Rhythms of the World, come forth! (backdated 23/07/07)

Hey, overdue post here, last weekend I was invited by my good friend Will to the Rhythms of the World festival in his own backyard, Hitchin.  Now due to the way the trains work, if I was to solo the trip, it would mean travelling into the centre of London, going via the Underground to another hub in London, and then back out and northwards to Hitchin.  Will offered to pick me up (and drop me off) at Milton Keynes Central, one of the main stops towards London.  This was very advantageous as it cut the journey effectively in half so I was all in favour.  The festival fell on the weekend of the 14th July, so the (revised) plan was to head down on Saturday morn and return back on the Monday, just before Will went off to work.

Trains were fine, and after a bit of traffic getting out of Milton Keynes, Will getting slightly annoyed at the sheer volume of the number of roundabouts, we were on our way to the festival and the alcoholic oblivion beyond :D.  Will stressed getting the earlier train to allow for more drinking, and well we arrived in Hitchin with about half an hour before the festival officially started LOL.  We went via his sister’s flat, currently unoccupied, to fill up cooler bags with beverages and then we were on our way.

First stop was off to see a band on one of the main stages that was promised to be in the same mould as Enter Shakiri.  Unfortunately that was not so, the band that actually turned up produced nothing greater than watered-down 3 minute emo songs.  A promised highlight (thanks Will) was their completely unexperimental cover of the dance hit “Castles in the Sky”, which when the rest of the band kicked in created nothing more than shapeless noise – nice one guys, you were so good, I can’t even remember the name of your band.

Next stop was the other main stage for the Chris Phillips Band which many held in high regard, the band forming after the split of former local band Ardent Kicks, and Tom, one of Will’s mates, was brother to the Chris from which the band drew their name.  By this time a bit of a crowd was forming, and front man Chris milked it for all it was worth, and the set was genuinely enjoyable – their stuff being quite folksy thanks to Chris’ acoustic, but also some electronic and synth elements included to deepen the sound.  One for the future here hopes, the guys were extremely good, very tight - Dan the drummer is held in exceptionally high regard for his skills although the set didn’t allow the freedom for him to show off, plus speaking with Chris later that night was pretty cool, a stand up guy – I wish you guys the best.  As I mentioned to Chris in the little chat I had with him, the band coped very well the technical difficulties that struck Dan’s kit a couple of times throughout the set.  Rather than feigning excuses and mass shrugging, it was inspiring to see Chris take the initiative, and get the crowd involved.  That involved the classic sing-along and clapping with the instruments dropped out.  Another bit of fun was the Mexican wave that was sent back through the crowd which actually made it back to the front a couple of times, which was quite smart.

With the early highlight of the day already over, it seemed appropriate to take a breath (and get more beer) so we headed over to the acoustic stage to chill out (if memory serves me correctly, it gets a bit hazy from here on in, thanks to the copious amounts of alcohol that we were drinking).  The absolute name escapes me but next highlight was an Orchestra that did classical covers of modern songs – it couldn’t fail to be entertaining so we all set about being there.  Some food later and we headed back to the first main stage in what was already an impressive crowd but the sound seemed screwed up.  There didn’t seem to be any amplification going on, so it was very hard to hear them over the general hubbub of the crowd.  It was a shame as they promised to be very good, so we took our leave -  I can’t remember if we went back to the acoustic stage or perhaps even the George for the first time.

Next performance we couldn’t miss was the Easy Star All Stars (I think that’s what they were called, where is my programme?..), and we didn’t miss them.  This goup were responsible for remixing popular albums like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Radiohead’s OK Computer in a reggae inspired fashion.  Properly liquored up the crowd were really starting to enjoy it, lots of people dancing, our substantial group as well and even I showed off some of my moves towards the end.

