"You've got a mouthful of diamonds & a pocket full of secrets."

- Sarah Barthel

(The Great Blog Catch-up of '11 - post for 26/01/2011)

Easily the freshest I have ever been for about five years. Who knew that early night/early morning combination actually worked?

For the first time in a long, long time, I actually wanted to get out of bed at eight o'clock. I was really looking forward to today's game & figured I would prepare, both physically & mentally, in a patient, sensible manner. Took my time to get a good clean, executed the three S's & just generally took my time to get ready & look presentable. First team games means upping the attire front, so it was shirt & tie for your humble narrator. Dressed to impress, clean & fresh, I headed off to uni'. Funny though, 'cause once we all got on the bus to start travelling, the inevitable banter started & suddenly the whole 'professional approach' didn't really seem to count for much anymore. Anyways, the bus pulled out of the uni' & we were off. Destination: Winchester.

The drive there wasn't as interesting as the drive back, so I'll skip over the details for that...

We got to Winchester about quarter to twelve & heading in to the changing rooms it was still very much all about the banter. It was annoying in some ways, cause I kind of wanted to get my game-head on, but in a whole bunch of other ways it was great crack, so I can't really complain. Although, speaking of complaints, it's never good when you're trying to prepare for a match & the lads decide that they want to put music on, when they only have 'Justin Bieber - Baby'. Nightmare isn't even the word.

Out onto the pitch the lads went, having done the warm-up & prepared for the game ahead. I say 'the lads' because I was starting on the bench, which was fair enough given the fact it was my first call-up; I can't say I was surprised. It gave me a good chance to watch the lads play & figure out who the good players were, who the average players were & who the players were that I couldn't believe had been in the team ahead of me for this long without being found out. Anyway, the first half past & we had a 1-0 lead after fourty-five minutes. No half-time substitution, but again that was to be expected. I was just hoping that I'd get a run out for the last half an hour to be able to have the chance to show what I was capable of.

The first fifteen minutes of the second half seemed to fly over & suddenly we found ourselves drawing 1-1, after a defensive mishap gifted the opposition with an equaliser. Quite the time to be coming on! So me & the other sub' Luke came on & had to get straight into, what was, a pretty intense match. I'd started reasonably well & was just starting to get into the flow of things when a debatable offside decision, or lack of, cost us another goal. We were suddenly 2-1 down with about twenty five minutes to go. Immediately I could feel the deflation of the team & having experienced it a lot with the second team, I had that familiar sinking feeling. Luckily for us though, that soon disappeared. We pulled together as a team &, after some good football & sheer determination, we managed to get a goal back, which wasn't shy of controversy itself. 

In the blink of an eye, there was 10 minutes to go & the game was tied at 2-2; it couldn't have been a more exciting period to be playing in. I was putting a solid performance in at right back & I was quite pleased with how it was going. We were playing some great football & eventually, with about 2 minutes to go, we managed to bag the winner; the goal itself was made even sweeter by the fact that we'd had one disallowed moments earlier, even though it should have stood. When the referee blew the whistle for full time about four minutes later, it was all about the euphoria. The feeling of satisfaction was overwhelming.

As you can imagine, the bus ride back was a very cheerful affair. We'd all bought tins for the journey back & it was safe to say everyone rode the wave of victory all the way back to Bath. Amid the celebrations, we'd all agreed to go back to one of the lads' flats on campus & continue the partying there. I'm sure you don't need me to fill in the blanks, but the facts are that between about ten of us, we polished off sixty cans of Carlsberg & a bottle of Disaronno. It was a real good chance to get to know all the lads properly & share a bit of banter etc. & it was even better to be given praise for my performance, which I think may well have earned me a place in the first team on a more permanent basis.

Good times all around.

THD.

"Never take life too seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway."

- Unknown

(The Great Blog Catch-up of '11 - post for 25/01/2011)

Today was the day of my first official call up to the university first team. The way it works for the first team is that there are fixtures on a Wednesday, which are the proper university matches, and there are fixtures on Saturday, which are matches played in one of the local Somerset leagues. I'd played a Saturday game for the first's before, but this was the first time I'd been asked to play on a Wednesday. A pleasantly surprising start to my day.

Didn't have much on university-wise, just one English Literature lecture through the day. Unfortunately, it wasn't one of the best, 'cause it was a bit of a make shift lecture, due to the lecture hall being kitted out & ready for some sort of orchestra performance or something of that nature.

