Blogwatch

It was reassuring to know that, after a manic few days up to my eyeballs in work, there would be delights aplenty awaiting me when I made my return to the blogosphere...

Just in case you were wondering, I'm not alone. There are other bloggers out there proselytising about Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, most notably Kenny, who, as part of a great album review compendium, argues that Abattoir Blues / The Lyre Of Orpheus "exhibits the full range of Cave's songwriting skills and it's a record rich in quality, atmosphere and good old-fashioned hell-raising", and Vaughan, in whom it inspires apocalyptic thoughts: "If, personally, your life's feeling like it's all been thrown up in the air and you're not sure where the pieces are going to land, and if the world is really destined for four more years of some nebulous War Against Terrorism in an attempt to impose one superpower's strange brand of democracy on any nation it doesn't think is reading from the same hymn sheet, then the least we can do is to all go to hell listening to some absolutely heavenly music".

Elsewhere:

After a bit of a hiatus LondonMark is back and in good form;

in deepest rural Norfolk Jonny B's been battling against insomnia - "Ninety minutes later, I am still lying there, and I realise that I have exhausted the entertainment possibilities of studying the inside surface of my eyelids. They are featureless and boring";

an honest mix-up with her mobile phone nearly leads Mish to mistakenly tell someone their mother has died;

Amblongus continues to pick over the bones of the US presidential election, including this summary of what Republicans seem to think the Democrats should do over the next four years to be victorious next time round;

Phill's met Girls Aloud - "they were all five foot tall and wore tracksuits, chav chic if you will. A couple of them I must say were quite good looking, but one of them was decidedly rough I have to say (presumably she's the one that can sing)";

and Wan's been dreaming about Johnny Cash.

And finally, Secret Knowledge Of Backroads has a tall tale about a converted milk float - "With great fanfare, the whole family including, and this is true, two guinea pigs, set off for two weeks in the Lake District, a distance of fifty miles or so. Sadly they never got that far. In fact it took them three days to get as far as Garstang (Home of the World’s Biggest Onion, fact fans) where the milk float’s battery eventually gave out".