I'm gonna get this bit out of the way first thing. Facebook. The cause of many of life's problems. Since I got it within a month or so of going to university it has been there taking up my time that would be much better used on doing more constructive things such as working or doing exercise or just about anything. But it is not the general facebook that I am going to rant about here it is the events section. You think, wow what a nice simple way to invite all your friends to a night out. NO! this is a myth, it is utterly useless.

This too was the case on this occasion. About a month or so ago I created the event Bombay Bicycle Club @ KOKO (Club NME) to which I invited a solid 30 or so people to. As expected I got a number of replies saying no they couldn't make it which is fair enough but then you get the people who say yes and don't mean it, say maybe or even don't reply. How is this useful to anyone. What does Maybe actually mean in this situation, if it is no but I don't want to say it, WHY? just say no. the same for not replying. The worst though are the people who say yes despite having no intention of going whatsoever. The group had a confirmed attendance of 7 people and yet after I called around on the day only 2 of them came. Me and Leander. Laura was there as well but she was with a bunch of her mates.

Rant over, the day started with some Labour party work, delivering leaflets, then a quick trip to meet the girlfriend (who was one of the few people to have a decent reason for not coming) and then off to Colliers Wood tube station for 8 o'clock. I had estimated that it might take us an hour to get there, but it only took about 40 minutes, so we went to the pub across the road and had a few brewskies. I hadn't intended to drink on the night but as there were only 2 of us there I thought it probably would be a bit weird not to. Don't ask me to explain that reasoning but it made sense to me. Anyway we stayed in the crescent pub until about half past 10 and then made our way into KOKO. The entrance price by this time was up to £5.00 of which Leander payed full price. I on the other hand asked the man behind the till if I got cheaper with NUS he said yes and without even checking that I had one, charged me the measly sum of £2. I of course was elated, whereas Leander was a little peaved.

We were inside and immediately I remembered why I loved KOKO so much, not only does it look amazing, they play top tunes. The first two we heard were the wombats and the view. We went up to the top bar (as it is always the emptiest) and ordered some drinks and I immediately remembered why I don't go there every week. £3.50 for a can of beer. Luckily there was some special deal going on. A concotion called a granite something, not entirely sure what it contained but it tasted largely of ginger beer, which wasnt a bad thing and it was by far the cheapest drink there. We went back into the main room again and what song came on next. GENERATOR! by the Holloways and of course I went mental, stepping on various people's feet and getting some weird looks but I didn't care, it is essential when hearing that song.

The first band came on at 11:30, they were from New Zealand, I can't remember their name and for that matter I wouln;t want to. They were boring, end of. There is actually nothing else of note to say about them. After they finished there was a 15 minute break, including songs from the Libertines and one of my most recently listened to artists, Ida Maria before Bombay Bicycle Club took to the stage. I have liked the band for a few years now, since I first saw them on road to V after the Holloways. Back then they were 16 year old school kids who had just finished their GCSE's, now at 18 they are allowed to play in venues such as KOKO and play it they did. The performance was lively and saw them playing all the songs that they have released so far in their fledgling career. Their stage presence was good if not a little anxious but then they are only just starting playing to bigger venues, I do like the lead singers dancing though as he plays the guitar, reminds me of myself. This doesn't mean he's a good dancer but not afraid to just move exactly how he likes without caring. The set finished at about 1 o'clock and me and Leander stayed dancing away to the indie anthems until about 2 before we left for home.

As usual I got lost first but then remembered where the nigthbus leaves from. The bus journey took maybe an hour in total and so we were back at my house by about half 3 and then we went to sleep before being woken up at stupid o'clock in the morning by my dad going to work. Leander then left and I went back to sleep.

END

I currently have no internet, so this is going to be the first blog I have ever written before I’ve actually been able to put it up. The plus side to this that if I make any silly spelling errors the lovely word checker will tell me, the bad sides are obviously that I can not put it up immediately and the horrible little spell checker that doesn’t accept words like blog.

Anyway I am currently in Durham as the title would suggest well not quite Durham but a nearby town called Stockton where my girlfriend’s university is situated. I’m not sure how glad she will be that I am telling the whole world this but I went up with her this week to keep her company while she is doing her re-sits. Yes, it may seem a bit of a bad idea as she is meant to be heavily revising but I can imagine if I was up here by myself I would get very lonely and thus most likely fall into some kind of depression. It is not that Stockton is a bad town; on the contrary, some parts of it are quite exciting. Just there is not all that much in close proximity of the room we are in.

