» Teenage Poetry

Oh dear
Time to trawl through the darker recesses of my lyrics archive, for the songs that have now been consigned to my 'shit' folder.

I'm sure you'll agree that the use of the word 'synonomous' in popular song form here is masterful:

It’ll never be the same
People will never take my name
To mean the same thing again

Synonymous with loser
Why did I have to choose her?
Why did she have to screw with me and make me feel this way?

I really can't remember whether the innuendo in the last line of the following verse was intentional. Also note poppish 'yeah' included at the end... I think I was listening to a lot of pop-punk at the time.

When other guys were saving up for cars,
I was spending money on guitars,
While they were getting girls into bed,
I was developing calluses, yeah.

And frankly, those are just the worst I'm prepared to show you. There's plenty more that will never see the light of day, and that's just the stuff I kept. I dread to think what the lines I threw away were like. I like to think I've improved, but the sad fact is most of this was only written about three or four years ago. Song lyrics are allowed to be awful though, right?
(Thu 11th Aug 2005, 15:55, More)

» When animals attack...

Urination procrastination and inflammation information
So I was watching television while getting ready for bed (I forget what programme). I needed the loo slightly, but the programme was on the BBC, so had no pissbreaks. Just as it was finishing I put 'Now and Next' on teletext and saw that I'd just missed the start of a programme I really wanted to see, so I switched over and start watching that.

The second programme was also on the BBC, by the time it got to within ten minutes of ending my bladder was screaming at me. By five minutes to the credits, I'd started pacing around my room in an agitated manner to help me try and hold it in (I don't know why this helps, but it does).

Since I was ready for bed, I was at this point barefoot. Mere minutes before the programme ends, I placed my foot forward and instead of being greeted by a sturdy floor it instead met tremendous pain. I looked down to see a huge bumblebee sitting on my floor. I'd jerked my leg back so fast I hadn't even crushed it (though obviously it would die soon having stung me). I'd somehow miraculously managed to not piss myself in all this, but hopping around my room with a full bladder was no picnic either. What was really concerning me was the effect the sting was having on my foot. Now, I'd been stung by bees and wasps a few times before, and it hurt but wasn't particularly painful. This sting however, was not only very painful but also seemed to be spreading across my foot and up to my ankle. This worried me enough to abandon the tail end of my TV programme, however before I did anything about my sting I absolutely had to pee.

By the time I'd hopped to the toilet and relieved myself (you know how you walk funny when you really need the loo, imagine what I looked like hopping it), the lower half of my left leg had begun to go numb.

I finally made it downstairs to the kitchen (where our medicine cupboard was) to deal with my sting (which had now made a worryingly large area of my foot quite red), and to resolve never to delay emptying my bladder again for the sake of a few minuteds of television.

I suppose I could have killed two birds with one stone by simply pissing on my foot.
(Sat 4th Jun 2005, 16:00, More)

» Claims to Fame

When I was 12 or 13...
I met Tony Blair (during his first term as Prime Minister), my dad and I also had a conversation with Cherie Blair (or Cherie Booth, as she apparently prefers). Rather more impressively this was as a result of being invited to tea at number 10. Slightly less impressively it was some publicity thing, they just sent letters to a load of schools asking them to send a pupil along - though it made the ten o'clock news. Meeting Tony Blair was an unexpected bonus though, as was (briefly) going into the cabinet room.

This was all topped by my sister though, who whilst she was a student at Cambridge University, fell over Stephen Hawking, in public. She walked out of a shop (or, I suspect, a bar) and straight into him and his wheelchair.

My other sister has met many famous people too, since she works in theatre and gets to go to after-show parties and bars frequented by celebreties. Oh, and my mum went to school with Estelle Morris. Also, a friend of my dad once phoned up Virgin Airways to complain, and got Richard Branson on the end of the line. Apparently he mans a phone for an afternoon every now and then to give his business 'the personal touch'.

The house I lived in as a child was used to film an educational documentary on coal (they were struggling to find a contemporary house with a coal fire, since it was about 1997 at the time). I was living there at the time, but didn't feature in the programme (although some kids from my school did, and my sister was in some other TV programme when she was at that school).

Finally, the chippy in the town in which I went to high school was apparently the first chip shop south of the Scottish border to sell battered Mars bars.
(Fri 25th Feb 2005, 0:18, More)

» Office Christmas Parties

Scrooge-like warden
I'm a student so I don't have a boss as such, but when I was a first-year living in halls on campus we were supposed to be kept in check by a resident warden.
In a bout of first-year randomness, myself and a friend on a neighbouring corridor had erected a string telephone between our rooms (we were on the first floor in a kind of L-shaped building). I had the (seemingly) genius idea of using this string as the basis for a huge Merry Christmas banner.
After a truly soul-crushing search for the necessary materials, spending an inordinate amount of effort, and suffering almost dangerous sleep deprivation and great physical hardship (the details of how this banner was constructed are almost comically horrific, but I can't make this post any longer than it's going to be already) we achieved the following... A complete loss of faith in the idea of any kind of 'Christmas spirit' in the universe, a rather unpleasant feeling animosity towards each other (and ourselves), and this banner (also available in stupidly high resolution)

We'd put ourselves through a lot, but the first person (of many) I saw look up at the banner and smile (actually, look up with a 'WTF?' face then breaking into a smile) made it all worthwhile and filled me with a warm glow inside.
So when the warden for our halls drove up an hour later and said 'No, I'm not having that, you've got to take it down.' it came as something of a kick in the teeth... Bastard.

Actually this story has a bit of a happy ending, our own Sub-Warden (in charge of just our block) loved the banner and let us keep it up until just before the warden returned that afternoon.
(Tue 21st Dec 2004, 17:13, More)