sw’as

So, we attended V Festival on the weekend. It was awesome. Here is a random assortment of highlights, lowlights and other shit.

Highlights

• Muse. Best gig of the weekend.
• The Presets. This was the first act we saw and the only disappointment was its extreme brevity. 25 minutes is not enough Presets. We were left wanting more, much more.
• The Hoosiers. Don’t think I’d heard of them before, but they put on an awesome show.
• The Zutons. After listening to their latest album You Can Do Anything a lot, I was really looking forward to seeing these guys. They sure didn’t disappoint. Their version of Valerie was amazing live and really highlighted how boring the Amy Winehouse gig was, as we’d heard her sing Valerie about 15 minutes earlier.
• The Kooks. I’d never really got into their music, but seeing them live was a treat. There was something about their gig which just screamed quality.
• Kaiser Chiefs. Closing the festival, they put a huge exclamation mark on the weekend. What a show.
• Friends. As always with these kinds of events, the friends we hung out with really topped it off. It wouldn’t have been as great without them.

Lowlights

• The camping facilities. The other three day music festival I’ve camped at a few times is Splendour In The Grass. The toilets and showers^[1] at V are seriously lacking when compared to Splendour. You definitely have to expect a degree of disgusting shit when you camp at a festival, but most times I visited the toilets at V there was very literally^[2] shit up to the rim of the bowl. They were simply unusable.
• Amy Winehouse. Boring! That’s all I can say, not that I expected or hoped for much.
• Line-up changes. Spending ages in the crowd working our way right to the front and waiting for Sam Sparro didn’t pay off when we found he’d been switched with Robyn, who was also cool, but we were there for Sam.
• Waiting. There is too much waiting between shows.
• Missing The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers. I’d seen them both before so we chose Muse and Kaiser Chiefs instead, choices I don’t regret, but it would have been awesome to see them both again.
• Unidentified flying liquids. There was far too many unknown liquids being thrown around for comfort. I don’t mind a bit of water being thrown around a hot crowd, in fact I love it, but it’s simply rude to throw anything else. It’s very sad that people do because they can. An extreme lowlight was being hit (along with many people around us) with a distinctly warm liquid; much to warm to be a warm beer.

Other shit

• Extreme inebriation. Seeing a chick who had pissed her self and was left stumbling around looking dazed with soaked jeans was a bit funny - in a sad kind of way.

The whole weekend really was a blast, and it’s re-invigorated my love of (live) music. The other acts we saw were: Royworld, Alphabeat, Taio Cruz, Lost Prophets, Alanis Morissette, Lenny Kravitz, The Pigeon Detectives and Stereophonics.

1. Oh, wait, there were no showers at V. [↩]
2. I mean the literal meaning of the word literally, not the ‘I literally shit my pants’ kind of literally which is used far too often for comfort. [↩]

It’s well past the due date for an update around here. I’ve found that every time I decide it’s time for a new entry all that happens is I accumulate a new draft. I’ve got this obsession with going large on the blog posts which tends to mean not finishing what I started.

So my resolve is to be ok with making somewhat shorter and more frequent posts. I’m fairly certain I’ve made a similar resolution before, so let’s hope this time it actually works.

I’ve finally managed to start uploading some photos of our travels (which I’m actually happy with). Over the weekend we spent a day out at Hadleigh Castle and Southend-on-Sea. Hadleigh Castle now looks far more like a pile of rocks than it once did, but it was still well worth a trip. We had one of the best days we’ve seen since landing in the land of cloud, but unfortunately, the beautiful blue skies were somewhat overpowered by the bitter, bitter cold. Southend-on-Sea was one of the strangest places I’ve been. The esplanade was wall to wall games arcades, and take away joints selling horrible greasy food. The only interruptions seemed to be the occasional strip joint. There were also a bunch of amusement parks along the ‘beach’. Southend-on-Sea is also the home to what is apparently the world’s longest pier, which we had every intention of walking the length of, but were thwarted by the bitter, bitter cold^[1].

That’ll do for today. Short but…well, short. I’m aiming for frequent and short.

Gone.

1. Did I mention how stupidly cold it was? [↩]

It’s high time I took out the trash. Each of these paragraphs summarises a draft that I never got around to publishing and more than likely never will:

I got a new job…ages ago. In fact I’m only four weeks from leaving that very position.

Sometimes, friendships slip away, not because you don’t care for the person anymore, but because you and they simply forget to maintain it. Even if you still call yourselves friends, there’s not the same level of comfort and intimacy that there once was^[1]. I have this vague idea that I should keep and regularly review a list of friends which ranks them in order of importance to me. That way, I can be sure to maintain the friendships that really matter.

I sometimes get quite bored. In fact, recently (like six months ago), I was feeling bored much of the time. I’m not so bored at the moment, there are some very interesting things happening.

The Eels are probably the greatest band in the world (according to me).

I pretty much hate George W. Bush and there are a lot of reasons to feel that way ^[2].

The idea of de-cluttering is really appealing. The current cull of possessions due to our move is really helping out with that.

Last time I was in the UK the six weeks of traveling turned my favourite pair of jeans into tatters of denim hanging from my hips.

I noticed today^[3] that in an effort to avoid looking like I’m staring (not that I have to make a special effort, it’s just something I do instinctively) my eyes naturally gravitate to the least interesting or least attractive thing in my field of vision. This seems odd to me. Although I understand why it’s a social no-no to stare at other people, it really doesn’t make that much sense. Why would we stare at the back of an ugly man or the dirty concrete walkway when you could be looking at the much more pleasing body coming in your direction? Or why would you choose to look out the window when the person sitting across from you on the bus is infinitely more interesting than the wooden sound barriers surrounding the freeway? Go on people, have a stare!

1. Incidentally, I think Facebook can have a really negative impact on friendships in this vein. [↩]
2. Incidentally, I don’t agree with all of those reasons, but it was a convenient list. [↩]
3. It was today, about three years ago. [↩]

What? You mean we’re in January already? Funny, I don’t remember there being a New Year’s at all.

P.S. I haven’t just been ignoring this place. Check out withoutpockets.com. The awesomeness of brand new shirts arrives very soon.