The 31st Of October

I've never liked Halloween. Read somewhere today that the population of this country spend more on this festival than any other in the year, apart from Christmas - which seems vastly over-the-top for something which is essentially a festival of dressing-up. I have never been trick or treating either - I sense now in my mid-twenties would be an unconventional time to start - and have rather tended to spend the 31st of October ignoring the doorbell ringing all night while I try to watch telly.


I don't think I'm particularly fond of any festival in the year particularly, apart from the beer and music kind. Christmas and New Years always seem a bit underwhelming and disappointing, Easter doesn't really mean anything to me, not bothered either way by Bonfire Night, and I've just mentioned Halloween. Some people seem to really get into this stuff, and I wonder why I don't?


Spent the day preparing posters for upcoming gigs with my band, went for a walk, drank loads of tea, and listened to Sandinista! by The Clash, which seems to be my favourite record at the moment. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZOPte4hlqE

Steve Earl And The Dukes (And Duchesses)(And My Bladder)

Went to see Steve Earl and the Dukes tonight in Brighton. Fantastic show, with a mixture of country, rock and bluegrass. One thing struck me tonight, apart from the main-man's stage presence and musicianship, was that he must be one of very few Southern-american country singers to be openly left-wing and fighting for worthy causes and injustices. Brandishing his red-star-clad electric guitar, and superb band of musicians, he sings thumping country songs talking of the struggles of the working man, fighting for the unions and the against the aggression of capitalism. Not knowing much of his material before this evening - only really knowing his name and how respected a songwriter he is - I was more than pleasantly surprised.


Once again at a concert I made the error of having a few pints before the show, and therefore spent most of the first half thinking more about the state of my bladder rather than the music, which seems to be the norm for me attending these sort of things. I hope it isn't just me. 

The Spy Who Shagged Me

Watching Roger Moore copulate his way around the world in 'Moonraker' this afternoon - and he had literally slept with four women by about a third of the way through the film - made me wonder how often James Bond goes to get himself checked out at the STD clinic. I certainly hope he does. As he travels the globe, toppling corrupt regimes and master criminals in the name of the British Empire, he could be squirting gallons of chlamydia into these doe-eyed admin girls he seems to meet all the time. 


I can't imagine he ever decides to 'rubber-up', and certainly not of his own accord, as all of his sex seems to happen in a perfect, romantic, flowing Hollywood kind of way - as the string section in the orchestra starts playing passionately and he and his lover just drop out of shot and onto the silk-laden sheets of the bed. You never see him him fumbling drunkenly with a condom wrapper, and rolling it as quick as he can onto his attentive loaded weapon. He probably encourages them to just go along with it, reassuring them that the disease is largely symptomless, and then does some kind of shit pun.


And he cares not.


Having slept with her dream man, she will likely awaken to find he has left the house, probably stolen some important documents, be rendered pregnant with one of Bond's many illegitimate spawn, probably get killed by a some kind of comic-book villain - with metal teeth, or one arm, or a very sharp bowler hat - by the end of the film, and to top it all off she will be infected with some rampant sexual disease. 
I just hope he was worth it.

Thought For The Day #2

What to write today? I sense these daily entries may start to peter out, as on the last few occasions I've written very little and struggle to think of anything to write about. Although this maybe because I tend to leave them until about one in the morning to write and am generally totally knackered by this point. Technically, I should be doing it by midnight or it isn't daily - but I just so happen to have signed onto an american blog site, which is on american time, so I have in fact until six in the morning to write this and get away with it being daily. Provided of course that at any point I don't write the next day's one before 6am - which is fairly unlikely - I will manage to keep this weird bet with myself - that isn't actually a bet, just a mild compulsive disorder.


The thing is, I should be able to conjure at least one interesting thought from a whole day in my life, everyone should really. At some point in a 24-hour day some thought, no matter how small or menial, will pop into your head and make you analyse it. Surely. I think it may just be hard to remember it when you try to recount it during tiredness. 
I certainly hope that at some point everyday everyone thinks about something, and experiences something of interest in their day.


Luckily, my thought for the day for this blog, was a thought about thinking for something to write for a blog, which is delightfully post-modern. 


And self-absorbed. 

Thought For The Day

Some thoughts I had today:

"Hmm, turns out I am not very good at squash any more"

"How did Iain Duncan Smith become so amazingly posh?"

"I think I might have beans on toast for lunch"

"Website forums are presumably started promising interesting debate and discourse, but always seem to end up being the same nine people just slagging each other off"

What I am thinking now:

"I am really very tired and don't feel like like writing anything at all"

Mr Bean

Just watched some of Mr Bean on ITV3, and couldn't help but wonder if I was essentially just watching a disabled person make a twat of himself. He is vaguely funny, as he manages to engineer himself into his ridiculous antics, but I found myself questioning it tonight more than I have before. 