It was after those guys that I met one of the Irish girls (I want to say her name was Fiona oh dear :s), and in my merriness I got her to say lots of things, practically anything that came into my head, starting with all the cliches like “Top of the morning to ya laddie!”  I’m afraid I got quite smitten pretty quickly, and that is quite worrying that I can get like that after such a short space of time. It actually got me thinking about certain voices, or perhaps accents can, just on their own, be very hot.  I actually thought of Koel, particularly one of the times when I went up to Cov to see everyone and she left this incredibly long answer phone message, but it was cool to listen to her voice a couple of times hehe.  Anyways, back to the festival…

Later on in the day, we were back in the George (I’m pretty sure) for the performance of another person that Tom plus others knew (it seemed Tom knew the majority of Hitchin) and his band at the back of the beer garden.  They were fine without being particularly exciting but it was at this point that I discovered that, upon reflection, quite naturally, that they had a Ceilidh (look up spelling) on in the town hall.  I tried to persuade at least one person including this girl I’ve never met, who it turned out to be the girlfriend of the guy whose band we were watching LOL.  A little disappointed that noone would join me for a ceilidh, I decided to go check it out on my own, and hoped that I would find another odd person over who would be my partner (for those not in the know, Ceilidh’s are dances that generally operate in groups of 2 or 4).  Hanging about on the fringes didn’t seem to help much, and I didn’t feel bold enough to ask a stranger to dance, so after what was a probably short time, I headed back dejected that it didn’t work out *mimes sad expression with fingers on face*.

 

The final act we had to see on day 1 was this very large, latin-inspired percussive act which amongst its lineup had one of Will’s friends, Dave’s dad.  They were also a lot of fun and with that sealing the end of the day, we promptly headed over to the George and the other pubs closeby.  Some more drinks later, and a trip to the loo and I lost people, which was very scary, I was thinking oh crap oh crap oh crap, I actually left this one pub and then joined the queue to get back in just in case I missed some ppl despite me having a big look. Fortunately, Will randomly turned up so it was all good. We went inside the pub and played some fuseball which I lost after taking a promising early lead – shame.

 

We returned back to Will’s pretty knackered and pretty much went straight to bed.  The next day was going to be more of the same, but we chilled for a lot of the waking day playing Call of duty 2 and Forza 2 on Will’s 360.  We went down at about 8 to have the rest of the group attack us for not being more prompt and not getting into town at 12 like they all did.  The pub had a hardcore chiller set up outside cooling some beer cans which could be ours for just a £1 each -bonus! We got some of those and then got into the live drum ‘n’ bass that was on at the end of the beer garden.  Enjoying that as much as it’s physically possible we thought it was best to leave and headed over to Club 85, the “indie stage” but in fact a club – the clue’s in the title.  We were off to the see the last act of the festival, the Eagles I believe was what they were called.  Yeah, they were pretty cool, had essentially a young lineup, with this older guy doing a lot of spoken word which was pretty cool.  They also had a fair few guests come up on stage including a 2nd drummer which Will met at the bar just before, and a woman singer to do a song.  We then met back up with the group to finish off the beer supplies which were a little low on the ground.

 

The next day I only just made the train, the timing being very tight.  It is very strange that I am always tired and/or hungover when making these commutes back to Wem, why is that?  Overall a pretty good weekend, spent a lot of money, and got a bit sunburnt on my neck, but it was a lot of fun.

Here’s pencilling in the weekend for next year.

On my way… (backdated 23/07/07)

Hey, lack of book and any other means of viable of entertainment has lead me to dish out the laptop and blog blog blog like some obsessed person, No but seriously, thought I’d share how quietly nervous I am, about the whole training scheme. As I said to Carl last night, I’m getting all stressed about the packing and living somewhere completely new, and there’s also all this learning I’m expected to do yikes! (note to self: bring back the word yikes!)

As mentioned before, these people like to run a presentable ship, so I’ve been stressing about making sure I’ve got enough formal shirts, trousers etc, but I also have to be paying attention, learning etc, let’s just say I would never have made the previous start to the course 4 weeks ago.

