So I’m gonna live alone

I’ve only had the place to myself since Friday and I’m already very used to it. Although, I suppose most of the time I’m here alone anyway so it’s no big deal. So lonely, so very lonely. It’s good though. I get to eat Rice Krispies out of a pirate mug.

Incidentally, that mug is nearly a year old.

So, the theme of this mini-blog is living alone. Which brings me clumsily to how I spent the majority of the afternoon before work today. For some reason I like to torture myself sometimes by looking at flats for rent in London online. Today I looked at flatshares despite not having the funds or a job that would allow me to move to the metropolis. Some of the places seemed really nice, but I reasoned that if I did ever go down this route, I’d never feel like it was my home. Ideally, I’d like to live on my own. I mainly like the idea of being able to be as loud as I please. For instance, I’ve never been in the situation where, after a night out, I could noisily stumble through the door and make myself a cup of tea or toast or something without disturbing at least one person. 
I know that if I lived with someone I really like, that wouldn’t last long and I’d probably end up wanting to stab them within a month. This being said, living on your own is insanely pricey. Can this be done?

I just want to keep eating Rice Krispies out of a pirate mug.

I bought this today after deliberating for a little while…

I’m only a few pages into it, but it seems pretty concise. The decider was having it confirmed in writing that Angel, Angel, Down We Go Together is about Johnny Marr. I will learn every other song meaning and I will enjoy it.

So much to answer for…

This past week should be soundtracked by ‘Insomnia’ by Faithless.

The week before isn’t worth talking about as I don’t remember much of it. We did a stock-take at work that finished weirdly early. So that was nice.
I also saw Bruno and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince in the cinema. The former was better than I was expecting and everyone in watching it giggled quietly like they were laughing at something naughty they shouldn’t have been and with the latter… meh… It was alright, but mainly because Rickman is a genius. As always.

On Saturday, I caught the beelzebus at 7pm and headed to old London town. This was the first time I’d been there via bus since January and it made me remember why I don’t do it that way anymore. Hellish. I was alone until we got to Glasgow when a woman who had been sat opposite the aisle from me asked if she could sit next to me as I had a sort-of table in front due to sitting behind the stairs. I presumed she had a laptop or some writing to do or something, but no, she started to prepare a small amount of sushi on little foldaway mats and from a little set. It was round about 11pm. Is 11pm the best time to prepare sushi? Peculiar but pleasing to watch. Of course I pretended that I wasn’t watching and that this was, in fact, the most natural thing in the world and continued reading Richard Herring’s ‘Bye Bye Balham’ until it got too dark to. From then on in, it was a night of frustration at being unable to sleep or get comfortable in the slightest. I won’t bore you with details this time, though.

We pulled into Victoria (oo-er) at around 7am and I proceeded to walk to the southbank and just sit down and figure out what to do with the morning. Caught a tube to London Bridge and at around 11am, met up with Sarah. We then made our way to South Kensington and went to the science museum where we’d planned to bump into Lynsey. After wandering round trying to figure out what a “Bloid” is, pressing buttons that didn’t work and walking up too many stairs towards a disappointing future, we were ready to leave. Then we saw this sign…

And we had. So we listened. And it was good.
It was an exhibit called the Listening Post which is actually quite cool. More on that here. After ooh-ing, aah-ing and mainly laughing, we headed out up the lifts that were supposed to go down. It took about ten minutes for us to leave. When we eventually managed to do so, we walked to the tube and I sadly bid goodbye to Sarah. It felt a bit strange that I’d only been with her for about two hours when usually I’m used to at least a full day (and several episodes of Frasier or Darkplace!) Me and Lynsey continued to Kings Cross, then caught the Farnaby Express to the ‘Bush. There was a rushed goodbye as she realised she needed to get off the bus and I made my way to Casa Nella and Kerry.

With the Victoria line out of action, we ended up leaving for Brixtonia much earlier than first planned. It involved two buses. Exciting. This allowed me to explain Richard Herring’s Consecutive Number Plate Spotting game to Kerry and Nella. We started playing.
Until we got to Vauxhall and I saw this, which made me point and say, rather loudly, “Look!”

Kerry’s immediate response was to gasp and shout “Daddy!”
This set the tone.

