Very disappointed that the storm wasn't the Babylonian wind fest that I had been promised. That said, I can live without a tree on my car - which is precisely what happened to Sarah on the train today. An hour is a long time to sit with strangers when you have somewhere to be. I remember breaking down on a National Express bus once going from Birmingham to Victoria. Imagine my delight at finding I was on the same trip as the National Express mascot "man with six cans of Special Brew". Lovely. For those of you stuck without something to watch these days, I can heavily recommend a sleeper show called Breaking Bad which revolves around a chemistry teacher who discovers he has lung cancer and turns his hand to making and selling the purest cracked cocaine in town in order to provide for his family. It's very dark and shouldn't be funny but when he kills a rival dealer by accident and gets rid of him by melting the body in a bath of acid, you kinda know that one of these writers has to have some British blood in there somewhere.

I've just been chatting with my buddy Seb about magazines and design, and he wrote this which fair warmed my heart: "I remember you saying a while back that you didn't look at other mags when you were working on Burn, you looked at other stuff... I vaguely got it at first, but having worked in an industry totally disassociated from music, I think I get it properly now - every building we do, no matter how small or insignificant, it has to have something special to it - it's gotta rock like a motherfucker, otherwise, why bother? Same for music. Same for writing about music. Everything has to have it's special thing, otherwise, it'll be cock and you'll have to stand by it and look stupid."

Hoofuckingray! We have a winner. Nice to see a hundred pennies drop on the floor all at the same time. I'm not sure that's what we always delivered but it was always the vision - it can be hard though when people are bred these days to accept a genre stereotype - especially when there's money involved. That made my day!

The biggest issue of the day is exactly what to do with this facial hair growth. Currently looking like Rob Zombie, it's time to shape it. If I give it another couple of days, I think it will be long enough to actually be classed as a beard and not a goatee (or similar). I'm not being very successful at the Fu Manchu style, the George Michael is quite appealing but required far too much work on a day to day basis to be of practical value. Thus, it must be my old favourite, the Dr Strange (aka The Master) - who it must be added, probably go for this style for much the same reason as myself. You can't play with demons and look great if your goatee requires too much maintenance. I even have the white bits in the correct place - it's a gift from the Gods as a token of their appreciation.

More later. Must attend to the Monster Club and do rock things like put some washing on.

Where did it all go so wrong...

Clip of the day: The Sun and The Sky | The Violet Burning Bonus clip: The Healer (Live) | Crown of Thorns