from the beginning we both knew it wouldn't last, decisions have been made, the die has been cast

i say this every time i post here, but blogspot, i have really failed you. i mean, it's not as though anyone reads you anyway so the fact i rarely post isn't destroying world order too much. regardless, here's hoping it's not over, i'ma try and bring us back from the brink.

so...five months have passed. i'm a little older, a little wiser, i have travelled a bunch which is always good for morale. i've officially graduated school now and as the helpful letter i received last week from the student loans company told me, i'm £21,000 in debt as a result. i'm not entirely sure how to structure a blog-entry when i've not updated for nearly half a year, so i guess i'll start where we left off and see where we end up...

in april, i turned 21, and to celebrate such a sweet milestone, thomas took me to copenhagen in denmark for a few days in june. on heading to scandinavia, my two main concerns were: 1) i am going to be surrounded by blonde gods, thus making me feel vastly inferior and 2) i am vegetarian, my boyfriend is vegan, i shouldn't really eat dairy, and we're going to a country where the main component in most meals is meat. oh.

despite my food-based worries, we had a super awesome time and didn't die from malnutrition: the weather was awesome, the city is super pretty, our hotel was rad, the arcitecture was beautiful, and i got to see american tourists groping the bronze statue of the little mermaid. there was so much to do that we could have spent longer there for sure. i really want to visit more of scandinavia now, i can totally understand why that entire area has one the highest standards of living in the world.

a few photos (in no order because blogger is shit):

so that was my first holiday of the year, or as my mother kept referring to it, my 'mini break'. i will just say at this point in time that my memory is fucked and i am using iphoto to remember what i spent the past few months doing, is that a new low? i handed my dissertation in at the end of june, a personal highlight as i was beginning to get sick of jack kerouac and the beat generation. my dissertation tutor hated it but much to my surprise (because i am a pessimist) i got my 2:1 anyway so a big proverbial two fingers up to her. finishing education meant i also moved out of cambridge entirely (as i mentioned on my last post), and being home permanently meant finding employment, which in this current economical climate, proved hard. i temped with my ma at her office for a while and having experienced life at an NHS dental surgery, i must congratulate her on being a saint because the great unwashed of norwich sure can be hard work. in between the few shifts a week i had there, i did a lot of sitting around and read most of the twilight saga (so i'm still halfway through breaking dawn, don't judge). stephenie meyer is an awful writer and i can now say that as i am a fully fledged english graduate.

after two months of beach trips/dodging bad weather/eating american candy/getting tattooed and buying hilarious birthday presents for my best friend, most of which were edward cullen based, we went to leeds festival because the line up was seemingly better than usual and i wanted to pretend that i was okay with not washing for four days. obviously the latter was a massive farce, because we stayed at steph's parents and got the bus to and from the camp every day, but my bedraggled look for the weekend kept up the facade that i really was spending each night in a tent with seven others. while the weather was weirdly arctic and wet (?) for a supposedly sunny august bank holiday weekend, we had a lot of fun and thanks to sweet hook-ups from tracker and polar bear club, we had backstage access for the lock up stage on the friday and VIP for the rest of the weekend. you know you've made it when you see members of the hollyoaks cast on a daily basis and get to use toilets that actually flush. apparently alexa chung and other legit celebrities were around the backstage VIP bar we had access to, but we were limited to newt, JP, anita, the irish girl, and archie, and neville longbottom from harry potter who was in front of us in the guest ticket queue. i did get to watch thursday from side of stage however, thus fulfilling a dream i've had since i was 13. thanks PBC!

photos and august-november coming soon. don't hold your breath though.

xo

balance, i'm losing it and the ground beneath does not exist.

oh blogspot, you're like an absent relative i never see but when i do, i am instantly filled with feelings of regret for not picking up the phone and chatting with you more often.

june went quick and now i'm burning the candle at both ends to put the final touches to the broken record that is my dissertation. june 29th and i'm free, oh yeah. here is what i intend to spend all my summer doing: making tie-dye clothing and looking like a woodland creature.

i moved out of romsey road which sucked and i miss the benefits of being away from home and in cambridge i.e. being within walking distance of a plethora of multicultural food eateries, near shops that don't run out of the observer on a sunday, 15 minutes walk from something other than ducks and trees and sally anns on mill road that did a good job of fulfilling my vhs needs for three years. ARU 2006-2009, gone but nearly forgotten.

