What is Roland Rivron for?

I turned on my television earlier this evening to find some Saturday evening guff on (I think it was called Last Choir Standing or something) and standing next to the formerly lovely Myleene Klass (I went off her when I saw her "interviewing" Boris Johnson when pretending to be Judy Finnigan the other day. I almost felt sorry for him with her vapid questioning on policy) was Roland Rivron. It's not that I dislike him. That would be easy. It's just that I can't quite work out why he's on television. He's certainly not bad at presenting. And people must like him, because you don't get a Saturday night primetime slot if nobody likes you (unless you're Piers Morgan). But he's just instantly forgettable. He's instantly recognisable but nothing he's done has been in any way memorable. There's a vague memory of him being a team captain on an awful music version of A Question of Sport presented by Jamie Theakston, but that's only because I was somehow reminded of it the other day.

I do wish that there was some kind of punchline to this, but there isn't.


I'm alone for the first time in a week. It's... weird. Just like everything really. Some things are amazing. Some are terrifying.

Much has happened. And I have no energy to put any of it into words.

Rain is falling on you but you have the wherewithall
To pull on a raincoat, shielding you from all this cold

Reading lineup

Well, I finished Bit of a Blur by Alex James the other day and it was rather fantastic. His writing style takes a bit of getting used to. I mean no offence to him, but his sentences are fairly childlike in structure, often having paragraphs of "I did this. Then I did that." No doubt like my own occasional writing can be, I suppose.

But it's very interesting (unlike my own). If you're expecting an exposé of who did what to whom during the 1990s or what was the real reason behind various public events then you'll no doubt be disappointed, but it's certainly a fascinating insight into his life. He tells you what he wants to tell you and no more, but in a captivating way.

I need to finish reading Down And Out In Paris And London by George Orwell which I half read a few months ago and never got round to finishing. The same with The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart although I'll probably start that again because it's been so long since I started reading it.

After that, who knows?

Yes, I do realise I have just written about 200 words for no other reason than a rather awful joke that no doubt nobody will notice. But it's better than a 1500 word ramble about how shit things are isn't it?

"Then we meet as satellites that are grounded by the weight of the Earth"

An update to fill up part of the day.

I need to go to Sainsbury's. I have no bread and I'm running out of juice. And I need a walk. And a paper. It's Monday, and hopefully Charlie Brooker will be back. I don't want to check the website because if he's not then my motivation levels might sink below the threshold of actually wanting to go out.

Yesterday was fun. I went to the Imperial War Museum with Charleh (the 30 minute film about crimes against humanity is particularly thought provoking), then we wandered around lots. Then found Green Park (they have deck chairs!) and sat in the shade for a bit before she had to go.

Last week nothing much happened. Monday we went to the Natural History Museum, then watched V For Vendetta and more Coupling at my house.

Stuff that's happening? I'm seeing a couple of TV programme recordings this week in London (Edinburgh And Beyond for Paramount Comedy, I believe. I probably should know, but I just saw Russell Howard's face and clicked on it) which I'm hoping will be fun. Then I'm going to a barbecue on Saturday. Then next week is Radiohead and my barbecue.

I'll no doubt make a post in a couple of days reiterating much of that simply to fill up time, but what can you do? This is probably the most boring thing I've ever written. And that's even taking into account my GCSE geography project.

It's highly annoying that when I have nothing to do my attention span drops massively.

Now I'm going to write a shopping list.

"Moments follow one another without belonging"

I've been trying to write something about the past week for... well, a week. Alright, I admit it. I've been wanting to use this title ever since it became stuck in my head the other day. There are worse reasons for writing blog posts though, I'm sure.

One disadvantage of not using Livejournal anymore is that I can't write über elitist filtered friends only group posts so that only people not directly involved can read what I have to say. Having said that, I only ever did it once on my Livejournal. And I doubt I'd go to all the effort of making a friends group now. But that's not the point. I'm not sure what the point is, but that's certainly not it.