We eventually got to Brixton and met up with Sarah, Dan and Aniyah and had a few drinks and two fire alarms in the pub. As with most of my blogs, I’m putting too much detail in. We went to the gig. The gig was good. I didn’t get many good photos, but I quite enjoyed this one…

(Click it, it’s only mildly less shoddy.)
See! He’s lovely really…

I ended up catching three plectrums which isn’t really saying much as loads were thrown out, but I still felt like fucking Shaft… until I eventually found everyone outside and realised they all had at least two. I’ll get a Moz-shirt someday, maybe…

Monday was spent running around looking for a fairytale shop no-one knew existed for my sister. Eventually found it, though. Exciting times to be a Kirsten. Wandered around for the rest of the day. Have no real idea how I managed, but I did. I planned on meeting up with Anna and Tom and figured that might happen in Camden so hung out there for a bit. I never heard from them, so decided to go to my Lahndahn Local at around 6pm for a bit. The old men were out in force, it was very good. I made my way to Kings Cross for 7pm to meet Kerry to go see Herring. We met up and walked up York Way, opposite side of the road to the one we knew the venue was at. We passed the Guardian offices and exclaimed, “Ace! Let’s go get jobs!” but we never did. We ended up pretty far and were approaching an industrial estate. We crossed the road and doubled back on ourselves. Turns out the massive building we believed to be the Guardian HQ was mainly Kings Place, the venue we were looking for. It was huuuge! So we wandered in cautiously, collected our tickets and sat downstairs in the room for the gig. We were the first there and nearly sat in the front row until I remembered I was wearing a Bros tshirt and had a carrier bag full of cakes. We sat in the second row.

The place gradually filled and soon Danielle Ward came on. She looked familiar but we didn’t know where from at the time (we later found out she was on Brooker’s Newswipe, the person who changes ‘recession’ to ‘moneygeddon’. Genius!), but she was very very funny and gave us hope. A female comedian! Who didn’t go on about how shit men are! Or periods! Or talk about how hard it is being a woman! I would recommend her to a friend, A+++. She’ll be in Edinburgh in August with her show, ‘Lies’. Go see her. She might have an actual phone instead of a banana. (Clever, eh? Now you’ll have to go to find out what that could POSSIBLY mean… Except it’s pretty much what I just typed. Shut up, fuck you.)

We got some beers at the interval and then Herring came on. He was really very funny. Ridiculously so. Again, I felt guilty for overlooking him in the past in favour of his Stewart Lee shaped counterpart. I’m sorry, Rich! You’re really very lovely and ridiculously funny. See, I’ve always known this, but just sort of let him get on with it. Bad fan, bad!
He was at the bar afterwards so, as I had been reading it at the pub, I had my copy of Bye Bye Balham in my bag for him to sign. Lucky, eh? I also said that I’d to give him into trouble for bringing his number plate game into my life, thus taking over my every journey and ruining my already limited concentration. He said “Oh, I saw that on Twitter…” Cue my embarrassment. Had I been talking about this bloody game too much? Evidently so. He then asked if I was playing old school or new rules and discussed tactics. It’s possibly one of the strangest post-gig conversations I’ve been involved in… although that being said, probably not the strangest overall as I met Ross Noble after an Aberdeen gig in 2005…

We left, Kerry found a fiver on the ground, we bought drinks with that fiver.
Thus concludes best two days ever!

Sorry about this entry. It got lacklustre from my account of arriving at Nella and Kerry’s onwards. It’s 2.53am on the 27th July 2009. I am alone in the house, I’m listening to Elbow and drinking a peculiar blend of vodka, Irn-Bru and Red Bull. I wanted to type this to get it out of the way, but in doing so, I’ve neglected the things I really wanted to talk about. Herring’s book of blog entries has opened my eyes even further and seen that my little space of internets here is pretty dull. I’d like this to change, but I am very lazy.

On a more positive note, the trailer for the new web series by my ol’ chum and all-round good guy H. Blizzle (ahem) has gone online. Check it out at DailyMotion.

I’ll also leave you with this as I’ve been listening to an eff-load of these guys recently…

Bands You Might Not Be Listening To But Should Probably Be Listening To…

Firstly, I don’t have a superior music taste to anyone, so why should you listen to my ca-razy opinions?
Secondly, you should probably listen to my ca-razy opinions.

