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.
Showing posts with label bristol. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bristol. Show all posts
Monday, 15 August 2011
Saturday, 4 June 2011
Dolphins: The Rapists of the Sea
Bristol was awesome, as 0o gy9fgujgkghkj
Let me try that again. Bristol was awesome, as Bristol always is, particularly on a day as sunny as today. I spent far too much money in Fopp, as I always do, particularly when I can actually kind of afford it.
However, given the Slutwalk that was happening in Cardiff today (not that I knew about that, I was in Bristol), I think I have a more relevant topic to discuss in today's entry.
Sarah and I went to my parents' house this evening to enjoy some dinner and chat, and not for the first time my acute fear of ostriches was brought to the table. I was, not for the first time, trying coolly to explain that it's a perfectly rational phobia and screw it I'm just going to quote WikiHow again:
Let me try that again. Bristol was awesome, as Bristol always is, particularly on a day as sunny as today. I spent far too much money in Fopp, as I always do, particularly when I can actually kind of afford it.
However, given the Slutwalk that was happening in Cardiff today (not that I knew about that, I was in Bristol), I think I have a more relevant topic to discuss in today's entry.
Sarah and I went to my parents' house this evening to enjoy some dinner and chat, and not for the first time my acute fear of ostriches was brought to the table. I was, not for the first time, trying coolly to explain that it's a perfectly rational phobia and screw it I'm just going to quote WikiHow again:
"An ostrich attack...is straight out of Jurassic Park. Like that movie's velociraptors, ostriches are fast--they can run at up to 45 mph--and they have a sharp nail on each of their feet that is capable of slicing a person open with one kick. Unlike velociraptors, however, an ostrich can reach more than nine feet tall and 350 pounds."
Anyway, I was trying to persuade everyone else of the above facts when my brother Nathan suggested that dolphins were a more sensible animal to fear than ostriches. Naturally we all disagreed, pointing out that dolphins rescue drowning humans and, in my mother's words, "swim with autistics", when Nathan shut us all up my claiming that dolphins are the only animals capable of rape.
Wow. We were momentarily stunned, but before long our juices started flowing again and we collectively remembered all the times that we've seen a boy pigeon trying to get his bone on with a girl pigeon who isn't that keen. And does that even count as rape? Can animals give consent?
Eventually we decided to disregard Nathan's theory, and having just had a look on the internet the evidence behind it seems pretty flimsy. I did, however, uncover this little gem on Wikipedia:
"Problems with encouraging pandas to mate in captivity have been very common. However, showing young male pandas 'panda pornography' is widely credited with a recent population boom among pandas in zoos."
How we laughed.
Joel.
P.S. Another thing we were discussing over our steaks was the kind of monastery (don't ask) populated entirely by monks keeping a vow of silence. When asked if they still existed, my dad replied "yes", and I added, "But they're very hush hush." I was embarrassed at the time but, in retrospect, I'm quite pleased with that.
Monday, 21 March 2011
@Bristol
Bristol, then. In case yesterday's joke about paying for the hotel didn't make any sense, I'll explain: we managed to find our way to The Washington Hotel - it was much closer to the centre of town than I'd expected - and upon checking in I was told, politely, that that would be £75, if I'd just like to pop my card in the machine. I tried to stay calm, explaining that I'd already paid online, but apparently they'd just taken my card details and, I don't know, translated it ino their lottery numbers for the weekend?
I suppose I can't really complain. It's not like they'd charged me twice or anything. It's just that I was going to be on a tight budget for the next couple of months anyway and now it's going to be even tighter.
Still, that didn't stop me being typically loose with my cash in Fopp, where I purchased albums buy The Hold Steady, Explosions In The Sky, The Low Anthem, Tame Impala, and Broken Social Scene, although funds for the latter were generously donated by Sarah, love 'er.
As I've already mentioned, Interpol were awesomatic, an played all our favourite songs. We were right at the front, stood next to a woman in a very shiny leather jacket with numerous face piercings and one of Daniel Kessler's guitar picks hanging off her neck. Takes all sorts, I guess.
And, of course, the hotel breakfast was huge. My list went something like:
Yum yum. At least we did a lot of walking to burn it all off.
Joel.
I suppose I can't really complain. It's not like they'd charged me twice or anything. It's just that I was going to be on a tight budget for the next couple of months anyway and now it's going to be even tighter.
Still, that didn't stop me being typically loose with my cash in Fopp, where I purchased albums buy The Hold Steady, Explosions In The Sky, The Low Anthem, Tame Impala, and Broken Social Scene, although funds for the latter were generously donated by Sarah, love 'er.
As I've already mentioned, Interpol were awesomatic, an played all our favourite songs. We were right at the front, stood next to a woman in a very shiny leather jacket with numerous face piercings and one of Daniel Kessler's guitar picks hanging off her neck. Takes all sorts, I guess.
