Analyse my laundry

Here's a little something for you to do today...

Curly has just put his washing on the line as it is sunny outside. He noticed something odd, he didn't seem to have one t-shirt the same colour as another this week. He thought to himself:-

"Hmmm, I wonder what that says about me, as a person?"

Then, he had a great idea. He knew of a bunch of people that spent a lot of the time on the interweb who always seem to have interesting opinions.

"Why don't I ask them to analyse my laundry, I'm sure they know FAR more about things like this than I do"

And so he did.

Barring the obvious lack of underwear, which I assure you doesn't mean that he doesn't wear any, what does Curly's laundry tell you about him?

Brain Drain.

Whilst being 100% hungover on the train this morning, my mind was buzzing with ideas for posts (I've never had that before!). However, I've decided to not post any of them at all because they all require brain-power, I'm low on that at the moment. Plus, I've forgotten them all, remembering stuff is pretty hard too. Yesterday I came up with an AMAZING riff and some pretty good lyrics, but I'd completly forgotten how the song went by the time I got near a guitar. Damn. What I find most annoying is that the majority of my memories have been replaced by the first ten seconds of Guns n Roses' Paradise City, over and over again until it hurts.

There's been an unusual amount of forgetting going on recently and I'm a little concerned about it to be honest with you. Recently I have...

• Left work and got home before realising that I hadn't brought back any work stuff for the next day.
• Driven to Ebbw Vale for work, but have forgotten where Ebbw Vale was. I didn't find it for two hours. It's a 25min drive.
• Forgotten to eat for two days.
• Forgotten the Kings birthday.
• Stood outside on my street and not recognised a single thing about it, I couldn't even figure out which city I was in.

None of that has had alcohol involved. Alcohol was heavily involved however, on the weekend in Cardiff. That kind of memory loss is completely normal and once again the shitty phone camera has been in overdrive again. We pretty much spent the entire weekend in Phaelon towers, eating, sleeping and partying. On Sunday evening I'd inadvertantly caused a party... It was 11pm and the pub was closing down, I turned round to Simon and Gaz and said
"Err, boys... I think I've organised a party round your house later.."
"How did that happen?" asked Simon.
"I really don't know... but there's loads of people coming over in about an hour - we'd better get some beer"
"Shit... yeah" Simon nodded in agreement.

Finding booze after hours in Cardiff wasn't a problem, although £54 was a little bit steep for two slabs to be delivered. Ouch.

As well as all that, I've been doing things like this...

Chatting to two ex-miners in a town right up in the Welsh valleys. We talked for an hour in the sunshine about coal mining, politics, cars, coal mining, women, coal mining and the weather. They wanted a photo of their little garden which is going to have a road built through it within a few months. They gave me an Orange. Cheers boys.

Having a piss-up in a brewery, just me, my boss and the guy that owned it. Great.

Standing in the rain in Ebbw Vale. It was miserable. Nice little place though. Steel from Ebbw Vale built the Sydney Harbour Bridge, 44000 red engineering bricks from nearby Beaufort support the Empire State Building while Southampton docks stand on the crushed slag from Beaufort ironworks, and did you also know that a dodgy burger from Ebbw Vale made me feel sick? True story.

Stumbling out of the Students union in Cardiff.

Blaming my pounding headache on these boys, they're funny.

I've forgotten what else I was going to write.

Take me down to the paradise city...

A hungover poem

Said the boss to Curly as we sat in the pub,
"Of course you can leave early", so I bought him some grub,
I hopped on a train and drifted to sleep
My brain switched off after counting some sheep.

The train was delayed but it didn't matter a jot
I'd passed the time with a girl who was hot
We finally arrived in the big bad city
London was lively but the weather was shitty

After getting lost and getting covered in mud,
I found the bar with my pals Helen and Sud,
It was getting pretty late and I was feeling dead,
So I ordered a pint and had it on the head

The evening was fun, we all had a laugh
although I was pretty smelly and needed a bath
We went back to the flat, not too late
and ordered a curry which we only half ate.

Saturday was great, Sud fancied a lark
So off we headed to Tufnell Park
We checked out the area then met up with Huw
We cheered on Munster and ordered more brew

After a few more beers we searched for the underground
We were a little hammered and one couldn't be found
We walked to Camden, both pretty wonky
Eventually though, we hooked up with Donkey.