Often, when enjoying some music through my ears and brain, I think, “Why are these guys not huge?”, so that’s all this is. Maybe it’d be best to refer to the following as The Injustice League. Although that gives the wrong impression when I really mean that it’s an injustice that these bands are not massively well known (not in the US of Britain anyway). 
Yes, I’m writing this from the perspective of a girl in Scotland who only has a vague grasp of what’s popular and not music-wise… The following is probably not going to be a huge revelation to those who know a lot about music, but hopefully it’ll provide a sense of “Oh, I’ve heard of them… what are they actually like?”
Am I drunk? I don’t think so… Oh, who cares? Here are some bands I adore and think you might adore too if you don’t already. At the end there’ll be a Spotify playlist, so you can judge for yourself if you can be bothered… [If you're reading this blog for the first time, I'm so so sorry for the disappointment. You can leave if you like, the things I type end up like this a lot.]

Art Brut

Hmm… How do you describe a band like Mari– uh, Art Brut? They’re often compared to the Fall but, as much as I do love the Fall, I think this is slightly unfair. Art Brut are not really like anyone else around at the moment.
They are, however, very easy to get into. I struggle to remember how I did so, but I think I heard ‘Formed A Band’ on a compilation cd in about 2004/2005 and immediately fell in love. They tell stories and I like bands that tell stories. Their lyrics are very clever and usually very very funny. To date, they’ve released three studio albums, ‘Bang Bang Rock and Roll’, ‘It’s A Bit Complicated’ and ‘Art Brut Vs. Satan’. I think these need to be listened to in order. ‘Bang Bang Rock and Roll’ sees the band getting started and includes songs about relationships, LA and erectile-dysfunction. Overall, it sounded like a band having fun and enjoying making music while they could. I get the impression that with ‘It’s A Bit Complicated’ and ‘Art Brut vs. Satan’, the band have realised that they’re going to be round for longer than they may have first thought and have made albums in which they appear more confident and even a bit angry. 
Art Brut are not merely great on record, but they are also one of the best live bands I’ve seen. They work well in any sized venue. The first time I saw them was at a relatively large Music Hall supporting Maximo Park. I believe they’d never been to Aberdeen before this, so when I heard they would be there I bought a ticket for them rather than for the headliners. They successfully managed to hold every person in that room’s attention and looked like they were having the time of their lives. You could be forgiven for thinking that they looked so happy as they were playing brilliantly in front of a large room of people, but the next year, I saw them play in one of Aberdeen’s smaller venues, the Tunnels and they looked even more pleased and continued to give the show their all. My friend Keri nearly got kicked in the face by frontman, Eddie Argos, who enjoys jumping about in his socks, but she exclaimed afterwards, “It was worth it.”
‘Slap Dash For No Cash’ from the latest album sums up why everyone should love Art Brut. In it, el Argos explains his adoration of bands who make very raw records, often with tiny imperfections. This is what his band do. This is one of many reasons they are so fantastic.
Why isn’t everyone trying to sound like U2?
It’s not a very cool thing to do
Why would you want to sound like U2?
Just press record and play it straight throughJeffrey Lewis

“Hey, I recognise that guy, I think he’s the support act…” I whispered to Selly, “I’ve seen him on the Culture Show…”
We were in Sheffield at Jarvis Cocker’s homecoming gig for Rough Trade’s 30th Anniversary. More specifically, we were at the merchandise stand inside the Academy deliberating over which Jarvis tshirt I should buy (I settled for one with a rude word on it. Take that, Thatcher!) when a young, familiar looking man turns up, stands next to us and starts talking to the guy selling the merchandise about the comics that are onsale. This is where I give Selly my Culture Show knowledge. He realises that he’s due onstage in about two minutes so makes a swift exit. When he’s gone, I glance at the comics and realise that he is Jeffrey Lewis. We then enjoy the performance he gives before the Cocker takes to the stage.
I vowed that I would buy any albums of his that were onsale after the gig, but an impromptu dj set by Jarvis distracted me and I forgot. Days later, I got my hands on some of his albums and continued falling in love.
Jeffrey Lewis is one of those New York “anti-folk” artists you hear about. I’m a big fan of Adam Green, but there’s something about Lewis that is that little bit better. I was very nervous of writing that last sentence, but I’ve done it now and I stand by it. As with Art Brut, the lyrics are often very clever and sometimes funny, but his delivery of each word is beautiful too.
Not only is he extremely talented musically, but he also writes and draws his own comics. Skills. Possibly to pay the bills. You can get hold of the majority of comics of his that have been printed online if you do some quick searching. I thoroughly advise it… after you’ve listened to his music.

