Olympic Success - Real life failure

I have a large amount of shit that I need to do, however for the last nine days I have happily forgone the activities of sorting out my life/ seeing family and friends to spend  approximately 18 hours a day reveling in the success of sport.

I am in no way saying that this is a waste of time, but I definitely think that I need to lay off. My already slightly addictive personality has kicked into overdrive due to both the variety of viewing material available and the vast success that our team has enjoyed thus far.

This has had a negative effect not only on my capacity to engage in social/organisational activities, but also in more basic tasks. Like washing/ eating regularly.

HOW I FEEL WHEN GB WINS GOLD 

HOW I LOOK WHEN GB WIN GOLD 

Long may it continue!!!!!! 

English Dignity

Around this time last year, my classmates and I went on a field trip around the picturesque Swiss and Italian Alps. We observed mountains, glaciers, dams, ammonites and all manner of interesting geological sites. The only major downside to the whole trip was our transportation. The sun in central Europe is cruel even in early summer, and the minivan we spent the majority of each day in while we negotiated mountain passes high in the hills was a sweat box at any temperature over 20'C. The compounded heat on our pale and unprepared  bodies was reminiscent of a scene from a Vietnamese POW camp.

The highlight of the entire trip was a two night stay in the magnificent resort of Serpiano, a five star luxury hotel nestled in the hills of southern Switzerland, near to the Swiss-Italian border. 

As a general rule on these sorts of trips, the expectation is that you will be staying in 15 a room sleeping pit where running water is a luxury, so this was a wonderful surprise. 

The highlight of the hotel  was it's ample swimming and water based relaxation facilities. In particular, it's steam and sauna rooms. After four hours on a sweaty coach we donned some towels, lay back....and continued to sweat.

It was paradise. 

There was one aspect of the whole experience though that we found slightly jarring. In order to enjoy the facilities to their full extent, nakedness underneath towels was mandatory. This wasn't too much of an  issue for our little group. The English get through events such as these by clinging to our towels for dear life and desperately pretending that nobody else is naked under theirs. This was all well and good, until a new force capable of causing massive awkwardness among our ranks made itself painfully apparent. 

Naked Italian Men.


Apparently the towel was one item of clothing to many, and letting it all fly was the way to go. They were completely unfased by their state of nakedness and, for the next couple of hours, we were subjected to an  unrelenting display of wang.

Again, this was not too much of an issue, because we ourselves were not naked. We kept ourselves tightly wrapped in towels and scuttled to and from our respective changing rooms. There was one activity though, that could not be completed clothed. A dip in the plunge pool. The open area between the sauna and steam room had a rather handsome plunge pool and although we were all keen to go in visits to it had to be timed with military precision.

After 30 minutes of sweating my guts out in the sauna, I decided that it was time to  brave the pool. I checked to make sure the coast was clear and gingerly stepped from my sanctuary. I checked a final time, dropped the towel, and hopped up the steps of the pool to immerse myself in the icy water.

It was a this precise moment, that a pack of 45 year Italian men descended on the sauna rooms. Naked as the sunrise and looking my way.

The hell they were seeing my boobs.

As I sat hunched in the 2C water, waiting for them to get out of sight so I could get out and return blood to my extremities, I had a thought. I had just voluntarily thrown myself into a vat of icy water (I really did, the urgency of my actions is in no way exaggerated) and was now sitting in it waiting for solitude......or death. 

This is because I was raised English, and we are not naked. Ever. 

I stand by my actions. 

Tortoise Me

When I was very young, I was very deaf. I had trouble understanding anything that was said to me and often ignored people. This confused me school and distressed my parents greatly. It did not bother me though, I was too deaf to understand what was going on.

It was like living in a world where everybody talks like they do on The Sims.

As it was so long ago, I can only remember a tiny amount about not being able to hear.  The one memory that sticks out concerns a song we had to sing at school assembly. I'm guessing the purpose of the song was to instil the importance and value of friendship and communication in our young minds. The teacher sang it through a couple of times, and then we had to join in. 

The lyrics of the song confused me slightly, but I was not about to start questioning authority. I was already getting in enough trouble because of my inability to follow basic instructions. I inhaled and began blasting out my rendition of a song entitled Talk to Me, at full volume. 

It wasn't my proudest moment. 

After this my parents decided to seek medial advice. 

Now I can hear. 

THE END

Horse Porn

One fun and little known fact about me is that when I was in secondary school, I was very into drama. There is little about my life these days that would indicate this, but my level of commitment at the time was fierce. I spent  hours and hours a week rehearsing, learning lines and practising stage entrances. These performances weren't just confined to my school stage either. I performed nationally at numerous locations, ranging from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to the Globe. I was involved in improvisation, classical theatre, Shakespearian masterpieces, comedies, abstract miming and plays that were first performed in ancient Greece.

I was quite the little Thespian.  

When I look back on this period of my life, one play, out of the near fifty I was a part of stands starkly out. This play set the tone for the majority of productions I would be involved in later and, on reflection,  is probably one of the most bizarre things I have ever been involved in. 

First, lets set the scene. 

In year 9, I was thirteen years old. I had messy hair, was a foot shorter than I am now, and desperately needed braces. The last major school production had been the Wizard of Oz two years previous, in which I had been a Munchkin of the Lullaby League. The head of drama was not a fan of musicals, and the experience had left most people soured to the idea of doing one again. It was decided that we should do something new. Something......... different. 

