knee deep in static

Matt and Dan of Alkaline Trio

Originally uploaded by Lucy Havok

Aside from being weaksauce at keeping this blog updated in any way other than being the latest version of the software….I’ve been busy. Going to gigs mostly, although not really that often when I think about it.

Last night was Alkaline Trio, who I saw at the Slam Dunk Festival and at The Roundhouse earlier in the year. Slam Dunk was fab and I was only really there for the Trio and got bonus Against Me! AND caught Your Demise, whose guitarist I went to primary school with*.

The sound at the Garage was WAY better than at the Roundhouse – I think the acoustics there just didn’t work for it. Generally they were amazing, especially since they’d just hopped off the plan from the US in the morning.

Can’t remember the setlist, I never do, but they played Sadie, Radio…and looking on last.fm has found it for me.

I less than three Dine, Dine My Darling big time – mostly for it’s morbid sentimentality I suppose, and it was epic. Radio and This Could Be Love got the usual massive singalong. All round it was fab.

The support were rockin’ too. Loved The Exposed who were on first – definitely going to check out more of their music and probably actually buy the album I didn’t want to spend my emergency just-in-case tenner on last night.

Off With Their Heads were ok too – jetlagged but funny. Just wasn’t feeling their music as much as The Exposed’s though.

*It’s weird, that. Really weird.

Project 365 – Day 70

Originally uploaded by Mishb1981

Renegades last night were AMAZIN’. They’re a sort of Feeder side-project and a tiny bit ramshackle, what with playing new songs and getting it wrong occasionally. Only makes them move lovable I say.

I rocked out so hard, I hurt today. Or maybe I’m just getting old!

The support, the Cherry Break Wells were wicked too, should try and find out if they have any CDs out.

Corfu

Originally uploaded by herdivineshadow

I could do with going somewhere interesting right now.

However, I will have to console myself with studying Wales instead.

So. Today is polling day. I will, of course, be voting.

The only problem is that the candidates that I get to pick from for my ward all kind of SUCK.

Aldenham West

Caroline Boydell – Green
Sandra Huff – Labour
Simon Patnick – Conservative

Out of these three, only Simon Patnick has bothered to get a leaflet dropped through my letter box and he does seem to have made some comment to the Jewish Cronicle. Caroline Boydell doesn’t seem to exist on the internet other than as a “Representatives of the Green Party were not immediately available for comment.” note on the Borehamwood Times website. Sandra Huff, I suspect, does things in Aldenham, but again, I can’t seem to find any kind of comment from her anywhere.

You see my dilemma. Vote for a candidate who I have heard from, but whose policies I don’t really agree with and whose leaflet was full of boring personal details that I just don’t care about. Or vote for someone I know nothing about.

Augh.

On a more fun note:

Every year, ever since I was born, my parents and I make a pilgrimage to Walsingham, in Norfolk.

Which is where we went today and while I was there, among other things, it occurred to me that I should make some kind of video tour of Walsingham and the shrines there. Partly to share with my family, who mostly live in other countries, but mostly to share with my friends – most of whom will probably never step foot in a church, let alone visit a Marian shrine!

Randomly, I seem to be unintentionally named after the woman who built the Holy House at Walsingham and my parents would take me there and make the pilgrimage in thanksgiving for my birth. And really, they still do. It’s just that I’m old enough to conciously appreciate going there and everything that goes on there.

So, I guess next year I shall be writing to the various people in charge of maintaining the Anglican and Catholic shrines there and asking if it’d be ok for me to video stuff there and if there are any areas that they would rather not have a camera poking around – certainly it’s a bit rude to be filming in the middle of Mass or while the sprinkling services is going on by the well and I wouldn’t dream of intruding while people are deep in prayer.

It’s certainly something to plan for and to do well in advance of my next trip there.

On Wednesday I went to see Paolo Nutini with my dad. It was pretty fun. The first support was some woman that I don’t know the name of and her songs weren’t that memorable other than me thinking that “well, at least she can sing.” The second support were a band called “Ghosts” which I only know because it was on their drum kit and the singer said it a whole bunch of times along with “This is a song called Ghosts. Like us.” They were more or less an indie-rock Duran Duran lite. Although when they came on stage some kid next to me exclaimed “OH NO! They’re EMOS!”

Which is an easy mistake to make with the hair and the clothes and the mooching.

Paolo Nutini was Paolo Nutini. Considering he’s only got the one album, (and I think Ghosts have just the one album too) he managed to make it last a pretty long time. There was a cover of “I wanna be like you” from the Jungle Book in there and for some reason I remember a Radiohead cover but that one might have been a hallucination. Ghosts did a couple of covers too – there was that Pussycat Dolls song and some song from some band that must be fairly popular at the moment, but because I don’t listen to radio one or capital and rarely get the chance to listen to xfm anymore…. i had no idea what it was.

Anyway, my OU course starts this week and I’ve checked that the software I got sent in the post all works fine. Just gotta get on with the reading now, which theoretically shouldn’t be too hard. However spending most of the day at work has severely impeded my aimless loitering time, which is when I use to fit in the whole reading for fun and profit malarkey. At least now that the days are getting longer, I’ll be waking up even earlier and be able to get some reading time in then. It’s times like this when I miss dial-up – I used to keep a stack of books next to the computer back in the day so I’d have something to do while pages were loading. Now… the waiting time is gone and I kind of miss it.

Mmm nostalgia.

There’s some kind of Star Wars thing going on somewhere in London in a couple of weeks so really, if I want to go check it out, I guess I should find out what is actually happening with it.

On Saturday my mum and I went to see “Becoming Jane”, the film about Jane Austen. I think the general consensus from the rest of the cinema-goers was that it started off fairly slowly, which I didn’t really notice. Mostly, it was an ok film. I probably wouldn’t have gone to see it if my mum hadn’t have wanted to go and would have waited till it was on tv.

Sunday was Mother’s day, so there was presents and breakfast in bed for my mum. In the afternoon I was helping to run my local church’s confirmation class. So far, it looks like the classes will probably cover more of the actual theological stuff to do with confirmation than the classes I had did and will also touch on some of the other stuff that comes with making your own decisions and being an adult and that. The kids however, are all typical 14-year olds for the most part.

That’s what I get asked a lot. Especially when people first discover I’m an only child and they’re perhaps  a generation older than me.

 Lately, I’ve discovered that I miss spending time on my own and I’ve really noticed it since actually having a 9 to 5.30ish job. I spend most of the day with a bunch of people in an office and answering phones and stuff. In the evenings,  I then have to spend time with my parents interacting and stuff.

 Which is all quite strange for someone who has been able to spend vast amounts of time on her own over the last 4 years while at university. And has always quite liked spending time alone, or at least, not talking to anyone.

The answer is no, by the way, to the question in the title. I’ve been too used to being on my own for as long as I can remember.