A good mixed weekend really

I’m not sure where to start really. On Friday night it was a visit (with Yon, his mate Simon and Morgan) to the Northcote Social Club to see The Bats, which btw is becoming quite the northern beer barn nowdays. It’s one of those places that looks about twice the size on the inside you’d expect.  Shame the toilets are so far away from the band action. And the Bats? Well, they were just charming really – pretty much playing most of their new album The Guilty Office, which luckily I’d bought a few days before.

bats

Of particular note was the attractive female lead guitarist (who must have been 50, being a 26 year old band) and the tall blond Forrest-Gump like bass player who got the crowd laughing with his lack of guile and innocence: “We just found out this week, that that last song is going to be in the latest Keira Knightley film; might even end up on the cutting room floor – oh well”. As my friend Morgan said, the Bats play simple same-sounding folk-pop, but they do it so well. The support band was the young Crayon Fields, who I would describe as the Go Betweens in glasses and loud 80’s jumpers (it was hot in there too!), whose lead singer reached new heights in nerdish self introspection and unattractiveness. The synth-based songs didn’t really float my boat but they were ok. Photos to follow.

Next most exciting thing was Saturday lunchtime-ish. Whilst walking dogs on High Street we discovered a pair of unfinished art-deco bedside tables (routinely described as “rare as hens teeth” to find in pairs). They were without the bone handles or polish and I’m not sure that the drawers even worked very well, but they showed great potential. We apparently have first right of refusal, and I’m betting they come up a treat for $285 the pair (which is amazing considering we’d looked at others for 800 before). Discovering furniture gets me excited.

There was a family Christening for Liam on Sunday – painless for the most part, except when my hyper-anxious mother started shout-whispering across the church isle to sister A, that sister B had gone into labour this morning, and that she’d been vomiting and having diahorrea all night before.

We played some solid WoW on the weekend also, and I snagged a tanking trinket: The Black Heart, that for the first time in ages made my heart leap as it’s pretty much best-in-slot. We managed to down the first boss in the brand new Trial of the Crusader (25 man) on our third attempt, though mostly through some amazing raid leadership. The phase 2 where you tank the large serpents and get paralysed or burned is still very confusing to me. Luckily I didn’t screw up too badly.

It was a great mixed weekend. What a pity I’m working the next 13 days straight.