And, of course, the hotel breakfast was huge. My list went something like:
- Bowl of Coco Pops
- Three rolled-up slices of ham
- Slice of melon
- Strawberry yoghurt
- Croissant
- Two slices of toast
- Sausage
- Bacon
- Sarah's bacon that she didn't want
- Mushrooms
Yum yum. At least we did a lot of walking to burn it all off.
Joel.
Saturday, 19 March 2011
Monday, 22 November 2010
The Milkshakes of Bristol
Milkshake #1 - Strawberry Milkshake from YoYo
YoYo is a "gourmet hamburger bar" that Josh and Mark took me to after the Titus Andronicus gig. I had a rather delicious wild boar burger, but I could have had anything from kangaroo to springbok. I could even have had ostrich but I don't see any reason to make those buggers any angrier.
Titus Andronicus were fantastifabulous, as expected, but I had perhaps a little too much fun shouting along to them. I went up to Patrick "Beardy Vocalist" Stickles after the show and told him, as best I could, that my vocal chords [points at throat] were fucked [slicing motion] but that was AMAZING [thumbs up]! Josh had to order for me at YoYo because I pretty much couldn't talk after the gig, but their thick, fast-foody strawberry milkshake did go some way to soothing my corroded throat. So I'm grateful to them for that.
Josh spoke to Patrick too. He asked if he could get his hands on the setlist but had to make do with a guitar pick instead.
Interlude - His Milkshake Brings All the Girls to the Yard
We stayed the night at Rob's flat, Rob being a friend of Mark's who goes to uni in Bristol. He very kindly let me have his bed for the night; I think I was supposed to be sharing it with Josh but he seemed happy to kip on the floor. His days of sharing beds with men are all but over.
Milkshake #2 - Coconut Milkshake from AMT
I could have had a lie-in on Saturday morning. Herbie was driving Mark and Josh back home in the afternoon and there was a free space in her car with my name on it but no, I'd already paid £7 for the 9.54 train to Cardiff Central so up I got at some ungodly hour and trudged to Bristol Temple Meads in the rain.
My breakfast consisted of an apple from Tesco and a coconut milkshake from AMT, one of those train station coffee bars. It was a very nice milkshake but the purchase was kind of a dick move on my part; what with it being November and all, it was pretty cold out, and the milkshake was also pretty cold, and, well, it's just plain mathematics:
On the train this time I was sat alongside a table of middle-aged women eating brioche and drinking some sort of orange drink from plastic wine glasses so that was all very civilised. I was reading the Kick Ass comic which is so violent it makes Kill Bill look like Dora The Explorer but still, very civilised indeed.
Epilogue - Hot Chocolate & Malibu
On Saturday night, Sarah bought me a bottle of Mailbu and, just for the sake of experiment, I got quietly drunk. The initial plan was to mix it with Pepsi, but Pepsi's so detestably foul that after one glass I just started doing shots. Sarah now now holds the honour of being the only person ever to see me drunk; the rest of you will just have to use your imaginations. Apparently I'm quite funny.
There's still about half a bottle of Malibu left, by the way. According to my mum it goes quite nicely with drinking chocolate so I will probably try that sometime soon. That suits me a lot better than shots.
Joel.
YoYo is a "gourmet hamburger bar" that Josh and Mark took me to after the Titus Andronicus gig. I had a rather delicious wild boar burger, but I could have had anything from kangaroo to springbok. I could even have had ostrich but I don't see any reason to make those buggers any angrier.
Titus Andronicus were fantastifabulous, as expected, but I had perhaps a little too much fun shouting along to them. I went up to Patrick "Beardy Vocalist" Stickles after the show and told him, as best I could, that my vocal chords [points at throat] were fucked [slicing motion] but that was AMAZING [thumbs up]! Josh had to order for me at YoYo because I pretty much couldn't talk after the gig, but their thick, fast-foody strawberry milkshake did go some way to soothing my corroded throat. So I'm grateful to them for that.
Josh spoke to Patrick too. He asked if he could get his hands on the setlist but had to make do with a guitar pick instead.
Interlude - His Milkshake Brings All the Girls to the Yard
We stayed the night at Rob's flat, Rob being a friend of Mark's who goes to uni in Bristol. He very kindly let me have his bed for the night; I think I was supposed to be sharing it with Josh but he seemed happy to kip on the floor. His days of sharing beds with men are all but over.
Milkshake #2 - Coconut Milkshake from AMT
I could have had a lie-in on Saturday morning. Herbie was driving Mark and Josh back home in the afternoon and there was a free space in her car with my name on it but no, I'd already paid £7 for the 9.54 train to Cardiff Central so up I got at some ungodly hour and trudged to Bristol Temple Meads in the rain.