Fuck. That sounds like things are bad doesn't it? No. The complete opposite. Things are very good. The past ten days or so have been absolutely fantastic. Sunday the 25th I went to Cardiff to see Emma. Came back Monday evening in the rain. Wednesday was the Maxïmo Park gig. I arrived at the venue at 1pm to meet Dana who had come over from Germany. When faced with six hours of queueing (I hate that word. Especially when the spell checker isn't working, because I lose track of what vowels should be where), what better thing to do than to crack open the vodka and coke? It was fantastic fun. Meeting new people, seeing old people, being given free fire from XFM, finding my new favourite person in the entire world, seeing some great bands, realising how fantastic Maxïmo Park are, nearly missing my last tube home, realising I should find out when my last tubes home are.

Thursday daytime was spent mostly sleeping (and collecting the Monopoly board that I ordered for the next night's fun), and then meeting James and Olli who were dumping stuff off at my house before a number of tube challenges. That evening there were plans for a Random 15 challenge. This particular challenge involved fifteen stations being secretly picked from the proverbial hat (computers have made hats all but irrelevant. It's quite unfortunate), the first one being announced in advance (because we all need to know where to meet up), the remainder being revealed when the clocks start and then we set off to visit them all in any order. The route had to be planned against the clock, which is different to most other of the challenges.

We were battling against some quite big problems on the network that night (not to mention hunger!) so we ended up abandoning half way through and going to McDonalds (although not before taking photos of us by the TARDIS that was there) then meeting everyone at the pub just before throwing out time. Very few groups finished, and we were all hoping that we were using up all our bad luck before the main challenge the next day.

The main challenge was the annual zone 1 challenge that myself, James and Matt did for the first time last year. This year Olli came along with us and Matt went with another guy. After meeting outside Oxford Circus at midday, King's Cross was drawn as this year's starting station so we made our way there furiously planning a route (well, James was. He'd planned it all without me noticing!) for a 1pm start.

Compared to last year we didn't have many problems at all. Certainly nothing like a ten minute wait at Liverpool Street anyway. Towards the end we had some minor problems (a lack of Hammersmith & City trains at Aldgate East) but we managed to fix them with our brilliant logic skills. A lack of ideal trains at the last minute meant we were one minute slower than last year, but I think I probably enjoyed this year more. Last year was good because it was the unknown, but we paced ourselves far better this year so we weren't so utterly exhausted after the first run.

We didn't stay for very long at the pub afterwards (just enough time to enjoy the nicest bottle of cider I've had for a long time) then we went to meet Charleh at Leicester Square, meet up with Laura then head back to mine for the inaugural Blood Red Shoes forum Monopoly tournament ® (for once, not a cover story for anything). After severely cocking up the journey back to Uxbridge (entirely my fault, which I'm very sorry about) we went to buy food and alcohol. Arriving at my house both were consumed for a few hours and we discussed Life, The Universe and Everything (well, Charleh and I did) then I took her back to the station because she had work the next day and when I returned (twenty minutes early) the battle commenced. As expected, I was first to become bankrupt. I think Olli won in the end, but I can't be sure. It was fun anyway, and that's what matters.

Olli had to leave earlier on Saturday so I took him to the station, then James, Laura and I had another Brie and Bacon sandwich from the café in Uxbridge station and Laura got another chocolate cookie sundae thing after we'd bought one the previous night and left it in my fridge. I bid them farewell and returned to tidy up.

Yesterday I was having some windows replaced which meant that I had to be up at 7:30am. Normally that would be fine but annoyingly Tuesday night marked the finale of the Primary season leading up to the US election. The result has been inevitable (yet close) for a few months now, but I'd have liked to have stayed up to watch the final speeches. Especially as Hillary Clinton was still apparently introduced as "The next president of the United States". Despite Obama having passed the all important mark of 50% of deligates.

Still, I woke up to let the window people in and went back to sleep for another hour. I met Charleh at about midday and we spent the afternoon mostly watching Coupling (which she, scandalously, had never seen before) then we went off to North Greenwich to meet James, Katy, Phil and his friend where we saw Avril Lavigne.

Despite being much more of a "pop" concert than last time I saw her (last time I saw her it was her, two guitarists, a bass player and a drummer wheras this time she had eight dancers, choreographed dance moves and huge screens), it was still brilliant fun. There were a number of "what the hell?" moments, particularly when everyone went off stage whilst the video played a montage of her promo videos whilst Avril's cover of a Joan Jett track played over the PA, but it was still great fun.


