Ridiculous number of links for such a short entry

A couple of months ago I paid a visit to Trinity Buoy Wharf, to have a look at Faraday's Experimental Lighthouse and the Container City. I even took some pictures, about which I completely forgot until this afternoon when I was uploading some pictures of a scarecrow advertising a beer festival. So I uploaded those as well, and wrote some stuff about them instead of doing it here, as it seemed far too much fuss to do it any other way.

First the endless re-runs of the bloke in Beijing with the Michael Phelps cut-out, and now...

Scott Niblett out of Yo La Tengo, there.

I am who I am because of overpriced afters

Perhaps the most important thing to have happened while my computer wasn't working - well, apart from spilling orange juice on my keyboard and having to get this new one that I can't quite get used to, and that thing where I couldn't breathe properly, and the BBC having four interactive channels but somehow still seeming to cover less of the Olympics than usual because of their relentless focus on this 'Team GB' shit (and if I ever find whoever was responsible for coining this 'Team GB' thing I'm going to find a suitable alley and then kick their face off in it) (*) and the pie and mash shop closing down and my brief but intense affair with famous [name withheld on lawyers' advice] and the unbelievably odd thing that happened yesterday afternoon except that that happened after my computer was working again, are recent Dagenham-based developments in the pop world that I feel are necessary to bring to wider attention.


Yes, I know it's not very clear. Look, I was on a bus, it was a gloomy day, the camera on my phone isn't very good.

Anyway, I had seen boards advertising these monumental events about the place, but had found more appealing entertainment for the day elsewhere. However, the notion of either the Sugababes or Status Quo playing a gig in a park in Dagenham isn't necessarily an unlikely development. I'm not sure either band would necessarily approve of the support acts - I don't know how things stand between the Quo and David Essex, but I can't imagine that they'd approve of either Showaddywaddy or the Bay City Rollers, and as I haven't heard of any of the people supporting the Sugababes and have no inclination to seek them out I have no idea whether they were appropriate or not.

No, what concerns us here if the bit across the top of each banner informing us that it's our "last chance to see them live". Which is odd, as I'd have thought that at the very least a mention of the imminent split of either of these would have rated a mention on the Entertainment page of Ceefax, and yet I hadn't seen mention of either. I'm aware from No Rock that the Sugababes are more a business arrangement than a band, but then who's going to break up a successful business during an economic downturn? And Status Quo are plainly going on until them and their fans are all dead, unless that's what the organisers were betting on.

Of course, it could just as easily be explained by the line 'Buy one ticket get one FREE" that appeared elsewhere on the board.

(The next banner along, just before one for a farmer's market, was for the Offset Festival, whose primary attraction has been deemed to be Fightstar. Hey ho.)

(*) When I started this post the other day - yes, I know, I came back to this later and still thought it was a good idea, there's desperation for you - I thought the low-point of the coverage would be Gabby Logan sneering at some Bulgarian athlete for wearing a lot of make-up, apparently in the belief that we'd forgotten her Halloween-esque appearance in her latter ITV days. However, this was topped tonight when three minutes of the hour of the main highlights programme were given over to a man walking around with a life-size cut-out of Michael Phelps and people taking pictures of it. 57 minutes or so to show the best bits from 28 different events and we get this. Well done to everyone involved. Probably win an award for that.

Sucrose

I'm sat waiting to have my hair cut. I'm feeling oddly uncomfortable. This has nothing to do with my impending haircut, because I've been having my hair cut in the same place for about 16 years now. The person who will be cutting my hair has done it on several occasions in the past, and I'm fairly certain that I don't have the nits. There is nothing to worry about. No, what's troubling me are the people sat on either side of me. Because there are some curious dynamics going on and, well, I find this sort of thing slightly distressing.

On my immediate right sits an old woman. Next to her sits a man of about my age, maybe a few years younger. Now, I can't recall the last time my mum came along with me when I had my hair cut; I was probably about 11 or so. I cannot see a reason as to why he's brought (presumably) his mum along; they speak only once, in voices so hushed that I can hear no more than a murmur. Why is she here? It's all slightly creepy.

On my immediate left sits a fat kid with a bumfluff moustache. He's about 14 or 15 or so, I'd guess. Next to him sits a girl of a similar age; she's not his sister, as she asks where his mum is, and she seems too cute to be with him in any other capacity. I'd presume that they have some sort of friendship, except she seems quite savvy and he seems like an idiot, and I can't see that she'd tolerate him for long enough to talk to for more than a couple of minutes let alone go with him when he has his hair cut. I can't imagine that there's any sort of sweet-natured adolescent relationship going on, because for a start if she was interested in such things she could do a lot better than him, and besides which young women of that age are interested in fat kids? I know they weren't when I was 15, and I can't imagine that the bumfluff moustache would swing it in his favour; if anything I'd imagine that would be a minus point.

While the fat kid is having his hair cut a woman comes in with two kids; she knows the woman who's about to cut my hair, thus saving me having to make smalltalk with the woman cutting my hair, which I always find slightly awkward due to my total social inadequacy, and I nod along and laugh at their chat about the undesirability of X-Factor contestants being allowed to have children. One of the kids is cocky and looks as if he should appear in adverts and complains about being there and is generally hateful; the other is slightly chubby but seems otherwise cheerful enough. The cocky one sits in a chair and tries to read a newspaper, but somehow contrives to fall off the chair. He then starts blubbing. I try not to laugh, and get away with it by thinking about the pie and mash shop being closed.

Will there ever be a rainbow?

Yes. There's one now, in fact. (Possibly two; I'm not sure if two rainbows at the same time counts as two rainbows or one rainbow or what.) Well, a few days ago, anyway. If only my computer had been working, and I'd been bothered to leave the flat instead of taking the picture from through the window making it less murky and the yellow even more, well, yellow-y than it is here.