Category: Other

It hurts to admit but it has been ten years since I was a fresher. I am therefore best placed to give you advice on what to do with the rest of your week/life. There’s something that bothered me about being a fresher. It wasn’t so much that I feared being swirlied (I still fear this, I live in constant fear of this), it was more that it sounds like you’re already the victim of something. That aside, here’s my top tips for making it through and coming out the other side as a reasonable human being.

1. Don’t take up smoking to be cool or bohemian.

More than anything this is a cost saving thing. I’m not against smoking although it will cause you any number of problems including death if used for a prolonged period. Cigarettes are really expensive. Even buying tobacco and papers is now out of your price range. If you need to do something with your hands then buy a Rubik’s cube or take up knitting.

2. It’s okay to sleep with nobody and it’s also okay to sleep with everybody.

As long as everyone involved is consenting to it and you’ve detailed your hard limits then go for it. If you want to sit in eating microwave pizza and binge-watching Lost cringing at the thought of contact with another human being then go for it.

3. Don’t even think about the debt.

Unfortunately we are stuck with a government who think education should be for the privileged and your fees are going nowhere my friend. Each month for seven years a slice of my monthly wage has been taken away before I even see it. I’m clear of storecard and credit card debt so I don’t think about my student loan. It’s just one of those things. Chances are I’ll be dead before I pay it off so I’ll be laughing at the Student Loan Company from Hell.

4. Don’t buy a kettle, toaster or microwave.

Every Diana, Blair and Tinky Winky (I’ve based these names on the big stuff that happened in the year you were born if you’re 18 and therefore of university attending age by my understanding) will have been bought a kettle, toaster and/or microwave by their parents (Lyndon and Caroline (again, I’ve based this on the big stuff that happened in the year your parents were born if they were 30 when they had you)). Check into halls and get a feel for the white goods counter before you head to the Value range at Tesco, the Basics range at Sainsburys or Asda.

5. Go to lectures.

Take it from someone who didn’t, it won’t help. It doesn’t matter how hard your hangover hits you at eighteen, it’ll hit you a lot harder at twenty-eight and then you’ll still have to go to work and pretend to do some adulting while sweating out ill-advised jagerbombs while you try to grip a venti something-mocha. Go to lectures and learn. Knowledge is power. She will probably still be there when you get back.

6. Cultivate new friendships but don’t forget those you had before.

You are going to meet a lot of amazing people. I see my friends from university as often as I can. Some of them have got married. Some of them have kids. Some have grown up adult jobs. Some of them still think they’re nineteen. They’re all great. What you have to remember is that you’ll also come home to your old friends and you might even move back home after university so don’t burn those bridges. Keep everyone who is good to you and for you close. You need them.

7. Experiment.

If there’s a time for regrets it is when you are at university. If there is a time to find out what you’re into it is when you are at university. If there is a time to find out what you’re not into it is when you’re at university. If there is a time to assist in finding yourself, it is when you are at university. Kiss a boy (if you’re a boy, or if you’re a girl, again, consent and everything else in point 1), try and start a band, try pilates or kickboxing or crochet or croquet. I kissed a few boys and a few girls, I kissed the Incredible Hulk, I started a band, I tried pilates. Your experience doesn’t have to be the same. You don’t have to do as much or any of those things but work out what you do fancy. Keep your hard limits.

8. Be a cheap bastard – except when it comes to two commodities; toilet roll and binbags.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if you use cheap toilet rolls and binbags you are going to end up putting your finger through it and covering your hand in shit. Buy cheap fruit and vegetables because they’re still fruit and vegetables and you need that shit. Bulk buy pasta and rice because you need cards. Buy cheap bread because how else are you going to make a black pudding sandwich but trust me on the toilet roll and binbags.

9. Get student discount in as many places as you can.

There are websites dedicated to lists of stores and restaurants that give you student discount. Try here, here and here. You will miss that when it is gone. I’ve been fortunate enough to recently start a professional qualification which means I have regained the right to an NUS card and it is fantastic. I’m a discount pimp.

10. Enjoy it.

People are very quick to tell you that certain times in your life are the best years of your life. That’s bullshit. It’s what you make of it and how you categorise it. What I thought I wanted ten years ago is different from what I want now, that goes for both my life and a night out. I rarely want a Snakebite anymore for example. What I will say is that it’s the last hurrah for a lot of people before you have to get a job and commit and do all of those terrible things you’re partly putting off just by going to university so try and enjoy it. If you’re anything like me you’ll spend the whole time thinking about what a great anecdote it will make one day instead of enjoying the moment. Enjoy the moment and trust me on the toilet paper and binbags.