So onto the actual activities that I shall be talking about. The lady needing to revise meant that I needed to make myself scarce and being the helpful lad I am I thought I would do some shopping for us for the week. Obviously this did not go entirely to plan or it wouldn’t be worth writing about. Kali told me the directions to the local Morrisons supermarket but I hazily forgot them and so went for a bit of a wonder. I looked around me for inspiration and saw a Morrisons sign and naturally made my way towards it. Apart from getting stuck briefly in a David Lloyd fitness centre I made good progress towards the sign. I did get a little confused at the location, it seemed a little secluded and that’s when I saw it, the Morrisons sign that I had been making my way towards, unfortunately not the supermarket but the regional head-quarters. A good hour and a half after I had initially left I got back to the room with as little food as I had started with. We then had a nice Chinese take away to celebrate.

That was the Thursday, on the Friday we went to the cinema to catch the latest Mummy film, for anyone who hasn’t seen it I am just about to ruin it by saying it is exactly the same as the other ones but in China . Saturday I went into town which apparently, as I read on the signpost, has the widest high street in the UK . Stockton has everything you would expect in a town, a variety of shops and a good selection of pubs. It also has a market on a Wednesday and a Saturday which is ridiculously cheap and has the coolest named building ever ‘The Shambles Shopping Centre’. But it was Sunday that boasted the next really exciting events.

We woke up late on Sunday, too late for our planned visit into town and so we spent another day of me mindlessly playing computer games and her doing her best to do anything except revision and this is the way it stayed until approximately 8 o’clock-ish when we decided to take a little stroll as we were tired of being cooped up in the room all day. We made our way over the bridge into Stockton , taking a few pictures as we went, for memories and then made our way onto the deserted high street. Well not quite deserted, there was only one man that we could see and of course he came up to us. A slight fear came upon me as it always does when a beggar comes to you but soon enough he turned out to be the greatest beggar of all time. He introduced himself to us as Paul and he made up a lovely little story of how once a few years back I had seen him in a café and leant him some money for a cup of tea, he then told us how he was still homeless but getting out of a bad patch. As if this wasn’t enough he kept telling me that I was gorgeous and that my hair was beautiful, anyone who knows me in the slightest will know that this kind of compliment will get you just about anywhere with me, and it would have got into my wallet had I been carrying more than 17 pence on me at the time. He did on several occasions feel the need to point out that he wasn’t ‘a queer’ whilst telling me I was gorgeous which was nice to know as we hugged and said farewell.  I did feel bad that I had no money to give him after such a magnificent effort from him. A tip for you if you ever find yourself begging on the street, don’t just sit there and ask for money, be like Paul and do a whole speech, it really worked on me.

I bet you are thinking wow! That is a pretty exciting story but no it does not end there on that very same night after we had said goodbye to Paul we walked a little further up the street and decided to have a photo next to these weird dog statues when an elderly lady asked if she was in the way. At first I had thought she was angry but she wasn’t and soon enough we found ourselves in our second conversation with a stranger of the night. Her name was Joyce and she was a little old fashioned which some may construe as racist especially in the company of my Asian girlfriend but it was clear that she meant nothing by it, she had just clearly grown up in a lot less politically correct time. Her racism was not the only thing about her though; she had an amazing grasp of language. She asked Kali where she was from and when she heard Sri Lanka she immediately said ‘nundri’ which means thank you. She then listed how many languages she could say thank you in. From Urdu, to Polish, to French, to German, it was truly inspiring her stories of how a man called her a pig in Urdu and she replied who are you calling a pig in his own native language. Language though was not her only talent she then got out her little pack of cards and wrote our names in an old English font which I shall now keep as a souvenir for ever. The conversation with Joyce went of for what seemed like half an hour but we soon said goodbye and then started on our way back to the room and I found myself in an extremely jubilant mood following the evening’s proceedings (well that the absurd amount of sugar I had consumed that day). We got back to the room by about 11 and went to bed.

And here we are on Monday we are going to go into town today again because Kali wants to get some stress relief in the form of shopping which I am a bit apprehensive about. I have never been shopping with her properly yet and I am sure I will end up spending hours waiting around clothes shops waiting for her to try on clothes but you never know it may just be fun. Tomorrow is her next exam and then we shall be headed back home soon after on another six and a half hour coach ride…

This is the end of my Durham blog, and just because I am writing it in word I will give you a word count so here it is… One Thousand, Three Hundred and Twenty Nine words, wow!

See you soon, END

It was today that I went to the Field Day festival. Field day is a festival that I probably wouldn't have looked twice at thisyear due to a fairly average line up and my complete and total lack of money but when my friend Nicole phoned up a month or so back, telling me that she had won a pair of tickets and wondered if I wanted to go, I was as good as there.

