#ff

"40 Posts, last published on 24-Oct-2011 – View Blog"


Woops. 


Well I'm sorry it's been a while, it turns out that uni is just totally amazeballs, and I haven't reaaallly had much time on my hands (absolute barefaced lie, all I do is sleep).  Anyway, I've got an essay due in soon and there's nothing like procrastination for kick-starting an urge to blog, is there? 


Cunctation isn't the only reason for this, however: I've been reading some of your lovely posts and a couple in particular have really stood out.  It's Friday, and as a Twitter addict of the highest order, I thought a few Bloggers #FFs would be a nice thing to do. 


Very nice people live below this heading


Hila
The best thing about a fucked up sleeping cycle is being able to see tweets from down under.  In the past week I've very swiftly fallen for Hila, and I think her new year's poem can demonstrate why.  She is also bally ace for good retweets, and I've found several lovely things via her in the past few days, such as Jennifer Grotz’s stunning “Poppies”. And no, that's not a link to the Sun.


http://hila-lumiere.blogspot.com/ 
@tout_moi


Charlie
One of the best people I've met this year (and this is the year I've gone to uni) is a boy I followed on Twitter on a whim after seeing him tagged in a few friends' tweets.  Turns out the guy shares more than an interest in Peep Show with me: a keen writer, bantersaurus rex and fellow sufferer of arrogance and laziness syndrome, we've been planning to co-write some stuff for a good forever now and I therefore pledge to eat a hot chili in a vlog if, by the end of summer, we still have nothing substantial to our names.


@charliechalkley
Black and white blog
Colour blog


Zoe
When I first joined this website - almost entirely down to the efforts of Bee, who I'm sure you'll all know - I immediately followed several blogs in a flurry of activity, in an attempt to really get stuck into this whole community business.  Zoe's fantastic photography, craft and lifestyle blog, Ladybird Likes, is one of very few that I stuck by, and that's as much down to her amazing personality as it is her superb eye for gems when thrifting.  I for one am very much excited about the prospect of her new - own - business and if any of you wankers don't at least have a butch I'm going to send the big boys 'round.
(Zo', I'm sending your mixtape SOON AS I'm so sorry it's taken quite so fackin' long)


ladybirdlikes.blogspot.com
@ladybirdlikes
Flickr 


Flatmates
As you might have expected, I'm at university with some pretty charming chaps.  My flatmate Molly, for one, is fiercely intelligent and of everybody I know has one of the best tastes in literature.  Together we run (ran) @matthewquotes, the tribute twitter account to Matthew Bond, one of the most entertaining people you will ever have the pleasure of meeting.  Here's a photo I took of him the first time we went out as a flat.


One of the best things about studying at a university notable for its multiculturalism is how different the people you meet are to each other, and just how many people you meet and love.  Somewhat surprising, then, is how Charlie has managed to end up in three quarters of my classes, but I regret nothing - she's proper ace, right; she likes feminism, films and fluffy penguins, and her happy new year video was wrapping herself up in cellotape.  


YouTube channel  
@EdgeOTI 


Have you subscribed to Charlie on YouTube yet? Ace. Now watch this.*


Aleks  
The nicest person around is Aleks Bhowmick - without his consistently happy tweets, the world would literally collapse.  I don't really feel I need to say much more: following him on twitter will quadruple your quality of life.  Go for it.


@AleksBhowmick






BLOGGY BLOGGY BLOG BLOG








*Nothing she's done, but I'm always up for misleading my readers into watching a nice bit of Thierry-porn. 

Right now

I am TOTALLY listening to my new LP

It's only bloody Is This It


I've exercised little (but some) restraint since I got to uni. I've been very reasonable with my vinyl purchases - good prices only, y'know? Unfortunately... yeah, I've somehow only just started to find bargains, so I've spent a pretty decent amount on record crack

I've bought Is This It
I've bought Whatever People Say I am, That's What I'm Not
I've bought We Are Each Other
I've bought Warpaint's cover of Life on Mars
I've bought I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose
I've bought The Libertines
I've bought Brianstorm (B-side is Temptation Greets... which is AMAZING)
I've bought Bloodflood/Tessellate

I've NOT bought:
- Antidotes
- Total Life Forever
- Radio Ladio
- Heartbreaker
- Holiday
- My Heart Rate Rapid
- Humbug
- Favourite Worst Nightmare
- We are Beautiful, We are Doomed
- There are Listed Buildings
- The Fool
- Romance is Boring
- The English Riviera

See? The 'not' list definitely outweighs the 'couldn't help myself' list. So that's alright, yeah?