As he was preparing his Christmas turkey, and lost his wristwatch in it while attempting to stuff it, and then somehow managed to end up with it stuck on his head, I wondered what his actual medical condition was? And then when he was trying to sneak out of a multi-storey car park without paying, and made that pale blue three-wheeler topple over in the process, I wondered how he managed to pass his driving test in the first place?

Maybe I'm just not supposed to think this stuff.

The Good And Bad Things About Religion

Bad Things About Religion:

- It causes fear

- It causes bigotry

- It causes lies and deceit 

- It causes exclusivity 

- It causes wars and killing in its name

 

Good Things About Religion:

- It teaches us that we are not the only thing that matters

- It teaches us that there is more to life than material possession 

- It provides comfort in times of grief

- It gave us gospel music, stained glass windows and Christmas crackers

- It stopped Cat Stevens making any more records

In The Queue For The AMEX

This evening I experienced my first Albion home game at the new AMEX stadium. It was an interesting experience, and I was impressed with the flash and modern arena. Brighton lost one-nil to West Ham in what was probably quite a predictable result. The real disappointment for me this evening, apart from the bloke sitting behind me that kept saying 'Jesus Christ!' all through the game when something didn't go our way - which got a bit much after the 200th time, was all the queuing;
As soon as you got to Brighton station you had to queue to get onto a train to Falmer, in which hundreds of people were forced to fit in 3 carriages, to such an extent that I spent the journey with half of my face in someone's armpit and the other half breathing in some bloke's bad breath - something which didn't help my claustrophobia. Then you had to queue to get out of the station, and then queue to get into the ground. After the game you then have to do all of the queuing in reverse again (not backwards, just the same bits again.)
I am not a patient queuer.
But it was good to see a full stadium of Albion fans - even if a large chunk of them have only jumped onto the team's recent success - as it represent a pride in it's sport that the city of Brighton and Hove has been lacking for many years. And it is an impressive football stadium. I might not like the queuing, but I was proud to be a loyal fan tonight.

T.W.A.T.S.

Started walking the South Downs Way today. This is some a group of friends and I are planning to do in stages over the winter whenever we can, and today marked the start of our challenge, walking from Winchester to Exton in the Hampshire countryside. It was only 13 or so miles and we stopped at a couple of pubs on the way, but it felt good to start a little project like that.
Unfortunately, we stopped for a pint in Winchester before we got going and didn't actually start walking until about 3, so had to navigate the last couple of miles in the dark.


We have decided to call ourselves, for the purposes of this project, 'The Walking And Trekking Society'. Fairly respectable until you consider the abbreviation is TWATS. Might get some T-shirts printed up for the next leg.

The Saturday Boy

Felt like a real man today when I did some plumbing. You get a real pride out of performing any task that for some reason seems inherently manly. I didn't end up knee deep in gushing smelly water and flood the house, I bloody fixed it. Oh yes! 
I AM A MAN! 
I then rather let myself down by spending the rest of the afternoon playing video games and drinking orange squash out of a plastic cup. False alarm then. I am still just a boy. 
A 25-year-old boy. 

Jobs

Everyone who has ever had a job knows what its like to lie in bed in the morning, still under the weary spell of sleep, and be awakened rudely by the alarm clock. 


"Oh", you think, "I've got to go to bloody work today" Then yawn, ".......ahh go on then, just one more minute and I'll get up........", and then that minute comes to an end and you think, "Okay, on the count of three then......... one............ two........... well, maybe just one more minute..........and eventually drag yourself out of bed five minutes later". 
And at this point at least once every couple of months (maybe weeks?) that little voice at the back of your head suddenly pops up from nowhere and says "Of course....... you could....... call in sick today?" 
And then you start to convince yourself that you are sick, and think "Well actually, I suppose have got a bit of a back-ache anyway, I mean if I go in then it'll get worse, and it'll be better in the long run, and I'll be late now and oh, oh yeah it really does hurt actually and christ!, I'm not going to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair for them!!" Five minutes later you're on the phone to work telling them you won't be in today and not to expect you until at least March.


Or maybe that just reflects my perhaps less-than-perfect work ethic.


The thing is, I'm starting to miss the above scenario - which may seem a little warped. I mean, I'm fed up with not having a job and bored with all my spare time, but the main thing I miss about working is skiving off? I do miss working, and for many reasons - most notably the income, but also the social side of it - and the fact that it can help fill your day and give you a vague sense of purpose.


But.


Most jobs are actually really crap. They are monotonous, uninspiring, poxy, horrible. And the horrible starts right from the beginning, the interview. 
You dress smartly in rarely worn and probably ill-fitting clothes and spurt out rubbish like about how you are 'capable of working alone as well as part of a team', and smile a lot and answer stupid questions. Its like all these crap admin jobs I keep applying for at the moment, and they ask you in all seriousness, "So Mr Sadler, what is it that first interested you in working in an administrative role?", and you think, "Well nothing obviously! I'm just totally skint and I need the money!". But you have to play their game and say all the right things anyway.


