Pneu pneu – da-daahh de-dada.

A whole week has gone by without having a wife around. Given that we’re normally both living and working around eachother here in the flat, it’s been a strangely un-strange week for me; think we’ve both just gotten on with things. And I rather think Caroline’s week has been more intense than mine, which is a cruel twist of fate given that I’ve been working and she’s been on a sketchbook field trip to Montpelier. Still, I’ll have to work up the sympathy a little when she returns, as right now I think she’s likely to be in a café in Paris, diverted to the city of lights by the current French rail strike. I’ve had FIP on round the house all day, listening to a bonkers-eclectic playlist and Parisian traffic reports in solidarity.

Lastnight, it was French music too. Though I’ve yet to decide if Air’s fashion sense is the future or not – it wouldn’t be the future of a family, if I did adopt their tight white jeans as my new look du jour.

I’m beginning to wonder if the Opera House has pants acoustics. Can’t say lastnight’s mix was any better than Pendulum’s a week ago – and what a dreary technical way to start a review of one of Pop’s most enjoyed left-of-centre groups. But trying to pull off electronic music live is a tricky one, I feel prompted to say again, and though the boys did an admirable job with their band, a combination of fizzy synths, live vocoding and a middle-aged audience did little to create a seething Zion in the mosh pit.

Still, as an inadvertant Air nerd, I enjoyed playing air keyboards along to their back catalogue and it was nice to hear so much from their least commercially successful album, 10,000htz or whatever it’s called. It was a likeable, tuneful show with a fabulously over-egged, arpeggiated finish, even if they’d cleared off with a friendly ‘bon soir’ by quarter to eleven. They obviously figured their demographic would need to get home sharpish to relieve the baby sitter. Never mind.

I did have a bit of a Pavlovian reaction to some of the tunes from Moon Safari though – I’ve had so many darned dinner parties to that album over the last decade, I was desperate for the main course by the end.

So, to celebrate a night out properly, we turned a joke into an action plan and Andy, Mark, Mike, Emma and myself hotwheeled to the Chick King and ate mushroom burgers in the seafront carpark.

Health kick starts tomorrow, when Caroline is back. I had better get the hoover out; if I still haven’t cleared the washing up by the time she walks in later, I won’t be humming french lounge music, it’ll be something from The Muppets.