An inverted abecedary snowball...

And the most inconsistent blogger award goes to...

I've got a new poem on the internet. My course this year is pretty much creative writing so I'm going to have to have a few things to show you by the end of it, whether I like it or not. Here's a little something for now, that I'm posting because I can't be bothered to finish off another bit of coursework (that's due in in two and a half hours. I'm just chillin'). Sorry it's so small, not sure how to remedy it quickly without ruining the whole graphology THANG. Hope you enjoy peeps x

Time passed by Jaedla

2013.

2013.

PRIMARILY, this year I aim to make an effort. Even writing this, I know I’m in a pretty resigned mindset and doubt I’ll achieve these. I think it’s okay, I don’t need to get everything done, but neither can I sit and wallow. I’m only writing this because I have an unstarted essay due and I’m the world’s worst procrastinator. Why should I wait till publishing these to do something? You can do things without resolving that you will in print beforehand to scare yourself for fear of being reproached. Seize the day! I don’t need Ms Lindsay to push me!

Explore
Since the start of this academic year, I’ve lived in term time in a small Essex town/large Essex village called Wivenhoe. It’s lovely – semi-famed for its artistic community, full of pubs, really close to uni and has a nice bookshop and antique shop. And yet the only places I’ve been inside are my house, the train station, One Stop, Co-Op, my hairdressers’ and the chip shop. This is a ridiculous state of affairs and I am determined this term to have a snoop around and maybe even become involved in the community – my favourite performance poet, Luke Wright, is doing a gig above a pub this month and I’ve already recruited a couple of friends to accompany me. To aid my exploration of my community I’ve decided to bring back an old favourite. Who remembers my walking blog? Well I miss it and it’s a feature that’ll be easy enough to schedule, good fun and probably good exercise. As a sucker for alliteration, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to write a blog about walking in Wivenhoe, with the lovely benefits of being able to stretch my legs and get some fresh air. I’ve started a new blog just for those updates that hasn’t really been set up yet but you can find HERE. Do us a favour and bookmark it now, yeah?
Keeping exploring local is nice but I’d also like to commit to splurging a load of cash I don’t have on seeing a couple of friends at their universities (and, in doing so, completely justify it to myself when booking). I must go and visit Plymouth to see Al (and hopefully Bee), maybe a trip to Manchester for a couple of pals up there. I've got to see Laura sometime soon too, given she’s not exactly hard to get to. PREPARE YOURSELVES LADIES. Inevitable time spent getting to places on the train (to Plymouth takes 5 hours from Letchworth or something stupid) leaves me plenty of opportunity to explore beyond the boundaries of reality, too, and get my nose stuck deep into a big old book. I love but find it hard to find the time/bother to get any serious reading done so I’m looking forward to this one.

wORK & CREATIVITY
As the shameless king of procrastination – my apathy and vague narcissism really do know no bounds – I have got to get stuck into my work this year. I did so to an extent at the start of the academic year and remembered how much I liked my course and why I’d chosen it in the first place. I’m confident that this will hold true this term and serve only as an incentive. I’m penniless so being able to get a job – maybe exploring Wivenhoe will help me find something – can’t be absent from my list of priorities (and the structure that comes with working will hopefully allow me to slip into working for myself too).I’d like to blog again, even if it is only about my walking, though shan’t be as naive this time and promise much more than I can give. I miss doing a photo (however bad it was) a day, so might see if I can take that up for a while, maybe for a probationary period. Perhaps a second of video a day, a la this dude? Somebody remind me about it though, because there’s no point saying you’ll do something and then putting it off. Look – my new attitude shining through! And one I nicked from Cathy. Thanks, C.
As you may well be aware, my essays are almost exclusively written in the period from 7pm-10am so to hurriedly apply at the deadline, by which time I’m more tired than the look behind David Cameron’s glazed eyes. Needless to say this rules out most planning and pretty much all editing. I MUST begin to do these things if anything I ever do is going to be good. Was it Ernest Hemingway who said that “the first draft of anything is shit”? Whoever it was knows a lot more than I do.
I never write anything for myself, barely even jot down ideas anymore. I must write. One paragraph every two days minimum, with exception of essay days. Setting myself tasks seems all well and good now, before I do it, and though it makes little sense I take this as but incentive to further remove my ambitions from the accomplishable. By the end of summer I must have written: one whole song and one play of any length(as well as the short one for coursework); by the end of the year one page-long poem and two short stories.

