g’day mate

Hi,

So basically I’m going to travel and in particular Australia because mainly that’s where my flight is going and secondly because there’s a lot of koalas and feral cats (so I’ve been told) and thirdly because they speak English there (in Australian accents of course) and there’s actually many reasons.

I suppose my tipping point was just the other day during my four week review at work where my manager said he nearly fired me because I was vague and asked too many irrelevant questions like what would happen if there was no ice in the world? And, would you rather be a human with a fish head or a fish with a human head?

Both excellent questions I’m sure you’ll agree but it made me realise that gutting fish probably wasn’t the ideal job for me anyway and I took it as a sign I should go travelling. Also I asked my Magic-8 Ball and when I asked it if I should go it said “GO FOR IT” and you can’t really ignore the advice of a mass manufactured plastic toy – it makes all my important life decisions for me.

I mean once I couldn’t tell if I’d be able to fit in a parking space and thank God I had it with me because it told me I should “GO FOR IT” back then as well I mean it’s very persuasive because I did go for it, and it’s a good thing I did because that could have affected the rest of my life.

Like how all those mean butterflies cause hurricanes all over the place because they’re maliciously flapping their wings.

I mean if I hadn’t parked there who knows what a state my life could have been in by now.

But obviously going travelling for a year (no but 10 months actually because I’ve already started paying for my Bestival ticket in September next year), with very little money or solid plans will be a good idea.

No money is not a problem because I have decided to lead a simple lifestyle and was tidying my room earlier so I could de-clutter my mind which is what the Buddhists say I think because they tidy their rooms as well when they’re stressed or something.

Because I think thinking too much makes you stressed and sad and these are both two of my least favourite emotions.

And I don’t like feeling stressed so therefore I will not stress and have minimal possessions and turn into a hippie. And if I don’t wash my hair for a week it turns into dreadlocks so I’m pretty much there. I like hippies they’re cool.

So I’m going to do some couch-surfing, (not literally surfing on couches, haha just my little joke) and WWOOFing so I have places to stay and WWOOFing sounds great because meals are included if you work for a few hours on a farm and you don’t get paid but some of them have a pet alpaca or acres of rainforest or offer you surfing lessons it just sounds so cool.

But obviously I will have my laptop and phone and I’ll be uploading nice pictures of Australia and writing more of the stupid thoughts that are swirling around my head like the ghosts of ants or something a similar size.

I’m going next week. I’m so damn excited.

hooray i went to bestival and stuff (part too)

Yeah I do realise that is not the correct way to spell “two” or even “2″, but I am being all hip and trendy because that’s what cool people do – cool people deliberately spell words wrong because it’s cool.

So these are some more Bestival pictures because just so much stuff happened and I need to write it down before I forget everything because it was over a week ago now which is a long, long time ago.

We saw Hot Chip on Thursday even though we got Friday tickets because we were clever and queued up for hours and then realised we needed Thursday entry which was only a tenner extra at this Box Office stall just on the other side of the fence but then we were told we’d have to go all the way to the back of the queue once we’d got ‘em and me and Brian just thought, hell no – that’s crazy. So we queued up in this new much smaller queue and this guy goes to us, “It’s a good thing we’ve got our wristbands otherwise we’d have to go all the way to the back of the other queue to get back in!” And then me and Brian just thought, oh dear, because we didn’t have our wristbands because we had to come back out, leaving Squawky with the bags and tents, and buy the Thursday entry. But it was okay because we managed to squeeze through a gate and none of the security people really cared, so all-in-all that was a bit of a non-story.

Anyway Hot Chip were great and I got right to the front where this guy was purposely sticking his elbow out to stop me getting to the front because some girl had started talking to him (obviously just because she wanted to be at the front), but I got inbetween their boring conversation and got things spilt on me and  it was great.

This is Brian giving Fern a turtle face because she was a turtle for the wildlife theme and not just any turtle, one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (I can’t remember their names, it’s been a long time and also my brain wasn’t properly formed at whatever age I was when I watched it). Also Fern had this cool backpack which looked like a shell which her costume revolved around.

It was confusing though because whenever she said “Can you pass my shell”, it sounded like she was saying “Can you pass Michelle”, which would have been awkward and difficult and Squawky gets really funny if you touch her.

For example, she absolutely freaked out when I wiped a slug on her eye, (as a punishment for laughing when I expressed my shock and distaste at finding a slug crawling up my jeans). She also got all agitated when my lip started bleeding because my lips were in terrible condition for the whole festival, and this proper glob of blood appeared on my lip so I wiped it on her arm. And she even got all annoyed when I accidentally, (or totally on purpose – I forget), spilt this noodle juice on her from those leftover noodles I found like a tramp.

