Currently the reservation is dillying and, indeed, dallying around in Oxford. No doubt, I'll be seen loading saddlebags with the complete works of Edith Bowman, wearing a neckerchief and pooh-poohing theories as you read this, whilst swinging from side to side on my ancient bicycle as a result of a rather 'topside' sherry.
The reality is that I'm up to my glands in lesson planning, teaching and the like so the blog has had to go into hibernation for now. Please feel free to check back occasionally to re-read some old posts or leave comments.
Put down the razor blades and shotguns. It'll only be for a couple of weeks while I get used to all this mish mash. We'll meet again. Very. Very. Soon.
Toodlepipmylittlemonkeys. xx
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Thursday, 17 June 2010
Orb chasing and skirt slobbering
Some people are on the pitch, they’re reading a blog...
It's a curious thing, that once every 4 years, I find that it's completely appropriate to become a gurgling neanderthal, shedding millions of years of natural selection in the process. It leaves me scouring round the flat, scuttling after pigeons that land on the windowsill, hoping to lure them inside so I can bash them to death with an IKEA bedside lamp and grill the meat over the toaster. I got LOVE and HATE tattooed onto my eyelids. I started clapping with my elbows. I enjoyed yelling jingoistic slogans in the direction of the magic picture box in the corner of the pub and imploring some of the fittest men in the world to 'work harder' while I recline in my seat and suck warm beer through a straw like an alcoholic stroke victim.
The World Cup has a reputation for turning hoards of right thinking, modern people into flag draped, riot inciting, monotoned, shameless anti-socials or sunshine fearing, TV worshiping, offside rule explaining, entertainment vacuums. This time around though, the emperor is starting to look somewhat exposed around the edges. This World Cup is a little bit rubbish, despite infinite adverts rubbing their crotch and jocularly backslapping us into remembering how much we all really like football. No really... NO REALLY - YOU DO (eat at McDonald's) YOU DO. FOOTBALL. EURRRGH. FOOTBALL!
I’ve taken a short break to write this, after 7 days cultivating the impression of my buttocks into the couch and treating myself to herculean doses of the most soporific matches in history. I'm begining to think it's me vs. the World Cup. If this was a boxing match, they’d have called it off, mainly on account of being bludgeoned to death by rank tedium and the fearful sight of Alan Shearer seemingly aging on screen before my eyes.
As a dedicated football fan, I really look forward to enjoying my favorite sport with people who have a bi-decade, passing interest in it. I love watching everyone coming together and enjoying the games. The World Cup allows people who normally have stupid pointless things, like friends and lives, to stand in the pub with the rest of us, shouting at In-ger-land for doing a rubbish “ball kick thing” or celebrating a goal by shouting “BINGO”. Of course, there will always be a few hardened wretches, glumly forced into grumbling acceptance that TV is suspended for a month and complaining about the Eastenders start times.
This time around I have a sort of sympathy for the naysayers. My ears are hounded by the relentless muffled white noise of the Vuvuzelas (or ZuluAliens as someone at work calls them – you can tell he’s the father of young children) which make the match sound like it’s being beamed to us direct from the inside of Mosses' arse during a biblical plague of wasps. It's a din more irritating than having your temple prised open with a crowbar and teams of glass ants being pushed inside your brain cavity. At least the unique sound of the screeching little Pingu’s tootling away has caught the public imagination, while somewhere in the middle distance several overpaid athletes hoof their orb to and fro, with a lack of enthusiasm that suggests they're just killing time between Thai massages and adultery.
The action to date has been a humourless, grey display of defensive inscrutability, just begging for characters and big game players to get the flyaway pound shop ball under control and reverse the current trend of pinging it over the bar like Johnny Wilkinson and standing, hands on hips, looking heavenward with a ‘why me’ expression all over their sour puss.
Lucky then that there are a couple of wacky tales underpinning the drudgery and wing-backs. The astonishing sight of the overweight, onion headed North Korean goal hanger blubbing during the national anthem was something to savour, until you remembered that his tears were probably the endgame of a knowing acceptance that failure to cruise to glorious victory would mean suddenly going ‘missing’ and being replaced by another gaggle of interchangeable patriots in the next game as a result of the edict from the 'Dear Leader'.
There's the ludicrous story of a bevvy of Dutch beauties being thrown out of Holland's first game for wearing matching micro dresses that showed sponsorship logos from an evil non-FIFA endorsed brand. Only an organisation as myopic and slapstick as FIFA would fail to realise that banning the dresses and kicking them out of the ground would only draw attention to the brand that oh so badly offended them. Sure. There's literally no way pictures of dutch hotties wearing tiny orange dresses would ever get on TV or in the papers. Behold; Sepp Blatter, the thinking man's idiot.
The hilarity seemed to not only double, but square, when it turned out that monotone ITV summariser Robbie Earle was responsible for the ladies getting into the ground in the first place, leading to him losing his job, his dignity and becoming the unwitting subject of 'Well I would have done the same..' conversations up and down the country between gangs of slobbering teens and overweight, bear knuckled gruntholes.
The opening ceremony promised myriad delights, with a huge concert held in a cavernous corporate rock venue in a South African township called Myideaohell. It was quite a sight to see Shakipsdon'tlie, The Black EyePods and other paid up members of popville trying to whip up some atmosphere. The organisers helped by dumping a load of beach balls on the bedazzled onlookers and first rate strategic flag distribution. The camera's occasional, ill-judged, close ups of the crowd showed them looking like they’ve been bussed in from the Eurovision Song contest to wear sparkly costumes and tick the appropriate boxes of enthusiasm and retain starry eyed rapture, making whole thing resemble a Loony Tunes re-imagining of the Nuremberg rally.
But, for those of us who know, this is everything we've been waiting for. Only a certain type can appreciate the warm, sunny feeling of waking up each day knowing that there's going to be 3 full matches. Not only that, but they're on the telly. Then, the world seems to open it's full glory to us; no matter that it's BBQ weather outside, no matter that the kids want to be taken for a bike ride, or you need to eat, or that you've failed to move for 12 hours and the DVT is threatening to move towards your spine if you untie the bit of string holding it in your calf. For just a short time, every four years, the world comes together. And watches a goalless draw between countries you've never been to. Ah. Sweet mysteries of life.
