Lowry and Martyn Joseph

After spending the last two days down south with work, I’m getting withdrawal symptoms due to lack of contact with the Dog Collar and Rabbit Corpses household.

Happily tonight relief is available as J joins us from across the Pennines, as we head to the Lowry to see Martyn Joseph.

He’s good at what he does and has a very amiable stage presence, but musically it’s not hugely my cup of tea. Still gracious beyond measure he even thanked the guy on the sound desk, despite one of the worst displays of not paying attention and inability to fix problems I’ve witnessed since the last time I saw Sally standing at a mic on a stage repeating “can’t get the staff, can’t get the staff” at her entertaining side-kick.

Normally as you know I endeavour to capture a moment of all gigs on camera, to allow the dull greyness of this text to be occasionally broken up pretty colours courtesy of some lighting technician or other.

However, the Lowry in their greater wisdom, rather than adopting the reasonable tolerance approach to amateur non-flash photography that most venues run with, have outlawed all photography. No sooner is my camera phone out my pocket, than a steward creeps up behind and reprimands me. Zero tolerance.

Still this is the publicly funded building that feels free to evict young law-abiding lads who they simply don’t like the look of, with the rather disingenuous line that there was nothing for the public in the building.

Maybe one day they’ll twig that ad-hoc amateur photos contributes to a world of free publicity on the web, but in the meantime this blog remains deprived of such visual stimuli.

Still, not wishing to leave my reader's appetites unsated, here instead is a picture of a small kitten. So please say hello to Chaos, current winningest kitten on KittenWar.com.