I never could get the hang of Thursdays

Great

Don’t get me wrong, I love The Libertines, perhaps a bit too much. I dance around like an idiot whenever one of their songs come on, especially this one.

But I think it’s great that they’re not going to reform or do any more gigs. It’s like Fawlty Towers, only twelve episodes, but great episodes. Just leave it as it is.

Also I was lucky enough to see them at Leeds festival last year. It was fabtastic. It makes me feel smug.

I don’t especially like it for the taste, the blend.

It’s the nostalgia!

You may remember me posting this a while ago.

It was left on my phone, which I lent to my housemate, and he found, and read, and laughed at. Apparently it was good advice.

God knows what else was on that phone which he shouldn’t have seen, I can’t remember.

No other sports commentary is quite like it. When you have a game that can last upto five days there’s no point rushing things. It creates the perfect background noise for that barbecue, your report that needs to be done or just reading the paper. Imagine it alike to radio four, spoken word, opinions, but still commentary of the cricket running at a snails pace.

“Are you a fan of the theatre Geoffrey?” “Not especially, John” “England on 213 for three”

You get more detail about the weather than any other forecast, better guests than Jonathon Ross, the best cricketing advice and history, batting averages and jargon than any other casual radio program. Not to mention the best theme music (nice bit from the Blues Brothers on the end of that clip).

Just by listening you’ll soon know what three slips, a gully, backward short leg, mid off and mid on mean. It seeps in through your ears into a big cricket cavity in your brain, leaving you wanting more, eager to know if we’re going to enforce the follow-on.

It is the ultimate in easy listening. The voice of Yorkshireman Geoffrey Boycott justifying every second of airtime he takes, dispensing cricketing knowledge and advice to the captains, recalling in detail old matches which he played in, players and test series’.

There’s nothing like it.

Hello

I start my new job on Tuesday as an Assistant Park Warden, finally, after being on benefits for 10 months. Thanks future jobs fund! I get to work mostly outside in parks during the nice weather, and more importantly, not at a desk.

Also, I’m going to a few festivals this year. Latitude for a weekend, Leeds (mostly for The Libertines) on the Friday. I’m thinking about others too.

Latitude Festival - line up

I wouldn’t mind seeing; Belle & Sebastian, Laura Marling, The Maccabees, Richard Hawley, The XX, The Horrors, Vampire Weekend, The Coral and lots of other literary and comedy performances, such as John Cooper Clarke and Mark Lamarr.

Leeds Festival - line up

I wouldn’t mind seeing; Libertines (obviously), The Cribs, The Maccabees (again), The Mystery Jets, The Futureheads and maybe Arcade Fire. There’s tonnes more to be announced for Leeds as well.

And if I can go to Kendal Calling I’d like to see; The Coral (again), The Futureheads (again if I’m not tired of them), OK GO, Lancashire Hotpots and The Craig Charles Funk And Soul Show (which looks hilariously brilliant).

I’m excited.

Simon Cowell is evil. This we know.

Luckily the evil forces of Cowell Inc. were defeated at the battle of Christmas number one by a proper song that was written eighteen years prior to the X Factor dribble. It was nothing to do with money, just the dominance of X Bollocks over more or less everything, and that by having a TV competition to manufacture a local karaoke singer into superstar doesn’t make for good music.

Anyway, now Cowell is using his enormous influence and power within the music industry to raise money with a charity single for the victims of the Haiti earthquake.

Good, maybe he isn’t entirely evil.

I have a problem though. He’s getting all his pop-chums together to cover a song. A good song (this has happened before with Hallelujah). His next cover is the brilliant Everybody Hurts by R.E.M.

Please please please don’t make it shit. It’s an amazing song and it could so easily be ruined by rushing it through in a week or getting pop singers to sing little bits themselves. If you’re seriously going to try cover this song for something so important, do it right and make it genuinely good. I don’t want to hear any more Cowell-esque tripe created by the music machine that only sells because Susan Boyle whines “Soooooooometimes” once during the outro.

Imagine this song reminded you of your mum dying, just because it happened to come out at the same time. Imagine how awful it would be to hear a shite-sobby-pop rip-off that was rushed through in a week, that makes you cringe every time you hear it (and you will, because Cowell will make sure it gets plenty of air-time).

If you’re going to do a cover, do it right.

You may think that Everybody Hurts is a sad song, quite the opposite. Listen to the outro, it really lifts you up.

Back to my point. Good effort. It is a very noble thing to do, pulling all those strings around you to raise some money for a good cause, but maybe leave the song writing to one of the “musicians” you’re getting in and make something original which is actually good, and sells because people like it, not the people that are in it.

Source – The Mail Online

I’ve just found some not-exactly love notes, but more love conversations I’d hidden away on my computer for a year or two, unread in a long time. Without saying much more about it, my stomach turned over and I felt a huge gap reappear in my life.

I know I said I wont blog about personal things, but where else was I going to write this?

How things change. Nothing good lasts forever.

There have been more complaints by university students on value for money for their courses. I agree entirely and if I wasn’t finishing this year I’d be one of them.

There was a representative from Salford University on BBC radio four’s consumer programme You And Yours today, and he didn’t convince me any more about the care my university has for its paying students. The university does have good facilities, libraries, stuido space, that kind of thing, but I, like most other students, still find it easier to work from home. Also, our contact time with tutors is ridiculous for  £3000 a year. Normally I’d see my tutor for maybe 3 hours a week, if that. For my final major project I haven’t had any contact time with my tutor (except two informal meetings with a tutor-in-training) and I’m set to hand in my final module tomorrow. If I can do it without seeing her at all, what am I paying for?

My conclusions is that I’m another person going through the degree machine. I get a degree, the university gets another good mark for a sucessful graduate, and I’m pushed into the world of work feeling completely unable to do anything. I don’t feel like I’ve learnt anything in the last year. I could have improved as much if I had taught myself. I may as well have applied to the open university and had a full time job at the same time.

Universities are like glorfied libraries, and I’ve only used ours twice this year.

Today is the 5th of April. Start of the financial year, today we (well, not us students) get taxed and whatever else. Companies across the country will be starting the books afresh today.

Most importantly though it’s my birthday, dear reader, and I have turned twenty-one.

I’ve not been looking forward to it. I’ve been quite happy at twenty, that being said I was happy at eighteen, however now I’m not feeling so bad about it. New horizons are ahead of me when I finish university, such as having my own house for the first time, having a job, earning money, being seen as a proper adult and not being a student any more.

All the student-ness can continue though, it depends what I make it. I’ve got a hunch that’s what is going to happen if I move in with coursemates, I can see myself smoking more, drinking more, cleaning less. Why not?

Anyway, teenage years are behind me (I counted the last one as twenteen). Roll on the twenties.

Plumbers have a lot to hide you know, much akin to Freemasons. We are unaware of their importance because their work goes mostly unnoticed.

By day, they are plumbers, doing plumbing, fixing taps and the like. By night they are the watchmen/women of the netherworld, Vampire slayers, exorcists and witch doctors. They can take many forms when they don’t want to be seen as plumbers, to avoid being called up on when a pipe bursts when they actually need to be fighting a vampire. The disguise of an old man carrying a bag of pipes around a train station, when actually those pipes are stakes made of silver.

Plumbers know things we don’t. Filling our houses with materials to ward off evil spirits when they come to fix the boiler, and sticking an extra charge on top. No wonder copper piping costs so much.

We don’t talk enough these days.