being home is mid to average, especially as apparently no-one i want to socialize with on a daily basis lives here anymore. i mean, even jack pitt went back to essex for summer. currently doing a katy perry and waking up in vegas, stephanie walker is totally coming back in september, but i have a 3 month waiting period for my best friend needs to be filled, i.e. daily text conversations about horse-face trace cyrus.

in the last few days she was around to sing metro station at me, 76 lincoln street held another house-show. it was good, sweaty, smelly, but good. dorian gay/nothing existed/william english/hex/hang the bastard/lonewolves/cold ones/headcase played, the most amazing part being cold ones set and i still cannot believe i saw them in jack's living room. it was mental. i took video footage again and will edit it when i can. most of it is of the floor due to copious amounts of crowdsurfing but it's worth it just for the sheer fact that we actually got away with doing it all again after march. pictures will follow soon.

tomorrow i am totally going to copenhagen because my boyfriend is pretty rad and is sweet at 21st birthday gifts. we will probably eat fruit and water for 4 days because scandinavia is all about meat and fish but food is of secondary importance when I AM LEAVING THE COUNTRY AND GETTING AWAY FROM ALL THAT INFURIATES ME. I DO NOT CARE ABOUT SUSAN BOYLE OR WHO THE STIG IS. please let it be sunny so i can shed my edward cullen skin and become something other than sparkly diamond white.

procrastination aids: twitter.com/aprylhm, i need a blackberry asap.

two records i am fairly in love with currently:-

the horrors- primary colours:
when i was in my first year of university education, the boy who lived next door to me in halls (who now looks like a smack addict, that's called karma...) listened to a sweet combination of the libertines, larikin love and the horrors, so much so that any mention of the latter for a long time sent shivers down the spine that was destroyed by 9 months of single bed living. he is also the same reason i've not watched donnie darko since 2006, but that's a whole other blog entry. fuck you luke, fuck you.i digress. 2006/2007 were my years of being XSTRAIGHTXEDGEXHARDCOREX to the max and while i listened to a fair amount of music that did not have sweet mosh parts, i did not get the horrors. sure that video directed by chris cunningham was pretty cool but as for anything else, no reaction from me.
fast forward to 2009 and i download their second record 'primary colours' on a whim and having read good reviews on various blogs. may i just say WOW. evidently worshiping at the gates of all things shoegaze, they've entirely upped their game. it's flawless from start to finish. i want to buy it on vinyl and listen to it in the dark at 3am. it makes me want to see them live. it makes me wish i was going to ATP in december to see them play with my bloody valentine. 'who can say' and 'sea within a sea'- AMAZING. it's a bit joy division in parts but interpol have based their entire career around this so it's not a hinderance.

title fight- the last thing you forget
it's like polar bear club, shook ones and a bunch of pop-punk bands fell into a blender and were made into an awesome smoothie that you can't get enough of to the point where you keep on drinking, until a few days later you realise have nearly 100 plays on lastfm already. i really want these guys to tour here asap, and i really hope they're playing shows when i hop across the pond in autumn. i think they're all super young and that makes it all the more amazing. it took a few listens to get me hooked but now all i want to do is sit around and listen to their record and maybe eat some fritos and then wander round places and take photos of hilarious in-jokes that only three people appreciate- i.e. for it to be summer.

so there you go. maybe it's the fact that i wrote part of this last night at 3am whilst watching weeds on sky three or maybe it's because i have lost the will to live, but i appear to be more witty than usual. i shall end this by saying that i don't think i've been more excited about a book than i am about reading 'new moon' while i'm away. shameless, but three years of reading renaissance drama, romanticist literature, deciphering what the fuck william blake was on about and studying the hell out of jack kerouac, has destroyed all of my brain cells and my ability to read books aimed at the educated, so i have to start with teen vampire novels with mormon undertones. splendid. team jacob.

xo

feathers float, wings flap, beaks pound

quack quack xo

the times, they are a-changin'

i really do not update this blog at all anymore. like i say in every entry, tumblr has stolen me.

