16.19, Thursday 2 Nov 2000

"Excuse me, do you know if Gary Numan is performing tonight?" he asked me, at the Magnetic Fields gig last night. "Sorry, was he supposed to be coming?" "I don't know. I assumed you would," and at that point I should have suspected something wasn't quite right. All I was doing was standing at the bar drinking Red Stripe.

And then somehow, and I still don't know quite how, "I can guess if you like, but I probably wouldn't be right. Would that help?" must have come out really aggressively, because the guy snapped back "You've got blue hair so I thought you'd know" and stomped off. Oh.

Departure Lounge supported and helped me lose my prog-rock virginity before they lapsed into not-really-very-good.

Oh, and then Magnetic Fields doing (some of) 69 Love Songs, and their alter ego The 6ths playing songs from Hyacinths and Thistles (which is where Gary Numan didn't come in, but others did), which is an album title deliberately difficult to say: Awesome. Stephen Merrit has the most incredible voice and the best lyrics.

"Tom Lehrer meets Tom Petty," I whispered to Dan. "You're composing entries in your head again, aren't you?" he replied. He'd caught me at it.