Andy's Land of Adventure

The evidence

I know you've been waiting for these. The pictures from Friday nights Halloween party! There were hundreds more, but they've been highly edited and strategically selected so that no-one suffers any too over-whelming embarrasment (you all know what I mean)

As you'll probably notice, Russ was playing silly buggers with time-lapse photography, hence some of the wierd (but sometimes cool) effects. Personally, I like it when the karaoke words come out the TV screen myself.

Anyway, that's enough jibber-jabber from me. Here's what you really came here for

I can tell that you're impressed...

... and comments are always appreciated

It's my party and I'll blog if I want to

What do you get when you mix a scary clown, Little Red Riding Hood, a bad fairy, a ninja, Elvis, a couple of devils, a few witches, a masquerade cat, a rasta, an American, The Punisher and Nick Fury? The answer is the consumption of two bottles of vodka, two bottles of Jack Daniels, one and a half bottles of Bacardi, a bottle of tequila, a bottle of vanilla liquor, 18 cans of Fosters, four cans of Stella, two bottles of Peroni, a bottle of Bucks Fizz, four litres of coke, two litres of lemonade, four cartons of orange juice, two cartons of pineapple juice, two cartons of cranberry juice and two cans of Red Bull; as well as enough crisps and sweets to turn a village of African children into clinically obese, pimple ridden teenagers. And what was the damage? Well, surprisingly little actually. One broken glass, a floor that took over two hours to mop clean and my new headphones are missing; but that's all!

What a night it was though!!! Before I get into the details, I just want to say thanks to everyone who turned up and for making such an effort. Everyone looked great and the pictures are fantastic, though I forgot the memory card reader today, so you'll have to wait until tomorrow to see them.

So, what happened... Well it all started a long, long time ago. About 5:30pm on Friday to be exact.
Actually no, that's a lie. It started about 12:30pm Friday afternoon when Russ, Han, Ian, Amir, Laurent and I went to Wagamama's Noodle Bar for a birthday lunch. It was bit of a double celebration as it was Amir's birthday on Saturday too. That's where it all started as I had one of those giant bottles of Tiger beer. With a noodle soup that's marinaded in steak (yes... marinaded in steak), a Tiger beer goes down an absolute treat!

On the way back from there to the office, I nipped into Sainsbury's and bought a few supplies. By supplies, I mean £84 of alcohol, and damn that stuff weighs a lot. Fortunately I'd managed to enlist some help carrying it all back to the office.

As the end of the day approached, the overwhelming power of all that alcohol by my desk started to take hold until I could resist no longer. At 4:03pm, I sent out an email inviting some people I know on my floor for a "birthday beer". Needless to say, they came and got one. It was really just a way of me being able to have a beer without feeling guilty about being the only one at my desk drinking.
Two more beers down, and 5:30 o'clock came around. It was time to leave, so I packed up and headed down to the ground floor. Fortunately, again, I'd got some help as Becky had offered to help carry the stuff. I don't think she'd realised what she left herself in for!

As we walked off with bags in hand, in the rain, the plastic bags do what they do best... they started to rip! Fortunately, Becky noticed an empty and unguarded postman's trolley on the side of the pavement; so we nicked it! That made things a hell of a lot easier, despite the abundance of funny looks that came with it. We abandoned the trolley just before arriving at Argos to pick up the karaoke machine. That thing took ages to come and was a lot bigger than I'd first anticipated. When we finally left I realised that there was a train due to leave in four minutes. We were only a two minute walk away from the station, but when you're loaded up to the brim and waddling like a penguin, it's not such an easy journey. We just made it, knackered and sweaty with a matter of seconds to spare. So we ended up at my pad, dumped all of the drink and headed to my local Sainsbury's to get some food and things.

When we got back, Claire had arrived and was getting changed in the bathroom. What a cool outfit she had. A "bad fairy" (you'll get to see pictures tomorrow). As her and Becky got changed, I set up and tested the karaoke machine. It worked like a charm and was suddenly obvious that it was going to be one of 'those' nights.

