Letters from the past, nearly illegible but not nearly illegible enough.

So, I've talked a lot in here about how I like to write. You've probably noticed that the idea of writing professionally is starting to coalesce in my mind once again. Of course this isn't the first time my thoughts have swung that way. I remember a time when I was all about my various notebooks full of scribbled song lyrics (my band was never going to take off but obviously someone would want to buy the shit I'd been writing for their band: it was gold dust!).
   Recently, I was scrabbling around for something to scribble on (I was scripting/directing what was essentially a TV ad - if it doesn't make TV I might stick it on Youtube) and I came across one of these old notebooks. I deliberately didn't look at those old scribbles, mostly because I was pressed for time but also because I wanted to continue to remember them as merely weak rather than know them to be abysmal.
   Well, a few days later I'd gone to bed and suddenly remembered that yet again I'd nearly forgotten to write anything for that day. Quickly I snatched up my old notebook from the floor where I'd abandoned it and, searching for inspiration for what to write, I reviewed that time capsule from 16-year-old me.
   Mission accomplished. It certainly inspired me. Very soon I'd embarked on a essay extolling the virtues of fire when it comes to expunging unwanted records of the past.
   I think all of my old notebooks are going to be dug out tomorrow and have a lit match applied to them. I had always half intended to keep them for the purposes of refining them when I'd become a better writer or just as a reminder of where I'd come from. Well, bollocks to that for a game of soldiers, I'd much rather forget as much as possible of that. Let this blog be the start of my journey, let the feeble prose herein be testament to my origins and (hopefully) my progress towards a decent level of skill.
   The discovery of those old scribble pads did remind me how much I love writing with pen and paper though. Obviously I'm digital these days (and today I did see a typewriter in the shop where I volunteer and immediately fell in WANT) but there's something about the barely legible scrawls you make when caught in the flow of an idea that capture the tone of your thoughts the way typing can't, no matter how feverishly your fingers dance.
   So, once I get money my next purchase is probably going to be a stack of fresh notebooks in various styles for the purposes of impromptu jotting, and probably that typewriter (so much WANT).

Creative Non-fiction

So, I realised I'd nearly forgotten to write something today and was casting around for a topic. I had this in the pipeline but it wasn't something I was planning on doing for a while yet. I guess there's no time like the present though and I've got nothing else so it'll have to do.
   Cards on the table, I bought a book that's supposed to teach you creative writing and this was task 1. I honestly don't believe it's something you can learn (especially the particular aspects that I lack) but my chances of learning it are 100% worse if I don't try compared to what they are if I do, and you never know, right?
   Anyways, I'm supposed to make a list of names I've been called in my life and write a paragraph on any one of them. I might do a paragraph on a couple of them actually. Pretty sure this'll be no good, partially because it's me doing it and partially because it's a pretty lame subject, but I'm not going to turn my nose up at something designed to help me improve a skill I've been scrabbling to acquire for years. So here we go. First, my list:
Dan (duh!)
Danny
Daniel (when someone's annoyed with me)
Daniel Lovegrove (when someone's fuming with me)
Daniel James Lovegrove (when the shit's about to hit the fan)
Lovegrove
Loveshack
Shack
Shacka
Shaktar
Shakkerslovakia (it's totally possible I made that one up, but something's telling me it happened)
Mangrove
Love me Slender (I have literally no idea)
Lovebear
Sex God (I had weird friends at school)
Mr. Lovegroan
Dean
Dandeano
Big D
Son

I got called Loveshack again the other day. It's an ambiguous name for me, the thought of it transports me back to a time when I was relatively happy - or certainly a time I remember as being happy - but when there was so much confusion and sadness around that I've no idea where this happiness came from.
   That time was school and that right there should give you a measure of the confusion and sadness I'm talking about. I was never popular but then I didn't particularly want to be. I was genuinely happier as an outsider, if it wasn't for the fact that you need a few extra people for a decent game of football I'd have been a total loner. Sadly, kicking a ball against a wall all by your lonesome isn't anywhere near as fun as kicking it around with other people, so that forced me into having what in the right light might have looked like friends.
   They weren't friends, not really. Us loner types struggle to make real friends, we're too odd for people to connect with (especially at school, where odd does not play in your favour) and find that sooner or later, everyone lets you down (especially at school, where hormones and peer pressure turn everyone into an obnoxious little shit, and I include myself in that).
   Anyway, Loveshack as a nickname came from this group of pseudo-friends and while it was initially a friendly moniker, I can't help but recall the times it was used by bullies or friends who had turned against me. Allegiances were so fragile back then, so while a nickname's supposed to be something used amongst friends, part of your group's own particular slang, my name was used at least as much by foes as it was by allies.
   So. Confusing, sad, no friends to speak of. School was a nightmare on paper, but as they say, the game's not played on paper. I remember it fondly, for reasons I still can't explain. Perhaps it was that lessons were easy, breaks were frequent (and filled with football) and the future seemed bright.
   Whatever the reason, thinking about the character of Loveshack, I think of a happy person surrounded by circumstances that made him unbearably sad and a sad youth who always aspired to happiness. They are one and the same and they are me and I them but also we're all strangers.
   Being called the name again felt weird. I was sat in a car with two of my former pseudo-friends who are now mature enough and have stuck around long enough to have become proper friends if I weren't too much of a loner. That was the reality but as far as I was concerned I was practically back on the school astroturf, trying to figure out why my friends sometimes act like they hate me and why I sometimes act like a total dick (the two may not have been unrelated, in fairness).
   It's a name that'll stick though, I think. To this day I can't hear the song Loveshack by the B-52s without smiling and singing along.

Whew, that was considerably more than a paragraph, guess I'll leave it at one name. Just a note though, the person who calls me Big D is a total arse and does so without any encouragement from me. She may be family but I genuinely want to do violence when that godawful attempt at joviality is uttered. Night all.

Oh, and I guess you might be wondering about Mr. Lovegroan, I know it sounds like a shit name for a porn star.
   Well, that's a whole other story.

=

Well, it's only day three of my write-something-every-day challenge and just 36 hours since I really put the pressure on with a melodramatic outburst on why it's so important that I keep it up and I've only just noticed that I've written nothing today. I'm the king of poor follow-through but this was nearly a dismal failure by even my generous standards.

   So, in my haste to fire something out in the 57 minutes remaining of today, I've had to pluck a topic out of nowhere and I'm going for equality. Weighty stuff for midnight on a Saturday but its something I think about a lot. I've always had a passion for justice and fairness, and there's a couple of related stories/events at the moment so I thought I'd talk about one or two.

   So first things first, I consider myself a feminist. Yes I'm a man, yes you could just call me an egalitarian if you want, but this is where I'm coming from. I may be quite a bad feminist at times, as I shall recount here, but I am a feminist.

   One equality-related thing happening at the moment is the Women's Football World Cup. I've always been a staunch defender of the women's game against a barrage of sexist comments from people I'm slightly ashamed to call acquaintances and friends. Women's football is not the same as men's football but it's no less entertaining. Sometimes it's better to watch, even if you might be able to make a case for the standard being lower. Anyway, there are obvious potential challenges to my claims of feminism here. I often find myself thinking something bad about what I'm seeing. I actually made a mental comparison between women's football and "real" football earlier today and I was not happy with myself about that, I can tell you. Of course, having these thoughts doesn't make me a complete chauvinist arsehole. In fact, acknowledging my own faults and trying to address them probably makes me a better person in the long run but still, I'd rather not be prone to such slips in the first place.

   The main problem with trying to be a male feminist women's football fan though is trying not to think very bad thoughts about the endless parade of very aesthetically pleasing women on show. I wrestle them down most of the time but thoughts like these trouble me still. Can I really be fair and equal in my treatment of people with these thoughts in my head? Can I truly be a fan of the game I profess to love? Or am I merely a worthless letch? Fighting myself here proves I'm trying but does the lack of total victory mean I'm not trying hard enough?

Titles are Hard, part 2 of 2.

