List #3: Things I Have Learnt About Myself From the Night of Saturday 16th July 2011, My 18th Birthday

1. If I have done really well for myself and got a really good job for the first time in my life - don't mess it up by being sick all over it before your/my first shift.
2. Always have dinner before a night of drinking, even if you had a massive lunch and even if its convenient to walk there with Alice at 7.
3. If you're drinking consistently all day, a little bit of mixing is allowed.  A little, not a lottle.  For example, you're allowed to follow a - frankly massive - G&T, followed by beer, over the course of late-morning - mid-afternoon; but don't mix Leffe, Fosters, Jagerbombs, Crabbies, Goat's Gash cocktails, Ale, something I can't quite remember and a lot of cake in just over an hour.
4. Goat's Gash is one of the nicest things that I have ever drunk.
5. It's a good thing that you can make friends with random strangers at the bar when you're waiting for mates to arrive, but don't allow them to buy you too many birthday pints of Leffe
6. Leffe costs more than your average lager, and an extra pound can really annoy said strangers
7. Leffe is 7.5%, not the 4.5% you assumed it to be.  If you're drinking it, that's cool, it tastes great; just ease up a bit.
8. When your drink hits you (it will), stand outside for a bit, yeah?  Don't eat loads of cake.
9. Seriously, go to Hitchin, not your workplace.
10. You know that friend that everyone has?  The one that's a bit cooler and older than everyone else, and you cannot begin to kid yourself you don't model at least a little bit of yourself on him?  Yeah; when meeting his girlfriend for the first time, don't introduce yourself by being sick on her.
11. The friend who doesn't mind taking you home is amazing and must be cherished.  Always force them to stay over.
12. Make the most of not being hungover (although potentially still drunk) whilst you're young and you can.  It's worth drinking the night after, if in moderation (but when it's a house party half-dedicated to you, you kinda have to).
13. Reading the entirety of Caitlin Moran''s How To Be a Woman is the best thing the next day.  With baths, cheese and water.  Also: go for a run (don't let people see you (shuttles in the back garden)).
14. You're going to really enjoy being a student, if you're vaguely careful.
15. Being drunk is lovely.  It's good for being happy after the after-effects (if you read good things and haven't lost your job because of it).
16. Writing this in the same place you were sick two nights ago, making friends with the bar staff and apologising profusely, is fun and a good move. Hopefully I'll get a second chance.
17. Might go for a walk after this cuppa (75p. Win).
18. Oh, and Craisins.  The best.
19. (post-script): Buy some records. Use loads of your birthday money up on vinyl shopping.  You'll feel immeasurably better.

Goals

Another, longer, project - as the scope of much is this blog is self-improvement and things I own, if figure a list of targets could be quite helpful.  There's no specific number, and I'll add things & strike things off.  As you can see from number two, I'm working under the assumption that this is a very long term thing.

1 Go to a cup final (inc. Champions League)

2 Buy a season ticket for The Arsenal

3 Manage consistent revision for the first time

4 Do better than expected in something academic (A2s please)

5 Walk every street in Letchworth 

6 Walk every street in Colchester

7 Own as many Smiths/Moz singles as possible, but specifically There Is A Light That Never Goes out on 7"

8 Shout 'next round on me' in a not-empty pub and buy everyone a drink

9 Finish writing a good play

10 Go on a tour with a fairly popular band that I really like (Everything Everything, Friendly Fires standard)

11 Play fairly high up the bill of Rhythms of the World

12 Play at Glasto

13 Write by myself and record a song that I am genuinely proud of

14 Vlog at least five videos of myself covering my favourite songs

15 Learn to sing well

16 Learn to play the drums

17 Relearn (properly this time) the trumpet

18 Own all of my favourite albums as LPs: Modern Life is Rubbish, Romance is Boring, The Queen is Dead, Is This It, The Suburbs...

