The Winchester

It's a pub near the top of St. George's road in Kemptown. I'd started going there rather regularly before Christmas, and when I moved to my new place a couple of weeks ago, I discovered that by happy coincidence, it was only just around the corner from where I lived.

I quite like it. It's very intimate, everyone knows each other, the barbs flow almost as freely ('fleely?) as the beer, and the Bloody Marys rock.

And now?! It's changing hands!

The low-key casual nature of the setup will, I fear, not appeal to the shark businessperson who prioritises their profit margin highly. For that reason, this may be the last we'll see of it in its current form.

This is just my luck. Storm, a bear club, closed in Brighton last year before I had a chance to check it out, I only fitted in two visits to Schwarz before that entire building was closed for 6 months for renovations, and now this. Next thing you know, they'll be closing down the Bulldog.

Hopefully this particular song will remain the same, but if it doesn't, I see splintering of groups on the horizon...

In any case, tonight is the 'last night', and all drinks are £1. I'm there.

In other news from today, a chiropracter was doing freebies in the hall that I walk through to get to lectures. I got a free 'assessment of the spine and pelvis'. Apparently there are slight misalignments of my spinal column, and some torsional irregularities in my pelvis, but this is normal in the general population. If I get a decent job over the summer, I might see to it.

The weekend

Out I went on Friday night to the Winchester for a quiet water & lime or two, after which I repaired to the Bulldog with The 'Flee of BN2Beeyatches fame. There, I got entangled with the hot n' horny Scotsman I referred to earlier, and we later went back to mine.

I'd been keeping my TV down after that missive from hell I got recently, but if the lodgers next door and underneath my floor are light of sleep, well, that night they had something else to complain about. Ha!

While on that note, The 'Flee posted up a rather fun parody of my recently received letter on BN2Beeyatches.

Pinched from BN2Beeyatches...

This is what a Word Cloud of my blog looks like. As opposed to Yeller/Slagella, I am rather happy with mine. I particularly like the juxtaposition of 'guy' and 'head'.

I'm wrecked tired...

Crap!

My application for a summer placement with Boots, which if successful meant that I would have had two months of paid work taken care of, has not been successful.

If the other applications I made go the same way, I could end up having to go back home and repeat the cycle of looking for work from my parents computer in Mallow. This does not augur well for the future of my sanity.

One down, four to go. Please God make it happen.

No ratty note left on my bed by the landlady this week, though they changed the bed covers to a blinding canary yellow and white check pattern. I'm going to have to leave them a note telling them not to touch them in future.

One of the other lodgers (he who complained when I used 'their' kitchen) continues to be an irritant. Once more, and he's going the same way as Janet Leigh's character in Psycho.

Oh My God.

Oh My God!!

I passed both of the exams I sat after Christmas!

Neither of the marks were spectacular, but considering - in my own opinion - I was borderline on one and almost certain to fail the other one, I am now very much chuffed to bits. Both of the marks were at the lower end of the passing scale, but right now, after what the last 6 weeks have been like, that is enough for me. The main thing is, I don't have to do either of them again. I don't start being assessed towards my final award until next year, so this year all I have to do is get through.

I'd love to go on the razz tonight but I'm broke - especially after last weekend - and I need to get things done tomorrow, so that's kind of a damp squib on everything. We'll see how things pan out later.

Oh huge sigh of relief...

The Weekend

After a hellish day of labs on Friday, I had a dinner at Phil's that really hit the spot, and then repaired to the Bulldog.

The drunken antics of all concerned was a source of merriment, but the hangover I had the next day most certainly wasn't. That's absolutely the last time I stay out until 5am. The extended opening hours of the Bully have their drawbacks.

Today saw me making breakfast in a kitchen which is actually considered to be available only to the bedsits outside my section, owing to the fact that in spite of the landlord being told that one of the two hobs in our own kitchen is broken, it has yet to be fixed, and now the other one has packed up as well. One schmuck from the other bedsits laboured the point that it was inconvenient for everyone else, almost to the point where I nearly strangled him. I got what he was saying, but I won't go without breakfast just to please someone else.

As it is, our own kitchenette (a small corridor with a few appliances, basically) has no oven, and I've alreay told the landlord that I may need to use the oven in the other kitchen once or twice a week. He agreed to this, but now it looks as if he needs to make the other lodgers agree to this as well. He has been texted. He'd better get back to me soon.