BabywhenyoucallmeyoucancallmeAl... xx
It's a curious thing, that once every 4 years, I find that it's completely appropriate to become a gurgling neanderthal, shedding millions of years of natural selection in the process. It leaves me scouring round the flat, scuttling after pigeons that land on the windowsill, hoping to lure them inside so I can bash them to death with an IKEA bedside lamp and grill the meat over the toaster. I got LOVE and HATE tattooed onto my eyelids. I started clapping with my elbows. I enjoyed yelling jingoistic slogans in the direction of the magic picture box in the corner of the pub and imploring some of the fittest men in the world to 'work harder' while I recline in my seat and suck warm beer through a straw like an alcoholic stroke victim.
The World Cup has a reputation for turning hoards of right thinking, modern people into flag draped, riot inciting, monotoned, shameless anti-socials or sunshine fearing, TV worshiping, offside rule explaining, entertainment vacuums. This time around though, the emperor is starting to look somewhat exposed around the edges. This World Cup is a little bit rubbish, despite infinite adverts rubbing their crotch and jocularly backslapping us into remembering how much we all really like football. No really... NO REALLY - YOU DO (eat at McDonald's) YOU DO. FOOTBALL. EURRRGH. FOOTBALL!
I’ve taken a short break to write this, after 7 days cultivating the impression of my buttocks into the couch and treating myself to herculean doses of the most soporific matches in history. I'm begining to think it's me vs. the World Cup. If this was a boxing match, they’d have called it off, mainly on account of being bludgeoned to death by rank tedium and the fearful sight of Alan Shearer seemingly aging on screen before my eyes.
As a dedicated football fan, I really look forward to enjoying my favorite sport with people who have a bi-decade, passing interest in it. I love watching everyone coming together and enjoying the games. The World Cup allows people who normally have stupid pointless things, like friends and lives, to stand in the pub with the rest of us, shouting at In-ger-land for doing a rubbish “ball kick thing” or celebrating a goal by shouting “BINGO”. Of course, there will always be a few hardened wretches, glumly forced into grumbling acceptance that TV is suspended for a month and complaining about the Eastenders start times.
This time around I have a sort of sympathy for the naysayers. My ears are hounded by the relentless muffled white noise of the Vuvuzelas (or ZuluAliens as someone at work calls them – you can tell he’s the father of young children) which make the match sound like it’s being beamed to us direct from the inside of Mosses' arse during a biblical plague of wasps. It's a din more irritating than having your temple prised open with a crowbar and teams of glass ants being pushed inside your brain cavity. At least the unique sound of the screeching little Pingu’s tootling away has caught the public imagination, while somewhere in the middle distance several overpaid athletes hoof their orb to and fro, with a lack of enthusiasm that suggests they're just killing time between Thai massages and adultery.
The action to date has been a humourless, grey display of defensive inscrutability, just begging for characters and big game players to get the flyaway pound shop ball under control and reverse the current trend of pinging it over the bar like Johnny Wilkinson and standing, hands on hips, looking heavenward with a ‘why me’ expression all over their sour puss.
Lucky then that there are a couple of wacky tales underpinning the drudgery and wing-backs. The astonishing sight of the overweight, onion headed North Korean goal hanger blubbing during the national anthem was something to savour, until you remembered that his tears were probably the endgame of a knowing acceptance that failure to cruise to glorious victory would mean suddenly going ‘missing’ and being replaced by another gaggle of interchangeable patriots in the next game as a result of the edict from the 'Dear Leader'.
There's the ludicrous story of a bevvy of Dutch beauties being thrown out of Holland's first game for wearing matching micro dresses that showed sponsorship logos from an evil non-FIFA endorsed brand. Only an organisation as myopic and slapstick as FIFA would fail to realise that banning the dresses and kicking them out of the ground would only draw attention to the brand that oh so badly offended them. Sure. There's literally no way pictures of dutch hotties wearing tiny orange dresses would ever get on TV or in the papers. Behold; Sepp Blatter, the thinking man's idiot.
The hilarity seemed to not only double, but square, when it turned out that monotone ITV summariser Robbie Earle was responsible for the ladies getting into the ground in the first place, leading to him losing his job, his dignity and becoming the unwitting subject of 'Well I would have done the same..' conversations up and down the country between gangs of slobbering teens and overweight, bear knuckled gruntholes.
The opening ceremony promised myriad delights, with a huge concert held in a cavernous corporate rock venue in a South African township called Myideaohell. It was quite a sight to see Shakipsdon'tlie, The Black EyePods and other paid up members of popville trying to whip up some atmosphere. The organisers helped by dumping a load of beach balls on the bedazzled onlookers and first rate strategic flag distribution. The camera's occasional, ill-judged, close ups of the crowd showed them looking like they’ve been bussed in from the Eurovision Song contest to wear sparkly costumes and tick the appropriate boxes of enthusiasm and retain starry eyed rapture, making whole thing resemble a Loony Tunes re-imagining of the Nuremberg rally.
But, for those of us who know, this is everything we've been waiting for. Only a certain type can appreciate the warm, sunny feeling of waking up each day knowing that there's going to be 3 full matches. Not only that, but they're on the telly. Then, the world seems to open it's full glory to us; no matter that it's BBQ weather outside, no matter that the kids want to be taken for a bike ride, or you need to eat, or that you've failed to move for 12 hours and the DVT is threatening to move towards your spine if you untie the bit of string holding it in your calf. For just a short time, every four years, the world comes together. And watches a goalless draw between countries you've never been to. Ah. Sweet mysteries of life.
BabywhenyoucallmeyoucancallmeAl... xx
Sunday, 6 June 2010
No place like homeless
28 Blogs Later...
It's a bi-product of my nomadic lifestyle over the last couple of years, that I seem to be in a constant state of unpacked half and half. The things that I own, the books that I've read, the CDs I've borrowed and never returned (and put in box labelled "Mwahhhahhahhhaaa, it's MINE now") they all live in stasis. Little nuggets of my personality packed away in the attics of friends and family waiting to eventually be reanimated into my world. It feels like I'm trapped in a cautionary satire of my own life, written by a disturbed John Lennon obsessive, riffing on the idea of removing all my possessions and warbling a tedious, patronising song about it.
The stinging and painful sensation of homelessness comes into focus during more depressed moments, like when I stub a toenail, drop a plate or stand, weeping, in front of a mirror. Being without a base causes a worrisome split within me and gives me a feeling of something being out of joint. Although I've had some great times renting in flat shares, it's inevitable to be haunted by an impotent feeling of not being able to influence your surroundings and the acceptance that you must at all times be seen to be grateful and get your bloody feet off the sofa.
