I was sat in the house on Friday afternoon feeling unaccountably angry, barking at anyone who had the misfortune to stumble into my pit. The weather had riled me. An infinite torn sheet of dumb wet on the one day of the week when I don't want dumb wet.

The weather can spoil Telfords, you see.

And a band were trundling up from South Wales to come and play for me. Poor bastards. I had a sense of foreboding that turned out to be entirely justified, as things go.

We'll get to that, in great , spirit-sapping detail in a matter of paragraphs.

Let me tell you about my anger first. Frustration is probably a better description. I've been a livid, pot-bellied Tasmanian Devil for a couple of weeks now. Most of it is internal, an inner voice that would shame the name of Tourette. Sometimes it erupts out. I don't get physical or anything remotely exciting like that. It manifests itself as endless hissy fits, like Elton John but with only the one wig, permanently attached and sporting 70's mannequin chic. I had a hissy fit about Jo going to London to see her friend Maz. I had a hissy fit about us losing our broadcast assistant at work. I have had a whole series of hissy fits with people for less than nothing. I'm not proud of this. Just saying, like, in case you got the sharper edge of my tongue when you e-mailed me to see if I'd check your tunes out on your myspace page [Just bloody send me them!] or asked me for a request in Telfords [Lady Gaga? But you don't look retarded.]

I'm sorry.

There are root causes, but parading them in public feels like the action of a feeble, lily-livered, spineless apology-for-a-man.

So, here goes: Jo had voluntary redundancy rather forced on her by the tax-syphoning demons at Lloyds TSB [change the logo to a black sheep] and my dad is having to undergo more treatment for prostate cancer. I've dealt with both of these events with a characteristic mixture of immaturity and selfish anger. While Jo and my dad are proactively dealing with their challenges, I'm shaking a bloody fist at the clouds and swearing when I drive past churches.

We like our heroes to have human fallibilities, but they offset them with charisma, a glint in the eye and something aspirational. I'm mostly fallibility. Be do be da ba day.

I feel much better for getting that all off my chest.

Thank you.

Please imagine the scenario. Henry's Funeral Shoe are still trundling up the A roads from South Wales, spending a disproportionate amount of their time stuck behind Ifor Williams trailers and caravanners who speed up the moment you've pulled abreast of them desperate to finish the over-taking manoeuvre before you meet the spoiler of the onrushing hunk of articulated death. As they're doing this I'm spewing bile into the heavens and fashioning a DJ set of music that I intend to be complimentary to their sound.

All the while I'm listening to the Black Keys, Son House, Black Sabbath, Man, Queens of the Stone Age, Clutch and the like, trying to ignore the [other] little voice within that is saying "this is going to go down like that there lead zeppelin what is analogous to the band of the same name."

But I ignore the voice and trust to the God of Good Taste in Music, which is a stupid thing for an atheist to do.

I start my DJ set and so begins the inexorable exodus of casual Friday nighters after a bit of booze and Gaga. Really, after a whole herd of very enjoyable Friday nights in a row, the utter emptiness of this past Friday could not have been predicted.

The band played to an audience of about 10 people.

They were good, but their relentlessness did little to draw more people forwards and into the illusion that there was an audience worth performing in front of.

I felt guilty, but I do not have the poise of a professional boxer nor an expensive legal team to get me off the hook. So the guilt bashed me about a bit. By the end of the night the dancefloor was full and I'd rescued some tatters of pride. Even the sudden left-turn into drum 'n' bass as if it was 2004 didn't derail things completely.

But it was unsatisfactory and I felt sorry for the band -- and more than a mote responsible, given that I'd done zero promotion of the night, bar a couple of Tweets, trusting to the God of Audience Regulars. What a funny word 'regular' is.

I did the only thing I could in the circumstances. I sat with Brennig and Aled from the band and did my best to obliterate their memories of the night past with booze. I think I left Telfords at 5am. No doubt trusting to the God of Amazing Recovery.



Saturday arrived with a nagging sense that I needed to be doing something? Now, what was it? Christ, Y Ffin Festival in Mold! Loads of my favourite Welsh artists all playing in my hometown. But I feel like my sack of a body has been filled with all those things that little boys are made of after they've been smeared in fish guts, cottage cheese and Newcastle Brown and left in the sun for a month.

I toy with the idea of blowing the gig out. Oh, I was supposed to be DJ'ing the aftershow party at Y Pentan.

But I don't do blowing things out. I don't think I've ever missed a night at Telfords in 11 years of DJ'ing there every Friday night [very very occasional holidays notwithstanding]. And I have been known to present Sunday nights whilst evilly poorly and having to leg it to the loo during long songs. [Nothing short of an MBE will appease my martyrdom complex]

Most importantly, I couldn't bring myself to fathom a convincing lie to tell to Andy and Sophie from theAbsurd, whose energy and positivity in organising the festival were a shining example that distilled my guilt into something like molten plutonium. I forced myself in front of my computer and compiled a few CD's of noodly Welsh electronica, something that I thought would fit into the ethos of the Absurd and compliment the night well.

