Uni life
I believe that this is my first entry to this blog since I moved into my halls of residance at Newcastle University. I have to say it is pretty awesome and I get on with everyone on my floor. I am now going to attempt to list everyone on my floor as a little test for myself….me, Sam, Adam, Matt, Simon, Dan, Tom, Andy, Bill, Toby, Angus, James….can’t remember the last guys name, oh well.
Been pretty good, probably a bit too much drinking as I woke up on the corridor floor yesterday morning but I felt it was a sign of a good night out really. Women are also pretty easy to get off with as well but I am not sure if that was just because it was freshers week.
I don’t really have anything interesting to add at this time but I am sure I will be able to think of something soon.
EDIT: the guys name that I could not remember is James.
The Aero story
I love this story mainly because it’s funny and happened to one of the rowers. Anyway this guy called Fred is a rower and they were all in Italy. The cox Steve likes to abuse people and one night they all got drunk and he basically shoved an Aero bar (a chocolate bar, check wikipedia) up his ass.
Fred wakes up in the morning to find he has a melted bar of chocolate in his crack. I thought it was pretty funny anyway.
A note from Toon
I have managed to connect to a neighbours wireless unprotected network (what sort of stupid idiot doesn’t protect their network?) so I currently have the ability to write a quick blog for you guys.
So been living up in Newcastle since friday 15th with some grad and final year students who are all like 20 something which is pretty cool. In Jesmond which is where a lot of the 2nd year “better off” students go and having a bit of a laugh. The rowers are all pretty cool but some of them are a bit posh which puts me off a bit but it seems good. Staying with some girls called Lisa, Alice, Helen, Sarah and Hannah who are all awesome and really nice. Alice is from Shipley and Helen is from Rawdon so local girls which is pretty cool. There are also two guys called Mason and Sam who came up like me for pre-season who I don’t really like. They are pretty posh public school boys sort of thing and seem to of been a bit sheltered from the real world - I feel like punching them half the time.
Training has been pretty mental. On saturday did 20k on river (20k = 20 000 metres); sunday did a 40 minute ergo (rowing machine) and 10k on the water; monday i went for a 15k run and 10k on the water; tuesday I was out in a single skull for the second time in my life and it was choppy - no idea how much I did but I didn’t capsize which is the main thing and today I did 2×6k on ther ergo - I have never done more than a 5k on an ergo and that was a year ago so it really was hard today.
Moving into halls on saturday and freshers week should be starting on sunday which will be great. Anyway catch you later dudes.
Bye bye
Off to stay with someone tomorrow, not entirely sure of their name etc. but who cares should be interesting. 9 day of pre season rowing training with 1 session a day should be quite a nice way to be broken into the rowing season. The shit will hit the fan however if they have any issues with my height and don’t let me train but again we shall see how it goes.
I doubt I am going to have internet access as I am not planning on taking my laptop and even if I did I would presume I that they won’t have a wireless network but you never know do you!!
Move into halls on the 23rd and freshers week begins the next day. I should get my information for the university network on the monday (25th for those who can’t work it out) so that is when I am next going to be online.
Bye bye xx
Shavey
I went a bit crazy the other day, I now have minimal hair on my head. Some people love it, others hate it. I don’t really care as my hair will grow back and at least I don’t look like a complete tosser. Here are some before and after photos.
The Datsuns
What can I say? It was pretty awesome. They were playing at the Cockpit in Leeds which is probably the smallest gig venue I have ever been to. It is also the hottest and the loudest (never experienced ear ringing so bad that has lasted as long anywhere else). The warm up act, don’t even know their names, where what I would call shit. It’s not that they were bad, it’s that it was just shouting. I thought of them as a bad version of Death From Above 1979 (and they’re not amazing live).
The venue wasn’t sold out and so was not very packed but it was not that bad. Crowd where liking the music from The Datsuns but didn’t seem to want to rock out like me and a few friends. Due to this there was only about 3-4 rows of people going crazy and the rest of it was just people nodding their head. What ya gonna do?
Set was awesome, one of my friends even got asked what song they should play next which was sweet. We basically just rocked out and had a great time. Merchandise wasn’t too price (£10 a t-shirt which is what the tauts usually charge) and vibe was good.