I've never actually owned my own house, mainly on account of the fact that I don't possess a magic duck that shits golden eggs, so find myself somewhere short of the 47 billion lifetimes I would need to be working for in order to afford a deposit. Instead, I've been wandering from short term lease to short term lease and sharing with live in landlords. Although I've never been anything other than welcome (in no small part on account of the pennies coughed up monthly) there will always be a sense of being the second rooster in the hen house. Especially when I was discovered burying turds and crowing outside the back door at six in the morning.
Perhaps my dislocation from my location is caused by the split from my possessions as much as the lack of the traditional notion of a home. This is a personal Hell, not because I live in a manner that is even approaching "mildly inconvenient", but because I am absent from my heaven. Everything I own is absent from me, locked away in storage and bundled into boxes. It's a continuously weird situation to be so transient and it's a situation that makes me wonder constantly about what my future holds.
When you lose something important; your wallet, an old letter, the key to a secret basement dungeon, the frustration is driven by the function or emotional significance of the item and how desperate you are to use it. Eventually it dissipates and you give up searching, so the anger, the looking down the children's throats, the threats to perform an emergency c section on the kitten, they give way to a constant migrane of irritation. This feels like a yearning, caused by the knowledge that it's out there. Somewhere. Mocking you. Entering your dreams and whispering quietly; "I'm here... why can't you find me....? I'm so aloneeeeeeeeee..... BURN THINGS"
All the things I've owned in the past and at some point given away, outgrown or sold for crack, they're all out there, somewhere. My history is in those artifacts. My old sofa is being guffed on by a flatulent, bum picking sloth in somebody else's front room. My old washing machine is being cacked on by a seagull on a rancid landfill. My first toothbrush was probably pushed inside a broken oil pipe in a dismally futile 'Top Kill' exercise.
Thinking about these things can lead to either a sad nostalgia, where your missing object is romanced, mourned or even personified, which is exactly what I was telling my hairbrush this morning. I know it's silly to attach painful emotions to mere items, but it's hard not to want to pin your experiences to things that remind you of certain times in your life. It has to be better to think of the objects you shed as discarding a past, rooting you in inactivity. I'm glad I can move on and create a vacuum which is ready to be filled with experiences rather than commodities.
I do miss a home and a solid base. It makes life more comforting to know you can always return to your own sanctuary, but for now, life is constantly about emptying baggage and doing as much as I can to refill it. Perhaps next time, I'll pitch up somewhere I'll be able to stay.
At least my old toothbrush is doing its bit to stop the apocalypse. Not a surprise really. It did have Mighty Mouse on it and there ain't nothing he can't do. Apart from blocking pipes vomiting oil into the sea, it appears, but then I might have missed that episode.
Callmeonthelinecallmecallmecallmeanytimecallme xx
It's a bi-product of my nomadic lifestyle over the last couple of years, that I seem to be in a constant state of unpacked half and half. The things that I own, the books that I've read, the CDs I've borrowed and never returned (and put in box labelled "Mwahhhahhahhhaaa, it's MINE now") they all live in stasis. Little nuggets of my personality packed away in the attics of friends and family waiting to eventually be reanimated into my world. It feels like I'm trapped in a cautionary satire of my own life, written by a disturbed John Lennon obsessive, riffing on the idea of removing all my possessions and warbling a tedious, patronising song about it.
The stinging and painful sensation of homelessness comes into focus during more depressed moments, like when I stub a toenail, drop a plate or stand, weeping, in front of a mirror. Being without a base causes a worrisome split within me and gives me a feeling of something being out of joint. Although I've had some great times renting in flat shares, it's inevitable to be haunted by an impotent feeling of not being able to influence your surroundings and the acceptance that you must at all times be seen to be grateful and get your bloody feet off the sofa.
I've never actually owned my own house, mainly on account of the fact that I don't possess a magic duck that shits golden eggs, so find myself somewhere short of the 47 billion lifetimes I would need to be working for in order to afford a deposit. Instead, I've been wandering from short term lease to short term lease and sharing with live in landlords. Although I've never been anything other than welcome (in no small part on account of the pennies coughed up monthly) there will always be a sense of being the second rooster in the hen house. Especially when I was discovered burying turds and crowing outside the back door at six in the morning.
Perhaps my dislocation from my location is caused by the split from my possessions as much as the lack of the traditional notion of a home. This is a personal Hell, not because I live in a manner that is even approaching "mildly inconvenient", but because I am absent from my heaven. Everything I own is absent from me, locked away in storage and bundled into boxes. It's a continuously weird situation to be so transient and it's a situation that makes me wonder constantly about what my future holds.
When you lose something important; your wallet, an old letter, the key to a secret basement dungeon, the frustration is driven by the function or emotional significance of the item and how desperate you are to use it. Eventually it dissipates and you give up searching, so the anger, the looking down the children's throats, the threats to perform an emergency c section on the kitten, they give way to a constant migrane of irritation. This feels like a yearning, caused by the knowledge that it's out there. Somewhere. Mocking you. Entering your dreams and whispering quietly; "I'm here... why can't you find me....? I'm so aloneeeeeeeeee..... BURN THINGS"
All the things I've owned in the past and at some point given away, outgrown or sold for crack, they're all out there, somewhere. My history is in those artifacts. My old sofa is being guffed on by a flatulent, bum picking sloth in somebody else's front room. My old washing machine is being cacked on by a seagull on a rancid landfill. My first toothbrush was probably pushed inside a broken oil pipe in a dismally futile 'Top Kill' exercise.
Thinking about these things can lead to either a sad nostalgia, where your missing object is romanced, mourned or even personified, which is exactly what I was telling my hairbrush this morning. I know it's silly to attach painful emotions to mere items, but it's hard not to want to pin your experiences to things that remind you of certain times in your life. It has to be better to think of the objects you shed as discarding a past, rooting you in inactivity. I'm glad I can move on and create a vacuum which is ready to be filled with experiences rather than commodities.
I do miss a home and a solid base. It makes life more comforting to know you can always return to your own sanctuary, but for now, life is constantly about emptying baggage and doing as much as I can to refill it. Perhaps next time, I'll pitch up somewhere I'll be able to stay.
At least my old toothbrush is doing its bit to stop the apocalypse. Not a surprise really. It did have Mighty Mouse on it and there ain't nothing he can't do. Apart from blocking pipes vomiting oil into the sea, it appears, but then I might have missed that episode.
Callmeonthelinecallmecallmecallmeanytimecallme xx
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
Seasons Weepings
The Blogfather...