Part one here

   Last time I mentioned that I'd be trying to write every day, just to see if I can get any good at it. I'll be honest, that piece went on longer than I expected and I never managed to wrestle it towards its intended subject, so I inserted a break at what seemed an appropriate point and split it in two. I'm undertaking this writing on the advice of a far better writer than myself, who thought it might help. Unlike the man in question, I haven't the ability to write fiction (now anyway, hopefully it will come with time) so I'm just typing to see where it goes.

   Anyway, the second and third part of Sir Terry's advice concerned becoming a good writer, which I don't think many people asked for advice on, more commonly they wanted to know how to make as much money as he had so these other pieces of advice are less widely published. The second part was this: read, and read a lot, if you read enough words they start to overflow and you'll find yourself writing, if you've read good things and read widely about all sorts of subjects, you'll have a lot of material to draw on.

   This, I suspect, will be my downfall. Back in my teens I could read two books in a day and if I'd spent that time broadening my horizons I'd have probably ended up reading everything in the universe, but I'm a notorious re-reader so my horizons stay stubbornly narrow. There's a nice eclectic mix in there but new things are rare and these days they seem to take months to get through. However, a glut of new books recently entered my life and hopefully I can take some good things from the experience.

   One of these was actually written by a family member and I'm proof-reading it for him. Through a twist in circumstance I'm not entirely sure he knows I'm proof-reading, it could be he thinks I'm just reading it, which presents me with the dilemma of what to do with the points I notice that need or want changing. I've no idea of the etiquette in this situation and I'm really reticent to give the book back with my little scribbled notes all over it.

   You see, not only do I not know whether he's expecting any feedback or not, the feedback I do have is harsh and I've gone far beyond the remit of the proof-reader, for four reasons. Firstly, because if my relative is to go from self-published to just published, which I assume he would like to, he's going to need to get used to harsh criticism of spellings, punctuation, grammar, syntax and such (this, incidentally, was Terry Pratchett's third piece of advice: knowing your commas from your semi-colons is vital). Secondly, I've been harsh because there's a pretty good story in there but it really struggles to immerse you thanks to its presentation and making it easier to read will make it better. Thirdly, I love correct grammar (though my definition of correct may be looser than some others) and seeing it misused hurts me almost physically.

   The fourth reason is far less virtuous. Honestly, I'm jealous. I've always thought myself a writer, even if not a very good one and suddenly here is someone putting their skill into practice while I wait for an idea to strike, like some hunk of stone landing on my doorstep from which I might be able to hew a story of some kind. I've been wretchedly comparing what I've read in that work to my own efforts and while I believe myself to have the edge when it comes to the nuts and bolts of writing, the author of the piece I'm half way through critiquing has me beat all ends up on imagination and story-telling. Together we'd make a fearsome team, though I'd never say it to him. Instead, rightly or wrongly, I'll just tear his first novel to pieces and try to be as dispassionate as possible so that what I'm saying comes from the part of me that's trying to help rather than the green eyed monster who keeps urging me to find any fault I can purely for its own satisfaction. It's a perilous tightrope I walk, over a chasm of despair and envy.

   On this high-wire of the soul I have one salvation. Knowing that the trick of the tightrope walker is to lower their centre of gravity to a point below the rope, I've fashioned for myself a heavy weight. This is why I write every day now, to keep me balanced. I've done nearly 1350 words today (and amazingly still haven't got around to the topic I originally had in mind) and the release I feel is not just down to the confessional nature of the last few paragraphs, although that will certainly have helped. I know that this burden, gladly carried, can save me from becoming the terrible person I've always suspected myself to be and if between that and improving my own skills I can't find some motivation to keep on carrying it then I don't deserve to use this keyboard for anything but facebook and gaming.

You Know What? Titles Are Hard. (Part 1 of 2)

That has bugger all to do with the topic for today. It's just a comment. I've come up with some titles I've been pretty happy with over my career but sometimes I just can't condense what I'm thinking of writing about into a concise enough sentence.

   My topic for today is in fact pretty much what it always is: my struggle to express myself through the medium of the typed word. (Yeah, I know, but there's actually almost a pretty good reason for once).

   In fact, yet again I've had someone tell me I write pretty well. This happens surprisingly often and I never believe it to be true. It seems more likely to me that people are humouring their friend. I don't say this to fish for further compliments, I'm simply stating the facts of the matter.

   Having said that, I was reading back through some of my favourite posts from this blog yesterday and thinking to myself that some of them were half-decent. This is clearly selection bias though: if I'm reading my favourites, of course I'll like them, I should try reading the ones I hate or (if it were possible) the ones I've deleted if I fancy getting a true measure of my ability.

   Anyway, that's why I'm here. Compliments motivate me to try and make myself worthy of them and practice makes perfect so here I am.

   Fair warning, this piece is about to go off on such a tangent you wouldn't believe it.

   I was mid-way through my annual re-read of practically everything Terry Pratchett ever wrote when the great man passed away (naturally this extended the splurge to include other of his books that I read less often). Amongst the things I took in this time around were the anthologies of his non-fiction and shorter fictional works. Between them, the notes he makes between each piece in those books represent the closest we'll get to an autobiography, which both gladdens and saddens me. It's unusual for writers to to autobiographies. Despite being the only people qualified to do so, they always have something more interesting to write about. Such was the case with Pratchett and I wouldn't swap one novel for an autobiography but from those notes in the anthologies of his work I learned there are scarcely any people whose own story I'd be more interested to read. It is all there in his fiction, anyway, once you know where to look.

   Writers are always asked what the secret is and of all the answers I've heard, Pratchett's is one of my favourites. It comes in three parts and the essence of the first and most important part is "You want to be a writer? No-one's stopping you, write something." He himself wrote at least four hundred words a day when he was starting out. If he finished a story within one night's session, he'd simply start on another story. A lot of those innumerable words might never have made it to print but that wasn't the point.The goal wasn't necessarily to be published (although I'm sure it was appreciated), he wanted to write, so he did.

   I've decided to take his advice and try to emulate him, as much as possible. Not that I expect that by writing a couple of hundred words a day I'll turn into the next Sir Terry Pratchett, he had certain advantages over me - such as a skill in the craft - but with any luck I might at some point become worthy of those compliments I've been getting.

My name is Daniel, and I'm an alcoholic. Well, I've had a lager.

So, I discovered something today: 25-year-old me can handle significantly less booze than 15-year old me could. I think the first clue was when, after one San Miguel while ostensibly working on a project for a family member. I started slacking off, posting more facebook statuses in an hour than I have done in the previous month and singing Busted songs at the top of my voice. And now I'm blogging about totally random shit and I just can't seem to stop.
   I've always had a measure of control. Even in those heady days of Cardiff '05 and the infamous pre-birthday bender, I could turn tipsiness off if I started making an ass of myself. The lowered inhibitions pursuant to a considerable amount of lager made me less likely to do so, but the option was open to me. I still have this trait but again, lowered inhibitions mean that while the flesh is able, the spirit is unwilling. It's not like I need booze to have enjoyment but there's a certain element of what I consider enjoyable whilst not lightly inebriated being far more sober pleasures than most people would enjoy, whilst alcohol - that great leveler - brings my personality more in line with what some call "fun."
   Truth is though, fun's a nasty bastard, fun comes in flavours including "we thought it would be fun," "we were only having a bit of fun" and most perilously of all "are you having fun yet?" I hate "fun" people. I like funny people (in both senses of the term), I like diverting and engaging people, inspirational people, people... People described as "fun" are like movies described as "feel-good" in that they contain very little of merit and tend to all be the same.
   What I'm saying is, I don't like slightly sozzled me, but everyone else seems to and down this path madness lies. I'm not saying I'll never drink again, 1) because that's too cliche and 2) because it's just not true. Every now and then everyone needs a drink and I'm no different. But my current rate of about two bottles of lager a year seems sufficient, to me. And I will say one thing for far-too-easily-inebriated-me, I've written my first blog post in what seems a goodly while - certainly the first one I'll bother posting on Facebook for ages, despite what sober me might think of that later on (*evil laugh*) - and despite having to wrestle with an American spell-checker it had some pretty good vocabulary, no errors that I can see and possibly even better punctuation than usual. I even managed to reference Shakespeare (in my drink-addled fugue I think I flipped the reference 'round as well so it's probably satire or parody or something), I did borrow extensively from Pratchett but then I do that when I've not touched a drop; my sad attempts at the sincerest form of flattery being far more worthy than my own - thankfully inimitable - brand of "writing", so that's no big deal. Maybe my semi-annual beer should always lead to blogging, maybe not. But either way it's probably time to sign off - so I can post this before I get sober enough to realise its a mistake - and get back to work, we've been through happy drunk, introspective drunk, maudlin drunk and tailing-off-mid-sentence-drunk (though I managed quite an adroit save there, I thought) and nobody wants to see angry drunk, if that's something I even have in my pantheon of inebriates, I've no idea.
Adieu, friends.

