21- alcohol

to quote ed byrne; “people say ‘I like a drink as much as the next guy’ ….not if i am the next guy you don’t”

in many ways this is a similar attitude i have. drinking is fun, i like drinking and i am not afraid to say that, even when britain is being touted as the binge drinking capital of the world. this is largely because people have the wrong attitude to drinking.

here, people drink until they are sick. the point of a night out is to get so wasted you do not know where you are, what you are doing, who you are with, and by the end of the night throwing up, only for pictures of you doing all these things, dazed-eyed and voming. when people talk about drinking in the UK, this picture is normally shown;

this is a picture, to those of you who do not know, of a man on a pub crawl called carnage which is run in most UK uni cities, and involves a lot of drinking, free shots etc. and here, the guy is actually urinating on a war memorial. obviously, this shows the ‘youth of today’ disrespecting everything, and drinking too much; but at the same time, i know loads of people who just are not like this. it is an extreme case, and while people do drink and do stupid things, we are not entirely a generation of wasters and idiots. yes, as a first year university student last year, i went out a lot and i drank a lot, but never to the point where i was urinating on war memorials or throwing up in clubs. the only time i did throw up was after being spiked at a dubstep night and i spent the next day in bed, blacking out and throwing up. i felt terrible.

at the same time though, even those of us who drink ‘in moderation’ such as myself and most of my friends drink a lot. every time we go out, there is pre-drinking, which involves consumption of much alcohol, and it’s almost worrying to think that as a generation we feel that ‘having a good time’ is a parallel to ‘drinking’, or an equation. i like to think that i drink in moderation; i will drink every day, but this is a whiskey or a beer with dinner. something nice to go with my food.

i think issue of moderation taps deeply into people drinking from a young age in the UK. when i was younger, i drank from around the age of fourteen or fifteen at the weekends when i went out to gigs and such, but at the same time my parents had let me drink with dinner or whatever from around that time too. i learnt moderation when it came to alcohol. for the other kids i hung out with at the time, or most of them, alcohol was something new and mysterious, so they drank and drank and would be sick or end up in hospital having their stomach pumped. as parents, by letting kids drink in the home, with dinner or under ‘supervision’, i.e. in a controlled and safe environment, you take the mystery out of something that otherwise they are going to discover on their own, and abuse. maybe it is the british way of not talking about things that make us uncomfortable, but the same is true of drug taking and under age sex in the UK. most parents are afraid to expose their children to those things, or information about those things, thinking that it will be damaging, only for them to find it for themselves, in a chaotic and uncontrolled environment.

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Edit (29/10); I am very proud to announce that an edited version of this post was published in my university newspaper; Gair Rhydd. Hopefully I will get more articles in there soon !

 

21- sex

sex has always been something of a dilemma for me; i think it’s being torn between being a guy, and being a guy who thinks too much. part of me feels like being single, one night stands and such will be fun; it will massage the ego, and you might feel a little bit more confident and just generally better about yourself. then there’s the other side, where if i went home with a girl, or brought a girl back to mine, i’d get too attached. as someone who is recently single, this is a worry for me. there’s a great quote from russell brand which i think, in a way, sums up my attitudes towards sex and one night stands etc;

“…often I feel incredible intimacy and unity, not only with a regular sexual partner, but also in fleeting encounters with strangers, a shared humanity and bond. Why is it…that longevity is considered a necessary part of the feeling of love? Why can’t you fall in love for half an hour? Is it less valid? Who cares about the difference between an hour and a decade and a lifetime?”

it’s the part of me that thinks and tries to rationalise everything that says ‘i could never have sex with someone purely based on their looks’, i would at least have to get on with them. even kid myself there was some manner of connection there. of course, you can again rationalise having sex with someone beautiful as trying to pass on good genes to the next generation, but frankly that does not cut it. i have always leant a certain level of romance to sex, always felt that it is something great that you share with someone you have a connection with, and all that. but at the same time, in romanticising it, you forget that it is a basic animal urge, especially as a guy, to go out and spread your seed. maybe i am lucky with who i have been with to date; girlfriends and friends, in that the fact  it might have been part of a long relationship, or a friendship, there has always been something of a connection which is nice in a way. all the while, you can still argue if such things as love or ‘spiritual connections’ exist anywhere outside of our minds, and that love and such are just chemical reactions that we have rationalised with culture.

at the same time as people romanticise it, everyone has their hang ups and insecurities about sex; if you are doing something right, wrong, or just doing it. it’s strange that something we romanticise, i.e. think of as beautiful, only in it’s good aspects etc, can be the cause of so many negative things, such as these insecurities. with a culture of sex surrounding us in advertising, television, film and explicitly in popular music, there’s this expectation that you should be good at sex, know what you are doing and bring wave after wave of pleasure upon your partner. anyone, anyone who has had any kind of sexual contact knows this not to be true. i am not complaining about the culture of sex around us, i will leave that to someone else, it just concerns me how these attitudes are portrayed through the media.