You'll be pleased to know I had a charming weekend, spending most of it in my deckchair overlooking Reservation Towers, with a knotted hankie on my forehead and wearing a string vest covered in vinegar stains from pickled eggs consumed over 12 hours sat in persistent drizzle.
It got a bit alarming when two care workers were dispatched by the council to smile at me cautiously and ask “If I was ok” in patronisingly cheery tones, before I shooed them from my roof terrace with a cricket bat. I was merely enjoying the freezing weather as only a patriotic Hercules and borderline alcoholic can.
I’ve always considered June to be the start of summer and thoughts turn to walking through the gardens of stately homes while unshaven, flat capped grounds keepers wielding multi-barrelled shotguns, shout unintelligible threats about walking on the paths and not picking the Hydrangeas. Images flash across my mind of never ending bike rides down steep country hills, staying out past nine o’clock and the taste of barbecued meats followed by the sound of uncontrollable retching and the satisfying ‘plop’ as hunks of undercooked sausage repatriate themselves from gullet to toilet bowl like a ten year old hitting a belly flop from the high diving board.
In this country we have a shared understanding and disappointment regarding the seasons which is often discussed nervously by people stuck in awkward social situations. Who among us hasn’t passed the time during, say, a chance meeting at the water cooler, the gathering round a fatal accident or the aftermath of a mugging, by politely discussing Mother Nature’s unwillingness to provide Britain's with slightly less hail?
People often speculate as to why the Brits talk so much about the weather, but it’s not that surprising because it’s always on the change, morphing from one partially recognisable state to another, before you’ve even had chance to check if you remembered your brolly.
Helpfully, people from previous generations often remind us (normally in the manner of wise sages issuing Caesar a grim warning to watch out for the Ides. Nothing more dangerous than an Ide. More dangerous than a Lion with a broken bottle... Sorry, I digress) about weather they remember from their youth and how bloody brilliant it was. Yes. That’s right. Even historical weather gets a good going over. Well, great. Let’s all get on board the fun bus and have a good old chat about historical weather. Parp, Parp.
To hear it told, this was a golden age, when summers lasted exactly the 6 weeks of the school holidays and were so hot, the oven was turned on to cool the house down, you could fry eggs on your nipples and lambs spontaneously combusted in the fields before being scooped up from the ground into pita bread and scoffed on the beachfront. Winters, in turn, were semi-arctic with great drifts of snow blocking in pensioners and marauding Yetis were hunted in the hills by SAS marksmen.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that indulging in imagined wonderment at historical weather might possibly be a cathartic exercise to purge us of our jealousy of the really nice stuff the rest of Europe seems to enjoy. Either that, or the frame of reference has simply changed. A beautiful summer forty years ago probably involved a trip to Margate, a dip in the brine, then back behind the windbreak before your eyes turn blue. Nowadays a good summer is judged by a previous Majorcan getaway, where it was so hot your entire body evaporated, leaving only a thin mist and the smell of BO and Ambre Solaire where you once stood.
I don’t put much stock by these rememberings of extreme conditions because it’s amazing how selective the brain hole can be. I can remember as many rainy days as sunny when I was a kid and frankly it didn’t bother me too much. It just meant a day kicking lumps out of pixelated Spectrum footballers on Kick Off 2 rather than playing “knock and run” or being bullied at the local park. The myth of summer never amounts to much more than shop windows displaying skin tight hot pants instead of woolly-pully’s, advertising agencies finding legitimate reasons to reduce their adverts to semi-pornographic levels by stripping the female models down to thong bikinis and people finding increasingly grim excuses to hang out the back of the pub with the fag ends, dog turds and frenetic kids, rather than huddled round a storage heater praying for the lock in at the Onion and Weasel.
This year there does seem to be an unhealthy number of tight shorted, floppy fringed morons around, looking like gay lumberjacks engaging in a battle as to who can look the most mentally incompetent whilst at the same time maintaining a galactic level of smug self-satisfaction that would make Fearne Cotton blush (as an aside, you know what they say; you can’t spell “Fearne” without FEAR. You also can’t spell “Cotton” without wanting to stop writing “Cotton” and instead go round to her house and push her face into an industrial belt sander, but that’s for another time...). It’s still raining, it’s still windy, but the sunglasses remain in place and I have to restrain myself from hurling concrete blocks from my window and watching these preening foreskins dodge them like little Asos froggers.
I think that, as a nation, we need to break free of the tyranny of an imagined summer that never happens and be bloody thankful for the nice days that we do get. Drizzle adds nice depth to a beautiful view, so it shouldn’t stop us doing what we want anyway. It doesn’t matter. In 50 years we’ll all be underwater anyway and all that will be left to moan about will be who gets the last lilo.
LoveisthedrugandIneedtoscoreooohohohcan’tyouseeloveisthedrugforme xx
You'll be pleased to know I had a charming weekend, spending most of it in my deckchair overlooking Reservation Towers, with a knotted hankie on my forehead and wearing a string vest covered in vinegar stains from pickled eggs consumed over 12 hours sat in persistent drizzle.
It got a bit alarming when two care workers were dispatched by the council to smile at me cautiously and ask “If I was ok” in patronisingly cheery tones, before I shooed them from my roof terrace with a cricket bat. I was merely enjoying the freezing weather as only a patriotic Hercules and borderline alcoholic can.
I’ve always considered June to be the start of summer and thoughts turn to walking through the gardens of stately homes while unshaven, flat capped grounds keepers wielding multi-barrelled shotguns, shout unintelligible threats about walking on the paths and not picking the Hydrangeas. Images flash across my mind of never ending bike rides down steep country hills, staying out past nine o’clock and the taste of barbecued meats followed by the sound of uncontrollable retching and the satisfying ‘plop’ as hunks of undercooked sausage repatriate themselves from gullet to toilet bowl like a ten year old hitting a belly flop from the high diving board.
In this country we have a shared understanding and disappointment regarding the seasons which is often discussed nervously by people stuck in awkward social situations. Who among us hasn’t passed the time during, say, a chance meeting at the water cooler, the gathering round a fatal accident or the aftermath of a mugging, by politely discussing Mother Nature’s unwillingness to provide Britain's with slightly less hail?
People often speculate as to why the Brits talk so much about the weather, but it’s not that surprising because it’s always on the change, morphing from one partially recognisable state to another, before you’ve even had chance to check if you remembered your brolly.
Helpfully, people from previous generations often remind us (normally in the manner of wise sages issuing Caesar a grim warning to watch out for the Ides. Nothing more dangerous than an Ide. More dangerous than a Lion with a broken bottle... Sorry, I digress) about weather they remember from their youth and how bloody brilliant it was. Yes. That’s right. Even historical weather gets a good going over. Well, great. Let’s all get on board the fun bus and have a good old chat about historical weather. Parp, Parp.
