The Return Of The Averagely-Sized, Brown-Fading Duke
Hello everybody. Lack of typing over the past few weeks due entirely to an accident I had with some heated rollers before Spain and all my fingers just clean burnt off. I have had to learn to manipulate the keys with my tongue. It's licky!

Damn I’ve just spent the princely sum of 79p on i-Tunes on a rollicking electro track from last year called Blink by John Dahlback, only to discover I already own it. I’m always, always doing this. What’s the one I downloaded three times? Something or other. Anyway, Blink reminds me of the dirty electro in the Bacardi tent at last year’s V, everyone thoroughly squashed in and off their faces, all the boys with red, poppers-‘n’-sunburn faces and the girls with their knockers out. From outside you could see steam billowing into the air! I do hope it’s the same this year because we’ve just been booked again and this time we’ve been given not two but four extra VIP’s in return for agreeing to do our final set as the Wifes i.e. with a bit of slap on. We’re taking my wee niece and her mate and Mez and Toby Fanny Rat - although I would be a bad uncle if I encouraged the young folks into said electro furnace of Sodom and Gomorrah. I’ll dump them on Lou or outside watching something more wholesome like Babyshambles. Mez is a huge fan of beefy Essex boys so maybe she’ll stick on a regulation Stetson and get her tits out. Maybe Toby will. Maybe we all will.

I won the football! I won the bloody fucking football! Football is ace. Football rules. What does Basil say to Polly when he wins that money on the horses? ”For once in my life I’m ahead?” - that’s me. Pulled Spain out of the hat in the work sweep on the day before we flew there – an omen - and Waz (Warren) said ”They’re going to win, Woody”. But I never win anything so couldn't steal myself to believe for even one fleeting second that they actually would. Whilst holidaying over ‘on the continent’ I paid more attention than is usual to this Euro thing. Not hard - in previous years my interest levels would have had to have been measured in minus figures. Jock, on holiday with us, had also picked Spain in his work's sweep - another omen – and I even watched a bit of one match over there, just a few seconds mind, with my lovely Uncle Philip. Couldn’t face any of the final last night, however. Fints had it on of course but it was too exciting for me and I thought I might suffer a seizure of some kind so I sat upstairs with headphones on playing The Osmonds. We opened a bottle of red wine after it ended at 1-0 and watched Glastonbury on the telly. I think it's incredible that I've actually made some money out of, football – one of the things in life that's most irritated, bemused and annoyed me over the years. Can you bet on EastEnders? I hate that too.

There’s no point in me going on for too long about the holiday, really. Nobody’s ever much interested, are they, when you get home and start distributing photos and going on about what you ate and where. But what I will say is that it was perhaps the most perfect ‘abroad’ break I’ve ever had. I was so knackered and sun-deprived before we went – really, really tired - and all I wanted was a bit of good company and to lie down near water (born under the sign of Pisces, I calm down near water) with a book and an i-Pod, feeling the hot sun pressing into my chest. We had unbroken sunshine for nine days straight, watched the lights come on over Africa at night, laughed our heads off at dinner time with Alice, Philip, Jock and Ada and drove to Cadiz again - only this time it didn’t pour down. Cadiz is fast gaining on Edinburgh in the stakes to be my favourite city of all. Alice and Philip are, have always been, such good fun and we saw a lot of them, and their mates Carol and Harvey who I love. Carol is writing a mystery about a protagonist called Kenzie Brown and Harvey was, is, known for having the biggest cock in the world. He didn't show us of course but somebody saw it after a game of squash and we're talking bollard proportions, apparently.

Gah, but remembering is hard for me: I would so like to still be there, on A and P’s sun-blasted terrace listening to Joanna Lumley’s life story on audio book (utterly brilliant - a wise woman) and rubbing lemons just fallen from the tree into my hair to blonde it up (this works, if you don’t mind the odd wasp or pips running down your face). I love Spain. There's a great picture of me in the pool I meant to post but Fints emailed it to me earlier from downstairs and it's still not here. How can this be?

I played Dave’s Lodger quite a bit on holiday. Shameless I know but I was reading Jock’s Bowie In Berlin book I bought him for his birthday haha. Over the years I’ve read quite a bit in various biogs and magazines about that 76-79 period and played the albums more times than I could count but Lodger I’ve listened to the least of all. For some time I was even actually quite down on it, considering it the poor relation to Low and Heroes which it still sort of is. But there’s still much to admire - Fantastic Voyage, for example and Boys Keep Swinging of course and Red Sails which we regularly blare out at Duckie, screeching along to ”The hinterland! The hinterland! We’re gonna sail to the hinterland!”. See, the first two albums in the 'Berlin Trilogy' always seemed more complete to me, like much more than just a bunch of songs slung together, but reading this book I finally got what he was trying to say with Lodger– the whole thing about restless travel in sunny climes, about not wanting to be a seven stone reclusive waif any longer. In my mind I came back from that holiday like LodgerDave: tanned, happy, hair cut and side-parted, a paperback in my pocket - life is the pop of a cherry.

Returned home with reluctance and I finished The Project at last. 4 months it took beginning to end - my life's work. I felt like taking off all my clothes and running out into the street when it was all over. Fints and I were reunited with kitters (Hook OK but bringing in birds, Evie moping badly and has a minor thyroid thing, Roy is too fat - somebody is obviously feeding him) and I saw Black Kids and Ladyhawke live and pissed about with Jelly at the club. I've caught up with Mary Portas on TV, decided I've gone off Britain’s Next Top Model and, like everyone else, worried about the economy and oil. Won the football yesterday and Gay Shame is this weekend, and then sis's 40th where we'll unite with good friends, past and present. Then it's the first work trip to L.A. for my new job in late-July followed by V Festival in August and, further ahead, Christmas in Scotland. For now the good vastly outweighs the bad, even if this isn't Marbella.