A Revelation

I had something very insightful to post here but now I've forgotten it. Now I'm just feeling incredibly envious of Ed Stockham's ability to make stuff.

I think I'm going to have to pistol whip Cliffey into making Cranberry Panda a reality. More on that soon...?

Joel.

Lazitude

Just one post for October? Appalling, I know. Especially since last October had like twenty. You lot probably have no idea what's going on around here, do you?

Well Tom and Cliffey and I did indeed go to the football in Swindon. There was some pre-match doubt as to whether we could actually be bothered to pay the entrance fee but we did eventually squeeze through the turnstile and into the stadium, where we witnessed a rather nail-biting 3-3 draw. We were sat in the Swindon stand but were secretly supporting Hereford, which Tom made painfully obvious by going "YEEEEEEAH!" after the first Hereford goal.

Since then...no particular incidents spring to mind and that's maybe a sign that I should update this more frequently. I've been going to uni, which is fine by me because I have Wednesdays and Thursdays off so it kind of works out that I get two weekends. I've been going over to Swanbridge on those days to keep Sarah company in Sturff (she seems to end up working those days a lot, oddly) and, well, everything's pretty dandy I suppose. I still have no idea how my life is going to go after university, but at least I've got my unpaid journalism gig.

http://themmp.tv/live/cave-painting-clwb-ifor-bach-october-14th-2011/

JD

The Last Big Weekend of the Summer

LAST WEEKEND 


Unusually splendid weather for October. Aside from my fully foreseen FIFA failure (fuck), we spent a lovely weekend at Sian's house, in Penarth.

The sun had been out all week, and we'd decided beforehand that we ought to make the most of it on the weekend with some activity or other. Said activity turned out to be a barbecue* in Sian's rather spacious garden, so we hit up Tesco, bought some burgers and sausages and alcohol, and-

Oh but I'm getting ahead of myself. Earlier that Saturday, a few of us had been at Varsity, enjoying the Merseyside derby (or not, in some cases) and eating food and drinking drink. Sarah and I shared a pitcher of strawberry daiquiri, which got us surprisingly tipsy. I'm sure this is the wrong way 'round, but I seem to be getting lightweighter every time I drink.

But yes, once we had sobered up (and, in some cases, cheered up; Everton is a silly team to support), we headed to Tesco and then on to Sian's. The barbecue** was a great success, and I was even cajoled into watching The X Factor. And missing Strictly Come Dancing, which I still haven't had time to catch up on, but there we are.

Sunday was beautiful too, so we hit the pier and got some ice cream. We also saw a fisherman catch a conger eel, which was exciting.

So that was the last big weekend of the summer.

THIS WEEKEND


As I'm typing this on Friday afternoon, the weather is actually quite nice, but we're doing Autumnal things this time around. Tomorrow it's football; Tom, Cliffey and I are going to Swindon to watch Hereford lose again, because a) Tom seems to enjoy watching his team be rubbish, and b) Paolo Di Canio will be there. On Sunday, Sarah and I will be eating Sunday dinner with my parents...and also her parents. It'll be the first time our folks have met each other, so hopefully all will go smoothly and we'll be enjoying the crackle of fireworks and the crunch of leaves underfoot before we know it.

By the way, my review is here. Hopefully there'll be another one soon.

Joel.

*I still can't believe that the word 'barbecue' contains no letter Q.

**Seriously!

The Phantom Video Sniffer

So yeah, Cliffey and I went to that gig and it was good, although being as it was a 14+ show we did feel rather old. I won't go on about it too much here because hopefully my review should be up on the Miniature Music Press website before too long and I can just lazily link you all to that.
Lovely weather we're having recently, isn't it? There are rumours that a group of us might be going to Barry Island on Sunday, to frolic and laugh and play with a ball and generally make the most of this unusual warmth.

Sarah's been missing most of the sunshine due to, y'know, jobs and stuff, so it was a pleasant surprise yesterday when her dad came into Sturff and told us that he would look after the shop for a bit if we wanted to have a meander around Penarth.

We acceded, naturally, and so off we went to work on our tans. I of course live a pretty leisurely life, so had already seen my share of the sun (hell, I'd been doing timed laps earlier in the day to pass the time), but for Sarah, who had barely been outside all week, this was a revelation. Summer, it seemed, had finally arrived.

...Mind you, it was really hot outdoors, so we periodically took shelter in Penarth's many charity shops. We didn't buy anything, but we did see a boy getting slightly intimate with some old VHS cassettes in the Oxfam shop. I thought he was just sniffing them; Sarah suspects that he was in fact licking them. Either way.

Cliffey and Tom were playing FIFA '12 last night, mere hours after its midnight release. I suspect we might join them this evening. Apparently it's really difficult to tackle now. To be honest I was never that good at it to begin with.

Hello Facebook apologies. How I didn't miss you.

Joel.

Joel Dear, The New Lester Bangs

I have plans for tonight. I'm on a guestlist.

Of the several things I neglected to mention in yesterday's entry, probably the most important is the small matter of my burgeoning journalism career. Remember my Willy Mason review? Well, I sent it to a bunch of folks and one of them got back to me. The Miniature Music Press - a local publication for local music - said it was cool and would I like to review some other stuff for them?

Of course I would. So tonight I am going to Clwb Ifor Bach to see OK, a local band who are playing a show to promote their new single. As I said up top, I'm on the guestlist, and I even get a plus one! I'm gonna feel so awesome at the entrance, provided they believe my story. I'm sure they will.

So who's my plus one? Sarah, right? Actually no. She's back home in Swanbridge tonight so I asked Cliffey if he wanted to come and keep me company instead (it means that, after the gig, there'll be someone to remind me of what happened). I showed him a couple of OK's songs, and he decided that they were, well, okay.

Hence, we shall be off to the Welsh club in a matter of minutes. But that's not to say that you should be. Josh is playing at the newly refurbished Cardiff Arts Institute tonight, and since I can't go and support him, you all should instead.

He's totally adorable. I think you'll like him.

Joel.

A Variety of Societies

Improvisational Approaches, then. It did in fact involve a fair bit of jammin', and it was good to back in the company of the musical folk who made the Shrek gig such a cool thing way back when. Our assignment for the morning was to make up some grooves, and obviously I had lots of fun with that even if the baritone horn isn't a particularly 'groovy' instrument*.

Just after this session I was waiting for a bus home when I received a text from Cliffey. It was his Fresher's Fayre, and he was asking if I wanted to go with him and get a bunch of "free shit" (his words). I decided that yes, I would like some free shit. Sarah, who had work later but not yet, would be joining us, and so - still lumbered by my baritone - I headed on over to the Great Hall to meet them.

There were a great variety of societies on offer for Cardiff students but, unfortunately, I'm not one**. Cliffey, on the other hand, is one, so Sarah and I were left to look on in amusement as he signed up for:

• The Poker Society! (if you beat their pro player then membership is free!)
• The Northern Society! (Cliffey of course was born and raised in Cardiff but his dad's from Huddersfield so that sort of counts)
• The Cookery Society! (they had free lemon cake)
• And another one that I can't remember. Ask him yourselves.

Free shit duly acquired we headed to The Woodville for a sit down and some food. Sarah was ravenous, and ordered a bowl of chips that she could gruffle before work but sadly they never arrived.

Well, they did, but not until after Sarah had left for Next. She's got two weeks off soon which she's very excited about, but unfortunately this time off did not arrive soon enough for her to receive her chips.

Obviously I stepped up in her absence and gruffled them myself. They were delicious, although the taste was somewhat soured by my subsequent Trivial Pursuit defeat at the hands of one Sian Lewis.

I could probably have named the six murder weapons in Cluedo if anyone had asked me. But no-one did.

Joel.

*Jen heard me practising the other and told me that I'm much better than I used to be. I guess that's basically a compliment, so thanks, Jen!

**That of course didn't stop me conning my way onto AltSoc's mailing list; I thought an alternative music society was an interesting prospect but it seems that they mostly just go to Metro's, which frankly is nothing new. I did appreciate their free sweets though, so thanks, AltSoc!

Fun & Interesting Things

It has occurred to me that there was a ten-day gap between my last two posts. I'm sure you're all wondering if any fun things happened over that period.

The answer is yes! One fun thing is that Tom and I were playing FIFA, and he was beating me 8-0 so I got angry and turned it off!

Ha!

Joel.

Hand Me The Defending Dice

Yesterday was the first day of my last year at the Atrium.

That means that I've got a year - less, in fact - until I have to become a real person. Job, non-student accommodation, etc. etc.

And standing between me and that point are, among other things, a 10,000-word dissertation and some sort of major group project, the specifics of which remain to be seen.

But let's not worry about that yet. Last night we played Risk, although we had our share of real-life obstacles to conquer before we could think about conquering the world.