 

21- shoes

i am not a sexist person, but i am going to assume this was suggested by a girl. it just reeks of girliness and i can feel my masculinity waning as i think about writing this post.

shoes are not something that many men will admit to really consciously thinking about; we do not amass huge hordes that same way that girls do, and i very much doubt that most men consciously think what shoes to wear with a certain outfit etc etc. i think i own four pairs of shoes; a pair of hi tops, a pair of DMs, a pair of normal plain black smartish shoes from school, and some sandals. and i’m not even sure if the sandals count.

converse are the staple of teenage fashion pretty much; everyone has them, and no-one cares. rarely is it one of those things where you go ‘oh, everyone has them, i must be different’ because, let’s face it; they’re the most comfy shoes ever, and they look cool….even though they make my massive feet look tiny. leonie has been telling me about slim fit converse, that somehow make your feet look even smaller….but that is something i literally cannot imagine. plus why would you want your feet to look smaller than they already do in converse? so they are comfy, but living in wales, you need waterproof shoes to combat the eternal rain, and frankly converse suck like this. literally. they actually absorb water, and then rub your feet. you arrive home with cold feet and just feel miserable. then you crawl into your slippers and melt inside !

DMs are my every day shoe; both water proof and comfy (after you break them in; before this point it is like walking in agony). plus, aside from anything else they look grungy and awesome. they look rugged, and ageless. plus, if you are wearing baggy/longish jeans then DMs look like they are smart shoes; hello getting into clubs with every day shoes. yes please. but, as mentioned before, breaking them in is literally the most painful thing in the world. prepare for at least a week or cuts and blisters on random parts of your feet. my only fault with them so far is that my last pair cracked really badly and i had to buy a new pair. and this new pair is starting to crack…but hopefully it will not.

earlier i mentioned how girls are more into their shoes or whatever; to be honest, i am not going to complain. to any girls reading, shoes to contribute to an awesome outfit, and us guys do notice. well, some of us. though any guy will agree that a girl who walks in with nice heels that show off their legs, we notice.

 

21- raining

living in wales means two things; everyone from outside wales always asks you how bumming sheep is going for you, but secondly it means that it rains all the bloody time. as i sit here writing now, it is tipping it down. and it is so very cold.

i hate to sound like a drag, but rain gets you down. as someone who already gets low in autumn and winter as it is, the rain doesn’t help, but investing in a warm layer or two, and some decent boots (hello DMs) makes you feel like a little vanguard of warmth in the horrible rain. getting soaked in the rain is horrible though; not only does it mean you have to entirely change whatever you are wearing, but if it soaks you through to the skin, you are so very cold and only a warm shower will cure you.

in somewhere like the humidity of thailand or louisianna, rain is welcomed; when the humidity gets too much, you know it is going to rain and it will be beautiful. a wave of refreshment will roll over you as the humidity difuses and is replaced by the cool, easy air after a storm. in the UK, however, the humidity will maintain itself for about a month before it goes away or is rained off, which means a monthful of sweaty t-shirts, no matter what else you are wearing.

in the UK it is nice though, to just sit inside, preferably snuggled up with someone and watch the rain from the inside of some double glazed window, sipping hot chocolate and watching a film.

 

21- sleeping

yes, i realise i have already pretty much defeated the point of this experiment by not posting for a day; apologies for that, it’s been quite busy at this end !

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being a uni student, i have started to appreciate sleep more. be it a full nights sleep before lectures, or a power nap during the day to sustain me through to a night out, sleep is amazing. better still, i now have a double bed which is more amazing ! while i enjoy a nice lie in after a long week, i have started now to get into the habit of getting up earlier. by early, i mean by nine. there’s no point in wasting more or less half a day in bed, when life is out there, happening, and you can be doing anything you want. that said, if it is winter, and the winters here are cold then you can stay in bed for as long as you want, and feel justified in doing so. at which point you leap into your dressing gown/a hoodie/don’t leave your duvet, and run to a warm shower. heaven.

even if you are snuggled up with someone, or just alone and reading a book, your bed is your temple. sit and enjoy it. that said, it has to be your bed. in other people’s beds, i just do not sleep as well, at least not initially. plus, as nice as it is to share a bed with someone, there’s still slight uncomfortableness as they toss and turn, or even snore. but if it’s someone really special, then sleeping is easy; the only problem being if you wake up ages before they do, and have to wait for them to wake before you move or anything, lest you wake them up. it’s a tragic life, isn’t it?