19 Own every Wild Beasts and Radiohead album on vinyl

20 Brew my own chai tea

21 Read the entire works of Oscar Wilde and B.S. Johnson

22 Adapt and/or direct a staged production of one of Jean-Paul Satre's, Tennessee Williams' and Mikhaol Bulgakov's plays 

23 Watch every Adam Curtis film

24 Memorise every lyric written by Paul Heaton, Moz, and Gareth Campesinos!

25 Devise a really clever metaphor / a perfect analogy to help explain something really confusing

26 Have a pint with an assortment of my favourite people called Alex: James, Turner, Kapranos

27 Write a short film

28 Write a good comic

29 Convince Ariane to fall in love with me without cheating

30 Get a good summer job

31 Find a full time job where with which I am genuinely happy

32 Help out at the recording of three TV shows which I like

33 Go to every major UK music festival at least once (Latitude)

34 Go to the Cannes Film festival

35 Go a major music festival overseas

36 Owe mum and dad no more money

37 You know when you see a band but don't know their music but they're excellent? And then you get really into them afterwards? Yeah, see all of those bands again: Belle & Sebastian, Two Door Cinema Club, Flashguns, Everything Everything, Bombay Bicycle Club...

38 Own the 7" of at least six of my favourite Beautiful South singles

39 Give adequate time to and finish every book on my 'to read' shelf (well, two shelves)

40 Buy this babe

41 Buy original art by Alice Dixon, Tinhead and three other favourite artists of mine

42 Ride a zebra

43 Learn to drive

44 Get Andrew smashed

45 Get a portrait of me painted (thanks Vicky)

46 Master circular breathing and get good at playing digeridoo

47 Write a song where glockenspiel is an integral part

48 Win a cooking competition (best use of a potato award, sick)

49 Win a proper cooking competition

50 Score at the Grove

51 Get my hair cut like Aaron

52 Grow a good strong beard

53 Meet Bee and Marie

54 Visit Rosh when he's living in America

55 Become comfortable with who I am

56 Realise when I've stopped growing 

57 Win an LC! competition

58 Get a stable weight

59 Regain a stomach I'm happy with

60 Become an expert on something. Anything.

61 Own a house with its own library

62 That most annoyingly masculine of traits - have 'good' biceps

63 Get a regular readership where I have enough readers to run competeitions

64 Create a box of mixtapes for every mood

65 Run a competition for said box

66 Do a LC!-style record box giveaway

67 Think of some non-cunctactory justification for writing really long unnecessary lists

68 Have a wardrobe full of excellent jumpers

69 Live for at least 6 months in Brittany, Prague, Berlin and London

70 Get a column in a good quality newspaper or blog

71 Subscribe to Heatrash and catch up on issues I have missed

72 Be featured or have my band featured on one of my favourite music blogs

73 Get to 1,500 followers on twitter without being a dick and following a million people for that specific purpose

74 Get really good at gardening and grow a tree

75 Learn to walk in a straight line

76 Perfect my G&T making skills

77 stop being so clumsy

78 do a Josie Long and after uni take maths for A level. I want to get a B or higher

79 play an acoustic instore at David's Music

80 Buy everything I want on a single record store day (as in every exclusive release I desire)

81 Own an HD video camera

82 Tell these people what they are face to face

83 Own a top-of-range phone

84 Own a lot of nice guitar pedals and play around putting voices and my stylophone through them
85 Read the complete works of our lord and saviour Monty Python
86 Find the perfect chai tea recipe
87 find and become an expert in using a tea strainer thing
88 become a connoisseur in aromatic teas i.e. this

Bearded woe - an introduction

I have a rubbish life.  I'd quite like to improve it  - exam results would go a long way towards it, as is this blog; another thing is the desire to really know who I am, and eventually grow into the person I want to be.

I think that's what this blog is really about, so by way of introduction to my waffle I'm going to start my first series here.

Basically, I really like beards.  I'd look terribly terribly shit with a moustache or beard, and obviously being really rubbish at maturity means it takes ages to grow anything.  I'm therefore gonna grow one over exams for the hell of it and stick pics on here in the weekly photo/video post for you all to laugh at me - today's is, what, three days in?

Oh dear.

Until tomorrow, anyway.

@jamieeelaing

www.kidswithfireworks.com

Update - 27/05/2011

Haha forgot to say about this, but I'd completely forgotten about study leave being non-existent this year for me (my school's in special measures and is trying to look authoritative) and obviously this made me look a little stupid, soooo I figured I'd postpone it a bit. Sorry dudeheads, it was a bit weird anyway though  x