 

Former me:

The other week I had to make a Sophie’s Choice level decision. I had tickets to go and see Carl Barat & The Jackals at The Scala but I also had a job interview at ten the next morning. Now I know you’re going to be screaming at the screen like when you watch a scary film and they hear a noise and decide to investigate, but here is why I made the wrong decision and am completely fine with it.

Now my friend Jocasta Devillenerve (it’s a fun nickname) and I often use our 2007 counterparts as a measurement of how far beyond our lives as students we have come. When we both suggested it wouldn’t be a good idea to go to the gig because “we know how we get” and both had important meetings the following day, the 2007 versions of us were swearing over a gap of eight years at us as we trotted off to bed to get our full eight hours before ironing a shirt, eating a sensible breakfast and delivering a coffee enema whilst squatting in the bath.
I’m down with the fact I’m getting older and my priorities are changing. There will be other gigs and there will be times that are more appropriate but major cringe coming, I need to think about what I’m doing and where I’m going with my future. Job security has become an actual thing I have to consider, not some half-baked theory concocted by parents to stop their kids going traveling or living some other kind of ambition. Don’t get me wrong. You should go traveling. See the world. Sleep around. Explore. Whatever. But on that day, my efforts were on sorting myself out and ensuring I could be in a better position going forward.
As it turns out, the whole thing has worked out and I’ve been offered the job. I’m really happy because it is something I’ve been looking to move into at some point and it will be really interesting. It means I get to be around the same supportive group of people who make going to work what it is and at the same time I can still be in an exciting area of London and still have access to all the things I enjoy. I’m keen to do well, I always want to be the best version of me I can and I’m looking forward to proving this to myself in the near future.
JD is still waiting to hear back on his job.

Today is three years since I decided to use WordPress instead of Blogger or any other blogging site. While the first year was committed to what I was doing it has fallen away ever so slightly as we enter the third year. I promise you I have a lot going on and I’m going to do my best to play catchup with myself in the near future. 

Thank you for sticking this out with me. It’s been a trip. 

It appears to be a month of me losing women. Yesterday’s was probably the worst yet. My sweet little 1.25 Ford Fiesta has been put out for pasture. She took the knocks well and saw me across thousands of miles. She will always have a special place in my heart but Pancetta is dead.

About five years ago my brother bought a car. He thought it was really cool. It had blacked out rear windows, a little tea tray of a spoiler, nice rims, a CD player, all the mod cons. To belittle his efforts in being “gangster” I decided to give said car a stupid and slightly effeminate name to bring down his name. This car was Pancetta.
What I hadn’t accounted for was that eventually my brother would sell me the car and it would have to keep the same name and so that sassy little lady came under my charge.
I’ve eaten in her, I’ve slept in her. I’ve picked up friends, I’ve picked up girls, I’ve picked up my dad, when drunk and on his way home. She has certainly served her purpose but now, as President Truman says, “we must cut down on the cost of living”. Having recently bought my first property and with the idea that I just want to stay in and write all the time, and the train line is just a ten minute walk away I’ve decided to scrap Pancetta and see how long I can go without a car. I know there are going to be issues with it in the coming months. I’m not entirely sure how food shopping will go, or how I will take stuff to the tip six miles away but if you can change and I can change then maybe the whole damn world can change. I might get a bike. Good for the environment and I’ll feel like Morrissey.

But for now, I just wanted to wish Pancetta well as she evolves into a Tetris square and is dropped into the hole. I hope your line gets cleared soon sweetheart.

For the past few months my life has been consumed by thoughts of Hank Moody, the foul-mouthed, womanising, near-alcoholic anti-hero at the centre of Showtime’s Californication. From the start I was hooked and have told almost everyone I have since been in touch with that it is indeed the series of the gods.
What Californication does so well is to take the story of a writer, or as far as I am concerned, a writer who doesn’t seem to be able to get a lot of writing done, and ramp it, to make it cooler, sexier, more worthy of screen time. It has genuine heart and wonderful character and you will the action along because you are just waiting for Moody to get his shit together and realise what has been waiting for him the whole time.
if you are yet to witness the power of Californication then I can assure you, you are missing out.

I often write about the smorgasbord of talent that Southend and the surrounding areas has to offer. It seems that all of my friends do a thing whether it be music, art, poetry, stand up, juggling, improv, DJing, yoga, script-writing or anything else. What an incredible thing Village Green is therefore for being able to represent these things and even better was my invitation to perform as an alumni of my college along with Adam and Lance aka Charlie’s Hand Movements who I wax lyrical about at every given possibility and will no doubt continue to do so later on in this post.

