George With Words

Travis's "The Boy With No Name" Review

Sun, 20 May 2007 17:25:42 +0200

I remember the first Travis album; the lesser known Good Feeling, and that first song that only ever reached number 40 in the charts. I remember that Travis, and I loved them. Back in the day when they were spat out of Glasgow Art School as a newly formed underground Brit Pop band, back before they discovered melody and their main ability was to play with some chirpy distorted guitar noise whilst Francis Healy screamed his gravely voice over the top. I can still remember when the huge arena lyrics of Sing and Why Does It Always Rain On Me were still yet to be written, and instead their greatest gift to poetry was "I'm a foot without a sock without you". I loved that band, that first album, Good Feeling, is possibly my favourite album of all time, and the reason Travis will always have a place in my top 5 bands.

Somewhere between Good Feeling and the infamous Man Who they sold out a little. They were still an amazing band, if you looked past the number 3 singles to the delightful b-sides, songs like As You Are, which fits somewhere on the list of songs that have saved my life. Even the opening track Writing To Reach You was a beautiful in-joke, the line "what's a Wonderwall anyway?" being sung over the top of the chords they'd stolen directly from Oasis's track. Then of course there was Blue Flashing Light, the hidden song, and one of the nastiest hidden tracks to appear on an album. It is a vicious dark ballad with sinister lyrics, but all comes across as a beautiful release of anger against the world.

Then came the Invisible Band, their musical low point. I bought that album, and at the time I liked it, but now it seems so ordinary and mundane that it can only disappoint. Suddenly they seemed so far away from Good Feeling that my heart was on the verge of breaking. Tracks like Sing and Flowers In The Window were beautiful, but they were songs to slip on a mix-tape for your girlfriend, not songs that captured a mood and a life like they use to be able to. Next, album 4, 12 Memories: it was hope. The band went back to their routes, suddenly something had angered them and they bit back with amazing songs such as Beautiful Occupation, juxtaposed against the xylophone led Somewhere Else; they weren't back at Good Feeling but it was work in process.

So that is the history of Travis. Starting off at their best, they moved away from it, but now were on the course to recovery. So, all hopes rested on The Boy With No Name, some belief they might just go back to being the Brit Pop group they once were. The first single came along, Closer. My heart sank. It is a good tuneful song, delicate lyrics with a gentle melody, but the truth is it was flouncier than a bead-laden English Lit student skipping and reciting poetry.

Maybe it was just a one-off, but suddenly my hope had gone, I bought the album in a pessimistic mood, and made a little prayer before I pressed play. The first song came on, my heart sank even further, it was now in my shoe. It's a simple whiney ballad with no impact whatsoever, and a dreadful opening song for an album that was supposed to be their return to glory.

Eventually after four minutes of 'it's all right, but nothing special' the song finishes. However then song number two happens.

The drum roll kicks in, backed with a bass riff reminiscent of Iggy Pop's Lust For Life, suddenly your ears are grabbed and you have just enough time to prepare yourself for the beautiful moment as the guitars kick in. Some jumpy strumming by Francis Healy hits your ears as Andy Dunlop assists him with the xylophone like guitar noise he had perfected throughout 12 Memories. Suddenly I was in love again, the song made me want to sing, and jump, and dance, and breath, and smile, and skip, and live. The world, despite grey clouds and spitting rain was suddenly beautiful, I smiled happily at the car that almost ran me over on my way to Uni, as I made my enthusiatisc way down the street. Okay the guitar is still an acoustic, and the distortion of Good Feeling is nowhere to be seen, but that beautiful essence of golden Travis was there. "All we needed now was the golden lyrical genius of Francis Healy to come back", this was the thought flying through my mind, as a sentence caught my ear: "Well a perfect combination of good etiquette and charm/ You keep the chocolate biscuits wired to a car alarm." They're back, I thought to myself.

Selfish Jean is definitely the best song on the album, and if it is that then it might be the best song Travis have ever done, and if it's that, then it might just become my favourite song of all time, we'll just have to see whether it can stand the test of time, but right now I am in musical love. Certainly it is the song I have heard that most incorporates my perfect taste in music, some delightful whacked drums with jumpy acoustic riffs flying over the top, other people will hate it, I don't care I am in heaven.

However apart from that the rest of the album lacks something. Big Chair has some early Travis bass riffs placed in sync with some fast-paced rolling drums, but it simply fails to climax or grow into anything better. Eyes Wide Open has a sinister angry guitar riff with some authoritative rhythm stamped over it, but then makes the fatal mistake of having a wonderful verse next to a tedious chorus.

