Latitude Excitement!

I have glorious news in the way of scoring (no one ever really says that) tickets to Latitude festival, the idea started a while back brewing in the mind of my mate Philip who whilst in the throws of some sort of university educed boredom or drink session came upon the idea of going to not one, but two festivals this summer, this idea was crazy too crazy for words.

Now, I know people who go to every festival under the sun, people say to their faces that they're cool but behind their backs call them rich idiots or elitist snobs, because financial wise, going to festivals in this country is an expensive affair. Firstly you have the fact that the average festival cost around £150 on face value, but once the website you buy it off, which you have to buy it off take their selling and transaction fees off you you're looking at around £160 before you've even set out the door. Then you've got to buy supplies for the 4 nights you'll be sleeping in a field, which is about £20 plus whatever alcohol you decide to take. And then you get there, and hope you've bought enough food and drink to make it not so desperate to spend £8 on a burger and a coke. It's weird when you come back from a festival and all of a sudden a can doesn't cost a quid and a bottle isn't two.

So yes, going to two festivals is a big step for me, and an exciting one and a really cool and fun thing and a quite naughty thing all at the same time. Hah, well my mum and dad have left for for two weeks and it falls smack in the middle of it all, and I'm supposed to be saving and looking for a part time job, however I can't really just say to them, "naaah I'm gonna spend £200 instead" so hopefully with a bit of help from my sister looking after the cat, they neeeeed never know. And if they ever find out, I'll just tell them it's a poetry festival, which kind of has an element of truth to it, just not that much...I mean there will be poetry there, and multi coloured sheep but I'm pretty sure with the exception of the sheep I'm really just going for the music.

And the words music festival usually fill them with a sort of dread that I'll end up dying of a drug educed coma, where in lies only a smidge of truth, if we're going to relapse then why not in a pretty safe as houses environment? I'd never get out of my head around here, it's too dangerous, it's a little dangerous getting drunk in Wolves, your mugging likelihood gets quadrupled.

So yeah, mega fun times ahead!

The Fantastic Four Bore

Well hello there and welcome to a brand new thing for me, a first bit of blogging on my laptop! Wizard cool eh? Not much of a difference for you mind, but that’s not the point, point is due to the wonders of wireless networking I’m writing this in the lounge and may well post this off from the garden, that’s technology my friends, that’s the future as we see and hear and read and WOW OH MY GOD I’M SO HAPPY!

Now then, what’s happening in the world of Toby, well I’m around a week older than the last post and around a grand poorer, however I have a lump of technology attached to me and that’ll keep me going for the next three years no problem, so yeah, investment in the future of a rising star of English literature, or expensive toy to watch comfort dvds when it all gets a bit much and I’m home sick. Probably a bit of both if we’re being honest.

So in the past week, hmm well went to go see Fantastic Four (against my will) on orange Wednesday and all that can be said is thank god that it was an orange Wednesday otherwise a gross injustice would have been served. The first was an utterly soulless piece of work and the second only builds on that frame. I think it suffers from some very fundamental flaws. Firstly, the superheros themselves, suck, right out, straight up aren’t very good. The stretchy captain fantastic, who…has long arms is constantly pushing the “learning is more cool than football” angle it just makes you want him to stretch tooooo far. His wife to be, can turn invisible…great if you’re eight. And a massive rock, which seems to be more of a disability than a superpower. Undeniably the human torch is way cool, but by the time you get round to that you’ve sort of lost interest. And with him really being the only one with a decent power the rest seem to just be following him round while he does all the cool things. The film struggles, constantly, to find disasters that could possibly use all their powers at once…and it’s just tiresome.

Another way this film falls down is the terrible, terrible, terrible, can’t say that enough acting. Everyone bar the human torch is embarrassing, the two characters who apparently due to get married behave more like brother and sister, and their thinking faces don’t much differ to their pain or anger or happy faces, they might as well used unknown actors and done it all on the cheap? And the guy from Nip/Tuck turning up again to revive his role as the campest and least scary villain of recent history with Action Man eyebrows hamming it up as the bad guy turning out closer to Freddy Mercury than Freddy Kruger.