I am currently sitting on a train in Shrewsbury, waiting for it to leave for Birmingham New Street.  Thanks to the recent onslaught of rain, plus what seems like regular “random” engineering works that occur on Sunday, it means that I will be taking a bus from Brum to Coventry.  Now as you all know folks (also bring back folks…) the one thing I can’t stand more than riding trains is riding buses.  To make matters worse I am with suitcase, so the whole thing is gonna be one stressful ordeal.  This truly is the calm of the storm, thanks to the infrequent trains that run on a Sunday, I’ve had to spend just over an hour doing nothing on the platform.  Looking at trains and scaring pigeons away gets old really quick.

I’m not sure if it’s an omen or not but I forgot to pack my “lunch”.  Yep, a snack and my precious final can of pepsi which was carefully put aside ready for this trip and I went and bloody well forgot it.  I was getting a little worried that I may forget something pretty darn important.  I only remembered to pack towels just before I was gonna go out for a quiet farewell drink.  Yep, they stressed it in amongst the bold type of the rules of my stay that they would not be providing towels.  I think that’s where a lot of this nervousness(ness) comes from, the fact that the open day went by so fast, and a lot of details are still unknown to me.

One important detail is how many days of the week does the training consume.  Ideally I would like it to be Mon – Fri, but Saturday is considered a working day so can’t help but feel that perhaps there is no, or less, structure to that day.  The smart dress, shirt + tie is mandatory on weekdays, but on Saturday, they’ll let us get away with no tie – oh those rebels!

Another area of concern, probably the least largest, is the accommodation they’re gonna set me(us) in.  Yep, I will be living in shared accommodation with some other people on the course.  It’s not hugely important that I get on with these guys (they will be guys…) but the whole experience would probably be more enjoyable if I did.  Here’s hoping that a lot of other facilities are provided for us, i.e. cutlery and cooking equipment as I decided to risk not packing any, plus no more stuff would fit in :s.  As they state, fresh linens are provided every day, which is quite smart, not unlike halls at Uni, and I assume this will be done when we’re all out learning hard LOL.  Although this is great, I hope this service extends to keeping the communal area tidy and of course the providing of toilet paper.  One of the few downsides of the Red Faction house was how messy the shared areas got and it was always fun waking up and discovering there was no toilet paper just when you needed it, which spurred an impromptu visit to “the shop” to get some. Those were the days…

Anyways, to be more positive, this training course will give me the skills, both those specific to jobs and improved interview skills, which should guarantee myself a job at the end of it.  The course itself lasts just 7 weeks, so by the time I truly get used to the new digs and the routine of the day, it will be soon over.  So yeah, the ultimate goal to come out of this is a nice new shiny job that pays well enough for me to move out, comfortably live on, and start getting on with my life, like learning how to drive etc, so we’ll see.

From Brum to fatherhood (…is my ticket still valid?)

Hey all, got some more scary news to share with the intermaweb.  A week last Sunday (my how time flies :S) I met up with Wilson in Brum for some catching-upness and general merriment.  After going to a few of the regular haunts like the nicer of the two Spoons and getting some grub, possibly fueled by the harder drink, we thought it would be cool to try out a few new and random watering holes.

Well we didn’t get that far in all fairness.  We went to O’Neill’s which I believe is a part of a chain of bars, a franchise if you will, but it wasn’t too bad.  Following that we went down the road about 50 metres to find a new bar called “Walkabout”.  Encouraged by the promise of a cider festival which as it happened started that very same day, we popped in to check it out.  Confronted with two Australians behind the bar it prompted the question, “Do you have to be an Australian to work here?” to which the reply was, “No, but it helps…”.  One random fruit of the forests cider and some Australian rugby later, it was time to move on again.  It was at this point, that the evening was starting to draw to a close, and I thought best to be off, it was a Sunday, and the trains get really bad late on in the evening. 