Overall the album is okay, but failed to make the vital steps in the direction of perfection that I had hoped for. It certainly isn't as good as Man Who or my beloved Good Feeling, but it is better than the uneventful Invisible Band and the tedious 12 Memories. Someday they will release Selfish Jean on single, if so you may want to buy it, and maybe Eyes Wide Open will be worth the £2 when it makes an appearance upon shelves. But if I was you I wouldn't buy the album, there is no great beauty or wonder within it, just a few basic tunes that could be heard from any good pub band up and down the country. So instead of buying the album, hit the nostalgia shelves and add the must have Man Who to your collection, or alternatively track down the spectacular, but little known Good Feeling.

As for me I will sit and wait in hope of album six. Maybe there is still hope, Selfish Jean is hope, maybe enough to keep waiting on.

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The Voice In The Nightime

Sun, 20 May 2007 17:23:51 +0200

Words were dead to me. Gone with times that once were, repressed by the day to day, nine-to-five. I’d forgotten what it was like to love a sentence, love a word, a pattern. Then her voice read. Voices so mundane had read those words for years, and now they were revived, remembered, given life again, so once more they could inspire the belief.
I’d started to thing they were useless, that beauty was impractical, that sentences were no longer mansions but terraces houses, conveniently packaged to be just enough, but nothing more. People no longer build gothic cathedrals, or exquisite palaces, we build semi-detached houses that are environmentally sound and economical to run.
I don’t know when it was that I lost that feel; the way words use to move me. Somewhere in this lacklustre mundane world of temporary survival I was reduced to another yielding cog in the forever machine But now I am alive again, heaven sang and an angel’s power found my pen and made me see beauty again; see it as aesthetics, instead of just debts and loans.
Buildings fall down, cars stop working, but words last forever, lasting on page after page, read and recited by different minds right down the ages. That moment as we read Pope, or Chaucer or Marlowe, how are minds engage with the will of the words, the syllables come to life as we struggle to understand old words written centuries ago, or as we suffer the translator’s wraith when he replaces them with new ones. But it does not matter, because words are alive and they are still changing the world forever. We would not know what Jesus looked like laying on the cross is someone had not penned it, nor would we know the atrocities of countless wars, had someone not had the bravery to write what they saw down.
We needs words to make things real, and they are real, here on this page. The day I become no longer impressed by everyday speech is the day I give up. How we go through that infinite effort, bending and flexing our tongues round the moving breath, just to pronounce the most basic sounds, and say “the”. I cannot respect man for buildings, for birds have beautiful nests, I cannot respect man for the car, for birds can fly, cheetahs run and fish swim. But humans can talk, and write. Write thoughts and feelings and ideas, express what we want, what we need or feel without having to resort to basic instinctive cries.
I thank her for reminding that, as her tongue bends the of centuries ago, bringing them back to life again. Marlowe is dead, his skin decayed, his soul ambiguous, his bones anonymous, but right now he is alive. In this room, in the air, he is here, infecting me; my ears tingling and vibrating to his thoughts centuries later. Right now, this is time travel.
I did not believe in muses, I didn’t think Shakespeare had to stare at a pretty face just to make things rhyme. But right now it’s different. Right now I am not writing because I wish, but because she made me. Made me believe, made me hope and dream and think. She did that, and all with just words.
I will not call her a muse, not debase her to an idea, or an inspiration. She is not mechanism, or a means to an end; she is the words, the language and the thoughts in my head. As each syllable passes through her lips once more I am reminded why beauty is more important than objectivity, why it doesn’t matter that the sky is blue, just that blue is more beautiful than black.
Science is important, but its father, Da Vinci was an artist, a man who saw the world through twisted eyes and made it change. I believe in art, is music, on words. I do not care if the artist has depth or if the writer can spell, as long as it feels. As long as that creation inspires some light or hope in the darkness of humanity then it is worth it. The human race has hurt itself, it has hurt its planet, humans cheat, they steal, lie and steal, but at least they invented words.
Words are not everything, I cannot like God declare light and let it be, but I can write and idea. I can like Orwell write a story of some pigs on a farm who corrupt the ideals in which they originally so firmly believed.
Many people don’t have this faith in words, they will tell you that the mechanic or the doctor are more important then why do gears break down? Why do people die? Why does metal rust, diseases mutate, but words last forever?
It is with an idea that I write. People should not write for fortune or just to make a quick bit of cash to keep the account looking happy. Instead they should seek to inspire, to make people read and write themselves. it does not matter who has been published and who has not; nor does it matter who has the best use of syntactic patterning or extended metaphors. All that matters is that it is written; that the brain releases that hope in humanity and the ideas trickle down through the arm and out into the world: Ideas that can make people smile, cry, or even change the world.
So I thank the voice in the night time air. Her soft voice forever speaking the words as though plunging me into the world in which they were written. All of a sudden the human race is not lost but saved, and now may the world keep turning, people keep thinking, and minds keep writing, and may we all thank that voice in the night time.

