Maybe this blogging lark aint for me!

So it seems I haven't written anything on here this decade which to me feels neglectful. If I were a parent and this blog were a child I would be described as a 'monster' in some hysterical article in the Daily Express. Fortunately though this blog is not a child and I as yet am not a parent so (as far as I know) the Daily Express doesn't have shit on me.

So why the long silence? Well I've been busy, really really busy. I'm currently living in a strange limbo between the refined, repressed and almost unbearably passive aggressive world of my Dads house and the floor sleeping, cider swigging, unrefined, physically uncomfortable yet honest and welcoming world of my band and my friends. Basically I can't live at my Dads for more than a few days, he has made this clear as I have I. All he sees me do is lounge around in my bedroom at 23 years old watching bad American sitcoms on FIVER and generally wasting my life and education. What he doesn't see is what I actually do with my time which is pretty much playing guitar and writing lyrics for Leagues Apart, occasionally trying to write something or other for various fanzines, half sort of helping Kieran put on shows with Moving North and generally completely immersing myself 24/7 in music. Of course this means I spend days and days sleeping on floors and sofas which my friends seem ok with but makes me feel like I'm putting them out and worst still that I have no base from which to work out of. I'm in the room my things are in at my Dads at the minute but it isn't my room, I don't feel comfortable in it, it isn't a sanctuary. This is the way it is going to have to be for the next few months at least. I'm going out on tour for a bit on Tuesday which will be mentally destructive and physically exhausting especially seeing as I don't have much money to my name so I'll be mainly relying on donations to feed me! Bread, butter and banana sandwiches I think are the order of the day. Tins of soup and noodles etc. I'm actually kind of worried about it, honestly I've never tried to actually survive off just music before on the road, I've always had enough funds to see me though. This time though the donations bucket is all I got!

When I get back from that I'm planning to get a job for a little bit before Leagues head out to Europe in April. Our CD should be available at some point in late March, it's sounding pretty awesome and we're all honestly really excited about it. I just hope people like it really, I can't imagine releasing something you think is amazing and the entire world then sticks two fingers up at you and calls it shit. Gah this was such a self indulgent post, I'm sorry, next time I promise to actually write something amusing and interesting.

Moving North

I'm packing up my life again, well about 42% of it, everything else stays here to gather dust and look confused. Like the little girl who later grows up to become the meth huffing prostitute looking out from her front step screaming 'Daddy where are you going!?' in some Oscar nominated redemptive story probably starring Drew Barrymore and Jarred Letto as the abusive yet tragically lovable older brother. Urgh.

So I'm moving out of Maidstone, West Malling, Kent, the worn disfigured knotch on the commuter belt attempting to control the ever expanding waistline of the dirty, alienating urban sprawl we call London. I'm moving to the North where things are less hectic, less complicated and competitive. Some people find London exciting and maybe I would to if I dared give it half a chance but truth be told it just isn't me. I don't like maneuvering like a tetris block through the crowds. I can't bare the complete lack of silence, endless sirens, screaming, boisterous banal conversations, the sharp metallic accents that scrape against the bones in your ears. There's no warmth in London or the Southeast. It's a grey created by woven suits and speechless transactions in non-desrcript shops with workers who barely speak the same language as you. Everything is so detached. I've seen commuters literally walk into people in their way, knock them over and keep walking. What kind of place is that? Sure there's the wild side to it, the infinite thrills but from my experiences of London and Londoners it's all too fucking cool for it's own good. They live for the most part in a state of continually anxiety that a better time is happening somewhere else. I'm sure it just consists of more people listening to music devoid of anything remotely endearing or soulful and posturing around in attire so off-putting it at best is intriguing and at worst depressingly tacky. I don't have much time for fashion or dancing so London isn't really for me I suppose.

