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May 12th, 2008
12:42 am - i don't know if you're beautiful because i love you far too much
in the vein of posting images, this is the small and crappy version of a great picture my grandfather took of my dad and i about 5/6am as we were setting up the fishing equipment. The bigger version has much prettier james cameron fog effects but I still like this shot a lot.
After 6 hours of sitting there - although i was mostly dozing whilst surreptitiously listening to my ipod - we left without a single bite, except my grandfather who caught 4 of the biggest carp I've ever seen, and in case you're wondering they were all put straight back in the pond
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12:36 am - take the medicine 3 times
if you want any more proof that guns are bad m'kay, this is the state of my arm about 9 days since I went shooting fake plastic pigeons with my father:
that was only caused by my inability to hold the gun correctly, i'm really starting to feel for that guy dick cheney shot, unlucky bastard indeed
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May 4th, 2008
09:01 pm - road leads where its led
no money and sat in my parents house on a sunday night. I'd go out for a drive but where? its all the same round here. I have a bunch of yo la tengo records I put on the ipod before coming here. It turns out that I can listen to the entirety of i am not afraid of you and i will beat your ass driving from my home in manchester to my parents house. it now makes my current top ten driving records:
boards of canada - music has the right to children
dandy warhols - dandys rule ok
modest mouse - This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About
Neutral Milk Hotel - Aeorplanes over the sea
yo la tengo - i am not afraid of you and i will beat your ass
idlewild - the remote part
sparklehorse - vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot
radiohead - ok computer
ben folds - rockin the suburbs
sufjan stevens - illinoise
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April 30th, 2008
11:11 pm - thats what im waiting for
fun weekend most of which was taken up by my trip down to alexandra palace in london for the annual carphone warehouse ball. 8 of us took a train to euston and then rode the tube to wood green. It was fun and I took a few photos with my sisters old camera phone but ineviatably none of them turned out well.
The ball itself, well i'm not a fan of these kind of mass events and especially jolly old corporate ones like this, was a themed venetian masquerade ball mixed in with a Rio and a bastardised Notting hill-esque carnival which was actually pretty awesome. Our CEO had hired Mika and various dj's, dance troupes, steel bands, marching processions and lots of free alcohol.
We danced and drank and ate and mostly didn't fall over too much until the night came to to an end around dawn. Of the 8 of us that travelled down, only 4 made it back home to dreary manchester on the free coaches, a success of sorts. I spent all of sunday zombified infront of sky sports news and trying not to move my head much.
actually after taking that shot i ditched the tie for a bowtie. Though i never managed to fasten it no matter how hard i tried. apparently its like tying a shoelace backwards but it was too confusing for me
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April 14th, 2008
10:52 am
another wet weekend in manchester. originally planned to go to the lake district but the weather was atrocious so instead drove around the peak district. Made it to Buxton over the A537, more commonly known as the Cat & Fiddle. The road was so spectacular I made plans to come back on my bike as soon as the weather improved.
The route will probably go sometihng like travelling down from manchester via Alderly Edge to Macclesfield. Then over the cat and fiddle to Buxton and coming back in a circular route via Whaley Bridge
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March 21st, 2008
12:08 am
my father got a new motorbike recently. Theres no point debating the mid life crisis nature of this purchase, but i am excited. This easter there's a promise we're riding up to scotland i'm really looking forward to.
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March 16th, 2008
09:44 pm - thats what i'm waiting for
we hung out last night at abode, the weather was crappy so we sat inside listening to the dj play alternatively, ac/dc, lighthouse family, arcade fire and g'n'r. It was a little weird. Afterwards we moved onto ularu and sat opposite the female toilets inside which a drug dealer was handing out coke to the girls and guys, why the hell are people still getting high on some stupid 80's party drug i have no idea.
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March 10th, 2008
02:35 am
its late sunday and really should be fast asleep ahead of tomorrows marathon job coding. but i made the mistake of having obscene amounts of coffee earlier and the wind out there is rattling the doors so any thought of sleep has long since disappeared.
I took the bike out for ride earlier today. When i woke up at 11 it was glorious sunlight, but by mid afternoon when i finally walked out the clouds were close and dark. The bike was without an offside mirror - it finally broke last week when my uncle walked into it stepping off his bike. I went at it with blutack and gaffertape but only made a mess, although it lasted a good ten minutes of riding.
I rode south thinking at first I'd ride the a34 down to congleton but it was much too cold and the lack of side mirror offputting so headed in a round circle through wythenshawe - more depressing town than stoke, and back home before the rain started.
This afternoon we headed into town. I didn't feel much like shopping and beer was off the menu so i bought a magazine and holed myself up in the corner of cafe nero on cross street and sat for an hour until the coffee went cold and went back home.
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January 28th, 2008
12:24 am - shoreline
a fun weekend with phil.