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title-2303186

Sun, 20 May 2007 17:22:44 +0200

Yet again, be prepared for quite a long blog, it was quite a long night with quite a lot to tell you, however first of all may I tell everyone why it is still, fifty odd years on, still compulsory viewing.

Gone have the days when I watch to see if the British can win, I certainly don't watch it planning to buy one of the songs because I loved it so much, nowadays, Eurovision is no longer like an extended Top of the Pops, or some musical delight, but a work of accidental satire of the highest quality. Its humour is farcical, and always reminds me of an almost Monty Pythoneque comedy where you find your self laughing more and more as the world descends deeper and deeper into ever more bizarre attempts to get Europe's attention.

Last year, the Greek Eurovision song contest gave us Loardie, a bunch of gothic, axe wielding, masked men, who, in the Eurovision President's own words were likely to "scare children." However this year was something quite different, but before reaching this year's champions let us just reflect on this year's musical highlights.

There was of course the good ye olde traditional Irish entry, where a pretty Irish girl is placed in front of a stereotypical Irish folk band recently picked up out of the nearest pub to the airport. Naturally, she stands there singing with pool like eyes, and gleaming smile, whilst the violinist shows us the gaps where his teeth used to be. Then of course there was the likes of the Swedish who seemed a little determined to try and cash in on the whole Loardie 'Goths can win Eurovision' look, as they came out in the best metal clothes available to the Swedes. Unfortunately this resulted in a topless man lying down on a spinning hypnotic wheel singing something that sounded suspiciously like McFly. Although, they weren't the only ones trying to pick up on the whole Metal revolution in Eurovision. Even the Russians tried to get the 'alternative' vote, by getting the three teenaged women to "sing" over a metal infused riff, as they gyrated the microphone stand. However, worried they were being too 'pop', they also got a lone metal guitarist to head bang in the background as he pretended his lone guitar could produce the entire song.

So, that's the metal side of Eurovision scene covered. Now onto the 'tarty', of which this year's best offer came from the Greeks, who promptly paraded out a man with several blonde women, who were noticeably showing more skin than was being covered by the white material they called a top and skirt. To add to the touch they tied little ribbons to each of their hips, which the man could then pull and make them create pretty patterns, which in the end formed a huge heart shape (awww, how sweet). But apparently sex no longer sells that easily in Eurovision anymore; certainly Loardie never came out in a two piece bikini. So Greece this year, despite catching the attention of most European men for three minutes, failed to even threaten the voting patterns.

Oddly enough Britain tried this pattern this year. We managed to get even less votes than the Greeks, but did manage to gain the award for the most amount of sexual innuendo ever crammed into three minutes – "would you like something to suck on while we land, sir?" the question being asked by the very gay man in the flight steward outfit.

So, this year the metal scene was disappointing, the 'blonde and half naked', tactic didn't take it, what was left? Well there is always the good old bizarre factor, my personal favourite, and this year it seemed to steal the show. Last year Loardie was our only hope, apart from a group of lads from Lithuania who optimistically titled their track "We Are the Winners of Eurovision". However this year, bizarreness was the main theme, with even the French getting in on the act: that is presuming that four incredibly camp men, dressed in pink, dancing around like idiots counts as bizarre. In fairness, if that doesn't seem bizarre enough, take into account that the drummer had huge fairy wings sewn into his pink suit jacket, whilst the second singer ran around the stage with what appeared to be a cat nailed to his shoulder. It was the campest display the French have ever put on, and with that country's reputation, that's saying a lot.