I don’t really have an idea of the set but I took several photos on my phone which I think are pretty good (3.2 megapixel camera baby yeah)
Foil man
Well something rather interesting happened on sunday. Got a phone call from Duncan which summarised was basically.
“Go buy some tin foil and come to my house”
Bought 30 metres of the stuff (I would also like to point out that tin foil is not exactly what you would call cheap). Anyway I arrive and there is him, his sister (Lizzy) and her boyfriend Charlie eating nachos and they fill me in on what is going on.
Basically there are some Jehova’s witnesses walking around annoying people so the master plan was to dress up in foil and mess with their minds. Except after some wrapping we realised that we didn’t have enough foil so Charlie and Lizzy went to buy more.
About 10 minutes later we get a phone call saying that some prick has reversed straight out into Charlie’s car, bastard. Me and Duncan come down to check it out (half dressed in foil suits). Nothing much happening down their so we continued to “get dressed” as it where.
Unfortunately my mates mum was their and she laughed at us. There was also an added bonus of a teacher from the school I had just left being in the car park at the time - I am probably going to be known as a crazy bastard at WGS now, oh well.
Walked around Tesco for a bit, some people found it funny and others just took it as some twats dressed in foil and carried on their shopping as normal.
Also went to the big car park in Ilkley where Duncan went crazy and ran round shouting he was free before going to Moors Centre to see what was going down and the Ilkley Fine Foods thing to try some food where some crazy guy tried to sell us out of date toothpaste which smelt of shit.
Bit of a dilemma
Currently having my laptop fixed by a couple of dodgy guys in Bradford (the only place to get deals on electrical goods) so I don’t have a computer at the moment. I am currently using the “family” computer but it has such a facist regime attached to it that I can only use it when my brother and sister give me “there permission” to use it - tossers.
Anyway I had a lovely blog saved on that computer about Foil Man but as I do not have the laptop I cannot post it on here so people you are going to have to wait a few days for that one (but trust me it’s good). Don’t know why I am saying this as I don’t think this blog has many readers, oh well.
Just got back from seeing The Datsuns. It was mint, crowd were shit and not up for going mental but the band were great and freakin awesome live. Also ticket was cheap so bargain. Go see them if you can, they’re like the decent version of Wolfmother with good back catalogue and mint guitar solo action going on.
Until I have the energy and the resources to produce the Foil Man and an amazing Datsuns review, good night.
University
I have been so busy writing the biggest blog about Leeds Fest 2006 that I have forgotten to mention what is happening in my life. Result wise at A-Level I got B (Business Studies), B (Maths) and C (ICT) where I needed ABC to get into Newcastle University to study computer science.
Luckily they still let me in even though I still dropped a grade and I officially move into my accommodation on 24th September. However I have been invited to go do some pre-season rowing training with the University squads from the 15th onwards and I have accepted. I am not entirely sure what is going on but I know I am going to be living with a random for 9 days or so which should be fun!!
Carling Weekend Festival: Leeds
I could of written this before now but I have been busy at work as you do after festival so I feel pretty fucked at the moment. You guys should feel very luck as this post is going to include numerous photos (most of them rubbish quality but there you go). So the adventure begins.
It all started with the prepartion for the big day of leaving. This prepartion basically involved making the camp flag and also “obtaining” suitable transport to move the beer from the car to the place where were going to camp. Me and Zach created the flag and it can be seen below.
This flag was a work of genius (in our opinion, my mum was not overally impressed) but it was not enough- we needed more damnit. Anyway Zach went off to Rosie’s and Duncan came over and we proceeded to go to Tesco to obtain a trolley. Now when “obtaining” a trolley there are several factors that should be considered. If you have to pay for the trolley is an important factor, another being how big the trolley is and what the wheel base is like. We discovered that Tesco has the best trolleys so we got one and proceeded to modify it.
Now all the basics had been covered. The purchasing of food and this year cider (Strongbow is the way forward, not only is it strong it tastes quite nice warm) so everything was ready - I had even packed so now it was time to have a good nights rest and get ready to go.
