Hello, I've been expecting you. I'm Paul, the author of this Blog, born and Raised in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, England. Now living with my Canadian girls in the second coldest capital city in the world. When I am not blogging, which is most of the time, I am raising my 3 year old princess, or conspiring with my better half to take over the world.
paul-lancaster.com is my personal blog for the purposes of publishing my incoherent ramblings and such. Don't forget to check out my other projects.



The Cribs, Death Cab For Cutie & Franz Ferdinand

The Cribs, Death Cab For Cutie & Franz Ferdinand
Cepsum, Montreal QC – 15th April 2006

It was off to Montreal over the Easter weekend for a phenomenal concert. Wakefield’s finest The Cribs kicked off the show with their mischievous Yorkshire antics, much of the crowd seemed relatively unenthused, but I loved them, and the crowd at least picked up a little when they played “Martell”, used in a TV advert over here. Death Cab for Cutie were up next, now from what I had listened to of Death Cab prior to seeing them live, I had always got the impression their music was quite mellow, so I was expecting a low key show, but to my surprise they rocked! I didn’t know all of their songs but I was officially converted. They kept it entertaining too, Ben Gibbard pulling out a mini drum kit during “Different Names for the Same Thing” kept it particularly memorable.

Death Cab for Cutie, Cepsum, Montreal. 15th April 2006

The stars of the show for me though were without a doubt Franz Ferdinand, being a big fan of both their albums I had a good idea of what was to be in store, but they excelled my expectations. They couldn’t have got the show off to a better start, in my opinion, making their entrance accompanied by Neutral Milk Hotel’s “The Fool”. All the members of the band were full of energy and had great stage presence, they really got the crowd going. Being my first Franz Ferdinand show, it was awesome to hear quite a few tracks from their first album along side the newer stuff. An awesome show from start to finish.

Franz Ferdinand, Cepsum, Montreal. 15th April 2006


How to open a bottle of wine sans corkscrew

So Crystal bought me a bottle of wine, so sweet considering she is an ardent beer girl, she bravely entered the alien world of the wine store and picked out a bottle, a good bottle too. I couldn’t wait to indulge but being a beer girl, she had overlooked the fact that she didn’t own any form of cork screw, Boo! So after deciding that pushing the cork in was way too ghetto, we had to pull out a whole collection of tools to get that thing out. Various screws, hooks and knives were employed before a pair of snipe nose pliers turned out to be the weapon of choice, we nibbled at the cork with them until we pulled it out in little bits. It was worth it too the wine was goooood.

How to remove a cork without a corkscrew