1. I had been suffering from a migraine for much of the afternoon, which culminated in a bizarre episode during which the entire right side of my body fell asleep. Fortunately, I managed to sleep it off in time to go with Cliffey to pick Sarah up from Penarth...
2. ...but we got there rather late due to a combination of traffic and errands that Cliffey had to run in Lisvane, including stops at his dad's house, the Griffin, and Sainsbury's, where we picked up JR.
3. Once we had collected Sarah, we decided to pop to Tesco's to buy some Risk snacks. Sarah and I got a pizza each, and I spent the rest of the evening being mocked for spending four pounds on Sarah's when she had (allegedly) told me to get a cheaper one. 
4. Tewkesbury Place is no place for a game of Risk, and so we opted to play in what used to be JR's mum's house. The house is currently unoccupied, but JR had the key and there were enough facilities still about to...facilitate a game of Risk. A table, four chairs, an oven in which we could cook overpriced pizzas. Plus, unexpectedly, a mammoth spider that forced us all to evacuate the house in terror. We stood outside for a while, wondering how to get our board game and pizzas back from the monster that was holding them hostage, when JR decided to step up and deal with it. The spider, you'll be pleased to know, was neutralised (read squished) by a speaker that JR dropped on it. 

So after all of that, we sat down and did some wars. We had decided beforehand that we weren't bothering with the mission cards; our only goal was complete world domination, and we expected to get a good few hours from it.

I had terrible luck with the dice, rolling mostly twos and ones, and while I did manage to hold on to South America for a good few turns I was very quickly put in my place (which, as it turned out, was a few territories in central Asia). Cliffey found himself in a similar position, with JR and Sarah the only ones who looked at all likely to win, so he and I formed an alliance. At first it was just a handshake agreement not to attack each other, but eventually we went the whole hog. Up until then, I had been the green troops, Cliffey the blue, but our merger saw us trade in both of those colours for a nice, Communist red*. JR and Sarah weren't best pleased, and they formed a similar alliance in protest (although it wasn't so much a coming together of military minds as it was Sarah signing over her troops and territories to her ginger overlord). Cliffey and I made a valiant push for victory, capturing most of Asia and North America in the process, but eventually the JR-Saz coalition brought the proverbial speaker down on top of us.

And so JR has gone, victorious, back to work. Uni for me kicks off on Monday, when I'll be dragging the ol' baritone in for its first 'improvisational approaches' session. What that will entail I'm not sure. Hopefully just two hours of unadulterated jammin'.

Joel.

*In an ideal world we'd have chosen the colour that would have resulted from mixing blue and green together, but seeing as bluey-green wasn't an option, we went with red. I like it because it's Liverpool's colour; Cliffey went with it because it's also Wales's.

Badly, I Groove

Late shift at my job last night.

Only joking, I don't have a job! What I actually did last night was play another gig with SCRIBER. It was only my third gig as a member of Josh's backing band - the first was supporting James Vincent McMorrow - and since our last performance had been a little...clumsy, it was imperative that we got it right this time. In fact, we were so deteremined to deliver the goods that we actually decided to rehearse a couple of times before the gig.

Rehearsal #1 was at Josh and Ed's house, and I decided to spice things up a bit by bringing my mandolin along. I basically just did it because I get bored waiting for an appropriate moment to play the drums, but my noodlings went down pretty well so we decided to throw it in. It made it a bit folkier, I suppose. Although we did set ten minutes aside during the rehearsal for a little Krautrock experiment on Ed's keyboard, and I think that would be a pretty good direction to take if the nu-folk bubble should burst.
Rehearsal #2 was at Tewkesbury Place, and was mostly spent trying to choose a song to cover. Unfortunately, it seems like there is no band that all three of us appreciate, so after much deliberation - as well as an extended jam of Anyone Else But You by The Moldy Peaches, the only song we all knew* - we scrapped the idea and told Josh he could just play his own shit

We had a brief rehearsal before the gig, too, just to make sure. But we didn't need it; by this point we could have played Led Zeppelin themselves into a cocked hat.


The sound guy was a bit annoyed - no-one had told him that he would have to deal with a mandolin - but apart from him everyone was in high spirits. Having decided that "Scriber" was a bit too singular for a three-piece, we passed the time between soundcheck and show by brainstorming names for the backing band. Some of my favourites:


Scriber & The Shoelaces
Scriber & The Sluts
Scriber & Ed & Joel
Scriber & The Rebircs
Scriber & The Super Dinosaurs The Shoot Lasers From Their Eyes

Josh, being the misery-guts he is, vetoed all of these and introduced as just Scriber. But we'll just see about that.


The gig went very well; our weeks of arduous rehearsal paid rich dividends. I missed my cue on the first song - Josh usually counts us in but instead he just nodded and it's hard to tell what number he's on with just nods - but otherwise it went great, and even my mandolin bits were pretty sweet although I do say so myself. We were treated to the luxury of awed silence, which made the quiet bits all the more electrifying and the loud bits all the more potent. And I do love the way that Josh, when people start applauding at the end of a song, will raise a hand to let them know that it's not finished yet and shush.


Best of all we played Badly, I Move (or 'The One With F' as Ed knows it), which is my favourite 'cause I actually get a decent thumping rhythm going on the drum.

The setlist, for anyone keeping score:
The Party
Mountain Man
Holland House
Slow Runner
Badly, I Move
The War & I


(Ed pointed out last night that no less than three of those songs are named 'something and something'. Can't see them all? Well there's "The War and I"; "Holl and House"; and of course, "Mount 'n' Man".

I ran off at the end of the set because, well, we finished later than I thought we would, and I had food and a Sarah waiting for me at home (not to mention my tonsillitis, which I used as my 'official' excuse). The other bands were probably great though. A girl from my course was in one of them so I feel a bit bad about my breach of gig etiquette but, eh, I was hungry. Sorry Sam!

Joel.

*Ed also did a very shouty rendition Steak For Chicken on electric guitar. I've never seen him so angry.

Marius Kart

I've got tonsillitis. Hooray! Coughing and sweat for all. I realise that's no excuse for neglecting my blogging duties over the past few days...or at least it wouldn't be for a man who didn't type with his tonsils.

Hell, I didn't really want to do this entry, but I came up with that awesome title and, even though this is more of a Cliffey story, I knew he wasn't going to update his blog. So I'm taking one for Team Tenuous Pun.

Cliffey, since returning from his European jaunt, has had the pleasure of spending rather a lot of one-on-one time with Marius. First everyone went to Green Man, then Sarah and I went to Scotland, and of course Pete's been looking at rocks in Neath for the best part of six weeks. Tom's been here, but he's got a girlfriend now (ew) so nobody's really seen much of him.*

Which, largely, has left young Cliffey mano-a-mano with our Albanian import. During their time together, he has learnt much about Marius; his personality, his culture, his likes (British history) and dislikes (gypsies, Arabs and gays). And, through it all, their bond has only gotten stronger.

Which, presumably, is how Cliffey ended up being Marius' own private taxi service. Oh, it started small - lifts to his friend's house in Llanedeyrn, or to his job in the bay - but the mileages crept up, and pretty soon he was taking him to Bridgend for whatever reason.

And yesterday, Cliffey got up at 5am to drive Mazza to Birmingham and back. It was something to do with his visa, something he could have done in Cardiff but would have had to wait a lot longer for if he had. And hey, since his close personal friend with a car Cliffey-boy had nothing better to do that he couldn't do another time, why not have an early morning road trip to the Midlands?

As it happens, Cliffey's just come in the room (he's very hungover - night out with work last night) so maybe he could reel off a few reasons why not:

...

Nope, he's too hungover. But suffice it to say that he didn't have fun. Suffice it also to say that I'm banking on the assumption that Marius does not read my blog.

As for my life, well, I'm working tonight. By which I mean Josh has a gig and he's asked me to play drum for him again. Also, I'm bringing the mandolin along this time.

Come back tomorrow to find out whether or not that was a good idea.

Joel.        

*If any parts of this paragraph are news to you because I've neglected to mention something previously, well, now you now.

A Tale of Two Gigs

[Sarah and I went to see Willy Mason last night and my mum, eager to see my journalism career get off the ground, told me to do a write-up of the show and send it to some music magazines. Here's what I came up with.]

Willy Mason at The Point, Cardiff, 7/5/07

The Point, a former church that has been converted into a fully-functioning concert venue, makes a lovely backdrop for a gig. Particularly the stained glass windows. Still, it never hurts to go the extra mile, and so Willy Mason and his band are also treating us to a showing of The Dark Crystal, Jim Henson's seminal 1982 meditation on good and evil.


Willy Mason at The Gate, Cardiff, 6/9/11

Willy Mason has broken his thumb-pick. Holding its remains aloft, he asks the audience if, by any chance, somebody could lend him one.

It's not the first time that Mason has crossed the artist/audience divide. Previous tours have seen him performing in fans' living rooms and crashing on their sofas for the night. Sadly, nobody present has a spare pick, and so this golden opportunity to be part of the show passes and Mason simply has to tape his broken one back together.


This show comes a couple of months after the release of If The Ocean Gets Rough, the second Willy Mason album proper and follow-up to 2005's critically acclaimed Where The Humans Eat. Since that album his sound has expanded considerably, and tonight his country-folky musings are fleshed out by a full, electric, band, as well as his friend Nina Violet on viola.

There's no band tonight, just Willy and his electric guitar. It's been four quiet years or so since If The Ocean Gets Rough, Mason's last release, and he seems to have brought along a few new songs to try out. However, he forgoes the usual 'new stuff' patter - "this is a new one, it's going to be on my next record, hope you like it" - instead allowing the unfamiliar material to sit, unburdened, alongside the older cuts. You hardly notice the join.

