Sixteen Days (Part 4)

I awoke with a hangover and the taste of burnt pizza on my tongue, and made the appalling discovery that the 69 bus from Winchester to Southsea has been cancelled. Gone, one the best bus journeys ever, and now it's impossible, without having to change buses at Fareham bus station, which isn't advisable, like doing most things in Fareham on foot. So it turned to be that after I'd finally bothered getting dressed, I had to get the train down to Portsmouth and Southsea. It cost £8.80, which is absolutely ridiculous, nothing should cost that much, not even a house, or a car, but since Stagecoach have decided to cancel the final leg of the 69 route, and I'm too old to qualify for the young persons railcard that I've lost anyway, it cost £8.80. The hundreds of reasons why buses are better than trains were made all too apparent by the number of slags, suits and stuffy old gits on the platform. I had to tell a man so posh he probably pays someone to operate his lungs for him where to get the London train from, IE the other platform.

My reasons for going to Portsmouth were simple. In keeping with the two key themes of my holiday which are nostalgia and change, I decided to go somewhere that I've never had a bad time, and see what was how I remember, and what had changed. Apart from the bus, which I've now managed to mention three times, none of the differences are negative at all. Portsmouth is technically three areas for the part-time tourist or day visitor: Portsmouth, which is the main city centre and veritable eyesore, Old Portsmouth, which used to be rubbish and only of any use if you've got an extended interest in sea slime and the Mary Rose but is now the must-visit area of the city, and Southsea, which is a few miles of seafront which somehow manages to get simultaneously more ugly and beautiful each time I visit it. Normally, and this is why I liked that bus route, you could hop on in Winchester and be delivered straight to the seafront and the Clarence Pier funfair. This is impossible now so far as ten minutes of googling and half-assed investigation has proved, so I went straight for the city centre. I have very little to say about the city centre. I think I've only been to centre of Portsmouth a few times before; twice was to go to the Guildhall which used to be an awesome venue to see bands, I remember seeing Super Furry Animals there one Halloween, and 11 years ago I saw Cast supported by Travis. Great times. The only other times I've been to the city centre were pretty insignificant, although for some reason I decided that Portsmouth was definitely the best place to go to spend my birthday. That was during the time that buying CD singles was definitely a good idea, so I bought loads with my birthday money, and then we tried to get a bus to Southsea and left them all on the bus. Being the idiot I was, I then went back to Our Price later in the day and bought them all again. I'd love to know where CD2 of Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp by Mercury Rev, Big Wheels by the Llama Farmers and Solved by the Unbelievable Truth are now, because they sure as fuck aren't anywhere near my CD play. They're probably all festering in a drawer upstairs. The main thing I remember about the centre of Portsmouth, both from a causal meander, and the fact you can't avoid noticing it as you dissect the city by car, was the domineering and ominous presence of the Tricorn Centre. This behemoth of disgusting 70s architecture is, without question, the most repulsive eyesore of a building you could ever hope to see. It was a hulking grey elephant dominating the entire skyline with it's ill-conceived matrixes of concrete staircases, overflow car parks and spiral-system floor manoeuvring. If I can find any pictures that do this terrible happening justice, I'll link them at the end of this post. It was the sort of place that you fear to even go near, in case you get mugged, raped, fall into an open sewer, or shop in Iceland. It looked like something out of Escape from New York. The one time we ventured too far, we found a pigeon that had its neck caught in a loop of chicken wire. If I didn't know better, I'd assume that even the pigeon hung himself after being near the Trion too long. So it was with great disappointment that I approached the north end of town hungrily, armed with my dig cam and a sense of dread to find it wasn't there. I had heard a rumour they were tearing it down, but then, I heard a rumour that Chinese Democracy was due out in 1995, so I thought it too good to be true. What's fantastic though, is that there is no evidence of this holocaust of structural ineptitude ever existing. It's a really impressive job. I was expecting at least one pillar or archway or block of asbestos with flies buzzing around it, to remain, but no. I mean, that area of town isn't special by any means; it's just a big car park, but good job on the Etch-a-Sketch system of destruction. The rest of town is too average to comment on - I went in Waterstones to sneer at how rubbish it was and to mentally tick the box marked "Waterstones Portsmouth are clearly going to have a display of naval-themed novels and non-fiction books" and went in Zavvi, which was one of the worst examples of the chain there is going, and I noticed they'd put the band Johnny Foreigner under 'F', the idiots.