This place is having more than its fair share of teething problems, and while it's a given that I'll be moving out once the academic year is finished, even if I stay in Brighton for the summer, I'm now beginning to wonder if I'll even make it that far. The whole moving process took enough out of me the first time though, and it gets in the way of all things academic as well. I'll have to play this one by ear, I think.

I'm getting tired of this shit. It's been quite a while since I've had to live in a place with this kind of atmosphere. I've gone from one extreme (living on my own) to this, and because it's not the usual house share set up, it's the negative aspects of the former combined with the pain-in-the-arse aspects of this particular setup. Living on my own wasn't that bad, it was just the area I was in, in those particular circumstances.

Oh, I just want to press the fast-forward button and move beyond all this crap.

Can you say 'Control Freak'?

God Almightly, it hasn't taken long for trouble to rear its ugly head.

I came home from college yesterday after a hard day, feeling rather satisfied with myself, and found this on my bed:

Bloody hell. Ignoring the fact that as I am still in the process of unpacking, so of course it's going to be a bit untidy, these people are invading my living space and then passing comment on it. I told them I was more than capable of cleaning my room myself. As for the TV, it was never blaring, and if I was disturbed by someone else's tv, I would just ask them politely to turn it down, which is what they should do. Then there is the snotty tone, behind which it is implied that because I am a 'student', I need reminding that I must stay quiet and tidy at all times. I should say that to the one (whoever it was) who crashed up the stairs past my room at 2 am last Saturday night.

I just got off the phone from the landlord and he explained that his wife was 'in a bit of a mood' when she wrote it, to which I replied that I was put in quite the mood when I read it. He explained that she was a bit house-proud, which is fair enough, but that is quite the letter to get when you've only just moved into somewhere.

I could write her a letter back that would cut the legs from under her, but I know that it's best not to reply in anger. I'll sit on it for a while.

This is definitely not a place I will stay in for the duration of my degree though.

I have moved!

At last, I am more or less set up in the new house. I have acquired a room overlooking the seafront in Kemptown (hereafter referred to as 'bn2', its postcode) , and I am right in the middle of everything. The university is a bit far from where I am, relatively speaking, but I don't care. I can walk it in 40 minutes, whereas all my favourite pubs, clubs and shops are all within a stone's throw. The rent is saucy enough, but I'll make it up on the taxis that I won't have to get any more when going home. And I'm right next door to Brighton's main cruising ground, The Bushes.

The move from my old flat was done quite quickly, but was a bit of a nightmare at times. I fear some of my clothes may have been lost in transit, and only time will tell if they turn up again.

I never really liked the place I was living in before, and the area was chav central, so even though this new place is essentially a bedsit, the fact that the overall tone of the place is classier puts that quibble in the shade.

Last night, I had some after hours drinks in a nearby bar, until quite late. There will be other perks becoming obvious soon, I'm sure. I passed a megahot bear on the main street a couple of days ago. If I hadn't been so preoccupied with the whole removal saga, I would have swooped in, but I'm sure I'll see him again.

It's been a depressing, draining weekend, and now college has started again. I need to think about a holiday of some kind, to recharge my batteries, but now things are looking up slightly, thank God.

My head is ready to EXPLODE!

Venting time!

January has been just the worst month in a long time for me. I have had to write two time-consuming reports and study for and sit two exams, all the while being broke and concious of the fact that by this Monday coming, I have to be out of my current flat and have found somewhere to live.

Realistically, I couldn't do much househunting in the run-up to the exams, so I left it until after Friday January 27th, where I figured that the two weeks holidays would give me enough time to find somewhere else to live. It is only today that I have finally sorted out somewhere, but not everything has been finalised, and I won't know for sure what my story is until about 8pm this evening.

Not surprisingly, I'm feeling just a bit fucking burned out. I haven't had a chance to stop and take a breather since I got back here, and the two weeks holidays that were supposed to be chill-time for me have almost been as bad as the four weeks that came before them. I need a break, badly. But once I move into the new place over the weekend (enough of an ordeal, with all the stuff I have), do I get a break? Oh no. Another assignment is due in this day week and I also have to find a job, with no small amount of urgency.

I knew going back to do this course wouldn't be easy, but I am seriously feeling the pinch right now. God only knows how I am going to take this for another two and a half years.

Deep deep breaths. This time next Friday everything will hopefully feel a little bit better.

