I saw Beak. It's the bloke from Portishead and two other blokes. The audience was blokes and a few missuses. Someone in Manchester's tag is "Bloke", you can see it up the stairs outside the car park next to Retro Bar. It's a good word. Onstage behind them were two fixed spotlights, which mostly stayed on, so mostly what the room in front of me looked like was black man-shapes and hairy white outlines and a few pink glowing ears, dancing slowly. They were good, the band, and the ears, and the beers, there were free beers at the end, because it's the time of year it is.
I was evaluated, during an evaluation week, which was two days in France with a day's travel either side. The conclusion was: you are very suitable but you have not got the job. I wish they'd told me that before I gave up the Crooked Vultures ticket I had, to attend. I never told them of this wounding and hilarious sacrifice. There's lessons everywhere. Tomorrow I might give up a free ticket to the moon so I can attend a painting-white-lines-with-your-bollocks recruitment weekend, if only I could find out where it's happening.