I resisted further pedantry and decided to walk down towards Old Portsmouth. Like most other cities in the 21st Century, Cardiff being a notable example, most of the council’s money is being ploughed into this area, throwing down landmarks and shopping arcades and nice orderly marinas and cafe bars, like a game of Sim City. Old Portsmouth still remains, and as I walked down towards the sea you can't really ignore the maritime tang in the sea breeze; there's pictures of boats, a bunch of new flats called Admiral's Quay or some such shit, and you can see the Victory and the Mary Rose from a mile away. But the landscape is almost completely dominated by the Spinnaker Tower, which was Portsmouth's single token effort for the Millennium, and it's a very good call. Being situated on Hampshire soil, the idea to build a monolithic white tower in the shape of a boat's sails on the edge of the harbour was naturally met with snotty mouthed bored who claimed it would ruin the landscape, and that the money would be spent if everyone in Portsmouth were given an extra £10 to spend in the bookies. Even my Gran moaned about, God rest her soul, but since she lived over 15 miles away and as far as 'ruining her view' it's like saying that an earwig at the foot of a garden is a reason not to like a house, she had no excuse. But I defy anyone; especially local residents who get to go up it and look down their noses at the peasants below for a reduced fee, to deny that The Spinnaker tower is anything less than impressive. I didn't go there straight away, instead I moseyed down to the harbour and upon discovering I had exactly the right amount of money to get the ferry across to Gosport on the other side of the harbour, decided to, despite not having a particularly good reason to. I also probably wouldn't have bothered if I didn't have exactly the right change for the machine, I mean, it's Gosport for God's sake, but I enjoyed the trip anyway. I was sat on the ferry next to two people who sounded like they'd never been on a ferry before, possibly people who hadn't even see water before. They were American, so it could have been all concerning the unbearable tweeness of it all. In America, of course, they have trillion dollar cantilever bridges and era-defining support structures to get from A to B, and in the event of route C, you've got ferries the size of Battersea Power Station to get you across the body of water. So I guess this rusty balsa-wood excuse for water transportation was quite fascinating. Unsurprisingly, there were more people waiting at the other side to get to Portsmouth rather than the other way round, and this is because Gosport is awful. It's mean to say it, it's like comparing Barry to Cardiff, or Andrew Ridgely to George Michael. I stopped in Gosport for about half an hour, which was more than enough time to realise it was a boring, average, extremely faceless little part of the world, permanently living the shadow of the city across the harbour, to the extent the whole high street seems built sloping down towards the ferry terminal, so that even if you spill a bottle of water, the liquid will drip and run away from town. I bought some fish and chips in a takeaway, and somehow got involved in the life of the woman behind the counter, as we ended up talking about her daughter’s holiday to Eurodisney being cancelled. My parting gesture was "well, I do hope it all gets sorted out", which in hindsight is ridiculous, but then, it was the longest I've spoken to anyone since last Friday, so I cut myself some slack. The fish and chips were TERRIBLE.

I crossed the harbour back on the ferry, to the amusement of the drawbridge operator who had probably bet his workmate how long I was going to stay in Gosport. Yes, perfectly rational ferry operators make bets about my life which they're fascinated in. I got annoyed with the layout of everything along the Portsmouth side of the harbour because I found it much more difficult that I should have done to find the entrance to Gunwharf Quay. Gunwharf Quay is the all-encompassing title for the megacomplex built in blocks like New York City, but full of all the usual tat like Fat Face, Chiquitos, I would stake my life on there being an Old Orleans there somewhere, but to be honest, lovely and very pretty and spectacular the whole whizz-bang moneymoneymoneybags experience really is, I couldn't be bothered to look at a bunch of shops and bars when I didn't want to buy clothes or doughnuts and I didn't want to sit underneath a thatched umbrella with an overpriced cocktail. I toyed with the idea of going up the Spinnaker, but having forked out £8.30 on getting to Portsmouth, I didn't really feel like paying more or less the same to stand a few feet above it. There's a glass floor up there though, so you can see everybody below, so I did what any normal person would, and walked around the perimeter for about twenty minutes meaning the top of my ridiculous red and black hair will be in loads of people’s photographs. You ever stopped and wondered how many photographs of you exist in the world that you're unaware of, and any given time, photographs with you in the background could be sitting on shelves or even in frames, in cities and houses right across the globe. I added a few more, and then as I was trying to leave the compound, I added more again. I had difficulty trying to leave the other side of the marina, partly because the sun was so hot and everything in these new complexes tends to be made of glass so it was like walking the plank in a day-glo laser show of bright light, although, as is the case every time I'm ever somewhere I've got no idea where I am, someone asked me for directions and then thought I was fobbing them off when I said I didn't know.