The setlist is pretty evenly divided between his two albums - recent singles 'We Can Be Strong' and 'Save Myself' mingle nicely with songs like 'Where The Humans Eat', although admittedly the latter elicits a louder cheer from the crowd (as well as a gleeful cry of "MEEEEE!!" during the last verse). There are a few chestnuts, too; non-album track 'Mosquitoes' features only Mason and his acoustic guitar, and, for me, is one of the highlights.

The Gate used to be a Presbyterian church, but has since been turned into a rather charming arts centre. Until recently it was mostly used for plays and dance classes, but lately it's been gathering steam as a music venue and it could even fill the hole that The Point left in Cardiff's live scene when it was forced to close a few years ago. Tonight's audience is seated (some of them in pews, presumably left over from the venue's previous function), and one gets the feeling that this is far more of a 'concert' than a 'gig'. People are drinking red wine instead of lager. Enthusiastic bursts of applause follow each song, but otherwise we all just watch in slightly awed silence. Listen carefully, though, and you might just be able to hear the gentle tap of our approving feet.

The film projection certainly lends an air of psychedelia to what should have been a fairly straightforward folk-rock gig. Just like thousands of internet people have found a certain synchronicity between Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz, there are moments tonight when Mason's lyrics could almost have been commissioned to soundtrack The Dark Crystal. Perhaps it's my imagination, but the likes of 'Simple Town' and 'When The Leaves Have Fallen' seem to go quite nicely with the lush fantasy landscapes and the innocence of the central characters. And when Mason's laptop runs out of battery in the middle of 'Riptide', thus cutting our viewing pleasure tragically short? Well, that's the end of the gig; he apologises, waves goodbye and heads offstage.

And then something wonderful happens: during the chorus of 'Riptide', a wistful song full of nostalgic longing for a simpler time...Mason burps. Hilarity ensues. He's very embarrassed, and apologises profusely, but if anything it's only endeared him to us all the more. The song continues, and while Mason has been completely thrown off his stride, he is helped to the conclusion by the audience, who - to a man - start clapping along to encourage him. It's rather heartwarming, actually.  


Of course he comes back. Some rather drunk-sounding people in the audience have been belting out the chorus of 'So Long' in the hopes of having it belted back at them by the man himself, but instead he gives us a rendition of 'Oxygen', his breakthrough single. It's quiet but powerful, especially with everyone singing along, and it's a fitting end to tonight's proceedings.

When the music magazines first started talking about Willy Mason, he joined an ever-increasing group of singer-songwriters to have been christened "the next Dylan". Yes, his lyrics tend to flicker towards political dissatisfaction, but tonight his vocal betrays a slight country twang that, along with his ear for a great melody, perhaps places him closer to - similar names aside - Willie Nelson. So all hail Willy Mason - the new Willie.

Season Two

Hello and hi everyone. I've been in Scotland recently but as you may be fuzzily aware if you read this post, Cutlery has marched fearlessly into its second year. Which means, incidentally, that's we've been living in 6 Tewkesbury Place for a full 12 months now too.

So it won't be long until, once again, we all go back to uni. Pete and I will be starting the third years of our respective degrees, while Cliffey is entering his second (just like the blog!).

And while I'm sure that will give me plenty to talk about here, first of all I need to cover where I've been for the past nearly two weeks.

...Well, I've been in Scotland, like I said. The first night was spent at a Travelodge in Lancaster, and was complete with all the thrills that implies, followed by a jaunt up the M6 to our cottage in Clackmannanshire.

The nearest town was Dollar and we went there a couple of times to get fish and chips and ice cream. It was very quiet apart from an hour or so when all the high schoolers in the area simultaneously came out for lunch, at which point it was surprisingly busy.

Of course we visited many touristy destination points in Scotland, including:

The Wallace Monument in Stirling
Yes, Wallace as in Braveheart. My dad, brother and I climbed up the scary spiral staircase to see the view from the top but Sarah and my mum were too scared so they just went to the gift shop where Sarah bought this hat (that's not the best picture but it's a Highland Cow).

Loch Leven
Featuring the castle where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned as well as some grouses that you could feed (that's actually a better picture of the cow hat, look at this instead of that one above).

The Camera Obscura Museum in Edinburgh
We arrived in Edinburgh on the last day of the fringe festival and saw an escapologist street performer (debate still rages on as to whether he was Scottish or American). Afterwards we went to this museum that was a bit like Techniquest but mainly the optical illusion side of things. Their main thing was a camera obscura that afforded a view all over the city, but we probably had more fun with the photobooth that could make you look like a monkey.

Fopp in Glasgow and Edinburgh
Once I realised that these cities had three Fopps between them, my bank account was doomed.

Edinburgh Zoo
Highlights included the penguin parade (reminiscent, I think, of the Squirtle Squad) and the two Sun Bears who seemed to want to kill each other.

But it wasn't all outings 'n' daytrips, nosir; there was plenty of stuff to do in the cottage too. We had a games room, which provided the perfect opportunity for a table football tournament (it came down to me versus my dad, and I foolishly threw away a two-nil lead to eventually lose five-three). Also lovely were the horses living near us, which Sarah was rather taken with. We fed them grass.

Our last few days north of the border were spent with Sarah's grandparents, as well as various relatives, which was lovely. Especially the amount of food we were given. Mind you, I did get a little weary of the following conversation, which I went through with a great number of aunts and neighbours:

"So what do you do, Joel?"
"I'm just going into my third year at university."
"And what do you study?"
"Music."
"Oh, aye, and what do you hope to do with that when you finish?"
"...Teaching?"

Such were my floundering attempts to sound respectable. I'm back at the Atrium from the 19th of September, so I guess I'll have to start working it out then.

That was a nice way of bringing it full circle, wasn't it?

Joel.

P.S. I had resolved to try haggis while we were there but, alas, I did not. Although I did have a pizza with cactus on it.

A Telegram From Scotland

THANKS CLIFFEY FOR SPECIAL ANNIVERSARY UPDATE STOP "CAT-STAMPING HANGOVER" WILL HENCEFORTH ENTER MY EVERYDAY USAGE STOP CURRENTLY STAYING WITH SARAH'S GRANDPARENTS STOP SARAH'S GRANDPA SAYS FOOTBALLERS THESE DAYS ARE "A BUNCH OF DOOLIES" STOP GOT THE TRAIN TO AYR TODAY AND MET SARAH'S AUNTY FOR LUNCH STOP I BOUGHT AN EDITORS TAB BOOK FROM WATERSTONE'S STOP STAY IN COTTAGE NEAR DOLLAR WAS LOVELY STOP ENGAGED IN MANY ACTIVITIES FROM ZOO VISITS TO PING-PONG TOURNAMENTS STOP WILL GO INTO MORE DETAIL UPON RETURNING ON TUESDAY STOP LOVE JOEL STOP

A One Year Anniversary

My Dear friend Joel (see what I did there?) has asked me to celebrate his one year of blogging on here.
It's Cliffey by the way, of cliffemeister.livejournal.com fame (little plug there). I haven't blogged in a long time so I actually wouldn't bother, I tend to do it when I travel, and currently I'm not travelling.
I won't lie, I'm crazy hungover, and I'm probably not going to give a very good account of myself.
Joel has passed the Cutlery mantel on to me today, whilst he and his lovely girlfriend Sarah, as well as his parentals and brother, are visiting Sarah's native Scotland. I received a text this morning, and it was like the beginning of the end as it vibrated and the Mario Death ringtone reverberated around my aching head. You know you're too hungover when a cat stamps into the room.
So I shall fill your minds with some of the things we people have been up to since Joel and Saz left me lonely.
Whilst everyone else decided to leave me lonely by going to Reading, or going back to Neath (in the case of Pete and his friend Rich), me and Tom were the only residents of 6 Tewkesbury Place - or Chez Awesome as it has been known.
So what would you do when you've been abandoned by everyone? Go away yourself? Hibernate? Chill out? Nah, where's the fun in that? Me, Tom, Gaz and his girlfriend Rachel went out 3 nights running. Hence the cat-stamping-hangover.
Honestly? That's it. I apologise for my poor showing but I'm struggling.
Hope everyone has enjoyed the year of Joel's blog, I know I have.
Looking forward to the resumption of normal service.
Much love, Thom xx

Caledonia!

Had a bit of a mopchop yesterday. Here is a picture:

We're off to Scotland today. Well actually we're off to a Premier Inn in Lancaster today, and then Scotland tomorrow.

We - being my family and Sarah and I - will be staying near the small town of Dollar. As far as music for the journey goes, I have decided to make 8 CD-Rs of 20 songs, each with this song as all 20 tracks.

That's 160 spins of Aloe Blacc to get us to Scotland. I can't wait!

See you in two weeks.

Joel.

Green Mun

Last night, at around 1am, Sarah and I arrived home from Green Man. Cliffey, fresh from his adventures in Europe, had very kindly agreed to pick us up from the festival grounds, and we spent the hour-or-so journey home exchanging tales of our weekends. Oddly enough, Cliffey seemed to have a lot more to tell than we did.

But perhaps I was just tired. Green Man was excellent, right down to the weather, and many many bands were seen by all.

I'm not going to do my usual trick of expanding my weekend into a novella - I can't be bothered - so here instead is a list of my Top 10 acts from across the weekend, in no particular order, with a brief description and YouTube links provided.

Bellowhead
Lots of very skilled people playing high-octane folk music, among other things. Awesome, though it's a shame we missed their first couple of songs. Considering buying tickets to their Cardiff show in November.