I arrived on site in Mold having missed the majority of the bands I wanted to see. Quick list: Race Horses, Nia Morgan, the Drip Dry Man, Stacey Cohen. I got there in time to see Race Horses drive back to Aber, to meet Dean Fuzzyfelt and his harem [that's a joke, by the way - don't bloody hit me!], and to see Derwyddon Dr Gonzo. This isn't supposed to be a review. Suffice to say that in amongst the tomfoolery [of which there was a lot] there is a great band in there. Madrach and Dangos were very good indeed. I liked them, for what it's worth. But I, personally, could have done without the wrestling and the more cabaret elements. But I can empty a room when I'm DJing at 1000 paces. There's lots I could learn from Derwyddon, I suspect.

Dean and I sat and talked while Sibrydion set up. The rain was in a very threatening mood but proved itself to be all mouth and no trousers, thank the God of Apparently Imminent But Never Arriving Rainstorms. If I'd had to put my cagoule on I would never had lived the shame down.

The audience all looked like they'd had a bloody good day. i.e. the majority of them were pleasantly pissed and sun-reddened. I saw faces from school who I haven't seen for years. Given the hangover still lurking inside me like a malevolent demon, I didn't struggle to my feet to go over and say "hello". I was very happy sat with Dean marvelling that the last time I was on the Rec was on Bonfire night 1986 [or 7] soaring in the joy of a date with Rebecca Cowell, until Jay Hall's fist in my face crumpled me to the pavement. That was the Mold of my youth. Occasional joys interspersed with random acts of comc book violence.

Pretty certain I saw one of the bastards who tried to make my school life hell, too.

He looked half dead and more than half filled with heroin. Why did that sight bring a tear to my eye?

Sibrydion were consummate, bright and tuneful. They're 'the perfect festival band'. Osian is still the coolest keyboard player in the universe. Mei is a natural, although why I waved at him part way through the set, I don't know. What did I expect him to do? Wave back halfway through a song?

Hangovers coax me into such stupid actions..

Dean and I left before Sibrydion's set had finished because I had to set my gear up. I got the Y Pentan [last time I was there I was in a bit of a brawl - none of these were my fault, I swear] and there were still people eating in the restaurant which meant that we couldn't snaffle a table for my 'equipment'. The fact that Y Pentan has a restaurant was something of a shock to my system. The fact that the food looks great and that the redevelopment has turned it into the kind of place I'd like to spend many hours supping many pints in was like a a visitation from the God of Religious Epiphanies.

Jesus, this is long.

Sorry.

We had a quick pint in the Ruthin Castle - my old watering hole. I hid in the back room because... I don't know... I'm guilty that I've only been back once in over 10 years, I suppose.

While I was there skulking in the back 5 people I either went to school with or used to gig with walked through to use the toilets. It was bloody good to see them. They look well. Some of them look better than they did. This filled my heart with joy.

The next half hour was a rush of Dean helping me set the gear up, John Lawrence frowning at the PA [the God of Wonderful Human Beings bless him!]. Me sweating -- it's a nervous reaction, thing. Deeply unpleasant. Stops as soon as I calm down. I met the Drip Dry Man [very dapper and urbane!], Stacey Cohen [talented and very beguiling, even recovering from swine flu], Mechanical Owl [who does the best cappuccinos in Mold, by all accounts, as well as being a very excellent human being and very fine musician to boot], Rhys Trimble [who got the benefit of 10 words of my pre-gig nerves... sorry Rhys!].

My intention, as stated earlier, was to play noodly Welsh electronic wizardry that I thought would sit nicely in the background while people stroked their chins and talked in elevated tones about the cultural worth of the event just gone. Fortunately, however, Y Ffin [just like the Absurd in general] is much more about celebration than it is about cerebral evaluation of culture and the arts. In other words, people seemed up for a party. Anyway, Paul Adams and Mike Foulkes, finely-honed bullshit detectors and unlikely to leave me in peace if I got my [swell]head stuck up my arse, were sat right in front of the stage. I decided to have a bit of a fun instead, and fun it most certainly was. I thought we'd end up crashing through the floor, or blowing the windows out, at one stage. It was a brilliant brilliant night and a crowd I would hire to come and enjoy themselves the next time I DJ.

It was a night that bolstered my spirits.

I haven't had a single hissy fit all day. Not yet.

Props [as I believe you kids say] to Mr Phormula for an impromptu beatboxing and freestyling set partway through. It was mindblowing stuff, Ed, You turned it into a party.

And great to see Mr Swash, Mr Davies, Mr Adams, Mr Foulkes, Mr Speed, Mr Arminshaw and Blue. I hope you enjoyed it even a quarter as much as I did. In fact I'm praying to the God of Not Making a Twat of Myself In Front of Old School Friends that that was the case.

I think I have a show to prepare. Back to the top of the page...