 

Larrikin Love

Before I get too ahead of myself, I should warn you that Larrikin Love are no more. A very short-lived act, but an important one nonetheless. My first encounter with them came, again, when I saw them supporting a band at the Music Hall. Once more, they were clearly more interesting than the headline act as I can’t even remember who that band was… OH! It was the Zutons. Yeah, they’re far better than the Zutons.
They may have only been around for two years, but their album ‘The Freedom Spark’ is still one of my favourites of recent years.
I don’t quite know what else to say about them, which is a shame, but I think their music speaks for them. At times very strange, at times very dark, at times very upbeat. A good album for any mood.

1990s

(Sadly, they don’t normally look like that…)
May be being a bit biased here as these guys are friends of mine, but they’re still very underrated and I don’t really understand why. I’m pretty sure they’re doing everything right in that their songs are catchy, they play a lot of gigs and don’t take themselves too seriously, but hey ho, these things happen. Again, I don’t really know what to say (“Then why are you writing this, you dick?” I hear you cry. I will not dignify that with a response, you should be ashamed of yourself…) so I may just have to let the music speak for them. Their songs are often very silly. They don’t exist as a band to write especially deep lyrics, they just want to have a good time and hope that you have a good time too.
Go see them live if you can, they’ll make you dance until you cry.

The Long Blondes

Yes, they won an eNeMy…E award, but did they get the attention they deserved? Sadly not.
Okay, so again, I’ve chosen a band who are not around any more. This is what I do, alright? I just can’t let go!
Look at them! They’re so good looking! Why were they not appreciated more?
I saw these guys live a couple of times and thoroughly enjoyed them. Their debut album, ’Someone To Drive You Home’ could be the soundtrack to many girls’ lives, despite the majority of the songs being written by Dorian, on the far left in the picture.
The songs make you dance, they make you think, they make you attempt to sing higher than your vocal range will allow. All very positive things, I reckon.
The second album ‘”Couples”‘ (Yeah, that’s Couples in speechmarks within inverted commas. Effing with your head, yeah?) I’ll admit, was a grower. The first time I heard it, I was disappointed after the genius of ‘Someone To Drive You Home’, but it’s not often you can rival genius, so I gave it a second chance. And I’m glad I did. The songs began to get stuck in my head and I’d find myself singing along to them throughout the day. I was hooked again.
It filled me with genuine sadness the day I found they’d had to split. It was even more sad finding out the reason why. Dorian had suffered a stroke at the start of last year and so, found it difficult to continue playing guitar to such a level as he prevously had. They called it a day. I hear Dorian is still doing fine, which is the main thing.
Still though, I’d rather they existed for that short period of time than have them never exist at all.

________________________
I’ll leave it at five bands for now. I feel this entry getting lacklustre and I’d rather everyone mentioned got the same level of passion, even if there aren’t as many words written about them.
I’ll probably do a second one of these at some point, despite the fact that you don’t want one. But this is in the ’self-important writing’ section for a reason.

As promised, I’ve put three tracks by each artist into a Spotify playlist. It’s hard choosing just three, but any more and it would have ended up going out of control like some Spotify-Godzilla.
Click HERE for the playlist. Right HERE! Anywhere in this line! WOO!

For those of you unable to get onto Spotify, I apologise profusely and will instead take the lazy way out and give you a track-list so you can look them up, despite that being effort…

1. Art Brut – Formed A Band
2. Art Brut – Direct Hit
3. Art Brut – Moving To L.A
4. Jeffrey Lewis – Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror
5. Jeffrey Lewis – Back When I Was 4
6. Jeffrey Lewis – If You Shoot The Head You Kill The Ghoul
7. Larrikin Love – Happy As Annie
8. Larrikin Love – Well, Love Does Furnish A Life
9. Larrikin Love – On Sussex Downs
10. 1990s – See You At The Lights
11. 1990s - Super-Legal
12. 1990s – 59
13. The Long Blondes – Lust In The Movies
14. The Long Blondes – You Could Have Both
15. The Long Blondes – Peterborough

The Gentleman’s Game

First off,  feel I should explain myself. About a month prior to its official release, I received a copy of The Duckworth Lewis Method’s debut album, intending to review/talk about it on this very blog. The album has now been out for over a week. I am very lazy.