So please, I know summer holidays are coming up, and what with the rain pissing down every five minutes a trip to the cinema could tempt you, but really…don’t see this. Or anything, I can’t really think of one film out at the moment that I want to see. The trip wasn’t a complete loss though however as the trailers showed me two films that I’ll definitely be exchanging my orange Wednesday codes for in coming weeks.

Firstly Evan Almighty looks really dodgy. It’s the sequel to Bruce Almighty, minus Jim Carey which should start alarm bells all over the shop but one important factors remains and that’s Steve Carell, the guy who single handedly stole the show in the first film remains and grows a beard, I dunno, I laughed at the way he said “sheep” so I might well enjoy this more than the average person. He’s part of that beautiful stable of stupid low brow movies that I honestly just lap up. Hah, so maybe that’s one to go see?

Also The Simpsons movie looks like it may well slay all those who see it, I was laughing about the trailer a full two hours after on the way out of the cinema… and here it is -

Okely, I’m off out, I’ve got more to say though so yaaaaarp I’ll be back!

Enjoy your Mondays.

x

Dreaming only of spring.

Good morning and evening and night.

I’m feeling very chipper and happy thus completely proving I’m a bi-polar nutcase without all the fun drugs and writing contracts to produce amazing works of fiction, never the less I can create works of fiction. I think I can anyway, that’s a half truth that stands one foot firmly in fact but the other in some amazing world that I create myself. Whenever writing fiction I’ve always had to pull off my own resources to produce it. I need to get worked up into a state to write and sometimes that’s when I produce my most vicious moments. But it’s only ever written down; I’m not a nasty person because I’ve never really transferred any of that emotion I’ve ever felt from the page to the person.

For a time it would be the case for all my emotions. I’d write at great lengths before about love and what it could do to you and how it could “make you feel and pick you up and send you off to another place free of everything shit and dark and just keep you in that place of utter happiness for that one incredible moment” but I’d never actually take a leap and a guess and a shot in the dark and act on any of those big words and romanticised gestures.

Every relationship before Nathalie I’d fallen into. I’d not tried to get into them so they came along and they were there and so was I and all of a sudden I was in a relationship not knowing where I was supposed to be going with it all or what I was supposed to do with either of them. They were fun but they never felt more than a friendship that got a bit passionate at times but nothing really other than physical connections where made, everyone likes to be held and everyone likes to be kissed.

Nathalie was the first girl I’d ever had to chase. I’ve had to seek this relationship out and work so hard on it I almost consider it to be one of the greatest achievements of my life in the last few years, that may read inexplicitly naïve and reek of teenage stupidity but it’s my genuine opinion. The levels of trust I’ve had to gain and keep make me feel better as a person. I don’t feel so loose and unpredictable, I feel more grounded then ever before. I had to be, I had to be the stable one, you can only be fucked around so many times before you give up on things I suppose, and I feel guilty for writing about this so candidly so I’ll leave this one for the time being, I don’t like whispers behind backs but I don’t really think of this as that. For once I don’t just write things down, she knows she’s everything there is to be and I feel lighter for it, you shouldn’t keep things to yourself. Call it my tip of the day, tell someone something you’ve wanted to tell them for a long time, it doesn’t matter if they turn you down or put you off you’ll feel better and to a certain extent that’s really all that matters, you can’t live for other people your entire life, eventually you’ve got to look up and take control of your own matters, selfish is good sometimes.

