day 65: a town like Alice

I don't read anywhere near as much as I used to, but a few weeks ago I was running a bit early to meet someone so I popped into the library to see what they had to offer. I spent ages trying to decide; how are you supposed to know what to choose when there is so much to choose from?! Plus a book is a big time investment, after many years of forcing myself through books I didn't really enjoy I am very cautious about what I give my time to. I ended up consulting The List, that is the BBC's top 200 books. I was working through these a few years ago, but since got lazy with it. I think I've managed about half of the first 100, not sure about the full 200. Anyway, I went back to this for some inspiration.

I ended up settling for A Town Like Alice, by Nevil Shute. I think the fact that it's got a strong female protagonist really appealed to me, as an adult female myself. The story is told by a Mr Noel Strachan, but is about the extraordinary life of Jean Paget; her experiences as a prisoner of war in Malaya, her incredible strong will to make lives better, and her plight to find her love.

I found the writing very easy to read. I might sound like a bit of an imbecile (I'm actually quite good at English as a subject) but I like books that have a quite straightforward writing style. I prefer to concentrate on the plot rather than having to make a conscious effort to understand the language. There was no over description, no long passages of irrelevant information (or whole chapters about the history of the sewers like I found in Les Miserables), and the pace was just right. From the start I found this book difficult to put down once I started reading it.

It was also a bit of a treat that my hometown of Southampton was mentioned so much. Jean Paget had lived in Bassett, a suburb of the city and an area that I am quite familiar with having lived in the city my whole life. The actual address, No 17 St Ronans Road, doesn't exist. I don't know if it never existed or if it was blitzed in the war (would Shute have used a real address?), but the detail about the city is still interesting.

Honestly, this book made me want to be a better person. It made me wish I were more like Jean Paget. She is not an unrealistic character, just an extraordinary one, and I believe that we could all learn something from her character and her plight to build a town like Alice.

read more >>>

day 61 - inside my house

I'm spending a lot of time inside my house this week. More precisely, inside my bedroom. Surprisingly this isn't due to any laziness on my part, it's actually because The Men are here doing home improvements, so we need to keep the cat beans cooped up out the way. It would be cruel for the cats and dangerous for my belongings if I left them alone in my bedroom, so here I am cat sitting. 

At the moment, there are holes in the bathroom wall and exposed brickwork. They only came to do some tiling and some painting, but LITERALLY A PLANT was growing behind the tiles, which is what was forcing them away from the walls. So instead of just taking off the old tiles and replacing with new, The Men have to had strip back loads of the plaster. It's kinda odd being able to see the bricks of this old house from the inside. It also smells really earthy in there, and I'm rather worried about slugs popping in for a wee visit. They are not welcome here. 

I'm trying to think of some fun activities to do whilst cooped up inside a single room of the house. I suppose there's actually quite a lot:

- reading

- playing Stardew Valley

- blogging

- general writing stuff

- reddit

- catch up on Game of Thrones 

- Netflix

- napping

- some small yoga

- drawing and colouring

- daydreaming

are just a few things I can think of. 

Despite the many activities of solitude, I am super looking forward to all this work being finished. It's  a super good job I've got this time off work or I dunno what we could have really done. Poor Smudge is having a nervous time :( 

I'm gonna try get some pictures of the carnage later, but right now The Men are working so I shan't disturb. 

Edit: here are some pictures of quite what I mean:

This is the process of the problems being sorted, so I suppose it's okay that this is all happening. We'll have a nice fresh bathroom in a couple of weeks. 

read more >>>

day 58 - download part 3: mud is everywhere

Sunday - the day of the hangover

Inevitably on Sunday we felt like arse.

I really wanted to see Shinedown but we missed them :(  I have loved them since 2003 when hardly anyone here had heard of them, and seeing them being successful enough now to be playing on the main stage at Download made me feel really proud. They're my babies and I love them. 

We got to the arena just in time to hear The Diary of Jane by Breaking Benjamin. We had wanted to see their whole set but we dilly dallied too much with the taking stuff to the car. 

I forgot how much I like Billy Talent, so I'm really glad we saw them, despite not really having the energy to move very much.

Disturbed covered The Sound of Silence, which gave me feels and was by far my favourite song of the whole festival. I'm always super impressed when a singer of a metal band is actually a really good singer in general. That probably sounds silly because singing is literally their job and they get paid a lot of money to do it, but it is a whole other style of singing so it surprises me nonetheless. Turns out their version of the song has been around for a while and you should definitely listen to it.  I don't know much of their stuff past the Ten Thousand Fists album, but I still really enjoyed them. 