Other moments of bizarreness were on offer, the Slovenians gave us a woman who's hand could omit light at various points during the song, the Romanians tried combining high paced gypsy music with a touch of Rastafarian reggae, and Latvia offered five men dressed in Victorian England clothing, wearing fake medals, and carrying a solitary rose each. Although it's hard to mention 2007 Eurovision bizarre highlights without mentioning the Ukraine.

It's hard to describe it, except to say that watching it felt a little like being mugged by a hyperactive roll of tin foil. After around a minute you start to question what you have eaten, and just how easily someone could've planted some form a hallucinogenic substance in whatever you've had. Imagine if Timmy Mallet was half way through a transgender operation, when he suddenly developed a fixation for 'shiny things' and took so much ecstasy that his only way to communicate was to incoherently shout numbers in German. That is as close as I can come to describing the sheer beauty, and yet frightfulness that was the Ukraine entry for Eurovision 2007.

However despite being firm favourites to win, and having made me see an all new side to illicit drug taking, they only came second. Yes this year's winner came from none of three Eurovision categories, nor did it come from my personal favourite to win, the Moldovan entry which tried to bring in every known Eurovision cliché into the one song. A tarty woman, wearing a leather corset, and leather trousers that showed as much thigh and belly as possible, sang operatically over a heavy metal beat; occasionally she would stop singing, and accompany the metal with some firm violin playing, whilst her accompanists wore little, and waved flags and ribbons in the background, as though it had something to do with the music. It was so Eurovision I almost fainted from eccentricity overload, however it still didn't win.

Instead this year's winner came from Serbia, who's entry was basically comprised of a small, fat, lesbian emo, who obviously cared deeply about her music, but who by the promoters had been forced into incorporating a couple of Barbie doll look-a-likes into her song. What the result produced, was a woman who couldn't sing all that well, trying to strain some vocals out over some poor producing, whilst blonde haired bimbos sang smilingly behind her. For their moment of big choreography, unlike the other nations, they did not pull off some spectacular dance trick, but instead chose to have the singer walk between the groups of Barbie dolls, and then (adventurously) walk back between them again; after this she returned to singing, whilst the Barbies placed their hands on her shoulder swaying - if post modernist theatre ever devoted a play to the themes of childhood schoolyard bullying, this is what it would look like. Unfortunately, despite the emo having her 'masterpiece' ruined by the plastic Stepford Wives extras behind her, and despite the emo's best attempts to ignore their existence completely, refusing to even look at them, they still won; and presumably only because of the 99% makeup, 1% person ratio of the girls behind her, because apart from that the song seemed as uneventful as a day in solitary confinement – in fact I think I would rather spend a day in solitary confinement than sit through that song again.

But anyway, thanks to the traditional voting patterns, the Baltic States have guaranteed themselves another year of hosting, and next year we will be off to Serbia. Which to an extent is a shame, because the Finnish did a good job of hosting apart from the cameo May-time Santa appearance, who seemed to kiss the lesbian winner a few too many times. That and the fairly bizarre cutaway clips of Finnish culture, including: replacing wedding bouquets with traditional market carrots; proposing to people by mobile phone; the "first official meeting of Finland's greatest celebrities Moomin and Santa"; and the highly interesting Finnish event, of a Computer Programmers Festival. Although possibly Finland's greatest gift to Terry Wogan's rants, was the "fan of Eurovision" they got to be the third presenter. The woman was a highly annoying, blonde fairy, who bounced around the camera like a headache, and spoke with a voice as though she hadn't quite woken up to the fact that she was no longer three years old. Maybe she was trying to be pretty, maybe cute, maybe charming; whatever her intentions, she was just a pain in the arse.

But alas, Scandinavia won't hold it next year, and thanks to the semi-finals and the new voting system, may never hold it again. Only Finland and Sweden made it this year, and instead the Baltic States and Eastern block swarmed in to fill up the positions. Naturally the ex-soviet countries all vote for each other, and therefore we can all expect never to leave that part of the world ever again. It use to be the case that judges decided on the votes, however since phone voting took over it has all become somewhat of an inevitability. Andorra voted for Spain, Denmark for Sweden, you start to see how having neighbours helps with winning Eurovision. As I sat there tonight looking at our 19 points compared to Serbia's 238 (at least it wasn't nil point again for us – thank you Ireland and Malta), I did sit there wondering if it was feasible to drag the United Kingdom the hundred odd miles southeast to nestle on Germany, France and Belgium in the vein hope of a chance of hosting it again. I'm contemplating now supporting Welsh and Scottish independence so that we can all vote for each other.