Southsea though, is the best part of the whole city. I have various memories of this stretch of coastline, most of which revolve around me being an idiot as all good memories should. The two main venues for seeing bands in Portsmouth The Wedgewood Rooms and the Pyramids, are both in Southsea. I've seen many bands in both, all of which were fun in their own right, but the occasions I most remember are when I took the 69 and just sat watching the sea drinking cider on one of the benches or in the shelter and while away a couple of hours before going to watch the bands. One afternoon I took this to extreme levels and sat in one of the shelters on the promenade for upwards of 5 hours before going to see Poison the Well at the Wedgewood Rooms and falling asleep in the car on the way home within seconds of sitting down. I revisited this shelter, and the bench on the other side of The Pyramids where I sat writing a letter to Anna during the summer where I tried to grow a beard and wrote 50 letters, What was interesting about the walk from Gunwharf Quay to the pathetic parade pier, was how each place I stopped at along the way was exactly one notch more rubbish than the previous stopping point. It was literally a parade of old fashioned seaside dross. The fairground, which from memory I remember being really really awesome, and was the biggest fairground in the world, and I used to tell people at school that it was bigger than Blackpool Pleasure Beach which is ridiculous exaggeration. Somehow, and this is going against the norm for all these fading seaside amusement parks, it's better than it was last time, although it's still crap, and I definitely wouldn't pay to go on any of the rides. The arcades hadn't changed at all. The rollercoaster is still there. There's a famous story about this rollercoaster, where come of the carriages came off the track and fell into the sea. I'm assuming it's true, it's all very plausible, and it does add an extra level of nail biting terror, having the potential to drown. The Pyramids Centres is of limited interest to me now. I don't think they even have bands on any more, at least, there weren't any adverts or anything or posters advertising events there, so it's gone back to being just a swimming pool. It's not even a good swimming pool - two shitty flumes, an average one in the shape of a snake, a wave machine, a water fountain, and nowhere to fucking swim. I did stop to look at the crazy golf for a while Nobody was playing it, but it looked like a good course. I'm fortunate enough to be able to tell a good crazy golf course from a bad one. A bad one is one that's pirate themed, or has a "ring the bell on hole 18 to win a free round of golf" hole. These are corporate, multi-national crazy golf courses, they're as bad as Subway and McDonald's and Nestle. This course was straight out of the 'yeah right' school of crazy golf, with seemingly impossible holes involving jumps, loop-the-loops and various unlikely looking ramps. Pretty good looking. The best crazy golf course I've ever played was at Shanklin Chine on the Isle of Wight. This is a course so sacred you aren't even allowed to stand on the holes to take your shots. Fantastic. By the time I got the pier on the far end of the promenade, my feet were about to give in, and I could already tell my face was sunburnt, but dare not look at any car bonnets or gift shop windows to have the awful truth revealed to me, so I didn't stop long, which was a good idea, because this is the worst place in Portsmouth, a place so ruined by the stench of inferiority that the penny arcades have been boarded up, I'd had enough, and was in no way going to walk back in the other direction. I'm glad I didn't, I probably wouldn't have any skin on my skull by now. As I write this, the newsreader's lead into the weather was commenting on how spectacular the weather was in Portsmouth was today. How nice of him to point out, it's clearly written all over my face.

As a near-perfect end to a nostalgia driven excursion, as I got off the train back in Winchester, I walked down the stairs to the Platform 1 exit and walked past the girl from school that I was in love with for 5 years. By "in love" I of course mean "Had a pathetic crush on" The conclusion of this passionate adoration resulted in me making her a mix tape with loads of great songs on it (by which I mean 'mix tape only I would ever want to listen to') and this was met with the decision to never speak to me ever again. 9 years later, the vow of silence wasn't broken, and she still offered the same minor smirk of superiority she used to exercise all the time back then. I pretended I didn't see her and kept on walking.

The Tricorn Centre: http://www.thejetsetter.co.uk/concretejungle.html

Sixteen Days (Part 3)

Bike riding isn't what it used to be. Or I should say, it isn't how I remembered it being. Apart from a brief interlude during the summer of 2005 when I borrowed a knackered old two wheeled death trap off my dad to while away three weeks of being between jobs, which culminated in me springing over the top of the handlebars like a malfunctioning jack in the box as I approached a busy roundabout in Cardiff, I haven't really gone bike riding much. When, the following year, A bike I'd borrowed without asking got stolen I vowed never to approach the subject. The combination of death and theft is a potent poison for putting you off something. But I went for a bike ride today, and it was fantastic, although I don't think I'll do be doing it again in a hurry. I used a bike which was propped up against some of the crap in our garden near the wheely bin, old front doors etc. I think, after the events of the ride, this was the exact bike that almost sent me to an early grave three years ago. I should have realised when I had to put the chain back on the wheel before I'd even got to the end of the road.

