...when Lorna, Jo, Rachel and myself will finally get to see Depeche Mode in concert, after 8 long months of pre-squee and worry. We sat around watching most of Lorna's DM-dvds in the den last night, while enjoying pizza, Chinese take-out and Guinness, and it was fun; but tonight, we're going for the real thing. There's also an after-party in Edward's in Birmingham that we may go to -- Lorna wants to talk about the gig and share the experience with like-minded individuals, and with us, she's unlikely to get it (because we're mean like that and like to torture her; e.g., I've found out that she gets very indignant when I say that Martin's got poodle-hair and questionable dress sense).

So, as you've already noticed, Wednesday night I got a little tipsy. We started our pub crawl in Whitefriars, where the demon drink seduced me with a brew called Damson Porter. It was very nice. It was Open Mic night, too; and two young men -- well boys really, called Ken and Luke, set up at the back of the pub and let rip with covers of rock classics, which they did very competently. More than that, they embellished on the material as well, leading me to wonder if they couldn't do any original stuff. We didn't have time to find out though, as the pub crawl beckoned.

There was nothing much going on in The Hope and Anchor, so we went straight on to The Jailhouse, where we found that Roddy Radiation and Kirk Brandon were playing. This was too good to be true: we were on a kind of alternative 2 Tone Trail, and here we were, in our second pub, bumping into The Specials' guitarist and the frontman for Spear of Destiny! Jez, Lorna's housemate who'd come with us, introduced us to his mate Pugs, whose claim to fame in the 80s consisted of having named The Courtyard, one of the most influential venues in those days...but the sad fact is that there's not many of Coventry's famous bars and hangouts remaining.

After a while and a couple more pints we relocated to another pub, the name of which escapes me, where again, someone with talent was playing (Karl Sweet). On the way over, we passed a film crew, filming in the courtyard of one of the churches. It was for Lady Godiva, in which ASH will star. We couldn't see through the rain and the umbrellas whether he was there or not.

Then when we came home, Lorna and Jez encouraged me to go on LJ and tell you all about it. No wonder they were falling about laughing!

I slept well, and waking up without a hangover, decided to go to Nottingham and check out the shops there, which Lorna had said were better than Coventry's. I don't know about that, but there were certainly a lot of them. And, yay! a Starbucks, so I could finally have the caramel macchiato grande that I always order. That was about the high point of my day really -- the sun was shining, but it was awfully windy, and the castle art gallery and museum was closed for refurbishment while the costume museum turned out to have permanently closed. I kicked myself for not having asked laura_isaac for her contacting details, as she'd said if I ever was in the area...

One thing I've discovered on this trip of mine, is that I can't use my credit cards, and I'm spending cash hand over fist. There appears to be a new law or directive in place that all credit card transactions have to be validated not just with a signature the old-fashioned way, but also, by giving in your PIN-number. I've had my credit cards for years. I've never had to remember the PINs. So I don't know them and my cards are useless here.

Hey! Since when do we have a Current Location-field? It's crap, isn't it?