"i'm flattered!"

This will probably be the funniest blog entry I ever put up. Prepare yourself, this one's a good'un.

So today I was working at my job (a market research call centre for those of you who don't know) and basically fell in love over the phone. The girl I was speaking to sounded hot from the start, this cute sort of understated but intelligent hotness - I quickly started summoning faces in my head of who I was speaking to. She was eating something through most of the survey, whatever it was she was slurping it in a way that seemed suggestive and we flirted for the whole time. I was actually pretty distressed that the call had to end, but she asked for the name of the company and who she was speaking to, I definitely felt some sort of connection, I was so sure of it.

As the call ended everyone around me started leaving for the lunch break. A little dazed and lovestruck I stumbled from my computer and told Tim and Ruby what had just happened.

"Why didn't you write down her number?"

Fuck! Why didn't I write down her number!? I had the perfect opportunity to take her contact details and I fucking missed it when it was staring me in the face! Surely I couldn't just throw this away.

After the lunch break I went back into work and asked a manager if I could have access to the interview so I could 'check the answers she gave me for spelling mistakes'. I wrote down the number and twenty minutes later, too full of excitement to contain it any longer, I told my manager I felt ill and made my way home.

As I left the building the sun came out, I put on some sweet tunes on my iPod and at a quick pace set off to the train station. I got there and a train was literally about to leave back to my stop, I made it though - it seemed like things were panning out like a film, this couldn't be too good to be true, it felt too real on the phone. I walked half an hour home, my feet barely touching the ground and sat down in my study.

All these doubts were flying around my head - surely this is ridiculous? I can't let myself do this! This is so stupid! But I managed to over ride those thoughts and hesitantly punched the number into the phone.

She picked up pretty much instantly.

"Hey... is this Mary?"
"...Yup?"
"Hi, this is Mike from the call centre earlier - (this next sentence had gone through my head a hundred times on my way home) this might seem a little weird, and maybe I'm completely out of line but I really enjoyed our conversation earlier, even if it was just some stupid questions. You seemed like the sort of girl I'd really like to meet up with... would you be up for meeting for a drink or something?"
"...Wow! This is such a shock... um, whereabouts do you live?"
"I live near London, I know it's pretty far from you but I can get a train up north pretty easily."
"Yeah, I live in Beverly - it's a bit of a trek!"
"I can get time off whenever I need, would you still be up for it?"
"Yeah, sure! I mean, well lets start by swapping email addresses and... we can go from there! (Best. Pause. Ever.)
I just need to ask - how old are you?"

Oh shit, I thought this might come up.

"Uh, I'm 19-"
"-ohnonononono... I'm sorry, I really can't do that, you might be in for a bit of a shock. I'm 38 with a little boy."

At this point, my hopes had been shattered but I was still desperate for this fairy tale romance to become true.

"Well, I mean, it doesn't bother me? I'm still game if you are?"
"No no, I'm sorry, I'm very flattered but I'm a bit old for you I think."
"Ok, well thanks for considering it anyway! And could you do me a favour?"
"Yeah, what's that?"
"Don't tell my manager?"
"Haha, of course I wouldn't darling! Thank you very much, that's very sweet - I'm flattered! But I don't think this can happen, it wouldn't be right."
"Ah, ok. No worries. Ok, bye."

I spent a few minutes laughing to myself - I'm not the sort of guy to ever do this! Pretty glad I did though, definitely gonna be telling this one to the grand kids.

a weight lifted

Every Tuesday morning, whilst walking half an hour to Beaconsfield train station to get to work, I stop to withdraw £10 from my fresh weekly paycheck. The ticket machine at the train station doesn't provide change in notes, so when I feed it my new, crisp £10 note every Tuesday I am faced with a day spent lugging around a pocket filled with £7.80 in coin change.

I just got a debit card. Means I can pay for everything without the need for a physical money transaction. No more Tuesday morning wallet stuffing. Sometimes it's the little things that perk me up.

I'm in a strange place at the moment. I don't know whether I'm melancholy, confused, curious or completely unsure of myself.

photographic memory

So this is the tattoo I'm getting on my right arm once I've booked it in:


This is my new hobby when I'm at home and I'm bored; just sittin' and mixin' all my favourite songs into a coherent DJ set. It's so much fun:




This is a film I watched for like the fifth time yesterday. Only film to have ever made me cry out of happiness every time I see it:



And here is a pair of shoes that combines my inability to ever escape from the clutches of the plimsoll (of which I have had too many pairs to mention) and my adoring love for boat shoes (of which I own zero pairs, somehow):


Peace and love x

all seems lost

I don't enjoy feeling sorry for myself and I can't say it happens that often.

But when it does, I'm usually crushed by it. I think the main thing that's missing from my life right now is a girl. It's not that hard to put right, right? I try my hardest but nothing ever comes of it, not even a kiss, and it's starting to seriously dent my self esteem. So I meet this awesome girl the other night, I manage to get her number, and I was absolutely hammered at the time but nonetheless, she was completely sober, so obtaining her number seemed like a pretty reasonable achievement.