Both me and Duncan were driving this year. I only had to take Zach but Duncan had Fred and Steve (the legend) in his car so naturally he had more stuff. Unfortunately I don’t have a roof rack so Duncan had to put the trolley on his car as well as his and everyone he was taking stuff.
I would just like to point out just how low his car is sitting, didn’t seem to bother him anyway. So this was the start of the Leeds Fest experience and off we went. I had to follow Duncan and his crazy driving where we (or more like I) only nearly crashed a few times.
We arrived at the car park in one piece, after having some fun with novelty horn signs to discover that the gates had not yet been open and there was a huge queue which we were pretty near the back of.
When this sort of thing happens there is only one thing to do - get the chairs out and start drinking. Fred pointed out at this point that only in Britain would you find a nice orderly queue to a gate, in every other country he said that everyone would be pushing to get in. After this commented we decided to be European and to cut more or less the whole queue and be the first into the campsite and it worked like a charm (mainly because we used Bert to ram people out of the way).
The important thing at Leeds Fest to guarantee a good time is get a good camping spot. For us this means travelling to the Yellow Valley campsite which tends to be craziest of places to camp so naturally you are going to have the most fun!! Only slight downer was that we were parked nowhere near Yellow Valley so we had a bit of a treck on our hands but it was well worth it when we finally made it.
The tents went up rather quickly and everything as thrown in. We also had to set up Amar’s tent as he was not arriving until the next day due to work commitments. He just so happened to have the biggest tent and no sooner as we had put it up it started to piss it down so we all got into it and started to drink.
When the rain stopped, we all went to check out our tents and surprise surprise mine had leaked and there was a nice puddle at the bottom of it- oh the joys (wet sleeping bag is not nice). Didn’t really care at this point but Zach managed to blag a tent off Rosie (the bird) so we would at least have somewhere to sleep which was dry from the thursday onwards.
Anyway, as the rain started to ease off the true legendary ginger that is Brown shows up and announces he has a marquee. Marquee is quite a loose discription I would say, basically he had the biggest ground sheet (something stupid like 60 square foot) and proceeded to put it up using big metal poles. There were three great things about this “marquee”, firstly it gave us all somewhere to chill when it was raining on that first night, saved us a big camping space as no one would want to camp by it and thirdly we now had our own toilet!!
The marjority of the evening was spent drinking and meeting randoms (including the neighbours) like this guy.
Fred kicked a few fires over and got caught by security but luckily the secuirty were all racist and just dismissed what the black security guy was saying about Fred. Steve also fell over in Cosy Camper and me and Zach found Duncan passed out in Amar’s tent, we presumed he was dead and left him.
Not a nice sleep (wet sleeping bags) so got ended up getting up at like 6am which was a ball breaker, Zach didn’t seem to like it anyway.
Had to do a bit of cooking to warmed up. I have forgotten to include a photo of the campsite but this is it basically- rather good we thought.
Now I would like to tell you one of the genius things about these festivals. They have second hand stalls which sell really random clothing and it all tends to be pretty cheap. Duncan bought this leather sheep jacket thing on the wednesday and on thursday it was decided that hats would be a good investment, to look cool and to stay warm at night when running round causing havoc. Hats were therefore bought.
Pretty pimping ey? Most of the rest of this day was spent drinking. We also decided to “test” Bert out. This testing was basically trying to let the organisers let Brown use Bert on the skate ramps, they refused so instead Brown went down the big hill at Orange camp. This won’t mean anything to anyone who hasn’t been to Leeds but lets just say it is BIG and no one made any video evidence as no one could watch as we all thought he would die. Anyway the end result was Bert being confiscated by security. I do have a video of the test run we did but that wasn’t really on a hill but it might give you an idea of why security took Bert away from us.
Another activity that happened on thursday was raw meat throwing. There is something satisfying about throwing raw meat and Duncan took great pleasure in throwing a couple of burgers.
I cannot actually remember much of this day except lots of people turned up and I got strangled by Sarah when she attempted to drunken hug me. I think in the evening the 5-a-side football pitch was destroyed as festivallers decided it should be more like 50 a-side which was funny. Some Duracell tent raving might of also been conducted.