Apologies for how long this is. I'll give a lolipop to any who has read it all.

Oh, and I do wish there was some deliberate irony in me starting an entry saying "I don't like writing long blog posts describing what I've done with people who read said blog" and then following it up with a thousand words of doing exactly that. But it's not. That's just what came out of my fingers. And I really hate editing myself.

"Spring is such a painfully deceptive time"

It's cold. I've not really done anything for ages. It's kind of nice. I think.

Next week is going to be busy anyway. I'm going to Cardiff on Sunday and coming back Monday, Maxïmo Park on Wednesday which should be... interesting?, Random 15 tube challenge on Thursday night then my second Zone 1 on Friday. Then I need to job hunt. Well, whore myself out to anyone who will give me any money for five weeks.

Wouldn't it be nice if life and people were just a little bit less complicated? I'm not miserable or anything, just slightly frustrated. I'm going for a walk.

iLiKECOFFEE

I must say, National Express are doing good things with the East Coast mainline. Extending the free wifi out to standard class was a good idea.

I should say I'm on the train now. Sadly not a repainted one, but still. The free first class tickets mean that I've been drinking vast amounts of coffee (well, if I'm being offered it then it'd be rude of me to decline!) and taking advantage of the food vouchers that I've got. I wanted a sandwich and the vouchers are for £5 worth (they don't give change), so the woman kept giving me more things to make it up to exactly £5. I've still got a triple chocolate muffin left!

Anyway, I pretty much only made this post to show that picture and abuse the free wifi.

"I took a long, cold walk in the rain, I only want to feel something again"

I realised something a few minutes ago. The last time I left Uxbridge was three weeks ago tomorrow. Luckily I'm going into London tomorrow evening, but still.

Penultimate exam this morning. It went awfully. As I expected, but still awfully. Tomorrow is my last one. But it's maths, and so very difficult. I should be working, but I don't have the energy. I'll probably make myself some coffee and go out into the garden in a few minutes. Still, home again on Saturday, and seeing The Blues Band at Ripley. I haven't been there for ages, so it'll be nice to go back.

Then I'm back for six weeks (give or take. I'm not quite sure what my plans are really). I've got a few things happening which could be great fun. Well, they should be great fun. And if they're not then it'll be my own fault. I will try not to be a mopey fuck.

The tube challenge will hopefully be fun. Olli will be there (I believe?) so it'll be different to last year. In a good way, of course. Part of me can't help thinking that there's no chance that it can live up to the fun that was last year, given how that was just one of those days where so much unplanned fun happened. But I'm sure this year will be fun too.

I want to learn German and go and explore Germany and not worry about anything. If only life was that simple, eh?

"'I wonder if you can help me' she said"

Summer. It seems to arrive at the most irritating time each year, and then no doubt it'll crawl back into its hole as soon as I'm free again.

Yesterday morning was really nice. As anyone who has met me will know, I'm not a morning person at all. The only time when mornings and me mix are when I'm seeing them from the start. Waking up in the morning is horrible. Apart from yesterday.

I'd been to bed, for once, at a vaguely respectable time. I'm pretty sure I'd have been asleep by 11pm. I'd been woken up at about 2:30am by people walking back towards uni from a night out in town (all gathered from the conversation) but then I was awoken by birdsong at about half past seven. When I saw my watch my first reaction was of irritation, of being awake far too early but it being too light and noisy to return to sleep, but then I realised something amazing. I wasn't tired. I was actually entirely awake. And it was sunny. So what better thing to do than to make a mug of delicious coffee and read the Guardian from two days previously whilst drinking the aforementioned coffee? (I should say, that's a rhetorical question).

Irritatingly, as it has a habit of doing, real life caught up with me and I realised that I had to do some increasingly futile work for a set of increasingly pointless exams. But it all started off so well, and I'd like to thank whichever higher power (be it the Judo-Christian God, Allah, Neil Hannon, whoever) is responsible for beautiful summer morning.