 

21- the internet

the internet is an amazing thing; you pool all of human knowledge onto an integrated network that the entire world can access, and all it is famous for is porn and you tube videos of kittens. what is most alarming about the internet is the anarchic manner in which it exists. there are little in the way of boundaries, and people can get away with so much, many without ever getting caught.

that is not to say it is all bad; with information available for free, it has never been easier to access. while sites such as wikipedia are user edited, and therefore not entirely reliable, the basic frame work of most things are online. sites such as reddit collect new and interesting articles from all over the internet, making it a useful tool for finding new things. at the same time, the internet seems to dilute intelligence as seen in some of the comments found on youtube etc; keyboard jockeys who inarticulately voice their stupid opinions

 

21- tv

since it’s invention, the television has been blamed for many of society’s ills, for making kids have square eyes and affecting people by the images portrayed on the screen. for me, television is something of a dated concept; i rarely actually watch tv, and even when i do it’s something on e4 to do with comedy, or something i have just flicked onto, when i cannot be bothered to move away or do anything. i.e. hangover days.

it amazes me that people worry about kids being exposed to rap music, or video games, and becoming violent and angry kids with knives and guns, roaming the streets looking for their next victim, but no-one questions images of war and famine being broadcasted daily across the world from hot spots. i am not saying these broadcasts should not be made, i am just point out a massive paradox of logic in out society. it’s the same way in which few people question the rampant advertising that goes on. while it is no where near as bad here as it is in the states, where it took me a good three hours to watch the usual suspects (which at a running time of about an hour and a half, makes this ridiculous). i remember watching saturday morning tv when i was younger, and being bombarded with adverts for everything; toys, sweets, albums and films. and, as no logo points out, kids are a good demographic to target, as they are further under the pressures of peer pressure and follow trends like zombies mindlessly follow flesh. even as an adult, i feel bombarded with adverts, for things i frankly do not want or need, but i guess adults can rationalise a purchase a bit more than kids can.

while i do not watch television directly, some programs i just get hooked on; as it turns out, mostly shows from america that are out in the UK a year or two after they start in the states. some good examples of these are battlestar galactica, lost, true blood and how i met your mother. the UK produces some great tv, but it bugs me how noticeably the production costs are. doctor who, for example, is one of the best written shows, and also one of the higher selling and most viewed shows in the UK, but the production costs are so low that everything looks shoddy most of the time. of course, the argument for this is ‘doctor who has always looked a bit crap, look at the 1970s and 1980s doctor’, to which my answer is ’1970s battlestar galactica looked rubbish too, but the rebooted battlestar galactica looks amazing, and the initial budget per episode was not THAT much bigger than doctor who. but i digress.

good television is something that says something, or is so well written that you get so wound up in the drama and the characters. true blood and battlestar galactica both deal with very contemporary issues; very generally speaking, the gay rights movement, and the war on terror respectively, both also having well written characters and story lines, battlestar galactica in particularly. lost too is one show, whose main appeal was the writing; even if it did go off the rails a bit from time to time (we can all agree season two was lacking…). even a good documentary every now and again is fun, but what i cannot stand is this reality TV fad; it is possibly the easiest television to make; give a group of real people the possibility of a prize, and make them jump through whatever hoops you want, film it and sell it on for lucrative profit. shows like x-factor are a modern day equivalent of watching a rat in a race, and shows like big brother today are just a cat walk for whatever freaks they deem interesting enough to put in a box. just because something is easy, does not mean you should do it, and none of that ‘but it’s easy money’ rubbish. good television, good film and good music are the ones that challenge and move the boundaries.

 

21- food

maybe it’s because i am a fat man living in an average man’s body, but i do love food. this is one of the bonuses of moving back to university, as here i can cook for myself, and i can cook whatever i want, when i want. at home, my mum always says i can cook if i want, but then never lets me. there is this horrible myth that uni students eat horribly, have takeaways every night to go with their mass of alcohol they drink, and while the myths about alcohol are probably true, the myths about food are not.

since going to uni, i have learnt to appreciate cooking. after a bad day, or a long day at lectures, there is nothing better than cooking yourself a nice meal, whatever it is. in the past, even making a pasta and pesto mess has been satisfying after a long day at work. i’m not sure if it’s the taste, or the fact that YOU made this for yourself, but it just tastes and feels amazing. also, being able to cook for yourself means that you can experiment. point in case, one day i decided to make a thai yellow curry, gathered what i thought was the necessary ingredients and just went for it, more or less just made it up as i went along, bit of curry pasta, coconut milk, chicken, pineapple, potato and pepper, and my flat mate tasted it and suddenly it became a regular thing in my flat. i’d cook my thai curry and my other flat mates would cook bolognese and a great tradition was born. another point in the case of students eating well, today my house and another house we are really good mates with are cooking a roast together; they are doing the chicken and such, and my house is doing the veg and anything else that needs doing. i have literally not looked forward to a meal so much in ages, excited ! more proof students are not all lazy slobs.

