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)