Perhaps it was just because the pigeons decided to fuck off yesterday morning though. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate those poor excuses for birds? I'll save that for another time.


Anyway, this time next week I'll have finished my exams. At the moment I've done four and I've got two left, one on Wednesday and one on Thursday morning. I'm going to see the News Quiz being recorded on Thursday evening (I doubt there's a more middle class way of "celebrating" finishing exams), we're having a farewell barbecue on Friday night after Adam, Kev and Sascha finish their final exam (Adam and Kev are my housemates. Sascha lived with Kev in first year. We take the piss out of him for being German. Something that is made infinitely more funny because he's not), then on Saturday I'm going up north for a week. A couple of things happening up there, but mostly rest. A change of setting. That's something that I need.

"The International GCSEcore Underground"

I have two differing emotions towards my mobile phone. Most of the time it irritates the hell out of me. When there's any pressure on the case it restarts itself, turning off the keylock which doesn't turn on again. It also doesn't have enough power to cope with me typing at even a modest speed, especially when I'm writing messages that span over two SMS messages. And it has a horrible system of predicting what I'm going to write.

But sometimes the predictive text is quite good. It tries to remember previously written words and then tries to compound them with other words and offers me those if it fits in with the letters I've typed.

Yesterday, when trying to write the word "hardcore" it, rather helpfully, first offered me "gcsecore". Also this morning, when trying to write "offline" it offered "meekgod".


I feel that my obsessing over Google Analytics (Incidentally, I think I may have accidentally stumbled upon a new idea for a service for them) may have a dramatic effect on what I write in here. There's a worry that I might end up putting phrases like "Miley Cyrus naked" at the end of posts just to see if it gets people onto the site.

"Drape yourself in greenery, become part of the scenery"

Well, I'm slightly less angry now. Still, it's utterly horrible for the greatest city in the world.

A follow up to another one of my earlier whinges, I've spoken to my personal tutor about the possibility of resitting the year. There's nothing that can be done at the moment (understandably), but because I've spoken to him now he's in a better position to help me argue my case with the department when results come out. I'm hoping that they'll be in such need of an extra three grand that they'll be alright with it. I'll have to work out how to carefully word a potential threat to drop out if they don't let me resit to not sound like the bribery that it blatantly would be.

To the library tomorrow. I should leave it at this.

"Crazy, loopy & un-British"

What's this, ten minutes after an angsty post, I turn on the telly to watch Mock The Week and I see Russell Howard doing this gag ("OMGz! Fakery at the BBC! You mean it's not all off the cuff?! CALL MARY WHITEHOUSE!") and it made me so much happier.

"Thanks Velcro"

"It's not the same you and it never really is"

I had a fairly productive day yesterday. Well, far more productive than any day preceding it anyway. But today any motivation has gone out of the window. It's sunny, so I might try revising on the outside table for a bit after I've had some lunch.

Things I've bought today. A ticket for the rather ace looking Latitude festival. And a tshirt of the rather excellent Johnny Foreigner. They need a website because I don't like linking to Myspaces as a primary link. (How odd. Never Ending Story by Limahl has just come on iTunes. What fun). That's all quite expensive, but it's all covered by money coming into my account from my housemates. (The deal we have with bills is that I have all the direct debits set up from my account and then at random points I tell them to give me money. It works, which is nice).

Oh, something else. I've got back into halls for next year which is nice. Well, it's not ideal. But since everyone who I know is doing a placement year next year and won't be in Uxbridge then I decided that it's easier to avoid people who I dislike in halls than to have to do the same in a house. It's called Galbraith Hall, and is named after an engineer who worked on the Bakerloo Line, which is rather nice. I think he's mostly known for designing the Kew Railway Bridge.

My favourite piece of spam today?

Girls can go crazy groping you
Girls call me the ultimate love making machine and I don't need a beemer for that.

Delightful, eh? Another one:

Bed her on the first date
Make her strip immediately with this

And then a link. I can only assume that it's trying to sell me rohypnol (a word which my Firefox spellchecker doesn't know. It does, however, offer me hypnotism. I'm not sure which is more morally acceptable).


