Amy Childs and the Lost Phone of Perspective

We all knew that this day would come but you just can’t really prepare yourself for it when it does. It’s the kind of thing your parents and grandparents have strove to prepare you for since the day that you crawled helplessly into the world. Since you opened your delicate newborn eyelids. It pains me to even write this, but here goes: Amy Childs has lost her phone.

I kick myself everyday for even being aware of who this poisonous fleshwaste is. I hope everyday that some new piece of information that I learn will push my knowledge of her useless existence out of my noggin. On a daily basis I can fail to recall passwords, where I left my pen or where my keys are, but still remaining, untouchable, is my knowledge of who Amy Childs is; fake, deplorable, abhorrent, detestable, obnoxious, heinous, revolting, ghastly, grim and grisly, Amy Childs.

I can safely say that my hatred for this plastic sack of air has very much peaked this evening when she tweeted a total of thirty-one times in two hours, all in capitals, that someone had stolen her phone. A number of retweets from pathetic “fans” (of whatever it is she does that one can be a “fan” of) were also thrown into the mix; people who were expressing their “disgust,” “annoyance” and, get his, “utter devastation” at the events that had befallen the Warlock on the day in question.

Now for someone like Childs, who evidently has to fill her day tweeting in capital letters to make her feel like her life means something, this activity cannot go without sympathy from us, the normal folk; us who go about our day with purpose, with a vigour for life; to our jobs, schools and universities, to learn, to help others, to rebuilt our stricken economy and to make the world a better place. Sympathy we must give, except for today.

Today is only one day after Mark Bridger has been arrested for the murder of five year old April Jones, who still remains missing. We can all sympathise with losing an item dear to us but I’ll bet not many can understand just how stricken it must feel to have lost a child. I certainly can’t and I hope to goodness that you cannot too.

Caution must be exercised and perspective must be engaged. We have all lost our keys, lost our phone and sure we’re annoyed, upset and damn right frustrated. A simple tweet or a Facebook post to vent ones anger is perfectly natural and normal in this age of technology, but thirty-one capitalised tweets crying out in anguish across to the whole of the Twittersphere because you’ve lost a 4” set of electronics encased in plastic? Please.

The diehard Childs “fans” will feel that she has done no wrong and the sad fact is that even after all of this they will harbour no hatred whatsoever. She will not lose fans, she will not gain fans and her public image will remain intact and unharmed. It’s the sad fact that accompanies each modern day ‘celebrity,’ and it’s the cross that us normal folk have to bear as it’s something we will never be able to change. 

A Short Post on Being Ill

 Say goodbye to my family and friends for me, I’m dying. No really, I am. My complete inability to tolerate real pain or hardship for more than a few minutes is, granted, one of my many faults but this “cold” is very much the viral form of Lucifer himself. On day one I got just about half an hour’s worth of sleep and the following days, well, not much more than that. I have a headache, earache and am producing more mucus than I thought was humanly possible. Today I literally looked like special effects gunge was pouring out of my nose (form a queue ladies) and I thought I must have been giving birth to alien out of it. Either that or I’m secretly the next mutation in human evolution and I’m so advanced that it seems far too farfetched to be true. That one. I pick that one.

Whichever one is true this man flu feels like it’s set to stay forever and I see no logical explanation to determine why that my not very much be the case. In fact, inbetween the last paragraph and this, I had to stop to blow my nose take a sip of tea. You would think that with my new found time moping around the house in rather loose fitting trousers and hoodies drinking tea and trying to taste food that I would have no excuse for not completing Uni assignments. Well, you couldn’t be more wrong. Make no bones about it, I tried, I really did; yesterday I sat down to read Little Women for my American Literature module and got about one sentence in before the text on the page actually started to make me feel dizzy. Books, my literary friends, reducing me to a blabbering wreck of ridiculousness, taking away a form of dexterity I possess that I’m actually proud of. The computer screen hurts my eyes, I can hardly squeak out a whole sentence and I’m loathed to waste food by eating something I can’t even taste – my piece of toast this afternoon might as well have been a brillo pad. All in all my past couple of days have been pretty damn awful. Pause for another nose blow. 

