Anyway, I received a text from my sister and balanced the knife on an upside down colander in the sink so it could stay under the tap, gradually getting hotter. Once my reply was finally sent, I turned the tap off and went to pick up the knife but burned my hand and then subsequently stabbed myself in the same hand while I tried to catch the knife that I had just thrown in the air.

It might be time to go to bed, I’m probably tired.

Note: the image here is a recreation straight after I finished making my sandwiches… only to result in me further burning my hand and repeating the entire thing after I took the photo.

It’s not often I upload a video to the big, corrupt internet, but today I have and it’s the clone video. The chroma stuff I filmed isn’t anywhere near worthy of a mention, but my first attempt at self-cloning worked with only minor glitches… enjoy!

Being a heavy drinker, I decided to take up Waitrose’s offer on their multipacks and carried twenty four bottles back with me on my way home from university. Together they weighed an awful lot and were the centre point in receiving weird looks from members of the public as they walked past. I didn’t care though, I needed the drink.

My problem then is storage, and where to keep a couple of large multipacks. Twenty four bottles needed some sort of home for the time I’d spend drinking them. I looked around my room for ages, moving things about and trying to see if there was anywhere they could go.

I had already filled a small shelving unit by the side of my desk, and my CD collection were balanced precariously above my head on another shelf. Every piece of storage was taken up somehow and the rest of my floor has recently become filled with a suitcase, and its contents, from a visit back home at the tail end of last week.

After an entire twenty seconds of glancing around the room, I since found somewhere for them all to sit. It just means I can’t open my window anymore. Perhaps it’d be a good idea to start some revision for Thursdays French exam…

I recently discovered Plinky, a website that is trying to combat writers block with a series of scenarios and questions aimed at getting your thought process into full swing.

The first scenario I was given by the site was “three people walk into a bar…”, and I had to finish it.

Unfortunately, it didn’t really trigger anything off in my mind apart from a little chuckle, but even that was short-lived.

It’ll be interesting to see where this leads in the future and whether or not it actually helps on writers block, but until then, internet games and exam revision it is..!

]]> http://samuel-gould.com/2013/05/20/writers-block/feed/ 0 samuelgould Screen Shot 2013-05-20 at 19.21.46 http://samuel-gould.com/2013/05/12/aint-no-sound-but-the-sound-of-his-feet/ http://samuel-gould.com/2013/05/12/aint-no-sound-but-the-sound-of-his-feet/#comments Sun, 12 May 2013 20:07:50 +0000 Samuel http://samuel-gould.com/?p=2918 ]]> It’s annoying you.

I can tell.

It’s ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ by Queen. The song seems appropriate at the moment for a variety of reasons but I won’t let that ruin my moral – although that seems to be non-existant after a week from hell. However, something more important has struck the little bubble that I live in.

Change.

I’m not exactly sure where this change developed from but the urge to instead of getting the tube, which costs a mortgage for a single journey, I have been taking to the Borris Bikes for my minor journeys. I say minor, you’d have to pay me to cycle all the way to places like the National Archives which at best can take up to an hour on the tube. The bikes basically cost £2 for a 24 hour period, and you can use them for half an hour at a time. If you need it longer, you can pay a little extra. The bikes are useful if I’m running late for work and instead of literally running, I’ll just hop on a bike and cycle most of the way, despite it being a 10 minute walk.

Two wheels also replaces the four on the bus for going to Oxford Circus, or uni sometimes. I’ve even taken one over Tower Bridge which was eventful, although I did get the tube back after suffering from the terrible jelly-leg-syndrobe since this has been the first time I have cycled after leaving secondary school. Those were the days when I would race my teacher through the industrial estate every morning on the way to school as we both took the same route.

But even after work today, while it had been pouring down with rain, I took to the bikes for my lift home. My jeans barely touched the soaking wet saddle but who cares anyway? I have got back into a routine of keeping fit and healthy, not just physically either. As I briefly mentioned at the beginning, it’s been an awful week but like in dreams, ‘all my problems seem to disappear’ as when I cycle, I’m so busy trying not to die that there’s no room for my mind to think about anything else.