anyway, a month has passed, my exams are over, i am (for all intent and purpose) back at home for the foreseeable future and should really be formulating some kind of life plan with regards to what i want to do with this degree i've spent the last three years slaving over. it's a particularly strange feeling to have, being at a cross roads when i don't really feel like i'm any older than i was when i started in 2006.

though finished with academia in the attending classes sense, i still have my dissertation to complete and while taking the extension seemed like a good idea at the time (particularly given the circumstances it was handed to me amidst), i now wish i'd handed it in a month ago like everybody else. it has become the eternal albatross around my neck, forever weighing me down when i want to be off laying in the sun or watching pointless made for television movies in the daytime hours.

aside from my time at ARU coming to an end, the last month has been a mass of revision failures, developing a complete and utter disdain for thomas mann and all things death in venice and modernist, swooning over the pictures of 'new moon' emmerging online, seeing morrissey in cambridge only to have him bail two weeks later due to sickness, and thomas off playing merch boy for polar bear club. with regards to the latter, i am glad they are back in the country because, well, no-one has the ability to wear a 'tank top' quite like goose.

along with tv, internet and cleaning my room, a particular distraction to my revision timetable was seeing cold cave at the portland arms two weekends ago. i will leave out the part of this blog where i go off on a 1500 word rant about the influential power of and my love for wes eisold and just say this: the band was intense, mind blowing, amazing and stephanie and i were insanely happy to a) see them live in a tiny venue and b) meet wes eisold. a sentence i never thought i'd write, but yes, it happened. it is an event that both makes me cringe and smile at the same time.

next week i'm getting tattooed and i suppose i hope to re-start the final workings of my dissertation along with completing the move back from cambridge. it's a strange feeling, knowing that for the first time in three years i will only have one home, one bedroom. our little house at romsey has been through a lot and it's going to feel weird saying goodbye.

the polar bear club/ruiner/defeater tour finishes tomorrow, with the last show being in norwich. i'm looking forward to seeing all three bands again (PBC as usual for blowing me away, and defeater in particular for being one of the best bands i've seen live lately) and to generally having thomas home.

xo

back in school never taught us what we needed to know, like how to deal with despair or someone breaking your heart...

in 12 days time i'll experience my last day of official teaching and in 32 days time i will have my last exam at. 3 years has gone quick.

bob dylan- don't think twice, it's alright



this seems fitting.

xo

if what it boils down to is that "you're either for us or against us"....

first off:

Four Year Strong 'On Tour In The UK!' SPECIAL Webisode 5.1 from Ryan Mackfall [CBP] on Vimeo.

the fact i missed out on this still while steph and tom made it weighs heavy on my mind and whilst watching this last night, i felt like both singing my heart out and weeping with sadness. suicide file covers plus kristian CIS, fuck! mindblowing.

wednesday i turned 21. because of the 'not drinking thing' it was low key but i wouldn't have had it any other way. i spent the daytime with my family, thomas and steph and in the evening headed to pulse with some of the best people i know. the past few weeks have been marred with a lot of bad stuff and while keeping it all inside isn't the best coping mechanism, right now i can't think of any other way to function. it still feels weird.

aside from the obligatory baby photos, family traditions and overloads of birthday cake, i received some neat presents, the crowning glory of which is probably my trip to copenhagen in june which tom organized to make up for our euro failure during the gaslight tour. i'm so excited! copenhagen looks beautiful and hopefully the weather will stay awesome while we're there.

recent events have inevitably caused me to question a lot of things and i concluded that in life there are people that you do and don't like. some people have issue with you for no reason and though this is sad and horrendously pointless, there is no point in going out of your way to please everybody. i would rather have 5 close friends that i know i can trust and love than have a harem of acquaintances that may flip and turn on you at any given moment. true loyalty is a rarity, one-upmanship is lame. what is the point of a friendship based on obligation or personal gain? 'hold onto your friends'.

i am looking forward to the summer and spending time with those i know, hanging out, going to shows and realising that life is too short. all this FUCK MY LIFE bullshit is redundant. very few people have anything worth fucking their life for, be grateful for what you have and quit whining about 'the state of ____' etc.

this weeks listens:
- K O freaking L
- bob dylan
- the bouncing souls
- atmosphere
- cold cave

this weeks eats:
- birthday cake supremely reigning over all.

life mantra:
xo