The tube home was closed, which set off alarms
But we quickly forgot in the Northumberland Arms
We watched Eurovision, which we thought was grand
Wogan was funny, the winners were Fin-land (oohh running out of rhymes here)

We got back to the flat at eleven, very late
Helen was angry, we were due in at eight.
We were going to Infernos, a little bit risky
So we psyched ourselves up with a bottle of whiskey.

The night afer that was a bit of a blur,
No doubt my dancing was suspect and I was beginning to slur
Good news though, I picked up a chick
It was my "posing dance"(tm) which did the trick

Breakfast on Sunday to laugh about the night,
We all giggled until our stomachs were tight
After more beer and some coke with an ice cube
Sud and I went on a crawl along the tube

We managed six stops before we ran out of cash
Luckily enough we bumped into my old friend Tash.
More beers and a laugh again
Before we finally died at half ten.

So here I am, sitting back in Wales
Feeling knackered but smiling, with plenty more tales.


(Inspired by and dedicated to:

The great City of London, The London Underground, The Fine Line, The Quays, The Northumberland Arms, The Golden Lion, SW4, Infernos, The Peoples Republic, Hung Drawn & Quartered, The Tankard, The Duke of Edinburgh, The Clapham North, The Alexandra, Sud Shady, Helen, Sarah, Lisa, Kris, Hot random train girl, Huw, Donkey, Tash, random Eastern European girl that gave us directions, random Aussie girl, Terry Wogan, random 3 black gangsters that laughed at my dancing and last, but not least, the two random Germans that knew where the nearest pub to Stockwell tube was)

What a weekend!

It's going to be an absolute feast of exciting events this weekend...


First up, Canada take on Sweden in the Semi-final of the Hockey World Championships. I'm at a loss who to support as I love both countries so much! I think I'm going to be rooting for Canada - simply because I've seen how nuts they are about the sport!


Ronan O'Gara and the rest of the Munster massif descend on Cardiff to take on the French in the form of Biarritz Olympique, for an almighty battle to be crowned Rugby Kings of Europe for the year. Munster should (and I hope they do) win this one.


Eurovision will be taking place on Saturday evening. For those that have never seen it, please make a special effort - it's nothing short of hilarious, to the British and Irish anyway. The rest of Europe take this singing contest very seriously indeed, which makes Terry Wogans comments about Britain "sending in gun boats" even funnier.




It's going to be camp as hell. More camp than a row of pink tents. More camp that a row of pink tents with men shagging in them.


And Last, but not least. It's our friend Marv's birthday, the Welsh kid that likes to think he's from Manchester will be turning 25. The poor boy will be in Cardiff during the Rugby (about 40'000 tickets have been sold for Munster fans alone), it wouldn't be a problem normally but Marv just doesn't like Eggs or any sport using an Egg-shaped object as a ball.
"I hate Eggs, they just look silly.." Marv 2006

Imagine how it would be. To be at the top making cash money.

I have just had an absolutely brilliant lunch hour (and a half, oops)!

My new favorite thing to do in my lunch hour is to go home and have a good stomp around my room to some extremely loud music, just to wake up Fatkid in the room below me (at 1pm). It's a habit born of sheer boredom. Today I felt like listening to a little bit of the Prodigy, I'd almost forgotten how good it was. The thumping bass line was enough to wake people up on the other side of town, so Fatkid must have been having a great time. As I left the house, I could smell him... I poked my head around the living room door and there he was, sinking into the chair with the most miserable look on his face. That put a giant grin on mine and I bounced out of the house, still singing along to the songs I was listening to a minute earlier.

Outside were my favorite three old ladies. There's a bus stop right outside my house and they always catch that bus down into town at the same time every day. I always give them a cheery "Shw mae ferched!" (Hello Ladies) as I leave the house, today they all chuckled together and said what a lovely boy I was... That's One, Two, Three old ladies telling me that I'm lovely and of course, they know best - I challenge you to beat that!

Five minutes later I was still singing to myself as I walked through town (It's a habit I've GOT to stop), two young ladies appeared behind me and started singing along! (admittedly I did know them, but it was still pretty random) It highlighted the habit anyway and I shut up for the rest of the walk back to the office.

Now I'm back in work, all energised and ready to go. But that's going to dissipate the longer I stare at this screen....

