Manchester England England...

...across the Atlantic sea, and I'm not really a genius genius at all, having insisted the locals show me that fancy folding bridge which turns out to be in Newcastle. Never mind, still managed to do a lightening tour of the town including the Urbis Centre seen here. At the foot of this perspex wedge lurks a Gloom of Goths, huddled from the wind in dark corners, exchanging blood and Bauhaus bootlegs or whatever it is Goth youth do. Manc teens in general cram the streets and crowd onto the Metro at every stop. Knife faced girls and bullet headed boys, filled with lead and powder, primed to go off if you so much as look at them. Back in suburbia, I've perfected the glassy smile which accompanies the act of 'looking at photographs.' I have seen Christmas pictures and wedding pictures and holiday pictures, I think I may even have seen someone's holiday pictures after their Christmas wedding. Kodak need not panic that people aren't printing their pictures anymore. Rest assured this practice is alive and well and being sustained single-handedly by my loved one's family (Can a group of people sustain something single- handedly? They can now)

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Roboten

God bless this little fella, fair warmed me cockles he did ha ha not at all, especially when I was curtly informed 'he' was a she called PaPeRo. Her master kept whispering enticements into her aural cavity and she would squeal delightfully and stagger around her platform like a dipsomanic dwarf. This machine is a bitter disappointment for those (of us) hoping to put their feet up and allow robots to take over the world. Sure you can phone her up and watch through her eyes while neighbourhood kids steal your stereo. You can get her to talk to your fridge to determine whether you're low on milk, but it's hardly 'Rise of the Machines' is it? I want lasers, piercing the night with their death dealing light. Random blades popping out of secret compartments to hack arteries and dismember fulish humans that bend down and say 'Oooh, how cute.' She also sounds like a Manga school girl, and that's just sick man, sick sick sick. Any fule knows robots speak in single cadent bursts of electronic loathing of the 'Exterminaaaaaaaaaate!' nature. They sure as shiz don't burble 'Konichiwa!' and chuckle. Babies chuckle, robots destroy.

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Heidi hi

Nothing like a corporate piss-up to get you within spittin' distance of a b-list babe like luvli Heidi (The pretty one) from the ever evolving girl band that is the Sugababes. No doubt the girls were expecting to troop on, bang out the odd 'hit' and dash off to their babe lair, cackling loudly as they counted off the squillion euros that got them there. The poor creatures never expected baying hordes of suited cretins, heavily oiled on free Moet, to drown them out with a dischordant version of 'Push the Button.' Keisha scowled down on proceedings with barely disguised loathing and the new one who isn't Munter, looked like she was about to hurl. Only our Heidi maintained a professional air, gamely plucking a S60 flashing heart from the povo and pinning it to her bosom (God bless it) Hats off to them tho, they did a very passable rendition of Artic Monkeys' 'You look good on the dancefloor' which is overrated shite anyway and no worse for being spouted by les babes. All in all a jolly party, made doubly gratifying by the goodie bag containing a 6gb Sony walkman, not to mention the Sugababes CD to give to niece for her birthday (yeah, that's my story and I'm sticking to it)

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Barca Mad

'Barceloooooooooooooooona' sang a fat broad and some toothy fella in a dodgy leotard. Fair makes you want to sing it does, wot with its arkitekcha and crazee nightlife and snails and stoners and kultcha and musik etc. Having done the Sonar Festival for a few years it has been suggested that I act as unofficial guide to the City. This seems rash as all three times I was there, I had been up for 72 + hours, thoroughly medicated/caffeinated (No Spencer, not de-kaff...) and generally worse for wear. I know where the Moog Club is, where the fab La Rambla market is and the Museum of Contemporary Art; that should cover it really. I fear the conference centre is miles away from any of these, somewhat debilitating my use to the Symba massive. To hell with 'em, there's wall to wall bodegas, that's all anyone needs to know, that and the phrase 'Un cafe solo, dos cervezas, por favor' (maybe drop the cafe bit.) Curses, no time to blog, i must banter.

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3GodSaveMe

An all pervasive sense of doom descends as my departure time to Barca draws nearer. The thing about the 3GSM World Mobile Congress that only people who have attended conferences of any type will understand, is that it traps thousands of people with expense accounts under one roof. They are all then obliged, nay forced, to utterly cane it at every turn. Breakfast meetings drag on into boozy lunches, stand duty is foresaken in the interests of a cheeky bottle of rioja. When the horn sounds to indicate the show day has ended, a palpable sense of liberation/libation wafts from exhibition hall to concourse. The evenings really kick off. There are always dozens of parties going on, from intimate little soirees to full-on, z-list celebrity hosted, dancing bear, chicks in cages extravaganzas.

All very well, but crawling back onto the stand at 8am with the breath of reptiles, twelve bore eyeballs, and lips permanently etched with the jezabel stain of cheap red, loses its rebellious appeal after four days. Exhibit hall aircon can suck the moisture from a fossil and shrinks the already dehydrated throat to a needle thin pipe of rust you can barely get a cold glass of chardonnay down. The Fox runs a tight ship, and yes, i do mean we are tight from about 11am until we stagger into our hotels at some dangerously late hour. Her capacity for charding it up is legendary as is her consumption of mints the morning after, though no chemical on earth can combat the lethal combination of three packets of Silk Cut and a crate of Blue Nun. As official company blogger, I'm obliged to send a running report on proceedings back to the web team, for posting on our public site. This may all go horribly wrong, but if you want to read about a career in freefall check out here as of Monday the 13th. Be still my bleating liver.

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