My main intention was to ride out to the bottom of town and scale Winchester's 'twin peaks', the hills of St Giles and St Catherine. St Giles' hill is a really good hill because it's only five minutes from key parts of the town centre, like the Guildhall and the bus station, it has an incredibly steep but mercifully short incline, and then suddenly you realise you've only walked 200 metres and you're towering way, way above the buildings you were just strolling amongst, as the photos below no doubt demonstrate. At the top, there's a viewpoint which used to have a useful map of the city with landmarks and other titbits of information on, but this is either being replaced, or more likely stolen, and is just a green frame with nothing on or in it. There was an entire family using up all three of the benches up there otherwise I'd have taken a rest and admired the view, as it was, I took some photos and was long gone A good idea really, the main problem with St Giles Hill is that it sits neatly between the two most statistically vile parts of Winchester, which I'll admit probably has nothing on the slums of some areas of the world, but ALL the fuckfaced bullies and bastards from school were from one of these two places, and it's more the sort of places you'll find yourself retching at the sight of used condoms and beer can bongs rather than admiring the sights and sounds of Winchester in the pretty morning sun. I descended the hill and sped across town towards St Catherine’s Hill. I often wonder what the legality of listening to headphones when you're bike riding. Surely it's not approved of, but then is it illegal? It's not really a health hazard providing you've got you wits about you and use your eyes, such is my logic, and although I was keeping one eye on every policeman on the beat or offering the occasional cower from anyone in a high visibility jacket, it eventually didn't bother me. When you're careering down country lanes and through rapidly expanding farmland who's to stop you, except the horses and dragonflies? It really is worth saying, that casually careering around the edges of yellow soaked cricket pitches on a Sunday morning, or cutting lines across the gravel in the college grounds by the tennis club, listening to Your Protector by Fleet Foxes, well there's really nothing like it. Most of Winchester seemed to be out in force to provide me with perfect stereotypes of what people should be doing on a Sunday morning - a tennis match here, a country youth cricket game where nobody could throw the ball accurately there. I even saw two seperate classic cars, filled like a cartoon with a moustached prat with a flat cap and his jumper round his shoulders and the top down. On the same stretch of road. I ended up going right around the perimeter of St Catherine's Hill and not actually going up it, simply because every turn I reached approaching the ascent of the hill, the alternative route looked much more enticing, and so it was that I ended up keeping left of the river and arrived in the Water Meadows. I used to love going to The Water Meadows, in all three stages of youth; as a child it was a big expanse of grass to run around in, as a fainty rebellious teen it was a great place to swim and sling mud and dodge pike, and when I was 17 and realised what girls were, it was a sufficiently romantic place to go walking amongst the weeping willows. Except I never did that, of course.

Nowadays, The Water Meadows has become a cross between environmental sanctity, boring farmland with stupified cows and horses gaping blankly at trees, and wasteland. It doesn't even really seem open to the public anymore, you have to cross a stile to get in, there's cow shit everywhere, warnings not to let your dogs loose otherwise you'll get a fine slapped on your head, and most importantly of all, it was a pleasant Sunday morning, and nobody was there except me. I felt a slight tinge of sadness, but then it wasn't much different last time I came, in 2003. I thought the might have taken the face blocking access to the river from the grass away by now. Realising I wasn't going to be able to cross the river to the hill in a hurry, I decided to cycle through St Cross, the area of Winchester you have to cut through to get to the centre if you're travelling from Southampton or anywhere else imporant and don't fancy the M3. I then cut through another area of farmland into somewhere between lost and troubling, and then ended up by the motorway. There was a woman walking her dog by the side of the road, and after I took a ridiculous side turn trying to find the Hockley Aqueduct (which is pretty hard to miss) and doubled back on myself, I ended up talking to her for about five minutes about the state of the footpath. It was precisely the sort of tedious shit that two people who find themselves stuck on an overgrown footpath with nothing better to do tend to have, but it felt strangely superior to get involved in 'Sunday walker' culture, even for five minutes. I've not done that since I went up Snowdon. After this incident, I crossed the road and proceeded to do exactly the same thing down increasingly overgrown footpath channels, in which eventually I had to get off the bike because I had stinging nettle stings down the full length of either arm. I gave up eventually, and went off a side path through a field of a corn and ended up in Twyford. Twyford is an insignificant little village outside of Winchester but is renowned for it's 'Lock' which I never really figured out what it was, apart from that all the cool kids from school went swimming there during the summer, and it sounded like fun, although of course I never went. I thought about trying to find it, but I didn't like the look of the hill you had to go down to get there, and didn't fancy busting my legs out over trying to get back up again. So I did what any normal person would, and bought some lucozade from the village shop and sweated raw idiocy over the counter, and then went and tried to negotiate my way up an even worse hill that was around the next corner. The hill, let's be honest, to a Tour De France cyclist, is about as tricky to traverse as, say, a sleeping policeman is to you or I, but it took me about three or four attempts to get up this hill, stopping twice (although I conned myself that I was using the excuse to take photographs of MoD signposts) but the view from the top, of a different angle of Winchester different to one I'd really stopped and looked at before. There wasn't much in the way of landmarks, but you can see in the photo, just over to the right, about halfway down and halfway from the centre, is St Giles' Hill, a pathetic little mound of grass, and just emphasised how good this view was.

It was of course entirely downhill all the way back from there, and it was a fantastic descent, right up until the point where I turned in the car park of the Park and Ride, and simultaneously the saddle AND the chain of the bike fell off. I thanked my lucky stars this didn't happen two minutes ago when essentially on a motorway slip road, but then I had the annoying task of taking the remaining mile and a half across town without any chain (it actually snapped in two, somehow) which I had to throw into a wheely bin on Chesil Street or anywhere to sit, I just had to propel myself using kerbs, walls and lamp posts. The whole round trip took four hours, and I concluded it back home by filling the sink in the kitchen with cold water, and then half-drowning myself in it whilst various Radio DJ's discussed in depth an incident involving Amy Winehouse punching someone live on stage at Glastonbury. I don't remember that, I saw some of her set last night, and all I remember is her being off her trolley and forgetting half the words to her own songs.