There isn’t an awful lot more that I could venture to say on the matter. I’m ill, that’s all there is to it. Of course I appreciate that you might not care and quite frankly more fool you for clicking the link or reading thus far, I hope you get what I’ve got – this mutated super man cold flu thing – then you’ll care. Until then dear readers, friends and comrades, I’ll see you on the other side. If I make it. 

"Cold Beer One Euro": Tales of Barcelona (Part I)

As I sit on my bed electronically penning this blog the skyward view outside my bedroom window is far from enticing. On any normal day the view of a dreary British summer evening; a sky enveloped by ominous grey clouds, would be ever the acceptable norm. At this point in time however it only seeks to give me a slap in the face. The reason being that on Saturday I returned from a ten-day trip to Benicassim and Barcelona on my first ‘Lads Holiday’ with, if you know them or not, Joe, Jake and Dorsett.

          Undoubtedly some of the best days I’ve experienced on this earth; gaining stories, catchphrases and memories that I’ll take, excuse the morbidity, to my grave. Ah, surely now you understand my reticence at the Great British weather. So much happened throughout the course of this trip that inevitably I’ll forget to include some events that no doubt I will be reminded of when I put this out, but what follows is a collection of some of those stories. It’ll be full of inside jokes and jokes that’ll make no sense unless you went but, y’know, so what.

Part One: “You Want Buy Weed? Coke? Meth?”

If any of you reading this have ever watched the film Planes, Trains and Automobiles you’ll have some sense already of the magnitude of transport we had to use to get to Benicassim. We had decided in advance not to book train tickets for when we landed in Spain, mainly because we were flying with Ryanair, but also because I had tried to negotiate the Spanish train website before we left and there was no option to change the language to English.

          Anyway, long story short, and somewhat inevitable, we arrived at the train station for 12 noon only to be told that all the trains up until 8pm were booked up. We deliberated for a while, too pumped up on adrenaline from arriving to really be bothered particularly, before deciding to get a taxi for the 2-hour drive to Benicassim. And yes, it was expensive. I won’t tell you how much. It was at this point however that we stumbled upon a gentlemen and a scholar by the name of Rob who became our inherent brother in arms throughout our festival experience and who, if he is reading this, can only be congratulated for sticking with us through thick and thin and providing us with so many laughs. Cheers Rob.

          Through some kind of Spanish miracle we eventually arrived in the lovely little town of Benicassim and were dropped off at the bottom of a vast dirt track next to a go-kart course and a makeshift bar. We were directed up the path and were told to go and check-in at the very top. The heat was much more intense than in Reus where our flight had landed and lugging two heavy and mightily awkward hold bags and hand-luggage wasn’t a welcome addition to the trip itinery. On our way up the main arena we witnessed a lad spewing up his morning dose of beer and immediately knew what kind of thing we’d gotten ourselves into. Yes. A good thing indeed.

          Our plan was to dump our bags at the campsite, unpack and erect (calm down) our tents and then go off to get some beer-based supplies, which sounded like a decent plan on paper, but turned out to be a little more complicated in practice. The main problem being that after the morning we had had, the campsite felt a million miles away. Sweltering and sweating our proverbials off, we arrived at the campsite entrance only to be told that first we had to exchange our tickets for wristbands. Only then could they grant us entrance into the site. With unimpressed but surprisingly upbeat groans we returned to the main entrance to check-in and walked back up the campsite (a walk that got quicker and less annoying with every trip).

          The next hour was spent looking for a spot to set up, setting up and having a sit down to just refresh after the hectic morning. This sounds, all told, fairly simple but the lads will know there is no way of expressing with words how much of a nightmare that was in the blistering Spanish heat. But having said that, “we’re on ‘oliday!” (Inside joke #1).