Well fuck you, so far everything has been amazing, can't wait to play with a good turntable and speakers at home.  My loan will never last, so I suppose it's good that £30 I spent on pre-ordering LC!'s almost definitely excellent new album Hello Sadness on vinyl was committed before I left


Maybe I'll do a proper post soon - I've had the final pre-uni walking blog in my drafts for almost a month - or, more likely, you'll get a few more half arsed things like this, written at 1am because I feel guilty to all you lovely followers, before I have to stop going out and start working and make some effort on the blog purely for procrastination.

See you soon

(my mum reads this blog :( )

Just a quickie...

I am at university! I am fucking loving it! I shall update properly after I've done some reading, sorry it's been a while; moving in and then my internet has literally just started working and I can't use blogger on my phone for some reason :(

I have been drinking fucking tonnes
I have been eating a lot of garlic bread
I have been making friends

Look how good this blog is. Definitely worth a follow.

List #5 - I promise Emma is cool with this and in fact asked me to put this up SO NAH

I took this from a vaguely project-y writing exercise I've just started: my own, generally unpublicised, version of Richard Herring's excellent Warming Up.  It wasn't written well, given I wrote it at about 2am. Nor is it really written for anyone but me to read, but effort to rewrite - so at the moment it's an odd cross between, like, Robert Louis Stevenson and Charlie Brooker... But obviously that doesn't apply to the frankly rubbish list which is 100% tired Laing puerility:

At Chappers' party, Emma had a story. Emma had Shiv's story. Juicy gossip attracts Gemma Inglis and myself as if moths to artificial light, yet Emma would not budge. Eventually, we extracted some small pleasure by spreading the TOTALLY TRUE rumour that Emma bloodthirsty Brooking and Shivan shitting Handa have been known to, on occasion, become involved with pleasures of the anal variety; an absolute fact the sordid pair somehow derive pleasure from. From now on, I am to greet and refer to Emma only as thus:

- dirty bottom; or
- sticky passage ; or
- spunk seat ; or
- cheeked botty ; or
- soiled buttock ; or
- perved pads ; or
- ejaculate ass ; or
- dodgy derriere

And I hope she learns the hole of her lesson.

Walking #5

I cannot be bothered to go and find all of my old pictures from this, nor remember about all the walking I did. Will one story do for all of the extra walking I've done?

LAST MAP

CURRENT MAP

So I figured I could get a section of this done walking to Baldock for a couple of tennis matches I had organised, and another (big) section done on a different route back.  Turns out I was a bit late so took a shortcut - partially already walked - on the way there, which I justified to myself with the thought of going over an entire estate on my way back, just en-route.  Midway through the second I realised I was so shattered that I couldn't feasibly walk home in good time, let alone get to explore Letchworth a bit, so didn't bother in the end.  I did get a little bit done, though.

Some assorted pictures I found from walking from ages ago:

  My friend Tom does a photo of the day. This was the 365th one. 

Stopped off in a pub in Hitchin. This guy blew mah miiind

My brother posing with a cowpat 

 

On the Isle of Wight, but fuck it: I looked down. A face stared right back up at me.  Granted you can't really see the face that much but I figured the story was vaguely worth it when this post looked a bit sparse.

