Have you ever tried...

...finding a chippy in Oxford?

No, not a carpenter... a fish & chip shop!!

Me & Becky landed in Oxford, via Stonehenge ("see, I told you it was just a big pile of rocks" ) just in time to drop our kit off and leg it in to town for a gig we'd booked to see.

We had to be at the Zodiac Club by 7:30 so taxi dude to dropped us off slap-bang in the middle of Oxford's Cowley Road. He was kind enough to point out numerous places to get food here, so we got out and strolled...

Chinese, Polish, Thai, Lebanese, Indian, Vegetarian, Cambodian, more Lebanese, Italian... there was everything in this road apart from ye goode olde English fish & chippe shoppe...

We hit the Chinese and grabbed two quick portions of HOT HOT chips, sat down and tried to enjoy them. We had eaten better, so maybe it was down to the rush and the absence of sauce. Sorry sweetheart *apologetic shrug*



The Zodiac was a nice, dingy (sp?) little club with a thin but growing & decent crowd.

First up, the barmaid wouldn't serve us until she'd finished belting out "Let's Come together... right now... ooh... over me"... and then she handed us a couple of pints of ice cold Strongbow. Nice LOL

We then endured Mike, whoever he was, doing some solo acoustic & vocal numbers... vaguely reminiscent of numerous classic ballads but all penned by himself he reckoned... yeah we believed him, I mean who else could sing a ballad about his nephew and get achingly soulful over the name Brian? Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with the name Brian, it just doesn't strike me as classic hit material... (there's a challenge for ya - gimme a list of songs with girls names in them, song title or lyrics...)

Then came up the act we'd come to see, The Casbah Club... Drummer Mark Brzezicki & guitarist Bruce Watson of my childhood heroes, Big Country, with master bassman Bruce Foxton of Stiff Little Fingers & The Jam and Simon Townshend, brother of Pete Townshend & recent member of "The Who", on guitar and vocals.

An interesting line-up they played a mix of Big Country & Jam classics with a dash of Who thrown in for good measure plus a couple of their own tracks featuring a mix of all the band styles... "In A Big Country", "Wonderland" and "Eton Rifles", "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight" (woah oh oh oh, oahoh), "Town called Malice" and a great version of "That's Entertainment"... they went down a storm. Hell, I even started getting funky with my lady (Hey, I don't dance, right! *stern look*)

We strolled down to the Cambodian take-away. This time it was Becky's choice of supper, and a proper one at that... coconut chicken curry & rice (aah, bliss) and we charmed the owners (as ever) into letting us stay and eat from the takeaway dishes with wooden forks whilst all the other drunkards got turned away. How romantic

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This post is dedicated to the memory of Stuart Adamson, RIP (1958-2001) as is Tony Butler's track Dreamboy (5.14Mb mp3)