We checked in at New Street, realising we had some time to grab another, although good ol’ Wilson reckoned we have time for two rounds, mmmm.  Anyways, as it turned out we went to the other Spoons, although it was for a pint of Old Rosie, which is slowly building up the rep it held when I was back at Uni – which is pretty awesome.

That single pint of Old Rosie was proving tougher than originally planned, so had to develop some speed drinking, and bless, I had to help Wilson finish his.  Realising that we had to really go, as in leave about 3 or 4 mins ago, we left at a brisk pace back towards New Street.  I got to my platform and did a little jogging to my train, which was not needed as the train sat there for about another 10mins, grrr, it’s so undignified to run for public transport, but I thought I had no choice, alas.

 

So there I sat on the train on my way back home, beer slowly digesting, and feeling pretty good about the brief hours spent in Brum, when uh oh! thanks to breaking the seal in one of the earlier bars, I had to go on the train itself.  Now that is a challenge all on it’s own, especially on the older carriages, where it is incredibly bumpy and rickety – would people understand if I had made a mess of myself?  Anyways, on the way down to the train loo, I spotted an old friend John Jones from school.  Once I got back I grabbed my bag and sat with him to catch up on what was happening at his end, which I have not done at all properly – I’ve seen John getting off the train I get on to get home from work, but that’s about it.

 

Anyways, so I got chatting with John, and the reason why he’s on the train comes up.  As he tells me, he’s on his way back from Kent, which as he stresses is an 8 hour trip and not an enjoyable one.  He continues, and as it turns out, he met a girl when absolutely wasted down in London some time ago, and all he remembers is waking up in this girl’s house in Kent.  But the first bombshell is that he has only gone and got this girl pregnant, so she is now with child. I’m not actually sure of the timings and John wasn’t completely specific but it seems that the wasted adventure John had in London could well have led to the conception of this child.

I actually asked John, “so do you love this girl?” to which he was especially non-committing and kinda shrugged it off, “Yeah, I gotta” or words to that effect, it was late, and I was liquored up remember.

Scary stuff, so another old friend has joined the list of people who have, or about to start a family.  I was probably in shock for a lot of the rest of the journey.  I often get worried that I’m not growing up like I should, and hearing of people having children does nothing to dissuade that view on my life.  I’m 22 now and although I do believe I have changed considerably in the last year, I still do not feel anywhere near mature enough to raise a child – the question to throw out there is, will I ever feel mature enough?  That’s probably how it would all end up, me winging it and potentially screwing up the child’s life.  Ah well, it won’t be the only one hey? :D  Adding to that, I don’t feel the want or need for raising a child right now, so even if I did achieve the maturity, there’s no way I’d be up for a child, the whole thing scares me :S

 

Here’s waiting for them to invent maturity pills…

No Topic :S [Dated 20/04/07]

Hey again, and welcome back to the library, the liviest place in town! Anyways enough of that, down to business lol.

I think this is the first time since resssurecting this blog that I’ve started blogging without a clear topic to start with, so this will probably be a bit of a rant.

To kick things off, I moaned in the last blog about Carl’s friend, and how I prefer to walk home from the train station on my own, well I must have jinxed it or something, cos thanks to a kid who hopefully had tourettes on the train, she felt like venting towards me. Just like when I bump into this guy Matt who works weekends, I don’t actually say much, he like Carl’s friends just like talk. I do wish sometimes that I can just switch off and just drop into a daydream while they yap, but alas no luck yet – if it happens enough, I could probably tune it out with practice.

speaking of trains lol, the other week I bumped into an old friend, well not really more acquaintance – a guy I knew back from Secondary School. We called him Seggar, as it was his last name, and well that the was the lazy nickname of choice at our school, I’m sure it was at yours too. Anyways, I hadn’t seen him since college most likely, so the last heard he had become a chef, so that’s what I told him.