John Mouse
The first act I saw (excluding Tim Minchin on the Thursday night, who was probably brilliant but I couldn't really hear him due to being some distance from the stage) and he was good fun. His partner and baby were in the audience and he left the stage at one point to say hi. Which was sweet.

Sic Alps
Very noisy and very to-the-point. Actually the song I've linked to isn't that noisy but they were live believe me. Kinda grungey, kinda bluesy, very short songs, and lots of them.

We Were Evergreen
Parisian trio who opened the Pub Stage on Saturday. Wonderfully twee and very entertaining.

The Burns Unit
Very enjoyable Scottish/Canadian supergroup, featuring Mercury-nominated King Creosote. I was going to see Josh T. Pearson but opted for these instead based on their description in the programme - I don't know if I made the right choice, JTP was apparently amazing, but I had a lot of fun watching these nonetheless.

The Avett Brothers
That song is hardly representative of their sound, but it remains my favourite, even after their otherwise very bluegrassy country set stole my own kick drum heart. Special mention for their cellist, who was absolutley mental.

The Low Anthem
Undercard on the Sunday night, perhaps a little quiet for the Main Stage but brilliant regardless. Spent the set sitting with Sarah MacG's parents, her dad is very passionately into The Low Anthem. Also saw them play a brief two-song set in the Rough Trade tent, which was nice. They signed a piece of paper for Josh.

Michael Kiwanuka
Soulful and summery songs that went very nicely with the beautiful weather the last day came out with (Sarah got sunburned! At Green Man!). The studio versions on YouTube are a bit more full-bodied than the ones I caught yesterday, which consisted of him on guitar and his mate on his bass.

Iron & Wine
Closed the Main Stage proceedings last night. Sarah and I had been listening to I&W's first couple of albums in the weeks leading up to Green Man, but where those records are lo-fi and stripped-back, the live show featured a full band (and then some), while the music often bordered on jazz. I was surprised, but Sarah insists that she knew more or less what was coming. After all, songs often sound different when you hear them live*.

The Antlers
Perhaps my most looked-forward-to band of the weekend, I was a little let down when I realised that they weren't going to play anything much from Hospice, the album I'd had two months to get to know, instead choosing to focus on their new album Burst Apart, which I'd heard for the first time the day before we left for Brecon.

They were still awesome though.

Feel a bit worse for wear today. But I imagine I'll be right back down in it next year.

Joel.

*Fleet Foxes' songs, conversely, sounded exactly the same live, which might be why they were so disappointing.

Elaboration

Alright then, birthday weekend.


Saturday was Bristol Zoo. My family came in the car to pick me and Sarah up, and off we went. We listened to songs from the 60s on the way there.

It had been a while since I'd been to a zoo, and I'd forgotten how much fun they could be. We saw lions and monkeys and penguins and seals and flamingoes and meerkats and lemurs and prarie dogs and snakes and pufferfish and gorillas and red pandas and chicken frogs and monitor lizards and bird-eating spiders and a butterfly landed on my leg and Sarah took many many photos, which I imagine will go up on Facebook as soon as we pay the Virgin bill and they give us our internet back.

On the way back from Bristol, we hit up Penylan library and took out a couple of DVDs to watch (after much deliberation and debate). That evening we watched Burlesque, featuring Cher and Christina Aguilera who were okay but very much upstaged by Stanley Tucci (a.k.a. the dad from Easy A). We paused the film halfway through to enjoy my pre-birthday cheesecake; apparently I would be getting my actual birthday cake from another source. Sarah and my mum knew something that I didn't.


So yesterday was my actual birthday and, even though I'm 20 now, I feel pretty much the same as I did when I was a teenager. Hopefully that should allay any of your fears if you're still 19 (I wish I were still 19; my childhood is over. I can't believe I'll never be young again!)

There were many presents, including Liverpool shirts, the Extras boxset, albums by PJ Harvey, Bon Iver, Radiohead, and R.E.M. (the latter on vinyl), all 6 Scott Pilgrim books in a nifty boxset with a poster, some awesome old man pyjamas (exactly my style), a coat that makes me feel like I'm in the Editors, and of course a clarinet, which Tom is going to show me how to play, maybe.

On to the birthday meal. Harvester has kind of lost its novelty, and the folks at TGI's have a nasty habit of singing to you on your birthday, so, at Sarah's recommendation, we decided to try something new and headed to Frankie & Benny's on Newport Road. It was very nice indeed; I had a cajun chicken pasta bake, followed by this insane cookie thing with ice cream and berries.

Frankie & Benny's left us very very full, but rather than go home and collapse we opted to go to Pets At Home and look at the fuzzy animals. It was like Bristol Zoo all over again - they even had pufferfish! Sarah and I were rather taken with the Degus, but decided that a student house was probably no environment for a little mouse, and decided to leave the pets for another day.

Back home, we watched The Other Guys (the other fim from the library) before heading back to Tewkesbury Place to set up for the evening.

There was to be no huge house rave, just a few people gathering in a place to play Mario Party 2 and say how much they like me. But we had a problem - we had lost the Mario Party cartridge.

Cue much wailing and gnashing of teeth. We enlisted the help of Mark and Josh (who arrived before anyone else) and turned the hunt into a party game of sorts, scouring the living room and sifting through the debris in Ciffey's room in search of that game. But it was nowhere to be seen; my brother's friend Jacob had lent us Mario Party 1 as a contingency plan, but dammit, that just wasn't the same.


So spirits were greatly lifted when I summoned up some previously untapped might to lift one of the sofas up and Josh, peeking underneath, cried out that he had spotted it. Success!

Tom and Jen and Tim and Anna soon joined the party, and pretty soon I had accrued a LOT of cake. Mark had brought a chocolate birthday cake from his work, and Jen had made piles and piles and piles of little fairy cake things. Having spoken to my mum today, she was at least partially in on this plan, and had relinquished the cheesecake a day early so as not to overwhelm me on the big day.

We played couples' Mario Party Drinking Game for a while - one person playing, one drinking - but eventually Anna left, Tim was left on his own, and the game descended into chaos. So we abandoned it and just sat around chatting. And singing, and rapping - I got hold of Pete's guitar and Tom and I did a rendition or two of all our most popular hits.

And that brings us just about up to present. Nobody really stayed over (well, Sarah and Tom and Jen did, obviously, but they would have done anyway) but it still had a bit of a slumber party feel to it, mostly thanks to the commitment of people like Tim and Josh who had brought pyjamas to change into even though they would have to change back out of them again before the night was over. The whole weekend, in fact, was excellent times, and in all seriousness, I'm not worried about the passing of my teenagerdom. I never acted much like a teenager anyway, and I don't expect to start acting like a proper grown-up now.

Joel.

Dear Fone

Yes, it probably is.

Joel.

Cliffey!

We started watching Weeds yesterday. ...It's not bad.

Although the theme song does have a habit of sticking in one's head. Grr.

Anywho, tomorrow is my last day as a teenager, so I'm going to the zoo. I maintain that, in spite of turning 20, I will not act like any more of an adult after Sunday. Hell, I'm celebrating the passing of my youth with a girly girly slumber party.

Joel.

P.S. No Internet at the moment - there was no money in Pete's account for Virgin to pay our bills with - so if any of us are a little hard to contact right now, that's probably why.

The Lock-Out

(Post #150)

Bit of a fiasco yesterday. Walked to Next with Sarah and, once her shift had started, plodded over to the Atrium to find some stuff for my dissertation (in fact, yesterday's update was typed in the Mac lab). Headed back but realised that I didn't have a doorkey. Could, I suppose, have gone into Next to ask Sarah for hers but would have had to wait 'til her break so went it alone.



Knocked on the door, hoping Marius would be about to let me in but, alas, no. Sat on the front wall for a bit, enjoying the sunshine and reading the Britpop book I had just checked out of the Atrium library before taking action.

Went to my parents' house. Rang Paul the Landlord and asked if he had a spare key. Very kindly offered to pick me up from parents' house and take me back to Tewkesbury Place. Had a nice chat in the car with him and his wife, apparently they have a 14-year-old daughter with a penchant for gory horror films. Her mother showed her Jaws in the hopes that she'd enjoy it but just pointed and laughed all the way through.

Got in, but neglected to ask Paul to lock the door. Spent the second half of the afternoon alone in an unlocked house, playing Tetris and nervously refreshing Twitter every two minutes to make sure riots hadn't started in Cardiff yet.

They never did, contrary to myriad rumours. Sarah rang me after work and reported that the only violence going down on Queen Street at that moment was seagull-based. She was waiting for Tom and Jen to pick herup and bring her back, which they did, eventually.

In the evening we went to Asda. On the way, Tom and I demonstrated our Destiny's Child sing-along skills for Jen, and upon arrival I bought 5 bags of Smart Price penne for 17p each.

Joel.

P.S. Paul has apparently been 'round today r drop a couple of spare keys so hopefully no more key-nanigans.

Formation of the Dissertation

I mentioned in one of my previous entries that, having left Next, I would now be devoting a good chunk of my free time to preparation. Preparation for my dissertation.

Well, since that update I have started to establish some idea of what I'm going to be writing about. Thinking about the political side of music, it occurred to me that the vast majority of politically-minded songwriters and artists came from the left wing of politics - power to the people and fuck capitalism and all that.

