Mykonos? My @rse.

Ever so often one of those songs comes along that lodges itself in your head, but not in a good way. It's not one of those that (like you joggers) goes round, and round, and round (fades). It's one of those that you loathe so much that every time you hear it you feel your tummy muscles contract and stomach acid beginning to bubble at the back of your throat. And if you're in an environment where you are not in control of the music you become edgy and fidgety, and you hasten out of there.

Or is it just me?

Songs that do this to me, off the top of my head: A Crazy Thing Called Love by Queen (and to only a slightly lesser extent, most of the output by Freddie Mercury and his poodle-haired buddy), Do Ya Think I'm Sexy? by Rod Stewart, You're Gorgeous by Whoever That Was By And I Can't Be @rsed To Look It Up, and that hip-hop rap-thing version of Every Breathe You Take. To name a few.

But, now, straight in at number one is a song so bloody awful it instantly sets my blood to simmer and I get to taste my dinner all over again. It took me ages to find out it's identity, which infuriated me as I kept aurally chancing upon it and the more I heard it the more I learnt to loathe it and it frustrated me that I couldn't identify it and by doing so heighten the chances of me avoiding it. All I knew it was by some heavily-reverbed hymnal folky types and the worse bit during the song is a 'we're about the sing something truly important' pause, followed by a bit that goes "Brother you don't need to turn me away, I was waiting down at the (something) gate".

Excuse me - I've just broken out into a cold sweat and need a drink of water. Hold on.

Eventually, I found out. It's called Mykonos by a band called Fleet Foxes. So now I knew. And me being me I've done a bit of wikiresearch and found them (with a fair degree of horror) to be from Seattle, Washington! The Home Of Grunge!! Of Mudhoney and Soundgarden and Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains and of course Nirvana!!!

How magnificent is the human mind? Mine managed to identify some music it knew I may mildly dislike, but must have somehow subconsciously deduced that Fleet Foxes originate from a place musically dear to me, immediately and unconsciously enhancing my disdain towards them.

Or maybe they're just crap. Album of the Year, my @rse. Although I haven't heard it but if Mykonos is a definable example then I'm taking every step to avoid doing so.

Colin is back at Chez BrynT and on the sofa and feeling sorry for himself. So it's a good job I'm not feeling too doleful at the moment else we'd be brothers in the arms of misery. He was back here by the time I came home, looking gloomy and grey. He asked if we could go to the pub but I told him I had to take Gabe kick-boxing; before realising taking little bro' along and finding a pub would be preferable to an hour or so wasted in a chilly car or traipsing hopelessly around a supermarket in search of excuses to waste a few pennies.

So once Gabe was dropped off myself and Colin drove to the least-grim pub I'd found on my brief survey a few weeks back and ordered a couple of Carling Exports. We then ignored half-a-dozen puzzled looks as we made our way to the quietest part of the pub and sat down on significantly-slashed seats. This was hardly the place for a counselling session, but we soldiered on.

Colin jumped straight in and confessed how he thinks he has screwed up and in a spectacular fashion. He admitted that he thinks his marriage popped its clogs well over a year ago, and he's wasted several months running along the flat-line in the hope of tripping over the occasional beep. It eventually occurred to him that it wouldn't even have bothered him if he did find a beep, or even some electronic jazz-funk, he'd only be lashing Red Rum with a cat-o-nine-tails.

I asked him about Holly and Amber but he just shrugged. I'm not like you, Bryn, he said. I'm not the big daddy, I think most blokes aren't. When they came along my immediate thought was that I'm too young to be a father, and I still think that now, yet last birthday there were forty-four candles on my birthday cake. How the f*ck can someone who's forty-four say they're too young to be a father? So it occurred to me I just don't want to be a father - yeah it's too late now and yeah, I'm shirking a f*cking load of my responsibilities to the girls but they're young enough to forget me and think of the next bloke who comes along as daddy.

I almost threw my beer at him, thinking about how my three felt about Poppy. But I kept my cool and just allowed my breathing to quicken instead.

I asked what was happening with regards to his immediate plans but Colin said he didn't know, other than spending the next few days, weeks or months flowing down a very famous creek whilst searching for an elusive rowing implement. He confessed that he was royally f*cked. No job, no home, very few possessions and a dwindling amount of income. If he could have picked a time to have screwed up, he said, this would not have been that time.

We talked for a little while longer, becoming increasingly anxious about a few expressions being thrown in our definite direction, so gulped down the rest of our beer and left. I passed our glasses back to the landlord who, instead of saying thank you, looked at me as though myself and Colin has just spent the past twenty minutes in plain sight of everybody alternatively sodomizing each other.

We picked up sweaty but smiling middle-son and came home. And currently, it is *both* me and my brother's home.