Once that was all done, I got changed and my scary clown had the effect that I was after. Becky screamed when she came out of the bathroom to find me lurking and brandishing a massive knife! She was far from the last person to do that during the night though!

As there weren't any other people there to start with, we decided to go and terrorise a few people in the street while Claire finished her make-up, and here-in lies the funniest moment of the night. Whilst Becky (or should I say Little Red Riding Hood) ran around the streets screaming "help me, help me", I chasing her in my bent over snarling run that I couldn't help but do as soon as I put the costume on.

We got a few amused looks. The best thing of the night (that I remember that is), is what follows next. As we ran around the streets, we came past my local Sainsbury's and Becky decided that it would be amusing to do our run through there, which we did. I'd love to get that CCTV footage!

The funniest thing is though, no-one batted an eyelid; except for the security guard who said "no running in the aisles please", as if a terrified girl in red gets chased through the supermarket by a satanic clown on a daily basis. That was one of the funniest things in my entire life. I'll remember that moment for sure!

On the way back to the flat, we decided to go to Escape and terrorise some people in there, so we burst in there and scared the living daylights out of a load of people. I thought, as it was nearly Halloween people should expect to see people dressed in scary ways, but I don't think that was considered by the girl that I made cry. I felt quite bad about that actually! The feeling soon passed as I took off the mask, and her friend said "oooh, don't worry, look, there's a hot man under that mask". The feeling of guilt quickly passed.

I don't think Max (the barman) expected me all masked up again to casually approach the bar and ask for two Makers Marks and cokes. But that's what I did! We stayed for those drinks and headed back upstairs. It was time to test the karaoke machine! It took a fair while to get the microphone volume levels right, but I achieved it in the end!

We put that to the side for now and started on the drinking as Russ a.k.a 'the Ninja' arrived. We had a brief battle with swords and knives, but the plethora of alcohol had an amazing drawing effect, so we stopped and went to get some liquid refreshment.

Now, to be perfectly honest, I don't know what order everyone arrived during the rest of the evening as it all seemed to happen so fast. That and the fact that even by 9 o'clock, I was already quite successfully on the way to getting horrendously drunk. Because of this, I can only summarise the events that I can recall and what I saw in the abundance of photos that I looked over the following morning.

There was a lot of karaoke! People seemed to love it, and I'm sure most pretty much everyone had a go at some point during the night! I recall everyone saying how good Kylie was, and in all fairness, she is an excellent singer! I also hogged the mic a fair bit, but it was my birthday, so I was allowed. At least I'd brought the "Ultimate Karaoke Kit" at the same time as the player, so there were more than enough songs to last the evening. Apparently, Russ and I tried to try and sing to "Hold Your Colour" by Pendulum, which is just a plain silly idea. I mean, karaoke... to drum and bass... it just doesn't work. Fortunately I don't remember that. I do remember attempting some quite pitiful beat box though! The joys of Mr Jack Daniels!

At some time late in the night, we all went down to Escape. I'd love to tell you more about it, but I have no recollection of going there, let alone any of the events that happened. If you were there and remember anything of interest, stick a comment at the bottom of the post to help jog my memory.

They was the main things during the night. I was really glad that it wasn't just people from work that came. There were people from my old work, old friends, friends of friends who I know; and in a couple of cases, friends of friends of friends. It was nice as it meant everyone got to meet someone new and everyone seemed to get on dead well and have a great time. There was lots of laughing, a lot of drinking and eating rubbish and a lot of singing, dancing and having general fun!

After speaking to people the following day, it seems that people left at various points during the night, ranging from sometime after 4am, through to as late as 8am. In fact, a lot of people didn't leave at all, as there were about 6 people who had stayed over. They joys of having a lot of inflatable and sofa beds.