Right, that's your lot.  Wednesday walking's back with a bemused smile and a newly undisguised apathetic outlook on the world, baby

Bands Good Enough for Me to Pay to Advertise Them

I really like music. Like, loads, yeah?  When I first joined Blogger, I followed several people without really reading their stuff as a way into the community.  As it turns out, the vast majority of Blogger seems to be fashion blogs; something I have little to no interest in.  However, amongst a load of floral print dresses, a segment of leftie politics and a few recipes dotted around the place I found one post,  on Hipster Musings, about T-shirts.  I really enjoyed it, and here's my cheap imitation (the closest thing you'll ever get to a fashion post from me):

  I really really like Wild Beasts.  I like this shirt because I like Wild Beasts and I think it's quite cool - but it doesn't really mean anything, special or otherwise, to me.  Should it?  I wear it to gigs a lot, I think.  There's two slightly annoying things about it - the bit that says Wild Beasts is really small and usually folds over, as well as it being oddly long yet snug It's just an odd shape and I have no idea why.  This was on offer online - so I OBVIOUSLY SNAPPED it up. My favourite Wild Beasts album is Smother, but song-wise it has to be All the King's Men which is an absolutely cunting tune.

                                                                

I bought this at a market in a French castle several years ago, just after I passed my massive RHCP stage. I'm not sure I really like them that much any more, but it's a nice piece of bed-wear nonetheless.  I think it's a girl's fit, but I'm not sure.  Favourite chilis song is probably Otherside, but I've always had an unexplained soft spot for Fortune Faded. 

                                                                 

Look See Proof were, for quite a while, THE cool local indie band.  They headlined, I think, or at least played at, my first local gig; for a while they looked like they might actually make it; their farewell show was the pinnacle of an era of my life.  All that said, I didn't own this shirt then.  Sometime about two years ago mum came home bearing this as a gift.  She'd found it in a charity shop, which seemed pretty apt given my quick transition from change from club night indie wanker wannabee to charity shop jumpers, books and vinyl loser.  Their best song was Casualty but Discussions and Local Hero were stonkin', too - my favourite was always this one which began with an S which I can't quite recall. EDIT: found it!

When they split up, they released a free internet EP which I can promise you is still amazing.  Ever now and again I find it on an old computer and overplay it for a month before promptly forgetting about it again.

(I'm listening to them now. NOSTALGIA. Only bands from that time of my life I still really like are Guildean Gang, Spiked and Model Horror.  I'm well over Rosalita.)

                                                               

     

This is a relatively recent purchase - The October Game are one of those bands that don't play 'my kind' of music, but are fairly incredible live and good enough that I like them nevertheless.  Think they're a bit of a music geek's band.  It's too small, but I bought that size because trying it on I had another shirt underneath and the creepy guitarist selling it was giving me a funny look.  Found out when I got home it had gaffa tape from display still attached to it and oil stains at the bottom :( Still, it's an alright shirt, and they're a good band. Just listen to this and see how fantastically cool this is!  People like Zoe from ladybirdlikes will proper love that second link.

                                                                

I don't really like New Found Glory, to be honest, but I got this shirt with the only money I spent on a free day out for a friend's birthday (I can never thank Esther McNeil and her lovely mum enough) which was an evening in Leicester to see Paramore play (supported by NFG, Kids in Glass Houses and another band I've forgotten the name of. Conditions?) at the De Montfort hall. Great night, and this shirt looked really cool. I still wear it pretty often - the print's just 'New Found Glory' written loads of times in loads of different styles, by the way.

                                                                 

Bought this years ago but still love it. I don't wear it very often - I don't really like wearing black shirts, not sure why - but the band (Spiked, obviously) only get better and, excitingly, two thirds of them are proper besties of mine.  The other third apparently used to go to the pub with Yannis from Foals all the time, but *clutches, grabs a straw* he's probably a dick and I <3 Sian and Lauren so fuck them! What is it about assonance that you always have to put monosyllabic names first?  Anyway, yes, had for years, bit small now, love it, amazing family at the heart of the properly brilliant band.  Best song is reeeeeallly difficult, I like their new EP 'Machines Please' too much to choose, really, but out of songs I can link you to I'm going to pick Good with Dollar.  If you don't like pretty heavy stuff (and I don't, really, it's just Spiked and Hold Your Horse Is) Casio Kid remixed their song What's This? which is ace too. 