The interruptions were playing a charity gig in dukinfield, a small town in tameside home of Colonel Robert Dukinfield. We caught a bus into town and then found our way onto the 220 service that took us out east past ashton and dropped us off in front of a lifesize bronze statue of the colonel.
No one knew who the charity concert was for, but it was vying for attention with some kind of biker wedding/convention in the main hall which meant the place was full of baldy beardy blokes in leather waistcoats and dodgy tattoos. It also mneant the interruptions played pretty much to an empty hall, as the bikers didn't care much for them.
After the show a few of us walked north to ashton train station
and boarded the empty train back to victoria where we carried on drinking at the city arms and fab until phil made the catastrophic error of downing a quadruple gin.. we left shortly after.
Today was mostly helping phil nurse his hangover before heading out once again, this time to see British Sea Power. The academy was a wash with little emu kids off to see 30secs to mars, while inside academy 2 contained the usual ragtag crowd of flag waving, tree branch bearing brigade. The band were as good as ever, I get weirdly emotional seeing them play older material as it takes me back to the graduation show they played at university and other such distant times,
  
tomorrow i have to explain why my project is behind schedule, yuck.
currently listening:
BSP - do you like rock music?
The National - Boxer (just brilliant, my fav album of the year)
Battles - Mirrored
Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala
Marissa Nadler - Songs III: Bird On The Water
Robert Wyatt - Comicopera
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December 7th, 2007
12:21 am - i'll take you all on
i don't know whats happening much these days, i feel a little lost at sea.
I had a call today about a job, software consultant, based in covent gardens london but 100% travel to client sites which are in the US and Singapore and presumably a lot of them in the uk. It sounded fun and the pay would be $$$. I'm not in a position to move to london until late '08 and I don't think i'm the right man for the job so i said no to the interview. i'm regretting this decision already.
Last wednesday was Interpol at blackpool empress ballroom. I was skeptical abotu this concert, but approx 3mins into the gig once Daniel Kessler played the opening riff to Obstacle 1 it was like a giant surge inside, Joe, Phil and I stormed to the front and jumped around like madmen for the next hour. I left midway through, my asthma was bad and I needed air. There was a fight at the entrance to the Winter Gardens, 2 middle aged couples were attackign each other while security tried to throw them out, one of the women bit a securities hand drawing blood it was kind of surreal. I went back to my car, used my inhalor, changed my shirt which was frankly disgusting with sweat and went back and watched the rest of the gig from the balcony. It was a long drive home but so so worth going.
radiohead tickets go on sale tomorrow, im getting tickets oh yes.
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November 17th, 2007
03:22 am - anywhere, anyhow...
i don't write much mostly because i'm too terrified to face upto the banality of my life lately. I don't see an immediate solution to this problem until I quit my job and really find some purpose or meaning to all of this.
In the meantime, last weekend I went out riding my motorbike with Rebecca from work. She has a honda cbr400 and was one of the few people in my life convincing me it was a good idea to buy a bike instead of the usual response of don't be fucking idiot. We met up at the service station just before you reach Chester and took the A-roads through chester and down into Wales and past Wrexham. She took me through the winding roads to Llangollen and then up through Horsehoe Pass:
The weather was a little off but it was so much fun to ride through these twisty little welsh roads. We stopped off at Ponderosa, a well known biker cafe before heading off in circular route that took us back towards Chester. It was so much more fun riding out with someone else more so than I expected and it does kinda annoy me that I know so few people who own bikes.
Besides the biking I've got tickets to Smashing Pumpkins!! thanks to my good friend Phil. I really cannot wait to relive my angst and troubled teenage years and jump around like a loon to this band. Before that there was Iron & Wine who packed out the Academy and coming up is Interpol, Gogol Bordello and British Sea Power - who without a doubt are probably the most influential and most loved band in my life.
Reading wise, I'm currently completely hung up on Flannery O'Connor, these gothic southern stories are the best thing I've read since Joyce. Between her and Dennis Johnson and Nabakov I feel happy and back to a state of awe and learning and appreciation I haven't felt in years.
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October 18th, 2007
02:26 am
I saw control tonight, and its currently leading my best film of the year chart. I don't know how they did it, but somehow in the brilliant monochrome they made macclesfield appear almost glamorous. I really really appreciated the fact the actors played and sang the joy division songs themselves instead of relying on a soundtrack and samantha moreton put in a career best performance as Ian's long suffering wife.
Joy Division weren't ever a band I gew up with, I didn't buy a copy of unknown pleasures until I was around 19/20. But I knew of Ian Curtis and his suicide, and even though after watching this movie I still don't feel I know much about who he really was, I do appreciate more of where their music came from and just how tragic his demise was. I think it stacks up nicely against 24 hour party people which I really loved but couldn't quite appreciate/understand the madchester scene, whereas this movie really grounds you in the banality and oppressive feeling of life around the end of the 70's.
