The Unwritten Rule

I have to bike today. The unwritten rule says a minimum of two bikes a week. That’s a self-imposed rule but in any case I’m going stir crazy in the car this week. So far the traffic has been worse than horrendous both days. Naturally the weather isn’t going to co-operate and make things easy. It’s hellishly windy and wet too, although the rain is actually quite light, just hurled around at storm force. I arrive at work very windswept; cobwebs well and truly blown off.

I also upset MD a touch when I cycled off past him; apparently he took some calming down after that. Oh yes, by the way, discussion done, in fact operation booked. A bit of an early Xmas present for him. He’s booked in for a couple of week’s time on a Friday, to give him the weekend to recover. SO he’ll need carrying to the pub that night; that is unless we can get him a little wheelchair or something.

In today’s NME they list the Top 50 albums of the last decade. Not that it had occurred to me that we were ending a decade; it doesn’t seem that long since the end of the last one. That millennium thingy. Of course it would be going over old disputed ground to point out that a millennium actually contains a 1000 years and not 999 as they assumed at the end of 1999 and we all celebrated the new millennium a year early. This though, has relevance here and was perhaps why I didn’t think we’re at the end of a decade because we’re not. The end of the decade is the end of next year, not this year or am I just being pedantic. No matter they’ve already given the accolade to The Strokes' ‘Is This It’. Which is exactly the sort of album you’d have expected NME to give the accolade to. That is if they weren’t going to give it to the Libertines, which they nearly did, as it came in at number two.



There are lots of omissions I could mention but none jumps out at me as much as that there’s no Kings Of Leon. Ok I’m biased but really, not even one album in the top 50!

NME's Top Albums Of The Decade

1. The Strokes - Is This It
2. The Libertines - Up The Bracket
3. Primal Scream - XTRMNTR
4. Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
5. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever To Tell
6. PJ Harvey - Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea
7. Arcade Fire - Funeral
8. Interpol - Turn On The Bright Lights
9. The Streets - Original Pirate Material
10. Radiohead - In Rainbows

I have three quarters of the top ten in one form or another but I’m not sure I’d put any of them on my own list. It’s not even my favourite Interpol album, although obviously their most famous one.

The wind blows me home, which is a damn sight easier than cycling into it this morning.

In the evening, L lets me go out for a meal with thirteen women with just one other chap and somebody's teenage son to balance the scales of sexual equality. Yep, it's the dog club night out. In fact it's the dog club Xxxxxxmas party. Talk about early.

I’m late arriving because I attempt to use public transport which is horrendously late. In fact all the buses seem late tonight. The supposed real time electronic signs kept referring to ghost buses where they counted down the minutes to their ‘arrival’, announced them as ‘due’ and then scrubbed them off the board without any of them actually turning up. At least not until much later.

The meal is a curry, which is fine by me but isn’t very Chrismasy and the women, as you'd expect, even swiped all the after dinner chocolates before us few men had chance to move.

I slip a chunk of naan into my pocket to take home for L. I’m always thoughtful like that. If she doesn’t fancy cold naan covered in pocket fluff I'm sure the dogs will oblige in disposing of it.