Anyway the new base of operations will be Manchester a city without parallel when it comes to civic pride. Manchester is really really bloody proud of itself. On the grand scale of things it's done some good stuff and some great things have come from it but it's achievements are far outweighed by its overinflated opinion of itself and I like that. I like it's neurosis, I like how big it feels but how small it actually is. I like the preachers and the homeless men underneath the Arndale centre, I like the small bars underneath the street on hidden down allies. I like the fact it's big enough to escape the majority of people yet still feel like part of the city (unlike Leeds for example!) I like the cheap drinks, the drawling warm accents, the grey spitting rain, greasy chips and mushy peas, the crowds are thick and slow, the small canal bridges and faded dirty signs for small stations, the fact it constantly feels new and regenerated, fresh and exciting yet old and run down although not intimidating or alienating. Above all though I admire the sense of identity Manchester has because gives it community, it gives it a shared experience. Get on a tube in London there will be perhaps 100 people all in ear shot of each other and nobody will talk. Get on a metro or bus in Manchester there will be 20 or so people all talking and there is always a conversation you pick up on that is either genuinely touching or hilarious. So as you may be able to tell I'm looking forward to moving, I'm looking forward to living in the city I was born in yet don't really know intimately. It's everything I want it to be!

National Novel Writing Month

hey I'm taking part in National Novel Writing Month where you try to write 50,000 in 30 days. I'll be posting my daily progress on here and we'll see what kind of horrible garbled, ill concieved mess comes out of it.

Day 1 - 1.11.09 - words= 1,389

Chapter 1: Oak Hill Blues

It was a rainy autumn and the drops hit heavily against the car bonnets that stood motionless in the parking bays. Across in a classroom a few children stared lazily out of the window as the drops fell down the glass forming deltas that became far more fascinating than the drawl of Dr Callahan’s endless analysis of Steinbeck. The seconds clicked by faithfully on the white clock at the back of the room and occasionally a pair of eyes would sneak a look at its progress. Mobile phones rumbled unnoticed in pockets and the children’s hand twitched as they resisted the temptation to discover what message had been delivered to them. The word Redemption was scrawled in red felt letters across the white board with the name Tom Joad written below it, it was the theme of the day. Dr Callahan found the best place to begin any lesson was with an over riding theme as he spent the next hour trying to convey the particular parts of the novel that contained the corresponding theme, themes of vital importance to humanity, humanity itself contained within a few thousand letters placed together across a few hundred pages, great fiction, yet great truth. The time and place of the writers, the industrial Dickensian distopia, Steinbecks swirling dustbowl or worst still the classic tales of crushed souls, a character destined to the worst of fates by their own actions; Lear or Faust.

These were the deepest of cuts fed to disinterested minds at such an early age, what could Jack Cropper know of tragedy, what could Simon Collins, who sat swirling chewing cum around his tongue with untied shoes and unpopped pimples, glean from Blake or Shelley or Wordsworth, why should he care? Borne to an electronic world, masters of quick communication already at the tender age of fifteen, they write thousands of words a day yet never read a letter. They truly know desire and lust but not for Juliet or Mr Darcy but for things, looks, possessions. Dr Callahan was a sales man, engaged in a bartering deal with his students. A deal where knowledge was imparted with the greatest of good intentions, offered as a means for a slip of paper that decreed a child’s worth in this world.

The rain still fell and the deltas fell into each other on the window. Edward looked out over the playing fields beyond the concrete fence at the back which had the letters f.w.c.k written on it. Stephen Stockmen had written that, well he had clearly written something else but Mr Taurbold had not got his hands upon the culprit so he had modified the mantra by add an extra line to the U. When eventually he did call Stephen to his office he would send him out there with a bucket and brush until it was clean. For the moment if you asked him what it meant he would reply “find who corrupted the kingdom.” For of course Oak Hill was Mr Taurbold’s Kingdom.

Edward smirked into his hand that was covered in blue ink as his pen was leaking. Things often happened to Edward that to the casual observer would look like carelessness but Edward would claim it was just bad luck. Often it was a mixture of the two, when bad luck befell Edward he would often pay little attention to remedying the situation instead choosing the idle route of acceptance, he felt it showed an ability to adapt to a situation, to accept fate in all its instances and to not question its judgment. If this meant his white shirt returned home stained with grass, chocolate and small dots of blood then so be it, he would wear it the next day because after all it was still a shirt, capable of performing the same function as it was the previous day. It still hung loosely of his shoulders covering his scrawny torso from the world. The only difference was now it had a chronology all of it’s own, it was his Nordic tapestry. Of course when his mother discovered the pile of his shirts stained and crumpled against the edge of his bed on a Saturday morning when she shook him awake to accompany her in shopping or a family excursion she would launch into an exasperated scolding for his lack of self respect for his personal appearance and remove the pile of garments in a wretched fit of disgust. On Monday the shirts would reappear gleamed and fresh hanging on the banister outside of Edwards room, blank canvas’s, suspended nylon tabula rasa’s.