So I thought I'd investigate the other side - the right-wing musicians. I spent most of yesterday trawling the internet for interesting examples, and I've already come across the surprising Micah P. Hinson ("Obama is the murderer of the American Dream"), the woefully unsubtle Darryl Worley ("You say we shouldn't worry 'bout Bin Laden/Have you forgotten?"), and the downright disappointing Matt Jay (from Busted) and Geri Halliwell (from the Spice Girls). 

More generally, I want to look at politically-active musicians from both ends of the spectrum, and find out how far one can go before the message starts getting in the way of the music.

Of course this dissertation is still in its most primordial stages (the dissertation, in its current incarnation, has several limitations) and there's a lot more reading to be done yet (I've just checked out a book on Britpop's support of Tony Blair's New Labour), but hopefully I'm onto a winner.

And if not, well, I've got like 9 months until this is due (like a baby!) so there'll be plenty of time to throw it all in the bin and start again.

Joel.

Enter Bonelle/House of the Couples

And so, at last, Tom Bonelle is officially living here. God knows it's been a long time coming, given that he was supposed to be one of the original five housemates back in September, but he's finally gotten his shit together and moved in.

Not that, even yesterday, he didn't take is time about it. Sarah, who was nursing a Big Weekend hangover, had to go to Sturff yesterday, so I stayed behind to get our old room ready for Tom's arrival. My dad came 'round at 9.30 to assist me* in assembling the new bed (which was retarded; it came in two halves and the clamps that were meant to hold them together didn't do shit) and, some hooverin' and hammerin' later, the bedroom was ready for its new owner.

But the owner, it seemed, was not yet ready for the bedroom. I waited in my ivory tower, watching the road and playing tetris, but no-one came. I called his mobile, but no-one answered. We had plans to go to Varsity with Sian and Pete, and Tom was causing serious scheduling issues. 

I went to the station to meet Sarah after work, and when Tom had still not materialsed upon our return, we decided to take action. Sian had Jen's phone number, and we figured that she might know where our housemate-to-be was hiding.

Sian rang Jen and, well, it worked better than expected because apparently, even though Tom doesn't answer his own phone, he does answer Jen's.

So eventually the three couples managed to congregate at Varsity but, unfortunately, the kitchen had just closed. This posed a problem; what should our triumvirate do for tea? We were all starving, and many suggestions were put forth - takeaways, restaurants, cafés, even some pansy vegetarian place that Jen recommended - but no decision was made so eventually we decided just to cruise down Crwys and eat whatever took our fancy.

When we made it all the way to Death Junction without any hint of a decision, I took control (sort of). I corralled everyone towards Zio Peppino's, the Italian restuarant on Albany Road that my family always goes to, and as luck would have it, they had a table for six all ready to go.

Now I had already suggested this place, and that suggestion had been met with middling enthusiasm, but when everyone saw the free bread and breadsticks, well, I think my choice was validated.

Also the meals themselves were awesome and everyone was very full afterwards.

And that's more or less the end. We were planning to stay up all night playing games and eating snacks (couples slumber party!) and the night was shaping up to be a fun one. Tom and Jen had just popped back to his house to grab his TV and we were looking forward to a friendly bit of Mario Party.

Of course I was asleep long before they returned, but I'm told they took over two hours. We'll have to have our slumber party another time, I guess. Maybe for my birthday (which is on the 14th, that's a week today, buy me a present).

Joel.

*Okay, he basically did it all himself. He was appalled by the state of the garage, and very disappointed in whomever acquired that Fanny Street sign, THOM CLIFFE AND JOSHUA ROBSON I AM LOOKING AT YOU.

The Lonesome Cheesecake

We at number six have a terrible tendency to fill our fridge with desserts that we never get 'round to eating. This is mostly the fault of the Co-op on Crwys Road, who are never short of a rhubarb crumble or something that's about to go off and consequently being sold at about a third of its usual price.

So of course we go to Co-op, see a cheesecake for little more than a pound, get all excited, purchase it, and then pop it in the fridge and forget about it.

And then, perhaps two or three days after the use-by date, we remember our lonesome cheesecake and buy all sorts of sweets and sprinkles to cover it with, partially to make this plain vanilla cheesecake more exciting, partially to obscure the fact that it's starting to turn.

And we manage to eat about two-thirds of it before dessert fatigue starts to kick in.

"Okay, I'm done. You can have the rest."
"I don't want it."
"Oh. What shall we do then?"
"Throw it out, I guess."
"Yeah, okay. Could you pop down to kitchen and take care of it?"
"I can't be bothered."
"Neither can I."

And so it was that, in a fit of laziness, Sarah and I conspired to throw a hunk of cheesecake out of our first-floor window.

"Don't get it on the pavement in front of the house. Aim for the road."
"I'm worried I'll hit that van. Do you think I can throw it that far?"
"I don't know."

I could, fairly easily. I used a kind of shot-put technique and it splattered neatly in the middle of the road.

How we laughed. This morning, there's little remnant of it, just a sort of faded splotch on the tarmac. So either someone cleaned it up, or the magpies had it.

There are some chocolate puddings in the fridge that we bought ages ago and keep forgetting to eat. Perhaps they'll be next.

Tom moves in tomorrow. I've somehow got to dismantle a bed before then.

Joel.

A Warm Flat

Today was going to be a cleaning day, but that now looks likely to go down as one of the main failures of our time. Just had a go at cleaning the black ring of mould around the shower and, blimey, that stuff won't budge an inch. Used some rather strong bleach stuff that I borrowed from my mum, but nothing doing. Even chiselling it off with a knife was no good, so I guess we'll just have to live with it.

Last night was Herbie and Lukas's flatwarming party, and being the socialites we are we decided to show up fashionably (three hours) late. Meic was aboot the hoose, you see, and his plan was to pop to Jenna's at 9 and then give Sarah and I a buzz when they were ready to head off.

Which turned out to be around 9.30, so there we are. The new flat is lovely, a good place to come home to after work (I would imagine). I ruined everyone's evening by having the last Haribo and not drinking, but in spite of this most faces were smiling as we left. Mark, whose evening was probably even more ruined than most because I had forgotten the DVDs I had promised to return to him, went to Spar to buy some discount ice cream and, well, that was about it.

I notice Mr. Cliffe hasn't updated for the last few days.

Joel.

Neither Istanbul (Nor Constantinople)

So Cliffey is updating his blog once more, and I'm damned if I'm going to update less than him - I don't see why should he get the proverbial drop on me just because he actually has something worth writing about. So you can either read about his tedious adventures in Eastern Europe, or you can come here and read about how I spent most of my day on Cracked.com (or I guess you could do both).

Today was my last contracted day at Next, and while I was in the dark as to whether they were intending to keep me on or not, I decided (admittedly after a lot of discussion and convincing from Sarah) to force the issue this morning and call it a day. So I worked one last shift, and informed my manager that my work there was done*. I think they had intended to keep me 'til Christmas but frankly I only wanted a summer job anyway.

Besides, I have bigger fish to fry because as of tomorrow, my #1 priority is research for my third year dissertation. This 10,000 word behemoth is worth about 25% of my overall grade and as yet I'm not even sure what I'm going to be writing about. So, um, any suggestions?

In other news: I have a mouth ulcer, except on my tonsils. Experts have characterised the situation as "pretty fuckin' gay". 

Joel.

*Although technically I didn't finish putting that last rail of clothes out before I left. Whoops!

The Goats From Gemma Meadows (Part 12)

Part 11 is here.

Goldberg wasn't used to driving at night, and the country roads weren't particularly well-lit, so the journey home was slower and more cautious than usual.

Sarah watched the forest's shadow gliding past, looked up at the dark trees as they stretched their eerie fingers into the murky sky, and thought back on the day's events. It had been frightening at times, true, but it was also the most excitement she'd ever had. Goats, she decided, must take whatever excitement they can get.

Pete wondered what to do next. Should he forget the whole ordeal, go back to being a goat and live out the remainder of his fifteen to eighteen year life expectancy wondering what could have been? Or should he continue to secretly betray his friends in the hope of a reward that may never come? It was a good question. He didn't want to be a goat for the rest of his life.

Cliffey fell asleep the moment they got in the van, and stayed that way right up until they encountered the troll from under the bridge.

Nobody saw it coming. One moment the road ahead had been clear and peaceful; the next, it was being blocked by half a tonne of repulsive, angry troll.

Goldberg had slammed on the brakes in time to avoid hitting it, but instantly decided that this was the wrong thing to do because running it over would have at least bought them some time.

But now the troll was charging at them, head down, roaring his insane roar.

The impact made a mighty WHUMP and sent the van spinning back down the track. Goldberg mashed the accelerator with under his foot in an attempt to flee, but this just caused the van to stall.

The engine sputtered pathetically, then went horribly silent.

"Damn!" cried Goldberg. "Damn damn damn!" Desperately, he wiggled the key in the ignition, trying to get going again.

WHAM! The troll once more collided with the van, nearly knocking the vehicle clear off its wheels.

The goats were terrified. The engine seemed to have given up completely. Goldberg, in a last effort to scare the thing away, honked the horn loudly.

No reaction. The troll bowed its ugly head, preparing to deal the final blow.

Goldberg and the two goats braced for impact.

Wait a minute.

Two goats?

* * *

Peikko and T'pon had been searching the forest for what felt like hours now, and they had found no clue as to where their colleague might be.

