It's the end of another week and Spring is in the air. I sat in a friend's house this afternoon which has huge sache windows that look out over the sea. On a day like today it was mesmerising, and therefore impossible for me to avert my gaze away and pay attention to my friend!
I sometimes forget that Brighton is by the sea (of course the cackle of seagulls serves as a constant reminder) but my house is a good 20 minutes from the seafront and the mundane routine of daily life stops a lot of spontaneous sea trips. So seeing it today on a sun filled and beautiful evening was special and most of all calming. It set the mood for a bit of Spanish interpretation with two of my friends from class. We attempted a discussion on Politics which somehow frayed into a discussion on the strength of men's hands...which was just as absurd even when in context.
My friend has a little dog. He's very cute and, err, furry. I'm not good on dog breeds but he's definitely one of those furry ones. He was happily bounding about the flat very excited by the presence of two women but for some reason he was terrified of me. Peri told me that puppies are often scared of men because they're taller and have deep voices. I'm sure the fact that I am 4 days unshaven doesn't prohibit the 'ghoul' factor either. Peri, puppy's mummy, has a very funny book of different dog clothes that you can knit for them - having seen it I am inspired by future visions of canine catwalks. Some of the bling displayed in this book was daring and could quite possibly constitute cruelty to animals. What about the glittery pullover or the H+M style Alsatian slip? Well, personally the red dog poncho was my favourite as well as what I can only describe as the 'Poodle Puff'.
I have the house to myself which is a rare thing when you share with three others. No, I am not prancing around naked with Chaka Khan on. I am 'chillaxing' as the kids say these days. It's been a busy week and it's so nice just to chill out for a while and collect your thoughts. It's very possible when there's a lot going on to lose yourself slightly. You need to stop and remember who you are sometimes. It's usually in the pub but tonight I will read a book I WANT TO READ! that will be the best thing about graduating; reading all those books I've been meaning to read which are conveniently holding up my bed at the moment.
I can't get my head around Brighton sometimes. It is a great place, full of creativity, good live music and colourful people but at the same time, well, it can be a bit seedy. It's a funny place because it's a wealthy part of the country where the people who work commute up to London every day leaving behind a city where a 'no hurry' atmosphere takes hold. If you walk through the Laines on a weekday it's full of people wondering around with seemingly nothing to do. It's full of art students who can afford to be idle or shopkeepers smoking outside their stores which are themselves often brilliant but frankly, I don't see how they survive in an area where the rent must be extortionate.
Go down to the seafront and it really is a cheeky kiss-me-quick affair - the kind you only get in England. It's full of drugs, sex and students, Brighton. It's full of skinny-jean wearing indies, dredded eco warriors, boho mummies, old drag queens and Katie Price. A very unusual combination for such a small place! What a town...
It's now 9.15 - I'm going to have that bath and read this book. Thanks for reading and have a nice weekend.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
General Musings
Oh dear, I have just realised that I haven't posted anything on here for over three weeks. I would have excuses but I really don't think there are any. The "I'm about to graduate" excuse has been sufficiently exhausted; I was using it to get out of yoga classes, parking tickets and, strangely, uni work. I still somehow find time to eat out though...
My house smells and I hate my landlord. I am almost certain he won't be reading this so I don't mind what I say. Who would become a landlord anyway? I always have them in mind as old men with a sagging gut, white string vest, questionable personal hygiene and as a compulsive smoker/liar/general vagrant. Of course in reality that hasn't been my experience of them. My first landlady was a woman of the manor from leafy Surrey. She was old and ever so slightly batty in the blue-blooded upper-class sense. She would present herself unannounced, usually in our bedrooms and usually whilst we were still occupying our beds, with the general greeting of 'cooeeey!'. At the time we lived with a French girl, Anne-Sophie, and our landlady, Mrs Todd, would tell her in a slow and patronizing manner to, I quote: "in your best English, call Matthew and tell him I am tending the garden." Anne Sophie would then yell "Maaaatttt" from the bottom of the stairs sending the seagulls into a frenzy.