FRIENDS
This is something I’ve been quite good at when at home, but not at uni: spending time with people I feel good to be with. I don’t want to have to continue to waste my days hung over, drunk or bored out of my tiny mind with people I do like but don’t find consistently enjoyable. I guess I mean do more fun things than go to a club bored. It would be nice to share a day or evening hanging out with someone. Maybe even sober! Musts: meet Laura. Meet Bee. See Zoe more. Hang out with the fun people from uni, not just mates. When home try and meet up with people I haven’t seen since before uni despite promising we would see each other.

SOCIAL MEDIA MODERATION
I’ve noticed since my break-up just before the turn of the year that I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time tweeting. I don’t know whether this is just because it coincides with a deadline but I’ve really got to spare myself some real world time. Everything is going to seem more fun, right? Hopefully it will help with productivity in any case.

FOOD
Simple, this. Stop making massive 3-4 person portions and then eating it all because I can’t be bothered to make the tiny bit of effort to store it away; or learn how  to judge the size of my appetite more accurately. With regards to shopping, buy regularly, sensibly, healthily and with an undefined but implied budget. The effects of my new attitudes towards feeding myself will hopefully be twofold: eating less at more sensible times (I’m putting on a bit of weight, me. The walking blog thing should help) and stop myself digging into my overdraft to attack campus shop sandwiches (why do I always buy two again?). Convenience food is my downfall. I’m not going to commit to that much less pizza and garlic bread but it’d be good to cut down. By the end of the academic year I will have more than three stock recipes.
For the past two and a half years, I’ve been a vegetarian. I’m really happy and incredibly surprised (or would have been should you’d have told me at the start) that that is still the case. Mostly my concerns with meat are my personal health and the environmental impact of it, so I’ve to my shame never conformed to the anti-animal cruelty veggie stereotype. The other day, however, I stumbled upon a Wikipedia entry in which I learned the process employed for the mass-production of milk. I won’t fill in the gruesome details here, but if you care to know just wiki veganism. I’m concerned, though, about how my diet would adapt to the elimination of milk and if I would be able to sustain myself well enough without spending a ridiculous amount of money on special vegan produce. So, as a compromise, by the end of year I will have spent two weeks to one month without having milk in my diet. Is soya milk nice? I hope so.

MY main aims are therefore sensible self-discipline, but not exercising too much self-restraint. Try and sort out a vague schedule but not being afraid to let go of the reins when able. I want to enjoy my life and not distorting the world for myself – but still be able to stimulate it. A nice clear head and scope to enjoy myself. It sounds ridiculous but I’ve written this in pink – by accident, mainly – but it’s made a lovely change and actually feels really nice. Cynicism can only do so much for you. I might carry on with such an easy-going colour. There we go. I’ve started already!

Here’s to a happy and active year for all.

J

Captions I haven't bothered finding pictures for: "I’ll leave money, exercise and learning to drive for now." // "Clutter will NOT be an excuse to fail to write. Living downstairs in a house of loud students, though, is perhaps acceptable"

How-to: create a fuck-off massive Wagon Wheel (71,640.6 calories)

Found this as a draft. Look how old it is!

"Yesterday (Wednesday 9th) third year, senior RA and fresher-fucker Matthew Rutter walked through our kitchen door with Tesco bags containing £30 worth of ingredients including marshmallows, jam, shortbread and 10 kilos of chocolate, with the purpose of making his ill girlfriend a GIANT wagon wheel."

Ha, really should have written this post.  The wagon wheel was well cool, as well, here are some pictures:

Katie smashing up some shortbread.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfeyUGZt8nk    

Matthew waiting for the first chocolate layer to dry

CALORIE COUNT (accidentally but hilariously written on a pizza hut box background)  

some of the top layer of choc

just a casual little geek out

ellie and i decided to attack harriet

#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. 

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?

Friday - recommendations #2

Evening all. I'm a bit late for a party, and need to do history revision, write this blog, eat, pre-drink, and get ready for tonight in a very short period of time. Multi-tasking - risky? We'll give it a try.