"What I don't understand," grumbled T'pon, "is why everyone voted for Jo-Tunn to be League president. He was lazy and worthless back then and he's the same way now. Except he's fatter."

Peikko cocked a warty eyebrow in bemusement. "You didn't vote for Jo-Tunn?"

"Absolutely not," T'pon retorted. "I voted for Karl."

Up went Peikko's other eyebrow. "Karl?!" he exclaimed in surprise. "You must have been the only one."

"I don't see why. I guess all the other trolls couldn't see past his stupid human name. Close-minded idiots. I should have run for the presidency myself, rather than let everyone get behind Jo-Tunn just because he's got a nice, traditonal troll name."

"But surely you'll admit that Jo-Tunn is good at keeping things organised?"

"I'll admit no such thing. We both know that you're the brains of the operaton, Peikko. Jo-Tunn's just a-"

T'pon's political ranting was cut short by an unhinged and rather trolly roar coming from the road behind them.

The two trolls looked at each other in dismay, then started running towards the noise's source.

"Karl? Was that you?!"

* * *

Goldberg looked around the van.

Cliffey was strapped in his seat, wide awake and paralysed with fear.

As was Pete.

Very slowly, Goldberg turned his gaze back to the road.

The troll was not charging at the van. Instead, his attention had turned to the small goat running in circles around him.

"Hey TROLL!" shouted Sarah, her voice quavering ever so slightly. "You want the goat who demolished your marshmallow wall? Come and GET me!"


Of course, Cliffey was the one who had devoured the marshmallow wall, but trolls are notorious for being unable to tell the difference between one goat and another, so Karl chased after Sarah as if she had stolen his soul.

"RAAAAAAAWARGH!"

Sarah was terrified, naturally. But she was quick, and her brave little diversion gave Goldberg time to get the van going again. With engine roaring and headlights on full beam, he stepped on the accelerator and sped towards the troll that was menacing his goat.

Karl may have been mad with fury, but he wasn't stupid. As soon as he noticed that dented behemoth roaring towards him, he wasted no time in getting out of its way.


Sarah kept running, just as Goldberg had hoped. He drove up alongside her as she ran, leant out of his window, reached out his arm, and...


...failed to pick her up. Oh no.

Goldberg hit the brakes and began a three-point turn to try again.

"Hurry up Goldberg!" cried Pete, leaning out of the passenger side window. "The troll's right behind her!"

Indeed he was, and Goldberg did his best to turn the van around as quickly as possible. But Goldberg was no stunt driver, and as fast as Sarah ran towards the van, Karl had no trouble catching up to her.

Sarah collapsed, exhausted and petrified. Gasping for breath, she could only screw her eyes tightly shut as the troll's ghastly stench got nearer and nearer and nearer...

TO BE CONTINUED

Signs of Carboard

Another Sunday, another go at doing a car boot sale. This one went rather better.

Sarah, Cliffey and I spent Saturday night at Sarah's house, with her brother Stuart and rather a lot of pizza keeping us company. We rose early on Sunday morning - some found it easier than others - and headed down to BP* to kick it off.

And we did fairly well. My old record player went within the first hour (although strangely enough nobody wanted the records that I'd hoped would go with it - seems there's no market for The Jam, George Michael, and a compilation of 'BBC Space Themes' nowadays), as did my bag of Action Man figures and several of Cliffey's knickknacks.

However, as the morning wore on, we became concerned at the non-sale of two important items: Cliffey's table football table, and Sarah's dad's TV.

Expectations had been high for these two - their starting prices had were £25 and £15 respectively - but there were no takes and the slow dwindling of the asking prices did nothing to change that.

Morning became afternoon, and we started to panic. Not so much for the profit; more because the three of us wouldn't be able to fit in the car if this pair of relatively hefty things was coming with us.

"TV for a fiver?!" we cried desperately at any and all passers-by. Lunchtime had been and gone, and the majority of traders had called it a day, including the lovely lady whose stall had been pitched next to ours (and whose CD rack I eventually bought for a pound out of sympathy - more on that later). We had spent the last hour or so 'modelling'** the football table, to no avail. The situation was looking bleak, and as I headed to the clubhouse to hear the results of the £100 prize draw, it looked like we would have to consider just tossing the football table on the cordoned-off rubbish area and giving Sarah's dad his TV back.

But as I gazed out of the bar's window, I noticed two things:

1) A large red car had pulled up alongside Xander, and...
2) The football table, which had sat alongside our stall all day like an albatross around our collective neck, had vanished.

Upon returning from the raffle results (we didn't win), I was informed that some men had bought the TV for £5 (on the proviso that Cliffey carry it to their car, which was reportedly parked a country mile away), and that the people in the red car had taken the football table for £2 (except Sarah had forgotten to actually take the money off them before they drove away, so it was effectively free).

So we dubbed the day a moderate success and headed off. Sarah had gained £5 from the sale of the TV, I had made £12 or so for flogging my various trinkets, and Cliffey had trousered somewhere between £20 and £30, which is pretty tasty.

Even better, those are the figures after we had, between us, spent a small nation's royal mint on other people's stuff. A quick rundown of our purchases:

Joel - Blondie's Parallel Lines on vinyl for £1; Charizard plushie for £1; melodica for £2; aforementioned CD rack for £1; old Liverpool home strip for 50p - back reads "Gerrard 17".

Sarah - Big fuzzy blue jacket for £2; tribal African face thing, £4.

Cliffey - Giant Tigger plushie for £1 - "big enough to spoon"; Cluedo board game for £1 (I think).

And afterwards we went to Harvester. So a massive success really.

Joel.

*The name of the field in Sully where this shit goes down. I have no idea why it's called that.

**Or 'playing on to pass the time during which nobody wanted to buy anything'. Whichever.

Also Dr. Dre Was There

You know how it is by now. I miss one day, and then I decide that I might as well miss two, then three, and before I know 11 days have gone by and I still haven't updated my blog.

Still, it's not like much has been happening around here lately. Sarah downloaded a game called Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse and she's been playing that and I've been watching her (it's really awesome, I've actually made sure she doesn't play it without me, lest I miss something important), so that's taken up pretty much all of our time recently*.

Oh, although I should mention that we have a new housemate. His name is Marius and he's Albanian.

Aside from that...yeah, just the game and work. The Next sale has been on all this week, and Sarah and I both had some pretty heavy shifts in preparation for it. My contract actually runs out a week today, although it remains to be seen if it will be renewed.

Speaking of sales, Cliffey and I had planned to pop to Sully and sell some of our tat out of Xander's rear at their car boot sale. We loaded all of his stuff in the car, went to my parents' house to load some of my stuff in the car, and drove all the way to Sully, only to discover this sign:

Oh and we went to Techniquest on Wednesday. That was awesome. I played the Rugrats theme on a stone xylophone and Cliffey built a bridge and Sarah had a Calippo and an Asian man stole my go on the water cannon thing. And afterwards we bought some fish and cooked it and ate it and I thought it was delicious and Sarah quite liked it but Cliffey was a bit disappointed.

Okay, it does seem like several things have happened that probably would each have been worthy of their own entry. But I've been busy, dammit!

Joel.

*Much to Cliffey's chagrin.

Dive-Bomb Dave, Seagull Scourge of the Streets

A seagull tried to dive-bomb me this morning. Gaz warned me last week that this sort of thing went on around here, but I assumed he was just some sort of bird magnet because in almost a year of living here I'd never encountered any territorial seabirds.

But I had just set off and was listening to Hospice by The Antlers* when I heard a squawk. I turned around and found myself eye-to-eye with a frowny looking seagull, swooping towards me at about head height.

I ducked, and once this mad-eyed thing had passed over me I ran, quite fast.

But anyway! This blog isn't supposed to be about my morning jolt of SHEER BIRD TERROR. It's supposed to be my triumphant return to blogging after a week or so without updates. We managed to ruin another computer and we had to wait a few days for Sarah's dad to sort us aht, but all is well now.

So how are you? Good?

Joel.

PKMN

Cliffey decided a little while ago that we ought to throw a Pokémon Party - he'd heard stories about them and they sounded pretty cool. Everyone had to dress up as a Pokémon*, obviously, but it went deeper than that. Each room (except the ones we wanted to keep the rabble out of) became a gym: Cliffey's room was the electric gym, the garage was the grass gym, and the oven was the fire gym. You get the idea. Each gym had activites relevant to its theme, so electric gym had the N64, grass gym had grass-related activites, and the fire gym was...well, that was just an oven. We were going to make some chips but we forgot about that.

And most of these activities were, inevitably, translated into drinking games. The psychic gym had a higher or lower game, whereby an incorrect guess meant taking a drink, while a correct guess meant choosing someone else to take a drink.
All good fun. But obviously what you're all waiting for is the list of which pokémon were present. Well, I don't remember all of them, and the ones I do remember, I don't necessarily remember the names of the people who were them. Still, here's a partial list; do help to fill in the gaps if you can.