Got home for about half two, then it was all about trying to catch up with this very blog! Been slacking too much recently, 'cause life in general has just been catching up with me & taking over my usual day to day routines. Started to develop some bad, lazy habits too, which I'm not really pleased about. I plan to pull that all together though come February. Sober, studious & sharp... that's what I'm aiming for come Feb'.

The rest of the day was spent pretty much doing nothing, which was then followed by an early night in preparation for the game tomorrow. I was being a good lad for a change, despite the fact that the lads were out having a few beers.

Looking forward to tomorrow. Heres to an early start, with the 10:00 departure on the bus to Winchester awaiting me!

THD.

"True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in their worth and choice."

- Samuel Johnston

(The Great Blog Catch-up of '11 - post for 24/01/2011)

I was excited about today, because it was my first scriptwriting seminar in nearly two months & I had developed a new found love for it when writing my essay. The only down side to it is that it doesn't start til 17:00, so I spend my whole day doing nothing, then I have to go to uni', which always seems to make me extremely tired by the time it finishes at 19:00. We've started working on an idea for a radio series, having finished our work on our mock-soap. We were given a location, a time of day, a character & an object that all had to be included in our series plan. So we had to construct something based on the following:

• The Isle of Lewis
• Friday night
• A local politician
• A cheese grater

We managed to come up with a decent storyline, given the circumstances. I won't spoil it though, 'cause I'm sure, if we get to work on it properly, that I'll be posting some stuff up on here.

Following that, I'd arranged to meet one of the first lads I ever met at uni', Sam Shelton, for a pint & a long over-due catch-up. We'd kind of lost eachother of these last few months 'cause we don't get any seminars together or anything & I think life has weaved it's usual magic; but we get on so well & I've got so much time for the lad. Anyways, we met up for a pint at Weatherspoons, along with my mate Laurence & his mate Sean. In typical university student fashion, a quiet pint soon turned into a bit of a night out. I can't complain though, 'cause we had such a good laugh & the crack is always good when we get together.

So after trips to a few pubs & eventual dabbling in a nightclub, we parted company & headed back home. I think it was when me & Laurence got home that I realised how lucky I was, with regards to my mates. Even though the night had primarily been organised to catch-up with Sam, it had actually been a while since me & Laurence had just had a pint & a chat too. When we got back to mine, we sat up & had a one of those 'meaningful conversations' about love, life, music & stuff (as Just Jack would say). It just made me appreciate how good my friends are down here in the south. Who knew there'd be decent people at university, eh?

When the night was all said & done, Lauro went back upstairs to his flat & I retreated to my bedroom. Eager as ever, I remembered that I had an episode of Californication to watch. So, half-cut, that's exactly what I did.

To conclude, Hank Moody is my hero.

THD.

"I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me-like food or water."

- Ray Charles

(The Great Blog Catch-up of '11 - post for 23/01/2011)

Today was, what a very small circle of people would call, an extremely monumental day.

I've been playing football for the university 1st & 2nd teams, but spent the majority of 2010 playing for the 2nd's. We'd never won a match last year, and today was our first match back since the New Year. Baring in mind that a few of us had assumed that the game was going to be off the night before, it was safe to say there were a few rough looking lads who turned up to play at 09:30 in the morning. Yet, despite our best efforts, we did it. Possibly one of the poorest game, standard-wise, that I've ever taken part in, it was literally a case of us being the better of two really poor teams; but we didn't care, it was our first win & first clean sheet of the season! And the 2-0 victory was enough to put a smile on all of the lads faces. A post-match trip to McDonalds swiftly followed, with the majority of the team going to celebrate in 'style'. However, the best bit of my day was yet to come...

Once the celebrations were over, me & my sentimental partner in crime, Tom Fair, retreated back to mine & switched back into 'chill mode'. It was a bit of a random thing, but decided to watch a film & I remembered that I'd downloaded 'Ray' a while back, but I'd never gotten round to watching it. Been as Tommo is a Creative Music Technology student, with a keen love for music, I figured it would satisfy both our taste buds. Safe to say that neither of us were disappointed. Jamie Foxx takes the lead role as Ray Charles Robinson and it's easy to see why he won an Academy Award for Best Actor. From the mannerisms, to the looks, Foxx easily & truthfully portrays the charismatic Charles, right down to the infectious trademark smile which he was so well-known for. Although some of the story was obviously fictionalised for dramatic effect, it still made for a great story, and it was amazing to get some insight into the life of Ray Charles. It did, however, make the pair of us question our generation, as well as specifically highlight the fact that we've missed out on some of the best performers that the music industry has ever seen. Great film though, nonetheless.