But until my plans are realised, the East will continue to vote for itself as Western Europe sits there fragmented and disillusioned. It is the Cold War musically reborn, with an iron curtain of self contained votes segregating our continent. Our only hope if to form our own adversarial Western Block, and somehow become more culturally inclined to vote for each other, the simple truth is we have to fight back or else we're doomed to forever be in the ex-Soviet states – in Terry Wogan's own words "where's Nato when you need it?"

But who cares, Eurovision isn't about the winning, it's not even about taking part. Instead it's sitting their laughing your head off, as Terry Wogan sips more and more wine, and wonders why he agrees to put himself through this absurdity ever 12 months. It's about us sitting in our country watching the eccentricities of our fellow nations battle it out for the economic boost hosting Europe's musical laughing stock can bring. It's about comedy, about enjoyment, and about slagging off the sheer horridness of the event before you wake up the next day counting down the days till next year. I love Eurovision, may it and Terry Wogan be immortal.

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title-2303176

Sun, 20 May 2007 17:20:36 +0200

In a previous blog I dabbled on the idea of creating an Apathy Party. However people seemed to misunderstand the joke, and the mild serious undertones that come with it.

Voter turnout did increase at this election, but then again for such a close election it is still atrocious that the turnout didn't even break the 60% barrier. With no party breaking 40% of the seats in Parliament, the largest block of voters were still those who didn't vote; a worrying statistic.

Of course there are those who can't vote, whether they're in hospital or in a different part of the country like I was for the St. Austell local elections. However there is no way that that amount could count for anymore than 5-10% of the apathy. So we still have at least 30% of the electorate, who despite being clearly able to vote didn't.

This is the point in the Apathy party, and the sole reason I will be running in 2011. If people are apathetic, and chose not to vote, then they deserve representation, otherwise their decisions is going to waste. However apathy comes in many forms, and it is not just those that don't care who I wish to represent.

There are many reasons why people don't vote, and I shall target the feelings of all of these voters. For example.

Those who don't understand the ideologies of the party
Those who feel their vote makes no difference
Those who don't understand the electoral system
Those who hate all the politicians running
Those who have no faith in politics

There are probably a wealth of other reasons why people don't vote, but those are the big ones. As much as the Apathy Party is a joke, it is much more a serious piece of satire, a political statement if you will. I want those people to vote for me as a statement, no one who doesn't care if going to vote for someone who doesn't care, but those who don't know might vote for someone who wants toe make it all clearer.

I can only hope that the Parliament sorts out the problems of apathy and understanding amongst the public; however is they don't, and somehow I should find myself with a seat in the institution of Hollyrood. Then rest assured I would naturally campaign on the issue that had brought me to power, to ironically make sure I was never re-elected again.

On all other issues, I would try and follow my instincts, my own personal beliefs somewhere with a liberal centre-left vision. As well as trying to take into account the general view of the public at the time.

But anyway, that is the plan, if I decide to run. The only paranoia I have is the turmoil afterwards, when I'm not elected, and for the rest of my life I am forever remembered as that twat who came up with that weird vision of the world. I hate the thought that I will never be taken seriously, all because I chose to do one stupid prank.

I can only hope that doesn't happen. But it seems worth it. Satire has never reached Parliament, maybe it's about time it did.

So I ask my loyal MySpace readers, should I do it? Is it just stupid? Any advice, offers of help, anything in fact would be very much appreciated. The simple truth is that I just don't know.

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Last Night

Sun, 20 May 2007 17:19:09 +0200

...She Said… *Starts mumbling incoherently in the singing voice of the The Strokes*

Believe it or not that was possibly the only musical reference within this particular blog, today instead of reviewing or giving my opinions I'm going to open up to you all.

The title last night, refers to the moment at which it proved just how quickly my life has crumble since the beginning of the Easter Holidays, and now my happy readers I shall tell you why in the short space of less than a week I now lay surrounded in an un-measurable mess of rubbish, and my eyes are blurry.

Two night ago was brilliant, the Gayes were in town, I saw them, I got a t-shirt, I hugged them, what more could any human being want. Then I retuned back to Nikki's and deciding it was too cold to go all the was home I slept the night on her floor.

This was quite possibly a mistake, because when I'm with people I tend not to shut up, and before you know it, through sheer talking we had found ourselves awake at 4am, and then with nothing to wake up for, we got up at 1:30pm. A bad move, now my body clock was miffed, and ready to get its revenge the up-coming evening.