In the afternoon, I treated myself to a roast dinner. By “treated” I of course mean, “resorted to” and by “roast dinner” I mean “microwaveable ‘lamb roast’” which had more carrots than peas, and wasn’t particularly nice. I ate it watching Children of Men, which is utterly brilliant, and is not only better than any of the Bourne films, but contains some of the most phenomenal single-shot or seemingly-single-shot scenes I’ve ever seen, There’s one ridiculously long tracking shot following Clive Owen as he machos his way through a war-torn compound near the coast that they break into, and it literally seems about twenty minutes long. It’s thing like this that make what’s essentially quite an average plot into a fantastic experience. That, and killing off Julianne Moore early on, which is always beneficial to any film. After that, I watched Neil Diamond at Glastonbury where he pretty much shit on everything else I’ve seen there thus far from such a gigantic height I’m surprised any of the many other hundreds of acts there even bothered tuning their instruments. He was amazing, even when the gremlins ate the amplifiers, he still owned the stage. I hope he didn’t play Solitary Man earlier in the set, because I missed that, but I got I’m a Believer, and Sweet Caroline, so I still went away feeling like a winner.

In the evening, I went into town via the Esso garage on Andover Road where I bought cigarettes and the cash point, to watch the final of the European Championships. I actually had difficult finding somewhere that was even showing it. My first port of call was The Old Vine, because it’s the only pub in Winchester that I’ve watched an entire game of football. That was five years ago though, and since then, The Old Vine has been turned into an all-weather wanky eatery with no pub element whatsoever. I had to do the awful thing that I imagine half the people of Winchester have done at some point, which is go in the back entrance, stroll in, realize the place is full of couples and families enjoying a quite meal, and then going out the front entrance, almost like I’d been carrying a neon sign saying “total jackass who only wanted a pint and watch the football on his own”. Then I tried The Eclipse, which, for all it’s charms, I don’t think even has a TV. Eventually I ended up in The Bakers Arms, a pub I’ve never been in before because it’s so awful, and thus it proved to be, because I was ID-ed at the bar and was subjected to the landlady saying I “was clearly trying to look like I was 15, but I can tell by your face you’re about 25” which made me want to rip her head off, and then after I sat down, I was told to move because a man with a Hawaiian shirt turned up and proceeded to set up a mobile disco right in front of me. I ended up going to the student plaza known as Alfies, formally The Coach and Horses. I watched the second half with a man in leather jacket and an ‘A’ t shirt, and because it was outdoors, I got to watch the pink grapefruit sunset and airplanes flying overhead, and it was super, not least because Germany lost the final 1-0 to Spain. There was a group of girls talking about their breasts which threatened to ruin it momentarily, but they didn’t stay long.

On the way home, I took an extended detour around the park so I could listen to the Andreas Kleerup album. Andreas Kleerup, or just Kleerup, to give him his studio name, was the person responsible for how goddamn awesome With Every Heartbeat by Robyn, last years BEST! song by anyone ever. I think, because the song ended up on Robyn’s album, the credits were mis-channeled, because it’s basically a Kleerup track with her singing on it, and this self-titled album should redress the balance, because it’s brilliant. I think the best pop songs are the ones with an element of melancholy and sadness, which is why With Every Heartbeat was so fantastic. Kleerup’s album is wall-to-wall drenched in sadness, with the ode to absent lovers, 3am, featuring the lovely Marit Bergman being the stand-out so far. It made a perfect soundtrack to sunset-gazing.

Sixteen Days (Part 2)

28.06.08 Started Saturday as i do every Saturday, regardless of where I am, listening to the Adam and Joe show on Radio 6. Today's was a mixed bag; for thumbs-up, Garth Jennings was standing in for Joe again. Controversial opinion maybe, but I'm actually starting to prefer the editions where Garth stands in for Joe when he's off sick or hawking Ant Man around Hollywood, because Garth as a fun voice, and there's somehow ever less professionalism than there usually is, and Adam Buxton does his ridiculous thing where he starts talking "as" people in a ridiculous voice. I'd struggle to find an example, but try and the edition of their radio show when for no reason, he started talking as both members of Justice, and about how they wanted to be global superstars with their songs about nightclubs. MASSIVE thumbs down though, because like the rest of the entire British Broadcasting Company, the show is coming from Glastonbury. Having never been to Glastonbury, I shouldn't really be allowed to say it's shite, but really: I have been to music festivals in the past, one of which was utterly hateful and boring, but Glastonbury just looks like AWFUL, and probably the worst music festival there is going. I caught about ten minutes on TV, during which I saw Estelle perform her number one hit American Boy to a field of idiots who surely don't like music at all, and are only there because they're too thick to turn around and go somewhere else, like Zimbabwe. Like any of these simpletons would go to an Estelle show. Then I saw Kings of Leon doing that awful song where Caleb Followill screams a lot and then a pathetic 'video diary' from the point of view of a steward whose sole job was telling people to get out of the way of tractors. So far, so staggeringly boring, and I haven't even seen any of the BBC's beloved montages of clips of people in bikinis and wellies, or big jesters hats all ploughing through mud to the strains of Why Does it Always On Me, giving the impression that not one person at the entire festival is a rational, normal person. I know at least four normal people at Glastonbury this year, including at least two bands playing. What's the likelihood they're giving a grand total of zip all screen time, against several yawning hours of zonked out hippies who go there for the 'atmosphere'. I will never go to Glastonbury, nor can I think of any reason to go in the future, unless it's the only safe haven during a nuclear fall out. But despite my lack of appreciation for the festival, Adam and Garth do present the best parts, which have so far included wheeling in Robyn Hitchcock into their studio to play a song called 'Museum of Sex' and moaning that most of the people at the festival look like members of either the Ting Tings or Hot Chip. It's all preferable to Wimbledon however, and I’ll take any form of ill-advised fawning backstage over Sue Ryder going gooey-eyed over Andy Murray.