Twenty-Something Life In The Bit Bucket: So, where do you get your inspiration?

Hi. Yeah, it has been a while. How are y'all doing? Good, good. How's life as automated text-scanning software treating you? Cool, Yep, any actual people reading this might be a bit confused by now, but I know my audience.

Anyways, the old uni blogging gang seem to be back on the scene and I thought I might as well join in, in my small way. Well, topics are still pretty thin on the ground, the only thing really going on at the moment is my first steps on the long and arduous journey towards being a proper football coach and since a) the human minority among the audience will quickly get bored with minutiae of VAK, STEPS, the LTPD and assorted other details and b) I have a sneaking suspicion that my first steps on the journey will also be my last ones - at least for a good long while - it seems a waste to spend a lot of time going on about it.

I will say this: I have managed to pass one coaching course and look set to scrape by in another despite showing a very low level of competency for the subject (my life in microcosm, if I'm honest: the number of things at which I've been deemed good enough to move on to the next level, only to find the next level to be beyond my limited ability, is simply staggering). Being just good enough at something to know how shit you are is rare. Generally, you're either amazing and so have sufficient appreciation of the skill to notice every microscopic detail (and therefore magnify all your own mistakes) and unjustly believe yourself to be poor OR you're so poor that you fail to understand what good or bad performance would look like and therefore believe yourself to be amazing (case studies: TV "talent" show competitors and at least 80% of management-level workers), how lucky am I to land in the middle of those two sub-sets and have total knowledge of my inadequacy?

Wow, rant over, sorry. On to why I'm actually here.

So, as this blog will attest, I'm a keen writer (though it's another area where I fall into the "I know I'm crap" bracket) and part of that is having to deal with the "bit bucket". Most of you will know what I mean by that. The space in your head where you throw those half-formed ideas that you just know you can work into something later on. It doesn't have to be what you might call traditionally creative, it could be 5 minutes worth of lesson plan, it could be an acronym for the new initiative that they're working on at the office, but generally it's for that one project you intend to get 'round to if only you had the time. Everyone's got that project, it could be a novel, a play, some poetry, a song, it could be a particularly spectacular piece of DIY (up to and including building your own house), it could be as grandiose as a general election manifesto or as modest a witty facebook status. Point is, everyone's got a project and it always starts out formless, no title, no outline, no components, just a thought, not always consciously acknowledged. At first any random inspiration can become part of it, suddenly you think of a bloody brilliant title for an album and even though you've not got a band and you haven't touched your guitar in months, you are always - from that moment on, in small ways - thinking about that album, working out genre, the songs, composition of the band, whatever. Other inspirations strike, they either become part of THE PROJECT, or they go in the bit-bucket, because of course, once THE PROJECT gets out, you'll be on a roll and ready to start on PROJECT TWO: PROJECT FURTHER which may be able to use stuff from the bit-bucket.

(Bloody Hell I'm being wordy tonight, I shouldn't leave it so long between posts, I get all gabbly, sorry folks, trying to swing around to the point, I promise).

I live in my bit bucket, if I'm honest, I'm constantly having thoughts, chucking them in the bucket for later consideration and rootling around for previous ones, trying to assess their merits as the basis for a PROJECT. There are so many thoughts in my bucket that they're actually breeding, some of them are now 4th or 5th generation bucket denizens, never knowing any other life than to swim around their own hopelessly crowded gene-pool, looking for other ideas to merge with, in the hope that the descendants of a cringe-worthy attempt at a song lyric and a desperately one-dimensional dystopian dictator could one day aspire to escape the bucket as a particularly pithy section of a stand-up set.

So, there's all these inspirations around, and everyone's got them and everyone stores them in their buckets or incorporates them into a PROJECT and by now we all pretty much know it and yet people who manage to get their PROJECT to fruition with a bit of success still get asked where they get their inspiration. Less so nowadays but still, it does happen and it's a bugbear of mine. It also sets up my point for today and a micro-rant blog on the subject is one thing that's been in the bucket for a while.

Inspiration is not what separates successful PROJECTeers from everyone else, inspiration of some kind probably strikes each of the planet's 7 billion people at least once a day and what takes it from imagination to the real world is an almost indefinable quality, mostly comprised of having the guts to try, the perseverance to keep trying, the motivation not to think that you'll get 'round to it one day but instead to get on it today and - not least - a degree of skill in the discipline.

So, part of why I'm writing this is I've got many friends managing to take on PROJECTs - a few of them taking on PROJECTs that I am somewhat envious of, in fact - and I wanted to take this opportunity to salute them because that x-factor they've got is absolutely a salute-worthy attribute. I may lack it, and that lack may hinder my every PROJECT and cause my bit bucket to overflow but it doesn't stop me appreciating the skill in others.

You knew it was coming.

I'm back. You know why. Good God it hurts. I thought I had it tamed but the beast has reared its head again, taking another savage swipe. The sad song playlist will be back out tonight for the first time in a couple of years and somewhere around 2am I'll start to wish, not for the first time, that I had a taste for alcohol so I can get thoroughly smashed. There's been highs and lows recently; life stuff, nothing huge, but once again there's one thing on the horizon, blotting the rest of it out like a huge life-blotting-out thing, draining the colour out of everything and putting a black hole in my stomach.
I guess the difference between won't and can't is huge, like the moon and the edge of the universe. Both distances are incomprehensible, insurmountable even, but you put something on the moon and at least you can see it, you always know it's there even if its existence is, in practical terms, little more than notional.
I've nothing left to say. Feelings won't form into sentences right now. Many more of these days to come now, I'm sure. Steeling myself to deal with them. Cat in Hell's chance.

Goals of the NEET Twenty-Something

For nigh on two years now, the author has been unemployed (although I've only been a government statistic for a month or two, signing on for jobseeker's allowance in March of this year) and that has somewhat lessened the motivation to blog. Largely because, for all my daydreaming of writing an informed article on anything, I know the truth of the matter is that I talk about me in this space. Which is fine, sort of. When I was at university it seemed to work well, on my annual trawl back through my facebook timeline, I do read a fair few messages of support from friends who were readers. The assumption is, of course, that they were being kind but nonetheless, I feel like I was at least trying to say something back in the day, even if it was filtered through a quite ego-centric medium.

The problem here is obvious, really. A supportive reader base existed at university because while I was writing primarily about me, I at least had a subject who was relatable to the audience. My subject - me - was a university student, writing for other university students who had similar thoughts. Now what is my subject? Unemployed, with little prospect of finding a job that in any way feels better than unemployment, with no real skills and holding qualifications that he possibly doesn't deserve which in any case, employers don't care for. The readers are a) enjoying some measure of success, b) auto-scanning computer software designed to make advertising easier or c) non-English speakers looking to learn a little of the lingo. Whilst the first are largely friends and hopefully could forgive me lack of anything interesting to say, the second do not judge and the third probably don't care what's going on here (though they should: if they learn it from me, their English will sway wildly between slang from four or five different areas of the English-speaking world, polysyllabic nonsense and unnecessarily verbose parenthetic passages), still I've felt for a long time like the blogosphere is not the place for me anymore.

