Love songs in C, Politics in G

The title of today's blog is from a song called "try this at home" by an amazing acoustic singer/songwriter called "Frank Turner". I saw him performing on Glastonbury highlights for 2010 on the BBC and fell in love with him because he plays in just the way I want music to be at the moment, a more soft, probably acoustic version of punk rock. We're going through times very similar to the punk Rock era, with students leaving school, college and university alike with no job to turn to, very little money in circulation and the world in crisis. The differences this time being that although the poor aren't as poor as they were last time round, we have no-one we can blame it on this time round. We have no political figure such as Margaret Thatcher to boo and hiss because they have thrown the country in turmoil. Many would blame the pairing of Bush and Blair, but even with them out of the picture, no-one really seems to know what to do about it. But anyway, getting back to the music, I've had these lyrics in my head ever since I first heard them, which is quite annoying because I'm pretty sure they're the few lyrics in the song to not really mean anything, but they sound good together.

Now where as I've been full of bad news, doom and gloom recently vis-a-vis the not-hearing-from-Ritzys thing about the job for almost a month, the not knowing if I can move into my new student house because I don't know if my other housemates have paid their money and what-not and Luke moving back in with his parents about 100miles away I do have some good news! I applied for a job as an article writer for a website that's soon to be published called "unitown.co.uk" and I received an email yesterday saying they want me to be the lead writer for their book reviews section!! It's £10 an article that gets published and as they want one from me once a week I have a good chance of making a fair amount of money from it, plus I really enjoy it as well. Here's an example of my work:

"I usually use reading a good book as a way of cooling off and getting to sleep at night, but unfortunately, I found this didn’t work with “Stories we could Tell” by Tony Parsons, published 29th August 2005. I just loved it too much and couldn’t put the thing down! Set in 1977, the story takes place in the epicentre of the rebellion era. In a world of The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Jam and lots of other safety-pin-pierced, anarchy believing Rock Gods, “The Paper”, a London based music magazine gives a job to almost all the main characters. Terry, his girlfriend Misty and his best friends, Ray and Leon embark on writing reviews for “The Paper” about bands now known as the Old Punk Rock Legends. Along the way, they meet a variety of characters, from the Dagenham Dogs who are intent on spilling their blood to the “Teds”, intent on spilling the blood of the dogs, to the Abba obsessed hippies from the 60’s in their flared jeans, tight fitting shirts “summer of love” attitude. To say the plot is based around a single night an awful lot happens to the 3 boys, but then again a night must feel like an awful long time when amphetamine sulphate is rushing around your blood stream, making sleeping and eating impossible and after 3 days of no sleep, causing some of the strangest hallucinations you thought you’d never see.
Books such as “Stories we could Tell” often have nostalgic points of view added in by the author which often make no sense to the reader unless they had lived through the era in question. But with such an array of characters it’s almost impossible for the reader to not find a character to relate to. However, the plot line is really quite predictable when reading with the twists and changes being thrown in the readers face long before they actually happen. Also as the story is set in the past the writer is writing with hindsight and so writes in changes that could not happen in a single night. But there is a certain charm to the book that makes you want to read more and so I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in the punk rock era and would give the book a strong 8 out of 10."

I'm absolutely over the moon because it gives me the excuse of buying a new book every week. However, it's not enough money to keep me happily living in Lincoln over the summer holidays. If I can't get the job with Ritzy's, I'm going to head home and possibly do some voluntary work experience with Andrew Hale Photographic Studios. I worked there for a week in my AS year for my work experience so Mr. Hale knows who I am so I feel fairly positive about my chances.

I went to visit Luke yesterday, it was meant to be just for the day, but after drinking our time away (on diet coke for me) at Charters boat pub, we realised it was getting pretty late and I'd missed most of the trains. So we decided I'd stay over the night. We went to discovery Photographic studios today to see if we could have a photoshoot, but they told us to wait until next month because the photoshoot would be free and we'd just have to pay for the prints which are very reasonable prices. So hopefully I'll have a picture of me and Luke to show you all next month!

Speaking of pictures, I have a new hobby. Here's an example:



Yes, that's me, and yes I have given myself faerie wings. I've been really enjoying tracing things off my laptop in this way for a while now and have quite a collection now of my friends all done in this comic book style way. I hope you like it!!

