Annan Water

Fundamentally trying to make more effort

Smoked too much

.x.

The Abduction of Margaret

Stockholm in 5 days. Woop!

Working kind of hard to get all my OU stuff done before I go. It's going to be a crazy busy few days.

Whilst watching Have I Got News For You on Friday, I discovered that the BNP have a youth movement. For many reasons I find this innately disturbing. So I thought I'd have a look at their website to see the kind of stuff they're trying to indoctrinate kids with. On the surface it seems to be fairly harmless, although I did enjoy the Bible stories with the nationalist morals behind them. But is this how things start? Disaffection with a liberal government leads to radicalisation of the people leads to a party being elected who would be essentially undemocratic. I'm probably over-reacting. I guess England has never had a proper revolution and there are no signs that we're about to start now. I just don't like the idea of radical parties (right and left wing) indoctrinating children with their ideals. It's not right. 

On a slightly lol note, I looked at their proposals for education - after an article of complaining about the National Union of Teachers (or Traitors as they called it) - they want to re-introduce "Grammer" schools, and make sure all children are literate. Perhaps whoever came up with that proposal was bitter that they were never taught to spell properly...

The Hazards of Love sounds much better on good speakers. As do most things. The joy of having awesome speakers still hasn't worn off. 

Time to work.

bai.x.

Be OK

From the lowest low to the highest high. I'd quite like an equilibrium. But for now I'm happy being damn happy. And it's mostly because of these photos:

Beer festival was really good. Tried 4 different ciders - Ouse Valley, Old Goat, Old Spot and Janet's Jungle Juice, which I tried purely because of its name, although sadly it turned out to be quite gross. Had a questionable cheeseburger which was all I ate yesterday. I don't know why I choose to have crap food when I could've had nice noodles and curry and other stuff. 

Spent most of yesterday in somewhat of a mess, between waking and sleeping. But it's all sorted now. It's going to be OK. 

"give me back my broken parts"

But anyway, back to the new camera news - shiny 400D, so excited. I just need proper things to take pictures of now, except for honeysuckle (the photos of which came out better than I could've ever wanted) so I'm even more excited for Stockholm so I'll be able to take loads of photos with a proper good nice camera :) yay. I've got to read all the instructions and stuff over the next week though so I get the best out of it. 

Weirdly I'm looking forward to work tomorrow. Less stress now. 

All the Orwell reading is going well, almost finished 'A Clergyman's Daughter' which is actually a lot better than I remembered it being, still not his greatest, but definitely readable. Hoping to get 'Coming Up for Air' and 'Keep the Aspidistra Flying' done before Stockholm. But I've got a lot of OU work to do as well, so that might be a bit hopeful. 

Music of the day: Greg Laswell. He sounds like the lead singer of Noah & the Whale. Crazy. 

bai.x.

Run My Mouth Off

Been sitting around. Reading lots of Orwell. Managing to acquire weird sleeping patterns, barely slept on Saturday night, slept for 12 hrs Sunday night, barely slept last night. Can't be good. 

But I've been trying to be more okay. Although now it seems like immersing myself in work isn't working as well as it was last week. Sitting in the dark and talking things over helps though. I'm trying. Still feel uneasy sometimes, but I know it'll pass, even if it takes forever, things will change. 

Slightly paranoid about going to work tomorrow. Winding myself up about things that are probably mostly in my head, but I got so wound up on Saturday that I wanted to start punching stuff. This is never good. 

Excitement for Stockholm is growing rapidly ^^ starting to try and find stuff to do, like palace tour! and a gallery with Edvard Munch paintings in, and what looks like the best museum/zoo/gardens ever = *yay!*

Nothing else is happening though. Feeling anti-social this week, so I'm going to go and make food now, and then I'll drink beer and watch CSI. Woo.

"all my days they end too slow"

bai.x.

If I Didn't Know

Feeling horribly uneasy.

Using Jenny and Stephen Colbert to balance things. 

Just don't go away.

(my Hockney poster came)

"something's lost when i translate you"

Transmitter Failure

Just got my hands on Jenny Owen Youngs' new album - "Transmitter Failure" - on track 4, so far so awesome! It's different, and I can see, as she said that the main difference is that she wrote this album with a full band in mind, and so it's a much bigger and punchier sound. But she's still Jenny, and it's still good. I think my favourite so far is the opening track, even though it's only 40 seconds long it's just so... brilliantly concise. 

In other news, I made awesome cupcakes with proper icing. I am well proud ^

London was pretty great. Got very drunk on Saturday night, and ended up wandering around New Cross at 1am. Bought a chicken burger that I probably wouldn't have eaten if I'd been even remotely sober. Sunday I cooked for Chris, and made roast potatoes for the first time ever, and they were actually good... I like cooking at the moment, especially as it appears I can actually cook. Then we went up to King's Cross to the Cross Kings (genius pub name there...) to see Woodpigeon. 

