Five Great Pink Lobsters
Apart from being brilliant from a musical perspective, Homegame was brilliant for a great many other reasons. One of which was seeing semi-official Toad photographer Dylan walking around glowing like a well-spanked arse throughout Sunday.
How did this happen? Well, sleeping spots were at something of a premium over the weekend, and Mrs. Toad and I hosted well over a dozen people, spread between two tiny and massively over-populated cottages in the town of Pittenweem. This was all very well, except that on Saturday night, after a prolonged and somewhat industrial drinking session, we acquired a couple of hangers-on. Dylan, having departed to spend the evening with a couple of other friends of ours, returned to the cottage he was supposed to be staying in to find the floor entirely covered in bodies. Seeing as how he’s actually far more sensitive and nice than you would think, given he reads this pish every day, he didn’t just hoof out the interloper or decide to sleep on top of him, no he spent the night wandering the streets of the East Neuk and eventually fell asleep on the beach in Anstruther.
This would have been fine, of course, apart from the fact that it was gloriously, joyously sunny on Sunday. So much so that a certain gentleman of leeky persuasion spent the entire day with a face as red as our little simian friend in the picture. And there was much tittering. There’s nothing quite so funny as the misfortune of your friends, is there, for some reason. Maybe it’s just gratitude that it was them, not you, who was made to suffer.
I bumped into ex-lurker Dan at Sneaky Pete’s on Wednesday at the Casiotone gig, which was really nice, so do feel free to follow his example and emerge from the woodwork. You don’t have to make any sense or be all that witty or anything, you just have to fill in your five and then natter about total horse manure with the rest of us. And come to Yusuf Azak and Enfant Bastard at Sneaky Pete’s tonight, because it will be brilliant.
1. Beetroot – pickled, roasted, not at all..?
2. Worst sunburn you’ve had.
3. Ever fallen asleep somewhere inappropriate.
4. What is your activity of choice at the beach.
5. Ever cooked a lobster alive?
The Avett Brothers – At the Beach
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Eilen Jewell – Too Hot to Sleep
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Elvis Perkins – While You Were Sleeping
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Maximillian Hecker – Sunburnt Days
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1. Roasted with fuck-tons of garlic
2. It’s the classic foot burn scenario for me I think, quite some time ago on a family holiday to Cyprus
3. Lots of places. I once woke up in a complete strangers conservatory somewhere in Cornwall after consuming HUGE quantities of gin
4. Cricket
5. No.
1. all of it…i love beetroot….tho not to the same extant as my brother who used to have beetroot and salad cream sarnies…..yak
2. my first ever t-in-the park….wearing shorts and it was a red hot day, put sun cream every where apart from my legs…..sore is all you need to know
3. at an Occasional Flickers soundcheck…..thought i’d got away with it….Bart told me otherwise.
4. making sandcastles.
5. no, and i’ve never cooked one to death either.
The conservatory was at the back of their house, and I was in no way invited in from what I remember – I don’t really remember anything, so maybe I was rescued. I woke up and left before I encountered anyone, it was very disconcerting.
Tim – anything with “fuck-tons of garlic” is good, so I second your No.1.
2. Went home, boasted about never getting sunburnt, lay in sun reading all day, stayed indoors for rest of week with massively sore shoulders. What a cock.
3. Not sure actually. Although I once overslept when I was supposed to be in a meeting in Inverness, and so missed the whole thing. When they came to pick me up for the drive up there, my colleagues tried phoning me and ringing the bell, but to no avail. I was so sound asleep that when I did finally wake, when they called me from Inverness itself, all I could think to say was ‘Wha..? Huh..? What time is it where you are?’ What a prannet.
4. Reading. It’s about the only place I can make time to read at the moment.
5. I cooked a live lobster once, except I didn’t have a big enough pot. Consequently I had to shove it into a wok and hold it down with a plate, whilst poking its constantly escaping limbs back in with a wooden spoon. I was a relieved man when the little blighter finally stopped struggling. Tasty though. We called him Leonard.
Chutters – what woke you up, the thunderous noise of their guitar play?
1. I really like beetroot, so any way is good.
2. Ft. Lauderdale a few years ago. Colleague & I sat in the shade by the hotel pool for an hour. By the time I returned to my room I was a 5’11″ blister with nothing but white t-shirts clean to wear
3. During sex once. Very late, quite drunk, warm room. ’nuff said.
4. sunbathing with a newspaper or book
5. Murderer.
1. Pickled. (like matthew’s liver)
2. On the tops of the feet too – Foolishly forgot to put sunscreen on them for a very overcast day at the beach. Said beach was in south Texas in May though so being overcast means bugger all.
