PJ Harvey, Cambridge Corn Exchange, 9 September 2004
By Tony Moortsol
So here I was ... Thursday finished work on time [that is 2 1/2 hours after I'm meant to finish according to my contracted hours ... I love overtime when the pay’s good enough] left saying I couldn’t stay and do any other stupid jobs like I sometimes do cos "I’m seeing a woman" [and she's gonna be this big [imagine a small gap between finger and thumb] cos standing sold out and the only seats were right at the back.]
I get home flatmate [mate being the wrongest word going] opens his door and says "you" in a rather aggressive manner reeking of beer, sensing too much hostility I just enter my room drop my stuff pick up an Enio Morricone CD for someone and head out to drop it off and collect some more, she wasn’t in so I came home picked up my tickets and headed to this cyber cafe after taking a dump [I say this as it will become apparent later on in the evening] I hear the front door slam with a lot of force but pay it no mind, I’m used to his tantrums.
I head off type a quick email with the last few minutes remaining on my card then head to the Corn Exchange very early, I have about 45 minutes or less to kill so phone up my mum to tell her I expect to be locked out when I get home due to his strop, the third time this year, although I’m the only one with a front door key for some unknown reason so I've always come in that way and let the next person be locked out hoping they’d have a go at him for being a tw@.
Doors open crowds mingle I’m at the start of a cold and just want to sit down so buy my water [I’m on a decaff diet for a while unless I go to the cinema or burger king then I allow myself an over priced coke] and make the trek to the back.
Knife And Fork support, the vocalist has a Grace Slick [Jefferson Airplane] edge to her voice, some songs sound as if they belong to the 60's psychedelia and are wonderfully lulling ... ill as I was all I wanted to do was curl up and go to sleep listening to them play.
PJ eventually comes on, starting with a track from To Bring ... perhaps that very track I’m a bit hazy. Then something from Stories, I know she played "The Whores Hustle and The Hustlers Whore" at one point. She played songs I did know but a lot from the albums prior to To Bring and Uh Huh Her [which I bought the 3 badge set] ... I didn’t rate Uh Huh Her first time I listened to it and "Who the F**k" although played well and well received by those around sounded more like something a 12 year old would write "who ... who ... who ... f**k ... f**k ... f**k ... you." Some one once posted about her performance of that song on later with Jools Holland and the smile she had getting away with swearing on bbc2 sfw? Anyone can swear I do it all the time, if I had a swear box I could clear the 3rd world debt.
Very few of the songs got me going save for the ones I knew and loved, all in all I think I paid £17 to watch Knife and Fork and Polly came free. I’m not anti Polly ... I’m just in the camp that likes the three albums before Uh Huh Her and not the stuff prior to To Bring ... not that I’ve heard them.
I get home, it’s almost midnight, and lo the kitchen door is locked from the inside and due to the aforementioned slam the front doesn’t work either, so after a lot of banging I get the front room occupant up and she finds out the hard way that the front is f**ked and I tell her through the letter box to go to the kitchen. Informing her when I get in that this was the 3rd time since she moved in that tw@ face has locked me out, me specifically, I’m not paranoid, I know he did it to me and me alone, it’s just that it would have affected anyone else who came home before me.
I mention this to the landlord's handyman who moved in not too long ago [not hinting who did it just stating that the front is broken and the kitchen was locked.]
"It was fine when I came in at 4am," he said.
Well duhh. "Yes," I calmly said, "that’s because Karen let me in." It’s not as if I was going to lock it up again afterwards, was it? The next day I was too ill to work [being as I work in the food industry, any other job and I may have soldiered on] and after sleeping it off I surfaced at noon and eventually left my room at 2:30 onwards just to mooch around town having nothing better to do, then I headed to the cinema to try and see "The Terminal" [for the umpteenth failed time] only to find I had over an hour to wait and Riddick started in 15, so I saw that instead.
Got back to my bike only to find some s**t had chained theirs to mine, I picked it up and slammed it down in disgust muttering "ffs you stupid c**t" and worked out if there was a way of Houdini-ing it out and fiddled with the speedo/clock holder straightening it out. "Hang on," I thought, "mine doesn’t angle." I looked at the bike again, same make, colour etc. I stood back and looked side to side and saw my bike yards from its twin and just unlocked it and walked off, all vengeful bike smashing vanishing from my mind, although if it was my bike knowing I wouldn’t be in work the next day I didn’t mind trashing theirs completely and coming back in the afternoon hoping to find mine free of its other chains [and in good nick too.]
Got home and had no hassle with doors ... as I was getting ready to go out today land lord showed up, told him bout the door and that it wasn’t me, as I looked for some stuff I over heard "3 months" and "eviction" mentioned in the conversation ... he used to be a good lad but in the new year he just went tw@ faced, has just someone who owes me money and that’s it.