Oh yes, Latitude Festival. There aren't many bands announced yet but so far they look amazing. And the comedy! I want to see pretty much all of the comedians that are listed. It'll hopefully be a warm up for Edinburgh anyway.

**insert pretentious song lyric here**

I've spent a few hours in the library this morning. I feel like I've actually done something productive, which is nice. I was actually getting into things by the time my headache got unbearable.

The thing is that my library has two "sections". The blue bit which is the main bit with books and things where people can talk, and the red bit is for silent study. Supposedly.

It's not too noisy, but you have to walk through it to get from one set of stairs to the main bit, which means there's a load of people walking through most of the time. Why on earth they don't use the other stairs I don't know.

But the worst bit is that it's far too hot in there. I drank the best part of a litre and a half of blackcurrant juice in the space of two and a half hours and I still had a headache. I'll try and find somewhere that's a bit cooler when I go back in a minute.

When I finally got there this morning I did discover that I'd brought the wrong textbook though. That was very annoying. And they only had an older one on the shelves.

I do realise that's very dull. Sorry for that.

I should go back. We're playing Monopoly tonight! I'll inevitably lose, but it's fun anyway.

"Captain Beefheart is better than Edgar Broughton"

Hello. I've finally got round to making one of these things. I've wanted to set one up for months but there was a major problem. I didn't have a name for one. I could have just had sven945.blogspot.com, but that would have been dull. And there's also the fact that I don't really like the username "sven945". It leads people to call me Sven. I'm not quite sure why.

After spending a lot of time listening to Radiohead B sides and Underworld album tracks trying to decipher the angsty moanings of Thom Yorke and mentally remove the vocoder effects on Karl Hyde's stream-of-consciousness lines, I finally found this phrase in a book that I'm reading. I like it. It stuck in my mind. Does it matter? I don't know. I'll probably learn to dislike it in a few weeks. Does it warrant a paragraph being written about it? Probably not. But I don't mind.

I've used online journals before. I had one many years ago on an online acquaintance of mine's website where I wrote about five entries, all of which clocked up to around 1500 words each. Not only does it take an awfully long time to write entries like that, nobody reads them. I abandoned that one for some reason then six months later or so I was convinced to sign up to Livejournal. Every so often, once a year or so, I look back at some of my old posts on that. It makes grim reading to say the least. Overindulgent, self obsessed crap. I feel sorry for anyone who knew me at the time of writing all that and who no doubt wanted to tell me to shut the hell up and do something useful about certain situations, rather than spending my time moaning and listening to Easyworld records. I often remind myself how bad things would have been (in the sense of how bad my livejournal would have been rather than how, in reality, I would have been) had I discovered the entire Cure back catalogue. I had Disintegration, which is still one of the most depressing albums I've ever heard, but I dread to think what hearing Bloodflowers would have done to me.

But that's all in the past. Probably like any other music obsessive, there were songs that are always and forever linked to certain people in my mind. Luckily, over the past six months or so, I've realised I can listen to most of those again. Yes, they are still linked to certain people from my past, but I don't see anything wrong with that. It's the past, and there is much that I perhaps wish hadn't happened, but it's still part of what's made me who I am now. And if you don't learn from those things then what's the point in living?

That's all got far deeper than I intended, and I do apologise. Ultimately what I want to say is that the point of this isn't to whinge about girls who don't want to have sex with me. Perhaps it's easy to say that now in a way that it wasn't at other points in my life because I'm not spending my time obsessing over anyone.


That's almost an introduction. I say almost because I doubt it tells you anything particularly worth knowing. I've not really talks about my interests at all, nor have I actually said what I'm going to to use this blog for. Since this post is incredibly long already (I don't think blogger will give me a word count) I'll write separate posts for some of my interests, and I'll try to be more concise than I have been in this one. I'm not sure how successful that will be, but I'll certainly try my best. Do please leave comments. It makes me feel like people have at least a passing interest in my ramblings. Feel free to ask me things. I might not answer, but ask away nonetheless. I'll certainly reply to you, even if it's avoiding the question that you asked in the first place.


Current music: RPWL - Cymbaline (Pink Floyd cover)