January 16 (Sunday): Friendship Update. Its an uncomfortable Sunday when I awaken. Misery abounds whilst outside its really not too bad, today I awaken grumpy. I ease into the day with the Sunday TV, where it all culminates with Millwall’s game being the featured game on The Championship.

Eventually I make moves and get up. I take my thrown for early morning twos and FINALLY I finish reading Kingdom Of Fear after repeatedly picking it up and putting it down for months now. By the end of my reading it through labour very little of it is registering, personally I think it is pretty incoherent and random even for Hunter S. Thompson. He is old after all.

I MSN with Racton for a while before noticing that outside, once more the guy is washing his clapped out black Fords again! I am so anti-social, I really do not want to have to have a twenty minute conversation about how I’ve lost my job and how the groundskeeper is weird and our property management are regularly taking the piss out of us living in this court. With godspeed, I avoid his advances and run to my car and speed out of dodge, wasting zero time in the process.

It is around 11.30 when I get to Asda, pretty much the calm before the storm period on a Sunday (lunchtime is murder time). I barely spend a pound, buying a little French stick and News Of The World to satisfy my Sunday needs. I do however freak out when I first step into the store and think I see the eldest boss at my old firm (he has the same balding hair style).

When I’m back in the flat, my phone rings and it is Staff asking if I’m still going to the Cats Against The Bomb show tonight in Bury St Edmunds. I say “yay” and offer him a lift, it gives me someone to go with.

I manage to get back into writing and finally begin to make progress on things, I only stop to have a break when Celebrity Big Brother comes on and I waste an hour of my time on that, not really learning anything about the world in the progress.

The afternoon movie on ITV is a movie version of War And Peace. It lasts almost four hours but I feel obliged to try and watch it because I will never ever read the book, so I guess it would be good to try and know the story in one capacity or other. Bad idea, this film is pretty terrible despite a couple of star names (Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda). Ultimately though, the film is boring and it sends me to sleep and I experience a “disco nap” when I awaken disorientated, feeling guilty about being lazy. To make amends, I almost immediately snap back into writing before realising that Twins is on the other channel and I wind up watching the end of that.

Back on the internet (anywhere but reality for me today it seems) I watch the trailer for the new Woody Allen movie called Melinda And Melinda. It looks fantastic, looking like one of those early nineties films he did set in plush New York about some kind of ridiculous drama. And Will Ferrell is the star in it. Scarily though, Chloe Sevigny is also in it with proper blonde hair and she looks almost exactly like Haslett that way. Makes me feel queasy a tad.

The Simpsons and dinner happen and then I head out at 7.30 to the show in Bury. I pick Staff up outside the derelict Odeon cinema on Crouch Street (where apparently there are a bunch of squatters living inside, I would really love to look inside the old cinema to see what it is like these days). I tear up my two least favourite roads (A12 then A14) while Staff tells me about his latest adventures with Extreme Noise Terror. The drive to Bury St Edmunds actually turns out to be a lot longer than I was expecting and arriving in Bury is a weird thing as it turns out to be a strange place (I have never been in this hood before). Eventually we find the venue (The Priors) and upon arrival Staff comments “it’s a beefeater!”.

We go inside and it costs £4 to do so. Immediately we catch glimpse of Adam and Doug and we find ourselves having stepped inside the Bury St Edmunds indie scene. Tonight’s show is being put on by Planet Beet which is run by a someone from the band The Secret Hairdresser and tonight is the Electro Beet night.

The first act tonight is some lad sat on stage cross legged at a laptop pushing out big beats in the style of the Chemical Brothers all in the name of distortion and noise pollution. The guy turns out to be called Bev and ultimately it is really really weird to see such a set occur it what is basically the backroom of a pub, always traditionally the domain of horribly bad rock bands. This is club music and it just seems so out of place here.

And following is something just as out of place as now three lads sit on the stage cross legged experimenting with noise pollution themselves, all in the name of Jack Nicholson (bet he would appreciate that). Here we have one longhair on a laptop with two oiks twiddling their guitars in the stylee of Sonic Youth in their most annoying and frustrating. This is that kind of non-melodic post rock people had us listening to a few years ago, taking music reviewed in The Wire straight to heart. It all reminds me of that Can track that sounds like an aeroplane flying/crossing inches above. I cannot recall many specific bands that actually get up and do this on stage (although there are loads) but the main reference I remember is Navigator from Norwich. This hurts. At the climax of the set Doug comments “very Mutebox” and that comment is so right.

The Cats Against The Bomb set tonight is special because it is the first time that Adam has headlined. I fear I may have sounded as if I were ripping on the venue with my comments earlier but the stage makes for a fantastic setting, it is lights everywhere to match the disorientating sounds emitting from the stage. Again he opens with Woodshed and it all starts out on a winning roll as the sound is pretty loud to match the ferocity of the material. Three songs in and the set threatens to break down as Cats Against The Bomb breaks a string, breaking flesh in the process as the set becomes bloodstained in a heated frenzy. Guitar Wolf Man rules the roost tonight as the tribute to the Orients seems to find it best possible environment. Tonight the I Wanna Be Sedated Ramones cover returns to the set as the person favourite of this writer (AKA Lover) falls to the wayside. Confusion abounds as Ant Gets Decked spews out inappropriate sounds and all too soon the sonic equivalent of a rollercoaster ridden on a deckchair set ends.

The night ends and Staff and I set off back down the A14 and then the A12. The weather appears to be taking a turn for the worse and I struggle to tear my way home on these roads, occasionally subtly flipping out in the process just in an attempt to stay on the road. Remember the impossible video game Pole Position? This was what I/we was/were living. Talk in the car turned to our metal past and exchanging our different versions/views of the infamous Colchester music scene over the past ten years. Regardless of what happens, it will always come full circle and wind up where it all began.

When I get in the TV options are The French Connection or Celebrity Big Brother. Once more, the latter prevails.

np: Sebadoh – Zone Doubt