To hear it told, this was a golden age, when summers lasted exactly the 6 weeks of the school holidays and were so hot, the oven was turned on to cool the house down, you could fry eggs on your nipples and lambs spontaneously combusted in the fields before being scooped up from the ground into pita bread and scoffed on the beachfront. Winters, in turn, were semi-arctic with great drifts of snow blocking in pensioners and marauding Yetis were hunted in the hills by SAS marksmen.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that indulging in imagined wonderment at historical weather might possibly be a cathartic exercise to purge us of our jealousy of the really nice stuff the rest of Europe seems to enjoy. Either that, or the frame of reference has simply changed. A beautiful summer forty years ago probably involved a trip to Margate, a dip in the brine, then back behind the windbreak before your eyes turn blue. Nowadays a good summer is judged by a previous Majorcan getaway, where it was so hot your entire body evaporated, leaving only a thin mist and the smell of BO and Ambre Solaire where you once stood.
I don’t put much stock by these rememberings of extreme conditions because it’s amazing how selective the brain hole can be. I can remember as many rainy days as sunny when I was a kid and frankly it didn’t bother me too much. It just meant a day kicking lumps out of pixelated Spectrum footballers on Kick Off 2 rather than playing “knock and run” or being bullied at the local park. The myth of summer never amounts to much more than shop windows displaying skin tight hot pants instead of woolly-pully’s, advertising agencies finding legitimate reasons to reduce their adverts to semi-pornographic levels by stripping the female models down to thong bikinis and people finding increasingly grim excuses to hang out the back of the pub with the fag ends, dog turds and frenetic kids, rather than huddled round a storage heater praying for the lock in at the Onion and Weasel.
This year there does seem to be an unhealthy number of tight shorted, floppy fringed morons around, looking like gay lumberjacks engaging in a battle as to who can look the most mentally incompetent whilst at the same time maintaining a galactic level of smug self-satisfaction that would make Fearne Cotton blush (as an aside, you know what they say; you can’t spell “Fearne” without FEAR. You also can’t spell “Cotton” without wanting to stop writing “Cotton” and instead go round to her house and push her face into an industrial belt sander, but that’s for another time...). It’s still raining, it’s still windy, but the sunglasses remain in place and I have to restrain myself from hurling concrete blocks from my window and watching these preening foreskins dodge them like little Asos froggers.
I think that, as a nation, we need to break free of the tyranny of an imagined summer that never happens and be bloody thankful for the nice days that we do get. Drizzle adds nice depth to a beautiful view, so it shouldn’t stop us doing what we want anyway. It doesn’t matter. In 50 years we’ll all be underwater anyway and all that will be left to moan about will be who gets the last lilo.
LoveisthedrugandIneedtoscoreooohohohcan’tyouseeloveisthedrugforme xx
Wednesday, 26 May 2010
Dropping your guts... LIVE
The Curious Case of Benjamin Blog...
First off, never have I seen so much cash up for grabs in such a cheap way. It appears that the set was built from the left overs from the Woolies clear out by GCSE art students the Sunday morning after buying fake IDs to get into the local boozer. It's not helped that it goes on. And on. And on. Until, by the time the credits roll, you actually feel liberated, like you're coming out of a deep coma and your senses are returning to you for the first time in decades.
The format plays out the interminably lengthy conflict between tedium and a niggling desire to prove yourself cleverer than the gurning contestants, keeping you interested, bored, irritated and ambivalent all at the same time. This odd selection of competing emotions is probably designed to stop you thinking too much about the title and conjuring with mental images of the morning after Godzilla and Mothra took a constipated King Kong out for a particularly spicy curry.
The contestants appear to have been handpicked from a random sample of Hollyoaks extras and the criminally insane, ranging from grinning, peppy little yappers trying to convey personality through the sheen of terror or wide eyed, talking bookends who look like they received council assistance to put their trousers on. I was amazed by their ability to be irritating and yet forgotten, almost while they're still playing the game.
And so to the host. Davina. Her chummy everywoman shtick creates a vortex of unlikability. She possesses a unique kind of reverse Midas touch when it comes to personality, in that everything she touches (says or secretly thinks) turns to insincere. She tries so very hard to come across as a next door gal, a tomboy mukka, winking (I said winking) into the camera and pulling that face she makes when she doesn't like something (you know the one. It's a kind of lip curl of faux disgust and confusion that is supposed to make us think she 'doesn't take herself too seriously' but makes her come across as a patronising old sow, who might be having a stroke).
The harder she works on her breezy charm the more, I fancy, she is masking the fact that she's an overacting pantomime dame, irritating people's arses off and telling them she 'loves them' a good twelve minutes after she met them...
"Here's Carol and Mike from Redditch"
"Hi Davina.."
"Wow, I love you... the way you're, like, so cool about it... I luuuvvv' you guys, you're great"
Oh sod off Davina. You're about as warm and fuzzy as myxomatosis.
Her gracious gift of love extends until the time it takes for these people's dreams to fall down an unconvincing plastic slide like a huge Ker-plunk of destiny, then it's back to the green room to call her fake mum and tell her about some hair dye.
With the likes of Lauren Laverne, Kirsty Wark and Gabby Logan around, I can't understand how her style of anti-entertainment still gets on the box. Especially as, when she's not presenting and on shows like Never Mind the Buzzcocks, she comes across as pretty likable. I get the distinct impression that the only million pound drop going on is the one into her bank account on Monday after the show. Either that, or that's my uncle at the top of the Eiffel Tower making paper aeroplanes from the foldin' money.
TheyplaysofineIthinkyou'llagree. xx
After this week's shopping taking me down to my last and final groat (perhaps I should have only had one bottle of rum and put back the toothpaste) I was delighted to see my wealthy uncle, who popped in for tea and scones.
SavagereservationsforClaridgesatsix lent me a tenner to pay off the gambling nuns that live in the flat above (who threaten to give me a good shoeing unless I pay up), then the both of us spent the afternoon laughing at beggars, stuffing shrimp cocktails into our slobbering faceholes and taking a jaunt to Paris to hurl pennies from on top of the Eiffel Tower, of which the security guard managed to turn a blind eye. Mainly on account of the fact that he was looking up at the time.