          That done, to the shop it was. Cheap beer, cheap “food.” It is at this juncture however that the subtitle of this passage comes into play. Having been on the go pretty much all day we decided that we’d have a bit of a scran at a small cafe in Benicassim which, incidentally, we did not return to (there’s only so many times you can dodge suspiciously pink looking flecks of meat in a burger). Now I have a tendency on the odd occasion to go ever so slightly British or ‘go all Stephen Fry’ as it has now seemingly been redubbed. None so more than this occasion. Whilst we were eating, a Spanish man approached the table and within a flash had bent down to eye level with me, stared me straight in the face and before I really had time to clock him said

          ‘You want buy weed? Coke? Meth?’ Within literally two hours of arriving in Benicassim I had been offered Meth. Going into British mode I said:

          ‘Sorry? What?’ The offer was repeated and when I was sure what he had said I answered:

          ‘Oh, oh no, no thank you’ in an accent I have never used before and am likely to never use again.

          Needless to say, even on the first day, we had got our first holiday phrase which, even up until this day we haven't forgotten and unbeknownst to us would be the first of many. Many many.

The Plight of All Students

Waiting for the release of exam results is right up there with the diagnosis of pubic lice, the loss of a limb and being subjected to Nicki Minaj on the radio in a list of things that could be described as slightly more than a bit bothersome. Not least when those exam results are the sole indication of whether or not the last year of your life has been at all worthwhile. All that said, the other day I received my results for the first year of University. Through some sort of ancient witchcraft, I conjured myself up a 2:1, and quite a substantial one at that, making me, forever your blogging friend, a very happy bunny indeed.

          Sitting the relative exams for these particular results was no less strenuous than any other exams I had previously sat, in fact, actually slightly more. Now, I imagine most people would agree that one of the worst things about exams, bar the actual exam itself, is the head invigilator. Anybody who has sat an exam in any capacity before will know how power-mad the head invigilator is; they get to read out the exam rules, allocate other invigilating minions to particular spots in the exam hall and co-ordinate the dismissal of the students afterwards. These crazed, I.D. wearing super-dictators, you would think, could not get any more mental if they possibly tried. Think again. Because university invigilators get given a weapon; a tool of majestic supervision, a piece of equipment to aid them in their almighty task of telling students to stop talking. I talk of course, of the loudhailer.

          Christ they’re terrifying. Which brainiac thought that would be a good idea? Picture the scene: You’ve been sat in an exam room for one hour and fifty-five minutes; it’s a two hour exam. You look up frantically at the large sports clock suspended in front of you and will the minute hand to slow down from the seemingly rapid pace it has suddenly picked up. You are deep in concentration, trying to jot down, in any capacity, your final point; it’s the point that’s going to get you the first, it’s the point that’s going to give the examiner a hernia as soon as he reads it, it’s the point that even the great bard himself would congratulate, then, suddenly, your deep concentration is shattered:

         ‘YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES REMAINING. FIVE MINUTES REMAINING!’

          The noise reverberates around the hall, echoes in your ear and the point is lost. Goodbye first. Goodbye herniated examiner.

          This has happened in both of the exams I have taken in the large sports hall during my first year and blimey that loudhailer grabs you by the jugular. It seems to be the primary source of amusement and annoyance for everyone when they walk out (apart, of course, from exclaiming how badly they’ve failed) and long, I imagine, it will be so.

          My next blog, in case you’re interested, will come after my imminent holiday to Barcelona/Benicassim. If my anticipation serves me I would imagine I’d have enough stories to write an epic novel upon my return, so look out for that. And with that said I’m bereft of anything witty or clever to say to round this little scribble off, so go away. Ta.

