Monday, April 12
The Epic Post That Will Finally Catch Up On Everything That Has Happened In The Last Two Weeks. Supposedly.
I am indeed two weeks behind in my writing here, which I am ashamed about and intend to rectify right now. I seem to have not found or made the time to write here, for whatever reason. But, if we do not take time, how can we ever make time? You need to read that last sentence out loud, in a comically French accent, a la the Merovingian in Matrix Reloaded. It’ll have much more of an effect that way.
I really don't want to bore my readers though, so I've decided to write pretty much in note form, except for the interesting bits. However, no doubt I will head off at tangents all over the place and end up writing yet another truly epic post! Apologies in advance if it ends up being 5000+ words...
Tuesday, 30th March (Yes, I'm that far behind)
An uneventful day, with a quick photoshoot for the article in The Observer in the afternoon (I kept thinking of Austin Powers and had an urge to shout 'Yeah baby, yeah!' the whole time. It didn't help that the photographer had a fairly comic face), and a boring, long coach journey back to Melksham (my proper home town) in the evening. I somehow managed to fall asleep on the coach, whilst listening to a random CD, which is very strange for me. Usually I'm awake for the whole 3-hour journey, especially if I've got my headphones on.
In a slight aside, I really, really want and need an iPod. Firstly, I want one because they are so cool and much more convenient than my CD player that I usually carry around with me. Although my CD player is a very good one, and has amazing sound quality and battery life, it's too big for the pockets of all of my trousers except one or two. An iPod would fit snugly into any of my pockets.
I need one because I'm going to Germany for a year in September, and I don't particularly want to cart over a vast amount of CDs as well as my stereo. If I had an iPod, I'd take a laptop (which I should be getting over the summer) with all of my mp3s on, including my entire CD collection ripped onto the hard drive, and my iPod, which would also have my entire music collection and the 1500+ mp3s which are currently sitting in my computer's hard drive. How much easier would that be?! I'd probably buy a little subwoofer and satellites set to compliment the laptop, because no doubt the sound quality from that would be nowhere near as good as my stereo at the moment. Anyway, that's the plan, and I reckon I can convince my parents that a £300 iPod would be a sound investment. Well, it might take a little bit of sucking up, but they can call it an early 21st birthday present.
When I got home that evening, my parents and sister were out at the cinema for her birthday, so I only saw them for about an hour that night. But I rediscovered Sky Digital. (Excited Californian teenage girl voice) Ohmigod, just how amazing is Sky Digital? It's got like totally loads of channels and always has something on and is great and just so totally cool.
Actually, that voice isn't far off my usual typing style. Bah!
That's not bad for "note form" for just one day... Umm, yeah. Only another 12 to work through!!!
Wednesday, 31st March
Again, I only saw my parents very, very briefly on the Wednesday, because I went to Cardiff for the day with a mate of mine to get oh-so-very-drunk. Well, I'd finished classes, so it was time to cut loose somewhat.
He goes to uni and lives there, but was back home in Melksham on the Tuesday before going back to Cardiff on the Wednesday. I got the train with him, and it was at 1.30 in the afternoon that we cracked open the first Stella of the day, within minutes of getting on the train. The first of Christ-knows how many...
We went back to his place, picked up a couple of crates of bottles and set about with the, erm, drinking. We also made a quick lot of vodka jelly, which was so very strong. Not quite undrinkable, but pretty close. A load of his mates came round in the afternoon, and there were some pretty rowdy drinking games taking place.
By the time we left his house at about 7 to go to a pub to watch the England game, I (along with most others) was quite worse for wear. I couldn't see the screen properly at the pub, let's put it that way. We met a few other of our mates from Melksham who also study in Cardiff now, and went to some random club / bar thing until a ridiculously late hour.
Is it just me, or are 18 year olds looking a lot younger than when I was 18? They look not a day over 16, I swear! Or is just me getting older? Meh.
Thursday, 1st April
I woke up in my mate's house on their sofa, quite cold and very hungover. It was one of those hangovers where you swear that you're never going to drink again, the kind where you don't want to do anything for about 456 hours, let alone try to live a normal life.
Luckily, I wasn't the only one feeling that bad. We all looked like shit. A few of us headed out to a pub (not to drink...) to get something to eat, and it was very, very funny to see all of us moping around and looking very sorry for ourselves after the self-inflicted drunkenness of the night before. A greasy Full English breakfast was called for, and duly delivered. The best hangover cure in existence, I swear. Mmmm, grease.