In a way, that constant look out for taxis gives space your mind and that deep breath when a bus overtakes you makes you realise that there is something more important than anything else in the world, yourself.

No matter how many friendships you ruin, how many customers lunge at you at work or why you lost something you worked hard for, nothing is more important than yourself and yourself only. Perhaps danger is a wake up call, or maybe its just my luck playing games with me again. I’m not sure, but either way, the nearly dying bit prevented a mental breakdown of catastrophic* levels.

The end.

*By catastrophic breakdown, I mean that I’d lock myself in my bedroom and play lots of music and stare deep into my lava lamp.

“Hi Sam,

I just want to say that it’s becoming obvious that your posts are made up because nobody could lead a life not cooking properly and being this unlucky with girls. Anyone living this lifestyle is living in hell.

Kind regards…”

Well.

Urm..

Okay?

I’m not going to lie and say I knew how to respond to this, as well, I didn’t. I wasn’t expecting anything to come through on my emails so when WordPress said that I had a message, I was a little excited. A couple of clicks later and I was sitting bewildered on my chair – catching moths as I tried to understand where on earth this came from…

So how do I write a reply to that? I asked around to try and establish a good place to start after receiving an ‘awkward message from a reader’ and this is what I managed to come up with.

“Dear reader,

Thank you for taking the time to message me…”

I got this far and had to take a break. As you can tell, it was getting pretty tough. I scribbled a few notes on a notepad and continued to type out some form of answer which wasn’t insulting or that would make things more awkward than they  already were. I also had to be careful that I didn’t lose a reader as well, I love all of them, even if they are here just to read on my misfortunes.

“I appreciate your concern over the legitimacy of my blog entries however everything I write is, bar the odd occasion where discretion hides the embarrassment of someone other than myself, actually about something that has happened…”

Throughout the planning of my reply, I kept looking at the original message in hope of inspiration but looming on the screen was a concern over my diet. Having earned myself a reputation over my cooking, it was no surprise that in a message like that, it would crop up somewhere. I also realised that I needed to form some sort of response to the last part of the readers message, whereby I am somewhat unlucky with girls? Anyway, I took to the notepad and wrote a couple of sentences. I repeated it with small changes until I had filled nearly two sides of my pad and read through them.

This was by far the most appropriate.

“In relation to your concerns of my cooking related pieces, I should point out that these are rare occasions where things have gone wrong. The reason why I don’t blog about my good cooking is because it can be boring and uninteresting, where as when it goes wrong, people find it entertaining and enjoy reading it. Unfortunately, there is no denial that the later part of your message is true and like many single people, I enjoy not getting headaches all the time, although this is not the case during Summer when it gets a bit too hot down here in the inferno.

I hope that this answers your concerns,

All the best,

Sam”

One or two friends of mine have spurred me on to keep writing as even that first sentence was saved into my drafts folder for a week or so as I still felt uninspired, but eventually, I delved back into the nonsense that lies unpublished and rediscovered my wonderful thoughts on fashion.

In my trail of thought, there are two ideas for how you decide what to wear. Now, being honest, I don’t know whether this is just me or all men in general, but these two ideas are; practicality and whether or not they’re clean.

So ultimately, the practical thing.

For example, if I’m going to be carrying a phone, wallet, iPod and my keys, I’ll wear my jeans because they have enough pockets. If for example, I was going to carry all of those, and a bottle of water, I’ll wear my jeans because they enough pockets for all the valuables – I’ll just carry my water bottle. The chances are, I’ll have finished drinking the water before I get anywhere and so the plastic will end up in a recycling bin somewhere – so there’s no need to carry round an empty bag.

What about t-shirts? Well, if they fit, they’ll do. Zip jackets or hoodies you may ask? I’ll say that if its cold, go ahead! And if its really cold, stick a scarf on. It’s great! But it’s raining too? A coat sounds like a fantastic idea! Picking clothes out of the wardrobe couldn’t be easier and takes less time than it takes to panic at your overdraft.

But at this point I’ll stop. I have to admit and say that for me, the shoes get a bit tricky. There are different things to think about for your feet, like, red converse or black?

Literally.

