smell and fellow anoraks for company."Flotation" for £10? bargain - but can you still sell it for more? How is eeeeBay these days? I've not had a browse for months

Meantime over here in Italy its election fever.After a hilarious series of gaffes by signor berlusconi (the best one being "anyone who votes for the left is a dickead" - i kid you not) he only lost by 0.2% of the vote,thats 25,000 people in a population of 47 million - ie it's another Florida,this may not be over yet.For me the most pleasing thing was the high turnout (84%) and the fact that in the my local bar/pub last night everyone was discussing politics in depth - one of the barmaids argued with someone for 15 minutes over the merits of voting communist.Would that happen in England? I think not.However in all the time i've been here in Italy,both past and present,I have NEVER met anyone who admitted to voting for him and yet he's been electing twice before and yesterday very nearly a third.This country is very odd.

Seeing as coincedences seem to high on the agenda around these parts I thought I'd share this with you.Whilest downloading some music the other week,I randomly selecting some tracks by (amongst others) Le Tigre and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs without checking the titles.The all downloaded at different speeds and were therefore mixed up in iTunes when I went back later.It looked like this

Dude Yr So Crazy Le Tigre
Bang! Bang! Le Tigre
Bang! Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Man Yeah Yeah Yeahs

but of course its only a co-incidence....I wonder if anyone has a track called "Bang! Bang! Bang!"?

Weeel, had a very nice time in London thanks for asking. I spent about 5 sad, anorak hours in the bargain basement of Notting Hill Record and Tape Exchange and plucked a few gems from the mire: Freestylers mix of Wubble U's - Petal and the Andrew Weatherall mix of The Grid's - Flotation (a pound each?!). Also got some Edan 12s, Talib Kweli's - The Blast and Deltron 3030's - Positive Contact (Dan the Automator mix), so veeery happy all in all.

I went down on the Oxford Tube (confusingly, it's a bus) and was listening to my iPod most of the time. As we were going down the Abingdon Road I was listening to the latest Ricky Gervais podcast and it made me think again of the number of mentals that show creates - people like me sitting on a bus pissing themselves in silence, while around, other people are slumped, thinking about work, thinking about what to eat, thinking about what to eat at work etc etc. While I was thinking of this and giggling like a girl, an old lady in the road in front of us got knocked off her bike and it really put quite a dampener on things. I stopped the podcast and started a Shuffle of my hip-hop tunes. Shame, cos it was quite a good cast too.

Still in Oxford on the bus and I saw a digger parked on the St Clements roundabout. It had black metal window covers on that reminded me of the hoods falconers put over their birds to stop them attacking everything they see. My childlike imagination pictured the workmen arriving for work later in the morning, taking the covers off and the digger, panicking with vision restored, lashing out at passers by with it's hydraulic arm and scoop.

Almost out of Oxford now and I was tickled by the Stella Artois window display in The Local in Headington. It consisted of Stella can 4-packs draped over more cans of Stella. And that was it. It seemed a bit pointless really. It was kind of like tying a pink bow to a hammer as a marketing ploy - don't bother, we know what it does and that's why we buy it. I actually had a can of wife-beater the other night. Then felt a bit peckish and, looking for some quick tucker, found a jar of pickled eggs at the back of the fridge. You might think from this rather proletariat snack that I was actually some kind of rough bloke, but these were organic posh eggs from Waitrose-don't-you-know. So I scoffed one down. Just. The bloody thing was so acidic it nearly gave me a stomach ulcer.

And, almost finally, Toby wants to know if there is such a thing as chocolate flavour Coke. And if not, when will it be made? Fair question I suppose. I can definitely see a market for it in the 3-5 year old child demographic.

And that's about it. Apart from a sign I saw in a carpet shop the other day: "Shoplifters will be prosecuted". Shoplifting in a carpet shop? Hmm.

Guard - "Excuse me Madam can I see what you have in your carrier bag please?"
Shoplifter - "Oh, if you mean this 14ft x 36ft roll of underlay, I brought this in with me"
Guard - "Oh, begging your pardon Madam. Off you go."
Guard to Shoplifter 2 - "Excuse me Sir, is that an Afghan floor rug stuffed up your jumper..." etc etc