Fantastic stuff from this week:

   On Tuesday I went bowling with my cub pack.  Some good things about this included the playlist (This Charming Man followed by Paradise City? Hell yes) and my score of 148 smashing Simon’s by a good 50.  Also going to be made a fully fledged leader for CV and things, we were discussing my name – has to be from the Jungle Book, we were thinking King Louie but apparently he’s only from the film, so I’m gonna be ‘Jacala’. Win.

    Wednesday after ethics I walked into town with Alice and accidentally ended up drinking all afternoon with her. Love my best friend, such a terrible influence but yeah man, ace day.

    Still digging the new Gaga album. It’s so immense. Favourite songs on it: Judas, Bloody Mary, Bad Kids, Hair, Heavy Metal Lover. Least favourite (but still excellent): Americano.  Even better, I was delivered this baby today.  Beautiful, best £2.47 I have ever spent.

    Also delivered today was my little brother @andrewalpha’s birthday prezzie. It’s his birthday on Sunday, I’m not sure if he reads this (IF YOU DO I HATE YOU) so I can’t say more than what he already knows, but I bought it direct from Gareth Campesinos! so he’s got a lovely birthday note from the singer of one of our favourite bands.

    Lots of yr13 leavers cake.  The best leaving thing has been in history, where we had a good party – lots of cream cakes, a competition which my team – ‘team’ – won. I got a medal and everything.  Ms Lindsay, or, as we refer to her when drunk/she isn’t present, Jan, gave us a fantastic emergency exam kit; featuring incense (a jibe at religion), ready-dated revision cards, and a wristband bearing ‘”legend” history class 2011’. She’s ma fave.

    I’ve been watching Campus on 4oD in the last few days, it gets taken down in 13 days so if I were you I’d be all over that like a rash, Matt Beer is excellent and I would hope if I never bothered to leave uni that is exactly  what I’d be like.

    Wild Beasts’ Smother is, like Gaga, still brilliant. The lyric ‘Oh, oh Ophelia, I feel ya’ is my all-time favourite nine syllables.

    This happened a while back but just remembered and it’s still hilarious – my brother, And, was watching Father Ted (our fave, alongside IT Crowd, Black Books, Alan Partridge etc) and was really enjoying the bit where Ted dances to the song Shaft*. He fairly innocently assumed that there’d be a decent .gif of it on Tumblr, so he searched it – forgetting that Tumblr’s a fairly sex-obsessed site. He’s regretted it since.
(*the shaft makes up a large amount of the anatomy of a penis, if you hadn’t realised. I’m sure you did though, you intelligent, sex-crazed things, you)

    @footballquotes on twitter are AMAZING. Massive massive #ff recommendation.

    This monkey is a joker. In the immortal words of my mate Maskey, “Monkey eats 3 bananas then has a wank.... tickled me hard” 

    I’ve just taken the plunge of following And on twitter. Best decision I’ve ever made, he’s hilarious. Also he’s at a hot tub party tonight. Love the little lad (again, if you’re reading this, though, I HATE YOU)

    NAZI HULA HOOPS
    Excellent news – Bobby ‘Dreamy’ Pires might go to America and play for NY Red Bulls (tut, American commercialism) - and therefore play in emirates cup with Thierry this summer.  If so, I’m so gonna go, Lebob and Titi, YES.

    This tweet is absolutely BANG ON

    Increase in DLs of free download of our song E9 here - it's a song I ('I' - well, I did the lyrics haha and some other bits haha) wrote about this picture, the board game Battleships and the Greek mythology of Sirens – I’m a pretentious wanker, I know...

    Feeling rock and roll and doing ma Nick Clegg sad face #2k11 (yeah that's a tie draped around my neck, forgot about it (also that is a medal I won in history yesterday, not a really shit necklace)) à Me  | Nick Clegg 

    Next season’s awful footie kits. Many are hilariously rubbish.

    ArseBandits is so fucking funny.  Football fans read the entire series right now.

    I found this old pic of my band after our first gig (with Two Door Cinema Club, smuuuug) eating pizza.

    My Sweet Baboo EP was delivered. It’s beautiful.

