"Snoop dogg is a huge Benny Hill fan.."

My mother told me, as many mothers must tell their sons, "don't talk to strangers". Clearly my my mum should have said, "don't talk to strangers, unless you go to an all night party in Reading called Fractals" as last Fridays gig had possibly the nicest bunch of strangers I've met in a while.

Top of the list has to be Dave and Paul who not only kept us so entertained with their banter that I ended up missing some of the sets I wanted to see, but also invited me and my brother for some breakfast afterwards. There must have been something in the air in Reading that night, as even when we wandered around Tesco at 5:30 in the morning, Dave even bonded with another random stranger at the checkout over their Diabetes. Then it was back to theirs, where we met Paul's wife and daughter (I kind of feel guilty now as I think the only reason they got up at a little before 6am was the noisey drunken people that had just been brought home). Again, both really nice people. And let's not forget the Cat. Called Mouse. Maybe I was imagining things by that point.. Anyway, very nice chaps, do go check out their websites and investigate their projects. Just what ever you do, don't get Dave to recommend DVDs to you, or you too will be ordering british tv classics like Beasts. I'll let you know what it's like.

I also met a nice beardyish (do huge sideys count as a beard?) chap called Dan, who also makes fine music with his associate Pip. You can check out their soon to be top ten record on their myspace page. He also invited us for some after party action, which left me in a dilema as to which offer to take up... I've been in this position a few times really, and with me being incredibly rock and roll, I usually end up with the most hardcore offering on the table. In the past I've turned down illegal warehouse partys and crazy drug filled adventures for tea and scones (no joke). So the offer of a nice greasy breakfast won. I'm not entirely sure why I end up turning down the more exciting sounding offers.. I think it's because I usually have to make the choice at about 5am, when I must instinctively just go for the one that sounds cosiest.

It was also good for catching up with folks I've met before, including Saff aka Semaphor, now a pround Wii owner like myself, and Mikerak, who is starting up a new digital distribution service called Splintered Digital. All that plus a bunch of the other Kraked crew, a guy into grindcore who plugged http://www.weirdsville.com to me so much that I can't remember his name or band (except that it sounds like wu-tang.. youtang, mutang.. er, must take pen and paper next time), one of the old northhampton massif, nice sound guy (Di?) and probably a bunch more that the beer has now wiped from my mind. It really was the best atmosphere at a gig that I've felt for a long time. Huge respect to the Fractals crew for an awesome night.

Oh, and on top of all that, we met Terry on the train down. After knowing Terry for the 40 minutes from Leamington to Oxford, I can predict a fine future for him as a judge. Basically, every crime gets life, or maybe 2 life sentences if he's feeling generous. Which I can't agree with really, as since Terry did a bit of time when he was younger, that would mean that he would still have been in prison now, and would never have told us his stories about all the celebreties he met when he used to be on The Word (a cult Channel 4 music show in the 90s). And if this hadn't happened, I would never know that Snoop Dee Oh Double Gee is a massive fan of Benny H-i-double-L. If only Benny was still alive, the cross over projects could have been amazing. Back...