I'd try to scrape something interesting from the rest of my day up, but in between me sleeping & chilling out, the only other thing that I did, which had potential, was that I started watching 'Boardwalk Empire', the 1920's crime drama, set in Atlantic City. With Steve Buscemi leading the cast & Martin Scorsese directing it, it's sure to be a hit. The first episode was very much my kind of thing, so I'll be sure to update more on that as I get further engrossed in it.

THD.

"Five days shalt thou labour, as the Bible says. The seventh day is the Lord thy God's. The sixth day is for football."

- Anthony Burgess

(The Great Blog Catch-up of ’11 - post for 22/01/2011)

This has probably been my least exciting day for a while when I look back at it on paper.

After sleeping in all day, wasting the hours of my life in the haven of my quilt, I realised I'd made a terrible error in judgement with regards to how long I should of slept in. It was the Newcastle/Tottenham game & I was already thirty minutes behind. Late nights & alcohol will be the death of me.

So I scrambled myself up & threw it on a very legitimate online stream from America, been as how apparently, for the second week in a row, Newcastle weren't important enough to be on Sky Sports. Being a fan of the Black & White army can be very emotionally tasking at times. After the heights of a 59th minute beauty from the unlikely source of Fabrizio Collocini, Newcastle had held their own for the next half an hour. But, true to form, stoppage time hit & they decided to hit the 'fuck it, let's just bottle the game' button. Sure enough, Aaron Lennon felt obliged to help us out, finishing off in style around the 91st minute mark, after some truly atrocious defending from Danny Simpson; it's a shame really, given that Simpson has had a better season this time round in my humble opinion. The part of this tale which I casually left out, is the part where my mates Danny & John were sitting with me for the last twenty minutes of the game. Danny, for those who don't know, happens to be a Tottenham fan. I'm sure you can all guess how well that went down.

The three of us headed off to the pub for some food, a pint & to catch the Aston Villa/Manchester City match, with Darren Bent's debut being the topic of conversation. Pretty much a chilled afternoon really, not a great deal of excitement to talk about, other than Mr. Bent bagging a goal on his debut, which turned out to be the subsequent match-winner for Villa.

Although later on we did all end up drinking at one of the halls partys, nothing amazing to shout about there either really. It was just one of those days unfortunately. We had planned not to drink, but after convincing ourselves that tomorrow's university football match was going to be off, we all eventually succumb to the powers of alcohol.

The need to stop drinking for a while is becoming more & more apparent. Roll on the February detox!

THD.

“There is no greater challenge than to have someone relying upon you; no greater satisfaction than to vindicate his expectation."

- Kingman Brewster

(The Great Blog Catch-up of ’11 – post for 21/01/2011)

Waking up & watching your life slide back into focus, through the hazy bubble of alcohol, is always interesting; the only thing more interesting in that department, is when you have a 500 word Cultural Report that needs to be handed in for twelve noon that very day, & you find yourself waking up at 10:00 preparing to write it from scratch. Very interesting.

This whole frantic-morning-fiasco made me appreciate the 'Adam Smith of the past.' His intense note taking from one of the Plenary sessions proved to be my saving grace, practically writing the report for me. I always had faith in my ability, but this was truly a performance to be proud of; we are assuming that I passed, of course.

So following a morning of fast-typing, car-driving, work-printing, essay-submitting & relieved-breathing, I found myself enjoying a fine sausage sandwich in the SU with my evermore reliable 'taxi-driver', Mr. Danny Latham. I had that smug, 'chuffed with myself' feeling all over again...

I decided, in my infinite wisedom, that I deserved a break from university on that particular day. So, despite having a two hour seminar, I opted to go home & enjoy the bliss of doing nothing & being happy that I'd finished all my work; I genuinely don't regret it in the slightest. Happy days.

The rest of the day's chilled atmosphere was followed by an attempt at a quiet pint out with a few of the lads, which ended up just never really getting into gear. So we bailed back to Vinny's gaff & a few of us just chilled in there & enjoyed a bit chinwag, accompanied by a few beers, just for good measure.