I made my way to the train station shortly after, and got back home sometime around 6 in the evening, still feeling a little bit iffy, but without the dull, pounding headache that had been accompanying me for most of the day.
It was only myself and my Dad at home, so I managed to convince him that Zoolander was worth watching. It was on one of the Sky Movie channels, and there was absolutely fuck-all else on. Little did I know at the time that it was to be my first of 4 (yes 4) films that evening.
It was followed by the Ali G movie, which I hadn't seen before (quite funny in places), and then I managed to sit through the second half of Bend It Like Beckham. Like I said, it was an otherwise dire night for TV, even on Sky! I quite like Bend It, it's a half-decent film and worth watching as I hadn't seen it for a fair while.
The last film I saw that night was this random horror film called Clive Barker's Saint Sinner. The description of it sounded promising, but the whole way through I kept waiting for the film to become, well, good. Unfortunately it failed to do so, but I still sat through it anyway. Meh, a lesson learned (i.e. unless a horror film is generally held to be amazing, it will be pure shite. There doesn't seem to be a mediocre middle-ground for the horror genre: it's a fantastic film or a crap one. Except possibly zombie films, which are so bad they're good. They deserve their own genre though!).
This "note form" isn't really going too well, is it? It could very well be that this is going to be epic. Bored yet? Try ExplodingCigar for a brief respite from my life...
Friday, 2nd April
Another crap, boring day. I went with my parents to walk our dog at this big hill near to where my house back in Melksham, and chatted with them for ages about everything, including plans for moving out to Germany, and the possibility of getting me a laptop. I also raised the subject of an iPod, to a fairly lacklustre response. Meh, they'll come round to the idea.
The rest of the day was, as I said, a washout, apart from watching Matrix Reloaded on the shiny new DVD player which my parents have recently bought. They've reluctantly entered the digital age, albeit slightly qualified by the fact that their DVD player still has a VHS player as well. I would have gone the whole hog and bought a DVD player with a hard drive, and also possibly a DVD-burning capability. But then, I am oh-so technically-savvy and in touch with the latest technological developments. Ahem.
Saturday, 3rd April
Saturday was looking pretty shitty until the evening, what with Arsenal losing to the Cunting Scum (aka Man Utd) at midday, and then none of my horses coming in in the Grand National, losing me £30 of my hard-earned overdraft. This is why I never gamble!
Thankfully, the evening was a hell of a lot better. Once again, it was fuelled by alcohol, but then what kind of good night isn't?! Well, at least for me, alcohol usually leads to a hell of a night out, especially when I'm out with all of the mates who I live near in my home town. It tends to get a little messy...
Once again, it was a somewhat early start, around 8 in the evening at the Pilot, our local pub. The Stella Train was on time, and we boarded it straight away. I'm not 100% sure if we ever got off of it for the rest of the night, to be honest. It all gets a little hazy in the latter parts of the night and into Sunday morning. I blame the alcohol...
We had a few games of pool in the Pilot, along with a few pints, and then hopped into a taxi to go into the town centre (as glorious a place as you could imagine in this mortal realm. Or not, as the case may be). Buds was the destination, not that we had a huge variety of late-night places to choose from. The joys of living in a small rural town!
Suffice it to say that I drank a fairly large amount of alcohol, or so my head told me the next morning. I remember getting a lift home with a couple of mates from the ex-girlfriend of one of our other mates, which was a little weird. At least it saved us from the epic walk home. Well, when I say epic, it's really only 20 minutes sober, but it always goes on forever at 3am, especially when it's cold and nasty out.
I stood chatting to Sketch for nearly an hour when we got out of the car, about anything and everything. He's a good mate, but I hadn't seen him for a good 3-4 months, so we somehow decided that 3am at the entrance to my street was a good time and place to catch up. We exchanged stories about our times at uni (he's down at Bournemouth), and our plans for the next year and beyond. He's down in London for a few days sometime soon, so I might go meet him or even offer him a place to crash if he needs it.
End
I've written enough for the time being, nearly a week's worth. I'm now only 8 days behind in my posting here, which is better than usual! I promise to get the rest done pretty soon, although my promises to this blog and to myself always seem to get broken by the distractions around me, such as the "four pursuits of undergraduate life: alcohol, music, work and women."
I will also put some pictures up, because I keep on forgetting to do so. Damn my lack of a memory and inclination to post here. Damn me indeed. Grr.