To be honest, and I am ready to be hated for this, I didn't think much of Iron Maiden. I had a brief Iron Maiden phase when I was a teenager, but I think I actually like the really cool artwork associated with them more than I like their music. I'm not one for insane guitar solos really. I mean, I can appreciate the technical ability and stuff, but I don't think I want to spend time actually listening to it. Also their lead singer (I feel like I should know his name, but I do not) reminded me of a dad when he first came on stage. It was weird watching this strange dad man rocking out to thousands of people. He did de-dad a little bit as time went on, but I still found the whole thing a bit cringey. Sorry.

It was quite evident that on the last night everyone had given up, The toilets were mega gross. I know portaloos at festivals are rarely nice, but this was something else. There were PILES coming over the top of many of them, so we gave up on that idea and went back to nature's ways instead. Lots of the lights weren't on, so everywhere was even darker than usual, which made everything even more difficult in the terrible mud. 

Goodbye, tentland

I had a most excellent time, but I am very glad to be back in civilisation where there is minimal mud and maximum bed comfort. 

read more >>>

day 57 - download part 2: blowout

Saturday - the day of the wee jobby 

Saturday was the blowout day. We started drinking on the way to the arena and didn't really stop until bed time, so much of it is a bit of a blur. From what I remember I had a good time.

 I actually was brave did a stint in the mosh pit at Anti Flag since they filled me with drunken rage about the government and stuff. I forgot how good they are. 

I'd never heard Tesseract before, but I liked them so much that I'm listening to them while writing this post. The lead matey has a really nice voice and it made me have feelings.

Deftones were good. Another band I've not listened to for ages. Download is really just a huge culmination of my fave bands from my teenage years and maybe early twenties. So much nostalgia. 

I don't actually remember much of Black Sabbath, but I do remember calling my mum and insisting I told my step dad that Ozzy was right there and that he should be jealous. 

My main memory of Saturday night is of meeting up with some dudes that Faffy knows from a previous Download, who just so happened to be from Scotland. I spent the rest of the night shouting about WEE JOBBIES, since I once had an incident with a wee jobby... (down south a "jobby" generally refers to a thingemyob or what whatdyoucallit, whereas up north it means a poo. This got confusing once when I sent an email to someone at work referencing the "jobby". They were northern.)

part 3 >>>

read more >>>

day 56 - download festival part 1: the sun and the rain

If I were to sum up Download 2016 in three words it would be mud, nachos, and rain.

We arrived on Wednesday with a view to getting a good pitch and the most camping for our money. Turns out this was a very good idea, as the pitch we got was still miles from anything, and would have been even more miles from anything had we rocked up on Thursday. 

It became quickly evident that this year's Thing Everyone Shouts was "HOLD THE DOOOOOOR!" which is a Game of Thrones reference that I do not yet understand, and will not spend any time thinking about because I don't appreciate spoilers. 

Here is our nest before it got grass and mud in it: 

Thursday was sunny, so we drank and chilled out with our neighbours. They were very nice chaps, though they didn't stay our neighbours for very long because some other guys pitched their tents in our garden. To be fair, the space was massive so we kinda expected it. I was chuffed as nuts because I won cards against humanity. I also didn't get a sun burn despite being ginger and especially susceptible to being set on fire by the sun, and using sun cream that was a couple of years out of date. The answer, it seems, is to shelter beneath a big ol' pashmina for most of the day. 

Friday - the day of the rain

I was preoccupied for most of Friday with the peril of hypothermia, since this was the day the rains came and I got drenched pretty much as soon as we got to the arena. When I checked the weather it said 3% precipitation, so I got over confident and let the rain just kinda happen, until I was so bloody cold I couldn't actually catch my breath, and I realised that maybe the rain might also have a weekend ticket to the festival. I got my poncho out, but it was too late. I didn't die of hypothermia though so I guess everything turned out okay.

We saw Alien Ant Farm, Killswitch Engage, and Korn, all of which are bands that I know and love a couple of their most famous songs, but am not so familiar with the rest of their music. 

Rammstein were definitely in the top three bands I have ever seen live, if not the best. They are known for putting on amazing shows with FIRE, and they did not disappoint. The pyrotechnics were welcome seeing as I was still pretty chilly and damp, as well as you know, just being damn awesome. 

Oh my god the NACHOS. I wish I had a picture, my words are not going to do justice to how amazing the nacho bowl was. To put it simply, the nachos were inside an edible bowl made of a tortilla, and topped with all the best nacho things. It was HUGE and AMAZING and horribly unhealthy.

part 2 >>>

read more >>>