35. Just got in from seeing SKIN. Had spent the afternoon figuring out whether it was worth going, had been listening to her new album of ‘love songs’ which seemed tame and not what I wanted. Had also checked out the support Easyworld who have a shit name and sounded shit as well on their website. But with nothing better to do I decided to get along there to the Cockpit and have a few beers and give it a chance.

I missed Easyworld except for the last song which sounded a bit dull, and settled into having a few beers. Skin came on at about 9pm, and the first song was a stormer absolutely fantastic…I was already glad I was there. Then came a few of the ballads from the new album I had been listening to, but somehow Skins amazing stage presence and vocals turned them around and made them sound good. Not Skunk Anansie great but well worth going for…had some more beers…and soon they had been playing an hour with a few dull ballads but mostly good stuff – alternating between soft then mental. They finished off with more brilliant Skunk songs, with a slightly weird segway into Blondie Heart of Glass which the audience didn’t seem to quite get. Skin joked if there was going to be a ‘Skin aftershow party’ they’d better stop playing and get into the free beers. Wish it had gone on longer and they’d played a few more Skunk songs – but whose complaining for a Sunday night – was sound.

34. Some nice photography at Ronald T Simon’s site.

Managed to escape the Leeds meat markets for a couple of hours yesterday – getting some promo drinks at the Cockpit in Leeds – prices £1.60 for a beer instead of £2.95 later in the shite Greek Street bars. And not only that but the musics good. Was approached by a buxom young lady who wanted to show us her new acquisition ‘its so cute – dont you think its cute?’ – the thing kind of looked like a clay tomato with legs to me, but she couldn’t be persuaded and decided she would treasure it forever.

33. Listening to XRay magazine compilation. There is some good stuff on the magazines cover CDs – and also takes you in new directions. I have 4 pairs of ‘travel’ shoes lying on my floor – I have to try them all on and decide on which to take to Australia. My criteria are comfort, good for walking in – mainly on the street, stylish and be able to get into nightclubs with stupid dress codes….think its gonna be the Merrills over the Brashers. The Brashers are much more my kind of shoe – good for travel, but I think nightclubs would be a problem and they dont fit as well.

32. The results are in on the Retro Remakes competition. My Fungaloids game is in the bottom half, but I didn’t really expect a ZX81 remake to fair much better against all these more recent games. At least the reviewers gave it a nice write up. Waiting for my prize in the post now…

31. Beer de Luxe seems to have been discontinued at ASDA – what can I do? I buy a crate of Biere Continentale. Just as cheap and hopefully as drinkable. Dandy Warhols is sounding good tonight after quite a break.

30. There is some great photography in the slideshow section to the http://www.steal-life.com/ website. I like the “America”, “Stockholm” and “Trash” to name a few.

29. The ‘Indian Summer’ continues – I go to the Saltaire festival to see an exhibition by Janet Cook. I am standing there looking at the blurb for the exhibition when a middle aged couple come next to me. The lady proudly announces she is Janet Cook’s sister, and identifies one of the photographs as being of her father. I had been looking for whether the exhibition presented Saltaire in a new light, as my own experience is a little jaded through long experience. The exhibition didn’t really do that for me, but it was interesting to see what shots had been included. I headed up to Fanny’s ale house for a couple of Ayinggerbrau’s sat outside in the sun – life’s not always a bummer when your an out of work photographer…

28. Had the most gorgeous chicken lentil and spinach curry last night at Bradfords best curry house – THE KASHMIR … followed by a dream where I had pouches inside my mouth on both sides which developed little holes and moths would come out of them, fly around inside my mouth, then take off out of mouth when I opened it – mm, I wonder if this is linked to the curry?

27. How to pick up an indie girl - quite entertaining!

26. Listening to Electric Soft Parade on Dan’s recommendation – growing on me – certainly good so far, but is that the beer talking?