And then when you're settled into the job you're faced with the next challenge; boredom. Most jobs involve you doing exactly the same thing everyday, every week of the year, and involve monotonous, barely challenging menial tasks. The worst thing you can do at this stage is check the clock frequently. It will usually barely move and make you very depressed, especially if you misjudge it particularly badly. Checking it thinking it must be nearly lunchtime and it turns out to be only twenty past nine can crush your spirit like nothing else. You space the time out with frequent toilet trips and long walks around the office carrying a pile of paper and pretending to be busy. 


Despite this I am starting to miss it. Not for the time you spend at work, and the obvious financial gain, but because it makes the time you spend away from it all the better and more valued. Nothing can contend with the feeling on a Friday evening when you finish work and have whole entire expanse of the weekend waiting there ahead of you. The sense of freedom is immense. And that first pint after work, the one you've actually earned from a hard day's work. 


It even makes the time you wake up and decide to pull a sickie as valuable and precious as anything you ever gave to yourself, because you're in a great place you shouldn't be, instead of a bad place you should be.

House Names

Spent the morning leafleting for my cousin. It was a crisp and sunny Autumn day, and had a bit of a chill about it. Spending a morning walking up people's paths and seeing their houses was very interesting today, especially in the posh parts of Brighton. To see up-close all the lovely houses some people live in, and ponder the fact that I will likely never have one. While doing this today, one thought struck me; why exactly do people name their houses? They already have a number. They surely just by that know that that is their house, and presumably what it looks like. Why must people persistently give names to the building that they live in?


Names like 'Braeburn Cottage' - citing some tenuous link to Scottish ancestry perhaps? Not sure it should really qualify as a good house name in Brighton then. 'The Coach House' - doesn't look like the building was old enough to be an old coach house. 
I remember a walk in the countryside not long ago and couldn't believe the number of houses out in this tiny village that had names. It seemed like every house had a name. The worst example I found was a house called 'Allison', which surely is a person's name! Why would you name your bloody house Allison? It doesn't even hold any clues to local history or a quiet nod to ancestry, it is literally a woman's name, or a man's name in America. 
Unless maybe the owners late wife was called Allison and she was as fat as a house, and this proved an amusing daily reminder for him.
As I delivered leaflets to 'Rose Cottage' (no roses), 'White Cottage' (fair enough on that one, it was white - and a cottage), 'The Laurel's' (?),  'Wayside', 'Springfield', 'Greenacres', and dozens more, I became more perplexed.


I vowed that if I ever own a big enough house that I had to give it a name, I would call it 'I Am A Big Wanker'.

Wednesday #3

'Reasons To Be Cheerful' has a follower! Thanks for reading, whoever you are, and I hope this doesn't disappoint too much, because to some extent it definitely will. To be honest I have done nothing much today, and think I've got even less to write.


Decided to go for a little walk along the seafront this morning to ease my boredom and contemplate my existence. Had a little paddle in the sea, and dodged the dog shit along the promenade. It was a perfect Autumn day. 


Managed to then miss my only appointment of the day, which was a game of badminton in the evening, because I accidently got drunk in the pub. Also, think I managed to annoy a famous punk-poet.

The Revival Tour

Last night proved a rare spark of inspiration for me. Seeing The Revival Tour tear up the stage and wow the devoted crowd in Pompey gave me an exciting glimpse into the side of music I've been missing recently - a side of good alternative music, adoration by fans with something fresh, thoughtful, and direct about it. Particular highlights for me were the first act Dave Hause, and the simply fantastic Chuck Ragan - who had me hammering out tracks on an acoustic guitar and harmonica rack all afternoon.
Having not known what to expect of the night, and knowing little of the acts, I seem to have have lucked out. The music and the vibe was great, and the realisation that the camaraderie of folk music is still alive and kicking has touched me to the core - and it more than made up for wading through the puddle of piss in the gents and the shit night's sleep I had in the living room of a student house.

Time To Move

Been digging around some of my old music stuff today, and ended up trawling through a big stack of lyrics. Its always interesting when you find old lyrics you've written, and are vaguely embarrassed by them - not that they're necessarily better or worse than any of the recent stuff you've done. Although I'm not sure. It takes you by surprise when you have absolutely no memory of writing them. Quite enjoyed this one I'd titled 'Time To Move'. It took me a couple of read-through's to realise I'd tried to write this one to the tune of an old Bob Dylan song, during his psychedelic electric period. I remember totally wanting to be Bob Dylan at this point, now I want totally want to be Joe Strummer. Maybe one day I'll totally want to be me!


Here's Dylan's version;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5fPWzcik2s


And here's my words to it;


"Well I wake up in the morning, hold out my hand and feel for rain,
There's a man outside my window and he's driving me insane,
He's singing Lily Allen songs while wearing a bowler hat,
Says he's the ghost of Charlie Chaplin, I say 'What kind of excuse for waking me up is that?'