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October 14th, 2007
11:47 pm
These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). Bold what you have read, italicise that you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an asterisk* to those you've read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
( continued after the jump )
hmm, not nearly as many as I hoped to have read. Most of the half reads were secondary req. reading for courses and just didn't the time or desire to complete them, looking back now though I wish i had made the effort
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August 8th, 2007
11:34 am
back from the twin cities.
I missed my original flight out
Missed the I35-W bridge collapse by an hour
Saw the insanely large Mall of America which has rollercoasters inside it
Hung out at the art fair in uptown
saw some of the fringe festival
Pulled over and warned by a policeman for commiting 4 traffic violations in one go
Spent time in Red Wing
Went up North to see Duluth and Lake Superior
Kayaked down part of the brule river.
Drove 300 miles through rural wisconsin.
Lost all my luggage on the return flight.
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June 16th, 2007
10:15 am
been quiet of late, but things are changing a little this summer so I finally felt able to post something. I've moved out of the city centre to Chorlton sharing with a pair of student hairdressers and landlady Andrea, a german translator, this is our house:
and in a rash move on my 25th birthday I drove down to South Wales and bought a motorbike:
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February 27th, 2007
02:56 pm
the days kind of blurring, work is slowly slowly improving, though not to the point of happiness/contented/worth staying for. The weekend was fun though. Meeting up with my sister and her friends on saturday and then again on sunday for the chinese new year festival which was frankly shoddy and not at all worth queuing for over an hour without caffine or sugar.
on that bbc radio quiz i won the following:
bloc party - a weekend in the city
cold war kids - robbers and cowards
Lady Sovereign - public warning
mika - life in cartoon motion
various - rough trade '06 compilation
various - rough trade 1976 compilation
The only one I really listn to is the Rough Trade compilation oh and Cold War Kids. Bloc Party's latest effort is a bit rubbish, Lady Sovereign is destined overseas, and Mika just annoys me.
Besides the free music I've mainly been on a diet of Rufus Wainwright and after discovering the long lost Nick Hornby mix cd in a dvd case: Bruce Springstein and Rod Stewart.
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February 14th, 2007
11:08 pm
ok... so who wins the coolest hat competition?
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December 22nd, 2006
09:36 am
we moved in on saturday. After picking the girl up from the airport and sleeping for a few hours i woke up and drove back to blackpool to collect more boxes.
The elevator in the new palce is broken - it works from every floor except ground so that meant lugging up all my stuff two flights of stairs blah. I have most of my belongings here. I'm missing all my books and computer but i have no phone or internet anyway till sometime in january.
The flat is ok, it has a really long corridor leading to the 3 rooms which wil be filled with prints or canvas art as and when we get round to it. The lounge/kitchen is all glass which is fun on a sunny day but with no curtains drapes feels a little exposed at night.
Saturday night we went to ikea - me for the first time. It was a little strange watching all the people defining their personal spaces by what brand of ikea lamp to hang on their ikea bookshelf opposite their ikea shelving. I think i actually hate ikea even if hating ikea is like hating mcdonalds.
Sunday was my parents visiting with more of my belongings and my father helping fix the boiler. That night I was itching to go out but instead stayed in watching tv and eating bad food.
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November 23rd, 2006
09:41 am
last week i finally gave my notice to the landlord, they seemed fine with everything and a to let sign has already appeared outside the property. In the meantime I've been scouring a million property websites for flats in manchester. I need to move sooner rather than later, this month alone with petrol costs and my car breaking down, its cost me £500 to get to work and back which is just obscene and makes me physically sick. I've been living off rice and bread for 3 weeks, waking at 5:30 and coming home at 7pm since september and i'm finally hitting breaking point.
I only have myself to blame with all of this. I should never have accepted the job but these things happen. As soon as i move I will have a little breathing space with money and with public transport being relatively straightforward if the car decides to breakdown again i'll just push it into the canal.
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November 14th, 2006
11:38 am
passed my motorcycle test. ++good
however now is not the time of year to buy a bike, especially with the costs of relocating to manchester to be paid in the next month.
Also my car exploded last week driving down the M6 but it seems to be repairable. In the meantime i'm taking the train to work, which takes me 2 hours each way, but in some ways its actually enjoyable, I get to slump down in a near empty train with a flask of tea, a book and music and sleep read my way to and from work. I haven't given myself this much daily spare time to read since leaving university and given that its cheaper than driving i think may make it a regular occurance as long as it isn't raining or unbearably cold..
Last saturday was watching Muse, i can't describe watching them as being pleasant, we came away wet, bruised, exhausted after having 5 thousand people jumping all over us but there is something to be said for that kind of rush.
Really hoping to see The Prestige this week. For both Christian Bale and michael caine and notwithstanding David Bowie as Nikola Tesla! Even if its pants it will be worth it to see how they portray him.
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