This is the last post on this blog.  I’m starting a new one.  This may seem a bit sudden considering my last post and in many ways it is very sudden, I only really decided on it a couple of days ago.

So why have I decided this?  I’ve had a blog of some description for 8 years or so, my first one was on Geocites (which doesn’t even exist anymore!), the second one was on Greatest Journal (also gone) so I’ve always changed them as whims take me. But this one has been with me for over 6 years, the first post was on May 26th 2004 and here we are on August 15th 2010 with me bringing it to an end. I never stopped it over this period because I’ve kind of ‘settled’ here. I can remember at various points thinking I should start a new one (I even opened a blogger account for such a purpose a few years ago) but I never did it. I just never felt the need or the urge to do so, but this urge is now undeniable.

As a result this blog has been with me through an amazing array of events. I was 20 when it started. This blog has seen me finish a degree and a masters, whilst also starting a doctorate. It has seen me move from Wickford to Colchester back to Wickford to Brighton, and then seen me move again within Brighton. It has been here from me working at HMV to going to Waterstone’s before returning to HMV, then seen me work in a library and as a tutor. It’s documented my fears and nervousness when I took me first seminars and first lectures, as well as documenting the trials and tribulations of my first publication.  At an even more personal level this blog has been there through the start of many wonderful long-lasting (and some which, alas, have been shorter in length) friendships.  It has seen me document my upset or reconciliations about relationships which never were. It was here the first time I fell in love, whilst also being here when I hurt friends. It’s seen me chronicle the many times shyness has impacted my life experiences, as well as being the receptacle of my worries, my occasional feelings of loneliness and (perhaps too many times) it has been my forum for my holier-than-thou attitude, arrogance, smugness and insensitivity (which I hope were more common in the blog’s early days).  It has chronicled my first listen to music which has come to be part of my very life story, Dylan, Stephin Merritt, Acoustic Ladyland, etc., right up to my recent Jens Lekman obsession.  It has seen me claim creeds or ideas to be my very shining stars, some of which I would now reject out of hand.  It has been to this blog that I’ve turned when events became too confusing and I just needed somewhere to write it down and figure it out, as well as records of achievements of which I will always think fondly, memories I’ve come to cherish, and some which still bring a tear to my eyes.

In short, this blog has seen me grow up.  Not in that traditional sense of growing up, of the teenage years, but instead this blog has been a chronicler of, and sometimes a forum, for my realisation of who I am, with both the negative and positive connotations of that statement.  In this sense this blog is special to me, but it is also exactly for that reason that I feel it’s time to finish it.  When I look back at the first updates of this blog it feels like someone else is writing them. Sometimes I can remember the events to which they refer, sometimes I can’t. Sometimes I think I agree, other times I disagree, and sometimes think a bit negatively about the young man who wrote them.  Things which when I wrote them seemed to be of grave importance in retrospect seem petty, insignificant, or, indeed, as significant as I originally thought.  I’m glad these things exist and that I can look back on them, but it also feels like its time to break the link, to start anew and to recognise that since the blog has seen me grow up it might be time to acknowledge that period is in the past.

I feel a bit strange about this, once I decided to do it I knew it was right and I’ve been committed to the idea but yet, it also feels like a sad time, when something has been with you this long it feels somewhat strange to know it won’t be anymore. It will still be here and occasionally I’ll log in and remember some of the events it talks about, but from now this blog will be a blog of the past.

If you are a regular reader of this, thank you very much for reading and I hope you’ve enjoyed it, also thanks for any comments you made. I’ve never had a huge readership and that’s fine, but it has always been nice to know there’s people out there who actually read these words, especially with how insular this blog can be at times.

So, I would welcome you to come to me new blog, which can be found at: http://reflexivebiography.wordpress.com/.  I’ve used the name ‘skimskitta’ for all of my blogs, and it felt like time to lose that as well. My first post is already up on there and it explains the choice of name. I think it’s unlikely I keep it as long as I’ve kept this one, but part of me is also excited about starting this new blog. I’m making no attempt to change the way I write, the things I write or how often I write.  I suspect I will struggle with the adjustment at first though, so I apologise in advance if you are witness to those struggles.

I guess all that is left for me is to say goodbye to livejournal itself, as well as skimskitta, ‘Where Do I Begin’ and this yellow background and layout. I suspect I’ll miss it all.