Update: Just found this while working... A piss-take of the Sony advert, where 250,000 multi-coloured balls are thrown down the hill in San Francisco, has been made for Tango. Although San Fran has been replaced by Swansea...

C-town representatives

Why is that shoe-laces always come undone on WALKING boots? It's been bugging me for the last five months. I walk for miles in them and the (double) knots remain tight, yet I sit down at my desk in work for fifteen minutes and they come undone...? Weird.

Apart from the shoelace problem, everything is pretty rosy here. Barbeque season has started in earnest, we've had three in the last week and they've all been absolutely fantastic!

I'm not feeling in the slightest bit creative today after staying up until 3am performing home surgery on a strange lump on the back of my head (see lovely pic) with a penknife, a pair of tweezers and a sewing needle. I've had the bump for a few years but never really paid it too much attention. The other night it decided to grow to about twice its previous size and become extremely painful, so I made up my mind to do something about it. My housemate (Archer) came home at about twelve, saw the blood/pus soaked tissues lying around in the bathroom and noticed that I was clearly having trouble so he decided to help out. Archer had consumed in the region of two litres of cider so was quite happy to help jam a sewing needle as far as he could into my head (we managed to get it in about an inch deep!!). I'm not sure what we actually achieved in the end, apart from making me bleed profusely, as the bump is still there today - I might have to make the trek to the doctors. Ho hum.

Strange bump, red and frustrated after being jabbed repeatedly

I'm becoming quite fond of my low-quality phone pictures, they're serving as a brilliant memory aid for the night before. I've only had a phone with a camera on it since January, previously I'd made do with one that just does normal things, like make calls. Another fantastic quality of this phone is that I just can't seem to type in peoples names in capital letters when I'm drunk, "Where's the use in that?" I hear you ask. Well, it enables me to easily identify any new names that I'd entered into my phone the night before as all the other names are in capital letters. This weekend I apparently met a GEmma, a SalLy, a RacHEl and an Isirph Mike (I suspect it's supposed to be Irish). Result.

One barbeque was a bit mental, a house-full of girlies had invited about four of us boys over, but after an hour we numbered about ten. I held the responsibility of being head chef and produced some quality food, the girls were incredibly happy as they'd just cremated about twenty sausages before we arrived. It was a bit of a strange bbq in a 13 year olds school disco kind of way, all the boys were outside having a laugh whilst all the girls were inside getting wasted... we all mixed up in the end anyway and headed out for a cracker of an evening in the Students Union.

Barbeque number one, with crappy (but kinda cool) photo.

Another barbeque was hosted by two 'George' mates Steve and James. The food was again plentiful, as were the free drinks and the laughs. We didn't stop laughing the entire time, and fueled by more booze and a few tokes on a smoke we decided to start setting fire to things (always a winner at a party!). There are plenty of videos and photos of the events of that evening and once I figure out how to upload my low-quality phone videos, I might link to them*.

Steve - Look, the flame's floating!

On an extra note, this creased me up in the morning when I was rooting around for ketchup in Phaelon Towers, it's a jar of Madras sauce with an odd message on it:-

Your scared of me aren't you David?

*Crappy Quality phone video uploaded, but you can barely make anything out. Quicktime or Realplayer should play it.

Oh my God.

I noticed that the amazon.com packaging protruding from underneath some German WWII helmets (lying around as they do) and decided to have a peek at what my housemates were ordering, upon closer inspection - I noticed that it was addressed to me! It'd been there for five days and no-one had told me about it.

I ran upstairs, a little bit miffed initially but overwhelmed with excitement, ripped open the packaging and waited for an age for the drawer on my CD player to open...

'Turning On' .... good good.
'Welcome' .... yeah, I know, HURRY UP
'Loading' ... WTF?
'Opening' ... YESSS, that's the one!

The CD was rammed into the machine and the process started again...

'Closing' ... AAAGH.
'Reading' ...GREAT
'Loading' ...Again?
'Sleeping' ... (not really, but it might as well have been)
'Playing' ... at last!

And then it started...

There's a guitar strummed softly for a few seconds before Juanita Stein's soft, seductive voice came in, the Aussie twang a clear and very welcoming change to some of the music I've listened to recently. By the time the second track, Velvet Girl, had finished, I was lying motionless on the floor unable to decide which emotion I should be displaying. I lay there listening to the rest of the album, completely forgetting what it was I was supposed to be doing instead.