3. Aunt & Uncle’s dinner table half-way through the main course. I was massively jet-lagged in my defence, but it didn’t stop me getting a faceful of mashed potato and gravy.
4. Frisbee & drinking lots of wine.
5. No
1. Not at all, although some did sneak into those blade-of-beef bar snacks we had at the Wark the other day, and it wasn’t as boke-envoking as I was expecting.
2. Oh, and while I’m thinking about it, fuck off!
3. Apart from the beach at Anstruther? I fell asleep during Gladiator, The Phantom Menace and Scream 12 or whichever hopeless sequel it was. At the cinema. Because they were all shite.
4. I refer the honourable gentleman to the response I gave for question 2.
5. Yep. That screaming noise they make isn’t actually screaming, it’s just steam escaping from the tiny gaps in the joints of their shells.
Thanks for the shout out, Matthew. Was good to meet you. Good gig, too.
1. pickled, but any way is fine. Beetroot is possibly the most underrated…root.
2. Gran Canaria, 2003(ish). Brutal burn, couldn’t go spend the day at the waterslides with everyone else. Sad day.
3. I don’t tend to fall asleep easily in odd places. I’m one of those babies who needs a nice bed, dark, no noise, etc. Can’t sleep in cars or planes. Lame, I know.
4. Beach football is good, any sport really; with beer.
5. Not lobsters, but crabs. Mmm.
1. Roasted.
2. Full face and torso after falling asleep at the beach. Took the precaution of positioning myself in the shade of a tree. Sun moved though, the bastard.
3. Fell asleep on a bed at the end of a party in a very large house once. Woke up on a different bed (same house), no recollection of what happened in between.
4. Reading is good; though I have to admit to preferring a view of the beach from under the shade of an adjacent palm tree, rather than actually being on the beach under the hurty rays of the sun.
5. Nope.
I prefer crab to lobster.
Fresh crab on crusty brown bread drizzled with olive oil and a couple of drops of Tabasco.
Oh yes.
Am rather thankful for my wee caravan after hearing about Dylan’s plight!
1. Raw, no vinegar.
2. Has happened at T in the park a couple of times but the worst in recent memory was after a rare sunny day in Donegal when I was out on a boat without a hat or suncream at hand – my balding bonce was indeed a beetroot beacon for a long while after.
3. During a T-Rextacy gig (T rex cover band obviously) at what used to be the Venue on Calton Rd.
4. Someone had to say sex – though preferably not in Dubai.
5. No, I couldn’t stand the guilt.
1. Pickled, with peri-peri sauce. Slightly nauseating, but utterly compelling while you’re eating it.
2. As an exceptionally fair child I always had paranoia parents to apply gobs of sunscreen, hats, t-shirts, etc. Currently I shun our mother star, which saves on sunscreen.
3. Nope. Kicked a friend out of her own bed once while sleeping. She didn’t seem to mind.
4. Cricket’s quite fun for the occasional times I risk exposure to sun, sea and sand.
5. In the words of DrunkCountry: “Murderer.”
1. Pickled on a sandwich
2. Was in Spain, fell asleep and my whole back was covered. A few days later it pealed in the shape of Africa
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=68116&op=17&o=global&view=global&subj=513623526&id=513364465
3. Went to London and woke up on a bouncy castle
4. Looking for beasties in rock pools
5. no
Dav’s on to a complete winner with his no. 4 – looking for beasties in rock pools is great.
Cheers Tim, although I’m sure you’ll agree I was a complete loser with no. 2
1. pickled. one of my favourite things in the world.
2. yes the feet are the worst. went to bennicassim last year and got totally cooked.
3. loads. woke up once on someones kitchen counter while some people were eating breakfast at thier kitchen table. also fell asleep once during the orientation meeting on the first day at work at a new job. also somehow managed to fall asleep while standing up counting a wad of £20 notes. when i woke up my boss was standing looking at me in utter disbelief.
4. reading. drinking. frolicking. all at once.
5. nope.
dav you look a bit special in that pic.
1. Mmmmmmmmmmm roasted beetroot
2. In recent years – on Barra. My lower legs puffed up like someone had taken a bicycle pump to them. I still had ‘old ladies’ ankles’ (where there’s a crease between the end of your leg and the top of your foot) weeks later. Niiiice.