The Duckworth Lewis Method are pictured above, if you hadn’t guessed.
“Gosh, they look a bit familiar. Where do I recognise them from?”
Good question. I’ll tell you. The man at the front there with the rather admirable moustache is Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy fame. The fella at the back sporting an equally impressive beard is Thomas Walsh of Pugwash. Together, they are the Duckworth Lewis Method, united in their love of cricket and talent for writing songs. We are led to believe that the more time they spent together, the more they became aware of an obvious gap in the market: cricket-pop, and so came a desire to create, in the words of Mr Hannon, ”possibly the least necessary album of recent years”.
They don’t like cricket. They love it.

Now, I know nothing about cricket. I am willing to throw my hands up and admit this. For as long as I can remember it has been my father’s favourite sport and, to give him credit, he has tried to explain the rules and rituals and funny little hat-wearing people to me, but I just do not get it. And I will not ever get it. I’ve come to accept this now. He often sighs with frustration and confirms that we’ll never understand by regaling us with the tale of when he tried to explain the rules to my older sister and she fell asleep during his lecture. I feel he does not take into consideration the fact that she was merely four days old at the time.

When this cricket-pop album came through my letter-box one Friday, I  promptly added it to my iPodular device, had a quick listen, nodded a lot, pretended to get the references and handed the cd to my father to enjoy at some point. I continued to listen for days after, slowly becoming more and more accustomed to each track. Immediately, the stand-out songs for me were ’The Age of Revolution’ and ‘Gentlemen and Players’. The former due to its general catchiness and musical mastery that reminds me of playing ‘Mafia’ on PS2 and the latter because it is melodic and sounds like the song you could listen to after a bbq when everyone is sitting around outside, well-fed and having a drink.
Other tracks of note include ‘The Nightwatchmen’ and ‘Jiggery-Pokery’, containing the phrase “Aussie skulduggery” which I have adopted to describe any situation I find myself in where I feel I’ve been wronged or tricked… although not necessarily by an Australian.

While making the above discoveries, little did I know that my father was listening tenaciously and growing attached to the same album. It was when I caught him whistling the chorus of ‘The Age of Revolution’ that I stopped him and casually asked his opinion of the record overall. I expected a reply along the lines of “Yes, it’s good, very clever…” and nothing more, but he grinned and started telling me every detail of why he loved it. I sat, bemused, as he explained the significance of the food references in ‘Jiggery Pokery’ (apparently Mike Gatting, the man the song is from the perspective of to all you fellow cricket-muggles, was rather a large man. I have learned.) and how he always mis-hears “Go and get your pads on…” for “Go and get your pants on…”
This sealed the deal for me. When my dad deems an album “Fantastic”, there’s no argument, it is so.

Proof that even if you don’t have a vast knowledge of the gentleman’s game you can really enjoy this album, but if you do, you’ll probably really really enjoy it.
Go and buy it. It’s only July, so you’ve still got ages to enjoy this perfect summer soundtrack.

And as a treat because you’ve been such good boys and girls, you can click the menacing picture below to watch The Duckworth Lewis Method’s Black Cab Session…

(It really is rather good.)

Happy Birthday, Blog!

Only just realised that it now has been a year since I abandoned that filthy wench, Livejournal and jumped aboard the good ship WordPress. And what a lovely year it’s been. Thanks, WordPress: Thurdpress.

Yesterday, to celebrate despite-not-actually-knowing, I bought a ticket to see Eddie Izzard in Aberdeen (imagine that!) in November. That man is getting hugged.
Other than that, nothing has been happening in the world of me.

Stick around, just in case it gets interesting. Thanks for glancing.
Four more years! Four more years!

xk

Etiquette: A Guide… [Part One]

et⋅i⋅quette /ˈɛtɪkɪt, -ˌkɛt/ [et-i-kit, -ket]
–noun

1.	conventional requirements as to social behavior; proprieties of conduct as established in any class or community or for any occasion.

2.	a prescribed or accepted code of usage in matters of ceremony, as at a court or in official or other formal observances.

3.	the code of ethical behavior regarding professional practice or action among the members of a profession in their dealings with each other: medical etiquette.

 

 

Road-Crossing
When you come to traffic lights in order to cross a road, the general unwritten rule is that if there is a small child also waiting to cross, you must not do so until the green man has put in an appearance. Even if there is no oncoming traffic, you must stand there until that little scamp shows his light-up face.
Bearing this in mind, this rule may be breached if a car is heading towards the crossing at a stupidly fast speed even as the lights turn red. If this occurs, you have permission to take one for the team and jump out in front of the car, getting hit, just to prove a point.