Then it happened...

Setting Sun - As I was lying there, listening intently, a giant wave of emotion washed over me - I was euphoric, miserable, confused and enlightened all at once, I was completely breathless, I hadn't noticed but I'd seemingly forgotten to take a single breath for the previous four minutes... David Blaine would be proud. I was transported to a completely different world, an alien world, a fantasy world, a good world, the world of the Howling Bells.

Painful Pennant

Most people in Britain, and indeed a fair few around the world, are aware that the football world cup is on its way. Here, in Britain, it's going to be unavoidable and I, for one, will want to avoid it as best I can.

"But why aren't you getting behind your team, Curly?"

I hear you ask, it's simple - England are not my team. The Welsh didn't qualify, neither did the Scots or either of the Irish teams. The second that I realised that Wales couldn't qualify for the cup, I lost any trace of interest that I may have had. I was happy to carry on with my day-to-day life, watching my much-preferred sport of rugby and ignoring the hullabaloo that was bound to kick off over the border in England. That is becoming an increasingly difficult task as we get closer to the event itself...

The headlines are dominated with pre-world cup build up, mainly consisting of pictures of spoilt young boys with their ankles broken. These headlines are only just kept off the front pages by political scandal involving secretaries having sex with their boss (who wouldn't want to have sex with him?) . TV adverts starring famous footballers are cropping up left right and centre and the year 1966 is being used in conversation far more than I'm comfortable with.

All of the above were easily dealt with, I avoided reading the articles in the paper and stayed away from the TV. That done, I carried on with my life happily, until the very second that I saw a car containing four blokes shouting "IN-GER-LAND" drive past with a silly, flappy, annoying St.Georges cross flying from each window... and then I snapped. My mood changed from singing to the birds and skipping along the pavement (not quite, that'd look a bit gay) to an overwhelming desire to snap the stupid little bits of plastic off the car and hurl them at the driver. I restrained myself because, dear reader, that is what the driver wanted me to do.

Even if that was all a bit of banter, the worst things about the whole 20 seconds of that experience were the flags themselves. I really don't mind seeing other nations flags being displayed in our small principality, in fact I'm all for a bit of national pride, but do you HAVE to annoy everyone by putting a flag from each window of your car? Huw is deeply annoyed by people displaying text on the flag, I'm a little less tolerant and am infuriated by the sight of them all together. My reasons for this are as follows:-

• They impose something on me that I'm not interested in (the fact that the world cup is here)
• Some of them make a' brrrrrrrtttkkkkkbrrrrtkkkk' noise as they pass by
• They look shit.
• Most irritating of all is the fact that they rip within a few miles of you driving and a damaged flag is NOT a good advertisement for your country. As the flag keepers in America state "One flag pole with one ragged flag is one flag pole too many"*.

So, it's inevitable that I'm going to be quite angry until the hype and general nonsense which surrounds the world cup dissipates - god help me if England win, which brings me on to my next topic, England winning things. England are currently in possession of the Rugby World Cup, in which they defeated Australia in a painfully close final back in 2003. England also beat Australia in a painfully close manner to win back the much-coveted cricket prize of the Ashes in 2005 (after 16 years in Aussie hands). All I ask of you is this, please do not in any way support England in the Footy, if they win this World Cup too, the triangle of sporting achievements will be complete, evil will rein supreme and they will not stop going on about it for YEARS to come. I will not be able to live a healthy, normal life if this happens, please do everything in your power to stop them - for the sake of the poor Australians (who had TWO opportunities to stop them), the Celtic nations, Germany, the entire rest of the world and most importantly, ME.

Thank you.


ps This is funny, and related to my post - nifty.

pps Cheers to Huw for inspiring me to go off on one.


*In fact, they actively encourage you to report a damaged flag here. I would encourage any residents of Britain to do the same when they see a damaged flag, lets see if we can get the flag keepers on our side to stamp out these cheap pieces of tack.

Unbelievable

With an Ice Cream in one hand and my no-longer-needed jacket in the other, I stumbled into my house to get some lunch.

Curly : "FARKING HELL! It's hot outside, bloody gorgeous..."

