The other day I went for a long walk in the rain. This may seem ultimately pointless as you just end up soaked to the skin but I rather enjoyed it. I have always been surrounded by water, I lived by the sea for 10 years, and all it does in Cornwall is drizzle, shower and pour. My earliest memory is of being a toddler and falling into a pond. My mother was at a friend’s house looking at the flowers and having a natter so I wandered off. I saw the most amazing patch of ‘grass’ right in front of me. A thought went through my head “that grass would be great to walk on” so I headed towards it. I took my first step and splash! That was the first of many encounters with ponds during my years as a toddler.
As we get older the rain becomes so negative, it ruins days out, festivals, and any countless trips to the beach. However, for me when I was younger, the rain meant a trip to the Cinema or the Bowling Alley It may seem mundane now, but for me it meant hours of joy and wonder. At School it meant you could stay inside to play board games or run around like a loony.
Whenever I walk in the rain I always get one particular memory flashing back which makes me smile and laugh. The memory in question happened when I was in Primary School; I must have been about 7 or 8 years old. My friends and I left school to be greeted with the worst rain I’d ever seen, forget torrential, this was something else. On a main road there was an enormous puddle that was so big cars could not swerve to avoid splashing people without crashing into someone on the opposite side of the road. We saw this as a positive rather than a negative, an opportunity! We must have spent a good 45 minutes getting completely drenched by cars, Buses and Lorries. I remember how much we laughed when my friend took a whole puddle full in the face, and he wasn’t even part of the game! Needless to say when we got home we received a severe dressing down from out parents about our ruined, sopping wet uniform. This didn’t stop us from doing it again the next time it rained.
Tuesday, 28 July 2009
Sunday, 12 July 2009
Good Night
Heavy footsteps on wet pavement. The temperature is still chilly; the rain procrastinating over pouring again. Sweat clings to my brow after a particularly hard shift, breathing the heavy sighs of freedom and fresh air. I stand to observe the silence, the road is empty and not a sound can be heard. Thoughts are racing through my head, cluttered and confusing like a neglected filing cabinet. I switch my mp3 player on and everything calms. I relax and begin to walk. Everything seems so much clearer now.
It is odd how when it is night time everything is completely different. Objects and buildings you have passed a thousand times in the day suddenly seem completely different, almost to the point of being frightening. There is always something a little uneasy about walking past a graveyard at night, you know there is nothing there but bones and dust but my pace always quickens. At night the silence is deafening and you can hear the quietest sound from a pin dropping to the louder sounds of rain water gushing down a greedy drain. There are very few people around in the early hours of the morning, and when you do come across them you instantly think they are out for trouble, why else would they be up at this time of night? I guarantee the same thoughts are running through their head when they see you.
The best part of the night has to be the calm though. After a manic day of working your arse off for a company that couldn’t give a shit about you there really is nothing quite like walking through the night and having the silence as a companion.
It is odd how when it is night time everything is completely different. Objects and buildings you have passed a thousand times in the day suddenly seem completely different, almost to the point of being frightening. There is always something a little uneasy about walking past a graveyard at night, you know there is nothing there but bones and dust but my pace always quickens. At night the silence is deafening and you can hear the quietest sound from a pin dropping to the louder sounds of rain water gushing down a greedy drain. There are very few people around in the early hours of the morning, and when you do come across them you instantly think they are out for trouble, why else would they be up at this time of night? I guarantee the same thoughts are running through their head when they see you.
The best part of the night has to be the calm though. After a manic day of working your arse off for a company that couldn’t give a shit about you there really is nothing quite like walking through the night and having the silence as a companion.
Thursday, 9 July 2009
Move To The Rhythm Of My Heartbeat
Music brings us together, everyone knows this from the Pikey on the corner with a bottle of white lightning, to the Grandad tapping his foot in a retirement home.
As well as listening to music as a release from the day to day monotony of life, writing and playing music is stronger still. I haven’t written a song for over a year and a half, and it seems like it has been forever.
I know I will never get the fury I once had back, I was an angry, pissed off 16 year old when we recorded an EP and since then I have calmed down to an extent. I penned songs full of anger and bitterness to the things and people around me, which, in hindsight I did go a bit over the top with sometimes. But now I no longer feel the world is a threat to me, and no longer feel the need to be overly aggressive on a topic I know very little about. However, throwing myself around the stage was the best feeling in the world, a high no one could take away from you, once you got started there was no stopping.
One night descended into total chaos as 20 people started to beat the shit out of each other in the tiny pub. After two songs a nose had been broken, a kid being thrown through a microphone stand and a panel in the door to the beer garden getting totally destroyed (courtesy of my foot). Some would call this mindless violence and appalling behavior but it was the music taking hold. It brings us together in ways we can’t imagine, some people tap their foot, others completely let go and let the sound flow through their veins like a drug.