Oooohhhh.....

My face is bald

I completely shaved off my goatee this morning. I needed to start again anyway, mainly because it had gone slightly asymmetrical in the last while due to my recent shaving around it one night when I was drunk (not a good idea, don't ever take a razor to your face in a state of inebriation).

I very much regret it though. I looked better with it than without, and once it grows back, I'm leaving it there, most likely until I die.

Exasperation is...

• Getting chatted up by a guy at a bus stop
• It turns out he is a rugby player and has a fantasy body (His name was Darren and he plays for Portsmouth RFC)
• Comes to a nightclub with you

AND THEN:

• He has 'problems' getting money out of the cash machine so you end up buying him drinks and paying for putting his coat in the cloakroom
• He turns out to have more issues with himself than a bag of cats on drowning day
• He sticks his tongue down some other guy's throat but swears they are 'just good friends'
• He asks you to wait until 3am, the time the nightclub closes, and promises that he'll go home with you then...

AND THEN CHANGES HIS FUCKING MIND AND DECIDES HE DOESN'T WANT TO GO THROUGH WITH IT AFTER ALL!

Aaaaaarrrraaaaaggghhhhh!

In retrospect, the fact that the muppet had paid £350 for a pair of Prada jeans should have acted as some kind of warning light.

Current mood: Capable of murder.

¡Hola!

Inspired by the big hairy man-mountains that I saw in Bear Cub, I have decided to learn Spanish.

Knowing myself, of course, I was reluctant to shell out money for a course of book and tapes in case I gave up after two days and they ended up gathering dust on the shelf. However, one of the newspapers over here, the Independent, gave away a free learning CD of the language with its paper yesterday, and the free book to go with it today, so I bought both. Not bad for £2.70.

The course is only six weeks long, so I figure that it won't be too much of an undertaking. So...

Avanti!*


* This might not actually be Spanish.

Kate Bush - Aerial

Prologue

I waited long and listened hard, trying to arrive at a definitive opinion on this, the first album from La Bush in twelve years. Then I realised that my opinions of almost all the records I own are pretty fluid, and I can end up revising my opinion of entire albums over a year after I've heard them for the first time. So, is this one any good?

Yes it is, though sometimes I feel like adding a qualifier to that.

Me and Kate go back over 15 years. I remember seeing the video for Cloudbusting when I was in my early teens, and startled by the amount of personality in what can often be a very tedious art form for getting across the essence of a song and its band. From then I was hooked, and my sister's copy of The Whole Story was fair game. Soon after that, I got my hands on The Sensual World, which was part of the soundtrack to my sometimes miserable first attempt at higher education. One of the strengths of Kate Bush is how she simply doesn't anything like anyone else at all, and on that album it was all there. Rock outs, love songs, ethereal dream sequences, everything. One song on it, This Rocket's Tail, made singers like Robert Plant sound like petulant little brats, and that was down to the fact that she can still hold a note while howling and shrieking through a passage, and that's one of her main strengths. I discovered more of this kind of melodrama on the Hounds of Love, while working my way backwards through her catalogue.

There wasn't much howling and shrieking on the more mellow follow-up, The Red Shoes, but it still had some great moments in spite of that, the most prominent in my mind being Moments of Pleasure.

Aerial is a bit like that. It's mellow, she doesn't cut loose like on her earlier albums, and this is why she'll appeal to a certain portion of the easily-listening crowd. There's no wailing declarations of lost love or anger due to some abstract event, but there is still plenty of dreamlike compositions and abstract reference points. Songs like Bertie and Mrs. Bartolozzi, the latter of which sees her describing the minutiae of her doing her laundry(!), refer to her domestic bliss, A Coral Room has flashes of a plane crashing and an underwater city, and An Architect's Dream and The Painter's Link feature Rolf Harris (yes Puppy, you were right that time!) joining in singing about the easel and the brush, so to speak. Some of the songs also revolve around Birdsong, and the pattern on the album cover actually represents the sound wave pattern of the song of a blackbird.

The song I've linked to above is one of the better ones, and a good indication of the overall feel of the album.

(Goddammit! I can't type this entry without the CD skipping. Windows XP multitasking, my arse.)

So there you go. She still has it, even if she's reigning herself a little days. It's still a worthy buy. Just don't expect any Ninth-Waveisms.

Going by her current rate of output, we can expect the next one in 2017.