Yeah, she’s a bit weird about human contact.

Man, they took so damn long to make those pizzas. We even went for a walk around to get our bearings and then returned and they still weren’t done. And we watched some guys get told off because their tent wasn’t within the white line and then they had to take it down and move it elsewhere. And then the pizza was done and it wasn’t for me, it was Brian’s. It wasn’t even that good a pizza and I consider myself very knowledgeable on pizza.

But the people in the pizza stall looked like they were having fun because there was cool music and they were dancing and singing even though they should have really been making pizzas, but it was okay because in the end we did get pizza and it was average but average isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

It’s really difficult taking photos in a crowd all dancing and stuff whilst you’re standing there a bit awkwardly adjusting the shutter speed and changing the film in your camera but I managed quite well I think as you can see by these mediocre and blurry photos of people’s hands and not even who was playing.

I mean, who even is this? I have no idea.

However as far as I can see they used loads of smoke effects so probably a good band.

 

Our friendly neighbours who helped us put up our tent because they say saw us failing miserably even though I told Squawky she was doing it wrong because she put the long bits through the wrong bits of the tent but she just shouted rude things like “You’re really pissing me off”, or “You’re so fucking annoying”, just because I was right and then when our neighbours helped us they told her she’d done it wrong and I was just so smug, anyway they made this sign.

It says “NO WILD BEARS” and we were very helpful and drew some bears on it in case anyone was slightly confused as to exactly what a wild bear looked like.

This is Jake putting it back up after I took it down to draw the bears on it and I felt really rude because the woman, (we didn’t find out their names), came back while I was taking it down and it must have looked like I was trying to ruin their tent or something so I had to explain we were going to draw on their sign because it was boring and that probably made me seem even ruder.

 

During a very memorable performance by some band I can’t remember this guy, (or woman – let’s not make assumptions),  just paraglided over and as you can see it was very exciting for everyone and the camera man who was meant to be filming the band for those screens for people far away from the main stage got distracted too because it was just incredibly riveting and intruiging.

 

And as you can see he just flew right over and I was actually sort of hoping he’d come down into the festival and make an entrance but he didn’t. That would have been so cool though.

Or he could have got really close to the main stage and just hovered over that owl and be able to see all the main bands and all the security people would have been trying to catch him but he’d be dangling over them and it would have been so funny.

 

Look over the hill – is it a bird? Is it a plane? No of course it’s not you stupid, it’s Mouse Trap!

That was such a fun game, I liked the bit with that old green plastic lady that dives into a pot near the end and also some other stuff happens before one of the mice get got. But yeah, it was such a good game.

They had huge mice and the cage like in mouse trap and the giant trap itself was proper swinging in the breeze and I was hoping it might accidentally fall down and someone would get seriously stuck and everyone could laugh at them and say “Mouse Trap!” But that never happened.

And also at Bestival some other things happened like, “Prince Charming. I mean Charles”, “Welcome to Shellyvile”, “Shell E”, this Swedish guy the others met and called Ikea and my trampy festival ways which consisted of my hair sticking on end, my feet being a bit smelly and eating food that had been left behind (burgers, noodles and pizza).

It was great.

WOO BESTIVAL 2012, cool (part wun)

I went to Bestival this year with some pals and it was really exciting because I’ve never been to a festival before because I’ve always been too poor so actually it’s weird that I went this year when I haven’t had a job in half a year and barely 30 quid to my name even including what was in my little woven pot filled with two penny coins and  the 20p I dug out from under my bed along with bits of string and chewing gum and confetti and that £20 note I nicked off my brother ages ago.

But yeah I still went because I used my powers of persuasion to persuade my parents to buy me a ticket. I’m good at persuasion stuff because I’ve read e-books on it back in the days I hadn’t sat on my Kindle.

Anyway it was super cool and it was on the Isle of Wight and that’s a lovely place and the weather was really hot and sunny which was champion but not so ideal when we had to queue for ages in this queue and it wasn’t even the sort of queue you could get comfortable and sit down for a bit in because the line kept shuffling and it was really was terrible.

I mean damn look at all those chumps queueing, and we were three of those chumps. The others came the day after so they missed the queues but also Alabama Shakes and Hot Chip who were both very cool and we only had to pay an extra tenner to get in early.

It was quite unpleasant because it was really hot and so much hassle carrying the tent, not that I did carry the tent but I had promised I would so it’s pretty much the same thing.

Also these aren’t going in order any more.