So now I am on holiday, after a period where I felt like the next day was going to be the day that I collapsed from exhaustion (I’m not exaggerating that much). It’s very nice to have that moment of ‘switching off’ and knowing that now you’re not working. Thus far it has been very peaceful, I had some nice pastry yesterday (the diet is also on holiday) and starting reading The Picture of Dorian Gray (have always wanted to). Today I had an unexpected joy by going for a walk along the beach with a friend, which was lovely and very relaxing. I don’t really have any plans as such and probably won’t go further afield than Lewes, but I look forward to that aspect of it, I need that extreme relaxation.

I’m sure my holiday will see me posting a bit on here. I was actually thinking the other day that over the last 2 or 3 months my activity on this blog has become more frequent, whereas for a long time I was doing one or two updates a month all of a sudden I’ve been doing one or two a week. I’m not entirely sure why this is. I did wonder whether it’s a result of living alone, purely since when I was in Colchester I updated with a similar frequency. This is a possibility, but I don’t think so, after all there were points whilst I was in Moulsecoomb that I updated at a similar pace. Another thought I had was that it was at transition points, a kind of unconscious way of documenting it and maintaining links back to what has come before. In all honesty I’m not entirely sure. I’ve had a blog of some description for about 8 years or so, and it amazes me how much of it is kind of beyond your active control and down to inspiration. I do wonder whether people who keep diaries have a similar kind of thing.

In case you’re wondering about the title, it come from this song:

Considering how indifferent I am to The Strokes I’m surprised how much I enjoy Hammond’s solo stuff

I ended up having this past weekend off. I say ‘ended up’ because this was not my intention at all, after all I’d just started my most recent chapter and it still had about 6,000 words left to be written. But, try as I might, I couldn’t get down to writing anything, the reason being that I was just too tired to get started.  This has kind of been a general story recently, I find my concentration wandering or find that my day is starting just a little later. Thus, in light of all of this I’ve decided it’s clear a three-day weekend just isn’t going to do as holiday this year and it’s clear I’m going to have to actually take a week or two off.  I’ve decided to finish this chapter before I do so, mostly because I won’t relax until it’s done (there’s probably about 4,000-4,500 words or so left after today, so there should be a first draft by Friday, a week or so of editing and then it’s ready to be sent off, I hope). Then I’ll have one week off and then, depending on how I feel maybe another one in September. I would have liked to power through and get closer and closer to the end of the thesis, but it’s clear that’s not going to happen at this pace anyway!

On another note, after denying it for too long and generally feeling a bit guilty at my behaviour, I’m currently drastically reducing the amount of meat I’m eating. As I say I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, the main reason being the environmental effects.  This is most notable with the keeping of cows, but I’d cut out beef already, so now I’m trying to cut down on everything else.  Considering I ate meat almost everyday until recently this should hopefully make quite a difference.  Don’t get me wrong I’ll still eat it sometimes, but if I can get to it being on only 3 days or so a week that would be a good change to do. All that being said I do really enjoy meat so I suspect it will be difficult at point, but then I think that despite how much I love beef cutting it out has been pretty easy, so how difficult can this be?

Finally, Nick Cave. For a long time I was anti-Nick Cave, I think the first few times I’d heard it I’d not been in the right place for it and it had just put me in a negative mind frame towards it.  It was really only with the Grinderman album that I came to change my mind.  I’m glad I did because I continue to be amazed when I dip into the back catalogue.  I think more than anything I admire the uniqueness of his lyrics, the way he uses God, or the way he approaches what are, at the heart of it timeless themes always makes it a gripping listen. In that vein I think maybe my favourite of his songs is ‘Into My Arms’, I always forget how beautiful it actually is:

Yeah it’s a piano ballad, what a shocker! Also, it’s hard to believe that’s his actual voice

A friend of mine is leaving Brighton in a few weeks, we lived together for a while and have remained very good friends since I moved out. Thus I thought it would be nice to get her a little present before she left. I decided however to make her something, that something being a mix CD.

I always get a bit defensive about mixtapes (just sounds better) now, almost like it’s something I should have left in the past, as if it’s something you stop doing once you get to your twenties? But I have continued to do them occasionally, but when I mention it to people I tend to make jokes of it, things like: ‘well I did work in a record shop!’, ‘such a stereotype I know’ or, the one I used yesterday when talking to a friend about my idea, ‘such a cliché I know’.  But, despite all this I do think they're a great thing and that we (or perhaps it’s just me?) shouldn’t really think of them as something only young people do.  I greatly enjoy making them, where else do you get to spend so much time thinking about a gift for someone, will they or won’t they like this song? Does this track follow that one better, or should it be something else? There’s something special in that.  Devotion and love are poured into this present. I always love to recieve them, I think of all the great artists I now adore I met first through friend’s mixtapes (Cherry Ghost, LCD Soundsystem, Spiritualized, Sparklehorse, Her Space Holiday, Aphex Twin, Silver Mt. Zion…the list goes on!). What a special thing to think that perhaps among the 15 or so artists you introduce them to there might be one, just one, they carry with them the rest of their lives, is there a better gift?