I turned up early to collect my trader’s wristband, have a cup of tea and wander around the site as the last items were set up and the hordes descended. How different the place is, how serene and noble before there is anyone in it but the vendors, traders and artists trying to batten down the hatches. I watched the sound check on the main stage, ran into an old friend and waited for the clock to tick over to 12 before enjoying my first Red Stripe of the day.
Beside our performance area (because I’m that self involved) was a face painting table set up by SEEVIC. I considered a Stipean (or indeed now Stampian) band of colour across the top half of my face but instead just shuffled around pretending I had important things to do and hiding behind a tree to practice. The invite had been a little ad-hoc and last minute. As such I didn’t have any idea when I was on, how many songs I would be doing or what songs they would be and it was only when sat with Sam, Cat and Freya later I jotted ten songs down on a post it note. After watching Mikey, Adrien and Jack it was my turn. The face painting table was packed out. It was going to be good.
I played:
Good To Dream
An Oblivion I Own
Listen Up
Charlie
Broken Record Love Song
What Katie Did
Scratchings
Coming Down
Don’t Expect To Hear From Me

Wandering back offstage in a hot flush I sat and watched Charlie’s Hand Movements pull it all together. They played a blinding set including Missyerface which they assured me would be ropey at best. It remains one of my favourite songs of theirs because they pulled it off with such aplomb. There were also a couple of new tracks much the anticipated second album.

I loves Village Green. The complaints about the ten pound ticket fee should be laughed out of the park. Just think what you are getting for that ten pounds. Think where that is going and don’t forget the sunscreen.

My thanks to people who came to watch and to Cat and Sam for filming. Thank you to SEEVIC and especially to Charlie’s Hand Movements.

Last night I was fortunate enough to see one of my favourite and one of the most interesting, exciting and innovative live bands of modern times play the last gig of their world tour. I wasn’t lucky enough to pay just £2.50 for the privilege but that is another story for another time.
The first time I saw Arcade Fire play, at my first Reading festival in 2007 I felt as if I had experienced some kind of wake up in and of itself. There were more people on the stage than I could count as they jumped between instruments and beat their fists in triumph at their celebration of life, disorder and death. The show was sublime. I was a convert. When The Suburbs was released I couldn’t get tickets for their London show so joined my friend James in Birmingham to watch them and we saw them together again at Reading in 2010 where they headlined after The Libertines.
In December 2013 they put on a number of smaller scale gigs as The Reflektors and I saw them at The Roundhouse as they blasted through the lion’s share of the new album to an adoring and fancy dressed crowd.

The gig last night was the best I have seen them. It was the production they should have been afforded form the beginning. The songs were all there. The audience stuck with them. It was a spectacle as any large scale show should be. Thousands of sets of eyes scanned the mirrored wall to take in what was going on.
The set began with their now infamous bobble heads wandering out onto the stage and taking up instruments to begin what sounded like a bad version of Wake Up. They were quickly shooed away as the band appeared from stage left in their finery to rapturous applause and ripping through Normal Person, Rebellion (Lies) and Joan Of Arc.

Win took bottles of water, sipped from them and sent them hurling out into the crowd between tracks and berated the local ‘rich people’ who had complained about the BST gigs when they were announced earlier in the year. He seemed to have finally found a level of comfort as the frontman for one of the biggest bands in the world. Joan Of Arc was followed by three songs from The Suburbs; Rococo, the title track and Ready To Start, before the band dipped back to Funeral for Neighbourhood #1 and Crown Of Love.
After the call to arms that is We Exist they treated me personally to Intervention, an a’capella Antichrist Television Blues and No Cars Go from my favourite album, Neon Bible, before taking to Reflektor tracks. They finished the main set with a powerful version of Sprawl II, Regine performing her art school dance moves and spinning coloured streamers to cheers from the crowd.

With the lights out and the crowd screaming for more a bobble head of the Pope took to the stage to dance to Sympathy For The Devil before the band returned for an encore where Win told the audience to be quiet because the rich people were trying to sleep. The set ended with Wake Up, as they are almost obliged to do. Will Butler smashing his way around the stage before hurling tambourines and microphones into the audience. The crowd were still singing the refrain when the lights came up on our gawking faces and we were shunned towards an exit.

Setlist:
‘Normal Person’
‘Rebellion (Lies)’
‘Joan Of Arc’
‘Rococo’
‘The Suburbs’
‘Ready To Start’
‘Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)’
‘Crown Of Love’
‘We Exist’
‘Intervention’
‘(Antichrist Television Blues)’
‘No Cars Go’
‘Reflektor’
‘Afterlife’
‘It’s Never Over (Oh Orpheus)’
‘Sprawl II’
‘Here Comes The Night Time’
‘Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)’
‘Wake Up’