An example of Grandmother etiquette not in play…

 

A: Sorry I wasn’t here on Monday, my Granny died.
B: Your Nan? Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.
A: Granny, yeah. It was for the best though, she was in a lot of pain.
B: Oh… Well, I supposed that makes it a bit easier then… Were you close to your Nan?
A: My Granny? Yeah, but she lived quite far away so I didn’t get to see her as much as I’d have liked.
B: That’s always a tragic thing, but I’m sure she knew your Nan would have liked to have visited more…
A: My Granny, yeah…As A Customer
When in a shop, you must always remember that you are not better than the person serving you. Unless they’re obviously being rude to you, they’ll just be doing their job, so treat them pleasantly… you don’t even have to go that far, just don’t treat them unpleasantly. If you go to the till and you’re listening to music with headphones on, either remove one or both from your ears to make it at least appear like you think you’re not dealing with a robot. The same applies for being on your mobile. Wait until you’re finished on the phone and then go to pay for things. Otherwise you’ll miss important questions such as “Do you need a bag?” or “Have you got anything smaller?”
Another thing it’s wise to do is to actually physically hand the person behind the till your money when paying. There is not much more irritating to the humble shopkeeper than a customer who will place a bank-note in front of themselves and expect said sales assistant to reach over to retrieve it as if they’re dancing like the lower-than-you class scum you believe them to be. Dance, shop-slave, dance for your recommended retail price!

On The Buses
Bus etiquette is often discussed. The two main rules of the bus used to be to always let people off before you get on and to never take up two seats by sitting on the chair nearest the aisle when the one by the window is free. Recently, with the rising population of children with phones, a new unspoken rule has been added: everybody must hate the kids at the back of the bus who blare out, usually terrible, music from their phones.
It’s a given that if an old person turns up at the bus stop to wait after you, you let them board the vehicle before you. This is true, right? You’re not a monster. However, the way this scenario is due to pan out is: You wait at the bus stop > Elderly person comes along > Bus arrives > Elderly person glances at you expectantly > You say, “On you go…” > They thank you and get on the bus > You follow – End of exchange. EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS, yet there are still some old people who will completely miss out the expectant glance, the wait to be invited to board first and the “thank you” and will just get on the bus before you. This must be stopped. They must learn. It’s not always a bad thing to rugby tackle a pensioner, even if they are someone’s grandmother/granny/gran/nan/grandma.

 

Coughing
COVER YOUR MOUTH! No, we all know that, so what follows is for those who aren’t coughing. If  someone has the nerve to suddenly and involuntarily expel air from their lungs in your presence, don’t shoot them dirty looks, don’t roll your eyes and don’t hit them in the face.  The clue is in the word ‘involuntarily’.
This rule, however, does not always apply in exams. If you’re sitting an important exam, it is guaranteed that there will be someone there with a hideous cold who will be spluttering away in the corner. They will be offered a glass of water, but this will not help much. The stress of exams experienced may provide a valid excuse for you to gain permission to tut about them after the exam is over. Also, you can blame them if you fail.

Grandmother
Granny etiquette dictates that if someone is talking about their grandmother and subsequently is using their word for grandmother, out of respect to both them and the lady in question, you must adopt this name, even if it goes against anything you’ve ever stood for. Especially if their granny/gran/nan/grandma has just died.

“Oh, I see we got ourselves a wise-acre!”

It’s the fourth of July which can mean one thing and one thing only. Yep. That’s right. I’ve now been at the bookshop for a year. Which also means that it’s been just over a year since my and John’s New York Cop obsession started up and nearly a year since this blog began.
More on that later.

Since the last blog, I’ve been alright. No wayward behaviour, merely japes and misadventure! (Not really, but I bloody love those words.) Last Friday we went to my cousin’s wedding in Inverness. I do really like Inverness, even if it does think it’s a city (aww, bless! — Only joking, Invernessians! …Is that what someone from Inverness is called? Nessies?). It’s very pretty. The night before, the sister and her boy came home and we got caught up in the Michael Jackson frenzy. That was exciting, but weird. It’s strange, I don’t imagine people dying a lot, but he’s one of those people you never really expect to stop living and being a bit weird…
So, yeah, Friday. The wedding was lovely. It’s always nice to see family again, isn’t it? Sort of turned into a bit of a touristy weekend after that. We left to go home on the Saturday and ended up in Aviemore having lunch, then various other hot-spots, including Granny’s hoose. Och aye. That was a surprise for her, and I think it was a good one.

