National Child Care Trust Classes and Wardrobes

I really wasn't looking forward to the NCT classes, that Kara had paid for in the early rash of over eager first pregnancy syndrome. We had already attended another antenatal course run by the goverment, and lthough it had been occasionally interesting, it hadn't taught Kara much as she is about as well read on this as it is possible to be. Also, there was very little socialising, as the classes were in the evening and everybody bolted for the door the minute the midwife stopped speaking.

In the end though, it was a really good course. Weel taught, with lots of activities for people with my kind of attention span. More importantly we met a bunch of really interesting folk, who hopefully will be some kind of support network in the coming months.

Meanwhile, on another baby related note the cot is nowcomplete and in the baby's room. This sentence alone is more frightening and odd than a Stephen King novel about haunted garden gnomes.

Bands with great bassists

All through the 80's I listened to Level 42, I was young, naive and desperatly in love with Mark King's right thumb. Now many people did many foolish things in the 80's, so I can live with the shame, but my real secret I have until now kept well hidden. In the wee small hours through the nineties, I would still put on Level 42 albums and dance around. Even though I had rebelled against the pop world and was now in the floppy haired indie gods grasp, I couldn't shake off the need to listen to great slap bass playing.

Now there was the Red hot chilie peppers, but I just somehow never bought into them, if anything they just wern't odd enough, I needed a band that hardly anyone else would like, and I could apreciate purely for the bass playing. No band was forthcoming, so I continued to secretly overdose on 'Lessons in Love' and 'The chinese way'.

So how, dear lords of indie, did I miss Soul coughing and Primus?

Les Claypoll of Primus is Mark King on acid, and the douple bass playing on Soul coughings albums is groovier than Jamiraquai at a late night exclusive jazz club. So now I have reached my thirties I can wax lyrical about great bassists of the 90's, even though I managed to miss them the first time around. And I have a whole bunch of Primus albums to work through.

If you like amazing bass playing hunt these out. Don't balme me though for the beat poetry (soul coughing) or just plain weidness (Primus) that you will find there.

Soul Coughing track of note: Casiotone nation

Primus track of note: John the fisherman.

Guitar Hero 2

It says random at the top, and that's what you are going to get. In this case my new toy, well the baby mobile and baby gym turned up at the same time, but I would sound far too soppy talking about them.

At £50 (that's $2356 on current exchange rates) this game was obviously a frivolous buy. But I don't care, as this has already obsessed me like only a great game can.

Playing rhythm karaoke versions of rocks great album tracks could be absolutely dreadful, images of me quietly trying to hide the offending game from guests, lest they laugh at me for making the consumer mistake of the century, came into my mind.

I was spared a major embarrassment though because it is great. Playing along to the tracks is intuitive, and most of all, and for the plagued by serious First Person Shooters Xbox360 this is unusual, the game is blindingly fun. I have already found myself jumping around the room to Killing in the Name Of and a host of other lesser none rock tunes. I even have the hair for it at the moment. Suddenly I was back on stage with Foolish Grin and fifteen years had dropped away. Well, without the smell of stale beer, or the endless bad sound checks.

Sad, immature, vaguely silly....absolutely, but I have played this obsessively, well, as obsessively as I can during term time, and the only problem is RSI I am developing in my index finger.

There, is that a good enough antidote to arty articles about the Tate.

The baby mobile by the way, has liquid and alternately rotating shapes, and music and lights, and colours and slidy bits, and, and, and, and, and I better go and sit down somewhere quiet until my gadget fetish calms down.