Anyway, we're getting beautiful weather in England and this happens so rarely I think I'm going to head outside wearing my short shorts, a bakini top, reading a good book and drinking some form of fizzy rubbish. Ciao for now xx

I can not sleep I can not dream tonight

Blink 182's "I miss you again". I don't know why I'm using lyrics from this, but I'm listening to it and singing along so why not? Actually, I'm doing pretty well. My life is well on track to be decent. I finally got my student card through and so have an overdraft to use to pay for my accommodation now which is excellent. I've just been paid £30 for a photoshoot I did months ago and if I get this other photoshoot work done I'll be getting another £30. I got my first brief for the article writing job I got and so hopefully will be making £10 from that and hopefully this week I will hear from Ritzys nightclub with (hopefully) the good news that I got the job. I really hope so because that will be £40 a week! The only bad news I have is that Luke moves out of his house in 3-4 days and so I won't be living in the same city as my boyfriend again. He's going to live back home as it will be free for him to live there and he will be getting a summer job and also will be getting a job at his old high school for £8000 a year. We might have the deposit for a house by this time next year! We're both going to save up a load so it should be good.

Anyway, last night was possibly one of the best nights of my life. Originally I'd only invited one friend, a girl called Laurel, to my place for cheap pre-drinks before we went to Sugarcubes nightclub together. The number, however, swelled quite dramatically until, including me, there was 9 people drinking in my living room! (One of whom was my flatmate Josh who didn't come to the club with us but was content to join us for pre-drinks) it was a really amazing night with plenty of alcohol, good friends, good music playing in the background (Massive Attack, Mezzanine) and then a great night at our favourite nightclub. Just thinking of last night, in a room full of my greatest friends all laughing and smiling and drinking together because of me puts a massive smile on my face... Helped by the fact last night cost me less than £15!

Oh, by the way. I've got myself a new hobby! When I'm on the internet, I'll often watch japanese cartoons on websites I know. Anyway, I like this one "anime" so much I started tracing pictures of the characters off my laptop screen and turning them into my own character that I made up. Then one day when I got stuck for inspiration I thought, "why don't I do a trace of myself from a photograph?" so I found a photograph I took of myself when I was 15... I think. Well, I think you can see the result yourself!



I'm considering making a comic book story and using my friends to make the comic book, simply because I think the style suits the typical Marvel Comics style. It'll be so fun to change my friends into superheroes!!

Keep on Running...

From Stevie Winwood. And why am I quoting Stevie Winwood? Because mum and dad insisted we watch a programme of his biography on TV. I don't mind, I'm not gonna stop them or ask to change the challen, but I am starting to feel really home sick and I've only been back a few days. When I'm in Lincoln, I always have something to do, somewhere to go, someone to see. When I'm back at home, I kinda tennis between waiting for my mum to come off the computer and waiting for my brother to finish playing on his X-Box. I don't really have friends here any more, and never really did have in the past. Even if one of my friends did invite me over, I wouldn't know where to go to get there. I know where they all live in Lincoln. This isn't my home anymore, it's not my place. I miss my flat and my life and everything back home and can't wait to get on the train to go back, I'm so bored.

However, it's been a nice weekend. When I got here on Friday, I had a fast tea and then went with my mum to meet the newest addition to our family, baby Charlie Jack to my cousin Claire. He was 3 weeks early and is adorable! He was sleeping a lot because he's not supposed to be born yet, his due date is in about 2 weeks. I loved cuddling him. Me and mum were fighting over who got to cuddle him longest over the soud of Charlie's dad shouting at the football in the background.

Firday was my grandma's birthday and I was going to post on here to say happy birthday to her, but then we realised no-one had told her I was coming down so we decided to keep it a surprise as we were going to visit the next morning. But dad told mum he'd told Grandma I was up when actually he hadn't and I told mum not to mention anything and she ignored me and mentioned it to my grandma anyway who told mum my dad had never told her in the first place... anyway, the by and long of it is that Grandma found out and it was ruined.

So we went to Grandma and Grandpa's place in the lake district and hung out with them for a while. It was really nice driving on the familiar roads again and seeing all the lambs going through their teenage years being moody with mum, but of course running for her safety when the sheep dog made an appearance. Today mum dyed my hair for me and Brendan's friend came over so he could co-play on the X-Box.

I'm going to stop talking now because I feel like on of them people that has the most boring life in the world but tries to make it sound interesting. You know the sort. "So I got up and had a tin of rice pudding. I said hi to mum's friend Cassandra and then I got dressed and I wasn't sure what to wear, I either had the plain black circle neck t-shirt or the plain black circle neck t-shirt saying 'Enjoy California' in the Coca Cola style...".

I'm not that sort of person.....

I hope.