It’s been a strange week. Really hot. Like ridiculously so. Apparently Aberdeen was hotter than LA on Wednesday. That’s just insane. On Monday, it was enjoyable. I was working from 8.30am-12, then had a five hour break in which I got to soak up the sunshine for a while. I don’t think I needed to go back at 5pm, but it’s extra money, innit? And as it says in the bible “Every Little Helps”.
Worked again on Tuesday and on ridiculously-hot-Wednesday, Amber and I said we’d go to the beach, but ended up in town with ice cream and lounging around in Union Terrace Gardens. There are plans to move the gardens up to street level. I’m not sure why. I think one of the reasons was that nobody goes into them just now. I think this is because it’s never hot enough to enjoy them, but when it is, like this week, it ends up packed with people. Strange old Aberdeen…

On Wednesday night we did the quiz for the first time in ages. Ended up coming second again but got no prize as they were all out. I’ve been told to keep pestering them when they might have them in. Exciting. Afterwards we did a sort of unintentional pub-crawl purely because we didn’t know where to go that had a beer garden that wouldn’t be packed. Siberia’s was, but we went to the air conditioned side room there for a bit, then Enigma, followed by Korova and finally Exodus. A highly enjoyable night.

Thursday came and went relatively quickly. I met up with Jill for the first time in months to go for a quick lunch, which was very nice. I don’t remember what took up the rest of the day, but presumably I read lots. All I remember is that at night I watched That Mitchell and Webb Look, Psychoville and Question Time with my mother. Rock and/or roll.

Yesterday was Friday and I did nothing ’til about 2pm where I went into work and signed a card for Pam. Then came home, briefly watched some of the tennis and headed out to Pam’s. We got to the Braided Fig at about 6.30pm and had a few drinks and a general lovely time. Joss ended up buying Joan tequila, poor lady. She did not enjoy it. As with the christmas night out, the numbers slowly dropped and soon merely eight of us ventured to Prohibition. It was here where I discussed the fact that I’d been at the shop for a year and reminded Arlene that she had interviewed me. She said that after I’d gone from the interview, she’d said to Pete that I would “really fit in” and he agreed. This made me feel all warm and fuzzy. Aww…
Soon, only me, Pete, Pam and Shane were left but decided to leave. We took cover from the pouring rain (quite refreshing, really) under a tree until Pam got picked up, then Shane went home and me and Pete decided we needed tea and biscuits so went back to his to have just that. We ended up watching Alexei Sayle’s Merry-Go-Round and The Amazing Screw-On Head’s pilot. I knew we were in for a treat with the latter as Pete pitched it to me by saying “It’s got Niles from Frasier in it as a guy called Emperor Zombie.” It was great. Why did that never get commissioned?
I left at about 2.30am and oddly managed to get a bus really quickly. I got home, planned to do some writing, but fell asleep instead. Rubbish, eh?

So, like I say, this year’s passed really quickly and I don’t like it. Ultimately, I’m still here and this still makes me sad. But at the same time, I’ve got to stop and remember that I’m not even 20 and should shut the hell up sometimes and quit acting like I’ve wasted my whole life. It’s ridiculous. If someone could remind me of the fact that I’m being stupid the next time I jump aboard the downward spiral, that’d be nice. Thanks readers: Theaders.

There has been a constant in my fairly varied week. That would be Mr Stewart Lee. Finally, my own copy of 41st Best Stand-Up arrived on Monday. The rest of the week has been spent watching This Morning With Richard Not Judy.
I’m now even more excited to see him in August. I’ve only bought tickets to see him, Rhys Darby and the DO’D at the festival so far, but I’m also hoping to see Trevor Lock, Paul Foot and I suppose Richard Herring at some point too. Anyway, aye, Mr Lee is at the festival, but also coming back to Aberdeen in November. I really would rather like a ticket to that too, but funds prohibit me at the moment. Back off to the happy place on the 19th July. Doing the silly thing and taking the bus for the first time since January. If this heat continues, it’ll probably be the worst journey of my life.
…So that should be fun! I’ll hopefully do an update before I head off, but probably not. If I do, it might mean because I’ve gotten over the hideous writer’s block or something actually noteworthy has happened. Here’s hoping!