So nice to get a couple of Sinister emails through the increasingly disused email door. A week or so I answered some questions for a Frenchman named Lawrence about Belle & Sebastian, Postcard Records and music fandom, and this got me ruminating on those heady days of the late 1990s/early 2000s when every Sinister post was a minor work of art, to be poured over, over-analysed and clutched closely to my heart. Just two weeks ago I caught up with a dear friend, Helen, whose 10+ year trans-Tasman friendship I owe to a Sinister picnic in Melbourne circa 2003. I've also been enjoying baby photos on Facebook from David and Julie - a real life Sinister-relationship-success-story. When I think of Sinister I think of these people, bunking in Niko Ovenden's flat in Edinburgh in 2005, wandering around the Lower East Side with Eric in NYC, etc. These things still mean something to me. Oh, and for anyone who followed my ceaseless moaning 10 years ago, Belle & Sebastian FINALLY played a show in New Zealand a few weeks back, on the St. Jerome's Laneway bill. It was 45 minutes, but it was grand, and it was the first time I've seen them that hasn't involved me having to fly to Australia. Me? I'm turning 40 next week. I have three-year-old twins and I'm no longer some smarmy IT worker. I'm now a bitterly-sarcastic highschool Media Studies teacher with a heart of gold. Life has, for the most part, treated me well. Well, that's enough for today. Hopefully a few others might crawl out of the woodwork. Let the trickle become a flood. Is there any kind of ex-Sinister-mailing-list FB group? Would be nice to hear from a few more familiar names. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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 +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+