A Letter To A Religious Nation

I have thought long and hard about whether or not to write a blog on the subject this blog entails. The large quote from the writer and dramatist Douglas Adams I include below goes some way to highlighting both my initial doubt and subsequent decision to write upon the subject of religion. Before I begin however, read and enjoy this fantastic quote:

“Religion . . . has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, 'Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? – because you're not!' If somebody votes for a party that you don't agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says 'I mustn't move a light switch on a Saturday', you say, 'I respect that'. Why should it be that it's perfectly legitimate to support the Labour party or the Conservative party, Republicans or Democrats, this model of economics versus that, Macintosh instead of Windows - but to have an opinion about how the Universe began, about who created the Universe ... no, that's holy? ... We are used to not challenging religious ideas but it's very interesting how much of a furore Richard [Dawkins] creates when he does it! Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you're not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn't be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn't be.”

          I am an Atheist, and although I do not spend my days knocking on doors preaching (I choose the word advisedly) my non-beliefs and forcing others to adopt them for their own, I admit I am not entirely silent in publically airing them. And why should I? Religion is, somehow, the default position society finds itself in. Someone writes a tweet exclaiming their love for Jesus, someone else walks around with a Jesus tattoo adorning their arm, no one says a word. Someone writes a tweet exclaiming their non-belief or walks around wearing a t-shirt saying “God Does Not Exist” (which I don’t by the way) and society looks down upon them and berates them for expressing their thoughts. Something which, wrongly, does not occur in the opposite sense.

          I don’t believe in the existence of God, I also cannot see how religion is a force for good in the world. People claiming the Bible contains a blueprint for a successful moral compass have clearly not read it. There are countless examples in the Bible of tales that if we were to adopt them as morality guidelines, society as we know it would fall into disrepute. There is a rather large passage of writing by Professor Richard Dawkins in which he works his way through dismantling each and every one of the ten commandments. It is too long to reproduce here but I will give you a short snippet:

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy": this commandment is regarded as so important that a man caught gathering sticks on the Sabbath was summarily stoned to death by the whole community, on direct orders from God.”

          This in turn goes on to explain how the ten commandments lay no orders against rape, torture or the selling of one’s own children; acts that are rife during the time in which the bible stories allegedly occurred. We can only presume that God was fine with these things happening as long as everybody worshipped him and no one else. Of course, anything other than that would be barbaric.

          My final quote comes from, as ever, the eternally erudite Mr. Christopher Hitchens, the late hero of mine. One of his many splendidly phrased anti-theist quotes reads as follows:

“In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks "That's enough of that. It's time to intervene," and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't let’s appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person.”

          But alas, my aim here is not to berate religion as much as I can, and guiltily love to do. No, it is simply to address this damning of non-believers expressing their opinions. Mentally I am a militant Atheist, publically however I haven’t the platform or the status to express my non-beliefs it seems to a willing public (something which I grasp and many religious people seemingly do not).

          My hatred of religion however isn’t, as some people would refuse to believe, on a personal level. People want to pray, that’s fine and no one including me can stop them even if they wanted to, which I don’t. My opinions are loaded more towards the institutions and central bodies of religion; I have no problem in people believing what they want to believe, I just want to be afforded the opportunity to be able to voice my opinion without getting both barrels every time I do.

One, Albeit Sad, Positive of Student Life

Quite apart from enjoying the obvious fruits that University has to bear, one perdurable positive about the student lifestyle is, irrevocably and as well as countless others, the opportunity afforded to me to be able to watch whatever films and television programmes I choose to. Even writing that down it sounds sad, but sadly for me it is something that has mutated itself to be rather more important to me than I would have at first given it credit for over the course of the first year. It’s only a very small thing I grant you, but frankly never has it shown its importance more than the way in which it did this weekend.

          Firstly, allow me just engage you in a small amount of scene-setting for those not currently aware of my family arrangement, it’s really not that hard to understand so stick with it. When I’m not at University I live with my Mum, Dad and two younger sisters, (avec the Cat, the Dog and two Guinea Pigs all of which are not strictly, if in any way relevant here). With two younger sisters especially, you can probably imagine the amount of remote control turf-wars that occur on a daily basis, a living room Civil-War if you will. Sometimes, and I stress only sometimes, I will win and the television will play host to some top quality broadcasting of my choice, and sometimes Road Wars.