Following this extravagance, I was a bit bewildered to be sitting in front of The Million Pound Drop (C4) which started on Monday, a live game show which aims to give away a million brothel tokens to contestants who can answer 8 questions correctly. The contestants bet their million pound jackpot across one, or more, of 4 possible answers. If their chosen answer(s) prove to be wrong, the money drops out of sight and away forever, leaving the contestants regretful and sobbing like they've just sent their child to boarding school.First off, never have I seen so much cash up for grabs in such a cheap way. It appears that the set was built from the left overs from the Woolies clear out by GCSE art students the Sunday morning after buying fake IDs to get into the local boozer. It's not helped that it goes on. And on. And on. Until, by the time the credits roll, you actually feel liberated, like you're coming out of a deep coma and your senses are returning to you for the first time in decades.
The format plays out the interminably lengthy conflict between tedium and a niggling desire to prove yourself cleverer than the gurning contestants, keeping you interested, bored, irritated and ambivalent all at the same time. This odd selection of competing emotions is probably designed to stop you thinking too much about the title and conjuring with mental images of the morning after Godzilla and Mothra took a constipated King Kong out for a particularly spicy curry.
The contestants appear to have been handpicked from a random sample of Hollyoaks extras and the criminally insane, ranging from grinning, peppy little yappers trying to convey personality through the sheen of terror or wide eyed, talking bookends who look like they received council assistance to put their trousers on. I was amazed by their ability to be irritating and yet forgotten, almost while they're still playing the game.
And so to the host. Davina. Her chummy everywoman shtick creates a vortex of unlikability. She possesses a unique kind of reverse Midas touch when it comes to personality, in that everything she touches (says or secretly thinks) turns to insincere. She tries so very hard to come across as a next door gal, a tomboy mukka, winking (I said winking) into the camera and pulling that face she makes when she doesn't like something (you know the one. It's a kind of lip curl of faux disgust and confusion that is supposed to make us think she 'doesn't take herself too seriously' but makes her come across as a patronising old sow, who might be having a stroke).
The harder she works on her breezy charm the more, I fancy, she is masking the fact that she's an overacting pantomime dame, irritating people's arses off and telling them she 'loves them' a good twelve minutes after she met them...
"Here's Carol and Mike from Redditch"
"Hi Davina.."
"Wow, I love you... the way you're, like, so cool about it... I luuuvvv' you guys, you're great"
Oh sod off Davina. You're about as warm and fuzzy as myxomatosis.
Her gracious gift of love extends until the time it takes for these people's dreams to fall down an unconvincing plastic slide like a huge Ker-plunk of destiny, then it's back to the green room to call her fake mum and tell her about some hair dye.
With the likes of Lauren Laverne, Kirsty Wark and Gabby Logan around, I can't understand how her style of anti-entertainment still gets on the box. Especially as, when she's not presenting and on shows like Never Mind the Buzzcocks, she comes across as pretty likable. I get the distinct impression that the only million pound drop going on is the one into her bank account on Monday after the show. Either that, or that's my uncle at the top of the Eiffel Tower making paper aeroplanes from the foldin' money.
TheyplaysofineIthinkyou'llagree. xx
Monday, 24 May 2010
Celebrity Fuckwit Shock Soup
Fear and Blogging in Las Vegas
I'm not a nosy person in my heart, but boredom and the proximity of my neighbours has made me enthusiastic to keep up a healthy level of community engagement recently. I restrict myself to normal levels of interest. I can tell you though, it can be quite hard to resist taking it to that slightly creepy next level. You secretly want to start peeping into people's windows, keeping detailed notes on every one of their comings and goings; when they visit the lavatory, their favorite programmes, how much they mention me, try to find out why they ignore me. Why don't they see me..? Why wont they listen...? I told them I'd do it... the voices.... So as you can tell, I keep it pretty friendly.
Nowadays, idle curtain twitching tittle tattle is apparently the news. On Sunday the eighties revival gathered further pace, as Fergie was back, making herself look like a massive tool after being caught in a sting, trying to sell off her ex-husband's brain cavity as real estate space (or something). Her dippy naivety, although not hugely newsworthy over a weekend which saw a tragic Indian plane crash and a fatal coach accident, did at least give me a warm, fuzzy feeling of nostalgia at seeing her back on form, making a huge tit out of herself.
For ages, the news has been encouraging us to look over the fence into the celebrity dirtbox and glare at the foibles of these porridge brains with hand clapping glee. Watching Fergie, Lord Treismen and Ronan 'the pest' Keating, all try to wriggle out of it is like watching someone recover from a huge hangover the morning after a dinner party where they got hideously drunk, made rude comments about the pigs in blankets and headbutted the host before squatting over the table and curling a juicy log into the coq-au-vin.
This nasty habit the tabloids have consists of getting bored with real reporting, tying a Dictaphone to a fat titted wench or passing themselves off as a Sheik, waving boobs or cash under a non-specific celebrity, then spending the next six weeks perving over the fallout and moralising on our behalf. All this plays out endlessly while we sit dumbstruck and unblinking like an old man catching the ten minute freeview by accident while flicking through the channels looking for the snooker.
As a populace are we really passing moral judgement on stupid people caught in entrapment-o-ramas? We seem to really be just bedazzled by suddenly being faced with decisions on how to react best to the life of people we previously gave only fleeting attention. Are we tittering, or are we pontificating on what we would have done with our friends then secretly knowing what we REALLY would have done and thanking the Lord it wasn't us?
I'm not going to even bother passing judgement on the tabloid sting tactics. I'm not even judging the failure of the celebrity rats to recognise they had landed on the cheese or to hear the clunk clunk clunk of the marble heading down the stairs before it was too late and the little man was being pinged off the diving board and into their faces with a giant telescopic lens. The notional service of the news being a secondary medium to report to the public a sequence of important events that have already taken place has long since died, to be replaced with an unending episode of Trigger Happy TV that takes itself about a million times more seriously and the pranks organised by men even uglier, fatter (but probably more funny) than Dom Jolly.
Instead, one can only marvel at the frequency, ease and dexterity of the whole system. There are seemingly endless skeletons in closets who crave swimming pool funds, willing to cash in on their exploitation of the only celebrity they will ever meet. There is also a sickly and less comfortable element to how some of the stories are played out and how we are encouraged to view the celebs after the sting. Brad Pitt remains a lovable rogue following his affair with Angelina Jolie, whilst England's Brave John Terry is hauled into the tabloid kangaroo court to be branded a trollop and hit round the head with a collective red top 'harrumph' of indignation. Cheryl Cole is the wronged woman, standing, doe eyed beside her man (until he finally located enough straws to break her back, in the form of further short sighted text wanking arrangements), yet Victoria Beckham remains about as popular as a turd in a souffle.