My breakfast consisted of an apple from Tesco and a coconut milkshake from AMT, one of those train station coffee bars. It was a very nice milkshake but the purchase was kind of a dick move on my part; what with it being November and all, it was pretty cold out, and the milkshake was also pretty cold, and, well, it's just plain mathematics:
Pretty Cold2 = Real F'in Cold
On the train this time I was sat alongside a table of middle-aged women eating brioche and drinking some sort of orange drink from plastic wine glasses so that was all very civilised. I was reading the Kick Ass comic which is so violent it makes Kill Bill look like Dora The Explorer but still, very civilised indeed.
Epilogue - Hot Chocolate & Malibu
On Saturday night, Sarah bought me a bottle of Mailbu and, just for the sake of experiment, I got quietly drunk. The initial plan was to mix it with Pepsi, but Pepsi's so detestably foul that after one glass I just started doing shots. Sarah now now holds the honour of being the only person ever to see me drunk; the rest of you will just have to use your imaginations. Apparently I'm quite funny.
There's still about half a bottle of Malibu left, by the way. According to my mum it goes quite nicely with drinking chocolate so I will probably try that sometime soon. That suits me a lot better than shots.
Joel.
P.S. Keep an ear out for Angry Christmas, the new song that Josh and/or myself may or may not be working on.
Monday, 25 October 2010
Wound Up and Ready to Play
I love music. Obviously.
Which is good because there's music everywhere! From the crap that you have to listen to when you're playing Fifa because the dicks who keep beating you some goals-no goals over and over and over again think that Akon is God to the awesome stuff that you've been listening to on YouTube for the past two months and finally bought the album for a fiver, it all colours in the whiteness that is otherwise life.
The past weekend has been particularly musicalicious for me, and as the too long sentence above suggested, it started with Cliffey and Tom making me listen to Akon while they beat me at Fifa. And yes I know I've already complained about Akon once here, and I almost kind of found him slightly okay prior to all this nonsense, but their insistence that I actually love him only makes me hate him all the more. Sorry chaps.
On Saturday I was up bright and early because my dad and I were heading to Bristol. It's a thing we do occasionally; he goes to lots of charity shops to buy Penguin Classics, then I go to Fopp and buy lots of CDs. I spent £34 there this time, on such wonderful artists as Tom Waits, Stephin Merritt, Sparklehorse, Grinderman, and Bombay Bicycle Club, although that last one was for Sarah. I also got a Tindersticks album, because they played this song at Green Man and I've been completely enamoured with it recently so I thought it was about time I bought the album. I put said album on in the car on the way back, and I think my dad would have been more open-minded about the whole experience if the first line hadn't been something about strangling.
Saturday evening, and a few of us (namely me, Sarah, Mark, and Elusive Dave, whom I may or may not have mentioned before) went to see Josh play his SCRIBER songs in great big capital letters at Cathays Community Centre. It was part of the Swn festival, although I feel that just seeing my friend Josh and some sort of youth punk band doesn't really count as "going to the Swn festival", so when my lecturer asked us in the session earlier who had been to the Swn festival, I kept quiet. Anyway, Josh was excellent as ever, and I managed to keep mostly quiet with my incessant heckling this time. He did a cover of Girl From The North Country and all was right with the world*.
That night we went out to see in Meic's 20th birthday at the Owain Glyndwr or however you crazy Welsh people might go about spelling it. Meic asked me to write a couple of rap songs to put on the album he has to produce for his course, so I should probably do that at some point; as good as P-Town is, it's only one track, and he needs six**. I also admitted to really liking Jai Ho! (You Are My Destiny) by the Pussycat Dolls but was very pleased to find that Sarah, instead of mocking me, also confessed to liking it. Then Bad Romance came on and I was very pleased about that, too.
Yesterday, Sunday, was my mum's birthday, so Sarah and I went over to my parents' house to fork over her present and card. I got her a purple handbag from Sturff, because she said she liked it and I get honorary employee discount there so woohoo. My mum was just surprised to find that I was giving her anything other than a CD, which is all I usually stretch to. I even got her a card, generous bastard that I am.
Sarah and I somehow ended up reminiscing over Digimon memorabilia, before retreating to my room for a power nap on my far more comfortable than our bed in the student house bed. The nap was soundtracked by British Sea Power's Do You Like Rock Music?, which is a great album whether you're asleep or awake.
In the evening we went to The Globe to see oh my goodness it's British Sea Power what a coincidence. They played many wonderful songs with names like Lights Out For Darker Skies and Favours In The Beetroot Fields, and people had leafy branches to wave and I bought a t-shirt from the merch desk which had placemats with ducks on and Sarah reckoned the bassist and the violinist were going out because she touched his bum at one point but I didn't see it. I also managed to get my grubby hands on a setlist, which was itself fairly grubby because I think the keyboardist trod on it. Good times.
