Garden City Comedy.

Tonight, I moseyed - yes: "moseyed" - along to watch a couple of Edinburgh previews performed as part of a new weekly comedy venture run by the excellent illustrator and poet Mushybees at the Dot to Dot gallery in Letchworth; how's that for a long and winding sentence?

I had a great time. The evening started in a slightly surreal way, after meeting with our IYIE co-host Stephen outside the station, when we walked into town to get something to eat at the Cultiva Lounge; a bar with an artsy, opium den air, that happens to be housed at the site of a former Argos, where I worked as a cash-strapped teenager.

(They strapped me with cash.)

"That was where the stock room used to be," I said to Stephen (and to the guy behind the bar), "and there used to be an old-fashioned lift there at the back".

Steve was interested; the barman looked bemused, wondering why I felt the need to tell him in the first place. Didn't he care that I worked there nearly twenty years ago? Are we living in the future?

The venue - a lovely little art gallery on The Wynd - made for a comfy low-fi place for a gig. The audience were small, but receptive, and the shows were great. I felt self-conscious at first - when don't I? - but a glass of red wine in the interval eased me in.

With a bit of luck, the gig will continue, and with a little more luck, I'll do a preview there myself in a few weeks. I wish Mushybees the best with the venture; now, I intend to wind down with a cup of tea and look over a script for a casting tomorrow; it's been a while.

Shakerpuppetmaker.

Have Parker from Thunderbirds and Noel Gallagher ever been seen in the same room? The resemblance is uncanny. So much so, I think something’s afoot. If my suspicions are correct, I've stumbled across a secret that will blow the music and puppet industry wide apart. In the mid-60s / mid-90s at least. It doesn’t take long to see the signposts. There’s the similarity between the name of Oasis’ first single, Supersonic, and Supermarianation, Gerry Anderson’s puppetry technique. The Gallagher brothers would often wear Parkas . Live Forever was clearly a reference to Captain Scarlet and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants to the size difference between Noel and his bandmates. The more you think about it, the more brazen it gets. It’s fishier than Area 51, Paul is Dead and JFK's assassination put together. The only glitch to the theory is scale . According to Wikipedia, Anderson’s marionettes were 1’10” and Gallagher is 5’8”. How does he maintain an illusion of avera...

'...I'm Gonna Look at You 'til My Eyes Go Blind."

Over the past week or two, I’ve been on a bit of a Sheryl Crow kick, largely thanks to rediscovering her cover of one of my most-liked Bob Dylan songs. She has one of my favourite female voices, yet despite this, I only own one CD and that’s just a single (her '97 release ‘Hard to Make a Stand’); on that basis, you can only imagine how much of her back catalogue I’d own if I hated her (it would fall into minus-figures). Dylan, conversely, takes up more of my collection than anyone else, save The Beatles and Paul McCartney’s solo work. He’s one of those artists who, when you get him, you really get him - and once I’d tuned into his style as a student, I'd time and again be blown away by his lyrics; he’ll have more jaw-dropping imagery in one track than other people fit in a whole career. These days, I mostly listen to music in the morning when getting ready, and more often than not, this will consist of a suggested YouTube playlist when I’m in the bath, r...

Stevenage: A (Tiny) River Runs Through it.

If ever a river was mis-sold, it’s the Roaring Meg in Stevenage. I just walked past it on my way to the retail park that has taken its name. They’re similarly uninspiring. The river is less of a roar and more of a dribble; cystitis sufferers produce greater flow. The retail park is soulless. What was once a thriving enterprise is nearly devoid of atmosphere, save an underlying essence of emptiness and despair. With a Toys R Us. When it was first built I was excited. Back then, the thought of a bowling alley, an ice rink, a Harvester and a Blockbuster Video within a small surface area was enticing. I celebrated many birthdays on site. There was an indoor cricket pitch there for a while where I once had a joint party with a friend. Why someone with an almost pathological fear of sport would agree to such a venture is beyond me, but I did it. Now, there’s very little at the Roaring Meg of note. The river would be a metaphor for the shopping ce...

mostly david ephgrave

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