Edward reveled in scruffiness and alienated others in the process. His hair was thick and rough, it looked as though it would curl if only it had the energy instead though it sparked out of his scalp in a fuzzy limbo, there was nothing remotely stylish about it. It looked as though he were wearing a wig of horsehair and stalks. He frequently washed it with soap and created stiff clumps around the fringe and above his ears, like a spiny dry octopus made of hay had descended onto his scalp and taken residence there. It didn’t occur to him that perhaps this constituted anything but normality, he saw the other boys at the school with their subtle highlights delicately placed upon the tips of the gelled spines from the expensive hairdressers in town and wondered why they chose to call him a puff. They always seemed more premed and effeminate, Martin McCulsky even carried a tube of hand moisturizer with him at all times. Not that it mattered all that much to Edward if he was a puff or not, according to the majority of the student body it was the worst imaginable thing to be but Oscar Wilde was a puff and Dr Callahan was forever quoting him and talking about him. Maybe Dr Callahan was a puff to. Edward wasn’t sure how much different life would be if he were a puff except maybe he could give a definitive answer every time Elliott Samson asked him the question ‘Are you a fuckin’ puff Hale?’ before punching his stomach and laughing at Edwards contorted winded frame gasping for air against the wall of the corridor.

Edwards face looked as though it desperately wanted to be older, the first few shoots of an adolescent beard peeked out in whispers beneath his chin and beside his ears. Some boys had already achieved reasonable looking stubble around the majority of their faces. For Edward though the only evidence of his facial follicle achievements were through touch when he rubbed his hand along the soft strands he smiled and wished he could one day have a wild unkempt beard like Darwin or Whitman or perhaps a distinguishable mustache like Gracho Marx or Charlie Chaplin it would be so much a part of him he would not be himself without it. For now though he was confined to a light fluff like the fine wisps of cotton wool that clung to the edge of the pads his mother used to clean off her make-up before she went to sleep.

He would often notice these clumps of black balls in the wicker bin in his mother’s bedroom. She had the only full-length mirror in the house so he used to parade in front of it sometimes just to examine himself, to see that he was satisfied with what the world saw of him. Occasionally he would dress in front of it just to see his naked form that he did not choose be concealed by things he did choose. The stained, ripped and battered Parker jacket that his Father had brought him for a skiing trip two years ago. It hung now far too short and was held together by a few key stitches. The hood resembled an ally cat with the fur matted together and smelled as if it had been floating facedown in a sewer. The coat was almost a part of him though, when it rained and he put the hood up some boys he barely knew the names of who sat 7 rows back on the top deck of the 54A bus shouted ‘urrrgh Chewy!!’ at him from the window.

An Open Letter To Johnathon Dimbleby, Question Time and the BBC

Dear Mr Dimbleby

I understand why the BBC have chosen to allow Mr Griffen on Question Time. After all he is a democratically elected MEP and no matter how abhorrent this is it unfortunately gives him and his party the grain of credibility they have so desperately been seeking. But sir do you not agree that Mr Griffen's recent remarks about his fellow panelists show a clear attitude of offensive disregard for the respectful ethos of your program. Do you not find his comments beastly? If anyone else had made these types of comments they would be barred from appearing on the panel. When then is Nick Griffen allowed still to attend? Are you merely after a bigger audience share? Is the BBC using the controversy stirred up by the BNP to suit their own ends? Because this just what we expect from him? Is he somesort of far right clown? Allowing Nick Griffen to occupy this respected public pedestal is not only a mistake but it is my belief that his appearance is against the public interest when there are much bigger more immediate problems than Nick Griffen and the BNP which need our attention as a society.

I hope your ratings will be satisfactory.