Ok in fascinating news I’ve ordered a new laptop. I say new, by which I mean my first ever lap top. And it’s a pretty one, it’s a Sony Viao and it’s white and it talks to me in my sleep, I’ve bought it a 500gb external hard drive to be friends with and they’re currently on their way from jersey to come and play round my house. I think we’re going to have the best summer ever. I was looking at the mac notebook for so long, but it was just outside of the budget and if you’ve ever seen the diddy tiny screens you’ll understand why I’ve gone for me (still not massive but better than 12”) 15 and a half” screen. Plus while I really admire the way they work, giving you everything you need to have fun on a computer I just couldn’t help but worry about never having owned one, I wouldn’t know it’s little funny ticks. Much as I do with a PC, what with my mum being a home working accountant so long before her new job, I can remember playing on computers when they were black and green and floppy disks really were floppy (and huge). Ah memories. I was on the internet when I was about 6, I think, looking at the moon landings with my mum on dial up. I’m not quite totally internet generation, but I’m not that far off it? And this is the first computer I’ve ever bought for myself, I’m hoping it’s a good one, from all the reviews I’ve read Sony = quality, and Mike’s had a good few years with his. So woop woop indeed.

Currently listening to Patrick Wolf – Bluebells

For some reason Patrick is giving up live music, I’ll have to make the most of him at Carling, seen him twice before now and he’s genuinely magical.

Anyway, enjoy the song, (hopefully) enjoy the words and goodnight.

x

Barmouth Day Out! 15/06/07

Barmouth was ace and wet! And then dry!

We all caught crabs!

Hah, yeah I never get tired of that one.

Ok! Pictures!

(crabbing pictures supplied by nathaliedar)

You make patterns in my face, you painted pictures with my tears.

I'm feeling old and I'm feeling bored and I'm feeling tired and I'm not sure if I've lost my fight or my fire or that I've got no place to put my fight or fire anymore. I'm confused and on the edge of my emotions currently, I feel trapped with these feelings that are simply rising up and I've got no where to put them because they're spurned at every advance. And I'm made to feel stupid and alone and no longer part of this little collective we've got, we're not sharing problems anymore there just are problems and then if I'm not causing them I'm not able to make them go away. I feel just like I did when I was a stupid 16 year old kid. I've fooled myself into thinking that I've managed to master myself and know how I feel and how other people feel and I just don't have a clue, the last 11 months therefore have simply been guess work that's managed to pay off.

The sun is setting and I'm really feeling very hot and all my energy is sapped. I've not really slept and maybe I'm just punching at shadows and everything will be fine. I know I haven't changed. Maybe I have and I didn't realise and I'm this monster, but I don't think I deserve to feel this way.



This week I am going to get back to my roots and faff around with Mikey. I miss last summer so much, even though it was the summer where everyone left it felt so full of expectation and excitement for the future, now I think I know about the future and what it's got in store for me and I'm not sure if I'm petrified or exhilarated by the prospect of it all. I think it's mainly fear. I miss Dickie more than anyone who's left this year for uni and not come back, and he's been gone half the time they have, I miss me Mike and Dickie being round his, just laughing around in the sunshine, watching saurt africkans rugby and lying around on the trampaline giving each other static electric shocks and our amazing 2 pub, pub crawl with one pub being visited twice. Last year I looked forward to leeds festival, this year I look forward to it and dread it at the same time. I'm looking forward to it as everyone will be together, and when everyone is togther, we're a good bunch of people, we've always bounced off each other in a really good way, and it'll be nice waking up with these guys and making fires and drinking and making fires and walking in the mud with these people, but I think in the back of my mind I'll be constantly thinking that it's practically the end of the summer and that in a few days I'll be saying goodbye to everyone all over again to move away to university. I wish I'd gone to Stafford now. Because then at least I'd have my mates with me. I think I'm going to be coming home on the train a few times this year if only for a catch up and a sit down on comfy sofas with warm company.

I need a job currently, quite a lot. I don't think I'm finding it very easy to acustom myself to the new limits on my spending and I'm struggling to do the things I want to do. Because it seems that the things I like, lying around on grass and walking around looking at cows aren't interesting to many people, who infact don't enjoy free things, things have to cost money to do, if they don't cost money to do then they're not actually things at all. I'm going to be bankrupt by the end of August.