The timing of the festival was not great considering it was the day after my mum and dad were going on holiday, so I said goodbye to them at 4 o'clock in the morning, then fell asleep and woke up again at about 9 in preperation for the day ahead - As I said 'It was today that I went to the Field Day festival' in my opening line it is now safe to guess that I am in fact very tired writing this blog but nevertheless I shall carry on. Anyway I woke up at 9 and got myself ready to leave at 10 to meet Nicole at Mile End station at 11 and that all just went swimmingly, we then walked down to Victoria park, picked up her free tickets and we were inside the festival gates no later than 11:30.

Unfortunately as with all festivals, the time between opening and any decent acts coming on is at least an hour, so we walked around, getting a bit of a feel for the festival. Largely it was what you expect of a festival field, a large main stage, a few smaller tents and a whole load of merchandise and food stands. This was not all though, for some reason there was a large 'sports day' field in the centre where people were partaking in various events such as the egg and spoon race and the tug of war. It provided a strangely high amount of amusement watching these people playing games. We then sat down in one of the tents and had a little relax before heading back down to the main stage to watch the first act of the day.

The first act we saw was Noah and the Whale, who were deffinitely on my list of must see bands of the day. I don't know all that many of their songs, just three in fact, but I do like them all, especially '5 years time' which has been getting a lot of air play as of late on radio 1. They played all the 3 songs that I knew plus a selection of others from their forth-coming debut album in their opening half hour slot and it was a most enjoyable start to the day.

By now the weather was already beginning to deteriorate and bringing it back to a point I made earlier about the not outstanding line up. We had very little to do between the end of Noah and the Whale at 1 and Laura Marling at 4. Our main aim was to find shelter and thus we found ourselves in the 'bugged out' tent for a lot of that time. In the afformentioned tent they mainly play hardcore electo type stuff which I don't mind in small doses but a whole set of it was a bit much. Nevertheless it was better than getting wet and so we stayed there with the druggies and the ravers, showing off our pristine dance moves.

During this lull of good music we also managed to have lunch at possibly the best value of the over priced food stands. I first looked at the pasta stand, trying to be healthy and all but when looking at the price of £5 for a small plate of pasta in pesto I decided to go for the much better value 'chunky chips in Wicked Dips' £3.50 for a large container of chips with a rather tasty chili salsa

Eventually 4 o'clock came about and Laura Marling took to the stage sporting a very boyish haircut. I wasn't too bothered by that because she is a bit of a genius. She was clearly a bit nervous at singing in front of quite a large crowd but she didn't let it bother her getting through several of the tracks from her album. Unfortunately she only had a half hour long set and so I didn't get to hear all the songs that I was hoping for but still it was very good.

The next band we saw on the main stage was the surprise highlight of the day, Of Montreal. A very camp five piece from across the pacific. Their performance was so much more than just the music which did sound enjoyable  but I doubt would have been so inspiring without the rest. They all came out in bright, garish costume, especially the lead singer who was wearing tights and what I can only describe as a fish net cardigan along with the customary bright blue eyeliner. NOT only this during the performance there were a number of people coming onto the stage in various guises doing odd little dances and also giant balloons filled with glitter were burst over the crowd - a large amount falling onto my head, really livening up my outfit. It was truly a mesmerising set due to its sheer oddness and thus easily my favourite part of the day.

As soon as that had finished we rushed straight off to the Adventure tent to see a band called Mae Shi who Nicole had seen before and had raved about but on seeing them I was less than impressed apart from when they sent a parachute into the crowd which was passed on around the tent but the songs were pretty average and of course the visual display had no chance of beeting what I had just seen, so all in all the Mae Shi were not that influential on my day.

We then rushed back over to the main stage to catch Lightspeed Champion who were another band that I really wanted to see and too they didn't dissapoint. Dev Hynes maybe a real emo but there is no doubting he has real character and stage presence which made the performance that much more enjoyable. Another added bonus of their set was the random playing of the entire star wars theme tune before their final song which was unexpected and exciting.

At this point we were beginning to get a bit tired and because of the atrocious weather we decided to call it a day and so we didn't catch the headliners Foals but having seen them last year I was not especially dissapointed. We left the arena and made our way back to Mile end station where we went our seperate ways along the central line and I was home by around 9ish. All in all field day was enjoyable but I deffinitely would have been a bit dissapointed had I actually paid to go to it. And that is the end for another blog. Au Revoir

END