Last night arrives. I have some nice phone call with Kayleigh where I give her permission to call me at 9am the next morning - mistake number two, At this point it is ten o'clock, if I'm woken up at 9, that's fine, as long as I get to bed before the next day. But that moment of calculation was an awful one.

Suddenly, in the words of Shreddies, hunger strikes. So far on this day I have had a bowl of cereal at Nikki's and a sandwich bought from an unsanitary shop on Byres Road on the way home. My stomach churns a little, but I fully know there is little food in the house, and certainly nothing I can combine to make a meal. I have pasta, but no sauce, I have ham and bacon, but no bread, I have cheese for an omelette, but no eggs. I could've had a bacon, ham, pasta, cheese, mix in a disgusting mesh of dry food. However I decline, and decide that my stomach will suffice with something from the vending machine until I can get to Iceland tomorrow.

I look for my keys, fifteen minutes later I find them underneath a pile of unopened bank statements, and scrap bits of paper, a pile only searchable with a couple of days to spare. I didn't have a couple of days, I just picked up the pile and saw the keys slip from within and onto the floor below. Success.

I head downstairs and outside to the Central Services building at my halls. Now the halls are empty, no one is around but the occasional foreign student and the odd weirdo like me. I walk inside to central services, walk up to the vending machine and buy the inevitable can of coke, and a Yorkie bar. I know, it's unethical, they feed babies to cows to make them produce more milk and what have you, I know buying from Nestle is wrong, but at that moment, at that moment in time, I needed that Yorkie. It wasn't just the plain kind either, it was the one's with nuts and raisins in it that melts in your mouth along with your conscience as you eat it.

I head back inside Block 1 and climb the stairs to my flat. Back inside my room I switch on the Klaxons and open the wrapper. The music isn't that quiet, but there's no one left in my flat to wake up anyway, so I can get away with what I want. I eat the Yorkie and drink the coke, before chucking the wrapper and can onto the desk in front of me. It's at this point I realise the repetitiveness of my life as I notice the Yorkie wrapper land in a pile of three other Yorkie wrappers and the can rattle against four other cans that currently crowd around my speaker.

The hours start to tick by, my mind becoming numb with boredom. I resort to switching on my Play Station and playing Pro Evolution football by myself, not a pretty site, particularly when you start to actually enjoy it. But soon my mind was transfixed on a football match that didn't exist, and all this coming from an avid hater of football.

However at least now it was eleven. But strangely as if from nowhere the urge to write kicks in, the ends of my fingers twitching as the writing hormone floods my brain. I open up the book I've been working on for the last eternity, 175,000 words of creativity that now need transforming into something readable. I get to work, word hitting the screen but I'm getting nowhere. I keep typing, keep inserting new sentences, but there only words I will have to type over again. I'm not improving just replacing, and now as each word hits the screen the will to type becomes stronger but my tiring mind loses its concentration that little bit more. Suddenly the mental tiredness really hits and Klaxon lyrics start subliminally creeping into the text. Atlantis to Interzone is playing and now the words and beat are controlling my fingers not the creativity behind that novel at all, and now I am trying my best to write a novel but instead I'm repeating the words of the dictatory Klaxons instead. I wouldn't mind, but their lyrics aren't even that greater imagery.

I give up. Yet again my stomach rumbles. Unhappy with just a Yorkie bar and some coke. It wants more, it wants something that could constitute a meal. I'm trying to resist so that I don't have to resort to the one thing I know is in my cupboard, and also so that I might lose enough weight, and maybe height, to fit into the I Say Marvin t-shirt Jonny gave me 24 hours ago. I try to ignore the rumbling, the Klaxons go up a little bit louder as though if one more sense is intensified the other might shut up.

It rumbles again, demanding more. Eventually I give in, my stomach deciding it needs something. I walk to the kitchen with dread, it's now quarter past eleven, and Central Services is closed, it's too late to salvage another quick snack.. I'm in my kitchen, I know there's only one thing left and that I will regret eating it. I open the fridge in vein hope that something else will catch my eye. Two remaining slices of ham lie in an opened Somerfield packet. I pull the packet carefully from underneath the ten Stella Artois bottles my flatmate decided to place on my shelf of the fridge to keep them cold whilst he spends Easter in Newcastle. They may accidentally get taken out and binned soon. I eat the ham and throw away the packet. I tell my stomach to shut up but it doesn't, like a petulant toddler it just screams more and more. I give in, I open up the cupboard and it stares me in the face, the greatest edible sin of them all.

