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!