I head out down the road, I see a stranger on my street,
He wanders over to me and kneels down to kiss my feet,
'Stop what you're doing!', I snap, 'Don't you know who I am?'
He says 'No', I say, 'I'm nothin'', he says, 'How do you know that man?'


Next I walk around the corner, knock the postman off his bike,
I'm kind - I help him up - but i'll tell you what a sight,
He had lipstick on his face and high heels on his feet,
A feather boa round his neck, and a pink cushion taped to his bicycle seat.


I ask him, 'Why you dressed like that?', trying not to smile,
He says, 'Whats up with you, man? Don't you dig my style?',
'That ain't my problem', I reply, 'I'm just worried about my post',
'It can't be easy making your rounds when you're cycling in stilettos'.


Further on I see Nick Griffin on a wall, blowing up a pink balloon,
For John Wayne and Howard Hawks who are watching High Noon,
The Pope's in the sex shop, he's getting undressed,
While the Chinese President's handing out leaflets saying, 'Let's free Tibet'.


I walk back home I'm as hungry as can be, 
My maid lays a lemon down in front of me,
'It looks kinda bitter', I guess, staring at my plate,
And throw it out the window, it was the worst meal I ever ate.


Pacing round the lawn and to my surprise,
I'm wrestled to the ground by a woman twice my size,
She say's 'I'll bake you a cake if you help me make some kids',
I groan a moan, I know I'm too hungry to give it a miss.


The evening was bright, the sky a golden splendour,
As my lady and I sit down to watch Eastenders,
I live in a strange little town, I think I have just proved,
I'll sit down and eat my cake, then I think it's Time To Move"


To be honest I found little else in my stack of lyrics worth posting here! Off to see The Revival Tour in Portsmouth tonight, should be a good gig.

The Day After The Gig The Night Before

When putting a gig on anywhere as a band you always seem to spend more time setting up and tidying away than actually playing the music. Seems a shame sometimes. And then I always find it takes me half the set to really get into it as well. but you have to live the moment I suppose, and that's what counts.


It was also fun (I wonder how well sarcasm comes across in the written word) last night me and the bass player trying to hold the bass drum in place with our feet, because it kept sliding away from the drummer on a shiny wooden floor, as well as play guitar and stretch to sing down the microphone as well. Maybe we could mould our act into some kind of rock 'n' roll contortionist troupe? Although I have managed to give myself a bit of a groin strain in doing it - I bet Keith Richards has never said that after a gig.
Still, a good evening, and all involved had a good time. We were treated royally by the nice, if maybe slightly naive, bloke running the pub and at moments were really rocking.


I feel there may well be some scope with this band and the music we play, but only providing we all put a lot of effort into it. [Almost] no bands have ever succeeded in anything they have done without putting in the time and effort to do it. Enthusiasm and determination is everything and is the most important thing. Being really good comes second. At the moment I think we can be really good, and with an injection of determination could do better. In the meantime I am very happy playing for beer and food. Please check out the below link to hear one of our tracks;
www.strummerville.co.uk/bad-billy-band


This entry in 'Reasons To Be Cheerful' marks the last day of my pledge to write an entry every day for 2 weeks. I may continue in this way or may not. In a way, only about half of them have had any amount of content in them anyway, and many have just been drunken ramblings, so I kind of feel as if I've short-changed myself with this mammoth lack of effort. 

Hungover And In A Hurry

What a total prick. Somehow managed to spend almost all of my dole money last night while visiting the Worthing beer festival and then carrying on into the early hours. Following this I have managed to waste a beautiful day in the clutches of one of the worst hangovers I have ever had. Oh well, I suppose at least I now can't afford to do it again for a couple of weeks.

Topping this, and still feeling awful, I have now got to go out and 'entertain' people. My band has a gig tonight and to say I don't feel up to it would be an understatement. 

The most notable memories of last night were the fact that nearly everyone at the real ale festival looked alarmingly like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and my friend winning a collection of pint glasses on the tombola, which we then had to carry around for the rest of the night. 

And now..........it's showtime! Great. 

Thoughts On Joe Strummer, And Modern Music

All musicians start out with ideals and beliefs, but hanging onto them when a sniff of success comes their way can take real integrity.

The Clash were the greatest rebel rock band of all time, and their their unwavering commitment to making politically inspired songs part of pop culture was the defining legacy of British punk. Without them, the punk movement would be remembered as nothing more than a sneer, bondage-trousers and a safety pin. The Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Ramones, The Stranglers, Blondie – even The Jam - none of them came close to the radicalism that informed everything The Clash did and said. They influenced a thousand bands and musicians to follow in their formidable footsteps and still do, and the man they were all looking up to was Joe Strummer.

His tough and gritty stage presence, channelling a poetic sensitivity of everything he saw around him touched people's hearts and roused their spirits like few others have ever achieved. But the real difference about Joe Strummer, compared to so many others, was the way he retained his ideals and identity even in the face of media scrutiny. No-one has ever struggled so manfully to sit in the gap between success, and being the spokesperson for a generation.

