Gay lady, Mayfair in the morning...Hear your footsteps echo in the empty street...Early rain, And the pavement's glistening...

S'up, Ninjas?

There must be something in the air tonight, oh Lord. Once I get start a-movin' and a-groovin' and changing my life around, the snowball of change turns into an avalanche and before you know it I'm slowly suffocating under a sea of ice clawing and screaming for the big slobbery dog with the barrel of brandy around his neck to hurry the fuck up and dig me out. Not content with an awesome new job and a super hot new American Girlflen, I've decided to move out of the Aussie Embassy in Clapton and onto a houseboat.

As our regular viewers will recall, I was all lined up to move onto a houseboat with a South African bird a couple of moves back, but it all fell through at the last minute. For some reason I've been thinking about it again recently but it's just so hard to find a vacancy unless you're in the know with the sketchy riverboat folk. I did some half-hearted searching and lo and behold found an ad on Gumtree by a South African dude who was yearning for a life on the low seas but couldn't find anyone to do it with (ooh err). I gave him a call and we seemed to have a bit in common, so we met for a beer to sniff each other's bums and got along famously. Clearly it takes a very particular kind of person to want to commit to this type of enterprise so no surprises that we're of a similar temperament and outlook (he's a geeky sarcastic jerk off, too). He had an awesome boat lined up but was struggling to find someone who could handle the adventure so we went and had a look at it on Saturday and I brought along Salette's friend Naomi who just so happens to be a qualified sea captain...I shit you not! Don't back chat her, she knows boats. So while us lads were up top pretending to be pirates and snagging each other's groins with the gaff hook, she was crawling around below decks checking out the bilge and the poop deck and what not. The boat's not exactly in prime condition but it's more than livable for the short term (ie. until our short attention spans fixate on some other stupid hare-brained scheme). They're asking way too much for it given the condition, so we're gonna low ball them and see what happens. If this one doesn't pan out then we'll keep our eye patches peeled for another 'cos that's how pirates roll.

Work is really kicking along at the mome. In a bizarre fit of enthusiasm I volunteered to run two projects simultaneously which, although manageable, is proving to be an exercise in finely balanced chaos. If I was to represent it in interpretive dance I would be constantly oscillating between "Trees Swaying With the Wind" and "Bats in Your Hair". Still, I said I wanted a challenge and I'm back doing what I really love...

Speaking of things I really love doing, Salette is fab. Every minute I'm with her she more truly earns her crown as the most wonderful thing that's happened to me in a long long time...maybe ever. She broke her toe on Friday night, the end result of an unfortunate combination of cheap champagne, poor co-ordination and a casually placed kitchen stool. We spent 2 and a half hours in the A&E waiting to get it strapped up (more for the patient's frame of mind than any real medical benefit) but luckily we were out just in time to make it up to Islington to see Russian Circles play live. Those guys are awesome! They're a three piece instru-metal act from Chicago and they sounded incredible. Without a vocalist, you don't have to mix down any of the instruments so everything comes through at the same level, strong and crisp and clean. The drums were mixed right up and cut through the meandering waves of guitar and bass like percussive pugilism...the acoustic equivalent of a punch in the face. The fremitus slammed into us, making our clothes vibrate and our eyes blink involuntarily but it wasn't so loud that your ears hurt or that the higher frequencies got drowned out by the thrum of the lower. Their new album is called 'Station' and is by far their best work. Listening to it you could swear that each song is from the soundtrack of a movie, or should be. It's very emotive and affecting music, which I think can be said of most instrumental pieces. Without the subjectivity of the lyrics, your imagination can make up whatever narrative you like to accompany the music, which makes listening to it a very intimate and engaging experience.

Salette is very keen to give me a balanced view of the contemporary arts. To compensate for the abysmal cabaret show at Bistrotheque, she took me to see a guy called Justin Bond who is, like, the transvestite Jesus of cabaret. She used to know him back in San Francisco years ago when he was just a kid starting out but now he's a cabaret legend. He's a really talented performer who totally knows his craft- equal measures of wit and bitchiness, socially and politically aware but profane and kinky as hell - and a hell of a singer. She also took me to see a brilliant dance troupe called DV8 who did an amazing powerful piece on the persecution of gays and lesbians through religion, which more than cancelled out the awful lecture we went to by a leading German dance choreographer that turned into a naked bondage show...a brain-achingly boring naked bondage show (I know...I didn't think it was possible either. Surely combining two totally awesome concepts could only make something so super awesome whole that eclipses the sum of its parts? But then, Aliens vs Predator...'nuff said). Always a surprise with this girl!

We're off to see Dylan Moran tonight, which I've been hanging out for for ages. Once again the immediate future's looking bright on the live music scene and it promises to be a Very Metal Spring with Fantomas playing their 'Director's Cut' album in December, Lamb of God in January and Soulfly in Feb.

Belco!

Raining blood from a lacerated sky...Bleeding its horror, creating my structure...Now I shall reign in blood!

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