Charmeleon (Not sure who this was)
Charizard  (Again not sure, but they had crazy dragoneye contacts in so that was cool)
Squirtle (Think this was Dave)
Pidgey (Cartwright in a rather underwhelming towel-and-tape attempt)
Jigglypuff (Sarah, complete with marker pen and pinkish hair)
Zubat (Jen)
Psyduck (Ollie)
Poliwhirl (Tom, and possibly someone else?)
Machoke (Think it was Pat, but I'm a bit unsure between him and Dave because they were both painted blue; also Olly C.)
Bellsprout (Padbury, who later evolved into Man with a lampshade on his head)
Tentacool (Me with leggings on my head)
Onix (Meg)
Exeggcute (Luke, who later 'evolved' into Exeggutor simply by losing some of the balloons attached to his head and gaining a leafy thing)
Tangela (Elen, although this is rather dubious as she only decided on her costume after arriving)
Scyther (Mark in a rather impressive effort; his mum has been desperately searching for photos from the night)
Ditto (there had been several jokes in the runup that someone would come as a Ditto who had transformed into them, but I don't think anyone actually tried that in the end)
Snorlax (Cliffey; debate still rages as to whether Snorlax is blue or green but there we are)

Yes, it was limited to the first 151, and fortunately nobody strayed from that boundary. I wouldn't have minded - Gold, Silver and Crystal were arguably better than Red, Blue and Yellow - but Cliffey would.

I was just annoyed at whoever thought Tinie Tempah was a more appropriate choice of music than MIDI files of the game music on endless repeat.

I think it was Liv. Curse you, Liv!
Joel.

*There was some wiggle-room, naturally. We had an Ash, a Team Rocket, an Officer Jenny, a Nurse Joy, and Ed even dressed as an attack, complete with descending HP bar.

Two Truncated Tales

I mentioned the other day that we'd found our fifth housemate for next year, but sadly this has fallen through. Apparently he's found a house nearer to his uni or something.

So, instead of telling you about Henk, our housemate never to be, I shall cast an eye to the past and (briefly) tell ye a couple of stories from yore that slipped under the Cutlery radar...

I. Eggs


I was not present for this incident, so I shall be recounting it secondhand. My housemates were assembled in the kitchen, for one reason or another, when some bright spark decided to open the fridge. Out tumbled several of Gemma Ward's eggs, which presumably had not been fastened down in the proper manner.

"My eggs!"

The eggs were lost, but that wasn't the worst part. They didn't quite make it to the floor, instead aiming to land on Peter Murphy. They found their mark, splattering his lower appendages with eggy goo.

"My legs!"


II. The Cunning Trickery of Sophie Jones


A knock is heard at the door. Joel Dear wonders whether or not to answer it, but the scamper of feet coming downstairs indicates that the matter is under control.

Sophie Jones heads towards the door, but can see through the window that it is not someone she would care to speak to. She decides that Joel is better equipped to handle this one, so, instead of opening the door, she calls for her housemate.

"Joel! It's the landlord!"

Joel gets on fairly well with the landlord, and his happy to greet him. But upon opening the door - shockhorror! - Joel realises that he has been duped, and that he is in fact now saying how-do to a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses.

He deals with them in a curt manner before shutting the door and calling Sophie a cunt.

Joel.

Glastonbury Weekend

FRIDAY


As I ran from the stock room at 11am, taking the stairs three at a time, my thoughts turned to the long weekend that stretched ahead of me. Some people would be enjoying U2 tonight, but I was more exciting at the prospect of spending the night in Gem's room.

Except it was now my room. Gem had hastily and unexpectedly moved out on Thursday morning, and Sarah and I were quick to capitalise on this and increase our living space by about 150%. We had planned just to gradually start moving our stuff in, but of course we couldn't resist and ended up going all-out. I spent Thursday night in the master bedroom, surrounded by my wonderful possessions (mandolin, iPod dock, cuddly toys, etc.)

So anyway, after finishing work at Next on Friday I headed to Sturff, and after Sturff we went to TGI Friday's. I had recently finished stomping Tom in our one-on-one Fantasy Football league (I have Carlos Tevez to thank for that, mostly - perhaps I should send him an email) and, as we had agreed, he now had to buy me a meal. I had a lovely, expensive steak, and everyone had a great time. Except perhaps for Cliffey, who discovered that some girl he had a past with and now could barely bring himself to speak to was on the payroll at TGI's and happened to have a shift that evening.

Oh well. Later on, we kicked back with a head-shaving session*, a midnight visit to Tesco, and a great big washing-up session. Operation Polaris produced great results, but such things do not last in a student house, even if there are only three people officially living there now.

SATURDAY


Colorama are a local-ish band who sound a bit like the Super Furry Animals and whose new album I picked up from Spillers on Valentine's Day, more or less on a whim after listening to bits of it on their CD listening post. Today, they were scheduled to play a free set at The Old Library as part of Spillers 'Saturday Sessions' thing.

I was mildly excited, and while Sarah had to be in Next that afternoon, I had convinced Cliffey to check it out with me...that is, until it transpired that Colorama had traded the bustle of Saturday afternoon in Central Cardiff for the rather more bustling bustle of Saturday afternoon at the Glastonbury festival. Typical.

Their slot at The Old Library was to be filled by a band called Houdini Dax, to whom I feel I owe a little publicity because I know two of them personally - David and Jack are both on the pop music course - and yet decided, not for the first time, that I couldn't be bothered to go and watch. So click on this link, watch the videos, buy their album, send them naked photos, and generally do whatever it takes to bail me out, karmically speaking.

Still, I would not let the whole day slide by without taking in a little live music. So while thousands of people were enjoying Coldplay and wondering who that psychy Welsh band from earlier were, Sarah and I were listening to Mr. John Grant, for Czars frontman and the brain behind Mojo's album of 2010.

And, in spite of a few technical problems**, his set was fantastic. Most of his songs were backed by nothing more than a baby grand piano and a synthesiser, and The Gate made a pretty cool venue for it all, being more of a theatre than a club or concert hall.

The support act, Daughter, were good too. I got their EP and had it signed, although sadly the cardboard sleeve did get slightly bent in Sarah's rucksack. Oh well.

SUNDAY


Tom stayed over on Saturday night, and in the morning I was told that while I was falling asleep halfway through Megamind***, he and Cliffey had popped to the Kismet for a late-night curry. And guess who was there, chomping on poppadoms after another hard shift at TGI's?

Anywho, once we had all woken up and gotten dressed, the four of us (Sarah, Tom, Cliffey and myself) went into town to find costumes for our upcoming Pokémon party. It was a scorchingly hot day, and after stickly circumnavigating the city centre for an hour or so, we retired to Varsity for some food and a few cold drinks.

Which was lovely apart from the bit where I ordered some sort of complicated mocktail and the lady on the counter had to go and see if they had the necessary ingredients. Whilst awaiting her return, I thought it would be a great idea to perch myself on the bar - literally sit on the bar - and in doing so I knocked the Chip & PIN machine onto the floor, with surprising velocity. Imagine the launcher in a pinball machine, and replace the ball with maybe £25 per month of hi-tech gadgetry, and the launcher bit with my fat fuckin' ass.

I was roundly ridiculed, but hey, the virgin colada was nice.

And so, as several thousand people were realising that Kelly and Michelle would not, in fact, be making an appearance, Sarah and I rounded off the weekend by watching Catch Me If You Can, which we both agreed was awesome.

And now it's Monday, and Sarah's in work, and I'm sweating a lot and typing this blog and tomorrow morning I have work too.

Oh well. At least we know who our new housemate will be. More on that tomorrow.

Joel.

* Not my head. Meic's and Cliffey's.

** At the start of one song, he started singing into a second, thus far unused, microphone, which added a very distant-sounding effect to his voice. Which I thought was cool until he stopped and made an annoyed face, at which point I realised that the mic wasn't turned on.

*** Sarah had to fill me in the following morning. I won't spoil for you, but it all sounds very exciting. And for once I managed to guess an important plot point.

The Big Jam Sandwich-Eating Contest

And so last night, the momentous moment finally arrived. 'Washington' Dave Camilleri took on Thom 'Tenderloin' Cliffe for the title of...person who can eat the most jam sandwiches. Also Padbury joined in:

(N.B. If anyone with some image editing software that isn't MS Paint wants to do me a picture of Cliffey and Dave facing off, that would be cool. Something along these lines if you could. Thanks.)

So the evening began with our three combatants preparing their feast. Three pots of blackcurrant jam and six (!) loaves of bread were turned into a 48-sandwich obstacle course that would test these athletes to their very limit.

Each contestant received a plate of 16 sandwiches each, and as the battle began, it became clear that none of them wanted to rush their efforts (as Cartwright shrewdly pointed out, "it's not a race, it's a marathon").

So it was to be a war of attrition. We put Friends on in the background to pass the time. Some made better headway than others, but Cliffey (who started to fall behind his rivals some time around Sandwich #5) made it clear that speed was not the key factor here; the winner would be the man who could eat the most sandwiches, not the one who could eat a few sandwiches quickly. It was anyone's game.

But around the seventh or eighth sandwich, they started to lag. All three of them. It got a little strategic. Padbury started folding his sandwiches so that he could eat them in fewer bites; Dave took to tearing his sandwiches apart, presumably to make the task ahead of him seem less gargantuan. Cliffey began testing each sandwich's moisture levels, so that he could keep things a little varied.

Alas, to no avail. With still a good nine sandwiches between any of them and victory, it was decided that The Big Jam Sandwich-Eating Contest was to be rained off. Padbury had to go home anyway, and Cliffey and Dave didn't seem that thrilled at the prospect of carrying on. 