As 'The Clash' marched wilfully past the fast-fading punk scare, and became a huge success - playing vast stadium gigs and scoring top-ten hits, it was Joe who felt uneasy playing tracks from their early days like 'Career Opportunities' – despite it's popularity – because it seemed to him to be hypocritical to sing of the struggles of the working class when they were plainly no longer subject to them. It illustrates a real connection to your work if can realise that the content no longer applies to your situation, and to continue to perform it would devalue the song, as well as let down the ideals of your dedicated fans despite them wanting to hear it played. I struggle to think of many of the big names of today struggling with the morals of playing a popular song in their set.

Now, in a business [seemingly] awash with self-serving dullards preaching to robotic followers who live by their every word, their fashion and movements, we are really starting miss the honesty Joe gave us.

Even at a grass-roots level of music, artists seem to gratify themselves with the chase for stardom rather than with respect to their own beliefs and morals. I refer, of course, to the obvious transparency of entertainment shows like 'The X-Factor' which will never be about developing music. I also refer to many of the young artists I meet at local gigs and open mics in and around my home town of Brighton. While the internet has given budding musicians tools like myspace and facebook, through which they can all get their stuff out for people to hear - and this is surely a fantastic thing – it has also given rise to a generation that think that the chase of fame is the goal, and sing songs without ever really considering the words that hold them together.

I'm really not saying that this is the state of all music, as it obviously isn't. There is tons of fantastic new stuff out there, and given the advent of the internet, it is actually much more accessible than it has ever been before. But we miss having a figure like Joe Strummer in the mainstream, someone successful and never wavering from their ideals, someone that people can look up to and try to emulate their honesty and decency, someone who realises the hypocrisy of their fame and is humbled by it.  

Earlier this year I experienced a moment of integrity with my band which I am extremely proud of. We had, against our better judgement, decided to apply to a competition called 'Live and Unsigned', which provided an X-Factor-style stage for bands in the UK. As soon as we arrived and started queuing with the other acts waiting to perform to a panel of judges, we instantly realised it was wrong [for us] and that we were going against all of our ideals by even being there. We walked out and went to the pub, and felt good about it. 

Joe Strummer knew music shouldn't be about adoration and fame but about a belief in what you are singing and playing, Woody Guthrie once said “We've got to introduce a timeless element to our songs”, and I think that can only be achieved with a sense of honesty. 

Don't be seduced by fame and adoration, its up to you not to heed The Call Up.

Thursday # 2

Conducting a small bonfire made me realise today that, despite the amount of survival programmes I have seen on TV, I would really fare quite poorly in a survival situation. It also made me realise that I have too much time on my hands.

It took me about an hour to get the thing started, and this was using a cigarette lighter - when Ray Mears does it he rubs two sticks together and has it going in seconds, giving him ample time to look smug about it. He never fumbles about in the cold cursing at the sticks he's trying to set fire to, going 'Come on you [insert four-letter expletive], just fucking light!'.

Having got it going, I took another moment to ponder what it would be like in a survival situation. I suppose next I would have to build a shelter and find something to eat. 

I took in my surroundings for inspiration.

For shelter I would probably just sleep in the shed, but food would be the trickier part. Being a vegetarian, I wouldn't be able to eat any of the Blue Tits hopping about the bird table or the Squirrel, so would likely have to take a punt for berries and leaves. The trouble there is that I don't know which pieces of foliage are poisonous and which aren't, so I would probably cook them in a futile effort to get rid of the poison. I think red means they are probably dangerous, although I may be wrong.

My point is that very few of us in this age, apart from Scouts, know anything much of the basic skills that once upon a time set our race apart from the rest. And these surely must be very basic skills, because early humans around a hundred thousand years ago were using them, and to great effect - and they were probably really stupid. So it seems a shame that today, when our lives are complexed by technology, advanced education and deep thinking, most of us are too stupid to light a fire.

Of course, it might just be me. 

Knuckle-Cracking Dole-Scrounger

I've just been reading an interesting article on the yahoo homepage (oh yes) about the effects of cracking your knuckles. My mum always told me that cracking my knuckles will give me arthritis in my later years, and I believed her, but good news, apparently it now won't! This is all thanks to a Dr Donald Unger, who won a Nobel prize for his research into arthritis and rheumatism, partly down to research which involved him cracking the knuckles of only his left hand for over 56 years. What an amazing feat! Winning an actual Nobel Prize for cracking your knuckles everyday. I wonder what other annoying habit you could do everyday for 56 years in order to win a Nobel Prize? I honestly cannot think of one. 