We arranged that we'd see each other at a gig that was happening on Saturday, (tonight) and I've not looked forward to something so much in a long time. I see her at the gig and then at a party afterwards, but being my usual self I completely lack in any fucking balls and manage to talk to her very briefly a couple of times in the early stages of the party, hardly showing interest, genuinely because I wasn't brave enough to make any sort of move. Before I know it, a guy I know is all over her, arm around her, holding hands, clearly knocking me out of the water. I then tried miserably to wiggle my way back into conversation all night in the hope that he'd lose interest or something.

He gave her a lift home and they left together.

What the fuck is it? Do girls honestly prefer it if you're making physical contact with them all night? Do they actually like it more if you're trying to hold their hand all night when you've just met them as opposed to making them laugh and engage them in some genuinely captivating conversation?

Ok so I realise, after typing that, that I sound like a fucking gay. Clearly 'captivating conversation' has no place in getting with a girl. Why can't I grow some fucking balls and learn to show a girl some attention when I want them to know I'm interested? It all goes back to a complete lack of self confidence I think - when I sum up the courage to chat to/flirt with a random girl, it takes so much of my energy and bravado to do it that when crunch time comes around and I need to make a further move I just can't do it. I don't believe in myself that it's something I could pull off. In the words of a Radiohead film, "meeting people is easy"; I guess it's the 'being forward' phase that I 'm just too pussy to do.

I don't know why I get so personal on a blog that everyone can see. Fuck it, I don't talk to anyone about these things in this kind of detail, the public will do.

A bit of self confidence could go a long, long way I think.

since 19 eight to the 0 i've been takin' control

Ok so here's the first dream I've remembered in ages, literally woke up 5 minutes ago.

For some reason I had to back to my secondary school, John Hampden. I'm walking round the corridors in uniform, with my beard and wearing a trilby. This little fat year 8 comes up and plays the drums on a patch of the skin on my waist that's showing while I put on my bag. Now, I've contemplated to myself over the past few years just how erratically I would act if I had to go back to a school - I've got my own ideas about authority now, and having not been under the pressure of grammar school discipline for a few years, I've grown to despise the idea of it.

So this kid who patted a drum beat on my waist? I hit him round the face. In that moment I felt I'd liberated every time I've ever taken shit from anyone. I'm not sure how because technically it was a 19 year old hitting a 12 year old round the mouth, so really it's a horrid thing to do, but I felt fucking brilliant at the time.

Of course, it being a dream, the hit only really half connected with his face, his glasses sitting slightly off his face. "Wait until the headmaster hears about this" he said in the typical smug posh-boy way that you became acustomed to at a grammar school. I then spent a few minutes trying to convince him not to tell the headmaster, it didn't work, but eventually I gave up and went round the corner to the stairwell where, obviously, there was an '8 Courses for £8' table, with lots of different food in bowls, but then there were tables going all round the centre of the stairs as it went up, with different food in all the bowls. One of the prefect geeks was running it, he told me about his 'delicious cookies' he'd cooked. They looked good, but instead of chocolate chips on them he'd spread what looked like hot Nutella? I thought it would be rude to ask why he'd done that (even though it was fine to hit a 12 year old round the face).

Then for some unknown reason I had to find my old French teacher Mrs Dixon so I asked one of my old English teachers who was passing in the hall way, Bella Wheater. I was a little disappointed that she didn't recognise me.

Then Luke rang me and woke me up. Wish it could have continued.

when i'm at those pearly gates

So weird how I just forget for a while how much I love Radiohead. They really are on such a different level in their music to anything else I've ever heard. The haunting emotion and soul-filling epic music they write has always hit me in the same way whenever I hear it, something other bands have never yet managed with me, I can't see this ever changing and I genuinely feel that they've broadened my mind in not just musical taste but in the way I think, the way I relate to emotion. They are an incredible assembly of guys with the ability to create the most beautiful music I think I will ever hear.

To celebrate this I'm getting a tattoo in the next few months of some Stanley Donwood graphics; he's the guy who does all of Radiohead's album art and manages to perfectly sync the macabre political themes he constantly nods to in his work with that of Radiohead's music. I've got a promotional poster he created for their album Kid A framed on my bedroom wall:



Fiver on eBay, original print! Bargain. This is the graphic I'd like to get, probably at the top of my left arm beneath the shoulder wrapping round my arm:




Anyway, enough Radiohead bumming. Have a listen to this if you have some headphones. It's two of Radiohead's tracks, one played normally and the other played backwards over the top, then it's done the other way round. Make sure you listen to it from start to finish. Dedicate 4 minutes to it. It might well blow you away.

so chillin'

Oh my god, I haven't written a blog in so long! The 'Bad Weekend' bookmark in my Firefox has been sitting there staring at me since February but I always avoided it. Weird how this always happens with blogs. Not just with me but with a lot of my friends it seems.

Gonna keep this short and sweet if possible. Little catch up for y'all.
- I quit Art Foundation
- I'm applying for Film Production at Bournemouth for 2010
- In the meantime I've been doing all of Lights & Sounds' video stuff, loads of live music recordings, and I've got so many plans for future video stuff during this Summer
- I now work at Maven, a market research call centre in Wycombe

I miss this blog. But I'm still making videos all the time on YouTube so get on that.