But it doesn’t matter what colour or material your shoes are, this is England. Someone somewhere will judge you for what you’re wearing and if nobody’s judging you, then it’s yourself.

What people forget as they complain about what people are wearing is that, we’re all as bad as each other. People get criticised for wearing chinos or long leather coats, or even bandanas – but actually, they’re thinking the same thing about you in your skinny jeans and converse. So why don’t we just forget about fashion and wear what we want?

But like most things, we can’t, because someone somewhere thinks its a bad idea and quite naturally, humans don’t like being criticised. Or if they do, they’re doing a bloody good job at hiding it. Either that or they didn’t understand it. Or they’re drunk… but you get the idea. Political correctness and standard customer courtesy is changing the way we talk to each other now too, while the words we use are more “nice”, the point of what we’re saying is sometimes even nastier than ever before.

When a girl asks if her bum looks too big in a dress, instead of saying, ‘yeah, it looks huge’, we are now more inclined to say ‘it’d look more comfortable in the other..’, I guess. Unless its your best friend, in which case insults are the way forward – and quicker to the point too.

And then what happens under the whole ‘branding war’? Do we really need to be seen advertising a particular logo or slogan when really, we’d be better off just wearing something else? But having fallen under the branding myself, not in fashion but in electronic goodness, I can somewhat appreciate the need to be seen with reputation and in some cases, reliability. The idea of being seen in that particular group of people is marginally satisfying to the human race and so necessary for competition amongst different people. It’s what keeps us different, or in part anyway. You could argue though that we’re all victim to the consumer market and then I’ll respond by asking, is that a bad thing?

This relates to what I talk about in a previous blog post called Sitting on the floor, where I hypocritically explain that we all judge each other for no reason whatsoever and well, I’m going to repeat it here. Because we do, and it’s a problem and we’re all ignoring it – to some extent anyway.

It’s safe to say that since moving down to where I am now, music has been an ever-growing importance to me and well, a wonderful invention called CDs have made it something more. Perhaps now I have too many? Or I’d argue not enough, but regardless of how many I’ve somehow managed to squeeze on my shelf – isn’t it wonderful?

My Wednesday evening is now taken up with one line of though. Whether or not these should continue to take up shelf space or whether I should demote them to the floor by my shoes. They once were on the floor, but that meant that they would be out of sight and well, I found that more than uninspiring. Seeing some of the epic titles above my head as I work is a great source of inspiration for me – with names like Queen, Rolling Stones, Miles Davis and even my mate Andrew who released an album not too long ago. There are some awful albums in the mix but also some real gems.

I see on social networking sites, Facebook and Twitter, people from across the country spending their lives drowning in alcohol and clothes and on holiday and doing whatever. Some of them even moan, saying how stupid it is for me to spend money on music. I’m not even going to answer that one…

But what if the space-wasting, ‘in the way’, plastic cased disks is my way of getting away from the world? Did I complain that your last drink was one too many? Well it was, but that’s got nothing to do with me. It’s slightly hypocritical for me to say that the world needs to stop judging people, but honestly, it does. So before you mock someone for their way of life, remember that they’re probably mocking you for something you do.

Just saying.

It’s bank holiday Monday and I’m sitting enjoying a couple of buskers perform under the sunset outside the Tate Modern. The tide is out and just below me, are the pebbles and sand that usually form the river bed.

The air above me is busy, with planes and helicopters flying over and of course, the setting sun to me left, blinding any turn of the head towards Blackfriars Bridge.

If anything, I should be in my flat revising for my upcoming exams but I’m not. Instead, listening to two guitarists and the many conversations around me – most of which in a language I don’t understand.

But it’s almost like I wasn’t allowed to relax as I felt a buzzing in my pocket. My phone was calling me and a message read for me to go over to uni. It appeared as if a friend was in trouble.

I had moved towards Westminster and was sitting under the lights of the London Eye, looking out at the famous clock tower and the surrounding buildings when I took off from my bench and headed over the bridge.

A little blue sign was lit up ahead and after popping in my details, a Borris Bike was mine. I hadn’t cycled properly for a while, at least not sober anyway. I wrestled through the streets of London not knowing what was meant by ‘its important’ and soon enough, I was outside the bricked building that was my university.