Tuesday night, however, I found myself composing a blog entry in my head on my walk back from my 5-a-side football session. I can't remember now what I was going to say but something, along with reading a couple of other blogs since then, seems to have got me back in the mood. How long this mood will last, that's another matter. Personally, I think I'll have done well if I get as far as publishing this piece.

Nevertheless, I'm here now and believe it or not, that was just the introduction to this piece (don't worry, the middle will be shorter and the conclusion non-existent).

So, what do I want to say? Do I want to talk about how someone who honestly does want to find work can feel persecuted by the system that's supposed to help while in every town around the country the crowd of unemployed who intend to stay that way are legion and seem not to have been impeded in this goal by the same system? No, if I think about that long enough to write about it I'm at risk of psychotic rage or inescapable depression. So how about a recap of the themes from the university era of this blog? Well, the plural there is extremely generous and there's not a lot to say. Largely just that the thing that made me want to write this blog in the first place is locked inside a little room in my mind and doesn't want to come out. It's comfortable in there, assimilated with similar though less intense experiences, just another part of the psyche of an individual who has reaped nothing but pain from that area of life. Gone? No. Forgotten? Never. Simply in a place where it can't hurt me any more and has no more bearing on life than does the rain on Jupiter.

Nope, I think I'll just end on the good news stories, there aren't many but they bring a little sunlight to my mental horizon so I'll write them down, see them physically and be glad that they are there.

First then, next week begins an (up to) eight-week stint of work experience which, while it might not lead directly to a job, at least gets me closer than I've been in a while.

Second, I continue to help run my local Church's youth football sessions. We've grown to a place I hoped we'd be and we show no signs of stopping, such that we now use our love of football to raise money for charity.

Third, it may be a good few years later than I dreamed of  (and my God, did I dream) and I may be paying for it rather than getting paid for it but finally I get to do that thing that many like me dream of. Nine days from now I will step out to play my first game of football at a professional football team's stadium. Not for a pro team of course and as I mentioned, not on the extremely generous wages of the professional athlete but nonetheless, a dream will have come true. In a diffuse and unanticipated manner, but come true nonetheless. And then, a week later, I'll do the same thing again.

Fourth - and last - with the above three points and all my other regular football activities (which ramp up to nearly unprecedented levels this month) I'm going to spend a lot of May in an exhausted state, but a happy one. For the first time in God knows how long I can look at a calendar and think what an excellent time this is in my life.

Ramblings, just standard blogged ramblings. And a 3-month Epilogue.

So, I'm back again. In and out like a pissing fiddler's elbow. For those unfamiliar with the expression, the "pissing" was for emphasis, rather than a actual part of the phrase, a pissing fiddler would have to have a pretty stationary elbow to avoid severe toilet inaccuracy.

This deliberately has no structure, much like my left knee currently, which seems to have been decimated by me making the rookie error of trying to put my foot on the floor, obviously a poor move.

Other poor moves include purchasing a cineworld unlimited card. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to be able to watch as many films as I like without having to pay, but the card only pays for itself if you watch two films a month. Now all of a sudden you're having to meet a quota. The flicks used to be a treat, now it's almost a chore and furthermore, they don't seem to make two good films per month, so now I've paid money to be forced to watch at least one sub-standard film a month, it seems a slightly rough deal, when you stop and think about it.

I was right earlier when I said this would have no structure, as it's been a draft for several months and I've no idea where I was going with it. I think the plan was to take the last idea, word, phrase or concept of each paragraph and use it write the next paragraph on an unrelated topic but with said idea, word, phrase or concept as a jumping-off point. An intriguing concept that I may revisit at some stage, but for now I'm just easing back in by going over my unpublished material and seeing what can and can not be salvaged as a good piece to publish. (They all come under can not be salvaged because they were written by me but as the shortest and most recent of my many many draft entries this was an obvious place to start and in truth, I'm somewhat proud of the pissing fiddler joke).

However, the reams of virtual paper filled with words unsaid seems a decent topic to finish on. I could enumerate the attempts at fiction, or make some survey of the opinion pieces or map the milestone musings, but I guess I'll just look at it overall and try and make some attempt to bring meaning to it.

It's symptomatic of me, of course. A lot of what is published in this blog is words I couldn't say out loud so I suppose it make sense that some of them end up left alone and not even posted on the web.

Some of them are left as drafts for months and then deleted entirely, how this compares to words in my heart I don't know, I don't think I've ever erased anything from there. I still harbour some feelings for my junior-school "crushes", in draft form rather than anything more concrete. In fact I met one on work experience from college and briefly fell in love all over again. Thankfully the ones who know who they were don't stop by here. As far as I know, anyway.

I'm struggling for a conclusion, but then again, this wasn't supposed to be structured. It would have been nice to say something meaningful about making our voices heard or not being closed off, but in truth it would be hollow because amongst the never-released dross there's a thing or two that deserves its place in the rubbish bin and which I will never allow to be seen or heard. As sincere as the unpublished and ultimately deleted "Telephonic Soliloquy" was, it was an attempt to bring together a passion for fiction and the facts of my passion, making the creative writing sloppy and the real-life portions insincere. It was a failure and while I remember it still, three years later, it was ultimately a product of a part of me I wish didn't exist, the part that is as truly me as any other part but never gets the memo from the rest of me and is not a team player, it seeks to turn every life experience into something I can write with the ultimate goal of finding something publishable, not on a blog, but in print. This part of me ignores the fact that some of my life has to be just for me and tries to get me to whore out my few experiences and my meagre talent in pursuit of the dream.

Anyway, this is getting perilously close to something else that won't see the light of day so I'll end here. Sorry to have wasted another five of your minutes.

Twenty-Something on the Dawn of Creation

   "I love this time of night", was my first thought as I noticed that I was once again alone with the silently breaking dawn and my latest writing project. Having lost track of time, I discovered that somehow it was well past 4am and the Eastern edges of sky, just visible from my kitchen window, were beginning to take on a tint more commonly associated with midday, though the zenith above me was still as dark as the heart of a crater on the other side of the moon. The many hues of dawn are well known to me, the shocking pinks and fluorescent oranges are as familiar as the colours of my bedroom walls.

   It's not unusual for me to be up in the wee hours but recently it's become a rarity for me to have a better reason than simple insomnia and an internet full of TV. Yet tonight the ceaseless parade of the adventures of improbably interesting people was ignored in favour of the blinking cursor which Pacmans its way around the screen, eating up white space and leaving trails of creation in its wake. Not particularly creative creation, it has to be said. It's been years since my last fictional piece begun, stalled and was abandoned. No, tonight I was beating back the hordes of word-doc dwelling snow ghosts with a letter begging for donations to a charitable concern and registration forms for a fundraising event in aid of same.

   Such peaks of mundanity could not have been aspired to anywhere else by a young man in the wee small hours yet there was fun there. As well as the easily recognisable joy of watching another sunrise, there was another, less obvious, source of enjoyment. I soon realised it was a presence I hadn't felt since... such a long time ago. It was the buzz of writing, of taking something from inside your head and giving it form in the world, even if it was only as substantial as the fluctuation in an electrical current. Not for me the brush and canvas, nor even the inkjet and paper. No, my medium is this; the keys and screen. I won't ever create a masterpiece, or anything that is ever seen by more than a handful and is discarded and forgotten as easily as a chewing-gum wrapper. But who cares about skill or recognition when I can feel the sense of contentment that comes from creating at all?

I've got my mojo back.

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead.

Ok, to be fair, that's a pretty tasteless title, but it may just be one of the more moderate reactions of the day.

