Ayeep! It's that time again! The time when the phone is hot with messages from Rick telling me to shift my arse into 5th gear and deliver henceforth a column heaped with verbose nonsense. And as I sit here at 3am in the morning with the gentle sounds of BRAID caressing my aching brain, I have to confess to having less than no idea about what the following paragraphs will bring forth. I'm at a loss.

Actually I've just realised that I have an addiction. A real live clinical addiction. I don't smoke and I don't drink much so they're out of the equation. And drugs are for losers and people that wear dopey grins all day, so that isn't for me. So that just leaves me with one vice, one obsession that has me gripped by the tongue. So it is now and here that I will confess. My name is Russell and I am addicted to tortilla chips. There I said it. It's out in the open, you all know now. A family bag of chilli tortillas is my 'fix'. I realised I was indeed addicted when I commented to Kirstie one day (momentarily before consuming my fix) that "the first tortilla of the day is always the best...!". So I guess I should seek counselling before my salt-induced high blood pressure boils over into a coronary. But on a last note, always go for the tortilla with the least ingredients. Never settle for Monosodium Glutamate in your tortillas. All you need is corn, oil and chilli salt.

And so I went on a detox trip to London last week. Actually that was a lie. I actually went on a holiday to London last week. And anyway, you can probably buy more tortilla chips in London than you can in Hull so it wouldn't have been much a detox trip anyway. It's not like you ever hear of heroin addicts going on a detox trip sightseeing in London is it? But hey, it sounded good didn't it? And it also provided the perfect link for my next paragraph... (geezuz, look at all these wasted column inches just so I could get a smooth segueway into my next bout of banality...)

So we were driving down the A1 on the May Bank Holiday Monday which should be etched on your memories as the day of the first division play-off final between Sunderland and Charlton. Now with such matches I'm a bundle of nerves and radio commentary never helps anyway because the commentator's voice increases in pitch every time a team go down the wing, and my heartbeat seems to be inextricably linked to the pitch of the commentator's voice. So with that in mind, I had a tape playing, and come half time switched on the radio for a score-check. Charlton 1, Sunderland 0. Oh well, that's it then, thinks I, game over. I know, I'm a cynic so kick me. The next time I switched the radio on was a couple of minutes before full-time and through the static crackle I heard the score line coming through... Charlton 3, Sunderland 3. Holy cow on a rope! We had not just a game of football on the go, but possibly the most exciting match Wembley has ever witnessed. I kid ye not. Of course the match trundled into extra time and the next time I turned the dial in came an update of Charlton 4, Sunderland 4. Well hell, my mouth was dry, and a small droplet of sweat made a silvery path down my forehead. There were lives at stake here. Inevitably the match dragged ever onward into the cruel world of penalty shoot-outs. By this time we had arrived in London so I pulled the car into some guy's drive and sat silent as each penalty hit the target. After ten penalties the score was five each, an aggregate of 9-9 on the day. My stomach was sitting in an inverted position beneath my ribcage, all of its tubes attached the wrong things. And then it was 6-6. And then it was Charlton 7, Sunderland 6. Outside the cocoon of our car life was going on for ordinary white-collar North Londoners. Inside the car, Micky Gray placed the ball on the spot, stepped back and hoofed a shot weaker than my biceps towards the goal. Ilic saved with ease. "Well that's just FUCKING typical!" I said kinda loudly. And life went on.