Lying on the bottom shelf, right in my eye line, at the front, dead centre, is a lone Chicken and Mushroom Pot Noodle. My stomach enjoys the thought of the shitty noodles and soggy mushrooms, whilst my mouth starts to recoil into itself. I turn on the kettle, knowing that to kill off my stomach is the only way to sleep. The kettle boils and I add the boiling hot water to the disgusting pile of dried out ingredients, that quickly becomes a disgusting pile of soggy ingredients.

I grab a fork and head back into my room. The fork turns mindlessly in the pot as I try to distract myself by trying to find a google-whack on the internet. It's failing, the closest I got was thirteen. It was obviously a poor night for google whacking.

I eat the pot noodle, the vile taste of soya filling the corners of my mouth and settling down for the night so I wake up with that taste of stale mushroom the next morning. Everything is going so wrong and all because my body is still vilely awake, and not able to accept the fate of sleep dealt to it by my head.

Suddenly the little yellow MSN box lights up. My heart leaps, someone has noticed the huge "IS BORED" after my name on MSN and decided to talk to me. It's Marina, writing to me from some obscure island in the Atlantic ocean she calls home. In her usual delightful enthusiasm she laughs at my bored pain in the joking loving way I've come to expect. It may be a taunt, but it feels like sympathy from Marina for strange reason.

All of a sudden she reminds me of the twenty odd DVDs she leant me before she departed home. I thank her graciously and bow down to her proverbial feet as I dig out Series three of Teachers and shove it on, trying to kill the last inches of consciousness out of me with a DVD.

I've watched nearly a whole episode, when it happens again. A rumble. "No!" I shout at my own body trying to get it to be quiet, but it won't be, it's demanding more and now I know I have nothing left to give it. I try to ignore, concentrating on the sitcom in front of me, but still I know it needs settling, and now I have to once and for all.

I open up the cupboard, nothing left but various different things that can't be eaten right now on their own. I temporarily consider the raw onion lying in there, but then I spot the box of cereal. I leap at the Crunchy Nut Cornflakes and open my other cupboard in search of a bowl. For some strange reason I only own one bowl, and as I pull it out I remember the awful truth. I haven't washed it. The sour, gone off milk lies congealed to the bottom, and now I have to scrub it out just to eat. I pour some hot water, pour in the Fairy liquid and begin to scrub away at the bowl.

A few minutes later it appears clean and I am ready to make some cereal. For some strange reason, it is only at this point, as I open the fridge, that I realise I don't own any milk.

Suddenly it's 3:50 am. I am sitting on a swivel chair, in front of my PC, in the dark, watching Teachers, surrounded by rubbish, Yorkie wrappers, cans of Coke and an empty Pot Noodle, and I am eating dry Crunch Nut Cornflakes from the packet.

This is what my life has become, and I sit there watching two episodes of Teachers before I eventually plummet into my bed at 5am.

The phone rings, it was Kay. I knew it would be. But suddenly I am forced to leap myself across the room to talk to the woman who I stupidly gave permission to ring me. I pick the phone up. Her usual morning-person chirpy voice comes across as I start to realise my head now hates me. We talk for some fifteen minutes, my only replies being a groan, meaning yes, and the words "I miss you too." Eventually she leaves to catch her train, and after that things become a bit of a blur.

The next thing I know, I wake up with my head at the opposite end of the bed to the pillows, with my eyes trying to refocus to the world.

I look at my watch, the one that didn't even come off so I could sleep. It's 2pm. My heart sinks, yet again my body clock is messed up even more as I slowly become nocturnal. Tonight will probably be a little bit later unless I can kill off some alertness now by doing something worthwhile.

But that's why I'm typing this blog, with constant spelling mistakes as my eyes haven't quite become clear enough to see the keys yet. I type because I am not catholic, and in the modern agnostic world a MySpace blog is as close to as we get to confession. This is some feeble attempt at reconciling my sins by bringing you all some laughter at my expense. I am sure I will blog again soon, maybe I will review the MySpace tour, maybe I will write that one about cubicle based debating that I've been wanting to write for a while. But for the meanwhile I am writing for the life that I lead, so that you can all laugh at me, and in the process clear my conscience. So for this blog, forgive me almighty Rupert Murdock, for I have sinned.

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