ANGRY CORNER

This feature's all about good things, but we do all occasionally need a little bit of anger, just to keep us awake and exercised in mental activity.  It's fun!

  - I wrote my Superinjunctions song – ‘Oooh, Zeitgeisty’ but couldn’t record it. Boo. I wrote a blog about superinjunctions to make up for it but didn’t post ‘cause everyone’d got over the whole thing. Recording boo :(

  - Every single one of my pockets in these jeans I’m wearing have a hole in.  Party hard, yay, but holey pockets, nay. Pockets boo :(

  - I accidentally used a twitlonger yesterday.  GUTTED.  Not ma style.  Accidental twitlonger boo :(

  - The first thing which is more than a minor irritant.  Do I really need to explain why this atrocity is irritating?  Richard Littlejohn boo :(

  - This sobering thought.  Fuk da haterz boo :( 

  - Fuck off Crooks, Bale but no RVP? Load of old bollocks. Garth Crooks boo :(

  - Daily Mail - generally, obviously, bad, but this is awful.  Shit journalism boo :(

  - My timeline disappearing and Twitter apparently thinking that I'm not following anyone. I unfollowed + refollowed everyone, making those I mutually follow hate me when I appeared at the lower end of their followers list. Tasha assumed I’d unfollowed for ages!  Twitter being a dick the other day boo :(  

  - It isn't a good look to have visible pockets peeping or blatantly poking out of your short shorts - Nothing against a bit of leg, just against stupid pockets.  Stupid fashion boo :(

Back to the fantastic things love-in, and I'd like to say thanks to anyone reading this.  I've only got seven followers on here but it turns out lots of lovely people from twitter have email subscribed, and have been reading (: Thanks people - I'm particularly lovin' the love for my walking feature. Thanks very much twitter and everyone else for following! I hope I can get some more followers soon, still feels a bit like I'm blogging to no-one, comments appreciated haha - this is, I think, my tenth post, so now I'm allowed to join more communities and the count should be going up soon haha.  By the way, there is a small personal/housekeeping issue to sort - on my follower list, it has your usernames but I can't get it to show me the blogs you write, only those you read, so if people reading this could comment/email me ( jamie@kidswithfireworks.com ) with their blog's URL I can find you online and we can get chatting!

I think that wraps up this week, so that's one of my list of multi-tasking stuff to do done. I'm kinda ready to go out, too, and I've had a fair amount of cheeky beers writing this, so that's all good. Going to make use of Jan's lovely revision cards for a bit of history now! Then off (late) to N's party, paintin' the town red and various other cliches about drinking.  Revision win.  Have a good weekend!

P.S.

An assortment of links I would have liked to have written into this post but I am very late and a bit drunk now 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

P.P.S.
"I wonder if Buzz and Woody ever met any of Andy's mum's toys... especially since they probably had the same names"

P.P.P.S.
Really sorry it's so long.  These always turn out massively longer than i expect yhem tyo.  I'm quite late now tho

Walking #2

Alright peeps, I've had a great day.  Two hour lie in, this delivered, a gossip, loads of food in my last ethics lesson, and an afternoon spent drinking and laughing with Alice.  Quality.  And then I owned her 8-year-old brother on Guitar Hero drums.  I did little unmapped walking, though, so I'm gonna mainly say about the day after my last walking post, Thursday.  As ever, I've no idea how to make pictures on here work so I'm just gonna leave them all in a mess at the bottom for you to sift through - sorry, I'm lazy, right, but think of it as, like... a jigsaw puzzle... or something...

LAST MAP

CURRENT MAP



I am lost.

That's the conclusion I drew two hours into my 30 minute detour on the way home from school to get some extra walking done on Thursday 'morning' before turning back, delirious, and finding a sign pointing towards the fair old town of Letchworth.  I'm such an idiot sometimes, this project was never gonna do me well - all I did was go the other way out of school, to try and get to the top left corner of Letchworth conveniently, but decided to carry on to get a picture of our sixth's usual lunchtime pub, The Two Chimneys, for something interesting to say here.  But I had one of those moments when you think it takes more effort to turn around than keep walking and found myself inquisitive of what was ahead, so I didn't turn back and went all the way to Stotfold.  I was so tired and ruined (not urined, as I originally typed...) some perfectly good new chinos whilst I was clambouring through some sort of marshland and a building site.  I'M SUCH A DICK SOMETIMES.

