You got salty sauce?

We have a gig tonight, and it looks like it won’t be raining whilst we are walking to the Singleton. We may even turn up looking half presentable and not like we have been fighting ducks in a pond arena where monkeys place bets on mallards and gangs of protesting shrimps are tear gassed by anchovy security forces, in a town where antelopes stand on tortoises on every street corner prophesising the Apocalypse whilst humming birds struggle to make jam from small plums, which they sell at car boot sales and church fetes.

Moles plot coups beneath giraffes’ allotments, echidnae bawl at shrew landlords after being ejected from the pub for roughing up the bush babies. They go home to beat their wives, but the house is empty and the kids have all gone. She’s gone back to her mother, who has been all alone since her husband died fighting the porcupines under the railway bridge. Next door the bees buzz about the wasps and the wasps hide under the duvet chewing on crane fly legs; they won’t open the door and won’t pick up the phone.

I’m looking forward to tonight’s gig. After the last one in the Inferno I felt we had turned a corner. Everything felt more relaxed on stage, more familiar. Tonight my aim is not to feel intimidated by any old drunks and to really burrow into each song and try to connect with whatever the inspiration for writing them was. Our new song, Any/All/Some, is sounding pretty good; itchy and tense and not a little manic. I wrote it with Monica and myself in mind, but also thinking of other friends. It’s a plea to be saved from intrusions into your life using the image of a house being invaded by various things. I’m pleased with the way it sounds, especially the guitar break in the middle which, when we get it right, is a nice bit of counterpoint between all the instruments. It has an unnerving and splintered sound to it, just like shredded nerves.

Hopefully see you all later, if you’re within range. If not, I’ll be radiating on telepathic frequency QQ so you’ll be able to pick up the gig if you meditate on the image of a triangle within a hexagon after taking a tincture of sulphur, mercury, lambsfoot, benchknee, St Alban’s Nunkle and spinach sap. Should you be assailed by galloping insanities or night-terrors then simply sacrifice a jackdaw to our Lord Beelzebub, take two aspirin and have an early night.