So instead of finishing their sandwiches, they decided to do something different: set them on fire.

(I do have a pretty cool picture of this but sadly the computer isn't recognising my camera so that will have to wait.)

I know not whether the boys will return to the grand hall of jam sandwich marathons. For now they are pursuing other endeavours; Cartwright seems tragically assured that he can eat four cream crackers in one minute.

Joel.

Pay-Per-View

Big news! The jam sandwich-eating contest between Thom Cliffe and Dave Camilleri will go ahead this evening. We at Cutlery will bring you all the action, as it happens*, so make sure you tune in.

First, though, a shameless plug:

Everybody go to http://soundcloud.com/shiny-tiger and listen to the songs.

They're good.

Promise.

Joel.

*Actually I'll probably just write it down as it happens and post it here afterwards. I'm not about to do some kind of BBC live text thing.

Rocket Summer

Cliffey's in work at the moment, and he's gonna be there 'til around midnight, so I'm guessing the jam sandwich-eating contest is off.

Rocket Summer, then. A good while ago (quite possibly the other side of the new year, I don't rightly remember), some of us went down to The Record Shop* to have a look at what they had to offer. Cliffey stumbled upon an album by The Rocket Summer - a band he persists in liking even though I saw them at T in the Park once and have repeatedly told him that they're not that great - and being as it only cost a pound he promptly bought it.

But it later transpired that it wasn't the work of The Rocket Summer at all. It was in fact by a local band called The Afternoons, who had rather selfishly titled their album Rocket Summer**. Presumably so that folks like Cliffey would pick it up by accident.

Anyway, Cliffey gave it a listen and decided that while it was okay, it wasn't what he was after. And that would have appeared to be it.

I'm not sure why he was suddenly so desperate to get rid of the album on Saturday night - maybe he got a bit too drunk and thought it was cursed - but he decided that he would offload it on me. As with anyone who offers me a free gift, I was suspicious of his motives (and hell, I didn't want to listen to anything that was merely okay) and no sooner had I discovered the album case left on my bed than I placed it outside his door for him to discover in the morning.

I think my rejection may have hurt his feelings, so I said that we could listen to the album in the car while we were out picking up organs and such. If I liked it, I would take it off his hands (jeez, I really come off as quite ungrateful in this story). 

As it turns out, I did like it. And so did Cliffey. Its vibrant, summery tunes were somewhat at odds with the deluge that was pushing Xander's windshield wipers to the limit, but for an album that cost £1, it was a great success.

The result being that I now want it, and Cliffey wants to keep it.

Oy. Maybe some sort of jam sandwich-eating competition would distract him long enough for me to steal it?

Joel.

* It's just called 'The Record Shop'. It's off Albany Road and it's easily my favourite place to rummage, check it out. 

** The band The Rocket Summer have been around longer than that album, in case you're wondering. Although in truth neither artist is original, both having taken the phrase 'The Rocket Summer' from the title of a short story by Ray Bradbury. Now you know.

Father's Day & What Happened Before

At my parents' house yesterday, having handed my dad his card and Burn After Reading DVD, I was asked how Tom's party had been the night before.

I gave some vague answer, something along the lines of "yeah, pretty good", which was a fair summary of the overall night but did omit some important details like the broken toilet flusher and the people doing ketamine off Death Cab For Cutie CDs. I suppose I decided that my parents wouldn't be interested.

All of that aside, though, I think people enjoyed themselves. I had a rather in-depth conversation with Tom Rookes on the subject of living in uni halls, Cliffey and Dave organised a jam sandwich-eating contest, Padbury tried to light his farts...

Oh, and there was absinthe. Goblin-green, nostril-stinging absinthe. Tom brought some back as a souvenir of his adventures in Magaluf, and a few of us gave it a go. Mark and myself had trouble with it, eventually resorting to slapping the wall in a vain attempt to take the taste away; Pete took a sip and immediately fell on the floor.

But it was Sarah who was the real absinthe hero. She actually seemed to enjoy it, taking multiple shots of the stuff and commenting with a smile that it tasted "warm".

There were also ongoing shenanigans involving myself, Cliffey and an album by local band The Afternoons. But more on that another day, one when I don't have important events to review.

That sandwich-eating contest is supposed to be tomorrow, actually. Maybe I'll give you some sort of play-by-play.

Joel.

P.S. Cliffey and I went to pick up my organ today, the one I won on eBay for 99p. You'll be pleased to hear that it fit into Xander quite snugly (once we'd put the seats down), and is in fine working order. It even has a built-in drum machine, so you can play along to awesome beats! Cliffey suggested that we record me playing organ versions of various tunes from the original Pokémon games and play them at our upcoming Pokémon party, but I countered by recommending that we just download said music from vgmusic.com instead.

Tidy for the Party

Great Scott, he's done it!

Pete, assisted by his happy little elves Meic and Rob, have cleaned the house, and to a remarkable standard!

In fact, I'm sad that there's going to be a party now. It'll make a mess again.

Sorry guys, party's off. We're going to enjoy our clean house.

Joel.

P.S. Not really. Malibu time!

Operation Polaris

It's a bloody mess here at the moment. Landlord Paul emailed me the other day to ask when would be a good time to show a prospective tenant around, and I've still not replied because I simply don't know when it's going to be clean again.

So it's Pete to the rescue. A few days a go he promised me that he would soon begin what he called "Operation Polaris"; when I asked him what exactly this would entail he just laughed evilly for a moment.

Well it turns out that Operation Polaris = doing the washing up. As I may have mentioned to Tom yesterday, I'll believe it when I see it. I think Pete said he would do it yesterday, but in the words of William Shatner, it hasn't happened yet. Sarah and I went to see Avenue Q with my family last night (it was hilarious), and upon our return we were greeted by what seemed to be an even larger pile of dishes in need of doing.

So Operation Polaris is still pending initialisation. It's Tom's birthday today and he's having his party here tomorrow, but we shall see whether or not the house will be tidy enough to host that sort of thing by then.

I suppose we could make some sort of party game out of tidying up. Most crisp packets picked up from the living room floor wins one night of steamy Tom time.

I imagine he'd be down with that.

Joel.

P.S. Here is a visual representation of a train of thought I experienced while browsing in HMV this morning:

Filling You In

I won the Hammond Organ. 99p it went for in the end. Now we just have to pick it up.

I've no idea where I'm going to put it.

Joel.

Impulse Organ Buying

Terrible news for my bank balance! As of the past week or so, I have unearthed my passion for buying stuff on eBay. So far I have purchased Nick Cave's The Firstborn Is Dead (on CD), Neil Young's After The Goldrush (on vinyl - Sarah's dad is giving her a record player that will accompany us into Gem's room when she moves out), and an Adventure Time t-shirt for Sarah (although to be fair she did give me the money for that).

Also I'm currently bidding on a Hammond organ. The seller is Cardiff-based, and Cliffey said that he'd help me pick it up if I won it.

I'm not sure why, he has enough badly-played music to endure from the instruments I already have.

Anyway, the auction ends around midday tomorrow, so I'll let you know if I won or not.

Joel.

Utonium, Utonium - Jen's Party

Yesterday was not Jen Brooksby's 19th birthday, but it was (somewhat inexplicably) the day she chose to celebrate it.

Everyone was supposed to come in fancy dress, the theme being musicians. There were two Adam Ants, two Rihannas, an Axl Rose, a Britney Spears, and numerous others. A lot of people had put a fair amount of effort into their costumes.

None of them were us. In retrospect I should have been Jarvis Cocker; I already have the hair and a tweed jacket (courtesy of Tim Penn...the jacket, not the hair) and some thick-rimmed glasses would not have been hard to come by.

But this did not occur to me in time. Nor did the thought of bringing Tom along and just going as Tom & Joel.

Ten minutes before leaving the house, Cliffey was running around his room, trying to think of a musician he could dress up as using items he already owned (Sarah and I were sorted by this point, albeit in a fairly lazy way - she had on a Beastie Boys tee, I was wearing my British Sea Power top, so we were going as the Beastie Boys and British Sea Power). Eventually, he decided to wear his tiger onesie to Jen's house, because that way he could be...

...Cat Stevens.

I was taken aback with the excellence of this pun and immediately got a better idea than British Sea Power. I grabbed the gangster hat from the coat pegs in the hallway and, as I donned I dramatically announced that I would be attending under the guise of...

...Hat Stevens.

Now we had to think of a Cat Stevens pun for Sarah to be. We could write 'Welcome' on her forehead (Mat Stevens) or do her hair up (Plait Stevens) or put a cushion up her shirt (Fat Stevens) or have her spend the evening conversing in rhythmic gibberish (Scat Stevens) or have her wear a toga and drink a lot (Frat Stevens)...

This went on all the way to Penarth. None of these ideas were carried out.

Anyway, I spent most of the party using Jen's Virgin Media XL package to watch The Powerpuff Girls on demand with the sound off (someone, presumably an asshat, thought it would be a good idea to have music at a party), trying to guess what was going on.

I had fun.

Joel.

P.S. Some of the partygoers took the proceedings to Oceana, where festivities no doubt continued long into the night. I didn't go, because I knew I had to be up at 5ish this morning to go to work and wanted to get a decent night's sleep. Sadly this plan was scuppered when Sarah, Tom, Meic, Pete and a guitar all congregated in the room at 3am for a chat. Oh well.