This was that evening when we’d just set up our tent and went for a wander around to get our bearings and see some music of course and it was really pleasant and warm and you know when everything looks really nice when the sun goes down?

Yeah it was really nice like that which was lovely and it had a proper little sunset and I don’t think the other days had that but I can’t remember. I was probably too drunk.

There was so many tents about and obviously this came as no surprise as people do tend to camp at festivals but it did take me by surprise because there was so many tents and I’ve never seen so many tents in one place. It was weird, like a tent reunion or something and you could see some were related because they were the same brand and some were like children, like my tent. It was a child’s popup tent and I couldn’t even fit in it with all my legs.

This is Crisp checking her phone which was really very antisocial of her and everyone else did it as well and it’s very depressing the hold technology has on us when we constantly check for notifications or texts even though we should be out having fun and living life before we get too old and wrinkly and enjoy porridge. I mean that’s why I didn’t use my phone at all for the duration of the festival.

Also it ran out of charge and the only way to recharge it was to go to this charging point where you had to pedal to get enough energy to charge it and I’m too lazy for such gimmicks.

So that was probably another reason.

Man that grass looks fresh.

I wish I was sitting on some nice green grass listening to bands playing and swaying a bit, almost in time with the music.

This is Crisp, Squawky and Brian/Brain after Crisp did all of our Snazaroos for us so we could look just like wildlife for the wildlife theme but Squawky does have flowers on which is stupid because moose don’t wear flowers. Also she kept complaining that it looked like she had poo smeared on her face and I was just being so polite and tactful and telling her it really absolutely didn’t look like that at all even though it did.

Poo face.

The xx are totally rad and awesome and I just can’t even how good they even were/are. They are so cool. Everything about them is good. They’re good. Their new album is good. Their old album is good. Their giant X is good. Their shoelaces are good. I don’t think I’d even drunk that much when I saw them but I can’t remember much but at the same time I have awful memory but I do remember everyone was getting so excited when that giant X was revealed either at the start or the end but I mean they had good reason to be excited because it’s the coolest giant letter I’ve ever seen.

So yeah, I went and met Romy from The xx.

Me and my friend had just returned from a walk around the Ambient Forest or should I say disabled car park because those stewards with orange jackets on that should know where everything is are in actual fact totally useless and sent us the wrong way.

Anyway then we saw Romy and her girlfriend by the toilets so like complete creepy-loser-stalkers we decided to follow them for a bit to see where they went and we followed them all round the back of the main stage and then I said to my friend I wanted to get a picture with her and my friend was all like “Wah, no she might think I’m really weird and recognise me, wah”, (or something), because she’d got a photo with her earlier with Crisp and Fern when we were all sitting down on the nice grass and I was enjoying the floor and the pleasantness of everything and letting my wine settle in my tummy.

I tried explaining that Romy didn’t even care about her existence but she still seemed to think she was important enough to be remembered by someone significantly better than her (no offence if you ever do read this, Squawks which you probably will, you creepy stalker).

But I told her I was going to get a photo anyway and made a complete and utter chump out of myself.

Basically I asked for a photo with her (I actually had to ask a couple of times because she was on her phone texting but that is understandable because she is super cool and has other cool people to talk to). Anyway then she wanted to know where the cashpoints were and I, thinking my friend was with me the whole time, called her nickname (“Squawky!”), and she wasn’t even there – she’d slunked off into the shadows behind the floodlight like some sort of creepy night creature or vampire. She is certainly pale enough.

I had to vaguely wave in the direction I thought she’d gone in and said something like “Oh, she must have gone ahead without me – bit rude”, and try and chuckle it off even though I was mortified.

Basically I looked like I had no friends, perhaps even imaginary friends, randomly shouted out “Squawky!” like some bizarre form of tourettes and then to top it all off I thought I could get a bit of my dignity back by helping them so despite not knowing where the cashpoints were I sent them in a random direction, insisting the cashpoints were that way.

Later I checked a map and it turned out I’d send Romy from The xx and her girlfriend in the complete opposite direction of the cashpoints.

So all in all it was a great experience and not embarrassing at all.

And that is now my best (and only) claim to fame.

we went to italy quite a while ago

I think it was last year we went to Italy and we were in Rome for a few days too and I used slide film because I don’t really use slide film and wanted to see how different it was because it’s good to try new things right? But there is no need to try snails if you ever happen to go to France, I’m telling you that now because they are horrible and they don’t taste lovely at all thank you very much, mum and dad.

It’s a bit green, but not in a bad way I don’t think. It is a good colour because it is good for the environment.

Also I haven’t really done any blog posts or whatever because I’ve had a lot of things going on. My schedule has been chock-a-block. Also I am lazy, so that might have been the actual reason.