In case you haven't heard (you know, if you've been on Mars all morning or similar) Maggie "let's put the working man in his place" Thatcher died this morning. As a proud northern lad, I had nothing but resentment for the prime minister who ripped the heart out of anything north of the Watford gap but I'm not going to go celebrating. Today will be pretty much the same as yesterday was and tomorrow will represent a startling lack of difference. The woman may be gone but her legacy will live on in the politics of our nation quite possibly for ever. Some good things wrre done by the milk snatcher but then again a lot of harm was caused too, some necessary evils were enacted - with far too much relish for my liking - but some entirely unnecessary ones were entertained also.

Others will document, in great detail, the political life of democracy's greatest failure (she never lost a popular vote, you know) and despite all the wrongdoings, reports will most likely remain positive, partly because that's the ettiquette of death but mostly beacuse to badmouth Thatcher these days is to be, in the eyes of many, a millitant leftist bent on anarchy and the destruction of civilisation. Britain took a lurch to the right from which it may never recover when Maggie was elected and the rhetoric will all be of tough decisions that were unpopular but needed making, rather than the gutting of Britains industial northern cities. Neither leaving political office nor death can change the effect she had on us all, which was to turn us all to the dark side.

But whatever the past held now is the time to let her rest, if not in peace then at least in the ground, where we all go in the end, hopefully to reflect upon our sins, whether they be acts of political evil or dancing on the grave of a fellow human being.

Twenty-Something (and single) on Valentine's Day (sort of)

It's the most manufactured of all the special days we have, and yet probably one of the most celebrated. Valentine's day is that special date on which we all come together and declare our undying love for crass consumerism. The embodiment of our post-modern, capitalist society can be found in almost every place on February the 14th.

Okay, it's actually the 15th today, and (since I'm writing this with my nosey-ass brother looking over my shoulder which is considerably slowing the process by necessitating my punching him in the face if he does it once more) it may well be the 16th by the time you read it, but I'm not waiting another 363 days to get this written. I've got the topic and the motivation, timing can hit the bricks.

Anyways, Valentine's Day is often considered a couples' day, hence its often being misspelled as Valentines Day, the plural taking the place of the possessive to imply it is the day for you and your "Valentine" (perhaps the Americanism I most despise), rather than a celebration of St. Valentine. Point is, if you're single, society takes this opportunity to look down its collective nose at you.

But society is missing the point. The one thing this "holiday" is about (apart from gift companies having needed something to tide them over between Christmas and Easter) is people in love. This does not preclude couples, obviously, but equally does not exclude those not in a relationship.

Now, I'd love to be the sort of blogger who does a little research and sprinkles my 1500 words with a light dusting of facts but I'm just going to go with what I (and the rest of you, I'm sure) learnt in primary school and hope for the best, despite the fact that, when you can remember it, most of what you learn in primary school turns out to have been little more than unadulterated bollocks.

Well, here goes: according to every teacher I had from year 1 to year 6 (and sitcom How I Met Your Mother), St. Valentine was a priest/monk who married people in a time when some crazy Emperor dude had outlawed marriage. This guy was a supporter of a kind of love that, at the time, was not allowed. If anything, this guy now bears more significance for some single people in today's society.

No kind of love between two people is out of bounds in the modern world. As we prepare to make gay marriage legal in the UK, we've gone about as far as we can go in making every expression of love available to every person. But, nearly everyone has experienced the pang of a one-way love and that, I feel, is the kind of love that, whilst it is legal, is nevertheless not allowed today. While this kind of love can become reciprocal, it is far more likely that it is stamped out. We either bar ourselves from love by failing to act on such feelings or we act and are rebuffed, neither stops us from loving but in either case it is almost a fact of nature that we will be encouraged to stop, to give up, to move on. This is what I mean by not allowed.

See how those of us who are one half of a potential relationship which will never come to fruition are told we should not be allowed? We, the least obtrusive of alternative loves, are forever told we are unworthy of use of the term. Valentine is our saint now, we are the outlaws. We don't ask to secretly wed, we know the impossibility of such a thing, when we have no-one to be wed to, we ask merely that we be allowed to love, silently, from afar.

That's what February the 14th used to be about. Remember when you first heard the primary school version of the story of St. Valentine? Remember the card to the girl whose desk was a couple of rows over from yours? Often anonymous but sometimes signed, though only by the bravest of the brave. That's the only time this most sterilised, monetised of saint's days meant anything, when it was the chance for us all to take that flame we'd been holding (usually in a safety lamp with all the flaps shut so that no-one could see it) and use it to light the windows of our hearts.

I fail to see why grown-up Valentine's Day should be any different.

Twenty-Something back on the scene

Back on the blogging scene. Yes, that's right it's yet another "I'm back" post, putting me well above Lazarus but with some ground to make up on the Phoenix in the rebirth league table.

I make far too many promises, to myself as well as others. Not only is the number of promises I make infeasible, but it is coupled with the utterly herculean nature of some of the tasks I promise to perform.

In truth, the things I vow to do are not out of my reach: I have the ability, but the application is sadly lacking. However, I had promised to return to the blogosphere and here I am. One thing off the list. Sustaining my interest in this journal will not be easy, though. As my rest period slips inexorably into full-blown unemployment, viable topics of discussion become thin on the ground. I've been mentally composing rants against those things that irk me but I'm in a demographic of one on these issues and would lose what little readership I have if I were to tell you my grievances in these areas. I've also had designs on writing short stories or philosophical treatises, but the plot won't fall together and the existentialism has been rehashed here over and over again.

(If you're playing Dan's blog bingo, or some associated drinking game, you should have "return to blogosphere", "apologises for quality of blog", "pretends like he has a readership" and "takes self-deprecation too far". Simply because I assume you would like a full house I'll use the word love but I will spare you a disquisition on the subject. I assume that love was the uber-word, requiring some sort of cocktail of doom, comprising at least 8 different drinks including that 40% proof cider and a pint of absinthe. Suitably sozzled you may even thank me for pointing out that in the course of this last paragraph we've also covered "over-use of punctuation", "using big words just for the sake of it" and "puts far too long passages of text in brackets".)

At any rate, I've written my first post of 2013, I invite you to read half-way through it and give up: that's what I did whilst writing it. The paradox being that to have read this you would have to have perservered beyond half-way, you poor lost soul.

Twenty-Something and retired

So I was a full-time student. It's an apt phrase because more than any other occupation it really does affect you full time. Wherever you are, whatever else you are doing you are defined as a student, by the discounts you get, by the debt you are in or by the friends you are with and the topics of discussion among you. And then it all ends, much quicker than it began and you have to move on to real life and find a job or continue on your pre-ordained career path. You have to find a vocation if you didn't already have one in mind and bust your balls going for it. Well, I found a calling, that occupation I felt like I was put here to have. Being a student, however is not a feasible career choice and I've been forced into retirement without even the "benefit" of a pension packet.

In this vein, today I will be considering the ends of things, and the beginnings too, and pondering why I can't do middles. This will give me a great opportunity to properly close the ledger on the student blog and turn the page into this new one.

It's odd really, I'm forever stuck between the poles of any situation, not in the middle of it but constantly flitting between beginning and end or occupying both ends of the spectrum at once. I was a great student and I'd kick the ass out of being retired if I didn't have to go get a job and make some money first. I'm not even really twenty-something. Not in my mind: emotionally and mentally I'm part 16-year-old, part nonagenarian. I'm a good friend (I hope) and I'd like to think I'd make a great husband but I'm crap at the whole boyfriend thing.

Is it just a lack of follow-through that means I'm forever feeling like the middle of a project is the hardest? Probably. I'd say that is the curse of my generation. I've seen twenty-somethings who have escaped the apathy of the convenience culture of the 21st century and are capable of putting in the graft required to get them where they want to be but in every town centre are the other kind of twenty-somethings, the ones who gave up on themselves and hang around smoking in tracksuits outside the job centre in one of the greatest natural occurrences of juxtapositional irony ever to grace the face of the Earth.

I escaped the chavish tendencies of my town - as did many of my friends - but something held me back, my aspirations and motivation got me just far enough to realise I'd never make it to the end of the line and actually fulfil any of my dreams.

