I am at Glug, media learning-but-mostly-social thingummy at some point last week. There are two talks, both potentially really good but they suffer from booming mics and reek of reverb in the squashed venue. There is also a wall in the middle of the audience, which unsurprisingly gets a bit in the way what with people’s inabilities to see through walls.

The ceiling is brilliant-ish and is made of lightbulbs, organised in glowing clumps. There is also an illustration wall, full of petite and detailed drawings. I go to investigate it.

A girl draws on the wall and steps back looking bashful but pleased. “It’s not great, but it’s the only thing I can draw,” she says. I smile. “Most people have that one thing they can draw” I say. Teachers though, in my experience, are famed for their inability to draw horses.

“Show me yours!” She says. “What’s your one thing?”

Shit, I think. What can I draw? I was just trying to sound philosophical and clever. Finally after stalling with my face for a while, I remember.

My skill is in the league of dinosaurs and lions. Both look as though they’ve been drawn by kids – probably just a brilliant excuse to avoid any drawing skill, for I suspect there is not too much money in doing kid’s drawings.. The dinosaurs are 2D and the lions have funny back legs. Though not massively original, these are their characteristics and make me smile in their silly way.

I draw my Lion. It is garish and brilliant. Someone points out that the back leg is wrong.

“That is the point,” I say.

“Ah,” they say.

I step back and suddenly all the drawings come into my line of sight. They are delicate, careful and planned. My lion has some whiskers. Artful, nice things surround my orange lion and put it in context. My lion looked like the best ever thing up-close, context is a horrible thing.

“It’s not great” I say, immediately the perfectionist and looked bashful, suddenly understanding her. I still love it though.

The wobbly video is up – It’s in HD but you might have to view it on Youtube directly to see it.

Thomas Truax is a strange sort of man, but that’s no real surprise. We have struggled through the rain to see him and are excited when we see him lurking by a merchandise stand. He wears a black suit with an 80s cut and loose hair. We stand about dripping.

He seems confidently enshrined in his own little world full of self-invented instruments and references to unknown women in gigs. The crowd laughs half in politeness and half because he’s charming. He is also American, which surprises me. I don’t know why – maybe my notion was of an eccentric Brit – the Dr Who Matt Smith of music.

Three songs in, he leaps from the stage, guitar in hand and strolls into the audience, singing and strumming. “How odd,” I think, neither here-nor-there on the matter. He suddenly leaps from his guitar-filled wander, dives towards the door and bursts out with a clang. I potter off towards the toilet, coincidentally in the same direction (or maybe I’m just nosy and won’t admit it) and bump into the brown haired ticket-selling girl on the way.

“Where’d he go?” I ask.

“Oh, it’s his thing,” she tells me, waving ticket stubs about. “He runs up the stairs, and round the back. There’s a secret ‘No Entry’ door by the toilet which leads onto the stage.” I peer up the stairs but he is long gone. I continue on my toilet hunt, suspecting I must look like a stray fan hopelessly following Truax around the building. I see the secret door. It is a bit dull for a secret door and very nondescript, which probably keeps drunk people out. Such is the way of the secret door.

I take shaky video footage because my arms tire easily as I try to hold them really high. He finishes quickly and I eagerly ask him if he will play Wicked Game, a good 80s cover and the first track I heard by him. It’s no doubt an irritating request at the end of a gig to be asked to play a specific song. “Were the rest not good enough?” I half expect as an reply, but he smiles and tells me that he doesn’t have the right pedals.

Afterwards, everyone clears and feeling bold and drunk I grab my camera and leap on stage. Perhaps if I am arrested I shall tell them I am a blogger. That will fix things.

Bob discovers I have not been told off or frowned at in any way and jumps up too. I spin the ‘Sister Spinster’ around; it’s a smaller version of his first instrumental creation, a clanging beat-producing wheel with spokes, but I’m terrified of being that idiot who broke it and avoid pushing it with any force. The tapping noise it makes is exciting enough. This is the closest I’ve ever come to steampunk, and it’s lovely. There’s also a briefcase filled with a xylophone, with a lightbulb on a string hanging from the top. Wikipedia won’t tell me the invention’s name but it’s fantastic nonsense. I tap out some notes on the xylophone and admire the lightbulb. It’s brilliant and is my favourite bit. Glee glee glee.