James Hull

Utopia is Apples

Apple. In a Dickensian sense it's a spherical fruit grown in moderately humid areas of the world containing a brittle skin, crunchy moist center and according to conventional wisdom is something of a daily pediatrician repellent. In a Biblical sense it's the source of a hell of a lot of trouble. But in today's world the word Apple denotes a brand that may well define the late 2000's. I sit here on a apple mac with music playing on my ipod and it's like I've just woken up in a cold sweat and sudden start and suddenly realized I am completely immersed in Apple, they have me, I am one of their zombie slaves. This awakening began yesterday with a visit to the Apple Store. I have never been more terrified. It was a sleek steel utopia, the lines hard and the designs were at a juxtaposition with the dirty, misshapen, imperfect clientele aimlessly gawking at the sheer amount of technological prowess on display, the sense of wonder, that 'Apple magic' as I'm sure I've heard a million people say completely overwhelms you. Apple's trick is to make everything seem as simple as possible, it's all 'cool' it's a breeze, you don't need to worry we're completely in tune, harmonized with technology and nature, it's wants to comfort you and for you to feel comfortable. I write cool in inverted commas because Apple isn't really cool, it's beyond that, it's hyper-cool it doesn't even want to be cool, it doesn't need to be, it's beyond that. For Apple cool is a small dot very far away which assumes things can be cool and uncool. There's no cool or uncool in Apple world, they don't have time for that, there is (as one staff member had embezzled on his t-shirt) 'progress in progress.' But how impersonal this all is, I've never felt so awkward and inhuman in a shop which has apparently revolutionized the consumer experience. The staff reminded me of colourful instruction booklets that wanted to have a nice cup of tea with you and maybe talk about your day before you got down to trying to sort things out. This is all part of the Apple philosophy of course, they bounce and smile and ask how your day is and say 'super' or 'superb' or 'great!' or some other horrible marketing sales words, some nauseating synthetic vocabulary that is without true emotion or interaction, it's like you're communicating through an Apple logo. (Of course I suppose the staff are like interpreters for the Apple brand.)

The staff like the products are beyond our mere mortal comprehension. We're meant to ask, how does it do that! Oh it's so clever about the machines and we are also meant to think that about the staff. There are no spotty, surly men in sweaty shirts working here like in Maplin's or Curry's. No! It's crisp polo shirts and crisp hair, clean skin, smiles and greeting, robotic in nature yet seductive, so seductive, it's hard to remember that none of it is real, this is all just a marketing ploy.

That's when I woke up and realized I'm one of them, I'm a horrible desensitized gawking spectator of the Apple world, typing on my macbook and talking to my friends about how great it is. I'm like satan's little helper, have I begun to define myself through purchases, there is no doubt people are certainly judging me by them so does that not make them virtually who I am? Have I, have we, lost all our central notions of humanity and turned completely into representations of the consumer choices that we make. 'I'm a mac', 'I'm a PC', what does that say about us? What they want it to say, what marketing men want us to feel represented by, they made these fake associations for what is essentially just plastic and metal thrown together in some far off factory but some how these possessions define us as people! I don't want to be defined by what I choose to buy, I want to be defined by my own choices, the love for my family, caring for other people, being a good human-being not for using an i-pod!

You know I sometimes can't help but thinking that that bite missing from the Apple logo must have been taken by Eve.

Hello World, I Have Some News

Gemma Goodwin is the best and greatest human currently in existence.

thanks

x

Fashionista

I think so things maybe so far outside your sphere of understanding that they can't help but terrify you. Things that you can't even imagine happening to your or anybody you know. Things so tragic, so incomprehensible that they make your body tighten and a shiver of panic form behind your eyes. This incomprehensible paranoia is brought on by god knows what but I constantly think something awful, genuinely awful is going to happen at any given moment. Like a plane is going to crash somewhere or everybody I've ever known is going to be hunted and stalked to death by a B-movie serial killer intent on my complete deconstruction. Selfish and paranoid times. It's seasonal of course. Autumn is an anxious period of time, it's because people are more relaxed in t-shirts. Maybe we need something equally as casual for Autumn. No wonder I feel impending death and doom at every moment, scarfs are basically just asphyxiation tools, anyone could grab it and cut off my air supply. There wouldn't even be any prints because they would be wearing gloves. There's something sadistic about wellies to...