But yeah, Rome was cool. It was about a billion times sunnier and hotter than the other place in Italy we stayed at so not really that cool at all, (that was almost a joke, feel free to laugh).

The downside is it was really expensive.

On the plus side: pizza.

It really makes my head hurt when I think how many people you will see in your lifetime and how they have lives and families and jobs and possibly even cats and you might have loads in common but you’ll never know because nobody really just goes up to strangers and talks to them, it’s just not the done thing to do. But yeah, it’s weird stuff like that. I’m not really explaining it very well, but hopefully you get my point.

Actually I’ve changed my mind about the strangers thing because I have no idea who this guy was but sometimes I ask to take pictures of people and sometimes they say yes and this guy was really nice because he gave me some superb discounts on some posters I bought of old 60s movies or something and it’s always nice when people give you a discount on posters of old 60s movies.

I don’t know what exactly it is about clowns that makes them so creepy but I think it’s something to do with the fact they come alive when nobody’s watching them and they think about murdering you and that’s why they smile so much.

When I was younger and stayed at my grandparents house my room used to have this creepy clown painting made out of wood so the clown sort of popped out and I remember vividly the clown was always looking up at the sky because he was juggling on a unicycle but one time I needed the toilet in the middle of the night so I turned the light on because I can’t see in the dark and the clown was looking right at me. RIGHT. AT. ME. Which was odd because that’s not what he usually did and it took a toilet trip until I groggily realised that something was terribly wrong and I was terrified of going back into my room so I got my nan to take it down. I think I probably cried. And also by the way, when I saw the picture again it was looking up. God, clowns are terrible.

There was a cafe and they did slush puppies which is the perfect cure for a hot head on a hot day and this one didn’t give me brain freeze which was great because I looked relatively normal drinking it and I didn’t need to hit my head whilst going “Nnngh, nnnghhh, brain freeze! Nugguhh”  which makes me look dumb even though I am of average intelligence.

It looks like they are selling sweets but to be safe I’ll just assume they were selling stuff. Also it looks like fish bowls but in actual fact it’s not, it’s far more likely to be astronaut helmets.

Where are all the astronauts nowadays anyways?

There were so many people selling paper umbrellas which pretty much sounds like the most useless invention ever and I mean does anyone even bother buying those things?

Ah, my mistake.

Anyway Rome is nice, if you go there you should definitely check out the pizza because some of it is some damn good pizza.

a cosy little pub in bath

I think it was sometime last year me and my family hired this longboat for the week and went down this river stopping in pretty much every pub on the way. We’d done it last year before as well but the weather was really nice then, and it was sunny and you could lie on the top on the boat and I pushed my brother into the water when he started showing off by walking round the side of the boat on the really narrow ledge and I think he might have actually really hurt himself because the water was shallow but my family were laughing too much to care, it was hilarious.

But this time the weather was slightly less nice, but it was misleadingly nice like when it looks really hot and sunny when you’re sitting at the computer in your study typing stuff and then you look outside and the grass is green and the sky is blue and you think to yourself you’ll do all your work outside so you get all power cables for your laptop and maybe some speakers so you can have a bit of music and then when you get outside it’s actually colder than you thought it would be. That’s what it was like.

Unfortunately also I lost all of the digital pictures I took because sometimes I just lose things which can be quite upsetting but I have learnt to deal with it. The only ones I have are my film ones and these are some I took with my Olympus OM-10 literally just before it broke which was very sad.

By the way, these are at a nice little pub en route to Bath but I don’t know where exactly, but there is a river in Bath somewhere and if you follow it backwards for a bit you might end up at this pub.

There was a very disapproving old couple sat opposite us and I could tell they were disapproving because they kept frowning at us and the woman muttered something to that man about us being noisy or something like, “I wish they’d go away, they’re being very distracting”.Here is the disproving old man reading his newspaper.

There were many mugs on the ceiling. I like pubs with collections of things like beer mats or money or stickers or just interesting things because it gives you something to look at when the person you’re with gets boring.

These are some swans eating themselves. I don’t like swans, they’re really intimidating. If swans were people they’d be the sort of people I’d avoid and if I saw them walking towards me I’d cross the street to put a bit of distance between us because they are really scary as people.

This is Jack staring at the bridge. It got a bit sunny for a little bit which was really nice for a little bit.

My brother and my dad. We didn’t stay at this pub long because we’d only used the narrow boat for about 20 minutes and my family wanted to try more pubs. I don’t think it was a good idea to drink and drive the narrow boat though, the time before when we hired a narrow boat my grandad managed to ground us in the sand until we were completely stuck. Although this may have had nothing to do with alcohol, it could have just been general incompetency. (No offence to him intended).