I’ve used the majority of the day to take stock of what I have to pass the time for a week with nobody to talk to talk to and nowhere to go, and I’m really rather desperate not to spend the entire 7 days I have exclusively to myself either sat in front of the computer drinking beer (2007), sat in front of the computer drinking tea (2005) or wasting two days drinking tea and beer with then-girlfriends (both years) but this time it’s me, and I’m going to brave the outside world and get hay fever and die, but it’ll be fun and exciting and I might get a sun-tan or skin cancer and I might borrow my dads bike and cycle around villages. The world, or at least this corner of Hampshire, is mine to conquer for seven days, and back-to-back episodes of Gok’s Fashion Fix is going to stop me But not today, today was for stocktaking, and shouting in frustration at the frankly inadequate wireless network signal in the computer room of our house, and pottering around Winchester buying things I needs. In list form, I realized I needed: banana-scenting hair styling product, a USB memory stick so that I can transfer photos from the laptop to the PC because I was really clever and forgot the bring the digital camera software, a battery pack for the digital camera because I was really clever and forgot to bring mine, a new toothbrush, which dubiously offers ‘extra whitening bristles’ some new foundation because I’m a) a total girl and use it, and b) I’m also a boy and continually drop it so it breaks into chunks inside the case and then becomes unuseable. I also intended to borrow some DVDs from Blockbuster, but Blockbuster have decided to not to the fantastic 3-for-£7 that made last summer bearable, and have made it all £3 each for their backlist rubbish. Instead, I found a dog-eared copy of City of Men in their bargain bin and bought that instead. The lady behind the counter tried to up-sell me a large tub of ice cream. I felt for her, evidently nobody was buying large tubs of ice cream from her. Maybe if they re-introduced their 3-for-£7 offer I’d some some Wimbledon themed ice cream.

Winchester doesn’t change very much. The extraordinarily slow process which is the modernization of town has happened at such a slugs pace that I’ve forgotten when anything happened, when various houses or roads or redevelopments sprung up. Most of these things didn’t happen whilst I was here, they tend to spring up whilst I’m spending days on end gazing at the eyesore of twisted metal and scaffolding that comprises Cardiff City Centre on a day-by-day basis so everything is neatly spread out and finished upon my return. So, after a brief stroll around today picking up the various bits and bobs of crap I need to get through the week, I noticed several minor changes in and around town.

The post office doesn’t exist anymore. I’m used to various shops disappearing or re-appearing like a giant economic whack-a-mole (last time I come home, the wonderment that Winchester finally had a Subway and Starbucks was a total revelation) but not the post office. Winchester has now become of the first towns in the UK to have their post office almost literally tacked onto the scrag end of their WH Smith. Now, Smiths in Winchester is appalling at the best of times, but to accommodate the post office, they’ve annihilated the CD and DVD section so that it now stocks about three of each. The rest of the store was always a bit dirty and run-down, especially downstairs – upstairs is fine, it’s almost beautiful, with half-timber beams and deluxe fascias overlooking the Dave Pelzer books, but now downstairs like something Duncan Bannatyne would scrape of his shoe before going to work, all be it with a deluxe ultra-modern digital post office stuffed in the corner. The post office is so modern I was tempted to reach out and stroke the cashier’s face to find out if it was a hologram or not.

There is some new art installed in the grounds of Winchester School of Art. I don’t particularly take to hanging around Art Colleges, I should clarify, it just happens to be on my main stretch into town, just after the park. The new works of art, if they can be called that over just random shit spraypainted on the walls, I can’t tell if it’s the actual work submitted by a student who needed a public wall space to make their oblique statements, or whether the college themselves commissioned someone to ruin the aesthetics of the really quite pleasant cul-de-sac in which the Students Union sits, I really don’t know. But I know I really don’t like idiocy mixed with spray paint. There was one good thing about the Students Union though, looking at their posters up in the window, they managed to have Hot Club De Paris and Elle S’appelle playing their summer ball. Clearly someone there’s got phenomenal taste with a budget of pence. A winner. Hopefully not the same person who daubed shit on the wall, otherwise I’ve got some serious double standards to address.