Everyone had left by about 3pm, and I fell asleep on the sofa bed whilst trawling through series 9 of Friends. I was in no mood to do all the cleaning that lay before me, but I was consolidated by the abundance of leftovers that I had. If you could live on vodka and crisps, I'd be sorted for months!

Saturday went as quickly as it came and before I knew it, I was elbow deep in cleaning products. 5 hours it took to clean the flat, and that wasn't including all the glasses in the kitchen. Fortunately, most people had been using the plastic cups, so they were easy to get clear up. The hard part was mopping the floor. That took over two hours by itself! Ash and alcohol is not a pleasant mixture to get out of floors that's for sure. I just thank God I have wooden floors, else that would be my deposit well and truly lost!

Anyway, I aimed to have a night not just for me, but for everyone, where all had a night they'd remember, met some new friends and enjoyed the event; and to that degree, I think I achieved my goal!

Happy Birthday To Me...

Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to meeeee, Happy Birthday to me!

If that didn't give it away enough, it is indeed my birthday today... hurrah!!! Thanks to all the people that sent me nice birthday wishes this morning! And Ste, the pink card with the fluffy bunnies on was beautiful, thanks for that!
Anyway, most importantly it's the Halloween fancy dress house party night tonight! Woohooooo... I'm so excited. I tried on my whole outfit last night and it's truly terrifying! I even made myself jump when I walked past a reflective window! Just the look that I was going for!

And to answer the question of "what I want" that people who are coming to the party have been asking, it's nothing. Take that money, and spend it on your costume, alcohol at the pub beforehand or for the party, or just general party goodies. It's more important to me that everyone has a great time, not just me. I like my birthdays to be events that everyone remembers and enjoys, so I'd much prefer all the money and effort being put into that.
If everyone was to arrive with drinks or a bottle of something (I like JD *hint hint*), then I'd be as happy as I could possibly be.

Anyway, tonnes to do before then... But... I. Can't. Wait!!!

Andrew Whitehead, the man, the hero...

They say that if a bird 'drops one' on you, it's supposed to be lucky; but has it ever happened to anyone and subsequently made them feel like they should expect a good day? I know that I didn't feel lucky yesterday when my favourite black pinstripe Converse All-Stars were lightly coated in the shrapnel from a pigeon's behind. Though, I did feel luckier than the woman standing in front of me who received the full blast on the back of the head. To start with, I'm pretty sure she thought I'd spat on her as she turned around and looked at me as if I'd walked into her house on Christmas day and pissed on her kids. She soon knew the full extent of the damage though when she noticed me looking upwards, only to see a dirty great pigeon sitting in a girder high above us. I'm sure, through the darkness of the rafters, I could make out that it was smiling!

So that was the beginning of what was to be a night with its major ups and downs.

When I finally got in, I spent a couple of hours tidying the flat ready for Friday night's party. Fortunately Pippa wasn't in as she was at home feeling really ill, because I was making a fair bit of noise as I was tidying. And by tidying I don't mean 'cleared a few things away', I mean cleared, washed, dusted, polished, vacuumed and mopped (in that approximate order) so that the place shone with the light of a thousand suns; or something like that. Then I spent another hour or so 'decorating' the lounge so that it had a suitable Halloween-esque appearance. It's amazing what you can do with old black satin bedding (which wasn't mine incidentally). By this time it was late, and I was pretty shattered, and as I started to pack away for the night, I heard some commotion out of the front of the flat; so, being Johnny nosey, I had a look what was going on.

At first it was amusing to see a young black guy and a girl half burst and half stumble out of the taxi rank opposite while she screamed at him "give me my phone", slapping him whenever she managed to get an arm loose. It was funny to see this guy fending off her shots whilst trying to retain his masculinity, so I watched for a few moments. Then something happened.

