Doing My Own Head In

I haven't left the house for almost one whole week. Oh, actually that's a lie. I was out of the house briefly on Thursday to pop to the doctor's to ask him if he could stop the constant flood of blood that is coming from the back of my throat.

I had my tonsils out on Monday, you see. But I won't go on about that. Okay, I will a bit. Because it was really fucking painful. Seriously, I expected *some* pain and *some* blood, but the reality was much harsher. And the agony of eating toast a couple of hours after surgery will stay with me forever. Silent tears slid down my face as I feebly picked at a corner of the slice with my teeth while the nurse watched over me with her "you're not going home until you've eaten it" face.

I don't remember the last time I only had myself for company for so long. With everyone else out of the house during the day and only the internet, the telly and my two dogs to keep me sane I've spent a lot of time doing pointless tasks just to fill up another unit of time until someone comes home and talks to me with an actual voice.

I like pointless tasks. Really, I do. I like going through the motions of emptying all my drawers and then putting everything back in them again. But the other day I found myself rearranging my mum's spice rack whilst waiting for the kettle to boil in order of usage. At first, it really was just something to do while the kettle boiled. But then it became so much more than that and all the spice pots had to be taken out of the rack and lined up on the counter. I took a butter knife from the drawer and bent down so my eyes were level with the pots. Then I spent over half an hour using the knife as a straight edge to determine which pot had more than what pot left inside. Over half an hour. Measuring cinnamon. And I had to boil the kettle all over again. Which got me all annoyed. At myself. For wasting my own time. Even though I have nothing else to do. And this is how I've been all week. I can't even take my annoyance out, unfairly, on someone else because there is no one else during the day.

Today is the first day I woke up and didn't feel like I had a seven inch blade wedged in the back of my throat, so I got up, had a bath and put on proper clothes. Not pj's and an old comfort cardi. Jeans and a jumper. And now I'm going to walk the dog. For quite a long time. Like, an hour. Maybe. Getting out of the house is Best Idea, I think.

The Turncoat, The Little Ones and Jamie T

According to their MySpace page, The Turncoat hail from Wimbledon. This is the most interesting thing about them. Seriously. Their songs seem to have no choruses and from what I could gather were all about drugs. Whoopdidoo. Yet more songs about drugs! Although kudos to them for using a didgeridoo during one song. Oh, and the long haired guitarist was pretty cute.

The whole time they were on I did have a niggling feeling that I was missing something, as the fourteen year old kids around me knew all the words to the songs and were going crazy for the band's take on Walking In Memphis, Walking In Chelsea. Hmmm.

The Little Ones I liked. Fun, poppy songs with catchy tunes. Plus, they all looked genuinely pleased to be on stage for us with the whole band sharing massive grins throughout their set. And, after listening to their MySpace songs, I can honestly say they are miles upon miles better live. Their energy is brilliant to watch and the only thing that put a damper on things were the sixth form try harders stood next to me who insisted on analzying every song with pointless remarks like "ooh, this is just the kind of song you'd play in the summer whilst making pancakes!". What? I mean, really, what? What does that even mean? Making pancakes in the summer? Who the fuck even makes pancakes in the summer? Just fuck off you runt. Fuck off and stop ruining my night. Then came the "ohmygod! They have totally stolen this rift from..." gaaaaah. Shut up, go home, get out of my FACE. What is it with kids these days that they can't just enjoy music without proving to their peers how superior their musical knowledge is to eveyone elses?

And then the man of the night appeared at bang on 9:30pm. Being so close to the metal railing that seperates crowd from stage, I was suddenly thrust forward and crushed to fuck by the overexcited children who were desperate to be living the indie scene dream and create utter chaos amongst the crowd. We were pushed to the left, to the right, forward, backwards...at one point I was standing on one tip toe and being held up by everyone around me. Two nine year olds (really) were jumping up and down and hitting me in the head with their elbows, a very young boy had his groin pressed up against my bottom and then Jamie T threw a can of Fosters all over me. Hurrah! I lasted like this for three songs. Then I couldn't take anymore. I was sweating, covered in beer, being pushed and pulled in all directions and beaten up rowdy teenagers who were preventing me from enjoying the live act. So I made my friend stand on the stairs by the bar where we watched with perfect view and no pain.

Now, Jamie T himself was bloody brilliant. He didn't keep us waiting, he thanked us for being there and humbly introduced himself to the crowd before ripping into the first song. Having known friends who have seen Jamie T on previous tours, this one was not a case of just him and a guitar perched on a stool. He had a full band behind him and songs such as Salavdor were condensed into 90 second (approx - I'm just guessing here but it was no way album verion length) stunners.

Ed Larrikin joined Jamie on stage for the final song, Sheila, and spent the whole time prancing around the stage with an umberella. The tit.

Buy Panic Prevention here.

