When all the characters jump into their spaceships and start blasting away at each other, it’s time to switch off.
Death Star trench run aside, I think it’s safe to say that there is nothing more boring than an epic space battle. Give it five to ten minutes and the shooting will finally stop, the crafts will land, and it’s time to wake up.
What did I miss? Just a few holes breached and a bit part character bit the dust. Until the next one.
Two pigeons approached another pigeon in broad daylight and went at it with baseball bats, leaving the battered pigeon to flutter helplessly in the road. A car nearly squished it flat to finish the job. I saw all this in Scarborough after eating hot doughnuts. These birds have been watching too many gangster flicks.
Normality, what even is normality in 2022? The pandemic rules finally came to an end on February 24th 2022 and suddenly everything went back to how it was pre-20th March 2020. In the following months, I found myself trying to reenact the past, going to gigs, on trips, seeing friends and family, and pursuing work, and it all felt like roleplay. I was playing myself from 2019 very badly, the acting was hammy and hollow, I think hiring someone else to fulfil my role would be the smartest choice.
I don’t know how to hum along to all the live songs anymore.
Most of thirty-one was spent in lockdowns or in a restricted environment, I spent a good chunk of it eating KFC crisps, and I haven’t eaten any since.
I think we all did, ate or drank a lot of things during the pandemic that we’d never bother with again. I had to throw out the old trainers I wore during the two years of restrictions, and I haven’t been able to stomach Pop-Tarts since. I used to walk in the nearby park every day, and now I rarely venture that way.
In a way, I have a certain personal fondness for some of those habits. Important moments of my life often go hand in hand with the colonel.
I celebrated turning thirty in a small basement bar with a friend from college. He knew someone who worked there so he had them playing the likes of Pissed Jeans and Ween for me. It cleared the place out reasonably quickly, and off we went to Crazy Pedros for Hooch and Pizza. It was about 4am when I got back, and 7am when I got up for work. I rarely celebrate my birthdays this way, why was my 30th any different? When I got to the office they had balloons and cake, and I swear I found blood in my stools from the excess drinking the night before, even if it was probably something else, but let’s not go into detail. As I ate my slice and cake and felt the new decade dawn on me, my fellow coworker was fired and they had to deal with it as everybody sang happy birthday. That’s just the sort of place it was. With just three hours of sleep it felt like a twisted dream, a Hooch memory, a good and evil playing out in real-time.
I quit three months later.
I went to see Julia Holter at the Manchester venue called Gorilla, and I cannot tell you much about it at all. I remember going to the front, because I love to see the band up close, then for some reason walking all the way to the back before she came on. I stood and didn’t listen to a single note, my head full with the sound of scratching, for earlier that day I woke up to the sound of mice having a great time in the kitchen. And all I could think about is mice.
Scratch, scratch, scratch. Avant-grade rodents.
I spent a good chunk of January sleeping on an air bed, a cardboard box with a lamp on by my side. During the night the air bed would deflate, and I’d find myself sinking. I’d sink each night and wake up to walk around the empty flat, my belongings weren’t due to arrive for another couple of weeks. It was me, my toothbrush, a pile of clothes and my lamp. I’d finally done it, I’d moved to the city on my own. As I sank I’d listen to the noise of the pipes, and the footsteps from the flat above.
I think back to those airbed nights a lot.
It was a week of work in Spring when my autopilot switched off. In high spirits, I made the foolish decision to read the world news, and the Russia/Ukraine conflict put me into high news reading obsession mode to the point that it made me reflect on my own life decisions. Sure the battle realistically wasn’t going to cause much difference to my life (though who knew at that time the current war going on eight years later) but it did kickstart me to start this blog to write again alongside a slew of other scary news stories about meteors and climate change, and to start applying for full time writing jobs, to use my degree. It was the only way to distract my social media-obsessed mind.
And I did it, a blog with weekly stories, and a full-time SEO job. Thanks, scary news cycle!
Also, 2014 was the year of pulled pork. What a time to be alive.
I remember it being a very cold day when the new My Bloody Valentine album ‘MBV’ came out. I didn’t want to get up and walk outside, wait for a bus, and then complete my works shift, but the new album release got me moving. I’d downloaded it ready for the journey, and it was beautiful. Shoegaze or noise or whatever you want to call it is very nice on the coldest mornings of winter, and as I stood waiting for the bus, for once I didn’t mind that I’d be spending the next six hours or so standing in a cold warehouse waiting for tickets to tell me which shelf to arrive at and which item to send down the conveyor.
I guess this was post education living.
We went to see the animated movie ‘Father Christmas’ at St Luke’s Bombed Out Church in Liverpool. You watch films on a projector with blankets to keep you warm, a lovely experience. Only this time whilst watching the festive movie in December, it started to snow, and by the time the movie was over it was thick.
It was a truly immersive cinema experience.
Channel Static 