He hit her. And I don't mean in a 'get away from me' kind of way, I mean in a 'get your teeth out of the gutter' kind of way! So, seeing that no-one was doing anything, I ran down there. As I burst out onto the street and over the road he was lining up for what I could only expect to be his third or fourth hit in the time it had taken me to get down the stairs. He was side on to me as I got to the other side of the road, and saw me too late as I plunged a punch right into his liver spot. For those who don't know, that's a really sensitive spot on your lower back. I couldn't have placed it more perfectly. He was straight down on the floor and wasn't going to be moving for a while. A weak punch in the right place will wind you for a good couple of minutes, but I'd walloped him. I helped the girl to her feet as the guy gasped for breath in the road, and fortunately it was only seemed like a few seconds until the reassuring sound of police sirens could be heard.

It didn't even take a minute until the squad cars rounded the corner, by which time my heart had stopped feeling like it was going to punch a hole through my chest. As they helped the girl into the one car and lifted the wheezing guy into another as they took my statement and details, so fortunately I didn't have to give at the station.

I waited until the cars had gone so that the guy didn't see the flat I went back into before heading back in; but on my way, I said angrily to the people standing around watching "so no-one thought about stepping in or lending a hand... no-one". Their silence told me everything I needed to hear, so I went back upstairs and had possibly the most satisfying shower ever. Then as I got into bed with a sense that I'd done something good, I bashed my shin on my bed frame. It hurt. A lot. Bloody typical!

Whilst searching just now for an appropriate image to put on this blog, I came across this little nugget of a video. The synopsis (after editing) reads: "The white man tells the black man (pimp) to stop hitting the girl (hooker). The pimp gets so angry that he decides he wasnts to fight with the white man. What he doesn't know is that the man he is attacking is Jet Li. See what happens". Pure genius. It couldn't have been staged any better. Check it out at http://www.wackyvids.com/movies/fights/163/blackandwhite.php Is niiiice!

Grass Roots Roundup Show 3

This is only going to be a simple post, as I have other stuff to talk about later, and this is well overdue as it is; but this the the Grass Roots show 3 roundup.

8:04 Show introduction
            SONG: Rob Thomas - This Is How A Heart Breaks
            SONG: The Morning After Girls - Shadows Evolve
8:12 Hell of a day and coming up
            SONG: Dirty Pretty Things - Deadwood
8:21 Competition for Aussie Rules Football
            SONG: John Butler Trio - Old Man
8:23 Charity events, flash dancing and requests
            SONG: Bush - Everything Zen
8:26 Funeral song, sports stories and Augie March
            SONG: Fuel - Shimmer
8:34 Album of the week - "Milburn - Well Well Well"
            SONG: Milburn - Decemeber
            SONG: Milburn - 17
8:43 Mathematics, Aussie Rules Football and sporting memories
            SONG: Tenacious D - Tribute
8:47 Oxjam and upcoming interviews
            SONG: Zenyth - Eyes Closed
            SONG: The Super Dead - Mary Joe
9:03 Gig details
            SONG: Jackie Bad - The Players Lounge
            SONG: Seeker - Keys To Your Head
9:12 More gig details and plugs, shoutouts
            SONG: Live - The Dolphin's Cry
9:20 Requests
            REQUEST: Wolfmother - White Unicorn
            SONG: The Cardigans - My Favourite Game
9:29 On the farm and requests
            REQUEST: Guns 'n Roses - Sweet Child Of Mine
9:35 Guns 'n Roses trivia and essential gig guide.
            SONG: Soweto - <<song name coming soon>>
            SONG: My First And The Gimme Gimme Gimmes - The Phantom Of The Opera Song
9:46 Up and coming interviews
            SONG: Default - Sick & Tired
9:54 Coming next week and dedication
            SONG: Maroon 5 - Rag Doll

It was a good show, with nice links, some clever banter and a lot of excellent music. Roll on this weeks which is a Halloween / birthday special! Hurrah

It's amazing what a guitarist can do with his hands

That was my MSN mini-name for years... I love it, but Oh. My. God. Check this out... it doesn't get any better than this! Look at the picture to the left.