In other news, I’m writing again, with my most recent chapter now started. It’s on the state and it’s tough. With this being finishing time I’m trying very hard to make it all my own contribution and really finish off the argument. It’s looking okay, but come ask me again in a week or so…

The other day I went onto the website for my old senior school (or ‘high school’ as it is now renamed). This was a bad decision. I don’t really know what led me onto the site, I guess just natural curiosity. In all honesty the school I saw on the site bore no resemblance to the one I attended, it seemed that most of the buildings had been done up, the old head has left and been replaced with a man who once threatened to call the police on me to get me off school property (true story). Most of the old teachers have gone, a few remain, looking much older and thinner in hair.

I hated my school life, with a passion.  In reality it was my whole time in compulsory education, from 5 up to 16 and all three of the schools I attended in that period, but it was the final one, senior school the most.  I used to get ill quite a bit as a youngster, strong colds, upset stomachs and back troubles were common.  In addition to this I suffered from frequent migraines.  I received what was, in retrospect, a shocking diagnosis for all this: stress.  The source of my stress was my senior school.  There were multiple things about it, I was always a very shy boy so I didn’t have many friends and even worse never took part in the ‘boy’ activities (football, tennis, fighting, chasing girls around), marking me out in multiple ways.  I was always relatively bright but I found my school work an absolute bore, doing it mostly in an half-daze and doing well enough that my teachers would never think me a problem, but not good enough to mark me out as someone who should get attention, the comfortable middle.  When I did make an effort I felt like I was being picked on for it. I always lived in a very mathematical home, so I was quite good at mental arithmetic in a way my classmates didn’t seem to be. So when I would do my work diligently and finish early my teacher would seem insulted I was finished and sometimes complain about my lack of written computations (my response that the answer was right didn’t seem to help). 

I was picked on by the other boys a bit, I’ve always been overweight and my name is Matt, I’m sure you can imagine the rhyme for yourself.  But, although this did bother me, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, I was also always the tallest person in my year so I think they were a bit worried if they pushed me I’d get pushed too far and hurt them (as if…).  I also had some of the worse teachers imaginable, the kind who seem to intentionally aim to break your confidence and will.  As someone who struggled talking in class, or generally doing anything to call attention to myself, having one teacher who called me ‘incredibly rude’ when I said she could call me Matthew or Matt and another saying ‘if you don’t know the answer to this question then you shouldn’t be here’, then asking me what said answer was (of course I didn’t know the answer, as he knew) was enough to sap your last enthusiasm. Plus I was never really a hit with the girls, I’m not sure I wanted to be, but when everyone was going around as ‘couples’ it was another thing to mark me out

So I tended to miss a lot of time at school, I would get ill in the morning, then come 9, when it was clear I was staying home I’d be fine, or I would actually be ill for weeks on end. Plus, if I’m being honest, I used the migraines to my advantage, the school had been told, so I could go home whenever I said I had one, I’m not ashamed to say I did on a few occasions lie about this. Outside of school I used to escape to worlds far removed from my school in suburban Essex. Basketball, computers and rap music often making my retreat official. I did develop a few friends who I’d meet out of school but I was always very paranoid about them getting too close to my ‘non-school life’, I wanted something untainted but that dreaded place.

In the midst of all this I commonly heard the refrain that these ‘were the happiest days of my life’, I lived in fear that this would come true. I was quite lucky that my mum, an intelligent working class women who went to school in the 60s, had faced greater obstacles than me and she was always reassuring that these weren’t the best days, but still I did fear it. It’s 10 years this year since I left school and I’ve had many wonderful things happen to me in this period, but nothing matches the feeling I got the last day I walked away from those school gates, it is, and I have a hunch it always will be, the happiest day of my life.  When I started college that September my constant illnesses disappeared, I’ve had maybe 2 or 3 migraines in the years since and, in 10 years of education (and 8 with work), can count the amount of sick days I’ve had on one hand.

In light of all this, in light of my extreme unhappiness at school, my parents have often remarked on how surprised they are I remained in education. I’m less so, I was always inquisitive and eager to learn, and my school didn’t provide that. It’s only now that I discover how disadvantaged I am by my schooling, my historical knowledge and writing abilities, things I should be using know are entirely of my own creation, I’ve learnt it all in the last 10 years.  Before that I was pretty ignorant.  Things I haven’t learnt anew, such as science, I have a shocking ignorance in. I guess you could put this down to my absence from school (50% attendance on two separate terms) but my results were always good enough for this to be a non-issue.  True this is partly a class issue, and I’m hardly alone in this disadvantage, but it is another negative to add to my school experience.

