Heroes and Villians

It's been a long-standing joke in my house at least that I am a one-man goal drought when it comes to playing FIFA. In fact, that pretty much covers any football game I've ever played. I remember playing the Pro Evo league at work over 2 years ago and recording the only 2 0-0 draws of the whole tournament, and six 1-0 wins (out of a total 16 games played.). Basically, I don't score. Ever. But I rarely concede either.

Anyway, rambling about that aside, I was taken by a friend to see my very first ever proper real-life football game in a proper stadium with Bovril and everything to watch Aston Villa vs West Ham in Birmingham last weekend and the score was, as predicted, 0-0.

The irony in this came home with me when my housemates jumped on my goal drought extending to real teams but not only that but it was really rubbed in four day later when Villa produced a 10-goal thriller at the same stadium, defeating Blackburn 6-4 in a Carling Cup game which, incidentally, I did not attend.

Typical.

I guess if I'm to become a proper Aston Villa "fan", (and I'm still not there yet, although there's only one team I like nearly as much as them...and it's NOT Arsenal) then I'd have to go see them more often than once, and hopefully see some goals in the meantime, although as yet I have no desire to start chanting or buying replica kits, so "fan" status is probably still a fair way off yet.

With that said, the game itself was good fun to watch live. It's a very different atmosphere to Sky Sports and I'll not be waiting another 25 years to go back.

What I can wait another 25 years for is another stocktake. Some people who know me know that the day after Tuesday, quite possibly the most difficult day I've ever experienced in my whole life, is not the best day to be having this 13-hour shift whereby the entire second half was taken in near-silence scanning every barcode in the store. I hated the whole thing. Hated it. It was wholly neccessary and the ends justified the means but getting to that end point and having to be up for a 7am start the following day practically finished me off.

When I worked in the Lighthouse in Edinburgh 12-16 hour shifts were common. I used to lap them up. In fact there was a time I'd request them because the hourly pay was a godsend, and the tips I'd earn doing a double shift were well and truly worth it. not only that, but I lived a 3-minute walk from the pub itself so travel costs were nil. It was ideal in every way, even if the guy that ran the company was a complete douche. I don't know if I'm getting old or lazy or what, but 13-hours the other day just felt longer than any shift I ever pulled in there and I was seriously tiring out at the end of it. I really hope it's not age as I'm only 24 and if I start getting old now then I'm screwed in the years to come.

In fact that's not even worth thinking about.

I've got plenty of Villa games left in me yet.

Snow Business

So this is it. The brand new blog.

Some of you (but not many) will know that for the last 5 years I've had a semi-private Livejournal. Not many people could read it, and for pretty good reason, but I've decided to publically shut up shop over there and move anything I wish to make public over here. I'll still be writing my private thoughts and that kind of thing over there, but I want to keep people away from that place and bring them all here.

So. What's this blog about?

Well, pretty much everything. I'll either be posting reviews of films, cds, gigs, restaurants and the like here, or commenting on news stories and things that have happeneing in my life I wish to share here, or other such stuff. Basically, this is blog writing 101.

So, since it's the new year and all that jazz, I'll start with the new night that Grundy and I are putting on in the Port Mahon every second Thursday starting, well, tomorrow. With a bit of luck we'll have three bands (Dead Jerichos, Serotonin & From Here, We Run) and a large enough crowd but the whole thing looks like it could end up going down the crapper due to snow. Yes, the white stuff has come and rained down its slushy madness like it tends to at least once a year and as a result the entire city stopped. Grundy tells me that only 5 people made it into work today and that HMV was pretty much the only shop open in the Cornmarket.

Buses ran a limited timetable, and by limited I mean about 4 services ran every million years, and everything pretty much stopped.

With that in mind though, I do intend to persevere. After all if there's a small crowd then we can blame it on the weather. There's not a lot I can do about people who can't get to the Port due to snow, and that's fine. At worst it's an extra, public rehersal for the bands outwith their normal schedule. Dead Jerichos are playing about 400 gigs in Oxford in the next couple of months anyway so the extra stage time will do them good. The Serotonin guys are friends of ours from the Witney gig with FLM in October, so it's good to get a chance to see them again, and From Here, We Run go back to uni very soon so it's one of their last chances to get on stage before they have to go their seperate ways for the term. So as long as the pub stays open then everyone still wins (as long as enough people come down for me to be able to pay for the room).

Music promoters get a lot of stick for snobbery, failure to care about the bands playing, not replying to emails and being just in it for the money. I don't really want to start causing trouble and talk too much about that but there's been plenty of threads on the Nighshift forum about some people in the past. Hopefully Grundy and I will try to break this mould. It'll take a few shows for people to notice us, and because it's our first show tomorrow I'm sure there's going to be something we'll have forgotton, but it doesn't matter as long as three bands turn up, play some music and go home having made paying customers happy. After all, Oxford has a strong compliment of up and coming acts and I want to at least try to be a part of it.

Until then though, the snow is my biggest enemy. Hopefully it won't cause so much havoc we're left with an empty hall, but even if it is, it's an experience nonetheless. There's going to be stuff to take on board for the next show in 2 weeks, and hopefully we can make it bigger and better.