Ways To Fill A Working Day...

1. Play catch with a foam ball you found under a desk. Not with someone. Play on your own.
   
2. Build a wall out of box folders
3. Wander around the building clutching a piece of paper pretending to be Very Busy On Very Important Business when really you're just looking for someone to annoy
4. Annoy people - achieved in various ways including spotting someone with the tell tale flashing msn icon and standing by their desk for an age, not really saying anything but preventing them from continuing their online conversation.
   
5. Paperclip chain!
   
6. Watch people stranded at the bus stop outside - they don't realise the M25 is closed (or something) and they're going to be stuck in the rain for AGES yet because the traffic just up the road is, apparently, hellish. Ha ha ha.
   
7. Call you mother three times to argue over tonight's dinner.
8. Have an msn argument with your best mate.
9. Play with the foam ball some more.
10. Visit friends flickr accounts and leave comments for each and every photo using no more than two words.
11. Clock watch.
12. Take down all your old post it notes and re-write them using neater hand writing - this is not actually productive work and therefore allowed.
    
13. Wonder how the hell you manage to keep your job despite using this routine most working days at least every two hours.
    

Being Cultural

Or at least, trying to be.

It's a Friday evening and I'm sitting front row of second circle Sadlers Wells to witness the first ever Sadlers Wells Sampled, in association with Playstation, weekend.

What is Sadlers Wells Sampled? Well, quite. I wasn't sure either. Despite studying dance until my midteens, I've become pretty uncouth these days when it comes to the arts.

Soon enough all becomes clear and I'm about to watch six completely different styles of dance all crammed into one show. And so there I am, with one dance fanatic, one dance lover and one dance IDon'tKnowWhat'sGoingOnHere. I feel a bit nervous. What if I don't "get" some of it? What if I laugh when I'm not supposed to laugh? What if it's boring and my friend thinks I'm a philistine?

I'd like to say I needn't have worried, but thirty seconds into the first dance and I'm lost. On stage is a boy and a girl. They run, leap, fold and bend. Then they do it again. Then they're wrapping limbs around each other, then the guy is doing a solo. It's called Random Dance. To see it is to understand why. The whole time I'm watching, I'm trying to build a story in my head. I don't want them to be bounding around the stage for no reason. I NEED A REASON. Random isn't bloody good enough. I can clearly see they are very talented dancers, but I'm not appreciating it at all.

Now it gets good. The Vagaband Crew are an amazing hip hop dance act. Spinning on heads, bouncing on hands, popping along the stage on their bellies - I could have watched this for hours, these young, fit, apparent owners of bones made from noodles, men. And the majority of the auidence seemed to agree as the applause was raputous.

The next piece was "Jump" by the Yegam Theatre. I'm not sure how long this went on for. However long was long enough. They were all very talanted at jumping around and breaking slats with their hands and feet but the silliness began to grate after five minutes.

Fag break - also known as "interval" - and we're standing outside. I suddenly realise that there are a lot of people the same as IDon'tKnowWhat'sGoingOnHere girl and I. Some people are "getting it" and others clearly aren't. But it didn't matter, because everyone was enjoying themselves. Just on different levels, I suppose.

The second half and I fall in love with ACGI (Anyone Can Get It). A tap group from New York, their piece involved a "tap off" between two groups of three. Then they'd come together, tapping heel for heel, toe for toe in time with the drum and each other.

The mood darkens for Hofesh Schecter's (no, I have never heard of him either) piece which involves eight normally dressed men running around the stage in an animalistic fashion, then hugging, then running, then fighting, then shrugging shoulders, repeating process. I likes this. Why? Fuck knows. Same as with Random Dance I've tried my hardest to build a story in my head, but it all turns to shit with the next sequence of hugging. Generally, I like moody things. Music, films and now it seems also dance. Plus, you can't really go wrong with eight male dancers, can you? Any girl is going to find something to like there.

Now, this is where give up trying to make sense of anything. Swamp by Rambert included a guy with ginger hair wearing lime green spandex and lots of dragging of bodies across the stage. I spent the whole time watching ginger lime guy in morbid fascination. Why, just why, would you put a ginger man in lime green? But, ginger lime guy aside, I found this piece a bit....I'm loath to say this but....pretenious. Oh no! What have I done?! I'm sighing right now, by the way. Because I can understand that I don't understand, but don't know how to make anyone else understand that. Do you see? The working class gal in me wants to scream "WHAT A LOAD OF WANK!", but I know that's not true. I can appreciate why others would love this. But I never could. Mostly because it's a load of wank. And has a ginger guy wearing lime fucking green spandex which moulds around his willy and leaves nothing to an innocent girls imagination.

And that was my Friday night. Dance is good. Dance is fun. I liked the tap best cos it goes taptaptaptap at really fast paces!!!!!!!!!

