Maltese radio spectrum deregulation, aubergines and Echo and the Bunnymen

Wha? Huh? What happened to Victor? He gone for week!

First, he got poorly, and then his left hand had an accident that involved aubergine slices and some very hot olive oil. The yellow puss-ey loveliness in the webby bit between his fingers that resulted from the eggplant/extra-virgin contretemps made writing articles about Maltese radio spectrum deregulation at work more painful than they normally would be and ruled out any non-compulsory typing. Hence the blogless last week.

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Before I move on to the now-very-belated-but-earlier-promised meditation on the atrocity at Number One School in Beslan, let me say briefly that moving to Brussels has afforded me all sorts of interesting experiences, not least of which has been discovering that there were great scads of parachute-trousered and crimp-haired French-language new wave music from the early eighties that never really made it across the channel or indeed the Atlantic. It's like stepping into a parallel world where Depeche Mode and Echo and the Bunnymen sang in French instead, or finding a trunkful of abandoned Cure recordings that never quite made it out of the studio.

So at the risk of someone remarking 'Oh, well of course I had heard of them. I have three of their albums. Pshaw,' let me recommend 'L'aventurier', by Indochine. It's quite not-bad.

I can hear the derision already. Well fuck off. I hadn't heard of them before.