I was a bit dubious about the idea of listening to poets instead of bands. My only memory of seeing poetry being recited live is being forced to go to a thing called 'Poetry Live' at the Corn Exchange when I was in Year 10, which was meant to help with our GCSE English, and I mostly remember it being horribly dull. So I wanted to get there late, but we were bored and decided to just go for 7:30. I'm really glad I got to see it all.

 The first act was Dead Poets - which I could be wrong, but I think I might remember seeing on the Latitude Poetry line-up in the past. Basically consisting of a poet and an MC each doing their bit, it was actually really entertaining and funny, they had a sort of back and forth kind of argument going about the difficulties of putting poetry and MCing together, it worked so well, I'm tempted to go and see them again if I get the chance. 

The second people were poet Aoife Mannix and her accompanying accordionist Janie Armour. They were okay, I think Aoife's words were pretty good, but I was distracted by the music and the sometimes quite lengthy gaps between lines. Also, I was a bit creeped out by Janie. She smiled a bit too much. It distracted me. 

Murray Lachlan Young was fairly awesome. His poems were amusing - like a trilogy he'd written after having writer's block and being told by his friend to smoke weed. So he'd written this weird trilogy of poems about hair. Yes. Hair. His set ended with Woodpigeon accompanying him on a 'song' he'd written about dogging. We got to join in on the chorus which went "and a-dogging I will go" and it was just generally amusing. You kind of had to be there though.

Then Woodpigeon. Oh they're so twee and folky and cute. They only played one song I really recognised, and lots of other stuff, including a cover of ABBA's "Lay Your Love On Me" which was surprisingly good. Mark, the lead guy from Woodpigeon lists ABBA as one of his favourite lyricists, so that probably explains it. The guy playing the ukulele who is (I presume) an honorary member of Woodpigeon played one of his own songs which was good - he goes under the name Honeybear. I felt a bit sorry for them though, the crowd was quite noisy at times, and after people shh-ing other people, someone then shh-ed Mark when he was trying to tell a story about the song he was about to play, and so he was like "oh, okay I'll just play the song then...". The song was a story about a guy whose wife died and then he got his sons to bury him alive because he'd seen something in a newspaper about a boy being brought back to life, so he wanted to spend a few more minutes with his wife, but the doctor didn't get there in time to dig him out, so he died. Sad and sweet. I want to find that song. If only I knew what it was called. 

So good all round. Apart from being really tired and having to leg it for the train. 

Oh Jenny. You make me happy. I'll listen to you for weeks now. [edit] I just found the sequel to the first song on the album. Oh so good. SO GOOD!

bai.x.

Seasoned Eyes Were Beaming

I've fallen in love with Sara Lov. She is awesome. I've been listening to her album pretty much non-stop all week. It's that good. Oh yes. And as a result have also discovered Devics (her band) who are also pretty good. 

Going to invest too much money in buying icing nozzle-y things so I can do proper amazing cupcake icing and make proper amazing cupcakes. I'm quite excited. 

Been working super hard the last few days, so for once I'm actually ahead. This makes me pleased, although I was quite complacent today, so I'm hoping I'll be able to keep it up, and I'll do more this evening.

What else? I read Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, and it was brilliant. I couldn't put it down. So I bought Kafka on the Shore by him, which I'm going to read once I've got through all my Orwell. Every single last bit. Only just started, on Animal Farm. It's weird, I can't remember the last time I read it, but it was definitely a long time ago, before I studied Russia and Germany in History, and so now I can see lots of parallels that I just didn't quite get before. 

Got pretty drunk last night. Was good, hanging out with Chris and Smem in Pizza Hut & the Regal. Will be hanging out in London this weekend getting equally drunk and going to see Woodpigeon. Yay. 

Things are getting better though. Maybe. Immersing myself in work. 

Other things I like at the moment: Stephen Colbert (I bought his book "I am America (and so can you!)" waiting for it to arrive), flowers, having courgettes growing in my garden, standing on motorway bridges taking long exposure photos at night.

I'm going to Stockholm to see Fi at the end of the month before she comes home :) well excited. Even though Ryanair ripped me off with their stupid £10 credit card charge. Bastards. But it will be well good. Realised this will be the first time I've ever flown by myself. Scariness. 

Anyway. I should get on with working. Lots to do. 

"something carrying me that night, I know that it was you"

bai.x.

Worse Things Happen At Sea

Explodable headspace. 

Anywhere but here.

Wonder if I'm ever right about my mental state. 

Designated fall-apart day tomorrow.

Will I let it happen?

So desperate not to be needy. 

"and i hope you're doing fine, cos me, i'm doing fucking great"