Go on, look at it.

It appears that I've either gone partly "special", I'm trying to play the worlds most difficult guitar chord or something else.

There's actually a hidden message in it. Can you see what it is?

Yes... then well done.

In case you don't get it though, I'll tell you. I'm making the word "blog" with my twisted figures.

Have another look. Do you see it now? How cool is that?

I've decided that I'm going to run a competition. Yes a real competition, with a prize and everything. I get a lot of visitors to my blog now, so I think that I can pull this off and get at least one or two entries. What I challange you to do is pull your best "blog hands" pose, and the best one will be shown on here as well as winning something. I'm not sure what yet though. I'll think of something cool.

You'll get extra points for perfection of hand technique, as well as interesting face and body poses included in the picture. Even more bonus points come for better and more original locations than infront of your desk! If I get enough entries, I'll post them all up for a public judging.

So, email me your entries to andrew.j.whitehead@gmail.com if you want to take part. Get those camera phones out, and start snapping!

Happy hand twisting!

Where did you come from?

I find it truly amazing how Joe Public can come across your blog. Every day, I check my referrer links (that's what I get for working in SEO I suppose) to see how people have found my site. I'm not on about people who go directly to it, or even people who see it listed on the lastminuteliving home page. No, I'm on about the people that put something into Google, Yahoo or similar and have subsequently found their way to my site.

Obviously, some of them I'd expect like "Andy's Land of Adventure" and "Herne Hill", but what I didn't expect are some of the more weird ones that seem to end up pointing to my blog. The ones I find most amusing are "great boobs" and "waitress great boobs". Now this comes from talking about the night with Katie at the London Paper launch party and her comment that "...all the waitresses have great boobs", so that one is pulling me a lot of traffic. Also, the "Milburn - Well Well Well" review is doing me well as I'm the top Google blog link for anything to do with Milburn. The secret is putting the album name in the title of the blog, just in case you wondering how to do it yourself, so searches for "Milburn", "Roll out the Barrel", "December" and "Well Well Well" have all recently pointed people in my general direction.

There's also "blog ski snowboarding" that linked to my post about working at the London Ski & Snowboard Event last week, but there's also one that I found odd which was "cool+ipswich". Not only do I find that odd as it's possibly the greatest oxymoron of a search ever to be performed, but it linked to my blog of where I'm slating Ipswich for being a rubbish place. I wonder what possessed them to click through.

Upon further inspection, I find that I'm the top result on Google blog searches for both "Andy Whitehead", and "Andrew Whitehead", which makes me happy. It makes me very happy indeed. What doesn't make me happy though is people piggy-backing off the blog success like this cheeky monkey (see image on the right) who has my post, but forwards to a live nude and sex website. How odd is that. I can't see I saw that one coming! I suppose it could turn out to be good for me though, as now I've written the words "nude" and "sex" (twice) it's bound to get me a tonne more hits... suckers!!

If you're interesting in seeing where your viewers come from, go to www.statcounter.com and sign up to the free service. Then stick your code in your "page description" and it will log every single hit to your page. Not only can you track the amount of hits you've had without a big ugly hit-counter, but you can see how people move around your site, how long they stick around for, how they get to you, where in the world their from and all kinds! I highly recommend it!

Oh, and I've had a few emails asking where to get the blogging t-shirts. Some are only available in certain countries, but here are the links to the best ones:-

"Nobody reads my blog"
http://www.jinx.com/scripts/details.asp?affid=-1&productID=483

"I heart blogging"
http://www.zazzle.com/optimuscrime/product/235685599260558369

"I'd rather be blogging"
http://www.cafepress.com/buy/blog/-/pv_design_prod/p_926158.13540047/pNo_13540047/id_5264105/fpt_/opt_/c_360/pg_

"I'm blogging this"
http://www.thinkgeek.com/oreilly/tshirts/5eb7/

That should keep you going for now...!