Although the end of my recent blogs are starting to look very similar, I can't argue with facts. I ended up popping over to see Ellen again, cause she wasn't feeling very well & I figured she could use the company of a friendly Geordie to stick a smile on that face of hers. We chatted a couple of hours, but this time tiredness got the better of me; all in all, it's fair to say it was a quiet night indeed.

THD.

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”

- Plato

(The Great Blog Catch-up of '11 - post for 20/01/2011)

Two essays later, and here we are.
 
Finished my scriptwriting essay today, much to my delight. It's hard to tell how well, or how badly, I've done with this one because it's the first one I've done for this module. It feels like a good essay though, so hopefully that will be reflected in the mark. I had so much fun writing it though, it almost didn't feel right! One thing that has definitely been highlighted throughout this process is that Quentin Tarantino is nothing short of a Messiah when it comes to scriptwriting. You soon realise that everything you hear & see during his films is important & that there is a real long, meticulous thought process that goes into each & every word in his scripts.

No university today, luckily. I guess they read my last post, because the Plenary Lecture that we were supposed to have, where a guest writer comes in to talk about their work, got cancelled. Happy days in so many respects. I took that as a sign & decided, despite the fact that I had a 500 word cultural report to be in by twelve noon on Friday, that play-time started today.

It was the birthday of one of the lads from my halls anyways, so it was surely only right to go & have a good night with everyone, right? Right. After two days of solid work, it should be noted that every beer tasted like I'd earned it. Such a good feeling knowing that I could legislate some hard-play, after plenty of hard-work. I won't bore you with the details, but you can fill in the blanks I'm sure. The words that summarise the evening a probably 'alcohol', 'boys', 'girls', 'house party', 'elevators', 'taxis', 'more alcohol', 'Second Bridge', 'music', 'dancing' & 'magic'.

After all the alcohol consumption, funny conversations and looking after drunken friends by the name of Isobel Lindsell (which, I might add, involved some of the funniest quotes I've heard in along time, as well as hilarious incidents involving a variety of miscellaneous frozen foods, in particular curly fries), I took a few hours to just sit & reflect on the evening, once again accompanied by my evermore frequent late evening sidekick, Ellen. It's actually dangerous how long we can sit & talk for without paying attention to time. As we sat & chatted about God only knows what, I remember thinking that for the first time since I'd been back, I finally felt like I was home again; that feeling of comfort that I had found during my time down south was finally back...

...and it felt good.

THD.

"Opportunity is missed by most because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."

- Thomas Alva Edison

(The Great Blog Catch-up of '11 - post for 19/01/2011)

My philosophy on life tends to be something along the lines of 'work hard, play hard'. The start of this week has definitely been the former of that phrase so far.

I got up reasonably early today, mainly because I was trying to force myself into a good sleeping pattern, but also because I had unfinished business with a certain essay of mine. After a whole day of writing the main bulk of it yesterday, I used the last few hours of today to go over my Critical Reading essay with a fine tooth comb & make sure everything was pristine & ready to be torn to shreds by my tutor. Looking at it in retrospect, I don't feel like it's as good as my last one; I think the main reason behind that is because the last one just seemed to fit together so perfectly when I wrote it. So I'm expecting a lower grade than the 2:1 that I got last time, but I'm sure all will be revealed in good time.

Although essay-writing had taken up my free time, university lectures & seminars had decided that they were going to continue irrespective of my work-load. How inconsiderate of them, eh? The second day back at uni' was much more involved though, but I guess that's expected when it comes to seminar work. I've always preferred the seminars to the lectures, they feel more personal. Despite being offered to play football for the university 2nd team, I'd decided to focus on my work seeing as how I was already a week behind with my delayed return. Enjoyable as the seminar was, however, I still felt underprepared for it due to the lack of time that I'd had to do prep. work etc. I think by next week though I should be up to speed & back on the ball.

There was no rest for the wicked unfortunately. With the handing in of one essay, another essay was patiently sitting in my bedroom, awaiting my return. Another little fella who wanted 2000 words of well-structured loud-thinking from me, only he was an essay of the scriptwriting variety. This essay, so far anyway, has been much more enjoyable than the Critical Reading one due to the freedom it gives you. Basically, I have to study the scriptwriting techniques of one of my favourite scriptwriters & then talk about it in relation to my own work. Now, I don't know about you, but to me that translates to: watch a few awesome films by Quentin Tarantino & study the genius that he has given birth to in Reservoir Dogs & Pulp Fiction. That, ladies & gentlemen, is my kind of essay! So instead of going out with the rest of the lads, I played good boy & did my essay; I think I ended up having a better time in all honesty.