3 Lions on a shirt.....

Football. I'm sorry, but the world is insane. Oh the English pride of watching a few men who work out way too much, get paid way too much and have wives who are more plastic than person kick a ball around a field and hopefully into a net. The result can cause people to laugh and get drunk, or cry and become even more drunk. With the town sporting red and white, people come out of their homes to celebrate a result that has absolutely no impact on their lives, unless of course another "tragedy" occurs when a massive tidal wave of flesh presses too close to the barriers of the football stadium and is crushed under itself and death is surely the answer. Ha! That's not as important as the men on the field and their little ball. Of course it isn't, we're football fans. And so at the end of the day we won't return home to our families as we usually do, no we hear the cry of the pub and so one side of the marriage is left home with the children as the other skips along to the pub to celebrate aforementioned no-impact-football-results by consuming semi-lethal amounts of booze, before inevitably one will bring it back up from whence it was shoved. They say the streets of the city are lined with gold, but it's a shame you can't actually see any of said gold for the layer of vomit, spit and worse I should fear, the air filled with smells that are best left unexplored and more than likely the sound of someone getting a little too carried away and spilling blood into the already disgusting concoction. This is the English pride. Unfortunately, it's also the English sorrow. As you can tell, I'm not much of a fan of the world cup. Next match, I think I'll make a little den under my bed and lock my door. It's safer than being on the streets of the world cup, that's for sure!!

Anyway, with that out of the way, it's time to talk Middlesbrough Live Music Festival! Before you say anything by the way, I'm going to point out that actually, music ensues very similar results to the world cup, which is way you will very rarely see me in the middle of a "mosh-pit". I'm much more likely to be found on a bench at the back away from the screaming shouting fans who are probably the same fans as the football lot and spend their night, probably in the same jail cell while they sober up. Anyway, the first band we saw and actually remembered (we tended to forget the ones not worth remembering) were called "Airship". Now, the nice thing about this band is that they were performing in a well known nightclub in Middlesbrough. What does that have to do with anything you ask? The show was for 18+ years. Yes, we left the little emo children behind, showing off because they had got their hands on a well known brand of alcopop and so were showing off about how "drunk" they were, and entered into the world of adults, with calm faces who were there to listen to the music, which I might add was very good, and not to see how many drugs they could get away with before the police inevitably caught up with them. The rest of the day we spent in Walkabout, the Australian themed bar that had all the live music on that the festival itself couldn't house. We had this picture taken in the bar.

Um, or so I THOUGHT it was taken in the bar but this is the first time I've looked at the image properly and according to the thing at the bottom we had this taken in the Gay-bar Charlotte (pink hair) took us to the night before. Oh well, I loose track of these things sometimes. Anyway, those two in the image who aren't me (hopefully you've guessed I'm not the boy, nor the pink haired girl) are Alan and Charlotte who went to Middlesbrough Live with me.

That night we saw 2 different bands. The first were more of a support band called "Example" and they were fantastic! They really got the crowd reared up and excited and put on a really good live show. Also, no one was pulled out of their gig for dangerous behaviour. I wish the same could be said for the main act that night, the Hoosiers. The music was good enough, but the show itself was rather lacking. The band decided to have random conversations between themselves at the beginning and I even found them to be a little offensive at one point, when they shouted "Hello Middlesbrough, wow, look how many of you there is, what is there, like 50 people out there?". Now is it just me or does that sound like they're making the town out to be a place that doesn't put much effort in? Anyway, everyone else seemed to go crazy and I always enjoy being at the side during such gigs because you can laugh at the people being pulled out wearing tattered remains of their t shirts which probably cost more than all my shoes put together, one lad was pulled out and all he was wearing on his top half was the elastic from his underwear. (I say top half because he was still wearing jeans... and I presume the rest of his underwear on his hips down, and had no top on! Was really pretty funny).

Anyway, as much as I would love to keep rambling on at you, I just got a text message from Luke who's coming to my place for tea tonight so I better go let him into the building. Au revoir and Adieu my good people... or more specifically... My grandparents and boyfriend... as I'm pretty sure they're the only ones who actually read this!

Before I forget!

(Sorry, Slipknot lyrics, pretty perfect for a p.s.)

I'll come back on here soon and explain Middlesbrough Live Festival (much more satisfying that Trans Global), the money situation and of course, the job!

I have a job interview today (Thursday 10th June 2010) at 12noon. Wish me luck world! I really need this job so badly. I've dug myself a mighty fine grave and would rather not push myself into it. However, I get the feeling I'm falling in whether I like it or not so at least the job can act as my own ladder and I don't have to beg Luke for legs up anymore. Bless my boyfriend, he's lent me £190 to pay for my accommodation. Could I find a better boyfriend anywhere in the world? No. Don't think so. Love you Luke!

