Pastimes & Lifestyles

Its been a while since my last entry, I'd like to say I was busy or my computer was being daft but the truth is I've been a bit out of sorts for blogging.

Well, what exciting things have I been up to? Hmmn, thinking about my life over past week, did I do anything of note?

Umm ... well I baked a lovely Victoria sponge cake and went over to Chris & Kate's for tea and Sherlock Holmes game on Wednesday, not so exciting I'm afraid.

On Thursday I saw my parents and went to city centre to help them look for cushions - oh dear.

On Friday I went to the coast for a walk in the lovely weather and spent the evening with an old friend getting drunk in trendy local bars - hah redeemed myself!

Saturday - hungover, whole day to be written off.

Sunday went to my boyfriend's dad's and got annoyed at his over extravagant lifestyle, apparently his patio furniture cost 116 pounds per chair, he has eight of them and a very large table from same range!

Monday got signed off again for another month for work related stress, went to counseling session. Made me feel very shit.

Tuesday cleaned out downstairs cupboard and watched chick flick.

So here we are, not a great week by anybody's standards. I am going to Exeter tomorrow, alone, to look for a house to live in so we can move down to Devon, leave horrid jobs and live equally sedentary lifestyles but in the countryside. Watch this space...

Sorry but ...

On a friend's blog I recently received the response to some of my observations regarding a small back-room produced US publication 'What's British media journalism ever given the world?' The answer being in their view the tabloid, which is fair I guess and we also gave the world the paparazzi although this is an Italian word.

The modern tabloid and paparazzi are only a by-product of the way that the world has become so obsessed with celebrities which I know is not a uniquely British invention. Besides other countries have their equivalents such as Das Bild in Germany.

We have also given the world many paragons of virtue in the media such as the BBC which I understand is watched and listened to by many of our transatlantic friends so that they can receive an unbiased and accurate account of what is going on outside their borders. Our broadsheets such as the Guardian or the independent (although no longer a broadsheet it will always be a lifetime member of this club) are accurate and intelligent and even the Mirror which is a loathsome tabloid, spoke out against the war in Iraq.

US media journalism is responsible for a multitude of sins such as calling the previous election in Dubya's favour making it nigh on impossible for the Gore camp to claim victory without sounding like a bunch of whiney sore losers. The coverage of the war from the US media was grossly biased and incomplete acting only as a mouthpiece of the Bush/Cheney propaganda.

I should also imagine that they are responsible for the maleducation of the US public leading to Bush II as they should have been highlighting issues such as the terrible state of the US economy, the removal of civil liberties post 11th September and how Americans were hated even more passionately in the Middle East making them less safe than they have ever been rather than focusing on who did what in Vietnam and whether John Kerry's hair would allow him to be a suitable president.

I have no apologies for criticising the article as I would have done with most editions of the Norwich Evening News or the awful way in which the Daily Hate Mail or the Sun are written. Whenever you put anything in the public domain you can expect feedback be it good or bad as I'm sure I will receive in the comments from this if anyone bothers reading it. This freedom of speech is one of the things that the US prides in it's own constitution, you know the same one which allows you to sleep with an assault rifle up your backside.

That's enough yank bating for my blog as I do not wish to offend you all. Some of you are actually rather nice, one of my best friends is a yank and my mum married into them. Besides if it wasn't for us Europeans most of you wouldn't be there at all!

Twenty-something teenage angst

I have just spent the last two days with my parents and without my boyfriend, it was lovely as usual because they are wonderful parents and they live in beautiful North Norfolk but it was also weird.

Normally I see my parents with my boyfriend or with my three sisters there too but this time it was just me and them for two days with only Nell the Welsh Border Collie for company. I was happy enough at first but the weather was dreadful and we had to spend most of the time in the house so before long I remembered what it was like to live at home and wanted to skulk around like a moody teenager again but I couldn't as I don't have a room any more.

I now know how my friends who are away at uni feel when they come home for the holidays, as when you live alone you get used to doing your own thing. If you want to listen to music you do, if you want to potter about on-line you can and if the four walls make you too stir crazy you can go out to a pub or whatever, so it is tough spending the whole time making polite conversation with mum and dad when an odd nostalgic part of you feels like sneaking out, smoking a fag and downing a warm can of cider just because you feel 15 again.

I am now home and enjoying my independence by putting on the tv, cutting myself a slice of carrot cake and supping a cup of tea - oh hang on a second, that's what I have been doing chez mes parents. What am I moaning about!

British Sea Power could take them anyday

Does anybody else think that Razorlight's new single 'Somewhere Else' sounds like 'That's entertainment' by the Jam?

If you want to check this out try www.bbc.co.uk/6music and listen back to any show as they're bound to have played this dirge.

Apparently BSP are pissed off with Razorlight because they have taken to having trees and foliage on stage a la BSP.

A piss up in a brewery

I am crap at organising things, I used to think that I was really good in this area but alas my confidence has been shattered. For example on Sunday my boyfriend (who for some reason does not wish to be named in this blog?) and I wanted to go to the coast. All we had to do was get dressed and leave the house within an hour, did we manage this? Of course not! We left in an hour and one minute and so we missed the bus and spent the day moping at home.

