Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Come and cup my Christmas balls!

Those guys over at Clem HQ have been in touch again and offered me another acting job. This time they are making a music video and want me to dress as a Christmas pudding and dance along to their new song 'Come and cup my Christmas balls'......I think i'm going to take it, it pays more then ITV and the BBC have not called with any jobs in a while....or ever, as the case may be. For doing it I will get as many cups of tea I can drink in three hours and I am currently trying to negotiate three toilet breaks as part of the deal, which would be sweet! but they are proving to be tough people to bargain with.

I attended the works night out last Friday, the meal was excellent and I managed to drink nearly two bottles of Chatenauf de pape (I think that's how it's spelled) I just added it to the company's tab, I hope they don't look to closely at the receipt as it was quite expensive in restaurant terms.
I didn't feel to great the next day, and then I was hit with a cold which is wearing off now thankfully.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Dissapointing show

One thing I did do a couple of weeks ago is purchase this bird feeder, I thought as winter has started to set in, that I would help the wild birds by giving them a place in our garden to stop and eat. Unfortunately, in the 2 weeks it's been there I have not seen one bird feeding from it! Now there's gratitude for you!

Looking forward to seeing the new 'James Bond' movie, I had become bored of the last few but this one looks like it'll be a breath of fresh air and add some much needed vigour to the series.

A new series of 'Bones' starts tonight, really enjoyed the first series, I have not read any of the Kathy Reichs books, my brother has a few but i'm still reading Stephen Kings 'The Stand' and 'The Pythons' by The Pythons as well as a series of books on popular Philosophers, and trying to flick through a few pages of my 'Learn Spanish' book at regular intervals as well.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Lazy

I have not been up to very much lately, and I have not been in a blogging mood either!
Work is paying for a meal for us this Friday evening after passing a recent audit and for various other things so I'm looking forward to that.
I will be getting a new PC very soon, one with a better sound card so I can get on with some home recording, I have been very lazy and my muse seems to be escaping me at the minute so I have not been taking many photo's, I did manage to find some interesting pictures in my archive, the above picture is one of them, it a manipulated image of the messy workspace I used to share with a former colleage who shall remain nameless!

Friday, November 03, 2006

Beer Festival

My brother and I popped along to Hulls anual beer festival yesterday afternoon. The above photo only shows about half the beers on offer, there was a bar with hand-pulled beer that ran the length of the other wall, and in another room there was also a bar selling 20 differant ciders and perry's plus 10 selected German and Belgian bottled beers, I think there was 70 'real ales' on offer .
It was held inside the city hall. We got there around 14:00 and stayed till 20:00 and managed to try 16 ales and 2 ciders, even had some good fortune on the tombola for the second year running, winning a bottle of whisky, a t-shirt, 4 bottled beers, Jack Daniels playing cards, 4 free half pints of beer at the event, a make-up bag for my sister and 2 free pints of beer at a pub who sponsored the event in Beverley (a town 20 mins drive from Hull) that was with £6 worth of tickets, so not a bad haul. And as an added bonus I didn't wake up with a hangover, which is always a plus.
Downside is that no friends turned up, but we managed to meet a few decent folk! and a couple of oddballs as well, including a guy who was just like 'Otto the school bus driver' in 'The Simpsons' which was bizzare!
I intended to take more photo's but it slipped my mind as I drank more and more beer...sorry!

Sunday, October 29, 2006

DIY Guitars

I have just purchased the above "build it yourself" guitar kit. It's based on the Fender Telecaster design, it cost £71, although I will need to buy some proper pickups for it which will cost about £116. Still it will be 'cut price' compared to the real deal which would be around £500.
I have always wanted to give a project like this a go, I can create a truly individual and custom look, I may even consider getting an art student to give it a real custom paint job! Not like any of those grotesque guitars of Steve Vai's though, they would give me headache, my head is awash with ideas, I will post a pic of the finished article when it's done.

8 random things about me.....

I saw Katt do this on her blog and thought I would give it a go, maybe you'll feel you know me a little bit better, who knows....

I grew up on the largest council estate in Europe – also I think referred to as “the projects” in the US, it's called Bransholme, although times were often hard, especially as England was in a recession during this period in my life and the area was rife with crime and trouble of various sorts, this is were I grew up and went to school. Even though it was not the nicest (but not by far the worst) place to live in the UK, I really enjoyed growing up here, I loved school, there wasn’t much to do so we would find an overgrown patch of wasteland and make Dens and tree houses. We used to play on a big roundabout which we called “Island” and made Dens in the bushes, we would have to defend these dens from rival groups of kids who were also looking for a good spot to build a den. I miss those days!

