In Sainsburys yesterday I trudged the aisles, daydreaming slightly, and ended up staring at the catfood. I don’t have a cat, and I’m not interested in cooking up penne catfood or catfood a l’orange, but I did find myself attracted to the packaging of a particular brand. It had divided its range into two: food either for “playful livewires” or for “spirited adventurers”. I see myself more as a spirited livewire, with bursts of playful adventuring, so it wouldn’t have been any good for me in any case. I’ve demonstrated my playful adventuring over the last few days by humping my belongings from one end of the flat to the other, in order for carpet fitters and plasterers to weave their unique brands of magic on the floors and ceilings respectively. In the midst of the chaos a Chinese chap arrived; he had won my old television on eBay. We shared no common language, but it became clear that he wanted me to demonstrate the TV’s teletext capabilities. I turned it on. Saturday afternoon. The only teletext that seemed to be active was a stuttering, mis-spelt darts commentary. My Chinese friend didn’t seem impressed, but hey, I’m only responsible for the TV set, not British broadcasting as a whole. Imagine if I was. Brrr.

Talking of British broadcasting, last night 4 members of Scritti Politti jumped into a “luxury splitter van” (I don’t know why I’m putting that in quotes, other than it looks ridiculous without) and went to Birmingham, to play live on Janice Long’s Radio 2 show. To our considerable delight, we were playing in the room where The Archers is recorded, and we were surrounded by doors, cutlery and a number of other sound-effect tools, including an impressive range of doorbells:

We were brought an impressive range of sandwiches, and a less impressive selection of bottled waters, and then we played 3 songs while Janice sat 3 feet away, bobbing up and down and singing along enthusiastically. Dave, our multi-talented keyboard player and percussionist, was filling in on bass as Alyssa is still away on a lengthy antipodean trip; during Snow In Sun he got “the fear”, started shaking slightly, stopped playing, and started staring at his knees. Fortunately the rest of us didn’t follow suit. Poor Dave – he subsequently endured a journey home laced with jocular teasing, although we soon tired of it, and instead started composing a letter to Bob Marley. Yes, I know he’s dead, but his choice of reverb on the CD we were listening to had disappointed our engineer, Andy, and it seemed worth making the effort. “Dear Mr Wailer,” it began. I can’t remember how the rest of it went.