So that was my weekend in music. I'm currently listening to Freezepop's Here Comes A Special Boy for something like the seventh consecutive time, a song made all the more awesome by the fact that it's about Achewood, which everyone should read so here's a link to that too.
I was trying to play a Klezmer Kollectiv song on my baritone earlier. I'm getting quite good.
Joel.
*I was, however, absolutely APOPLECTIC that the free CDs Josh was handing out had moons printed on them. Mine just has writing on it, although it is a limited edition first pressing so that kind of makes up for it.
**Speaking of P-Town, some kind soul put it up on YouTube the other night, just over a year after it first went up. It's not got a whole lot of views yet, so everybody go watch it.
Which is good because there's music everywhere! From the crap that you have to listen to when you're playing Fifa because the dicks who keep beating you some goals-no goals over and over and over again think that Akon is God to the awesome stuff that you've been listening to on YouTube for the past two months and finally bought the album for a fiver, it all colours in the whiteness that is otherwise life.
The past weekend has been particularly musicalicious for me, and as the too long sentence above suggested, it started with Cliffey and Tom making me listen to Akon while they beat me at Fifa. And yes I know I've already complained about Akon once here, and I almost kind of found him slightly okay prior to all this nonsense, but their insistence that I actually love him only makes me hate him all the more. Sorry chaps.
On Saturday I was up bright and early because my dad and I were heading to Bristol. It's a thing we do occasionally; he goes to lots of charity shops to buy Penguin Classics, then I go to Fopp and buy lots of CDs. I spent £34 there this time, on such wonderful artists as Tom Waits, Stephin Merritt, Sparklehorse, Grinderman, and Bombay Bicycle Club, although that last one was for Sarah. I also got a Tindersticks album, because they played this song at Green Man and I've been completely enamoured with it recently so I thought it was about time I bought the album. I put said album on in the car on the way back, and I think my dad would have been more open-minded about the whole experience if the first line hadn't been something about strangling.
Saturday evening, and a few of us (namely me, Sarah, Mark, and Elusive Dave, whom I may or may not have mentioned before) went to see Josh play his SCRIBER songs in great big capital letters at Cathays Community Centre. It was part of the Swn festival, although I feel that just seeing my friend Josh and some sort of youth punk band doesn't really count as "going to the Swn festival", so when my lecturer asked us in the session earlier who had been to the Swn festival, I kept quiet. Anyway, Josh was excellent as ever, and I managed to keep mostly quiet with my incessant heckling this time. He did a cover of Girl From The North Country and all was right with the world*.
That night we went out to see in Meic's 20th birthday at the Owain Glyndwr or however you crazy Welsh people might go about spelling it. Meic asked me to write a couple of rap songs to put on the album he has to produce for his course, so I should probably do that at some point; as good as P-Town is, it's only one track, and he needs six**. I also admitted to really liking Jai Ho! (You Are My Destiny) by the Pussycat Dolls but was very pleased to find that Sarah, instead of mocking me, also confessed to liking it. Then Bad Romance came on and I was very pleased about that, too.
Yesterday, Sunday, was my mum's birthday, so Sarah and I went over to my parents' house to fork over her present and card. I got her a purple handbag from Sturff, because she said she liked it and I get honorary employee discount there so woohoo. My mum was just surprised to find that I was giving her anything other than a CD, which is all I usually stretch to. I even got her a card, generous bastard that I am.
Sarah and I somehow ended up reminiscing over Digimon memorabilia, before retreating to my room for a power nap on my far more comfortable than our bed in the student house bed. The nap was soundtracked by British Sea Power's Do You Like Rock Music?, which is a great album whether you're asleep or awake.
In the evening we went to The Globe to see oh my goodness it's British Sea Power what a coincidence. They played many wonderful songs with names like Lights Out For Darker Skies and Favours In The Beetroot Fields, and people had leafy branches to wave and I bought a t-shirt from the merch desk which had placemats with ducks on and Sarah reckoned the bassist and the violinist were going out because she touched his bum at one point but I didn't see it. I also managed to get my grubby hands on a setlist, which was itself fairly grubby because I think the keyboardist trod on it. Good times.
So that was my weekend in music. I'm currently listening to Freezepop's Here Comes A Special Boy for something like the seventh consecutive time, a song made all the more awesome by the fact that it's about Achewood, which everyone should read so here's a link to that too.
I was trying to play a Klezmer Kollectiv song on my baritone earlier. I'm getting quite good.
Joel.
*I was, however, absolutely APOPLECTIC that the free CDs Josh was handing out had moons printed on them. Mine just has writing on it, although it is a limited edition first pressing so that kind of makes up for it.
**Speaking of P-Town, some kind soul put it up on YouTube the other night, just over a year after it first went up. It's not got a whole lot of views yet, so everybody go watch it.
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