Partly to get out the house too, I'm going slightly mental. It seems everything was better when I had a job, I had somewhere to go, I had a reason, I had an importance I had a reason to be asked to things, I'm currently some sort of leech in people's eyes and I have no way of changing that viewpoint without getting a job. Tomorrow I'm going to go out and walk in a line and I don't know where the line will take me only that I don't intend to come home till late and that I don't intend to eat.



I think I'm also developing a drink problem. Which I've always wondered about. I've a stupid relationship with drink, it's part of a really bad personality trait. I can't take my time with things I see them and I want the finnished product already, I forget to savour the moment and I just want the end to almost say that I've arrived at that point. So much so that the actual motion itself is lost in the desire by myself to arrive at the end of it all. Much the same with alcohol, I just want to be drunk. I start drinking and I want to be drunk, if I'm not getting drunk I'll either give up and preserve myself in time for the morning or I'll go all out to get out of my head for a while and that's a progressive cycle and an unhealthy one to say the least. It's the way I've always been but it's only now that I'm looking at it like it's a bad thing, and that it's something I can't do anymore. There was a time where I'd drink with my friends in a barn to see our limits, to literally how much we could put inside ourselves before we reached the edge. We'd pass out, and it wasn't untill a few of us including me nearly probably died one night that we stopped. But I still want to go back to absynth. Because even though I have roughtly 3 memories of that night, they're all brilliant ones. Looking up at the skies with Dickie Messer and Mike, Dickie declairing he'd "been all over the world but that's where I wanna be" pointing bleerily to the moon, we all of course greeted this nonsense with choruses of "yeah man, cos that's the thing yeah" at which point I fell off the chair I was on and scraped my arms off the brick wall. Which I didn't discover the extent of till I woke up feeling like I'd been sandpapered. And with a bigger headache that normal, which came from shots at around...late, where I drank, and dropped, and slept, waking only for a moment to see people tickling Dickie. Only in the morning did I realise they were trying to stop him from dyyyying. I loved asynth night. And anyone there who took part loved it too, the feeling of being totally liberated and just out of your body, less so the having to hold onto the ground for fear of falling off the earth.

But yeah, unless it's absynth I'm not really interested anymore I don't think.

Goodnight.

I'm going to go and eat some multi-vitamins and get my self in shape.

Biffy Clyro - Puzzle

Hello then, I’m currently sitting down and listening ever so intently to the new Biffy album – Puzzle. And I’m bored and it’s a bit sunny and unless I’m in shorts next to a pool the sun doesn’t really appeal to me (I just get sweaty) so I thought, y’know, what that hell I’ll do a sort of review/meandering talk on how good Biffy are and that jazz.

So sit down and get a cuppa, here’s my account of a Biffy journey.

Biffy for me are a bit of a new thing, I’ve got to be honest I’m being a bit of a Johnny come lately on this one, I wasn’t there from the start, I don’t have a tattoo of justboy lyrics on my calf in case of emotive emergency but I’d like to think that I’ve got inside the Biffy groove, and the groove is large and chunky with really nice bouncy bass and the kind of drumming that makes me want to take it up long time.

Ok the sound, it’s confusing, it’s intimidating at first, the first song I ever heard, I didn’t like at all, it was just screaming as far as I could see, and that actually put me off them for absolutely ages. But via the wonders of the internet and Last.fm radio 2 Christmases ago, during a phase where they gave away free subscription content for a month (veering off topic much Marshall?) All The Way Down came up and knocked me sideways, it was soft it was slow and then it ripped and took off at crushing pace just when it needed too, I was intrigued to say the least.

But not that intrigued as it took me a year to actually get round to buying Vertigo Of Bliss, which would be the second album and a bit of a silly place to start, but none the less I played it (skipped to All The Way Down mostly sure) and really liked, however they stayed just an occasional listen till I saw them live. Supporting Bloc Party (strange mix) I really only knew three songs, and with one of them a solely performed fan treat, I stood there a little bit confused but liking all the same.