The managers and/or bigwigs at McDonald’s have painted all their window frames bottle green for no reason. Well actually, there probably is a reason, a very simple one, it needed a serious tarting up, and no, with the very glaring sore-thumb of the golden arches, the cornerstone of fast food in Winchester looks vaguely respectable. I didn’t go in, I’ve hardly ever been in this McDonald’s. I actually think I’ve been in the McDonald’s in Staines more times, but from the outside I could see they’d painted various bits of the inside green as well. The kids area looked like a jungle. I’d always thought that McDonald’s were punching above their weight by the mere fact they tend to have flower boxes on top of the crash barrier fencing outside, but now they seem to be coming good on their decade-long intentions. More good news for McDonald’s is their only main threat so far as cholesterol damage, The Blue Dolphin has finally poisoned one teenager too many. Actually, that might not be why it closed, it could be that chip shops are just too, you know, RIFF RAFF for 90% of the toffee nosed blazer-sleeved toffs in Winchester, but my experiences of going to the Blue Dolphin has concluded each time with 100% success rate for getting food poisoning, including the fabled incident which saw me holed up in bed on December 31^st 1999 watching every Millennium Eve celebration in the Eastern hemisphere whilst I honked up cocktail sausages. So a big WELL DONE! to McDonald’s, and a big GOODBYE to the Blue Dolphin. I’m surprised the chip shop didn’t stick around until after The Hat Fair (Winchester’s own version of Glastonbury, without the music, drugs, camping, or well, any of Glastonbury except the dickheaded hippy fans mentioned above. I can’t think of a Hat Fair I’ve been to without risking my life at least once in that particular take away.

There’s a few different things in and around our house that I’ve noticed from wandering round the garden. The problem with Radio 6, when they have good presenters on, is that I get bored when the songs are on (there’s only so many times I can listen to Hurricane Jane by Black Kids and that number is one) so I moseyed around the house playing with the cats. My dad has stuck loads of Mojo magazine CDs to poles to scare off birds. This isn’t interesting, but since I was discussing the exact subject two days ago at work, and I return to precisely the sort of madness I was talking about, it just about becomes interesting. I’ve also noticed another weird thing in our house, some sort of thermometer. Bizarre. In the house, there’s also a wooden duck in our front room, which has a name tag (Denis) which seems to always be looking at me, no matter what part of the lounge I go to sit in. I really don’t know why he’s named after a Blondie song. One more ‘N’ and he could be named after someone from Big Brother who spits on people.

Here are my cats: Alfie, Bertie, Misty, Jess (respectively)

Sixteen Days (Part 1)

27.06.08 So after the best part of ten and a half months and six days, I finally woke up this morning realising I was on holiday for the first time in forever. In true keeping with events of this magnitude, it was wanking it down and so was born the first of sixteen days, wasted for the first six hours cowering from the rain and mild humid breeze inside my house in Cardiff. This wasn't all unproductive, God no. I listened to a program on Radio 4 which was essentially the broadcast radio equivalent of Points of View, only hosted by someone I didn't recognise called Roger, and didn't involve any actual real complaints or views; it was more a forum on lunch time radio for pedants and other breeds of oaf to leave evidence of their pedantry and oafishness. From today’s edition, one of the people who phone in was a victim of her own paranoia and idiocy - complaining that news broadcasters say things like "900 people die in a ferry accident" and then don't specify where this incident is taking place, only to reveal five seconds later "in the Philippines where there's a tonking great cyclone destroying the entire island colony". The callers argument was that "people are going to get panicky and worry about all their friends that might be on ferries, traveling, and be totally in the dark, only to find out a minute later it doesn't affect their friends". I mean seriously. Another person complained about the Radio 4 adaptation of a book, which was so offensive, they refused to listen past episode two. Appropriate clip was played, in which I couldn't find anything wrong apart from that it sounded a bit dull. Apparently the problem was in the pronunciation of a couple of works. Pedantry drawn from geekiness is no reason to complain. But then, they did have half an hour to fill, and the media lawyer from BBC Radio can only drivel on about the legality of reporting war for so long.

I did the washing up, which was a necessary evil, but it meant I could listen to one of my staple washing up albums. I actually haven't taken the Bon Iver album out of the kitchen since I bought it two months ago because it lends itself so nicely to scraping dead ketchup and brine from the inner rim ofa bowl and staring at puddles in the garden. Other albums that have sat on the shelf next to the stereo in the kitchen since February when I realized I enjoyed washing up, include Old Ramon by the Red House Painters, CD1 of a Simon and Garfunkle Best Of, the one with Leaves That Are Green on, and Hats by the Blue Nile. All good kitchen albums. I can actually see myself in a few years listening back to this Bon Iver album (should it ever leave the room) and it reminding me of the time I filled the sink with too much hot water and scalded my hand trying to pull the plug out. Such happy times.

