Ice Cream For Crow

Here I am enjoying a delicious diabetic ice cream in sunny Swanage, where we visited Doctor Love for a herbal consultation, poker classes and gallons of red wine. There could be bad news for the diabetic ice cream industry though: scientists claim to have cured diabetic mice by wiping out their defective auto-immune cells and thereby allowing them to produce their own insulin again. Sounds promising, but I imagine it will be a while before the process is approved for humans so in the meantime I'm seeing what Goat's Rue can do for me.

Nueva Cruz

Pedalled down the Old Kent Road to see Attack! Switch Attack! once again on very fine form, this time at the New Cross Inn. Been a while since I last had a night out in SE14. It didn't look much like the new Shoreditch last night, thank God.

Sit on it, Little Dorrit

Another Crops rehearsal last night - more work to do before the 6th but we're getting there. The LP has now been retitled 'The Beast Must Die' and will feature The Wenhaston Doom on the cover. Went off to Ilisa's birthday knees-up afterwards, where there was a rather disturbing outbreak of fonzing. The BBC are filming some of Little Dorrit at my work and the squirrels are feasting on the sandwiches discarded by the picky spoilt Victorian extras.

Skinny the Pooh

Inspired by a post on Callaghan's blog earlier in the summer, I finally got some pictures of the ice cream van at Surrey Keys shopping centre. Is the bear of very little brain suffering from some kind of wasting disease or is this simply an attempt to sidestep copyright? Interestingly, D.Duck seems slightly more resistant to the illness and/or litigation. I'm keeping my eyes peeled for further examples of badly executed Disney characters promoting ice cream.

For good measure, I'm also throwing in a picture of Radar's underpants flying high above a pin the tail on the donkey on Brighton beach last Saturday. Enjoy.

Crops Circle

The first Crops rehearsal in over a year last Thursday went from very shaky beginnings to passably acceptable interpretations of the songs to a very satisfying session in the Roebuck afterwards, joined by SS and Alfie. The Crops farewell gig is set for 6th September at the Enterprise in Chalk Farm, so we've got a couple of weeks to get ship-shape. The gig will also be the launch of our album, 'Foxes Earth and Badger Sett' (though it's also TV Magick's birthday so perhaps a 45 would have been more appropriate). Anyhoo, everyone who turns up gets a free copy...if we get it all done in time.

Halesworth

Following Gordon Brown's lead, we've just spent a very relaxing few days in Suffolk, staying at the Tit Low House in Halesworth. Listened to Julian Cope's 'Jehovakill' a lot and also spent a fair amount of time consulting Roger Melly's 'Magna Farta'. When not indulging in these highbrow pursuits, we went rowing on Thorpeness Meare and visited the mysterious ruins at South Elmham Minster. I also bought singles by Sailor, Pilot and the Wombles in a charity shop in the fine old town of Bungay and ate a lot of chips. In many ways it was a good old fashioned English summer holiday, complete with windy beaches, dragonflies and more photo opportunities with cats.

Grindleford Station Cafe

Made a pilgrimage to the legendary Grindleford Cafe in Derbyshire on Saturday. It's a proper unreconstructed British cafe serving pints of tea and coffee and enormous portions of suitably unhealthy fodder. The interior is festooned with cheerfully grumpy signs in Shrigley-esque handwriting instructing customers not to take too many serviettes or to browse the magazines without buying. Fortunately I'd also taken my bike with me on the trip so was able to offset the lashings of white bread and fat with a bit of pedalling around the Notts/Derbyshire border alps, so no harm done!

Blue Sky Thinking

It's been a week of balancing the cycling ying with the boozing yang. Had a few pints of Adnams in Chalk Farm with Judge Ed early in the week followed by 3.5 pints of Aspell (staying loyal to Suffolk brands) in Crystal Palace while discussing artwork for the forthcoming Crops LP with Dan and T-Lo in Crystal Palace on Wednesday night. Out for a 36 mile post-dynamo tootle around the North Downs with Spratticus yesterday, which was very much like going for a bike ride in the school holidays, but with pub stops! Clocked up another 22 miles today riding from home to dentist to the Moat to home to the barber's and home again. I seem to be getting the balance about right as the old blood sugars are behaving themselves again.