There's no point searching for indignation to attack readers attracted to scandal mongers who spend their nights cackling in the dark and plotting who to take down next, because the society makes the system, makes the society. We're all in some part complicit in this, making us all responsible. I especially hope that Fergie takes that comment seriously and is inclined to divvy up my share of the loot. I'd even watch an episode of Budgie the Helicopter for that. As long as I didn't have to look at her face. Ever. Again.
Cleopatracominatcha xxx
I'm not a nosy person in my heart, but boredom and the proximity of my neighbours has made me enthusiastic to keep up a healthy level of community engagement recently. I restrict myself to normal levels of interest. I can tell you though, it can be quite hard to resist taking it to that slightly creepy next level. You secretly want to start peeping into people's windows, keeping detailed notes on every one of their comings and goings; when they visit the lavatory, their favorite programmes, how much they mention me, try to find out why they ignore me. Why don't they see me..? Why wont they listen...? I told them I'd do it... the voices.... So as you can tell, I keep it pretty friendly.
Nowadays, idle curtain twitching tittle tattle is apparently the news. On Sunday the eighties revival gathered further pace, as Fergie was back, making herself look like a massive tool after being caught in a sting, trying to sell off her ex-husband's brain cavity as real estate space (or something). Her dippy naivety, although not hugely newsworthy over a weekend which saw a tragic Indian plane crash and a fatal coach accident, did at least give me a warm, fuzzy feeling of nostalgia at seeing her back on form, making a huge tit out of herself.
For ages, the news has been encouraging us to look over the fence into the celebrity dirtbox and glare at the foibles of these porridge brains with hand clapping glee. Watching Fergie, Lord Treismen and Ronan 'the pest' Keating, all try to wriggle out of it is like watching someone recover from a huge hangover the morning after a dinner party where they got hideously drunk, made rude comments about the pigs in blankets and headbutted the host before squatting over the table and curling a juicy log into the coq-au-vin.
This nasty habit the tabloids have consists of getting bored with real reporting, tying a Dictaphone to a fat titted wench or passing themselves off as a Sheik, waving boobs or cash under a non-specific celebrity, then spending the next six weeks perving over the fallout and moralising on our behalf. All this plays out endlessly while we sit dumbstruck and unblinking like an old man catching the ten minute freeview by accident while flicking through the channels looking for the snooker.
As a populace are we really passing moral judgement on stupid people caught in entrapment-o-ramas? We seem to really be just bedazzled by suddenly being faced with decisions on how to react best to the life of people we previously gave only fleeting attention. Are we tittering, or are we pontificating on what we would have done with our friends then secretly knowing what we REALLY would have done and thanking the Lord it wasn't us?
I'm not going to even bother passing judgement on the tabloid sting tactics. I'm not even judging the failure of the celebrity rats to recognise they had landed on the cheese or to hear the clunk clunk clunk of the marble heading down the stairs before it was too late and the little man was being pinged off the diving board and into their faces with a giant telescopic lens. The notional service of the news being a secondary medium to report to the public a sequence of important events that have already taken place has long since died, to be replaced with an unending episode of Trigger Happy TV that takes itself about a million times more seriously and the pranks organised by men even uglier, fatter (but probably more funny) than Dom Jolly.
Instead, one can only marvel at the frequency, ease and dexterity of the whole system. There are seemingly endless skeletons in closets who crave swimming pool funds, willing to cash in on their exploitation of the only celebrity they will ever meet. There is also a sickly and less comfortable element to how some of the stories are played out and how we are encouraged to view the celebs after the sting. Brad Pitt remains a lovable rogue following his affair with Angelina Jolie, whilst England's Brave John Terry is hauled into the tabloid kangaroo court to be branded a trollop and hit round the head with a collective red top 'harrumph' of indignation. Cheryl Cole is the wronged woman, standing, doe eyed beside her man (until he finally located enough straws to break her back, in the form of further short sighted text wanking arrangements), yet Victoria Beckham remains about as popular as a turd in a souffle.
There's no point searching for indignation to attack readers attracted to scandal mongers who spend their nights cackling in the dark and plotting who to take down next, because the society makes the system, makes the society. We're all in some part complicit in this, making us all responsible. I especially hope that Fergie takes that comment seriously and is inclined to divvy up my share of the loot. I'd even watch an episode of Budgie the Helicopter for that. As long as I didn't have to look at her face. Ever. Again.
Cleopatracominatcha xxx
Monday, 17 May 2010
Festivalentine
An American Blog in London...
As the entrails of winter finally seem to be losing the battle to keep us in a semi permanent state of drizzle, visions of dipping toes into ponds, running hand in hand through the park, building a daisy chain and enticing skin cancer run through my thoughts.
Outdoor pursuits of all manner come to mind and I can literally taste the covering of sweat on my upper lip in anticipation of the heady days of summer, involving such activities as looking out of a shadowed office’s window at frolicking children playing outside like new born lambs and returning, weeping to routine work based tasks like spreadsheet corruption, embezzlement and burying corpses in a landfill site.
There’s always so much to look forward too when the days get longer and I’m hoping for a bumper summer. For the worker there’s the prospect of coming home in daylight, for the sportsman there’s jogging in the park and the World Cup on the telly, for the film fan, blocks will be fully busted at the local Megaplex and for the alcoholic tramp there’s a summer sniffing round pub car parks for the dregs at the bottom of Magner’s bottles. With a bit of luck, there’ll even be a dead wasp inside... Mmm, protein.
It’s also in about May that I start to eye up the summer festival schedule, dribbling lust spittle over the lineups, checking prices and having a squeeze of my lower back to check which of my kidney’s is ripe enough to sell so I can afford a day ticket. The mailing lists all bark at you unexpectedly like Lassie letting you know there’s a boy trapped down the well, to let you know that this year Jay Z is playing on the rec ground round the back of Morrison’s, or the latest kitsch revival act from the 80’s (Del Amitri? Big Fun? Chaka Demus and Pliers?) are literally aching for you to sing along in a field whilst off your box on a mixture of cider, pot noodle and heroin flavoured lip gloss.