So I took a gamble, which is a bit rare for me and ordered the first and third albums, oh my I wish I still had my job and could still do that but yes, they arrived and quite simply I feel in love with Blackened Sky, I must have listened to that track 20 times in a week, which when you consider back then I had about 20 hours in a week in which to listen to music, it really did make up a large chunk of that. Justboy I connected with straight off, but that’s probably because it’s such a basic song really. It’s heart is in the right place and the lyrics are pretty much your standard teeny angst love, “I don’t believe in anything” Which can be true, I suppose but it’s the music that drives the song for me, it’s triumphant, it’s a two fingered salute to whoever it is that’s fucking you around, it’s a NER in the fact of those people, much the same with 57. It’s just stomping. It’s a good album for softer slower moments, personal favourites being Christopher’s River and Scary Mary.

And then I saw them live once more, declared them to be the best thing since bread were sliced and bought a poster. Job done.

So the new one, Puzzle. Hm, it’s good, because it’s Biffy and its new and they’re fresh and brill. But, saying that a fair few of these songs have been touted around live for so long it sort of feels all a bit familiar, and as far as I can tell from the first few listens there aren’t as many corner stones with which to hang this album on, nothing’s standing out for me, apart from guilty pleasure Saturday Superhouse and that’s done and dusted with within the second track, I kinda get the feeling the album tails off towards the end.

However this is up for editing, as quite often you really can’t judge Biffy after say, 5 listens, maybe it’ll be upon the 20^th listen that the pieces of this particular PUZZLE fall into place.

I’ll get me coat.

Morning Australia.

I say this because solely, for a while and for a bit this will be an exclusive websiteblogmonogger for Dickie, who is currently on holiday gap year type running around with knees bent behavior in Australia. Not to be confused with the Australia that half my family lives in, they live in the boring horrible parts where you live in constant fear of being bitten by spider or mauled in the go toos by a wombat. But from there I'm sure I'll let other people see, so I'll write a normal blog entry...so it's not just like an open letter to Dickielar.

Ok that was my sister's wedding, I can take credit for technically pressing the clicker on that one, but it was Nathalie that saw the fact that if you zoomed and cropped you could see my Grandmother suspended in a bubble with my nephew, or her great grandson. Which are kind of funkaaaay, and a rather good spot by the Nathalie.

My grandmother is a bit of a strange one, I know nothing about her, nor do I my grandfather, they both up and left my mum when she was a baby and went their separate ways they obviously decided to go as far apart as possible, but they were obviously thinking the same thing as ma ended up in Australia and pa ended up in New Zeeland, apparently pa is still going and is called Trevor Getliff, and that's about as much as I know about that one side of my family. He looked quite nice in the pictures.

I've only actually met one grand parent, tis the thing with having older parents I suppose and she was lovely and probably the reason why I have slightly ginger flecks to my beard. That ginger gene is a strong one. Though I've heard its reccesive, does that mean all the gingers will die out? I hope not, they're the spice of life hair wise.

Moving swiftly on –

Go to Paris for the Eiffel Tower, stay for the Duck outside la louvre.

Paris is really really really wet around April, take that information with you, also take a lot of cocktail sausages and egg mayonnaise sandwiches, as they'll serve you well. As, contrary to popular belief Paris is a French speaking city with French types, who don't know what Cornflakes are, nor cold milk. HEATHENS! Hah, I jest, they have some lovely buildings and stuff.

Tomorrow I'm off to go and get my knee scanned and they'll be telling me how badly shaped it is, I'm not really looking forward to, if you're new to me and my knee, around 4 years ago I slipped on a sports hall surface which had just been buffed so it'd look good in the end of years photos, but was essentially an ice rink. I ruined tendons and dislodged my Patella, which is the knee cap to those who haven't had 4 years of knee science lessons. And that basically floats around having the time of it’s life exploring the parts of my knee it really shouldn't be going to, and I'm hopefully going to have an operation to put it’s libertine days and pin it down to where it should be. That's a figure of speech, as far as I know, no pins involved.

So here's for being able to walk about again like a normal human being.

I'm getting tired.

N'night.

Aren’t this a sparkly looking thing?