Sinister: memoirs... (or... how I stumbled upon a teddy bear's picnic) Sinister - Glasgow - 15/06/2001

[Neil Milton]

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WARNING This mail is incredibly long! Well 4 me @
least
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Contents...
1) The Picnic
2) The gig
3) other stuff

1)
England 5 - 6 Scotland
The Sinister International Football Match

The winning goal scored by the silky footwork (Oh, OK
he toe poked it!) of one Alisdair Cook!

anyway...

Never one to be nervous around new people (aye right!)
I set out apprehensively to my second Sinister Picnic.
 (the last one being so long ago that no-one would
even hope to remember who I was, having made
absolutely no impression on anyone the last time).
On the train from Airdrie to Glasgow, my trip
descended into cliche from the outset.  Sitting on the
train, drinking a Capri-sun (a more twee drink you
will not find - well except for ribena I guess - that
means U JenOwl) listening to a B+S compilation tape
and reading Stuart david's new novel.  Any person
clued in to there music trivia on that train would
have laughed.  "Look, he's going to a B+S picnic" they
would say!

I met Amy and Paul (and subsequently Dave and... OH
FUCK!!!!!!  I hate when that happens!  He was so cool
but I've forgotten his name.  Sorry :-(  ) at the
underground on buchanan street and we caught the train
to Kelvinbridge.

We get off the train and we walk out into the
sunshine!
WTF???  It was freezing in the city centre!  Warm in
the west end!  Well, OK it was overcast and the grass
was damp but at least it wasn't freezing!

OK, so by this time, I'm bricking it!  No-one knows me
 AARRGGHH!!!  I'm introduced to one of the sweetest
guys I've EVER met going by the name of John, and he
is eagerly showing off his new feather boa (called
penelope) and dufflecoat.
Then there is Ally Cook!  He strides out, Cool as
Fuck!  And you think... excellent!
We waited around for a while, and i realised the one
thing lacking in my picnic gear!  A PICNIC!  I hadn't
brought any food!  What a plank!
So we followed everyone deep into the regions of
Kelvingrove park and we found a rather nice (if a
little damp) spot to sit down!

We hung around and chatted (mostly about bicarbonate
of soda and pigeons exploding) and we saw a dog
metamorphisise into a man.

People began to join us.

Sweetie, and JenOwl, and Ia(i)n Radcliffe and other
people of whom their names escape me but could not
have been nicer to me if they had tried.

Paul and I went on our way to buy food on GWR and when
we came back even more people had joined us.

The food trip itself was notable for the number of
times we managed to cross the same road in the
shortest possible time.

We bought sweeties and juice and al-key-hol, and we
bought jaffa cakes too (well they've got sodium
bicarbonate in them - we fancied seeing a pigeon
explode - although we thought better of it!).

I don't know exactly at what point I decided to get up
and join the little kick about that was going on with
a ball that Ally had just bought but I thought it'd be
sociable.  We carried on passing the ball around for a
little while and then someone decided on a match.

England - Scotland.  The glasgow Picnic and it seemed
there were more english people there than scots.  At
one point we had an englishman (a really nice bloke -
I hate not being able to remember names) on our team. 
I think the excuse was that his grannies dog's
previous owner was born in Scotland.  This same
englishman however, who subsequently missed a penalty
for us.. ahem. :-D

The game was a lot of fun.  With lots of running about
and jumping and cursing my fat arse!  And obviously
the English scored first.  But us scots are resilient
(or just stubborn) and we regrouped and destroyed the
english (I'm beginning to sound like one of those
videos you watch at 'historic Scotland' or the
National trust monuments).  The score at the start of
the email is slightly apocryphal in the fact that,
no-one can actually remember what the score was.  It
turned into those games that end with the cry of "Next
Goal's the winner!!!"  Eventually we scored and the
game was ours!