One thing I have noticed since getting into this essay is that I think I might be having a rethink about my direction as a writer. Suddenly, I feel like scriptwriting might be a better option for me, because there are more opportunities with a script than there are with a book. It's probably just my brain thinking 'Tarantino is awesome, you could be like him', but it's still definitely a thought-process worth making a note of.

And with that revelatory moment, I bid you farewell.

THD.

"We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when add up all those inches, that's gonna make the fucking difference between winning and losing! Between living and dying! I'll tell you this, in any fight it's the guy whose willing to die whose gonna win that inch. And I know, if I'm gonna have any life anymore it's because I'm still willing to fight and die for that inch, because that's what living is: the six inches in front of your face."

- Tony D'Amato

(The Great Blog Catch-up of '11 - post for 18/01/2011)

First day back at uni since the one month hiatus. An easy re-introduction to university life, in fairness, with only the one lecture, but it was still such a good feeling to be back in the world of academia.

The lack of actual 'lesson' time was certainly made up by the fact that I spent the rest of the day delicately structuring my Critical Writing essay. And as much as I'd like to tell you otherwise, I found some sort of strange enjoyment in doing it. Granted, writing essays isn't the best thing in the world, but it's always an opportunity to show what you can do; it's an opportunity to take what you know & build something bulletproof out of it. So yeah, essays are annoying, but at the end of the day, why complain about it when I knew what I was signing up for, right?

So pretty much the majority of my day after 15:00 was spent doing that really. I'd give some insight into what else was going on in my head, or how I was feeling, but I was nothing short of living & breathing my essay, so that might be a tad difficult. What I will say, however, is that it just feels so good to be back and making progress towards becoming a writer. The more I think about it, the more I want it; so weird that I'm actually going for it, in all honesty. I always knew I wanted to be a writer of some distinction, but now that I've actually found my opportunity, I'm gonna take it with both hands & never let go. Cheesy or not, I've never been more certain about anything in my life.

THD.

“How soon 'not now' becomes 'never'.”

- Martin Luther King

(The Great Blog Catch-up of '11 - post for 17/01/2011)

Fair to say that, despite my best intentions, Monday was the beginning of a week-long catalogue of personal disappointments. As you all know, I'd planned to go for a run at nine in the morning and begin the other of my New Year's resolutions. Unfortunately, all did not go as planned. Not only did I not go for a run, but I slept in until about twelve/half twelve and missed half of the day. Usually this wouldn't of been too bad, but I had essays to be cracking on with and it sort of set my day back by a good two hours plus.

I pulled myself round anyway and met up with two of the lads from uni', Tom and Jamie, for a bit of a catch up and to sort out what our plans were for student housing next year. See, there's a group of seven who are wanting to live together, but rather than try to get a seven person house, we were thinking that we should be getting a four and a three. The usual trials and tribulations of the university student's life to be fair. Pretty standard. So yeah, we had a chat about that and it was nice to see the lads through sober eyes and be able to talk sense for a bit.

After that, it was back to my room for a couple of hours chill, then I was off to football training for the first time in nearly two months. I was definitely looking forward to it, but I was also very aware of how much suffering was going to occur due to the severity of unhealthiness over the festive period. But, despite being absolutely exhausted and feeling a pain in my ankle for the first half an hour, I managed to pull myself round and it was so good just to be back playing again.

Tired but satisfied, I was back home to laze around and relax after using muscles that had been redundant for the around the sixty-two day mark. On the plus side though, I did end my day with the company of one of next doors finest occupants, (and by next door I mean those of the Charlton Court variety) a one Miss Ellen Parker. Good to have a proper catch-up with her, cause we hadn't really had the chance over my eventful, alcohol-fuelled weekend return. It's strange how well we get on actually, given that she was probably one of the last people that I've met and made friends with during my time on this southern adventure of mine.The down side to that, of course, was that as usual we managed to lose track of about three hours through conversation, but I suppose I don't really mind given the fact that she makes good company and she's a pretty cool lass (I'd say don't inflate her ego by telling her I said that, but I get the feeling she's probably already been creeping all over this blog before the rest of you).

So, although I did fail to live up to my expectations in the morning/afternoon period, in both the 'fitness' and 'essay-writing' departments, I still managed to have a good day, albeit lacking in productivity.

THD.