Rolls on friday. Good sleep got up at about 10 (I would consider this an abnormality for me at Leeds as I am a pretty light sleeper). Anyway can’t really remember much of this day except that the bands started!! Also, Brown’s friend Stu turned up which resulted in some funny things happening but more on this later. First band I saw was iForward, Russia! who were very good and from the area. Proper crazy, here is a photo from the performance.
After this, we returned to camp before heading off again to watch GLC (Goldie Lookin Chain). If you are not aware of GLC then you should be, get some of their albums right away. They seem to be at Leeds Fest every year and each year they move further and further down the bill/stages. Funny as ever, I have some photo action to share with you people and I will upload the videos I made of their performance as well because I am nice like that.
On returning from GLC we found several of our camp in the piss tent which had been modified by Stu and they were all stoned (or just VERY chilled out). I have never seen people this stoned before (except for the following days as these people seemed to take it to a new level everyday, if they were in fact stoned). This is all down to somebody’s home grown, no drug dealing going on on our camp.
Rolled on the evening of friday at Leeds Fest. I had wanted to go to see Placebo but it seemed far too much effort, slightly gutted now but I will live with the fact I didn’t see them. Instead me and Zach went to the dance tent for a bit to see some random DJ before going to watch The Kooks. Everyone was complaining about the crush but we got to the front and there was loads of room - we were dancing about and everything. Their set was pretty shit as security came on part way through and shouted at everyone so they slowed it down a bit. I took quite a few photos of this performance.
After The Kooks, me and Zach went to get Duncan and Legend before proceeding to the dance tent to watch 2 Many DJs. Was absolutely raving in there and had a right laugh dancing too some tunes (I would like to point out that I was not on anything all weekend and at this moment in time I was barely drunk). Didn’t stay for all of the set but a far bit of it but it was probably one of my highlights of the weekend.
On returning to camp we discovered that the piss tent had been destroyed and the culprits had left a Japanese flag - damn Japs!!! (only joking, please don’t sue me). Rest of the night was spent drinking and meeting random people.
Unfortunately my phone was out of battery on the saturday so there is no photos of this day which as a bit of a shame. First band I saw were the Pigeon Detectives who were really good. Not really sure what happened between this time and Gorgol Bordello but I think we went round having a laugh; stealing nuts, coat hangers, abusing vegans - you know the usual. The problem was when we went to see Gorgol Bordello the NME Radio 1 Stage was behind and it was actually the Guillemots playing. They were alright but we didn’t pay much attention.
Gorgol Bordello were amazing though, really crazy pits and stuff. All their fans were mental and they put a right show in. Really enjoyed myself and was real sweaty afterwards. Again another highlight of my weekend.
I went to see Little Man Tate and bumped into Chris Moyles were was watching the band with who I presume were his girlfriend then some younger relations of his. LMT were alright, from Sheffield and seem to be a bit of a rip off of the Arctic Monkeys except their lyrics aren’t exactly amazing and they tend to be a bit more rocky. Was still a bit of a laugh and was quite a good show.
In the evening we went to watch Kaiser Chiefs which everyone slowly bailed out of, as they were no good. They would probably of been alright but no one could be bothered going to rock out so we stayed fairly far back and just took it in. As I was walking back to the campsite Dizzee Rascal was playing (I had forgotten he was on at Leeds) so went to check him. He was pretty good, couldn’t understand much of what he was saying but I enjoyed myself at least. Had a good time listening to the rap but didn’t stay for long.
Went to see a bit of Primal Scream later on that night as well, they were pretty good but a few of the songs sounded quite similar and it got a bit tedious so we left before any of the “big” songs came on. We did however dance around a guy passed out on the floor and do the hokey kokey which was quite fun. We also walked past a man doing naughty things with a woman outside the NME Radio 1 tent which was quite funny.
I got up on sunday to find that some of our neighbours had gone a bit crazy with their marquee thing and had put tents and stuff on top of it.
We also got a visit from the security staff. They wanted to take the piss tent away as they thought it was going to be burnt at night because of the riots Leeds is renouned for. No one wanted to touch it though as it was covered in piss so it ended up staying. If you wanted to know, this is what our campsite looked like on the sunday morning.