This is my dad’s and my mum’s feet.

From back when my dad used to smoke. He might still smoke actually, a lot of the time he did it in secret though by hiding somewhere in the garden like a toddler who doesn’t want to be found and then we had to pretend we hadn’t seen him. But seriously though, smoking is bad.

So if you ever hire a narrow boat to go to Bath, there is a pub somewhere along the way with mugs on the ceiling.

maybe final pieces but i dunno yet

If you’re interested I’ve sort of started/finished my final piece(s) and I think maybe, possibly they will look something like this. It’s the photo and then what I asked them and the drawing as well all shoved together in Photoshop.

Initially I was just planning on printing them off a4 sized and sticking them up with blu-tack but everyone else in my class seems to be putting much more time and effort into their final pieces. Into their whole project actually. They’ve even done reflective journals and sketchbooks building up their ideas and I leave it all till last minute so I have no time for such nonsense.

Also this isn’t all of them. I’m going to go to Brighton to do some more and hopefully I’ll get loads done and scrape a pass which would be wonderful.

Also hopefully it won’t rain because if it does i’ll have a sad-on all day and won’t be in the mood to take photos and I won’t be able to get an ice-cream and eat it on the beach because there is a time and a place for eating ice-cream and it definitely isn’t in the rain.

I’m not going to write about every single one because they have writing on them and it would just get tedious.

By the way I copied that stuff from an earlier blog post pretty much because I didn’t know what to write and I didn’t want to make it sound fancy because I’m not.

My parents were like oh, it’s too busy, make the text really small because it looks crowded otherwise but personally I much prefer it crowded. This sort of links in with a conversation I had earlier with my friends at the pub when I explained that it would be really fun living in a house like that man who never threw anything away because he had to crawl through stacks of newspaper and it just looked really fun.

Then they were all like oh, it would be a fire hazard.

Some people are so negative – it would be a lot of fun.

It is my life’s ambition to have a house like that.

And find out how Bernard’s watch worked.

 

borough market before christmas

I’ve only just got round to sorting my Christmas pictures and these are some pictures I took just before Christmas at Borough Market which is this big market in London with people selling food like cheese and bread and ostrich burgers and overpriced lemonade. Also as a special Christmas treat they were selling mulled wine which smells all Christmas-y, but it tastes disgusting.

So in a way they’re almost a bit dated because Christmas is only once a year and that’s how it should be. The other day I heard a Christmas song I’d forgotten to take off my iPod and it felt really weird to listen to it, like when you meet up with someone you haven\t seen in years and realise you haven’t got anything in common. Actually it’s nothing like that. But it did feel weird.

I was stood outside the cheese shop for ages because my dad and my grandparents wanted to buy cheese and I was in there for a few minutes but it smelt really rotten in there like bin juice and sprout farts and people kept offering me little cubes of cheese with mould growing on them and I felt really rude declining them because they had a hurt look in their eyes because they’d made it themselves, but it really wasn’t anything personal – I just thought it looked and smelt disgusting.

So anyway, I stood outside for a bit taking photos. This is a photo of some lights.

The cheese shop was very busy. It was a right struggle to get out, I sort of had to barge through because it smelt gross. But obviously not for everyone. If I liked cheese I’m sure I would have loved it there, but I don’t. I like Cheestrings and Babybels because they’re nice and simple and only one colour, although to be fair that probably means they’re loaded with additives and junk but oh well. I don’t think they sold Cheestrings or Babybels there and I didn’t want to ask in case they all got angry and murdered me. Or something.

There was a man and his dog and he was staring longingly over at the cheese. For ages. It was odd.

And this was his dog but because he was a dog he didn’t have the same viewpoint and was stuck looking at people’s feet which must get a bit boring after a while, but they don’t really seem to mind.

Then when they had finally bought all of their cheese and cheese-related items, we had a wander around the rest of the market and there was all sorts of food things and also Christmas trees, because like I said, it was coming up to Christmas. (Sorry, this is in the past). For example, there was also bread but as you can see it wasn’t particularly interesting – it’s just bread. There weren’t even any cakes or anything which would have livened it up a bit in my opinion.

Some shocked fish. They look a bit miserable and I don’t really blame them. It must be rubbish being a fish – you don’t have hands so you can’t play computer games and stuff. Also they are fish so they can’t play computer games anyway, unless they have some secret, hidden underwater world where they can play computer games. That would be cool. Also they are all dead.

And that’s what it looked like one day in Borough Market last Christmas.