Oh no it's happened again!

No this isn't just some exclamation, it's a line from one of the songs by Trans Global Underground from the new CD I bought. Ok, lets explain this a little bit first. A few years back, possibly about 6, me and my parents and little brother were at a festival in Wales called "Festival on the Edge" (the edge of the boarder of Wales and England). Everyone was getting really excited about a band playing that night called Trans Global Underground and were all planning to go to the gig. So was I. Unfortunately, my parents were not on the same wave length. So that night, I stayed in our tent and babysat my little brother while they went off to see this band play live. Even from where I was, about 50 yards away in our tent, I could tell it was a really rocking and amazing gig. They sounded amazing and I was really upset I missed them, especially when we were told the next day that they were one of the biggest bands in Pakistan and were going to be playing the biggest gig in Pakistan ever the next day. But I thought "Oh well, we have their CD and I'm sure I'll see them again at some festival". Yeah, that didn't happen. I've heard head nor tail from them, until this year. I found the advert on the internet "Trans Global Underground present UNITE, playing Manchester's Wall of Sound". So I got really excited and bought the tickets for me and Luke to go see them play 3rd June 2010. Now, the more experienced of you are probably sat there, like some famous opera singer shouting "mistaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaake!" At the top of your lungs. The more inexperienced of you, heed my warning. The saying "Always read the small print" doesn't always mean contracts.

Okay, so 3rd June comes around. Me and Luke head back home to my parents house and work out train times and everything. We buy our train tickets (£13 return for both of us, which in all honesty is a pretty good do.) We arrive in Manchester and get a taxi to the place for about £5 so we wouldn't get lost. Now, when we arrived there, alarm bells began tinkling slightly in our heads. We were in the middle of the comedy and high-class club area of Manchester, not the nightclubbing rave area we expected a rave band to be playing, but we thought "oh well, lets go in and see". When we got in, the alarm bells rang slightly louder. People were wearing dresses, high heals, the men in baseball caps and polo shirts, not the rastafarian ravers we were expecting. Then we got in the actual place and saw the people sitting down. Everywhere. There wasn't a dance-floor in sight. Now we're thinking "Something's really wrong here. Really wrong." But we say to ourselves "It'll be fine, if they don't dance, we'll MAKE them dance. They'll see." So we go to the bar and get ourselves a pair of drinks (£3 for a VKapple? I'm sorry, what?!) and settle down to stand at the back of the venue. Then a band comes on and start playing and me and Luke were quite impressed saying "These are pretty good for a support band" but we were thinking of time. They hadn't started until almost 9pm and if they had to play and then Trans Global we'd have to leave early to catch the last train home.

So we listened to a few songs and had a bit of a dance, and they're still playing at 9:30pm. So I went to the bar and asked "What time are Trans Global due to start playing" and the guy replies "Oh, they started at 8:30pm I believe".

You can imagine our shock. These were not the Pakistani ravers with powerful voices and sitars galore that I remembered. No, these were some strange electric band with a weak voiced Belgian lead singer and French guy on a keyboard. Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the Belgians and French, I personally believe France has some of the nicest cheese known to man and where would we be without Belgian chocolate? But when you turn up to a place and pay £12.50 EACH to see a raving Pakistani bands and a wickedly good night out, the last thing you expect is to meet a Belgian/French/Irish cast off playing a load of Belgian Ballads while you get ripped off for your drink. But you want to know the worst part? The gig finished at 10pm. They played a whole hour and a half. I paid £27 for me and Luke to turn up to a gig we weren't expecting to hear a band who are falsely advertising for 90minutes. I think anyone would be pretty upset in our shoes.

My warning? We got back home and told my mum who immediately asked to see the website. We looked at the small print and right at the bottom paragraph, it explained that this was a new band who would be playing and that only 2 members from Trans Global Underground would be performing with them. The two members performing spent the vast majority of the night off stage and only came on for 2 songs, seemingly to highlight how out of tune the lead singer was. Band on the Wall? I give you a MASSIVE thumbs down. Thanks for ripping me out of almost £50. We had more fun walking back to the train station and finding the right train.

Another year just like this one please!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J-7f0_fFsg


It's been simply beautiful and awesome. Never wanted it to end! But here we are, in the summer holidays and I had to do something to commemorate all I've been through this year. Thank you every single person in this video for making my first year at uni simply perfect!!!!!!!