3. In a car chair beside a bonfire in a squatted railway arch in London, while an Archaos party was going on. How the hell I slept through that I’ll never know.
4. Beasties in rock pools, above, is pretty much ideal, but even better is running into huge breakers, swimming for about 5 seconds, running out, frozen to the bone, getting warmed by the sun and starting all over again. Preferably with some suitably hysterical friends.
5. No. Too squeamish.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=68116&op=17&o=global&view=global&subj=513623526&id=513364465
When you said it looked like Africa I was expecting something that would have inspired Toto to write a soft-rock classic!
I caught the sun up in An – struther
1. Pickled beetroot with cheshire cheese in sandwiches. Mmm mmm.
2. I did an orienteering race at the top of a not unsizeable mountain in Austria in September. We’d been advised it could be pretty horrendous and turned up with thermals, hats, gloves etc etc, only to find it was a glorious day, over 30 degrees C. I raced in my sports bra and the pieces of skin that peeled off my back three days later could have been used to make some kind of cool sports bra template thing for modern art. Ouch.
3. In the linen cupboard at a hotel in Aviemore, after working a 15 hour shift on Easter Sunday.
4. Never been much of a beach person, but a book would probably keep me fidget free for a while.
5. Nope. Terrifying, frankly.
“Aunt & Uncle’s dinner table half-way through the main course. I was massively jet-lagged in my defence, but it didn’t stop me getting a faceful of mashed potato and gravy.”
Ian wins thread!
Dylan – I think it’s spelled ‘boak’. Not that either of us is a native speaker.
Dan – footie on the beach is great, but I weigh 14 stone. Dragging my blubbery carcass about on the sand lasts all of five minutes before asthmatic wheezing sets in and I am desperate for a beer.
Milo – what caused you to fall asleep at T in the Park, the beer or the woefully sub-dadrock lineup?
Michael – are you sure you aren’t narcoleptic?
Well I was trying to compose an entire lyric about Homegame to the tune of Africa by Toto.
Now I’m just hopelessly distracted by the thought of Becky running about in a sports bra.
Typical!
Pervert. Leave the poor lass alone.
1: In soup.
2: My ninteenth birthday. I had an appraisal at work that day and my boss decided to do it outside.
3: Under a bridge by the water of Leith.
4: FISHING! Natch.
5: No, but my gran one did. She started with a cold pan of water, much to the displeasure of the lobster.
matthew its funny you s
“When you said it looked like Africa I was expecting something that would have inspired Toto to write a soft-rock classic!”
It hasn’t peeled in this pic.
“matthew its funny you s”
What are you talking about?
Matthew, T in the Park was sunburn incident, T-rextacy was falling asleep incident.. both coincedentally begin with the letter T, not sure why..
T in the park used to have nae bad line-ups by the way, have seen some decent bands there in my time but not been for a while now due to the generally woeful line-ups of recent years.
I was there in ’95 when the headliners were Radiohead and Pulp. That rocked!
1. Pickled in large quantities
2. As a kid picking berries all day. Sore sore shoulders!
3. Don’t really fall asleep if i am not in a bed, but there were a few uni lectures.
4. jumping over waves
5. Couldn’t do it, i watched some Langoustines being cooked live, poor little buggers
Am I the only person who person who hates beetroot?
It’s like invasion of the fucking bodysnatchers round here.
1. i like beetroot. not sure of the various ways of having it though. so i just like it.
2. i don’t think i burn easily so i can’t remember ever having sunburn.
3. amsterdam train station. not advisable.
4. swimming in the sea! more likely jumping in the waves. also trying to spot the sharks that swim amongst us without us ever knowing.
5. i don’t like seafood. lobster being one of my least favourite dishes. i do however like the episode of the simpsons with homers lobster pinchy. genius.
milo – woeful line ups or influx of all of scotlands neds!?
Euan, JC from the Vinyl Villain calls it Nedstock, which is brilliant.
i’ve been to T-in-the park for 3 out the last 4 years…..never paid always via work….and it’s good fun….however this year the line up is pish….and yes the neds do get slightly on you nerves
““matthew its funny you s”
What are you talking about?”
dav i was trying to be witty about my supposed narcolepsy.
im sorry if i confused you.
I got it.
1. Pickled, if at all.
2. I ended up in casualty in cyprus with blisters the size of eggs on the back of my legs when I was 12. The doctor burst them with a syringe before bandaging me up and the nurse gave me a box of sterile dressings to bite down on during.