After the game we headed off to the pub and we all sat
down and had a drink together.  I felt tired and the
one moment I decided to shut my eyes, who should turn
up with a camera but JenOwl!!!  Great!  Can't wait to
see that one... ;-)  I nicked a B+S poster from the
wall to go with my idlewild and mogwai advert-posters
(y'know the ones I mean, those posters with the credit
card booking no. etc) and Paul showed me that Trevor
and Simon (remember going live! - swing yer pants etc
etc) now have there very own adult stage show on the
fringe.  Swing yer edible crotchless panties, oo er
missus.. whatever would Andi Peter's say?
                       ooo000ooo
2)
So Amy and Paul and John and I headed off down to the
gig... and we arrived to see there was already a
queue.  G'damn it!!!  But hark!  Who's voice do I hear
as we pass the queue?  No, It can't Be!  Jason
Andreas!  And thus we exploited our good friend's
position in the queue and we 'jumped in' with various
louder-than-normal-speech asides to each other of 'Oh
wasn't that kind of jason to keep us a space all this
time'  I'm sure we still pissed a few folk off, but
hey... All is fair in love and crowd position!

We got in and amy and Paul headed off to keep us a
space at the barrier.  I bought a t-shirt (and then
later that night badges and another t-shirt).  When I
got back there was a space at the barrier waiting for
me and the bad news that my girlfriend wasn't gonna
arrive until about 9pm.

The uptown Shufflers.  OMG!!!  How cool were those
guys!  five wee old men (one couldn't have been
younger than 70) playing the ballroom tunes of the
20's and 30's.  It kinda tugged at my heartstrings a
wee bit as I imagine thats what my uncle arnold (kinda
like a third grampa to me - and still as spritely as I
am and he's in his 70's) would have been like when he
was playing the clarinet all those years ago.

My girlfriend arrived just 2 or 3 minutes after the
shufflers came off and I got so excited as she was
there and also my best friend, Andy had just arrived
too..:)  It was really cool spending the gig with my
girlfriend, andy and his gf and my surrogate wee
sis(long story of which I'll let amy tell ya's), amy
and her boyfriend, my new bezzie mate Paul.

Belle and Sebastian came on stage to a lone bagpiper
piping away and OMG! Isobel was utterly utterly
beautiful!  Mick & Stuart looked cool with the tartan
trousers and tartan ties, and I thought sarah was
really cute, especially when she sang.

The first song, sleep the clock around, started with
the vocals really low in the mix and I think a good
portion of the auidence had a fleeting moment of
disappointment, thinking that the sound might be left
like that all night but it was fixed by about the
third vocal line and the audince cheered when they
heard stuart and bel's voices.

I was so excited and happy, that I have absolutely no
idea what order the set was in except to say that the
next song was le pastie de la borgoise which rocked
like a bastard.

The request slot was so funny.  Stevie doing a rather
fine rendition of Rod Stewart's d'ya think I'm Sexy
made me laugh so much.  It was so good!
The next suggestion was 'Letter from america'  Naebody
could play it except mick so he grabs the guitar and
show stevie how its done.  Stuart beckoned Mick to
sing it but he was not for that at all!  :-D  So
stuart took over and what a laugh, Beans came down to
the front and gave stuart his glasses and during the
verse when no-one knew the words stevie just adlibed a
surprisingly accurate holler that sounded almost
exactly like the boy from the proclaimers.

Anyway, I'm sure I've rattled on about stuff enough
and it'll have taken you a good period of time to read
up to hear...

3)
one last thing before I go...
could anyone i met yesterday please be a kind old soul
and click on the following link to my petition. 
You'll see what its all about when you get there...
I have a meeting with the director of programming next
week and I need to get as many signatures as is
possible..:)
the address is...
http://www.petitiononline.com/troika/petition.html

ok.. thanks for reading..

Neil.x.

=====
"I took a wrong direction, from a shooting star"
        Sparky's Dream - Teenage Fanclub
------------------------------------------------------
Neil Milton; neil_milton at yahoo.com; ICQ:77866398
Troika -             http://www.troikaonline.co.uk
2mf    -             http://www.geocities.com/tmfpromo

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