Sinister: Staring at the pink formica

[Robin Stout]

	It's a strange sense of guilt you feel when you sleep in 
someone else's bed and they don't even know about it. I stayed at 
my friend's house at the weekend and slept in the bed of the 
christian fundamentalist who usually lives there. Normally I wouldn't 
mind, and maybe it was because I'd been reading the Bible by his 
bed, but I suddenly felt very guilty about sleeping there. It's almost 
like wearing a stranger's pants without them knowing, isn't it? In 
Leviticus, I'm sure you'd be smote for that.

	My sister is very excited at the moment because she's 
organising her friend's hen night. She phoned me up telling me how 
she's found a brilliant hotel which is covered in plastic fur and pink 
formica. I'm a little worried about her enthusiasm and visible 
reddening about wipe-clean surfaces. What sort of party could she 
be thinking of? I hope it's going to be a tupperware party. At least we 
know where Erica's faux-fur has gone to.

	Personally, I'm reddening at the prospect of Belle and Sebastian 
Downtown style. When I was eight or nine Petula Clarke was my 
favourite singer. My sister and I used to record radio shows on our 
tape recorder and introduce songs from Cliff and Bros and lovely, 
glorious Petula. One of us would listen to the radio and the other 
would talk for a while into the recorder, then when a song came on 
the radio we'd quickly flick the switch and record it. For a while 
things were great, when we had the batteries we'd do a roadshow, 
and they used to call me the furry rice-crispie. Then Caroline came 
home with Dinosaur Jr Records and old-style DJs like myself 
weren't wanted anymore. I recorded my last show, span Downtown 
for one last time and dreamed of busy streets and plastic raincoats.

Robin xxx
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
    +---+  Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list  +---+
    To send to the list mail sinister at missprint.org. To unsubscribe
    send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to
    majordomo at missprint.org.  WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister
 +-+  "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students"  +-+
 +-+  "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list"  +-+
 +-+       "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper        +-+
 +-+   "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000   +-+
 +-+       "peculiarly deranged fanbase" "frighteningly named       +-+
 +-+           Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000           +-+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+