3. Beside a canal in amsterdam/in a bus shelter at 6am on crow road in glasgow.
4. running into the sea going “aaaaaa” through the icy waves
5. nope.
aaaaaah, apology accepted
haha, i like that. the whole ned factor always turns me off t in the park. that and the rubbish line ups. also, i just saw a something about DCs radio show and can I just say that The Seal Cub Clubbing Club is a genius, genius name for a band.
But a fucker to say sober or pished.
yeah thats always been one of my favourite band names along with ‘joan of arse’ and ‘the fucking champs’
i always liked subbuteo pitch invasion….though i don’t know if they ever got anywhere and i never heard them live.
1. Roasted, pickled, whatever – love the stuff.
2. The other year got sunstroke at the Open Golf at Troon – really ill on the way home and overnight. I know, I know, what do you expect when you do THAT for leisure and pleasure.
3. Not for many, many years
4. Managing to read about two paragraphs of the paper before being harangued into childcare and child entertainment.
5. Er, no.
1. Soup
2. I burn very easily, so tend to avoid strong sunlight at all times.
3. On a train. On the way to funeral, thus missing the service. I was hungover. It’s not my proudest moment.
4. Drinking
5. No. But it always reminds me of that scene in Annie Hall. You know the one. (Except for you Matthew, as you have terrible taste in films.)
I saw Buck 65 at T in the Park. That was good. Asides from that, it’s a gash-fest.
Finished. I’m a fuckin’ genius I am.
We took the bus northbound into Fife,
Listening to random locals’ mobile conversations.
Hungover, hanging onto life,
Only the dream of Homegame beckoning us on towards salvation.
We stopped in Leven on the way,
Wishing the backseat neds would all fuck off with their crazy frog melodies.
My iPod turned up all the way, The Pictish Trail is waiting there for you!
I’m gonna drink a lot and listen to folk and loops
With guitars and a drum machine and bleeps and bloops.
I caught the sun up in Anstruther.
Gonna have some fish n’ chips then do it all over again…
1. Roasted with salt and cumin and eaten with the leaves steamed and maybe with some goat’s cheese
2. I burnt the back of my neck so badly one time that I was sick for three days and managed to convince myself that I was about to develop skin cancer.
3. In the classroom in the middle of a lesson. One of the things I used to do a lot but haven’t done for a while was to fall asleep in the middle of a sentence whilst reading to my kids – I’d be reading quite happily and suddenly start mumbling nonsense with my chin falling down onto my chest
4. Kite flying, paddling, frisbee, cricket, lying and reading if I get the chance but I don’t usually get the chance.
5. I’m told the thing to do is to stick them in a freezer for a few hours first. I’ve boiled one alive once (why does some way of killing things involve ‘doing it alive’? Burnt / buried / boiled… is it a ‘B’ thing?) and very lovely it was too. But I also prefer crab, to be honest.
That’s an interesting point actually, Adam. Why do certian methods of killing things involve doing it ‘alive’?
No-one says that someone slaughtering cattle for meat “compressed-air-powered-bolt-gun-to-the-side-of-the-heads them alive”, do they?
dylan – new low.
Which one? The cattle slaughtering thing or the rip-off of Africa?
pickled, next favr would be roasted
FLA – moved there in my childhood from the great white north and was totally unprepared for an entire day at the local pool. The lifeguard sent me home around 2:00 when I began to turn purple, spent four days indoors with sun poisoning wherein one cannot even eat or stand upright. Thanks mom!
Cicero – in the 80s, not the place a young 20 something should really wakeup after a night drinking with 30 year old policemen. And no, sneaking their badges out of their pants pockets before THEY wake is not an appropriate way of remembering their
names either.
Swimming
Crabs
That is, big giant blue crabs off the East coast of the US and they squeal horribly
xoxo,
Tart – whose iPhone cut her off rather abruptly
I was concerned you were in a bit of a grump, today, Tart.
Glad to hear it was just the iPhone not cooperating.
Oh and as for sleep fuckers, I had one for awhile, no not you DC darlin, who regularly knocked boots while completly sound asleep and would only briefly awake at the er, moment of impact, and hardly remember the next morning how he had pillaged me the night before. It was great at the time but a bit insulting to be so un-memorable
a friend of mine has just come back from the USA and brought me a nodding doll of Obama….now i keep looking up and thinking there the President of the US is standing staring at me…..it’s at the correct level/angle to look like he has just come through the office door
Me? Aww Dylan, nice to have you looking after me again, been missing you, you beet-hater xxx
i have no idea at all what you’re going on about
hold on i think i may have got it……i was being naive
why does today feel nothing like a fucking friday!
