Some Punks

Mustn't get behind. I went to Brighton on Saturday, to go and see some punk bands at the Cowley Club and I took khalinche with me.

I was there for a bit of the first band but wasn't really taking them in, just waiting for the BFs. I haven't seen the Bad Fucks live since we parted ways in the summer, and this was only the second gig they've done with the new drummer, Tom, a lad with dreads down to his knees. The main thing I'll remember about this gig is Wayne. I've never seen him do his frontman thing properly before; at gigs obviously I couldn't see him directly and often I could hardly hear him, and then in practice rooms it's not the same. He was ace - it's all shouty grimacing stuff but he does put some variation in it, make it sound like it's meant to mean something, and of course the fact that he's a big ugly fucker works well when bellowing at a crowd. I told him afterwards that I'd never realised how good he was and he was terribly self-effacing about it.

Next up were Flatpig who were their usual selves, i.e. ace. They never seem to have the same bassist twice but they're always good ones so it doesn't really matter, and you always get Austen, a wiry bloke with his glasses taped onto his head, doing ace things with a guitar and Dave doing both drums and vocals with astonishing amounts of breath apparently at his disposal. I've got the single of Dear John somewhere, their tribute to John Peel, must dig that out again.

Umm, the Offcuts must have been next but I didn't really listen to them, I'm afraid. They weren't bad but they weren't interesting. I drank oatmeal stout and chatted to people instead, not least to avoid one over-enthusiastic mosher who was being an arsehole. Wayne lamented no longer being in Newcastle, where arseholes get taken out of circulation a lot quicker by way of getting lamped. But anyway. The last band were Axis Of Arseholes, who mainly do songs about things like arms manufacture and the whole War On Terror malarkey, but in the sort of musical style which is party music for punks, which makes them ideal headliners for a place like the Cowley. They're not the best band ever (which makes Liz (my ex-bandmate from Vegas Hell) getting chucked out for unreliability even more impressive) but they can keep a crowd of punks happy. I took over the job of keeping the right-side PA speaker upright, it being too far into the moshpit to have any chance of staying standing unaided, and thus mainly watched rather than danced. I seem to have got my phone out to video a song, though, which I'd forgotten about til now, I probably ought to put that up.

But not right now. Yesterday involved a car that doesn't think it's got gears any more and rail replacement buses and alternative tube routes and half a band practice and then cooking pasta at midnight and I was supposed to be getting an early night...

Breasts

Figleaves have set up some booths in the cloisters of UCL today, to do research about a new fitting method. I had to fill in a questionnaire, watch a DVD about the fitting method, try the method to see if I'm wearing the right bra size (since as the posters reminded us, 70% of women don't wear the right size) and then try on some bras to see if that translates to reality. The basic problem that figleaves have is that they're an internet seller, and buying bras off the internet means a lot of expensive posting of things back and forth, which puts prices up and customers off.

The first assumption they make that I don't like (and you could probably guess there's going to be a bunch of them) is that the only way anyone gets fitted for a bra at the minute is by the old tape measure method. I thought that had been exploded long ago, myself, but then I've only bought bras from Bravissimo for nigh on ten years. Their proposed replacement system is a series of plastic cup shapes - effectively volume measures - and a tape measure with a tensioning device in it, and the idea is that you'd order a kit of these to use at home. Then figleaves would be able to point you at the bras which are the same size on their volume-based system, and so correct for different brands and styles being subtly different sizes. 

Now, this is all very well but the way they're pitching this is that it will enable them to sell you the right size bra in any style that takes your fancy on the internet, and that rests on their second assumption, that although the style of the bra makes a difference to the volume, any style can be made to fit any woman if you just find the size with the right volume. Wrong-o-rama. I proceeded to prove this in the fitting section of the exercise; they tried to fit me into three different styles and in two out of three they were able to find a bra that was clearly the right size for me, as in band size and volume, but also clearly still didn't fit. Wires too wide in the middle on one, top line cutting across too low on another, and in the third, full cup style they couldn't even find one that even fitted well enough to tell if the volume was right because full cup styles just don't fit me. But I'm not sure their tests are going to get that because the tick-box only asked whether the size was right. In two cases the size was right but if I'd got them through the post I've had still sent them back for a refund; they didn't fit right and I wouldn't have worn them.

I quite like the idea of the tensioned tape measure. Although the tape-measure system is laughably useless for cup size, it at least gives you a starting point for band size, and the tensioning device takes the guess-work out of exactly how tight to pull it. But it was easier to use with two people, rather than trying to read it yourself. This leads to the third assumption that this is something for people to do at home; that customers are so keen to order bras over the internet that people would be willing to order a set of weird plastic breast-measuring cups and a tensioned tape measure to make it slightly more likely, but far from certain, that they'll get one that fits first time. You're not going to get mass take-up, the only people bored enough to bother have enough time to go to the shops, and even if you did that'd just up your costs because you surely couldn't get people to pay for these things. 

As far as I can tell, they've got the correlation between their volume system and the existing system right. Of course they put this in terms of congratulating me for wearing the right bra size, the patronising buggers. I'd like to know who did the stats for 70% of women wearing the wrong size, and when; I've been hearing that figure for at least ten years, and ten years ago I was wearing the wrong size, but then I went to a place where they taught me how to look properly at what fits and which direction in which measurements to adjust depending on what's wrong, and that knowledge will last me a lifetime and I will never wear the wrong size bra again. I can't be the only person that's learnt how to do it in that time. So while their measuring system works, it's i) tedious, ii) unnecessary if you can go to a shop full of bras iii) never going to fly in terms of getting people to order the measuring kit and iv) not going to solve the actual problem with buying bras over the internet anyway. 

Still, they paid me. There was a choice of £5 in cash or £15 in figleaves vouchers. I checked beforehand whether they sold the one style of bra I'm willing to buy at the minute, one by Panache that is the right shape and comes in completely plain black with not even any of those pointless satin bows on it, and they don't, so I took the cash. And now I'm going to the UCL Battle of the Bands, which reckons it's going to put 11 bands on in four hours so promises to be entertaining in all sorts of ways, to spend the cash on booze and rock'n'roll. Triomphe.