It sounds bleak but things could be much worse and I'll be OK. The main thing to realise is that it'll all work out eventually. The volunteering I'm doing currently (helping to run a couple of Church football groups) will hopefully lead to some proper work at some stage.

Anyways, on to the other reason why I'm here.

The rebranding exercise this blog has been through was to make me write more considered material which I could hopefully use as an example of my work should I ever get the opportunity to work as a writer (unlikely, I know but still it's only fair to warn you that there will be a few TV, film and literature reviews coming soon). Which is all very well but the decision to maqke the change came as a shock even to me and did leave me feeling like what I'm now thinking of as the old blog didn't get to finish its story, so I just want to close the book on that one with a little update regarding some of the material contained therein.

As you can tell I'm finding it hard adjusting to life after university. It's a slow process that feels something like grieving. I've talked about the five stages of death before, as you might recall, and that situation remains pretty much as it was, except that the pain is gone, which is an odd sensation. I don't think I've ever felt this way and had it not hurt like hell. That caused me some consternation, as my biggest fear was forgetting in the weeks after uni. Eventually I realised that feeling is still there but it doesn't hurt as much. Like schrapnel in a soldier's leg, it hurt at one time and it still can make life difficult now, but it's just there, permanent but painless, reminder of the battles of days gone by.

Amongst the treasured mementos of the time when there was so much pain in my life are photos from Grad Ball and Graduation Day proper, the texts that flew back and forth on results day, the ring I bought myself as a facsimile of a Sikhi kara bracelet and of course the Christmas card that started this blog. It never got delivered, see, due to a tendency amongst those off campus to skive off the last few lectures of a semester. Along with it is the birthday card to the same person which was also destined to never reach its intended recipient.

And chief amongst them all are the memories, of cups of tea in the lounge, of plane-spotting in boring lectures, of that one time we drove to ASDA, I tagging along and buying stuff I didn't even need just because it was time spent together, of the frequent times I made an arse of myself because the nerves shut down my quality-control filters and of course of that last goodbye. The finalty of that memory makes me want to be able to shout at my past self to make more of those last minutes, for disarmed by and confident in the last words we shared I took no opportunity to say what needed saying or even to hang around longer than I normaly would. In the movie theatre of my brain, the last shot of that heart-wrenching scene is taken from behind me as I stroll away, it goes into slow-mo, music starts playing  as the soft focus comes in and then the credits roll as the camera pulls back and up into the air and everything fades to black.

The last few months have been so hard because I don't want to leave the cinema. Maybe it's going to be like a Marvel hero movie; maybe there'll be a teaser for the sequel coming on soon.

Or maybe I can just sit in the dark and forget the world outside ever existed.

Twenty-Something on family holidays

Until last week it never struck me as unusual that at the age of twenty-two (OOLLLLLDD!! how the frick did that happen?) I still holiday with my parents. I suppose it's kinda natural, they are my house-mates after all but it seems that the likelihood of many others my age - especially lads - would be doing the same things I was last week is pretty low

It was a fairly grown-up holiday, but retained a certain family flavour. We still ended up going to a zoo, for instance, which is usually the preserve of much younger families. It was pretty awesome, really. I'm not a fan of locking up animals for our entertainment but most of them had plenty of freedom and there was even a safari-park style area with acres and acres of wild habitat.

Still, not what you'd have expected me to be doing on holiday.

At times it was awkward and frustrating but the same can be said of most time spent with family. At least it was awkward and frustrating on the beach.

Finances dictated that we were based at a very isolated caravan park on the Isle of Sheppey which was fifty miles from the nearest beach with actual sand on it and 2 miles from the village it was supposedly based in. Whatever we wanted to do each day necessitated driving miles and miles and therefore all doing the same things together so as to avoid being on the road all day. This is fine when you're a kid and you just go with the flow. As one of four adults, you sometimes just want to do something different from everyone else or even just do nothing at all.

It was a bit of a shit holiday. Not because of being a family holiday, although being bound to three other people when you're just trying to relax probably didn't help the situation. No, what made it slightly soul-destroying was the one idiosyncrasy of the area: it had no idiosyncrasies. Everyone's the same and they're exactly the stereotype of their particular area. Despite being in Kent we couldn't escape the Essex accent that everyone seems to associate with the whole 100 mile area around London. Also, the number of balding men driving convertible sports cars with women who had all the characteristics of being conventionally beautiful apart from the most important one (you know, actually being beautiful) was frankly staggering. You know the kind of guys I mean, the ones that seem to have woken up one day with a topless hairstyle and immediately rushed out to buy a topless car in an attempt to continue to be able to get women topless.

The most depressing thing about the area was the air of cynicism that seemed to pervade everything, emanating from the endless parade of bald spots and their peroxide-blonde trophy wives driving around in BMWs. I guess you had to be there but there was something about the way everyone seemed to have drawn out a life plan at age fourteen that consisted of "fast car and fast woman" and then gone out there and made it happen. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for chasing your dreams but I just think they should usually be something a bit less tangible and a hell of a lot more real.

Anyway, the point is I'm happy to be back in the North where there's a little more variety to life and I don't have to cross a bridge that looks like something out of Mario Kart every time I want to go somewhere. Will I be going on a family holiday again? Probably yes. Back to the South East? Hell no.

If I had a significant readership - and anybody knew who La Rocca are - I'd be more worried about copyright infringement.

That's right, I've thought of a name for the "couldn't think of a name for the blog" blog. It's a song lyric. La Rocca's Sketches (20 Something Life) isn't my favourite song ever but for some reason it's always been floating around my head since I first heard it on an old video game (FIFA, in case you cared).

Despite priding myself on being able to work out most lyrics without much fuss, I've never really been able to tell what the hell this song is saying but in a way that makes it better because it can mean whatever I want it to. Making up the words as you go is always fun.

Anyways, one of the few snatches of this song that I can get my ears around is:

All I have's this journal that I write,

Sketches of a twenty-something life

Which kinda sounds like me right about now. So, the blog's back, with a slightly new look. The first new post will be along soon.



A word to the wise ... from the utterly foolish

Advice. I do love impart nuggets of what I like to think of as wisdom, despite all evidence to the contrary. But if there's one thing I hate, it's the loss of meaning in the word "love" in modern society. However, if there's one thing I hate in relation to the topic of this blog post, it is receiving advice.

No matter how brilliant your pearl of wisdom I am likely to ignore it unless I'm in a weirdly good mood. Which is unfortunate really because at a time like this - just after graduating and with no clue about my future plans - just about everyone I talk to, from estranged family friends to the heartless tooth-torturer who calls herself my dentist, wants to give me some advice.

Their advice may be good, it may be bad, I don't know because the one thing you can be sure of is that I didn't listen to a word. I recall once I was playing a game of pool against a superior opponent whom I felt I had no chance of beating and yet I was a mere three shots from victory. Having weighed up my options and selected a route to glory I was about to approach the table for my first movement in what was surely to be a balletic billiards masterclass when an onlooker advised me to take the shot I was in fact already about to take. I immediately switched targets to the other (impossible to sink) ball, miscued and handed my opponent the chance to clear up, which he duly did.

It's just a case of cutting off my nose to spite my face really, but I refuse almost any help anybody offers to me. This will, I am sure, make job hunting an excellent experience and a pleasure. Or, even more of a nightmare than it is for everyone else, which is saying something in these tough economic times.

Anyway, knowing that I'll need to be fairly pro-active to get anywhere given the obstacles I put in my own way and being mature enough to realise that now is at last the time to enter the real world (read: having run out of options for more education) I decided today to have a look round at a few jobs before beginning the arduous process of claiming JSA and having to deal with various "employment advisers". Starting from the rather vague proposition of getting a graduate job as I am a graduate and these probably pay the best, I fired up google and began my journey round the virtual jobs market. Every graduate job currently available seems to be a teaching position or "recruitment" in the financial services sector. Loathe as I am to use too much text-speak my only conclusion was "WTF?"