I suppose my next landlord will be my father. He keeps assuring me that he's already rented out my room and I laugh half nervously in response - hopefully his humour is as sarcastic as I take it to be.
I am starting operation BBC today. I shouldn't be on here actually, I should be frantically thinking of personal attributes that would make me stand out from the crowd on an application form. It's all for work experience but obviously, being the Beeb, is outrageously competitive.
I saw a great looking work experience advertised yesterday for Channel 4, but it's only available to people from ethnic minorities. Clearly they have a quota to fill. What if I told them I'm a left-handed homosexual? no? well, what about 'I am from Clapham' -people from Clapham are certainly a minority, and a special one at that. OK, OK.
On a more serious note, if there are any broadcast journalists or media people reading this, what should I do? The whole process is lengthy and somewhat circular to say the least (I keep ending up at the same place). You're perhaps thinking I have ceased to make sense, probably owing to the ungodly hour that I woke up. I can't really think of anything else to say now. I just had a break from writing to eat soup and talk to Eva. Now I have broken the trail of thought. The day is getting on and I should get on with it too. I will write here more often from now on, there's a part of me that felt I should only write when there is something important or interesting to say but just any writing is practising a style n'est ce pas?
Thanks for reading.
PS: Eva, my housemate, says the interesting things to say are: "Eva is going running, Eva is going to the bathroom, Eva is taking a shower" for anyone wanting to keep track of her exciting and suspense-filled blog, you can find it lost somewhere in cyberspace.
My house smells and I hate my landlord. I am almost certain he won't be reading this so I don't mind what I say. Who would become a landlord anyway? I always have them in mind as old men with a sagging gut, white string vest, questionable personal hygiene and as a compulsive smoker/liar/general vagrant. Of course in reality that hasn't been my experience of them. My first landlady was a woman of the manor from leafy Surrey. She was old and ever so slightly batty in the blue-blooded upper-class sense. She would present herself unannounced, usually in our bedrooms and usually whilst we were still occupying our beds, with the general greeting of 'cooeeey!'. At the time we lived with a French girl, Anne-Sophie, and our landlady, Mrs Todd, would tell her in a slow and patronizing manner to, I quote: "in your best English, call Matthew and tell him I am tending the garden." Anne Sophie would then yell "Maaaatttt" from the bottom of the stairs sending the seagulls into a frenzy.
I suppose my next landlord will be my father. He keeps assuring me that he's already rented out my room and I laugh half nervously in response - hopefully his humour is as sarcastic as I take it to be.
I am starting operation BBC today. I shouldn't be on here actually, I should be frantically thinking of personal attributes that would make me stand out from the crowd on an application form. It's all for work experience but obviously, being the Beeb, is outrageously competitive.
I saw a great looking work experience advertised yesterday for Channel 4, but it's only available to people from ethnic minorities. Clearly they have a quota to fill. What if I told them I'm a left-handed homosexual? no? well, what about 'I am from Clapham' -people from Clapham are certainly a minority, and a special one at that. OK, OK.
On a more serious note, if there are any broadcast journalists or media people reading this, what should I do? The whole process is lengthy and somewhat circular to say the least (I keep ending up at the same place). You're perhaps thinking I have ceased to make sense, probably owing to the ungodly hour that I woke up. I can't really think of anything else to say now. I just had a break from writing to eat soup and talk to Eva. Now I have broken the trail of thought. The day is getting on and I should get on with it too. I will write here more often from now on, there's a part of me that felt I should only write when there is something important or interesting to say but just any writing is practising a style n'est ce pas?
Thanks for reading.
PS: Eva, my housemate, says the interesting things to say are: "Eva is going running, Eva is going to the bathroom, Eva is taking a shower" for anyone wanting to keep track of her exciting and suspense-filled blog, you can find it lost somewhere in cyberspace.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
SNOW!
Oh my we're having a cold winter. For those of you that haven't been living in 'Arctic Britain' for the last few months will do well to know that it has been the coldest winter since 1995. Ooh la la I hear you say. Yes, take pity on us for us Brits do find it hard to cope with any form of adverse weather. Take for example this Monday, February 2nd, which turned out to be a very surreal day indeed.
