Blogwatch

Welcome...

The Bargain Basement - home of Lord Bargain, a co-author of football blog Cheer Up Alan Shearer (via Swiss Toni)

Boob Pencil - the site run by author / blogmeet organiser / blog commenter extraordinaire Clare Sudbery (via too many blogs to name)

Me And My CDs - the tales of one man and his ever-expanding record collection (via Paul)

Some Kind Of Drum Chick - on which Creepy Lesbo chronicles her attempts to master the drums

Trabant Driver - the blog of a Trabant enthusiast (via Skif)

Congratulations...

JonnyB, who's been having a little trouble with boilers of late, celebrates his blog's second birthday.

Meanwhile...

The wanderings of By The Sea Shore's mind take a dark turn - "It's funny how the mind works. For example, as I leant back from the loft ladder against the wall supported only by my head, my first thought was not how I and the impossibly heavy crate of LPs that I was gingerly holding above my head could make it safely back to the floor. Instead of deciding how best to ease out of an uncomfortably rigid pose without falling, I tried to work out how long it would take anyone to notice in the event of my having an incapacitating or fatal accident".

Elsewhere...

Jonathan bows the pressures of the 21st century and gets himself a mobile phone - "I didn't quite get the hang of text messaging at first - I had to call the Virgin helpline, where a very patient young man explained the reason I was 'getting more letters than I'm typing in here' was because of something called 'predictive text'. And OK, I didn't know how to do punctuation at first - and couldn't get used to the need for brevity - so my first few text messages came out as free-form, stream-of-consciousness riffs that would have been rejected by Jack Kerouac's publishers as being rambling and lacking in structure".

Swiss Toni somehow survives a James Blunt gig without shooting himself in the head - "The Force is very much with him at the moment..... why can't we just celebrate the fact that a British singer-songwriter is being so bizarrely and unexpectedly successful worldwide? Why do we have to throw stones at him because he has escaped the indie ghetto? Far better this than Westlife, I say".

Betty hands her blog over to young Jimmy Blunt's dad for some insightful comment on Junior's recent conduct - "Going cap in hand is not my usual approach, but we have been rather frozen out by heir apparent due to his choice of career. Heir apparent started out rather promisingly viz. army career, playing big part in annexing of valuable bits of Austro-Hungarian empire, but it has all gone to ground. Why, I was encouraged be some downstairs staff to watch a recent 'television programme' in which he received some 'swing music' award or another. Bally fool was wittering on about how many pretty fillies there were in the audience, AND he rather seemed to be mocking his army career".

Mike reports on an unusual night out - "Yesterday's amateur strip night at the White Swan exceeded all my expectations, chiefly due to the extraordinary performance given by 'Viola', a scrawny sixtysomething tranny from Latvia with a limited grasp of English, and indeed reality. Despite being initially received by a more or less stunned silence from the punters, by the time it came to the public vote we had all recovered our bearings enough to give her a massive, sustained ovation".

Laura finds herself ensnared in a "fart trap" - "The aroma intensified around me in an acrid invisible cloud. I spotted the pharmacist coming back to serve me".

And finally...

Mario's latest 100 word poem is 'The Metaphysics Of Error' - "Sandcastle Uproar was knot the beast proofreader anyone had ever scene, but she worked hat a hack add dim ick small press. Spel lung and gram mar is not hen exact sigh hence, she used to say, so I down try too be par fact. San Kastle had in accomadating boss who dint expect a grate deal from her and loved her scents of home mar. Thanks to San Case Sell, he said, oar press pub lushes many ink cohere ant books. Whee have a ripe pew tea shun four chill lunge ink books that reword close ink speck shun".