I am scared of going into the sea – ever since I saw Jaws as a kid I will not go into the sea not just from the fear of getting attacked by a large shark but also because I wouldn’t like not knowing what is beneath me! I have been invited by a work colleague to go out into the North Sea on his new speed boat sometime in the future; I really want to go because it’ll frighten the hell out of me!

I hate it when the guy gets the girl at the end of a movie – i.e. Jerry Maguire, American Pie etc. It really gets me annoyed, I just think ‘well that doesn’t happen in real life, or it would have happened to me’ petty really, and I probably won’t think that way when I find a woman, you just get that way when you’ve been single for 4 years. I think I’m a bit of a romantic and miss having that special someone.

My favourite year in my life so far is 1996 - it was a very special year, so many nice things happened, first of all it was that magic summer of Euro 96 when football fever hit England and everyone looked forward to England’s next game in the competition, there was a definite “feel good factor” in the air, after years of growing up with no money, I got my first job which lasted for four months during the summer between years at college, this allowed me to buy things I had always wanted such as my own hi-fi system and CD’s, I also started going out and drinking around town. I was working with another girl from the college course, and this led to a very special, summer romance, this was predicted by others on the course and the romance faded when we arrived back at college mainly due to embarrassment. There were also a couple of other romances that year of which one led to us moving in together a few years later, sadly that didn’t last.

I would love to learn the art of Bush craft and to travel the world – after watching a TV show about Bush craft and survival techniques I have always wanted to learn the art of using nature to survive and in the future I intend to go on a bush craft holiday. I also have a desire to see the world, I have never been abroad, but would love to travel and see the world like Michael Palin writing about my adventures, I have had this desire ever since I read Paulo Coelho’s ‘The Alchemist’ however I have never seen the point in going on vacation abroad for a fortnights holiday in the Costa del sol, or Ibiza for example, it seems like a waste of money!

I want to become a star of a cult TV comedy show – not like Little Britain which is a series of crap character based sketches (same joke, different episode) , but more like Spaced, which was great. I’m really quite shy; I try to combat this by pushing myself into these situations, like acting in my mate’s sketches and playing in bands etc. I nearly fainted when I played my first gig! My friend is writing a sitcom for us, it’s about 3 flatmates one of which has an imaginary friend who is a pineapple.

Body piercing – I have had a pierced tongue, nipple, nose and ear, although only the tongue piercing is still in place, I also have a tattoo of a shark on my arm and an oriental dragon on my chest. It must have been a phase I was going through lol.

I regret not going to University – when I was finishing college I was going to go to Uni and study either Marine Biology or Forensic Science. I had this lecturer who was dealing with our University applications, when I told him what I wanted to do, he simply said “oh no…not another f#cking Jack Cousteau” and promptly tried to discourage me from applying for these courses on the basis that there are hardly any jobs in either of these fields, it true of course, but I listened to him and in the end took a year out to re-think what I wanted to do. This was my first big mistake as I then got a job as a Microbiologist and got used to earning money, later that year I moved in with my childhood sweetheart and took out a loan for furniture and stuff, this was my second big mistake, the relationship ended after nine months and I needed to work, to pay off my bank loan. After working for a number of years now I realize that it doesn’t matter what you do a degree in, as long as you get a degree, so what if I did marine biology, I may not have gotten a job as a marine biologist, but I would have gotten a science based job. I also regret missing out on the University student lifestyle!

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Stray cat strut

Todays random photo is another bit of graffiti, I think the simplicity of this one actually makes it an attractive image.

I have sore fingertips, the last few nights I have been playing my guitar again, I think I would like to start another band in the future, possibly with a hint of 'Stray Cats' type rockabilly, but my thoughts on this will probably have changed by tomorrow. The worst thing about starting a band is trying to think of a band name, a lot of bands settle for any old rubbish like 'The Killers 'or 'Jet' or 'Muse', singular words often with 'The' affixed to the front, but I prefer something a little bit more imaginitive like 'The 1910 Fruitgum Company' or 'Led Zeppelin' or 'Queens of the Stone Age' something a little bit more.......something with a bit more thought! Anyway I'm ranting on again about nothing of any real importance.

I had a little spark of thought when watching an episode of classic albums yesterday (it was the one on Nirvana's Nevermind) about how best to tackle my aproach to recording some songs with my limited equipment, to do with double tracking vocals to get a more fuller sound. I think how i'll do it is to record acoustic guitar and vocals, then add an electric or acoustic guitar melody to it, then double track my vocals to fill it out, that will take all four tracks of my 4-track tape recorder. I will then take this round to my mate Rob's house and record the whole thing into his computer after the levels have been set, then get him to record some piano over the top, hopefully it'll work out OK. I just need to get some songs together.