Today was spent packing up Rosie’s tent as we did not want it get destroyed and generally mess around as we had no one to go see until quite late in the afternoon. A lot of raw meat was thrown as well as other things. Duncan had hit a neighbour in the face with a sausage already which they weren’t too happy with but we also had got someone with some pasta salad and we threw more or less anything in our campsite.
Another comical even that happened was that we have a rule called “move your feet lose your seat” where if you get up you lose your seat. Now our friend Dave was being a cock and would walk round with a chair so he didn’t lose his seat (not that it was his chair or anything) so Fred tried to pull him off it which resulted in the chair being broken. He still refused to get off it, so me and Fred picked up the chair with him in it and threw him onto the piss tent. Dave was now covered in piss - we all thought it was funny anyway that he was covered in 5 day old piss of about 300 festivalers.
Some of us got a bit of this after a while and we went to see what we thought would be Be Your Own Pet for the simple fact that they are supposed to be crazy but it ended up being The Automatic. Turns out they have more than one good song and the show was good. Especially since we started loads of pits (even though not many people were up for it as they were quite young).
I then ran to watch DPT (Dirty Pretty Things) on the main stage and this is where I was planning on staying for the rest of the day. I had to say I was not too impressed with their set, it didn’t seem that good but I stayed and watched anyway. It wasn’t the worst performance of the weekend by far, it just wasn’t the best.
The crowd got a bit bored inbetween acts and a human pyramid was attempted. Unfortunately I was not quick enough with the camera so I only managed to capture it when it was all falling a part but felt I should share this with you anyway.
Feeder came on after DPT and I was randomly joined by Brown and Zach (yes we managed to bump into eachother at the main stage which is quite an accomplishment). I have seen them once before so knew they were good and that it was going to be pretty mental. My hopes were not dimished - it was absolutely crazy and I have never had such a laugh. Didn’t really dare going in their pits though as a load of people were just hitting eachother which was just a bit too crazy for my liking. There is also a photo of me and Brown near the end of the set - we look sweaty to say the least. The hat I am wearing is not mine I would like to point out, I had stolen it off of some random and thought it was quite funny to wear.
A lot of the crowd left after Feeder. I don’t think people were too keen on seeing The Streets but I knew they put on a good show and work the crowed well so stuck around. Mike Skinner had everyone jumping in time, flags swaying in time and got everyone to sit down and jump up at the same time. He also got everyone to take their shirts off and have them swinging around their heads which was a laugh. The Streets were also really good live musically, I would say it was another highlight of the weekend.
Now the crowd started to push and it became very compact/clostraphobic. This was because the Arctic Monkeys were due on. When they did come on the crowd went crazy but it was not the most pleasant of experiences because it was so tightly packed and crowd surfers were being beaten which is a bit uncalled for. They played a good set but didn’t really seem to work the crowd and just relied on the songs to do this. I had seen them the year before at Leeds in the Carling tent and had preferred that performance to this one - mainly because it had been filled with original fans rather than tagger ons who only know the new songs and none of the demos.
The heavens opened at this point and it became very wet. Around this time I realised just how hungry and called I was. I attempted to hang around for as much of the Muse set as a I could but I gave up after an hour and ran to the car to put dry clothes on and to warm up. I returned to the campsite with people being rather wet and Duncan and Smithy had been round robbing places.
I went back to the car with Zach and on our return everyone had disappeared. So we walked around a bit and followed people carrying gazeebos and stuff before settling down to people sliding down the hills in the mud. I had a video of the “bucket of doom”. You cannot really make our what is going on but you can get a rough idea of what is going on.
After this we decided to call it a day and to end our Leeds Fest experience. It took us a long time to get out of the car park as some car had broken down and a woman was having an epileptic fit. I think I was too tired to be driving as I drove onto a roundabout at one point and almost crashed into a car at the traffic lights but we made it home safely and that was the end of Leeds Fest 2006.
The last thing I would like to add is that Fred has made a video of our Leeds Fest experience. It mainly contains footage of the last day and I am only featured on it throwing sausages but it is still a funny video.
I would like to point out that I have been working on this entry on and off for about a week so if it appears or is disjointed I apologise but it better be the best entry ever written, ever!!