Aside from the main ones, there’s little festivals popping up all over the place and there’s not much to choose between them all. The seasoned genericoholic can immediately see through each festival’s attempt to present themselves as a flower sniffing hippie love in, with names like “Petal Floppyhat Kooka Mania”, “Nostalgianthaystacks” or “Groin Swirl”. No matter how hard they try to inspire whimsy, it’s all blown apart once you try to order your tickets and find the Krypton-Factor like hoops you need to train your dogbox brain to leap through. Demanding £750, a cheek swab and an imprint of your arse in a bit of concrete for a weekend camping ticket is rationalised by the curious allure of sleeping rough, not brushing your teeth and consuming falafel butties twice a day at the special festival price of £9.50 a pop.
The joys of the summer festival are multiple. For some it’s the camaraderie of the camp fire at the end of a long day’s moshing. For some it’s leaving the group and returning late at night to discuss the ‘amaaaaaaaazzzzzziiinngg’ world music tent, featuring bands called something like “Anal Spectrum” or “Peruvian Corn Lighthouse”, your enjoyment of which was in no way influenced by 48% cider and the giant pipe being passed around by a bloke in dungarees called Flute. Other’s like to chase the hit monsters, barging themselves to the front for all the big name acts, trying to look meaningfully into Bono’s eyes and wishing they could get close enough to really test that court injunction. For my part, every time I’ve been to a festival it’s been about avoiding trench foot, locating the bar and bouncing semi-rhythmically until my head feels numb.
I really enjoy the camaraderie of a solid weekender. It’s across between a prison break, an orienteering holiday and a really weird dream. It’s a mix of making friends immediately with people you’ve never met, sneaking rum past security men with foreheads larger than the main stage and falling asleep standing up despite the “Acid-funkinghellthatsloudotronical Bloodlung Remix” of the theme from Emmerdale blaring into your earcups from skyscraper sized speakers four feet from your face. You’d probably find a more relaxing break spending four days in an Afghan desert pothole while a bearded 1890’s circus strongman hammers foot long nails into your temples whilst bellowing the word “SOUND” continuously into your face.
In spite of the cost and the camping, the rain and the rancid, these complaints are still just woods obscuring trees. I absolutely bloody love a festival. In fact, right now I’m turning to the back of the Review section of the Observer (confirming my official position as a middle class, left leaning, humus muncher) to see where Morrissey's going to be, if I can catch Richard Hawley and find out if this is the year that Yaz makes her main stage return, surely ushering in a new era in popular culture. We all know pop wears cycling shorts, don’t try to fight it.
Overtheteethandroundthegumslookoutstomachhereitcomes xxx
As the entrails of winter finally seem to be losing the battle to keep us in a semi permanent state of drizzle, visions of dipping toes into ponds, running hand in hand through the park, building a daisy chain and enticing skin cancer run through my thoughts.
Outdoor pursuits of all manner come to mind and I can literally taste the covering of sweat on my upper lip in anticipation of the heady days of summer, involving such activities as looking out of a shadowed office’s window at frolicking children playing outside like new born lambs and returning, weeping to routine work based tasks like spreadsheet corruption, embezzlement and burying corpses in a landfill site.
There’s always so much to look forward too when the days get longer and I’m hoping for a bumper summer. For the worker there’s the prospect of coming home in daylight, for the sportsman there’s jogging in the park and the World Cup on the telly, for the film fan, blocks will be fully busted at the local Megaplex and for the alcoholic tramp there’s a summer sniffing round pub car parks for the dregs at the bottom of Magner’s bottles. With a bit of luck, there’ll even be a dead wasp inside... Mmm, protein.
It’s also in about May that I start to eye up the summer festival schedule, dribbling lust spittle over the lineups, checking prices and having a squeeze of my lower back to check which of my kidney’s is ripe enough to sell so I can afford a day ticket. The mailing lists all bark at you unexpectedly like Lassie letting you know there’s a boy trapped down the well, to let you know that this year Jay Z is playing on the rec ground round the back of Morrison’s, or the latest kitsch revival act from the 80’s (Del Amitri? Big Fun? Chaka Demus and Pliers?) are literally aching for you to sing along in a field whilst off your box on a mixture of cider, pot noodle and heroin flavoured lip gloss.
Aside from the main ones, there’s little festivals popping up all over the place and there’s not much to choose between them all. The seasoned genericoholic can immediately see through each festival’s attempt to present themselves as a flower sniffing hippie love in, with names like “Petal Floppyhat Kooka Mania”, “Nostalgianthaystacks” or “Groin Swirl”. No matter how hard they try to inspire whimsy, it’s all blown apart once you try to order your tickets and find the Krypton-Factor like hoops you need to train your dogbox brain to leap through. Demanding £750, a cheek swab and an imprint of your arse in a bit of concrete for a weekend camping ticket is rationalised by the curious allure of sleeping rough, not brushing your teeth and consuming falafel butties twice a day at the special festival price of £9.50 a pop.
The joys of the summer festival are multiple. For some it’s the camaraderie of the camp fire at the end of a long day’s moshing. For some it’s leaving the group and returning late at night to discuss the ‘amaaaaaaaazzzzzziiinngg’ world music tent, featuring bands called something like “Anal Spectrum” or “Peruvian Corn Lighthouse”, your enjoyment of which was in no way influenced by 48% cider and the giant pipe being passed around by a bloke in dungarees called Flute. Other’s like to chase the hit monsters, barging themselves to the front for all the big name acts, trying to look meaningfully into Bono’s eyes and wishing they could get close enough to really test that court injunction. For my part, every time I’ve been to a festival it’s been about avoiding trench foot, locating the bar and bouncing semi-rhythmically until my head feels numb.
I really enjoy the camaraderie of a solid weekender. It’s across between a prison break, an orienteering holiday and a really weird dream. It’s a mix of making friends immediately with people you’ve never met, sneaking rum past security men with foreheads larger than the main stage and falling asleep standing up despite the “Acid-funkinghellthatsloudotronical Bloodlung Remix” of the theme from Emmerdale blaring into your earcups from skyscraper sized speakers four feet from your face. You’d probably find a more relaxing break spending four days in an Afghan desert pothole while a bearded 1890’s circus strongman hammers foot long nails into your temples whilst bellowing the word “SOUND” continuously into your face.
In spite of the cost and the camping, the rain and the rancid, these complaints are still just woods obscuring trees. I absolutely bloody love a festival. In fact, right now I’m turning to the back of the Review section of the Observer (confirming my official position as a middle class, left leaning, humus muncher) to see where Morrissey's going to be, if I can catch Richard Hawley and find out if this is the year that Yaz makes her main stage return, surely ushering in a new era in popular culture. We all know pop wears cycling shorts, don’t try to fight it.
Overtheteethandroundthegumslookoutstomachhereitcomes xxx
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