He told me that he still was, and had recently moved back up from london where he did a stint of cheffing down there. As it turns out, he has a child, omg. I hid my suprise pretty well I thought, but fair play to the guy. This is a guy, who probs by his own omission is a large guy, but he found a partner (his word, not mine :s) and they had a child, but were not seperated. He had allowed custody to fall to the mother cos well he said that a child can’t be without their mother plus he then took the job down london. Anyways, he moved back to be closer to his offspring, and he was moaning that he had him more than his mother recently. He then went on to say, that he could easily get custody of the child, as he is in a stable full-time job, and she is, to paraphrase Seggar, on benefits, and always getting lashed everynight.
It’s quite scary that Seggar has a child firstly, and that he is actually the more stable of the parents. I dunno, I mean fair play to him, I probably suffering a little from Peter Pan syndrome, not wanting to grow up, and the idea of being a father is a scary one.

Once upon a time, I was quite pumped at the idea of being a daddy, obviously sometime in the future, not like next week lol. But reading and seeing all these stories about raising children, and how this generation seem to be the most awful parents – problems with junk food, obesity, paedophiles, it’s a scary world.
I also was quite happy at the idea of getting married one day, but in today’s society, it hardly seems worth it, what with about half of them ending in divorce. Maybe I’m seeing the extreme end of the spectrum thanks to daytime talkshows, but unless I’m wearing some rose-tinted glasses, standing at the alter reaidng my vows on how I will love this woman forever, I’m not sure I would believe it. But then again I’m a cynic, pessimist, call it whatever…

Maybe it’s an idea to move on to something a bit more upbeat. I have purchased Guitar Hero for the 360, a week or two ago, and it’s pro. I’ve hot a bit of a wall so far, playing through on hard. I was stuck for ages on Wolfmother’s Woman, the solo was killing me, I kept failing, but I eventually managed to crawl through. Saying that, in the next group of songs, The Police’s message in a bottle is much easier, so a little upset that the balance of the difficulty isn’t quite perfect. It’s a lot of fun with my shiny Explorer guitar, and thanks to good ol’ Claudio also possessing one, I’d actually really like to own my own explorer one day, but a quick check on the internet at prices, and oh my are they expensive :S
It’s quite bad in a way, cos my actually RL guitar playing has been slipping, and I’m simply not practicing as much as I’d like, it seems there aren’t enough hours in the day. Finally bringing work into the picture, and the 4 hours I am there are incredibly boring and tedious, there are times when I’ve looked at the time, and thought “shit, I haven’t even been here 2 hours!” :(. It also is pretty sucky, that thanks to the train timetable, I spend about 7 hours out of the house for 4 hours of work, which thinking about it, it’s pretty lame, I almost feel sick at it.

There’s a possiblity of a job in Telford as a web programmer, but I’m trying to not get over excited about it. I sent off my Cv etc and should know next week if I have an interview, which hopefully I should. Again with the few hours in the day, thanks to spending 7 hours away for 4 hours of work, I never feel like doing anything constructive when I get back in. Cos I haven’t done much programming at all really since leaving Uni, it would seem wise, to start getting back into that frame of mind, in preparation for this potential interview, but most of the time, I end up thinking, meh.

To sum up, moan moan for 4 paragrpahs and relax… Nah, but seriously, the hope is that it’s healthy to vent like this but I’ve been doing this kind of stuff for some years now, and well i’m not sure if it’s working. Looking not too far forward, I was chatting with Eric on the msn last night, and he and Karlie are coming into Wem, the only reason being to hang out it seems so far, and we’re going for a few drinks this eve, so that should be alright. It seems a bit of a highlight of this week so far *sob lol. Also, can you believe that Eric reckoned I should hookup with Carl’s friend, until I explained her unattractive qualities which I cba to list here. And before ppl turn round and say that’s harsh to put it like that, as Wilson convinced me, we can’t help who we are attracted to, so I’ve learnt not to feel bad if I am only attracted to stunning model types and not ugos. I’m kidding, it’s not quite that extreme, but I can’t help who i think is attractive or not, so thanks to Wilson for convincing me of that.

Until next time, take it easy.
J-Man.