I was supposed to get Glastonbury tickets, again I failed. I woke up late and a bit hung-over and forgot that they went on sale at 9am, I then got round to ringing/trying to obtain via internet at 11am but alas they were all gone.

Today we are supposed to go to Thrigby Hall wildlife park to see the tigers but my friend Chris in his ginger-stupidity hasn't insured his car yet so we have no way of getting there. This I know is not my fault but I have a sneaky suspicion that if I wasn't coming then all would have gone smoothly.

Being crap at organising doesn't sit well with my other bad quality which is taking disappointment very badly as I am less likely to triumph in the face of setbacks than to have a little cry, give up and go home.

Knowing about my lacking in this area scares me as we have to get jobs in Exeter and a house in the space of a couple of months and as my boyfriend is even worse at organising than me, this doesn't bode well. Expect major disappointment, I am.

Ode to my Glastonbury

I am gutted, I was unable to get Glastonbury tickets so that means that I wont be going until at least 2007 (next year is a fallow year). I was especially looking forward to going this year as we should be living in Devon this summer and it wouldn't involve an arduous six hour train journey.

Many people who haven't been don't understand the attraction and I should assume that perhaps 80% of these never would anyway because they're idiots who work in offices. However for the uninitiated, music lover, culture lover, spiritually inclined or just interested individuals to whom it should appeal here (in no particular order) is why I love the Glastonbury festival:

• Incredible sense of belonging and community
• Great music (and this is not just the main stages, my favourite things have often been on the Jazz world stage or Acoustic tent)
• Great music (its so good I've listed it twice)
• Hippies (most people hate hippies because they're jealous of them. I couldn't be that nice and chilled out all the time but I do admire them)
• Free stuff - massages, drinks, food, bongo lessons whatever you can blag really
• The mashed up people raving all night at the blanket stall
• Red bush tea - I discovered it there
• Chai
• Food that isn't just burgers and hog roasts as you get at other festivals
• The atmosphere, especially at night when the whole site is lit by flares and camp fires
• The Somerset countryside, especially sunset over Glastonbury Tor
• Comedy, circus, theatre tents to hide in when it gets too hot or too wet
• Weird stuff popping up all over the place
• My friends being together
• Smoking dope as if it's legal
• Ozomatli - they're a yearly fixture
• Cafes, especially the Gypsi candle lit one, the weird christians who have a solid wood house and introduced me to omelette baps, the Avalon cafe especially because I saw John Peel there and the Gujurati Chai cafe
• The smug feeling of a shared secret experience when you travel back through Reading to London and scare the businessmen
• the apres-bath

I couldn't possibly convey in words alone how much I love Glastonbury and it is a shame that it is being taken over by wankers, especially last year when the Oasis crowd got their simian hands on it making me not want to go. I am worried about the next time being in 2007, who knows what might have changed by then, one of my best friends is getting married and perhaps will have a child, others who are currently single might have a crap girlfriend in tow, I might be so poor as a student that I can't afford it and many other changes may have occured.

I am going away I hope so I wont tearfully stare at the tv as I have done in other years I didn't go.

HMV sucks (a bit)

I am still waiting for my Gorky's album, it has been over a month since I handed over my two pounds worth of deposit and was told it would be there in a week. I just realised this and I am not best pleased.

Also the one in Norwich has a very poor 7" vinyl section which upsets me because I love collecting them and have to go to the red, yellow and black place instead which may be out of my way.

That's all I have to say on the matter besides I really must have better things to do with my time?

I wander'd lonely...

I love springtime. This year has really opened my eyes to how much I love spring. It was snowy one week and then the next we were sitting outside a pub at 8pm without the need for scarves, hats and gloves.

The sun has a really special quality in springtime, it creeps across, bathing you in warmth and light with a soft ochre feeling rather than the intense brilliance of summer sunshine. Life bustles around you, birds fight, build and procreate & flowers burst from their winter sleep and come alive with the most radiant shades of yellow, pink and purple.

My favourite of these are the daffodils which appear everywhere from formal gardens to woodland paths to urban wastelands. A daffodil will always make me smile with their silly lion like heads turned upwards in praise towards the sun. There is a walk near the cathedral in Norwich which is planted with as many types of daffodil and narcissus that you can imagine. You can stroll by the river and each corner offers a vaste display of yellow, white and orange. There are huge double-headed ones tall and bold, fried eggs (orange on white) , the dainty narcissus with many heads drooping daintily from one stem and of course the classic, yellow, large single head, simple but elegant.

I felt very ill at work today and had to come home, but now I feel fine. I bought a handful of local daffs from our grocer, fed the very greedy blackbirdsin our garden with ham rind and settled down to a book by the window and it reinforced to me the fact that humans were not meant to be herded together in large concrete blocks lit by sickly fluorescent lights and forced to make meaningless inputs into computers for an abstract financial system that nobody really understands or cares about. We should be out, experiencing every minute beautiful change that spring offers, giving worship to an all-powerful, altruistic authority which brings us this yearly wonder (and I don't mean any of our so-called Gods of modern religion).

We've all lost the plot and I for one intend to find it again no matter how thinly spread the threads in this inhospitable, spiritually empty desert.