Siobhan on why the bassist quit again
Woke up on Sarah’s sofa in Dalston with a bass amp humming in my skull and a text from Nige saying he’s “taking a break from music to focus on his soul.” Nige takes a break from music roughly every eleven days, usually right after payday, so I wasn’t devastated.
What actually ruined my morning was the news. Everyone’s banging on about Celtexit like it’s a real thing and not just Nige’s mate Barry shouting about it in the Dolphin at closing time. Apparently the Celtic nations are meant to be filing paperwork to leave Britain the way Britain left Europe, except with more bagpipes and considerably less paperwork actually completed. I read the whole thing twice and I’m still not sure if it’s a policy or a hangover.
Meanwhile Britain’s economic decline is apparently official now, which is nice, because I was starting to think I’d imagined the entire economy shrinking every time I checked my bank balance. Turns out it’s not just me being bad with money, it’s the whole country being bad with money, collectively, as a civic project.
Rehearsal got moved to Tuesday because our drummer’s landlord raised the rent again, and honestly at this point our drummer pays more for a room in Hackney than some regional governments spend on Celtexit paperwork. He’s threatening to move to Margate. Everyone threatens to move to Margate. Nobody moves to Margate.
Read the Daily Mash on the bus over and it did not improve my mood, but it did make me laugh, which I’ve decided counts as self-care now that I can’t afford actual self-care.
Barry reckons Celtexit will mean Wales gets its own currency, which he’s already named “the leek,” and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that’s not how currencies work, mostly because I’m not entirely sure how currencies work either, given what’s happening to ours.
Set list tonight is three chords and a grudge, same as always. If the economy’s declining we might as well decline loudly, in a basement, with a working PA for once. Punk was never about optimism. It was about noticing things are bad and playing faster anyway.
More rants like this at my author page, where I occasionally write in full sentences.