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i would just like to apologise for how self indulgent these posts must seem; always posting about myself. this experiment is to see if it gets me writing as a habitual thing, and is not to be seen as ‘look at my life’. the point is to get me writing, with first thought being best thought. these are all un-edited pieces of writing, so i am writing about what comes to mind first. still though, i hope that anyone reading these posts is enjoying them.

 

21-school

as someone who never felt like he really had a place in school, i’m fairly confident that my opinion of it is skewed. that isn’t to see that i did not enjoy school, but to me, school is putting a load of very immature people into a room, in a culture doused with ‘cool’ and various people to compete as to who is coolest. the amount of peer pressure is ridiculous, you get ridiculed if you are in the slightest bit different to the norm, and the ‘cool’ kids get away with it. i don’t want to moan, but the amount of abuse i got for the clothes i wore and the music i listened to was beyond ridiculous at the time. some of the people who i got teased by i actually get on okay with now, outside of school…but i am not sure if that counts as a reason. the irony is that most of those kids followed trend for trend like magpies, which almost seems hollow.

what bothers me most about school is that we are there to learn, albeit we are there by no choice of our own, but none the less, we are there to learn. yet it bugs me that learning, actually working and reading are deemed uncool, that almost by peer pressure a lot of people do not work just to look cool. i had a friend, a guy named andy, who i used to be in a band with- was a really nice guy, who was doing well in school, until he got in with those guys. and after that, his grades sunk because he thought it was too stupid to work.

for all i disliked school, when school was good, it was so good. when a teacher was actually impressed with the work of someone in your class, or you worked hard on a piece of work and your hard work was rewarded, that moment was awesome. and moving from school, into the real world and into uni, school seems all the more worth while, but at the same time, all the more trivial. problems that seemed to big then are nothing now, but i am glad it happened, because i am happy where i am in my life right now. there is also that little part of me that is happy when i see kids who are bullies and thugs in school working in supermarkets full time now, with no aspiration of going anywhere and being someone. there’s that little part of you that goes ‘i was a loser back then, but i am going somewhere’.

 

21- coffee

as you can probably guess from the title of my blog, i like coffee. i think that i don’t ‘like’ coffee the same way people say they ‘like’ a good movie, but i ‘like’ coffee the same way ewan mcgregor in  trainspotting ‘liked’ heroin. but i digress. yes it is addictive, but it does not harm anyone. i’m not stealing tvs to fuel my fix, though that is largely due to the free coffee i get for working at starbucks. the day i finish working in starbucks will be sad, and i will not be sure where i am going to get my coffee from.

i think it’s interesting that one of the cornerstones of modern day corporate business and franchise is coffee shops. since the late 80s, companies like starbucks, costa, neros etc have been selling us the ‘romance’ of coffee, from a mystical past in milan espresso bars contemplating philosophy and jazz. and largely they have succeeded- there are seven starbucks in cardiff, with three of those being on the main shopping street. with a starbucks on every corner, how can the little man compete? this is a favourite thing of mine; when you find a small coffee shop, a one off, which is not branded, except for soda drinks in the fridge. it’s a thing of beauty, and i can sit there and read a book and not hear ‘grande-triple-shot-half-caff-soy-wet-extra-hot-latte’, just savour the smell of espresso being ground and the low hiss of the steam wand on milk.

i think you can tell a lot about someone by the coffee they drink. someone who drinks a cappuccino or a flat white is someone who wants to sit there, and relish their coffee. both are largely made of creamy foam; the kind of thing you want to sit there and slowly eat with a spoon, or dip biscotto in and think, or just enjoy being off their feet for a small eternity. someone who will have an espresso is often the artsy type, or someone on the go. someone who wants the beautiful hit of espresso, intense and inspiring. the artsy type, of the kind of person who will sit around reading and writing in a coffee shop too will enjoy just a black coffee or americano (hi, me), keeps you focused and it is full of flavour, but not bogged down with the massive amounts of sugar that come with other drinks.

which brings me onto the ‘other’ drinks, which, while they sell well, just don’t sit well for me. i used to drink a lot of mocha, you can still taste the coffee in it, but it is hideously bad for you thanks to copius amounts of sugar and milk. drinks like a caramel macciato or vanilla latte is just milk and sugar- you cannot taste any coffee. you might as well be drinking coke for all the sugar that is in it.

so why do i drink coffee? because good coffee tastes amazing. it lifts you like a good song, and it inspires you and makes you think in a more imaginative and energetic way