My jelly legs somehow carried me up the two flights of stairs to the library where I had been called to and after circling the computers, I found a ‘perfectly healthy, bored girl’ who had only cut her thumb – this morning.

I bet my face was priceless and as I pulled the Barclays release ticket from my pocket she realised were I had come from. It didn’t cross my mind that it was printed only ten minutes earlier, I was too busy getting my breath back.

While I’m not sure what this story proves, however I am confident in saying that I am not as fit as I used to be.

After purchasing a lava lamp Wednesday, I’ve noticed my mood chill out. The blue bubbles of lave bounce off each other in a kind of boring but weirdly relaxing way and have somehow inspired me to actually do something.

Considering the fact that my end of year exams are only a week away, you’d think that I’d do some revision, right?

No.

Well I’ll be honest and admit that I’ve been a little distracted.

The introduction of a lava lamp has chilled me out so much that I’ve ‘levelled up’ in the whole nerd scene by signing up to not only be a reader at the British Library, but also the National Archives. You may be wondering why, but the sound archives in the British Library really are SOMETHING and if I can make a particular flat mine next year, it’ll only be down the road from where I’ll be calling home. The opportunity for research, or even to just listen to amazing music that you just can’t find on the street anymore is more inspiring than anything and after having my first taste of it this morning, I am truly excited by having the time to visit it more often.

As for the National Archives, well they’re based down in Richmond which doesn’t seem that far out on a map, but took me a fair bit of time to reach. Once I got off the tube at Kew Gardens, it was an easy five minute walk down a beautiful residential street, lined with blossoming trees and dog walkers, before you enter the grounds. It’s almost like the headquarters to a spy agency or some super laboratory but inside, what you can discover is unbelievable.

Without really knowing how the archives work, I asked. Best thing to do, really.

Another slight truth is that I’ve always had an eye for architecture, technical drawings and travel. It was a career path I nearly considered instead of going into music, but while at the National Archives, I thought I would check some original drawings out.

In what looks like a small library, you can search for files on computers before ‘ordering’ them to view. Depending on the age and condition of the documents, you’re sometimes asked to wear gloves, but for the maps and drawings I’d be looking at, it wasn’t necessary. After half an hours wait in the canteen, my folder of drawings was made available to collect and I made my way up to the map room to view them.

For some background info on what I was going to look at, I had been made curious by what appeared to be a platform on the underground between Farringdon and Kings Cross. I noticed it when I first moved into the area in September, and it had been annoying me ever since. I then had laid out across a table in front of me the OS map for the London Underground which shows all of the tunnels, access, and rooms of each station – with all of the tunnels too.

You could call it interesting, dull, or whatever other word you can think of – but for me it was intriguing to see where the tracks laid beneath the streets of London. It took me a while to go through each page though, as each A1 sized sheet had to be handled with care and were, well, massive. I’d slide them over to the side to reveal the map underneath, take a glance and slide that one on top. It wasn’t long before Kings Cross St Pancras came up and there it was – my mystery platform.

It’s along the Metropolitan/Circle/Hammersmith and City line just east of the main station and acted as the old (main) platforms for Kings Cross. All the original corridors are still there and part of the entrance is still open, acting as a secondary entry point to the main station. It just means that you have an epic walk underground before you get to any of the platforms which isn’t really that fun. Also down that way, but not covered on this particular OS map, is the main National Rail platform which is still standing adjacent to the closed underground platforms. It has its advertisements still up and again, all the corridors are still there to link it all up, just that they’re blocked off.

The map also showed a few other bits and pieces, like for example, a mystery ‘middle’ track between the platforms on the new Metropolitan part of the station and the location of a disused ticket hall. In one of the stations on a different page was an entire length of tunnel which has now been cut off and turned into a restaurant. It’s all very… interesting?

For the curious minds and for those who like to uncover secrets, or ‘lesser known facts’, the Royal Mail Train is nothing new – maybe this would be an interesting thing to look up on? Perhaps in the month after my exams, I’ll find out whether it really does link with the Royals and the law makers but who knows?

I’ll have to pass my French exam first before I can find out.