          On the other occasions, I am sad to say, I lose. Mainly, I must add, this comes as a result of one or both of my sisters appealing to Mum and Dad for help. Well, I say help, I mean “Muuuuum. Daaaaaad. Tell Greg to change the channel.” Trust me; it’s not worth fighting against that, even if you have the time of effort to spare. On these occasions, the television is subjected to a veritable plethora of bum-dribble, the likes of which, I fear, has never been seen (or at least has never been subjected to one human being in one sitting). I talk of course of television ‘talent’ shows.

          Now, it is that this fitting juncture where the point (yes there is a point) of this article comes into play. This weekend I returned home to witness my beloved Manchester City scrape through victorious to lift the Premier League trophy. Quite apart from the fact that I feel that I’ve aged about thirty years over the course of the weekend, my throat is now pretty much non-existent and my heart feels like it could give way any second (although that’s probably as a result of my ‘diet’), that side of my weekend activities probably deserves its own article, alas another story for another time. No, back to the point. This weekend was the final of Britain’s Got Talent. Now normally, living at home, I would know, or at least be aware of, every act in the final. Unashamedly, this would be the result of twitter around the house and other advertised plugs on the television. However, this time around I knew absolutely nothing, and it felt fantastic.

          Living at University meant that I was completely sheltered from the shower of crap that was going on on television. I literally was not in any way aware that Britain’s Got Talent was on, because I had never been subjected to it. During the course of the first year I have missed two runs of Britain’s Got Talent and one run of the X Factor, all the while I will willingly be watching Horrible Histories, Qi, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, That Mitchell and Webb Look and all manner of other programmes chosen by me, for me. For years I have wondered what the secret was for avoiding all mention of these terrible ‘talent’ shows and other dreadful incarnations of pixels that John Logie Baird would be ashamed of. Now, finally, I know the secret: go and get a degree.  

Things I Learnt In First Year

After the stresses, strains, trials and tribulations that took place over the course of 2011, thankfully amounting in me being offered at a place at University, it seems ludicrous to be able to say to myself that the end of my first year is just two exams away. The start of my course seemed such a long way off at the time and although, granted, most of the time that I’ve “been at” University I’ve spent at home (thanks to the monstrously long breaks that I do not in any way criticise) I thought it might be quite nice to record some points; some of the things I have learnt during the course of my first year as a student (a couple of which I stole from the web but that are applicable and simultaneously more funny than what I can come up with). Here is a little, hopefully humorous, hopefully relatable, list of things I have learnt:

1.     It is possible to survive the entire day on a piece of toast or a mars bar. Or both. Or neither.

2.     Caffeine is a food group.

3.     Never, ever, ever, refuse free food.

4.     Yes, that is the guy upstairs weeing. Just turn your iPod up and try to ignore it.

5.     The Maintenance man’s door-knock is merely a formality. He will walk in no matter what state you’re in.

6.     If you wake up and your shower head has been changed, the Maintenance man has done it when you were asleep.

7.     Fear the Maintenance man.

8.     Upstairs will make the entire block smell like weed and there’s nothing you can do about it. Just go with it.

9.     People wear onesie’s without a trace of irony. Avoid these people.

10.    Apparently flip-flops are a socially acceptable type of footwear at all times of the year, as long as everything else you’re wearing has Hollister written on it.

11.    Hipsters are a race.

12.    Charity bookshops are dangerous places for book nerds like me.

13.    Reference everything. Reference your name. Reference the date. Reference your tutor’s name. Reference you references.

14.    If it’s a bad lecturer, it’s okay to skip the lecture.

15.    Pre-lecture reading is not compulsory and should be treated as such.

16.    Pre-seminar reading is compulsory and should be treated as such.

17.    Unexpected double-sided reading is about as fun as it sounds.

18.    No matter who tells you otherwise, when a tutor says “this isn’t something that can be done the night before,” it is most definitely a challenge.

19.    Remember that thing? Oh, what was it called? Hang on... Don’t tell me... Oh yeah! Money!

20.    You will take a flyer. There are no other options.