Today I have gone for walk, given my cold has started to wear off, been beaten heavily at 'Call Of Duty' at a friend's house - proving just how useless I am at video games, and once again have been disheartened by the lack of correspondence from the jobs I have applied for. I read today that the UK is experiencing the highest unemployment levels in 17 years, which is hardly encouraging. After about 5 weeks of feverishly sending off applications, writing letters, making phone calls and signing onto agencies, as well as regular meetings at the jobcentre, i really thought that something would have come up by now, and that I would have at least received a couple of replies.
It is very difficult in this situation not to entirely lose heart and just give up and accept your dole-fed fate. The skies are grey, the future is uncertain, and opportunities seem rare and bleak. So I just have to get up everyday, look for jobs, apply to them, then ring or email the agencies to see what they have, which is nothing, and then await replies, which aren't forthcoming. It really does start to get to you after a while, and you start to consider what the point is and that maybe you can just manage on the benefits alone and sod everything else. Then you realise that the benefits are not nearly enough to grant you an enjoyable quality of life and start applying again. I am really hoping that something will come along soon and break the cycle, a little like my 'Groundhog Day' themed entry a couple of days ago.


Yahoo also featured a piece about a marathon runner who came 3rd in a marathon at Kielder, coming in at a time of 2 hours and 51 minutes. Unfortunately, he was soon stripped of his Bronze medal because he took the bus for the final 6 miles. This cheered me up a bit.

Keep It Real

They say everyone's got at least one book in them. Well, judging by my blog entry yesterday, mine will probably be very short and not very good.


Another day has passed by unceremoniously. The novelty of being jobless and fancy-free has well and truly gone, unlike my cold. Aside from the daily rituals of applying for more jobs, watching 'The Wright Stuff', and blowing my nose every five minutes, I have spent some time today attempting to write some new songs (in my capacity as a budding/failing singer songwriter).


I have found my firm belief in my music, and in playing and performing, has begun to slip away recently. It has become harder and harder for me to write songs and lyrics where only a year or so ago they used to pour out of me like a broken tap. I wonder if all musicians, if I dare to class myself amongst their ranks, suffer these doubts and writing droughts from time to time. Or is that really the difference between those that succeed and those that don't, or were never going to? Do they persevere doggedly through such times, or maybe never have these doubts in the first place? I suppose the question I'd really like to know the answer to is;
Do artists succeed on talent, effort or just plain luck? I don't believe, personally, I have ever had any of these three traits in particularly large amounts - but then I've never really thought of music taking me anywhere anyway, not really, despite it being a great dream of mine. Maybe it really is a mixture of all three, and perhaps timing.


Any which way, I don't think it will be me. But I don't think it should stop me trying. I have always thought that perhaps there may be more dignity in trying and failing than not bothering. And failing in your own way and by your own accord - on your own terms - as a dreamlike bedroom-performing singer-songwriter than there is by applying to plastic theatrical talent shows on television. Whether people like your stuff or not, you've just got to keep it real.


Having said all this, in a not particularly focused way - I may revisit this subject - I've barely managed to write a thing today.


Do you want to be the best you can,
Or be well known?
Do you want to repeat lines you heard,
Or write your own?


Do you want to follow beaten paths,
Or blaze a trail?
When you try your hardest to succeed,
You mostly fail.


Mostly.

Poor Standards, Slipping

This evening I am regretting my promise to do this blog daily for two weeks. I have had ample opportunity to do this all day, but in the end decided I would leave it until when I got in tonight after a band practice and a few beers down the pub as it would make me write something much more interesting than I was planning earlier. Unfortunately, nothing interesting has happened this evening and I can't remember what I was planning to write earlier either.


Then again, I suppose nothing ever really happens on a Monday night anyway. And also, a paragraph, two sentences and two words probably constitutes a blog anyway. 


So there.

Bill Murray's Nagging Cold

I wonder how Bill Murray would have managed in 'Groundhog Day' if he'd had a terrible cold like I do? 

For those who haven't seen the film, Murray plays a weatherman who gets stranded in a small town on Groundhog Day and keeps waking up on the same day. After initially getting frustrated, then mischievous, and later suicidal at his never-ending torment, he eventually decides to use his time to better himself and come to the aid of everyone in the town, and to fall in love with Andie McDowell, which eventually lifts the curse for him and he wakes up the next day.

But if he'd had the same nagging cold as I do, with a sore throat and runny nose, and little inclination to do anything whatsoever, I wonder if he would ever escape. I'm not saying a cold is any kind of life-threatening illness or anything, but it just seems to kill any motivation, and makes you feel just ill enough not to be able to function well enough. Bill Murray's day would probably end up something like this; 

He would wake up every morning with tired eyes and a slight headache and lay in bed all morning. He would likely phone in sick for his midday piece to camera in front of the weather-predicting groundhog, therefore never meeting the love interest or any other of characters he befriends and who changes his fortune. He would watch whatever rubbish was on telly until mid-afternoon. Later on, he may start to feel a little better so gets up and showers and gets dressed. He decides to make an effort to go out in the evening for a little while to try to be sociable, but ends up just in the corner of the pub on his own and then leaves after one. He struggles to sleep that night because of a blocked nose, but eventually manages to drop off and wakes up at 6.00am once again to the grating sound of Sonny and Cher. And then the same thing happens all over again. Any progress he made with the cold getting better towards the end of the day is instantly lost. 