Coming soon... or now

I've been neglecting you again poor blog, and for this, I am sorry; but God have I been busy recently. Now, there's just not enough hours in the day to do everything that I need to. With the way my schedule is filling up at the moment with events, interviews, gigs, parties and general radio stuff I just don't have time for anything else.

I've had blog ideas that I've wanted to write down for days, but I've just not had the chance. There's one about blogging t-shirts, there's a couple of film reviews that I need to write, I need to pick and write my album of the week decision, there's last weeks show roundup and a general update in the abundance of madness that is my life as well as a plethora of other bloggy goodness.

On top of that, I've got a website to finish for the radio station that's draining the few spare minutes that I find myself with. It's going very slowly though. It's going to be filled with so many wonderfully over the top, cutting edge features that the back-end development is taking me so much longer than I originally thought. You can see the progress so far on http://alzani.falba.net/xse/default.php. I'm liking how it's going to look so far though, but I have tonnes of ideas running around in my head that I hope I can get down on paper.

Anyway, that's a short and chirpy (or not) catchup on why I've not been around. I promise to do one of the mentioned topics later on. Probably the t-shirt one as I've had that one in my head for the longest and it's beginning to bug me that I haven't had a chance to right it yet...

Bugger it. I'll do it now!

Recently, I've noticed that blogging has been making it's way offline into the "real world". It's funny, as I kind of disconnect my blogging "life" from my real one. I don't consider the fact that I'm using real time to create a blog in virtual time, but they're not different; they're the same.
I have to be honest, I've got NO idea what I just said!

Anyway, getting back to the point. The other day, I was walking into Saint James' Park tube station, and I saw a guy wearing a t-shirt. As soon as I got back into the office I Googled the words that were on the front and found a lot more than I'd ever hoped for.

There is a growing culture of blogging related t-shirts, and I think it's fantastic. The one that I saw was "I'd Rather Be Blogging", but by no means is that the end of it all.

After more searching I also found ones with "Nobody reads my blog", "I'm blogging this" and loads of others. I suppose that blogs are becoming so popular that it was inevitable in the end.

I only own one "website related" t-shirt, but I've never had the balls to wear it.
It's from Faceparty.com, is bright turquoise and on the front, in massive white letters it says "Sit On My Face And Party".
Now, I'm up for a laugh and enjoy a challenge and taking risks, but I do have my limits (surprisingly), and that t-shirt borders on the edge of that. I almost wore it on a night on the town once, but my better nature got a hold of me and I went for the "I'm in a band" one in the end. That t-shirt is semi-infamous around these parts. Everyone tells me that they want it, but they can't have it... it's mine... all mine! ***evil sinister laugh***

*ahem*. Anyway, it's my birthday on Friday (God yeah, need to write about that too), so if anyone wants to get me a blogging t-shirt then I'll post a picture of myself wearing it, along with a smile the size of a... well... really big smile.

So yeah, like I said. It's my birthday on Friday and I'll be turning good old 24. I've been looking forward to being 24. It's a nice number, though bordering on that "quarter of a century" mark.

To celebrate this momentous occasion, I'm having a kind of two day, part in - part out birthday fancy dress, Halloween theme weekender. What that basically involves is a house party on Friday night at mine, then an all day, all night drinking session in London centre on Saturday. That's not so uncommon you might say, but to participate in it, you have to be wearing Halloween fancy dress costumes. From what people are telling me there a big range of costumes from cats, to werewolves, to slutty nurses and evil blood soaked doctors. Personally, I'm going as Pennywise, the incredibly scary clown from Stephen Kings IT. I sense that I'm not going to make a lot of friends over the weekend. Becky in particular is not looking forward to it as she's afraid of clowns; let alone scary "teeth snarling" beastie clowns. She wrote about it in her blog. Excellent!

