"Just to stumble across another poor old soul from
The dreary old lanes to the high-street madness"

This week Posh Young Farmer Boy* released his second single and someone thought it was a good idea to do instore gigs. Instore gigs at HMV though, not Virgin and this means actual free music - no wristbands. Except that same person [/people] who had the idea to do instores, had the idea to do the Birmingham one at half twelve in the middle of the day. This worried me slightly because to be honest, I wondered how many people were going to turn up; something that worried me even more when I turned up at quarter to twelve and found no queue. Unfortunately wandering round the store led to me wanted so much stuff from HMV that in the end I resorted to standing near the stage area and watching the men set up, whilst a security bloke asked me the time then told his colleague that he was right and they had the wrong time. A while later, quite a crowd had gathered and I decided to text Corinne and inform her that, obviously, I was at the front.


Obviously it was an acoustic gig, which meant no drums. However, the drummer made up for that with a tambourine, bongos and banging on PYFB's guitar when he wasn't using it, and it all seemed to work well. I do love instore acoustic gigs; they always feel so intimate and he was sounding good. It amused me that somone had clearly gone two doors down and got them water from Marks & Spencers though. It went by really fast, even he said so, so much so he decided to do one more song than he was supposed to. And there were no mike stand incidents, or voice breaking incidents. Alas.


And then came the signing. I somehow found myself now at the front of the second queue, which didn't bother me too much but I was acutely aware of the fact that I had quite a few cd covers for him to sign** plus a picture from the Coventry gig taken earlier in the evening when he wasn't quite so drunk. So after a while, I reached the signing table and plonked the picture down first followed by my cd covers. Now you should probably know by now exactly how much attention I pay to security*** so when they tried to say it was only cd covers, I ignored them; as did PYFB who had already pulled the picture towards him to sign.

"They were talking about you on Radio 1 this morning..."
"Really? What were they saying?"
"They were talking about Jenny Don't Be Hasty and saying that if you lied about your age then it's your own fault [pause] but then they said that you sound older than you are so if you'd just conducted your relationship so that she could hear you but not see you, it would have been fine. Like on the internet."
[laughs] Like on MySpace?
"Yep."

PYFB then proved that men cannot do two things at once because, due to the above brief conversation, he'd managed to write "To Nic [space] To" He then looked at it, realising what he'd done and thought for a moment before saying, "I'll practice my sun" The result was what looked like a rubbish drawing of what I assume was a tree [the 'T'] and a sun [made from the 'o'].

Of course there was also the obligatory picture to add to the collection...






*I still feel a need to write Paolo Nutini as a footer for any poor soul who's stumbled upon this blog and wonders who I'm talking about but I really am incapable of calling him by his proper name.
**Well if the boy will release two discs for the single, I have to buy both, and one for Corinne because I'm nice like that.
***To quote Corinne, 'not so much'.