Yes Tom, we are legion and we know what you’re doing at work.
1) Roasted. No pickled. Don’t make me choose.
2) My wife and I go to the beach most weekends. The trains allow us to leave after four or six hours. My wife is hispanic and rather prone to saying “Oh, we’ll be fine”. Which she invariably is. I on the other hand… So in summary my worst sunburn was, the first year of marriage.
3) I have a folding bed in a store room at work. Also the back of the theatre during rehearsals I’m not involved in.
4) Reading. Wiffle Ball. It’s like baseball but with hollow plastic so you can’t hurt anyone. Also catch. Again baseball themed. And beach naps. Such a refreshing sleep.
5) Nope.
RCC
Because we all have to work all weekend. Longer days that 9-5pm.
Just my guess.
I beg to differ, Ben.
Ben, see that monkey in the picture…?
That’s Dylan, that is.
Oh Dylan. Sunscreen is your friend.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdGj-FVxOcs&feature=PlayList&p=BBF1DD10ADAE1F7D&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=8
I appreciate the advice, Ben, but if I had had the forethought to carry sunscreen, I would have made sure that no random fucker slept in my place in the cottage in the first place!!
oh D. it really has amused me no end this week. you’re a shining light for us all. literally.
You could have dragged him out into the street by his stupid fucking rat’s tail of a braid. No-one would have minded.
That was a stupid fucking braid in his stupid fucking blond hair, wasn’t it?
oh you are all fighting talking now……..nearly a week later
Well Dylan did say, quite reasonably, that he might have been a close friend of someone’s, so he didn’t want to be too aggressive.
Soft bugger.
Pint?
i want a pint!!!!!
You know where to come, fannybaws.
I’m in the Wark now. Using my phone to post on Song By Toad. Because I’m on my fucking own!
Come on people!
Better late than never….
1. Boiled and warm, what is it with beetroot on the Friday five? It always seems to crop up (no pun intended there)
2. I went to Zante when I was 17 when no one had heard of it and before they decided to relocate Blackpool there. Anyway, I spent all day paddling in the sea straddling a reflective lilo and burnt my arse so badley i couldnt sit down for days. My sun stroke was so bad that I passed out in the hotel bar before I’d even had a drink, I had an awsesome tan to go home though. So shallow.
3. Too many to recall, ask Dyl, I can literally fall asleep anywhere. Woke up in a hotel lobby once with only one shoe which was very confusing.
4. Strangely enough paddling on the lilo, whilst wearing factor 35.
5. No, but I’d like to as I’ve heard they scream.
Thank you Matthew for making me absolutely laugh out loud at the story about Dylan above. Misfortune is even funnier when it’s your big brothers. I need to go now and howl with laughter…
1. Since arriving in the UK I’ve discovered that everything seems to be pickled in vinegar here, including beetroot. Ruins it completely I think. Only with its natural juices, thanks.
2. My whole face peeled off after a day at the Royal Melbourne Air Show. I’m wild.
3. I find it hard enough to fall asleep in my own bed, let alone somewhere in appropriate.
4. Usually lying on it, though I’m not sure I’d attempt it over here. What’s with all the pebbly beaches? Not at all comfortable to lie on!
5. Well come to think of it…no. I really must get out more.
oh late and beered up a bit
1) On Sunday dinner
2)Death (almost) in Goa after a coconut oil body massage on the beach. Think fried scampi (in blood), it was a bad 5 days that followed
3)Under a bed, to wake with £300 in my pocket not knowing where i was or where it had come from and scared to reappear
4)Body boarding onto it with a huge whumph
5) I picked a live one out of a tank once and handed it to the chef in a very look how fuckin rich and westernised I am sort of a way. Bloody gorgeous it was too
1. Beetroot -not a massive fan, but like it as part of vegetable chips
2. Worst sunburn you’ve had – on one occasion (on holiday in Dorset, of all places) I got a patch that was about the size of henry Rollins’ Search and Destroy tattoo
3. For about half a second on the M8 motorway
4. Reading…not really a beach person, attention span is just way too short
5. No
I’ve not met Dylan, but if I ever do I really does hope he looks like the picture
A teensy red car? Odd, I’d have to say, but we all have our preferences then.
Cogstar, that’s just what he looks like, actually. That monkey is an actual picture of him from Homegame.