If you'd like to see what I'm going on about with your own eyes, watch highlights from the weekend here.

Winterkids

The Winterkids have been on the receiving end of some blogging hype. Not all of it good, with one blogger comparing them to Menswear. Oh dear. And, I have to say, they're not amazing. Everything about them should be everything I hate in a band; the image, the trite lyrics, the mandatory girl tinkling on a keyboard...Except, except for this one song, Tape It.

This song is nothing out of the indie ordinary. But that bassline gets me by the soles of my feet and makes me want to dance. The chorus is too damn catchy. I defy you to get it out of your head. I *know* I shouldn't like it, but I do. I really, really, really do. Oh woe.

Having fished around and listened to some other mp3's of theirs that are floating around, this is by far the only song worth lending your ears. Although be prepared for it to steal them for a while.

Find out for yourself at their Myspace page here.
Or, if you're deaf, purchase things here.

Lean On Me

I seem to attract unstable people. I seem to be the shoulders everyone offloads their weight onto, so once they're done complaining and feeling better I'm still sat there worried sick about what is to become of them. Friends shouldn't cause me this much stress, or take this much from me without giving something back.

Case in point, my best friend. Or, my sometime best friend. The best friend I have when she's fucked up yet again and needs someone to take charge of her situation and sort it out, give her a plan, put the plan in action, make sure she sticks to the plan. Then, when everything's settled down and she no longer feels the urge to pop three packets of pills, I don't hear from her. She's too busy going out with her other mates. The other mates that, strangely, are never around when she's hit rock bottom and a bottle of vodka. Again.

Without putting the reasons for her stupidity out there, I should say now the girl has some issues. Some issues I'll never quite get my head around, no matter how many times she tells me about them, or cries to me about them, or makes a passing joke, or throws them in my face when I dare to moan about anything that may have happened to me, past or present.

I don't mind her getting the stuff in her head out into the open, if it stops her doing something ridiculous then I'm all for it. But I am tired of having to watch her make the same mistakes time and time again.

I've tried sympathising, I've tried shouting, I've tried staying away, I've tried moving her into my house, I've tried alcohol, I've tried constant nights out, I've tried sitting in watching MTV and eating comfort food....but in the end she will still make a silly choice and disregard everything everyone around her says because she is convinced she knows what she wants and what she's doing.

Why do I bother? Because she doesn't have anyone else. No one. I am the only person who will drop everything to support her. Once this current mess is cleaned up and thrown out, we'll drift apart once again. And during that period of occasional emails and vague texts I will worry and I will wait. Because that is now my role in her life and although I've accepted it, I'm becoming increasingly tired of giving up parts of my life to accomodate for it.

The World Was A Mess, But His Hair Was Perfect

The Rakes. Fuck, they're cool. No?

Alan Donohoe, that be the singer if you didn't know, is like a new and improved, sexed up to the max Jarvis Cocker.

The album, Capture/Release, was forever the top CD on the "most listened" pile by my stereo and I once nearly walked out of a pub where my friend was playing live for the first with her band because they did a fuck awful version of Strasbourg. I had to settle for hiding at the bar because deep down I'm just too nice a person to desert a mate in their time of need - and need me they did because the venue was pissing empty.

Seeing them (Rakes - not friend's band, please keep up) live last May was the gigging highlight of my year, and I saw The Pipettes in September, dude, so they had some stiff competition.
Throwing out elbows, jerking his knees, knocking back beer and admitting that they were "off to take some drugs" before the final two songs....I spent an hour captivated by the energetic and tight set that got everyone, and I mean everyone, dancing like kangeroos on acid. Also, I was pretty aroused. Heh. For a very fleeting moment I considered running to the toilet and taking off my stripey knickers so I could throw them at Alan. Then it was all over and I came back down with a thud, sitting on the tube home playing Work Work Work on repeat, trying to relive the excellence of their live performance by unable to capture it properly.

I always get that with live music. The minute I walk out of a venue, I forget all the best bits about it and am left feeling a bit underwhelmed. Not because the music was bland or unremarkable, just because....well, it's all over innit? The thumping in your chest has died, the excited bubble in your belly burst and there's no longer any music to thrash your head or stomp your feet to and you're just left feeling a bit empty, smelling faintly of beer and sweat as you make your way home. At least that's how it is for me.

But goodness of goodness, I'm going to see them again in March. Whoop! I'm seeing Hot Puppies and Jamie T between now and then, but finding out I'm going to see The Rakes (*swoon*) again has left me giddy with glee. And in need of some new stripey knickers.

So, to get us all, but mostly me because I'm seeing them live and you're probably not, in the mood let's listen to The World Was A Mess But His Hair Was Perfect. Taken from forth coming album (out 19th March fact fans) Ten New Messages.

The Rakes, everybody!

Pre-order Ten New Messages from Amazon here.