The horseman you have brought deserve me/Somehow they’ve made it through the floor

Friday 11 April – Back to a regular slot, and I’ll start by going slightly off piste. I’m currently part of a group helping out with a study into Second Life, particularly with regard to age-related experiences within an immersive virtual world. Whilst I haven’t reached ‘silver surfer’ status yet, I’m definitely in the grey-and-heading-that-way stage, hence my involvement. The first session was an introduction followed by setting up an avatar that was supposed to resemble our own physical images (or what we thought we looked like). Due to slight technical difficulties I was unable to create an avatar at the initial session so I took over one that the lecturer had already created, which was female (i.e. not like me at all!) I tweaked the appearance to give her a bald head and a lovely ponytail of white hair, played with the face a bit, and then dressed her in white high-heels and denim shorts. What was I thinking! After a few minutes, along came an avatar resembling a fox, but walking upright. I was exploring the gesture interface at the time and accidentally selected ‘blow kiss’. The next thing I knew our avatars were somehow entwined and I was feeling distinctly uncomfortable. I said ‘bye’ and exited. You’ll be pleased to know that I later managed to set up my own avatar that did actually look a bit like me.

Anyway, back to the main event of the day, or rather, evening, and this particular evening we were spoilt for choice. Marc Atkinson at O’Neills, DSQ at The Roman Bath, Foreplay at The Terrace, and Lights and Sounds + Lecorum at Fibbers. Now we’ve seen most of these before, so settled on a band new to us, Foreplay (named presumably because there is four of them playing or maybe because they always play support). As per usual the beer was excellent, John Smith’s cask for me, The Rook and C drinking Landlord, and A on some ‘Beir Blanc’ that looked like a glass of wee. The crowd was quite sparse and got thinner as the evening went on. I’ve no idea why. It certainly wasn’t anything to do with the band who were brilliant, knocking out covers such as: The Who (Won’t get Caught Again), The Clash (I Fought The Law) wasn’t that a cover a The Stooges number?, Thin Lizzy (Whisky In The Jar O), Steppenwolf (Born To Be Wild), Bryan Adams (Summer of ’69), Rolling Stones (Honky Tonk Woman), Guns ‘n’ Roses (Paradise City), Dylan (Knocking On Heaven’s Door), Kaiser Chiefs (I Predict A Riot), Foo Fighters (Times Like These), UFO (Doctor, Doctor), Robert Palmer (Bad Case Of Loving You), Procol Harem (White A Shade Of Pale), Moody Blues (Nights In White Satin), Tina Turner (River Deep, Mountain High), Free (All Right Now). I’d definitely watch this lot again.