Having woken up early to a call of nature I happened to glimpse out the window. What greeted me was a spectacle of pure pristine white stuff blanketing the houses of Brighton. I switched on the radio to a media frenzied with reports of school closures, buses out of operation and all trains cancelled. This jolly seaside town had become well and truly cut off from the world.
It was upon this realisation that something odd happened to me. I, like many other millions in England, became 6 years old again. I ran around excitedly as text messages began to flood in - invitations to come out and play.
A little later, armed with what can only be described as a human-sized flying-saucer shaped dish, my companions and I trudged across Brighton receiving comments of admiration from passersby to our somewhat eccentric slay. We even stopped to let some children have a go, but they were less than impressed.
It was a day when people who weren't stuck on the M25 could take an impromptu break and really make contact with that inner-child, perhaps long locked away but never truly forgotten.
Of course, this being Britain, there were those who moaned. One particular gentleman on the radio told how London buses were kept going through the darkest days of the Blitz, but on this day bus drivers were seen engaging in snowball fights. People inevitaby harked back to that Blitz spirit and told of courageous people daring to leave their houses and venture into 8 inches of snow. What a glorious day therefore, when Britain once again triumphed in the face of adversity!
Of course, the truth is it didn't. In fact we quickly became an international laughing stock. A German news programme gave a dour but playful report on how Britain fell to its knees showing closed Tube stations and no doubt commenting on how peculiar it was that in Britain it seemed to snow underground as well . The Canadians thought it all downright hillarious-what strange people we are, a Polish friend exclaimed "You don't know what heavy snow is" and generally a lot of fun was had at our expense.
But do we care? I think not because for the most part I saw people really enjoying themselves on Monday. Children were in their element (I include myself and my friends in this because for the day, we were children.)
Much in the spirit of Mods and Rockers, snowball fights broke out across Brighton, but this time they were friendly. The noise of traffic died away and all that was to heard across the city was the noise of people having fun.
So that was a day when Britain stopped working, but hey, it was some much needed fun considering the un-fun times we're living in.
Having woken up early to a call of nature I happened to glimpse out the window. What greeted me was a spectacle of pure pristine white stuff blanketing the houses of Brighton. I switched on the radio to a media frenzied with reports of school closures, buses out of operation and all trains cancelled. This jolly seaside town had become well and truly cut off from the world.
It was upon this realisation that something odd happened to me. I, like many other millions in England, became 6 years old again. I ran around excitedly as text messages began to flood in - invitations to come out and play.
A little later, armed with what can only be described as a human-sized flying-saucer shaped dish, my companions and I trudged across Brighton receiving comments of admiration from passersby to our somewhat eccentric slay. We even stopped to let some children have a go, but they were less than impressed.
It was a day when people who weren't stuck on the M25 could take an impromptu break and really make contact with that inner-child, perhaps long locked away but never truly forgotten.
Of course, this being Britain, there were those who moaned. One particular gentleman on the radio told how London buses were kept going through the darkest days of the Blitz, but on this day bus drivers were seen engaging in snowball fights. People inevitaby harked back to that Blitz spirit and told of courageous people daring to leave their houses and venture into 8 inches of snow. What a glorious day therefore, when Britain once again triumphed in the face of adversity!
Of course, the truth is it didn't. In fact we quickly became an international laughing stock. A German news programme gave a dour but playful report on how Britain fell to its knees showing closed Tube stations and no doubt commenting on how peculiar it was that in Britain it seemed to snow underground as well . The Canadians thought it all downright hillarious-what strange people we are, a Polish friend exclaimed "You don't know what heavy snow is" and generally a lot of fun was had at our expense.
But do we care? I think not because for the most part I saw people really enjoying themselves on Monday. Children were in their element (I include myself and my friends in this because for the day, we were children.)
Much in the spirit of Mods and Rockers, snowball fights broke out across Brighton, but this time they were friendly. The noise of traffic died away and all that was to heard across the city was the noise of people having fun.
So that was a day when Britain stopped working, but hey, it was some much needed fun considering the un-fun times we're living in.
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