My landlord was on the receiving end of this statement as he sat in the dark, stale living room in just his pants and a t-shirt.

Landlord : "Shit. I'd better turn the heating off then..."

Followed by a half-pissed cackle, a flick through some channels on the TV and another gulp of whiskey.

Back in a Greeny-Yellowy kind of colour.

It's been a while folks, there have been several attempts to get this show back on the road. Each valiant attempt at a post has been plagued by a complete inability to write crap for about half an hour, a task which I would usually undertake without a second thought (and the lack of thought is evident in many of my posts).

I've been busy running around the country, mainly Wales, but there have been trips over to England a couple of times. I can't for the life of me remember what I've actually been doing but luckily I had my trusty low-quality camera-phone with me at all times. Here's a few things that I have seen (some I'd seen but just don't remember being there) over the last few weeks...



Mud Swimming in Cardiff


Mud Swimming, I have no idea what this guy thought he was doing


A quick photo from work over Swansea when the sun came out


Marv plays it cool in The George



Eirian snorting beer after losing a tense game of Paper, Scissors, Rock


Bar Billiards, Exeter. An unusual game, one which I was decidedly bad at - even when the locals took pity on us and explained the rules.


Exeter Cathedral, by night - isn't it beautiful? ahem.


Exeter Cathedral again... it obviously looked nice enough for me to stop stumbling for a second and take a snap


Bristol, this is the only photo I took the entire time I was here - it's a lovely city isn't it?


Swansea in the Sun again. I really do love this place!


Paul and myself in Dempseys, Cardiff


I noticed this in a bathroom after a conversation we'd had minutes earlier about 'Illegal Blowjobs', it's obviously more common that I thought. Which is pretty horrible really.


Swansea by Night, it looks great at night too - but my camera can't cope with taking photos in the dark. It looks pretty alien doesn't it?


A canal in Loughborough, I took a stroll around the town while I waited for a train home. It's a place steeped in industrial history and is a great town to wander through


On top of Pen Y Fan in the Brecon Beacons, the highest point in South Wales


I'd dragged Maddy up the mountain with me - she was grateful when we finally got to the top. What a view though!


Incognitos, Cardiff again.


My Old pal, Ginger Geordie Jim and his lovely wife Fran. I hadn't seen either of them since their wedding in Hartlepool last September. I thoroughly enjoyed catching up again


Gaz Phaelon, up to his usual cheeky tricks back in the George


It's been an odd few weeks, I was feeling a little deflated round about the time that I decided to take a break from bl*gging, but for some reason a lot of old friends got in touch with me over the following fortnight...

My old University pals from Southampton all got together for a fantastic weekend in Loughborough, where I laughed so hard that I think I ripped a couple of stomach muscles. Dink, Donkey, Rich, Meg, Pete, Nicky and Tash joined in the fun and we had tremendous fun ringing random New England (USA) -(Cheers Os for coming up with that) - phone numbers all night... I dread to think what the phone bill looks like.

Ginger Geordie Jim and Fran came down all the way from Hartlepool (WAY up North). Jim used to hang out in the 'Diff back in its heyday, with the King and myself. They were always good times, we were both new to Cardiff and really enjoyed exploring the place together. He moved back up North to marry the ever-patient Fran, they had a cracking wedding by anybody's standards.

Also getting in touch, were:-

• The King, who I saw a couple of months ago. And although he's a real pain in the arse sometimes, he can always make people laugh.

• Scottish Danny, who had the tent opposite mine when I lived and worked in Newquay for a summer back in 2001. I haven't spoken to him for about 3 years after we both lost each others numbers.

• Irish Conor, I'd seen him last in December briefly but he decided to give me a shout, for the completely fantastic reason that it's his 30th birthday coming up, I can't wait! Parties with Conor and his Irish posse are always very good nights!

• Yorkshire Andy - I worked with him in Cardiff shortly before he ran off with someone else's wife up to Scotland. He's back down this way and is looking up old mates... great!

• Hippy Paul, who used to live with the Phaelon Boys even made an appearance after a spell away from Cardiff.

Charlie Phaelon has even taken time out of his busy schedule to write a once in a blue-moon post about ME, can you believe it? A post about me, not actually written by me?

Having so many friends ring me up or meet me in obscure bars has cheered me up immensely, and I'm glad to say that I'm back....

You can cheer now if you want to.