I was presented with a script for this: 

Equus is a play about the reasons why a young man by the name of Allen has blinded horses at the stable where he works. The psychologist who interviews him slowly discovers that due to a lack of influence from the outside world, and some seriously confused ideas about sexuality, young Allen has created a religion with a horse at it's helm that he worships through highly charged semi-masturbatory self flagellation. 

A year 9 production of Equus. You can't make this shit up. 

Several of the older years were drafted in to play some of the more challenging roles.  I was cast as the leads' mother, an overprotective religious crackpot who provides much of the ideology on which young Allen builds his sexy horse religion. With the cast prepared and a date set for performance, it was time to learn the lines. 

I'm not entirely sure what my parents thought when I skipped home with a copy of this in my hand. I imagine its's how Linda Blaire's parents felt upon first reading the script for The Excorcist. 

All doubts aside though, I was allowed to continue and spent my time after school watching a screaming topless guy spank himself with a whip and making wire horse heads. 

My mother still says it's the best play we ever did. 

Modern Music and The Future

I was thinking the other day about old people. I'm not too sure how I feel about the idea of getting old, it never looks like much fun. There is however, one particular facet which I am looking extremely forward to.

One thing the elderly seem to particularly enjoy is listening to the music of their youth. It must evoke memories of a long past hey day when the world was young and anything is possible. A once familiar sound, long since forgotten could suddenly awake new life into the winter years of these fine individuals.

This is all very well and good when the big hits are 'It's a long way to Tipperary' and 'We'll meet Again', but what about our generation? What combination of music and lyrics will bring us back from the brink of an endless grey reality?

Will THIS be a common site in nursing homes and residential care centres across the U.K. by 2075???

I SURE HOPE SO!!!!

When I Dance

When I dance....

It looks like I'm having a seizure in slow motion

Its a far cry from the intended result

O2 Y U no luv me?

I like to think of myself as a moderately social person. In my younger days you could often see me languishing about clubs in the early hours of the morning, surrounded by many a chum. My social activities at present are rather more tame, but get out and see people I do. When I don't feel like seeing people, I do what any respectable person would. Retreat to the sofa and watch TV until my eyes bleed.

Sometimes however, there is an incongruity between what I want to do and what my friends feel like doing. I would like to do something, and they would like to do nothing. This is a period of high personal vulnerability. Bearing in mind I also have literally no initiative when it comes to organising my social activities and tend to just wait for people to contact me. It's at THIS precise moment, when I'm sitting along in my house, waiting for my phone to do something, that this then occurs.

A FRIEND!!!!!!!!

 I scuttle over to my phone, imagining all the fun I am going to have with my as yet unspecified friend.

Enjoy a salad

Watch a movie

Partake in healthy, outdoor pursuits

Laugh at your friend's really old phone

Then I realise who wants to talk to me.

I don't know HOW O2 knows how I'm feeling like this, but they always do. Because of the already sad feelings brewing inside me, the blow is is particularly crushing. The pièce de résistance occurs when the offending text is informing me that I am out of calling credit. It's like O2 is saying to me 

'Not only are you a loner, you're broke as fuck too. Have a nice day :D' 

Motherfuckers. 

Musical Tumours

This may sound like a bizarre topic of conversation, but I swear it makes perfect sense and has nothing to do with real tumours. It could quite easily have been called 'Musical Fungal Infections' or 'Musical Tapeworms'.

In order to properly explain what a musical tumour is, first the 'Scale of Music' needs to be discussed. The Scale of Music is a simple way of classifying popular song and is comprised of two extremes. At one end you have your high brow thinking man's music; James Blake, The Knife, Bjork, Postal Service, anything by Laurie Anderson. The sort of bands you quote at people when you're desperately trying to impress them.

At the other you have your gratuitously cheesy bubblegum pop. The Venga Boys, Blue, The Glee Soundtrack. The sort of stuff you  sing along to at weddings and when your doing housework. Stuff at this end is hardcore guilty pleasure, you love it, but that love is tinged with self loathing.

In the middle lies the Twilight Zone, Top 40 bands which in no way are going to alter your perception of the Universe, but are a far cry from Gina G. Bands like Coldplay, Maroon 5 and the Arctic Monkeys. Inoffensive 'four chords and the truth' set-ups. It's within THIS zone that the musical tumour is born.

A musical tumour is an artist, band, or even a song that you DESPERATELY don't want to like but eventually do. They grow on you against your will; like a tumour. My most recent encounter with this phenomenon at the hands of the ginger haired guitar swinger Ed Sheeran. When he first began gracing the airwaves of British popular radio stations I was all like:

Three Short Months Later......

This pattern has repeated itself many times. Over the Summer I had to begrudgingly accept that I did like Coldplay, after a long period of solid scorn. 

The most bitter pill to swallow was my emerging love of The Smiths. For years I had hated the Smiths, and I had not been quiet about it.You could almost define me as a person by my hatred of The Smiths. You know how some people are good listeners, or enjoy painting? I hated The Smiths. It was universal and all encompassing. It's what I did. 

Not anymore......

It is a hell unlike any other.