In the last couple of days I have acted exactly like Bill Murray with a nagging cold. I have done little, felt like doing less, and have done a lot of complaining about. Unlike Bill Murray with a nagging cold, mine will likely get better at some point in the next couple of days and I will have the power to break the daily cycle. And that is surely a reason to be cheerful.

 

A Vision Of the Future

What ever happened to the former party animal Tom Sadler? That may be stretching it a little, but I did seem to be mainly out getting drunk every weekend not even that long ago. Today I decided to mainly feel sorry for myself. I am fully cold-ridden, have little money until next week, have barely done anything for days, and now I find myself sitting watching 'Strictly Come Dancing' with my mother on a Saturday night.


I always seem to feel guilty by staying in on a Friday or Saturday night. I get the feeling that everybody else is out having an amazing time and that I am somehow I am the only twenty-something man who isn't out with them. 


This could be a worrying vision of my future. Maybe in ten or fifteen years time this will be the norm for me, and going out will be saved only for special occasions. Maybe, although I struggle to see it at this precise moment, I will become a firm fan of 'Strictly', never missing an episode. Maybe I will start buying scented candles and display cushions and drink wine instead of beer. Maybe I'll throw out all my Clash and Dylan records and stock up on Take That and Michael Buble. I might start wearing pastel-coloured jumpers, put slippers on whenever I'm in the house, and sport a flat-cap to hide a bald spot. Maybe I'll start reading Catherine Cookson novels and watching Midsumer Murders. Or Heartbeat if they still make it then. Maybe even worse, I could become a train-spotter and turn into my father! 


Of course, maybe none of these things will happen. Maybe the rest will do me good. And maybe things will look better in the morning. 

Love Thy Neighbour

A long walk to the Job Centre to sign on this morning was followed predictably by a long walk back. 
Running a bath in the afternoon was not followed predictably by getting in the bath, enjoying a relaxing bath, and then getting out of the bath, but instead with one of the taps coming off in my hand, having to abandon the bath, and then a desperate rush to find the stopcock - which I eventually discovered was behind the washing machine - before the house flooded.
The remarkable thing about this episode was not my almost cartoon-like over-acting during the event, but my next door neighbour coming to my rescue. 


After three hours spent failing to repair it myself, I called upon my kindly handyman neighbour Simon to help, and he was only too happy to oblige. Simon has often come to our rescue in situations like this. He always puts himself out to fix our problems and never wants anything in return. He is just an old-fashioned neighbourly kind of man. He is always friendly and considerate, helps out with gardening, he even makes his own wine and often leaves a bottle for us on our doorstep.


In an age when most people don't even know their neighbour's names, and rarely even talk to them, today I realised how lucky I am to be able to count on mine in my hour of need. I only wish I could do something for him in return if the occasion arose, but I don't seem to be very good practically with anything in the way he does. I don't have a trade, like his plumbing, decorating and carpentry, and as much as I like to think I can be practical and have a go at it, I will usually bodge a job to save time if I can. 


I only hope one day he needs someone to show him a couple of chords on guitar or to help him alphabetisize his CD collection, because I will be there in flash - and do a bloody good job of it.

What Is The Point In Blogging? (No-One Is Reading This)

Day 4 - another late one I'm afraid. 


I decided this morning that I would try and do this blog daily for two weeks. Almost tempting fate, I have left it all day today knowing that I would probably end up going home very late after a few pints at the pub and then have to write this poor excuse for a blog once again under the influence. Already 50% of my entries have been conducted whilst drunk. But then, what is the point of a blog anyway? If nobody is reading this then surely if it turns out to be just my drunken diary, read by only me the next morning, then surely it doesn't really matter anyway? 
It might as well be a happily used tool to satisfy my obsessive compulsive disorder for a couple of weeks, mainly reviewing 'The Wright Stuff', and then be forgotten forever. Although it does seem like poor form to submit two days in a row a drunken piece of writing.


The funniest thing I saw today was a drunk man at the pub who went through two packets of salt and vinegar crisps, trying to gnaw them into the shape of a love heart to give to the frightened barmaid many years his junior, only to eventually present her with a soggy, vaguely circular, crisp that more resembled a pair of buttocks than a heart. 

28 Minutes Later

This could possibly be construed as a half-arsed attempt at a blog. (It is.) I am writing this, my third blog, under the influence of a fair amount of alcohol, tiredness and apathy. The only reason I bother is that just in case I decided to turn this blog into a daily exercise (possibly for the rest of my life - although it may only last a week) and happened to miss Day 3, due to my self-inflicted condition, I may come to regret it in sober light. If not today, then soon, and for the rest of my life........ 