We stomp back out into the rain. I rather like Mr Truax. Bob smiles all the way home. He took some lovely photos despite the red lights – you can find them here.

The man who writes at Privatesecretdiary.com, predominantly about chickens, has had his book published. I was reading bits out yesterday in a voice that I felt was appropriate for chicken stories. After reading three posts I immediately encourage you to read it. It also, beyond chickens, mentions being a blogger at media functions during which I sniggered, as I spent last week imagining the same awkward fate as I was put on my first guest-list for an event.

“I write a blog about Brighton,” I imagined mumbling distractedly on arrival at my first gig, new to this guest-list business.
“A blog? No you may not come in – we are not in the future yet,” they laugh. Luckily, it transpired, that this is indeed the future.

“Here is somebody to meet,” says the Host. “This is the renowned journalist who repeatedly and tenaciously harried the Houses of Parliament with Freedom of Information requests, eventually forcing the authorities to concede details that led to the exposure of the expenses scandal, causing the biggest shake-up in the British political system for several decades and redefining the relationships between the Westminster establishment and the public.”

“Hullo, I – er – write a blog. About Norfolk,” I reply, after a bit of a pause.

A waiter refills my wine glass, which has emptied itself already.

“I travelled all the way from there to get here,” I add impressively, deciding that in the absence of any achievements whatsoever in my life, I will be ‘man who has made the most effort to attend.’ Another man joins in. It transpires that he has travelled from Glasgow. I shoo him away. Fortunately at this point the Host shushes everybody to make a short speech, and the lady from Durex says a few words about Durexes.

I was reading using my Adrian Mole voice which has generally remained as an inner-voice until today. I looked about for quotes to gallivant about the house quoting at unsuspecting people.

At some point in my childhood I acquired an Adrian Mole book, the brilliant story of our in-no-way ironic poet chap who has injected memories attached to Sheepskin coats, Thatcher, reverse-charge calls, and a host of other strange references that I missed by ten years into my mind at a young age.

He also says “Ratfink Lucas,” still one of my favourite words today.

I found last night that the BBC has done an adaption. It is faintly terrible, with all characters taller, fatter, more Harry-Potter-esque, and toting the wrong accents than the book suggested. I ended up watching the entire series on You Tube though. Once you got painfully past the fact that childhood reading memories were tainted, and sidestepped the credits, it was quite good. I did have to check he wasn’t somehow played by Daniel Radcliffe though.

Here’s my very old video from Kinetica that I’ve just put together. Because of camera ineptitude there’s no video of my favourite part: the lights that reacted to sound, but there’s an inadequate photo of them here on Flickr.

The exhibition had a section with the pencils that rotate and make circles (above) – which drew on our ability to stand aimlessly watching pencils draw motorised circles. Something I noticed is that the holder design didn’t allow for the pencils to get shorter – it didn’t compensate by pushing defaultly against the wall, but left them suspended away from the paper when they were blunt going round in sad little circles. Perhaps I’ve got too much pencil empathy.

There’s also the small beer robot that poured you beer into plastic cups and then flashed red in an alert to tell you it’s drinking time. Lots of good stuff there.

I mentioned Sci Fi last post, and whilst I was tempted to write a long list of films I’ve seen recently (because I have seen an absurd amount recently, including the perhaps over-hyped Heat) it occurred to me that this is not massively interesting for anyone.

I thought I’d talk about something more interesting I’ve seen. This covers Sci Fi I’ve been watching, namely the BBC’s Day of the Triffids, which surely the world must have already seen and I really quite rate. It initially keeps a slow pace similar to the book, although the plot deviates sinfully, which I don’t really mind about. Alas, it’s no longer on iPlayer but I did stumble across a Charlie Brooker commentary on Sci Fi mentioning the 1981 version which pleased me nonetheless.

Another video I’ve been surprised by liking is Matt Smith in Dr Who’s series five trailer. It’s hard to judge a new character in thirty seconds after David Tennant’s just disintegrated himself and many women’s hearts, so I try not to (although having appeared on every BBC program in existence over Christmas his departure didn’t dismay me as much as it might have done, even if he was an ace Doctor). This looks good though, very good compared to the 30 second snippet. I found it via Rob’s Blog which is made up of 90% of Dr Who gushing.