Thoughts from this week's walking, arranged vaguely chronologically:
- Lovely day for a walk. I'm really enjoying my walk this morning. I woke up really tired but now I've done a history mock and am off for the day. It's lovely; great weather, quiet roads, and clean air.

- Found a house with seven statuettes of pigs in the front garden. Seven, I'm not joking.
- Tractor goes past, followed by a Porsche.
- Lovely couple of pensioners who were chatting to me about walking - bloke called me 'old chap' a lot of times - I wanted to take a pic of some amusing gnomes but they were looking :(
- There is a lot of suspicious mooing behind this hedge.
- So I got pretty much a whole day off and spent it walking
- Really want a large chocolate McDonalds milkshake. The death of my veggie principles :(
- Random musings: good people to have a pint with - Alex James, Thierry Henry, Roald Dahl, Simon Lucas (my friend not someone famous), anyone who can take the fall guy spot off me, Moss from IT Crowd, Terry Pratchett, Phill Jupitus
- On my way down Baldock road, casually doing the limbo under low-hanging branches.
- Just saw someone asleep who I messed up a photo of and then I thought they might have moved a little bit so I was too scared to try and get another

- I haven't a clue where I am.  Though I suppose that is pretty much exactly why I'm doing this.

- Fucking hell

- Mum texts me, calling me a 'wally'

- Going back on myself. Don't even have a belt on so I can't run.

- Wish I had some headphones and Born This Way right now

- IT'S ALL GOOD GUYS, ALL GOOD, I FOUND THE POULTRY FARM AGAIN (again, I feel like a bad vegetarian).
- Found my way back to Chims! Really want a pint.
- I was cheered up by the sight of a man with a really crazy-jokes hair/beard/tache combo. Like, properly, mentally bad.  No good photo, though, because he had an angry looking dog on him.
- Random musings #2: my favourite emotion is the pride of achievement. It's a shame I'm so lazy and, err, jealous haha
- Crazy hair dude update: nearly got one! Didn't quite, though, he was crossing the road so wasn't looking and I snapped him but it was really blurry :( I got one of his back, though (I promise the dog looked more scary in real life).
- Are there any FB groups about cloudgazing the clouds on Google streetview? I'm pro at the real deal, I'd ace the watered-down version
- Just saw an old dude with the best cardi
- My jumper's really bloody hot right now
- HAHAHA just heard a little boy on the other side of the road scream 'oh Daaaaaaaad, did you just fart?' He's like eight, cheeky devil

Hope those sort of show you how I think when I'm walking - that's not all just Thursday, but is for the most part.

Picture jigsaw!

I don't care how reasonably you ask for peace, you're outside a special measures school. Not gonna happen.

Our lunchtime carvery!

Heh. 

Irony

Bins with dogs on them are pretty funny for some reason

An inquisitive dog

I found this barn really interestingggg

More of the intriguing barn

Baaaaarn

Single red poppy in a sea of yellow and green (my rubbish phone doesn't really get the vibrant colours... just the green)

A hilarious red gate...

I'm sure the isolated rugby ball was much bigger than this

A hole

"It's called character"

Massively poignant

A CONE ON A POLE! WOW!

Our lunchtime pub (: I play the occasional gig there

There's a lot of mooing behind this hedge

Terrible signposting. Terrible.

Accidentally gone really far off of my map...

The back-country

Is it only me who doesn't get patriotism? Really? I just don't understand it.

Letchworth (about 8 miles away at this point, I think...)

We still don't like signs around here (see last week's post...)

Ahh, the poultry shop!

Again, what is the point of advertising when it's done this badly?

TIMING/FOCUS

Crazy hair beard dude

Great, roadworks just outside my house. That's not going to be awkward for parking...

Pig house!

Nothing interesting for the tabs in here...

ZEBRA-TRAILER

heh

Toothy car

'Witsend'

A house with a moustache

We h8 siGnS

A dog doing a shit hahahahahaha I'm such a freak

Crocodile-shaped cloud (not a very good view tho')

Pyramid house