There must be more to being a graduate than this. We were happily informed not two days ago that 93% of last year's graduates from LTUC are now in employment or further education (no pressure). Even discounting the few who are working in shops or similar as opposed to graduate positions, I fail to see how so many people could have found jobs in a market like this.

So I moved on. Now, you'll be familiar with my wanting to be a writer if you've experienced this blog before and regardless of how unattainable this dream is (I'll let you decide, you're the one having to suffer the result), I thought I'd have a little look round for any writing jobs. I wasn't expecting much, surely any really good writing jobs wouldn't just be laying around on the internet for any schmuck to stumble across, but still, the pickings were slim. So, I'm back on track for the old "normal" job thing or being part of that shameful seven per cent.

The advice I most wish I'd listened to is when somebody said to plan ahead. People have been telling me since forever that I need to have a plan for my future but being a free spirit, a bit of a maverick and terrible at taking advice I didn't listen and now my future's here like some giant pugilist I have to take out: it's big and it's scary and it's about to start swinging.

G-Bomb deployed

Well, it's finally happened. If you've been here before, you know that graduation day has been a date in my diary that I've been dreading for some time. I always looked forward to the ceremony itself, but the thought that it is the last en-masse gathering of my favourite people on the planet never failed to make me more than a little maudlin.

In the end, it was actually a much happier occasion than I thought. For all that that I like to see modernisation everywhere, the ancient-feeling pomp and ceremony of the, er ... ceremony, really spoke to me. From my second-row-from-the-back vantage point I had an excellent view of what was merely 100 pointy hats away from being a scene from Harry Potter. If you are familiar with my, let's call it love (obsession sounds so seedy), for Harry Potter, you will understand how happy this made me.

Anyway, with lectures finishing so long ago it already felt like uni was over, so instead of the final chapter, today was the perfect addendum to the story of the last few years. I'd like to think that I had some part in my not being depressed. Having billed everything I could over the last few months as "THE END", I'd somehow nullified the finality of the day and turned it into just a great chance to see friends (in some cases perhaps a last chance).

I guess that's what it's supposed to be. It's a funeral for your student days but as always it's a celebration of life rather than a sad occasion. The idea is to look to the future and how this great experience will now help you going forward but I went to uni for uni's sake, not for my future career. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who felt the pangs of finality but then I also know we were all so happy to be there in our gowns, having our hard work recognised.

I can't help looking to the past, I should list it as my place of residence on official documents, but even as the ceremony concluded, consigning my favourite time and place to the past and tethering me yet stronger to my tendency for reminiscence rather than new experiences my happiness could not be dented. In fact it lasted all evening. Never in the history of human endeavour has something been dreaded so terribly by so few for so long, and then so heartily enjoyed.

After the main event was concluded came the part I'd really been dreading. Since the first time I realised exactly how much I loved my life (a feeling I was having for possibly the first time), this moment had been part of my nightmares. It is the moment of goodbye.

Now, I've said before how shit I am at maintaining a friendship. But then again there have never been friendships I've so wanted to maintain. I still have little faith in my ability to do so, but my motivation for the task gives me some small modicum of confidence that I might do it this time. And my favourite moment of the day was contained in this dread hour, at the time of my final departure came, not the words I'd been longing to hear - they shall remain forever unspoken - but I did hear the six words that would have come somewhere around fifth or sixth on the list of phrases I'd most have liked a certain someone to say. Not for the first time, I felt like I was standing there with my soul bared and that my every desire was visible when she said "We will see each other again." Looking in those eyes it was almost possible to believe those words to be true despite my own doubts on the matter and the memory of that moment, easily the most heavily replayed one of the whole day, still draws a smile to my lips.

Au revoir, my friends. Adieu Leeds. Auf wiedersehen shining glow of an otherwise unattainable happiness. We will see each other again

Blog Chalenge Day 5: I give up.

Yeah, why are you even reading this?

Fine.

I did have some more stuff written and ready to post but I'm giving up because it's shit. I'm much better at blogging on an as and when basis. Dailly posting is too much work and I can't keep the quality up. Given the terribly low starting point for quality, that's really not a good thing.

Yeah, I gave up because I couldn't be arsed.

The end.

Back whenever.

Holy Crap! You're Jesus Christ! Blog Challenge Day 4

It's a looks thing only, but then I guess most celebrity comparisons are. Anyway, most people will happily tell you that I look like Jesus, with my long hair and scraggly beard combo. My habit of going round wearing a bed sheet and flip-flops probably doesn't help either. I jest, of course: it's crocs, I wouldn't be seen dead and nailed to a cross wearing flip-flops.

If you want to know if I'm actually like Jesus, it depends on which Jesus we're talking about, of course, but I'd say yes on the proviso that we consider Jesus without the "Son of God" stuff. Which leaves us with a man who is famous for his long hair and beard. Definitely me. The Jesus I think existed was a great leader of men and preached a message of social justice. I'd like to think that could me.

The only gripe I have with being Jesus is that the bloody Beatles are bigger and better than me. On the face of it that's fine but the only surviving Beatles are the world's most arrrogant man and Ringo "Don't call me by my stage name" Starr. If John and George were still about, I'd bow down and worship but as it is I don't think so.

Incidentally, the one other celebrity I've been compared to is John Lennon, mainly because of the iconic picture of him in his hairy, beardy phase when he's wearing those little round sunglasses and I ... once wore a pair of sunglasses (blame my brother, it was he who saw the "resemblance"). Oh, and I'm told that when I was little (like really little, too young to have the nous to make this shit up) I heard "Imagine" on the radio and after about three bars I claimed I'd written it. John Lennon in a previous life? You decide.

Blog Challenge Day 3: Tara

My childhood pet - in fact, my pet for most of my life - was a tabby cat by the name of Tara. Rescued from being put down at the age of just a few months, Tara was with our family for 21 years, finally succumbing to a stroke in 2009.

People say cats aren't as affectionate as dogs, but these are generally people who have never owned a cat. In a way, it's the same as human beings, some animals or people go in for over the top displays of emotion and some prefer the quiet contenment that comes from two good friends enjoying each other's company. You can tell I grew up in a cat house (no, not as in brothel you sordid bastards), as I'm much more content to just sit and enjoy being in people's company rather than jump up and hump their legs as soon as they walk in the room.

Anyway, in the case of my cat, she was very good at just being there. When I'd had bad days at school (and there were plenty of those over the years), after the standard parental post-school interrogation, she'd just sit on my knees while I watched TV or whatever and barely move all night, even though normally she'd be more likely to be out on the street fighting (read: scratching the hell out of) the nieghbours' dogs . It sounds stupid and simple but it was always a comfort.

It's been three years (good God, where did that time go?) since the day I buried her in the back garden. Where there was a parched and barren square of ground, the grass has regrown now because I can't bring myself to play football out there any more and there's a small depression in the ground where the cardboard box we pressed into service as a coffin has decomposed and fallen away.

Yeah, I was just running out of ideas, to be honest. Blog Challenge Day 2

Thank you random blog generator, you pillock.

So, in the course of trying to make this blog challenge include only topics that suited me I had to use a couple of topic generators and "Going to the movie alone" would not stop coming up and it brought to mind a time when I'd had to go to see film without someone I was looking forward to spending some time with. It's a bollocks topic and what I'm about to write doesn't actually come under this topic but meh, what are you gonna do?

So, gather round all ye to hear the tale of the time I went to see a movie "alone", with one other person.

You know when you get caught in the gravity of someone else's invitation to an event? You know, when you're stood there as your friend is invited to a party or night out by someone else and then it's kind of awkward so you get invited too? Yeah, well when there is a party of three going somewhere and two of those people merely got caught in the gravity of one of the other's invitation, you get some sort of invitational black hole and the entire event matrix breaks down, making one person disappear.

Excuse the nerdgasm, what I mean is, I was only invited to go watch a film because I was sat right next to two of my friends arranging a trip to the cinema, but then I ended up in charge of organising it and in truth I only really cared about going with one of them, so I'd been caught in the gravity of the other person's invite and they were caught in the gravity of me wanting to spend some time with the third person.