It might also be interesting to me to see exactly what I wrote last night (now) in the morning (tomorrow), as I will definitely forget all of this.


Today I have once again been vastly under-productive in my job searching. (Although in many ways more productive than the previous day, simply because today I didn't watch 'The Wright Stuff') Around midday today I went to Lewes with a friend, and went for a long walk around the River Ouse. Following this we frequented several beer-selling establishments in Lewes town, leaving me suitably refreshed to write this blog at just after 11pm. 


The main point of interest I can think of to talk about from the day is a 3-hour conversation about a zombie-infested post-apocalyptic world and how we might survive in it.


Following a kind-of '28 Days Later' type scenario, a few of us (coincidently me, my friend and some of our closest friends) manage to surpass the catastrophe that has taken the world (no explanation how we managed that - we don't even live that near each other) and then (maybe we had a sleep-over in a nuclear bunker or something) have to survive (a sleep-over? christ!) and live in this new and troubled world. 


Some of our friends, we realised, would not be up to the challenge of staying alive - some might even hinder our progress and have to be left behind to die. This may seem harsh, but the future of the human race is in our hands - so we decide to shoot Marvin to save on supplies. 
Our first port of call is to round up weapons of some kind to defend ourselves. Unfortunately, with none of us knowing how to use guns or even where to find them, we go to B&Q and JJB Sports and arm ourselves with brooms, shovels, cricket bats and squash rackets to help fight off the zombie menace. Next, we get food by generally looting branches of 'Tesco Express' and set up home in a 'Big Castle' somewhere, and plan to spend the rest of our lives eating Baked Beans and watching DVD boxsets on a television powered by our own generator, at which point we regret shooting Marvin, as he is the only one among us who might know anything about setting up a generator. 


I eat an entire packet of Haribo on the way home for dinner and hope that very soon I will  grow up and act my age.

Foxy Knoxy

This morning's 'The Wright Stuff' tackled the main news of the moment head-on, with a piece entitled: “Foxy Knoxy – Would Ya?”, discussing whether you would bed the the newly acquitted, although probably still guilty, American sex-murderess if the opportunity arose.
Smug-faced grinning Matthew asked Christopher Biggins and former Atomic Kitten Liz McClarnon the killer question:
“What would you do if you met a rich, sizzling brunette at a bar, only to realise when you were in the taxi home with her that she was Amanda Knox?”
Good question Matthew! McClarnon was outraged, Biggins was dismissive. I only wish some of the other big-name panel-based discussion shows, like Newsnight, The Daily Politics or Question Time would tackle questions that started with, 'What would you do if......';

“And the next question comes from Ian Townsend from Bedfordshire...”
“Thanks David, I would would like to ask the panel: “What would you do if your nose and your anus swapped places on your body, so your nose was between your buttocks, and your anus was in the middle of your face?””
“Good question. Diane Abbot...”

More to the point, what would I do if I met a rich, sizzling brunette at a bar, only to realise when I was in the taxi home with her that she was Amanda Knox?
To be honest, I probably wouldn't recognise her in the first place, but if I did I'd wonder why I'd only just managed to recognise her in the darkness of the back of a taxi, and not during an entire evening spent with her, talking to her, and looking at face? And then I'd probably just go along with it out of politeness.

But was this actually a clever piece of journalism by Matthew?
Was he subversively asking us about our predilections of judicial decisions? Was he asking how accurate these cases are reported by the tabloids, and how the general public will follow their every word? Was he craftily hiding these topics under the guise of asking us whether we'd have sex with a kinky murder-suspect given the opportunity, and despite his smug, grinning face?
No, he wasn't, he was asking, 'Foxy Knoxy – Would Ya?'

Unemploy Me

I was rendered jobless just over one month ago.

My gobby teenage boss, after seeming to take so much joy in talking to me like shit for seven months, decided an appropriate punchline to her joke would be to sack me. And as an extra twist, to do it while I was on holiday.

I received the good news halfway through an expensive haircut, and wondered for a moment whether I might have to get the girl cutting it to stop mid-cut?

My initial response to this sudden unemployment was positive and constructive. For the remainder of the haircut I was cheerful and talkative, before then phoning someone up and swearing at them and then feeling sorry for myself for the rest of the day.

But over the next week I signed on to several agencies, looked into educational possibilities, and applied for countless jobs (at least three). As the month wore on, predictably, and we slid effortlessly into balmy October, I found my hard-line job-seeking resolve was slipping somewhat. Daytime television, video games and onanism were starting to win the fight for my spare time.

I have therefore, in an effort to kick-start a new and constructive Me, decided to document this time of unemployment with a blog, which will very likely be read by absolutely no-one.

Today, I have applied for a job online, watched 'The Wright Stuff' and tried to decide whether I either like Matthew Wright or I hate Matthew Wright, and am now waiting for my mum's new fridge to be delivered.