Anyway, later on in the week we went out into the bright lights of London town to meet up with David Stuart and Hilary Ellis, fine compadres of the world of punk rock fanzinedom. Actually before I begin this bit, there was this one time we went out in London with my brother and we were just gonna have a quick one in the afternoon (doesn't that sound a familiar story?) but all my bro's mates kept turning up and buying rounds. I got talking to the guy who used to drum for DEXY'S MIDNIGHT RUNNERS and also another guy that was in that cellphone advert with Patrick Troughton (just days before he died, Patrick that is, not the other guy). The beer was flowing like milk from the breast of Venus. And hey, the next thing I know I'm in this huge Chinese restaurant and I'm being asked what I want to eat. I slur out "whatever's vegan..." and rock across the bathroom where I kinda get my head together. After three pots (note pots, not cups!) of Chinese tea some semblance of normality is returning and I'm beginning to comprehend the fact that the two guys I'm talking to on the other side of the table are American military agents who are denying the fact that they're in Britain 'dealing with Iraq' whilst winking and nodding in acknowledgement. "No we're definitely nothing to do with weapons deals.." they chortle. I manage to make it out of the restaurant with my street-cred intact and we stumble into the Trocadero Centre. Now, let me offer you this advice as somebody that's been there, seen it and done it - never ever enter the Trocadero if you are drunk and everyone else is sober. There were lights, and lasers, and thumping music, and everything was silver and reflective, and the floor moved, and everyone was speaking Japanese, and gunshots were going off all around me and the escalators moved too fast and I felt nausea rising. We ran, we got on the tube, we recovered. End of story within the story.

So anyway, yeah, Dave and Hilary (remember?). We did a few pubs and had a cool chat about everything you ever want to chat about and saw a mouse and then we said our farewells until next time. "What nice people..." me and Kirstie remarked to each other. Problem being that now we both needed to drain ourselves of the beer that had formed small reservoirs in our bladders so we went into the tube station to check when the last train was. "11:45" said the ticket guy and then continued with "I said 11:45, not 12 o'clock or 11:30, but 11:45". It was 11:00 now which left us loads of time for us to go and find a pot to piss in. Now a good rule to live by is "Never darken the doors of a fast-food burger joint unless you are planning on soiling their premises" and I follow that rule to the letter. We headed for the nearest Burger King and, completely ignoring the food-selling purposes of said establishment, went straight to the toilets. We relieved ourselves and left the foul stinking place.

However, Captain Fate (he used to be known as Dr Fate, but in my life he got promoted due to excellence of services rendered) had dealt us a blow. On returning to the tube station, it was all locked up. There was action inside but the gates were all locked. And it was only 11:15. A quarter past fucking eleven and they had locked the fucking gates, the fuckers. After further necessary swearing (and after I had formulated a plan to place a bomb on the Northern Line timed to explode just before peak rush-hour) we weighed our options. We needed to get to Finchley so a cab was out of the question unless the driver accepted a song and dance routine instead of hard cash. So we fished out a bus-stop that ran an all-night service to Finchley and waited for it. We got on, paid our fares and then realised we didn't know what Finchley looked like from a bus at night, only from a car during the day. Of course, had we not have been blessed with embarrassment factor 10, we could have asked the driver but he looked busy (a feeble excuse I admit). So we sat there watching everybody get on and off and waiting desperately to recognise something, someone, anything. The guy behind leaned close and mumbled "ey exquooose meee, do yooo know where Neeeesden is pleeeeze?" to which I replied in the negative. Maybe it was a disguised offer of hard-drugs and I wasn't hip enough to know the street-lingo, or maybe he was just a Mexican guy who wanted to know where Neasden was. Anyway, the thoroughly impotent anti-climax of this woeful tale is that we spotted an opticians that we recognised, jumped off the bus, went home, had some tea & toast, watched "South Park" and went to bed.

And the moral is, never trust a London Underground official, or else squeeze your genitalia all the way home. Or I guess you could just piss yourself.

So thank you for having me, you've been a lovely audience. Please enjoy the rest of the artistes. It only remains for me to thank my hosts, Mr & Mrs Happy and their Happy offspring, and my loyal team of writers and production assistants who write this shit for me. Thank you and goodnight.

The news in brief:
New ANNALISE is done, dusted and selling like fuckery.
New SCARPER! Ep is done, dusted and selling like more fuckery.
And Fracture zine is running to schedule and shifting big units, man.
Contact: Russell, PO Box 43, Hull, HU1 1AA, UK
GEEKS CONTACT: pigdogrec@hotmail.com