                                                                

I've seen Fiction once.  They're not actually that good - they're not bad at all, just quite, not that, good - but the combination of really liking their shirt, really enjoying Klaxons (who they were supporting), and Klaxons having 'meh' shirts made me get this as a memento.  I'm not sure why I like it so much, I just really love the design... it's an owl, man! Trouble with wearing it underneath a white shirt (as you do at school etc) is the orange eyes look a little bit like a tea stain and you get a lot of remarks.  I wear this all the time.  Best song... not sure.  I think there's a car advert on at the moment which uses one of theirs, so that's ruined their cool, but they're toured with Klaxons, Warpaint, and soon Metronomy, so that's not too bad at all - there's a song called Phyllis which you can get for free which is pretty good... Ooh, just googled them, this is a song called Parakeets. It is good. 

(that was a lie. I had not listened to it when I linked.  However, I have heard 1:17 of it now, seems alright)

                                                              

Big big love for the Hives shirt! Bought this at Wireless, during a Pulp song, because they were so good.  I think that they are second only to Blur in my 'best live bands' list they were just that good. £20, which is twice what you should pay for any good band tee, and I still didn't have the sense to not take this wonderful white shirt to Reading this year.  IT IS STILL MUDDY.  I don't regret a penny of that twenty, though.  Great band, great shirt which gets me occasional high fives from strangers.  As I tweeted last night, they're very much a listen to LOADS for half a year then forget about for 18 months before a prompt rediscovery and half-year LOVE (repeat) kind of band, great for angry teens, frustrated fathers and nostalgic nannies alike.  It's a fairly obvious choice but this is probably their best song, although this or this would be my favourite.  For the second 'this' link, skip to 6 mins in and watch the PERFECTLY timed guitar drop over and over again and marvel, like I did, for days.

  Stax are a record label, not a band, I know, but I like Northern Soul and I got these and the Kinks shirt whilst Andrew got The Beat's Stand Down Margaret and The Who's My Generation tees.  They're pretty darn coooooooooooool, no? No, thought not :(

KINKS SHIRT WHICH DAD GOT OFF DAVE DAVIES FROM THE KINKS WHO HE USED TO LIVE NEXT DOOR TO DEFINITELY DESERVES CAPITALS. IT'S TOO SMALL AND I'VE HAD TO PASS IT ON TO THIS LOSER BUT STILL OH MY WORD A PROPER OLD KINKS SHIRT

Well I seem to have drifted into chatting about music, not fashion there, but to be honest thank God for that! The layering shirts over one another thing didn't look as funny as I thought it might :( 

I apologise for the big gaps between blogs now but I've been enjoying real life a lot recently and now I'm back want to ease myself back into the swing of things.  To be honest, I do harbour a bit of an ambition to be all that I'm not on Twitter - occasionally brilliant, and that's it, rather than quite good or okay a lot of the time.

Next week I'm going to attempt a return of my walking blog, maybe talk about my 'goals' list which I carried on updating whilst I was away, and hopefully do a vlog! It's nothing interesting, just, like, a guided tour of my room, but I thought it'd be interesting to compare with another when I move into Colchester for uni - also, Laura's meant to be doing one too, so that'll be a laugh I guess. See you then x

(did you notice? New glasses! I am really happy with them)

Who I really want a shirt of: Blur.  The Beautiful South.  Metronomy.  Gaga (tho' I bet she has no nice ones).  Libertines.  Bombay Bike Club (who do amazing jumpers too).  A good Pulp one.  The Smiths.  Los Camp! (more than the one I have ordered).  Foals.  Gorillaz.  Laura Marling, the Beach Boys, Biffy Clyro.  Copy Haho.  The Clash, the Cribs, Flight of the Conchords.

You?

innuendo fruit

So I guess my first blog for yonks should probably be some grand occasion, with loads of trumpets and guest bloggers and something meaningful, right? Instead I think I'm gonna do a subject I hold dear - innuendo.  And fruit!

1. Plums.

2. Melons.

3. Mangoes.

4. Is that a banana in your pocket?

5. *peels* one skin, two skin, three skin...

6. Brown Turkish Figs
7. Peachy

 It's almost always hilarious in my book.  I love a good double entendre or even a bit of a whoopsie.  I kind of agree with David Mitchell but there's still plenty of ways to make innuendo funny.  If you don't like it, just swearing over and over is hilarious too.

Might have ruined my topic somewhat there...


HELLO AGAIN (':