You see where this is going... the third person dropped out for some unknown reason and I ended up going to watch a film with someone who, whilst a friend, and a good one too, was not the target of this excursion. To make matters worse, I have a sneaking suspicion they may have seen this as a semi-date.

On a related note: how shit of a date is going to watch a film? It's become a staple of the couples scene but I don't quite get what's so romantic about me saying: "hey, let's go and sit in a darkened room where we can't see or speak to each other on really uncomfortable chairs, surrounded by sweaty strangers." It has been pointed out to me that the darkness offers an opportunity for smooching. I would counter this by pointing out that choosing a darkened setting for such intimacy does rather suggest you'd rather not see your date's face.

So, maybe going alone isn't such a bad thing, just make sure you go alone on your own and not with a friend.

Blog Challenge Day 1. Dream Job.

No particular reason why this comes first, other than I made a little joke with the title which registered about a 0.03 out of a hundred on the funny scale and has only been depreciating since so I'd better get it out of the way before we go any further.

Dream Job: FBI operatvive, standard.

That's right: Federal Booby Inspectorate.

[pause for laughs/awkward silence]

Very well, then. Moving on...

So, my dream job would be to be given money for doing nothing, same as everyone elses. Unfortunately, that job does not exist, so I'll have to look elsewhere.

If I'm honest, there's still a part of me that thinks I could make it in professional football, despite the fact that this is patently absurd. With little skill and even less fitness that dream will forever remain nothing more than a fantasy.

Dream number two would be to be a novelist, but I don't have the motivation or the imagination required to write 250+ pages of well thought out and enjoyable material. I could possibly ghost-write for someone but I think it would be soul-destroying to see your work out there with someone else's name on it.

I've had some compliments over the course of writing this blog, but I still don't think I'm that good at writing so I'll probably do what my mother did and one day I'll write something but never get the brave up to try and get it published.

Dream three would be to be a musician, but whilst I've got more skill with a bass guitar than I have with a football, I've less motivation to practice and learn to play than I have to write. So that dream is no more likely than any other. Plus, I'd want to sing and anyone who's heard me try that would attest that it's not a good idea.

Also in there are acting and politics, but I'm not "TV pretty" and have no charisma so they're both out too.

So, feet on the ground. A job that I can actually do and that I would enjoy. I have literally no idea. In all but a few situations I have absolutely no self-confidence and as a result I always think I'll be terrible at almost any job you care to mention, and whether that's true or not, it means that I have shy away from trying to get that job. To be honest I can't face the idea of a "normal" job. The idea is almost unpalatable to me. Maybe it's because I'm a product of the "famous for being famous" generation but I've never fancied working in a shop or a bar or an office or any other normal place. I always saw myself in some exotic location doing something incredibly fun that pays ridiculously well despite being not even remotely like real work.

Gizza job

The 30 Day Blog Challenge! Well, I'm not one to let a good bandwagon just roll on by.

I'm not starting yet, and I'm going to cheat massively, but nonetheless the 30 day blog challenge is about to get underway. In honesty, I haven't finished the last challenge I set myself. There are still more than a few out there who didn't get their section of my little series of posts about friends, but nobody seems too distraught about it and I don't think the ones I haven't got to yet are readers so it's cool.

Now, I'm not one for the old 30 day challenge, I couldn't be arsed with that 30 day song challenge that went round facebook a couple of years ago. Instead, I created a facebook note and simply wrote all the answers in there. In honesty, this is more my métier:



But I'll soldier on regardless. Anyway, the slight problem I'm having is tailoring my 30 topics to suit. I've got 26 topics covering a range of subjects and writing styles so far - pilfered from fellow bloggers, various 30 day challenges and a couple of random topic generators. I'm going to spend time thinking of some more but any suggestions or requests are welcome. I'll probably start some time next week, or make it 31 topics and just do one every day of July, I haven't decided yet.

My list of topics (with their current working titles) is, in no particular order:

• Famous person I've been compared to (Holy Crap! You're Jesus Christ)
• Childhood pet (Tara)
• Top five places to live (Location, Location, Lo ... w Price)
• What band or musician is most important to me? (This album is literally the reason for my existence)
• Favourite books (Is This Just Fantasy?)
• Dream Wedding (It's a Nice Day)
• If I could have any job ... (FBI Operative, Standard)
• Top Ten Top Tens (Top Ten Top Tens)
• Cats or Dogs (Getting in Touch with my Feline Side)
• My Home Town (Home Town Blues)
• Celebrity crushes (Well, This Will Not be Awkward at all)
• Lyrics that apply (Sad Songs Say so Much: I hope you've got all day)
• Belief in "the one" (Holy shit! It's an Anagram of Neo! Mind. Blown.)
• Inspiration (So, you wrote these questions on the way to the interview then?)
• Fictional Characters (Life Mimicking Art: Or some equally pretentious bollocks)
• Places I have lived (Take Me Home)
• Concerts I've attended (I like that old time Rock and Roll)
• Writing my own songs (Now, what rhymes with pretentious bullcrap?)
• My life from someone else's point of view (Writing in the 2nd person)
• "What if... ?" (What if... ?)
• Pay or Job satisfaction (They hand you a paycheck every week, and steal a piece of your soul every day)
• What I would do with three months off (Unemployment is too stressful, I'll take a sabbatical)
• Brothers and Sisters (Oh, Brother!)
• A time I want to experience again (Took me all of three seconds to come up with an answer to this)
• When other people tell me what to do (Don't jump off the cliff, you say? Well...)
• Going to the movie alone (You know what? I was just running out of ideas)

So, I'll see you soon.

PS. as always, I've sprinkled my work with a light dashing of not-so-pop-culture references. 1,000 points are on offer for correctly identifying all the book/song/movie/TV quotes and references in the titles of these upcoming blogs.

Adios.

Final Nail In The Coffin.

Although graduation is yet to happen, this feels like the final toll of the bell for university: the great move out begins. Well, obviously not right now because I'm blogging not packing but I would suspect that by the time most of you read this I'll be at home in the bosom of my family once more.

This is great because I really do like being with my family, hence why I go to see them every weekend. They are the first friends I had and even though living in such close proximity to three other people can get testing, I wouldn't ever want to move too far away. On the other hand, last night was such a good one that when I finally wandered back to my room with dawn breaking around me, leaving my mates behind me it felt like marching towards death

This room, in which I have now slept for the last time, has witnessed so much emotion. This little hide-away, my inner sanctum, has allowed me to remove myself from the world whilst remaining in touching distance of it. Now I'm going back into solitary confinement in the prison that is life and I've done my share of that. I don't want to be that guy any more.

Random chance has seen fit to land me in a situation where I thought I'd never be. If I had the money I would now be more than willing to move away from Chesterfield. I always envisioned the day when I leave home but I never thought I'd want to go more than a few miles away. Most of my family live in that town and the closeness that comes from this is amazing. The one person who ever moved away was like me in a sense, she's the only one of my family I know who went to uni and when her course ended she just stayed where she was. The major difference is, it wasn't to be near mates because as far as I can tell she's not got any. She also clearly has very little love for the rest of the family, so the only role model I have in this moving away business is a terrible one.

Of course, even returning to the place where I've had such good times won't cease the endless march of time. If I come back to Leeds, a lot of the awesome people I know here will have dispersed, and I can't rule out the possibility of more leaving in the future.

This is the problem with becoming attached to human beings, they have lives of their own and can be wild and unpredictable at times.

You know, a lot of this blog has been how I don't want to leave uni because of being in love with a fellow student, but I'm used to living with a love unrequited, almost from the moment I start playing the game of love I'm prepared to lose. I'm sure someone's using loaded dice. At the death I find the thing I really can't do without is the other people, the most important people to me right now are not the ones I vowed to walk the whole world to find, but the ones I didn't even know I was looking for.