Is it just me, or has a subtle change of mood come over Sinister? I leave for a few months, come back and everyone's obsessed with crushes (list or otherwise) and indulging in deep analysis of song lyrics. It's...I dunno...almost twee, or something. It's good, I think. I seem to be stranded in Cornwall. A delightful, picturesque part of the country, to be sure, but do we really want to live in pictures? Of course we do, pictures are pretty, but not pictures of sodding fields. Pictures of fun places, with all manner of debauchery going on, probably. Or failing that, something with monkeys in it. In my experience, fields offer nothing but cows, endless cows that I really haven't got any use for. I thought about giving each cow a different name, so I could track the course of their lives over several days. I started well - Daisy, Brian, Mr. Nietszche and You Little Bastard were all standing in a small group near the hedge - but then realised that cows all look broadly similar, rendering it far to difficult for a mere whimsical exercise, if not downright impossible. Whimsical exercises should be nice and easy, otherwise someone really should pay you for doing them. (Speaking of which, I thought that any indie football team should surely be based on a solid back four of the memebers of Ash - much in the manner of the old Arsenal defence - but didn't take the thought any further. That's the other good thing about whimsical exercises, you can stop them without any feeling of regret, so maybe it's a good thing nobody's paying you for them.) I've been thinking a lot about missed opportunities lately. Probably because, now I've left university, I can't help imagining all the things I /could/ have done when I was there. If I'd thought about a career earlier, would I have a job now? (Yes.) Should I have asked so-and-so out? (Probably.) If I'd taken those guitar lessons at school, would I now be a member of The Strokes? (No.) It's silly, really - I did plenty much amazing stuff (someday I will tell you about the "half-naked Jonny Vegas calling a barn dance while wearning a pink stetson" incident. Oh, I will tell you....). But I still think it's important to grab all the opportunities while you can - you always regret not doing things far more than you regret doing them. For example, I have a friend who came up with an idea for a children's book once. It was going to be about a boy called Harry Wizard who was very good at pottery. He never followed it up, and now he's had to run away to Canada. Of such small tragedies! are our lives made. Yesterday, I caught You Little Bastard humping Mr. Nietszche by the patch of bracken. At least, I think it was them. Life, I suspect, goes on. lv, t x -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- tom p, currently somewhere in darkest cornwall tom@fatfatpope.com "...a man with a phil oakey haircut..." the stage ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+