MEAL OUT: Barton Hall Restaurant

 A new place for us (though I had been about a month before with Rich, Phil and Denise) and a nice evening. It's a whole different experience from the bustling Goose with it's modern aesthetic, this was far more serene and calm. I had a lovely steak, though Rose was slightly disappointed with her main. IIRC I had some kind of blue berry cheesecake which was really good and Rose had the Jaffa Cake pudding which was apparently very nice. Somewhere for a special occasion perhaps... 

DECORATING: Lounge and Dining Room

The plan was, take a week off, decorate and then relax for the last two days. Which actually turned into three days as we accidentally booked our week off to coincide with a bank holiday. Result! What could possibly go wrong? Well plenty as it transpires... 

Well, we had a plan. But it proved impossible to stick to. First of all, we started bright and early on Saturday morning with a plan to strip the walls in a few hours, but it immediately became apparent that this was not going to happen. Rose decreed that we needed a wallpaper stripper so I set off to pick one up from Market Harborough (thus wasting an hour) and then after ten minutes use decided it was a waste of time because a) the paint on the wallpaper was sealing it and the steam wasn't really getting through, and/or b) every time I used it the wallpaper seemed to take huge chunks of plaster with it when I pulled it off. 

So we set that aside and spent the whole weekend stripping the all the wallpaper. Then came the job of filling all the holes we'd made pulling the wallpaper off. Some of these were quite small and so not a big deal, but there were some larger patches, notably near the dining table and these were quite difficult. Being that we were using blown vinyl (renowned for it's ability to cover up bumpy walls) I figured as long as I did a reasonable job of filling and smoothing the plaster the wallpaper would hide the imperfections well.

After that came sanding and painting the woodwork and the dado rail. And it surprised me just how runny the Valspar wood paint we'd bought was. It had to go on really thin or it just ran and I had to sand several places and redo them. But this was just the start. We went out for dinner on Tuesday night and while we felt the schedule had slipped at this point we still thought that the bank holiday would be our day off. Yeah, right.

I finally started wallpapering on Wednesday afternoon about 2pm. I finished wallpapering about 12:30AM, having finished the dining room and perhaps a quarter of the lounge. But the next morning it was starkly obvious that my plastering was not as smooth as I thought and the rather thin wallpaper wasn't going to cover the imperfections anything like as well as was hoped.

We decided the only thing to do was strip the walls, take the rest of the wallpaper back and get some better stuff. You would think the wallpaper would come off easy wouldn't you? I mean, it was barely dry. But you would be dead wrong. The paper might have been shit, but the wallpaper paste was doing it's job extremely well and we spent Thursday and Friday getting the room back to where we had been on Wednesday afternoon.

Not surprisingly, by now we were not in the best of moods, but I papered all Saturday and Sunday and by Sunday night the papering was finished. Yay. I mean how long could it take to paint two rooms? Well about 5 fucking weeks as it turned out. No I can't believe it either. It went on and on, and it just felt like it would never end. 

Well it didn't help that we almost finished and THEN decided that actually we should have bought matt paint instead of silk. The thought of starting again was horrendous, but we both hated it and what was the point of finishing it and hating it? So we went back to B&Q and spent another £150 on paint... before starting the whole process all over again.

As expected the 'Arch of Satan' was a nightmare, that on it's own took four or five evening to finish papering and paint. I must say it looks bloody excellent now, but what a fucking nightmare!!!

GIG: Faderhead (London 2024)

Faderhead's first UK gig for eight years was conveniently timed for a UK bank holiday, which meant we had an extra day to get over it all, haha. We arrived just as J:Dead commenced their set and while I initially thought they sounded quite good, as the set wore on the songs seemed to drag more and more. Also, what is it with British bands, they just revel in their own failings and undermine any credibility they have by pointing out how rubbish they are. Cyferdyne are another one. Just stop it. It's one thing for the crowd to think you're shit, it's quite another to go out there and tell them you are...

I seem to remember Elektrowerkz had been done up since our last visit, though honestly there wasn't that much evidence of it. They did have some new red laser lights over the crowd which probably look great during the club nights but are quite distracting when the bands are on stage. 

Faderhead took to the stage in an absolute fog of dry ice, and with just two red lights pointing at him it was almost impossible to see anything. Sami actually asked the venue to reduce the smoke as he couldn't see anything either... unfortunately that wasn't the only problem. The sound was also pretty terrible and when the second song started I was standing there trying to decide whether it was actually 'Generation Black' I was hearing or not. The drum beat sounded familiar but everything else was mush.

Thankfully the sound resolved after about the first five songs and the smoke also cleared eventually, which meant we could actually see Sami and his DJ helper guy.

At one point Sami mentioned that he was releasing a single every month and that he had just released a new one with Sasha from Neuroticfish. He then went on to say that there was no point playing that one as he only sang 25% of it, so instead he was going to play 'The Hell We Need' (February's single) instead. 

He then mentioned how some guy from the UK called Rob (ahem) told him the song sucks and please not to play it at the show - but he did anyway. So much for taking my advice, hahaha!

Overall, the show was okay. Sami was clearly not feeling his best and the setlist was a bit patchy. He'd included some slower songs to give his voice a break, but these really sapped the energy out of the room... regardless of whether I liked those songs or not, I think he has much much better slower songs he could have done, but whatever.

Of the three Faderhead shows I've seen though it was definitely the 'least best', but I guess that was inevitable given that the last FHD album I really, really loved was FHX in 2016. 

Still, I'm glad we went, but travelling to London for shows is really starting to lose its appeal. We've been doing it for 30 years now and the journey back is such a depressing and tiring experience... I think it will take something remarkable to get us back again. Probably only Zeromancer could do it and that's not very likely at all.