It cleared up around half two so I wandered purposefully into town to watch Teeth at the cinema. Anyone who's been following the slow and steady tide of hype surrounding this ridiculous concept shocker will know that essentially, it's a nonsense horror movie about a girl with teeth in her vagina which chomps off any hand or penis which dares to test it's treacherous waters. Except it's not. I'm not sure now what I was expecting; either a both-barrels firing barrage of crass humour and knob jokes with a garnish of splatter, or a pretentious metaphorical diatribe about the sanctity of virginity and that actually gnashing faff's was just a visual representation for feminist values. Luckily it was neither of these. It was more like a cross between a Todd Solondz coming of age mess, and say, The Thing. The gore hungry should be satisfied with some blood-soaked yodeling teenage boys clutching their half-chewed genitalia whilst various creatures munch on the other, and although the whole thing isn't intentionally a metaphor - yes, she does have piranhas in her pants, there is some credible feminist undertones - all the men who get their comeuppance are in one way or another lust-fuelled asshole who deserves everything they get. The ending sees the girl appreciating the power she has, and using it as a weapon against any ill-mannered male (which seems to be just about every single person in the movie). Girl rules, hooray. Teeth is, interestingly, directed by Mitchell Litchenstein, who is "wham!" pop artist Roy Litchenstein's son, so it's good that making money from nonsense runs in the family. The other fun thing about this movie is that the guy who played agoraphobic nutjob Harold Smith in Twin Peaks, plays the girls father. Ultimately,it's a lot better than "that movie where the girls vagina eats things".

I am now in Winchester, after a massively uneventful road trip with my father. We stopped at the usual services, one with a Marks and Spencer, Burger King and WHSmith, chewable toothbrushes in the toilet, and a few posters of over-personalization which as good as give you the manages mobile phone number and home address for you to go and molest his wife and steal his washing. It's a very poor example of the motorway services, which I find an integral part of the British Landscape, and with a whiff of nostalgia about them; aside from the Leigh services (today’s example) I don't think I've ever stopped at motorway services without it being a gap-filler or time waster during some epic road trip. It's like changing trains on an epic train journey, except you can stop for as long as you want, get back on the same train, and don't have to look at adverts for Halifax at Bristol Temple Meads. The rest of the journey was spent listening to a CD I'd made for the journey. Dad seemed impressed with Fleet Foxes ("I think they got the coveted 5 stars in Mojo") Wintersleep ("who's this?") and Steve Earle ("this is in an advert for cider isn't it?) and Billy Bragg ("Ah, Billy Bragg?"). Not bad, given he usually doesn't say anything at all about the music playing. I was annoyed to find that Steve Earle has loaned his version of 'Galway Girl' to advertise Magners, it doesn't seem right somehow. He's probably completely wrong anyway. I've spent the last hour or so watching The Hits, because they're doing a run down of the top 100 selling dance songs of the 21st century. I've been watching since #25 and they still haven't played the heartbreaking and ingenious video for Another Chance by Roger Sanchez, which is not only the best dance song of the 21st century, but one of the best music videos full stop. I'm really hoping they didn't play it during the 5 minutes I was fishing pickled onions of the jar with a fork, in the kitchen. They're now on Hung Up By Madonna, which is a good song, but not a dance song, and I really don't think Another Chance outsold this for one second. Looks like it did crop in those 5 minutes. Another Chance came out in the summer of 2001, I remember it being number around the time we all went to see Belle and Sebastian in Bournemouth, and Alex cut his feet on barnacles and we had to ask Stuart Murdoch if they had any towels. I haven't put returning to Bournemouth on my list of things to do this week I'm in Winchester, and I'm not going to either. Did that last year, and it's really not worth it.

This the tracklisting for the CD

01 Get Well Soon * Born Slippy (Nuxx)

02 The Hold Steady – Constructive Summer

03 Wild Beasts * The Devil’s Crayon

04 Galaxie 500 * Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste

05 Sharon Shannon and Steve Earle * Galway Girl

06 Glasvegas * Geraldine

07 The Dodos * God?

08 The Imagined Village Band * Hard Times of Old England Retold

09 The Blue Nile * Headlights on the Parade

10 Neon Neon * I Told Her on Alderaan

11 Wintersleep * Miasmal Smoke and the Yellow Bellied Freaks

12 Mates of State * My Only Offer

13 The Acorn * Oh Napoleon

14 Canadians * The North Side of Summer

15 Wolf Parade * Soldier’s Grin

16 Fleet Foxes * Your Protector

The one reassuring thing about Winchester is the local news. Although it's a rarity to actually feature anything happening in Winchester itself, Meridian Tonight's news is a totally different world to the main national news. When I arrived, my mum was watching the 10 o' Clock news, which was all about how Robert Mugabe is going to destroy the entire world, and how a loaf of bread is going to cost £45 and how North Korea are pretending to destroy their nuclear reserves to we all forget about them. Straight after, the top story on Meridian Tonight was that a shop that sold wedding dresses closed down. Whoop-de-doo, this barely measures 0.1 on the Richter Scale of newsworth events, but due to slow happenings, presumably in the rest of the region, this became big news, with a preposterous Jeremy Vine style interview with her in a posh hotel (one step away from the Gerry Adams helium voice and the silhouette backdrop) and then a load of hideous brides-to-be with teeth sticking out their chins and their voluptuous pig mothers in tow moaning a bit more about their fucking dresses, failing to account for the fact that delaying their wedding might just have saved them a divorce. Item two concerned an entire warehouse full of illegal Chinese Immigrants running wild on the streets of Alton, a miniscule non-event of a town North of Winchester. This feature managed to crowbar in a pathetic and very obvious advertising puff for the book printers next door. Lovely.