As well as listening to music as a release from the day to day monotony of life, writing and playing music is stronger still. I haven’t written a song for over a year and a half, and it seems like it has been forever.
I know I will never get the fury I once had back, I was an angry, pissed off 16 year old when we recorded an EP and since then I have calmed down to an extent. I penned songs full of anger and bitterness to the things and people around me, which, in hindsight I did go a bit over the top with sometimes. But now I no longer feel the world is a threat to me, and no longer feel the need to be overly aggressive on a topic I know very little about. However, throwing myself around the stage was the best feeling in the world, a high no one could take away from you, once you got started there was no stopping.
One night descended into total chaos as 20 people started to beat the shit out of each other in the tiny pub. After two songs a nose had been broken, a kid being thrown through a microphone stand and a panel in the door to the beer garden getting totally destroyed (courtesy of my foot). Some would call this mindless violence and appalling behavior but it was the music taking hold. It brings us together in ways we can’t imagine, some people tap their foot, others completely let go and let the sound flow through their veins like a drug.
Sunday, 5 July 2009
The Busker
Yesterday I was in London; I had just finished work and was enjoying the sunshine, walking along the Southbank with my iPod pumping through my ears. I crossed Jubilee Bridge and walked past the usual buskers, hearing snippets that lasted a few seconds of each, as I neared them. One man however, caught my attention. He was dressed as a court jester and was pretty much a one man band. The instruments were blatantly bought from toy shops and he had no idea how to play them. He looked like he should have been in the IT department of HSBC. He strummed away and I caught the lines ’50 cent’s songs are a lot shitter than mine’ and took a longer look. He had a tambourine with the words ‘joy is free’ written on it. This made me laugh and bought a smile to my face. No one else was passing by and he only had a few pennies in his pot. It made me realize people in London need to take themselves less seriously, and stop and enjoy his ‘music’. If only more buskers were like this…
To Youth
The other day I was thinking about my youth. The youth when you turned up to a party; and the parents were there giving out cake. The youth when you were scared someone would notice if a stubby lager was missing from the crate of 20, and the youth when you were more than happy to be somewhere without girls.
I remember dreading Sundays as it meant more school. School. You don’t miss it until you have left, not so much the teaching, but the fact you could go and see your mates everyday while doing next to no work and still able to scrape through the exams.
The weekends when you wouldn’t wake up hung-over or lie in bed all day, but do something more creative. Go to the woods and build something then tear it to the ground in frenzy. The weekends when you would skate through sun, through rain, through snow because the feeling you got from stepping on those layers ply and kicking off with your shoe was the greatest you could feel. The bruises, cuts and broken bones you would get and show off like a trophy. I remember the thrill I would feel from landing a trick for the first time. The thing that sticks out the most in my head has to be the first time I dropped in.
The bruises on my arse, knees and hips screaming in agony as I landed on them for the 5th time consecutively. The adrenaline racing through me as I each fall got me closer to my goal. Then, after more than an hour of trying I finally rode it out to the other side. The cheers from people on the 4 ft ramp who were with me throughout the ordeal were deafening, the crashing of ply and trucks on coping and woops from my friends. That one moment in time opened the doors for a lot of things for me. I gained the confidence to learn more lip tricks and drop bigger and bigger ramps.
So here I raise my glass to youth, to the kids who never give up, to the kids who struggled on, and to the people like myself, who miss the innocence of it all.
I remember dreading Sundays as it meant more school. School. You don’t miss it until you have left, not so much the teaching, but the fact you could go and see your mates everyday while doing next to no work and still able to scrape through the exams.
The weekends when you wouldn’t wake up hung-over or lie in bed all day, but do something more creative. Go to the woods and build something then tear it to the ground in frenzy. The weekends when you would skate through sun, through rain, through snow because the feeling you got from stepping on those layers ply and kicking off with your shoe was the greatest you could feel. The bruises, cuts and broken bones you would get and show off like a trophy. I remember the thrill I would feel from landing a trick for the first time. The thing that sticks out the most in my head has to be the first time I dropped in.
The bruises on my arse, knees and hips screaming in agony as I landed on them for the 5th time consecutively. The adrenaline racing through me as I each fall got me closer to my goal. Then, after more than an hour of trying I finally rode it out to the other side. The cheers from people on the 4 ft ramp who were with me throughout the ordeal were deafening, the crashing of ply and trucks on coping and woops from my friends. That one moment in time opened the doors for a lot of things for me. I gained the confidence to learn more lip tricks and drop bigger and bigger ramps.
So here I raise my glass to youth, to the kids who never give up, to the kids who struggled on, and to the people like myself, who miss the innocence of it all.
Greetings
This is my first blog, so I thought'd i'd do an introduction. These are my thoughts, in short, few hundfred words at the most. Some of these appear in various zines or will do soon so this is a sort of catalogue of all my thoughts and writing, if you enjoy them, great! If you don't, constructive criticism is welcome
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