I’ve been away, and it’s been long overdue. An awesome friend of mine was starting a new business running a health retreat* and much to her surprise, I signed up for the opening week. I haven’t had a holiday in a year, and was in need for something truly rejuvenating rather than spend sometime discovering a country, its food, its drinks, its night-life and the rest that follows then returning to the country destroyed both physically and mentally. Instead the idea of a dress rehearsal for life in an old age pensioners home where my existence was simple and decisions were made for me seemed perfect.

Luckily, Mel had done a great job with her new venture and the week was the perfect infiltration into a world that would usually look at me in disgust and rub tofu in my hair (“yours was the worst food diary of them all, but I think you already knew that”). Exercise, good diet, outdoor heated hot-tubs, day by day I talked less and less about the outside world until reaching the point where my existence was such that I was genuinely excited about changing the recipe for what we were supposed to prepare for lunch. Yeah, fuck the man.

I’ve been raving about the week to indifferent friends ever since, but despite all of the elements of the week that made me want to go in the first place, the most effective came as a bit of a surprise. One of the greatest liberations was no doubt the lack of any form of phone signal or internet access. Truly disappearing. Aside from a TV playing 6Music and Radio 4, I was excused from the outside world and the bane of social networking, peering into the lives of my friends and associates, developing an inferiority complex that my life was both futile and that I was wasting my time. Viewing photos of Germany whilst sitting in my pants eating a microwave meal.

Those unfortunate enough to have me listed as a friend on Facebook often mock me for my attempts at tired witicisms and my ridiculous prolificness. In my defence, I’m still adjusting to life on my own after many years together with the same partner. No longer is there someone there to soak up the relentless barrage of verbosity that escapes from my mouth, unfiltered from my mind on a constant basis. Yes, it’s hardly an enviable position. I’m not talking about profound, deep conversation topics or even the rationalising of your goals, ambitions and desires. I’m talking about things like hiding in cupboards for 20 minutes to scare the shit out of someone as you jump out shouting in Welsh. An under-rated negotiation technique indeed.

So now I’m back and have the usual post-holiday couple of weeks where I choose to adopt a high-level philosophical perspective before I descend back into the day to day hazy pointless existence of procrastination, avoidance and indulgence. I can’t wait.

According to that logic, normal service will resume on November 21st.

You have been warned.

*Hartland House Retreat

So yesterday I let them know.

All true, yo

The fact you’re reading this means there’s a good chance you like our music.  Either that or you’ve met us and harbour a crush on Jim that you’re working up your courage to realise or find us so arrogant, annoying, derivative and disposable that you end up spying on us in an angry voyeuristic way hoping to see the cracks, hoping to see things tumbling down just to feel a little better.

None of that matters, whichever is true, you’re reading this, so I win by default.

Here’s what you should do.  Got a Twitter account?  Follow us.  Got a Facebook account?  Become a fan.  Got a Myspace Page?  Be our friend.  Got an email address?  Join our mailing list.

Got other friends with decent taste in music?  Improve their lives, tell them about us.  Think you’re wasting your life watching shitty TV or spending way too much time at the same pub with the same person / people?  Come watch us live.  Think your remixing skills are laudable?  Email us.  Any other ideas of projects relating to the band?  Let us know, we’ll talk it over.

Of course, alternatively you could do none of these things.  If you do though, you get +10 life points for each.  Just imagine!

Oh yeah, and don’t forget to listen to our new track Bear At The Bus Stop on Soundcloud.  It’ll raise the temperature of your metaphorical testicles.