For anyone who's not familiar with Pennywise, this is him! Look at him. It's just evil! I love it! It's going to be a fun weekend of chasing kids around Piccadilly circus, that's for sure.

There's actually a few things that I still need to do to the flat to prepare, and I really should do it tonight as tomorrow I'm doing the new show intro and idents with Katie, and Thursday is obviously the show; but I can't afford it until I get paid on Thursday. Hmmm, decisions decisions. I'm sure it will all come together in the end.

You know what. I actually feel a lot better now I've done a blogtastic mega-entry. I don't feel like I've deserted my hard-core followers (if there are any). I've still got tonnes and tonnes and tonnes to talk about and post, but I'll have to schedule some time in to write about those, as I have other things I need to go and do now, but I'll be back; like the killer in any horror film made after 1996, I'll will return!

Never forget where you're from

People always say "never forget where you're from", "remember your roots" and other such home-related sayings in order to give you a sense of grounding; but what if you're like me, and the problem is you can't forgot, no matter how much you might want to.

Over the last four or five years, my home town of Burton-on-Trent has gone to pot; and I mean that in both meanings of the word. Sure, it's a brewing town, nay, the brewing capital of the World, and being from there I'm used to the constant overwhelming smell of hops and marmite; but to an outsider it would probably have you regurgitating your lungs all over the pavement within a matter of minutes.

This could prove beneficial though, as you're more than likely to hit a chav with your arc of sick. When I left Burton back in 2000, the term "chav" was just on the rise, and was thrown around as an insult to anyone who even dared own a cap bearing the "NY" symbol. Now, Burton is just a wash with fake Burberry, Elizabeth Duke jewellery and earrings so humongous that you could drive a train through them without touching the sides. Something has gone wrong! The chavs swarm about in packs like post-historic velocoraptors, hunting out their next pensioner shaped prey to attack in a flurry of tracksuits and gold sovereign rings.

I suppose, as a brewing town, Burton wrote it's own suicide note from the very start. When you hit 13, the bouncers will let you in anywhere, and when you can get two double vodka redbulls and four shots of tequila for £6, it's not surprising that a lot of young thug-types decide to hangout there.

Don't get me wrong, Burton isn't all bad by any means. There's two sides of the river, the "nice" side, and the "other" side. Guess which side I grew up on! My side has large detached houses, kids ride their bike in the streets and there's no gun crime in the schools. The other side... well... a new council estate springs up every year and a lot of the population live in their provided flat, with their eight kids, living on a statutary diet of beans on toast, cigerettes and Special Brew. I don't mean to be pretencious or condescending in anyway, but now whenever I go to Burton I feel taller. Maybe it's because I'm one of the very few that's made it from Burton to the Big City and am doing something with my life instead of flittering off into an early grave with nothing to show for myself except a family tree wider than the "Y-shaped" coffins that a lot of the girls there will need to be buried in.

When I look at the MySpace forums from my old school, you can see the digression over the years. I may write something like "I disagree. I don't think that it happened like that", where as the Burton locals would be more likely to put it "Fuck off. it waz neva nuffin lik dat".

I blame MTV!
And Wetherspoons!

Forget where you're from? I wish!

Going, going, gone

I'm sorry ladies (and any gents who have completely the wrong idea), but as of today, I am officially off the market. That's right, I know you've all been praying for a gossip opportunity recently, and here it is. Though come to think of it, when does anyone not want a gossip? Oh, I dunno... I guess that's one of the questions that us humble guys will never know the answer to.

Anyway, this doesn't mean that I'm going to divulge everything quite yet, I'll leave that one for you to try and figure out, but I have a feeling it won't take very long; especially here at lastminute where you only have to open your eyes and it's as good as giving it away.

So, I just thought I'd stir things up a bit for the morning before I trek off home now.

God, it's just gone 8:00pm. Where does the time go?