Non-buyer's remorse - wizard edition

The other night Cathy handed me this toy figure of a Troll made by Funko, and said: "This reminded me of you!" 

Bit harsh? Maybe. I don't mind Trolls. They're kind of cute. But what she was really saying was it reminded her of a photo she took at Greenbelt a long time ago when I was trying on a hat.

I didn't buy the hat even though it was blue and amber, making it the perfect hat to wear to Shrewsbury Town games. 

I also didn't buy it even though my nickname in the team I worked in at the time was "the word wizard". I even had a sign by my desk that my friend Matt made me. 

You might note that Matt spelled wizard with two zeds. That amused me and reminded me of Rincewind the wizard from some of Terry Pratchett's books, who had "wizzard" written on his hat.

Anyway, the troll reminded Cathy of the photo of me wearing a hat I didn't buy. I have had "non-buyer's remorse" about that hat ever since. This is the opposite of buyer's remorse when a person regrets purchasing something. This is one of the rare times when the opposite is true. 

I could have been a wizard all this time. But I didn't buy the hat.

Highlights of 2017: Seeing Midnight Oil again, 23 years on

I saw Midnight Oil play at the Greenbelt Festival in 1994. My dad wanted to go to Greenbelt, a Christian arts festival, to see what it was like. I was massively into Midnight Oil so jumped at the opportunity. I liked their meaningful politically-informed lyrics. They had some good tunes. They were Australian and that meant they were a bit different, but unlike Australian pop stars they sang about Australian issues and didn't seem to be trying to be generically likeable everywhere.

I don't remember much from that gig. I remember they had borrowed a didgeridoo player who had an artificial hand. And I remember thinking they were great.

And then life happened. They played a couple of rare gigs in London at the end of the 90s, but I didn't have the money or the wherewithal to get there. It was hard to find out what was happening with the band, pre-Internet. They weren't cool enough to get featured in NME or Melody Maker. Then the band went on hiatus. Peter Garrett, the lead singer, went into politics, getting elected to the Australian Senate and ending up as Minister for the Environment.

So, that was that, I thought. I'd seen them play live once and considered myself lucky. Other bands have come and gone who I never got to see. And if I'm honest, my musical tastes had changed. I had become slightly obsessed with the Tragically Hip, who I got into because they collaborated on a protest song with Midnight Oil back in the mid-90s. While it's sad to think you'll never see a revered band again, I kind of made my peace with it.

And then Cathy told me they had reformed and were touring again. I was very excited. Their only UK gig was in London, at the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith. Cathy bought the tickets. She also found a bargain price for the Novotel the other side of the Hammersmith flyover from the venue, and here we were, 23 years after I first saw them, off to see Midnight Oil.

The audience was mainly Australians, at least sitting around us. I was surprised when the set-list kicked off with Beds are Burning, their only real worldwide hit. They continued to play all the tracks off their biggest album, Diesel and Dust, in order, but didn't play the last track on the album, Gunbarrel Highway, which is my favourite one. So that was a tiny bit disappointing. They then kicked into a setlist of other songs, but nothing from later than Earth and Sun and Moon, the album they released in 1993. Weirdly, I could have been watching them back at Greenbelt all those years ago.

So, the big question: were they any good? Well, yeah. A bit rusty perhaps. Peter Garrett has slowed down a bit and doesn't do his trademark stuttering dance as much. He tried though, bless him.

And they made some odd choices. I'm not sure why they played Diesel and Dust like that. Maybe it's what the punters want. They also decided to do Koscziusko, one of their most driving rock songs, as an acoustic version to start with, which didn't really work and sucked all the power out of the song. They included some of the real oldies, like Stand in Line, and I really liked the way they sang Now or Never Land, but that's just a beautiful song of hope that has become ever more timely.

I was left with that strange sense of feeling really happy to have seen a band play who I never thought I would see again (and get the chance to buy two t-shirts!) and feeling wistful about the missed opportunities. Obviously, it's one of my highlights of the year, but it could have been even better than it was.

Arachnophobe

When I was a kid, my parents decided to follow their starry-eyed evangelical dreams and become missionaries, which is how I ended up in Sibanor, a little town in the Gambia. While out there we were told in no uncertain terms never to touch creepy-crawlies, never to climb trees, and never to put our hands into holes in the ground.

The prescription on tree-climbing was to prevent the most common form of snake bite - when a climbing kid put his hand on a dozing venemous snake and startled it. When I returned to this country I discovered I have no upper body strength to speak of, and I've never been able to climb trees, or for that matter ropes in the school gym.

But the worst bit of my African childhood conditioning was the fear it instilled in me about bugs and other creepy crawlies, particularly spiders. To this day I freeze involuntarily when something scuttles out from behind a cupboard, or from under a rock in the garden. I'm getting better at dealing with smaller bug-type things. I doubt I'd be trapped in my home office now by a spider in the doorway (that happened once!). But I still get a reaction when an unexpected critter suddenly makes itself known.

This evening we came home from a shopping trip and I went into the bathroom to take my contacts out. I noticed the window had been left open, so I leaned over the sink to shut it. Except that in the sink was the largest spider I have seen in years. It was easily a good three inches across if you count the legs (and I do!).

Like a big pansy, I screamed and then my conditioning took over and I just had to get out of the room. Fortunately Cathy and Abby were home, so they could deal with it. I felt a bit better listening to them from the safety of the kitchen as they agreed that actually it was quite a big spider and I wasn't a total wuss. Meanwhile I had a severe case of the heebie-jeebies and even felt like I was going to throw up.

I know being scared of spiders is illogical. But when I see one, with no warning, and it's bigger than usual, I revert to being the little kid who knows the back yard contains real nasties (like scorpions, fire ants and snakes). And it scares all the logic out of me.

On the bright side, my illogical fear does have a rational cause. At Greenbelt I met someone who was phobic about buttons. Yes, buttons. I have no idea what causes that kind of phobia.

Nizlopi @ Greenbelt

This is going back in time a couple of weeks, because since then I've seen Nizlopi play Cardiff, but here's some pics to give you an idea of what these guys are like...

Shortly before the mother ship beamed them up...















... and with added bubble ambience!