When I was looking at the website I thought about the people I knew back then at school, I’ve stayed in touch with none of them.  What did we have to talk about once we left that place? I did some googling and facebook investigations and discovered that all of them still lived in, or near to, the town we went to school in, and most look exactly like they did back then. Sure the guys have added a beard here and there (with a few adding a beer belly too) and there have been a few changed hair styles/colours on the part of the women but it all seemed the same (with the addition of some children for some of them). I think maybe 5 years ago I would have gotten on my high horse and felt proud that I’d left there and they were still there. But now I had a different view on it, looking at those pictures I wondered whether in fact the time at our senior school was the best time of their lives, they’ve maintained it because they like it.  I wondered whether they knew how I felt about the place back then, I think I hid it well to the few friends I did have, joining in ‘the laughs’ and making up crushes on girls I couldn’t get so I wouldn’t have to make any effort towards them.  I always feared they’d know how unhappy I was there, making that known to children is never a good idea.  Maybe they did know, to be honest I don’t think it would have had much of an impact, I was never in the cool crowd anyway.

The final twist to all this is that I did go for an interview for the 6th form of my school (we got the afternoon off to do so, an easy deal). They wouldn’t let me in. I wanted to do psychology and my predicted D at science level (a prediction which came true) led them to believe I’d fail. I often thought about going back and telling them I got an A in psychology at A level. But then I realised that they were right, had I stayed there I would have failed.  As I’ve already said the day I left that school was the best of my life, although I’m not saying my childhood was ‘bad’ (far from it, I had loving parents and a comfortable upbringing) I could never be happy whilst I was there.

I think it was that general resignation that summed up my feeling whilst looking at my old school’s website

So at the moment there’s an election for the next leader of the Labour party. As counter-intuitive as I know it is I continue to feel a kind of vested, emotional, interest with whoever ends up filling this place.  The office of Labour party leader has been held by such people as Kier Hardie, Clement Attlee and Michael Foot, people of whom I hold great admiration and respect. Therefore the next in line is of interest to me in the way the next leader of the Conservative or Liberal Democrat party isn’t (although, being a sad political geek, I do pay much attention to these too).  This is despite the fact that the last three have hardly been people who I would wish to be identified with (with Blair the worse of the trio).

I guess what I’ve noticed thus far about the contest and which I’ve found intriguing is that relation of the candidates to the New Labour era (which it seems is now spoken of in retrospect).  There’s been a strong move by the three candidates (the Milibands and Ed Balls) who can be linked to this concept to reject it.  This has generally taken two forms, of saying it was ‘of it’s time’ and now it’s time to go ‘beyond’ it (with a nod to Anthony Giddens, David Miliband is the best example of this, with his opening salvo that we need ‘Next Labour’, whatever that means) or, more interestingly, to suggest it was all an advertising slogan all along and let’s forget about it (the two Eds have been strong on this, Balls especially).  The other two candidates have less of an issue with this, Diane Abbott because of her clear role as a ‘rebel’ who was never identified with the New Labour project.  Andy Burnham on the other hand is ‘newer’ on the scene of Labour high politics and thus isn’t tainted with the New Labour battles (this hasn’t stopped him coming up with his own slogan, ‘aspirational socialism’, which seems to make even less sense when he actually tries to explain it). 

Now there are many reasons the candidates may wish to distance themselves from New Labour.  It seems these have generally fallen into two justifications, either a political one (New Labour is the Blair/Brown/Mandelson project and no-one wants to be associated with those three any more).  This is also the justification for what has often been vicious and, in all honesty, unfair, attacks on Brown by D. Miliband and Balls (the latter of whom is counted as one of Brown’s closest friends!).  The second one has been more a suggestion that the New Labour policies were somehow flawed.  This has been most noticeable in how all the candidates picked up on the issue of housing as soon as Jon Cruddas (who has been preaching this gospel for at least 5 years) excluded himself from the race; as well as issues of the exclusion of the white working class (Balls, E. Miliband), international policy (D. Miliband), and the health system (Burnham).

This is all fine and effectively operates as code for the Labour party to talk to itself and for leadership candidates to send out signals to the right and left of their party without actually pledging allegiance to either faction (D. Miliband and Balls have become expert at this, presenting themselves all things to all men, and the masculine pronoun was intentional).  But what has been disappointing, in fact I will say depressing, is the exclusion of one factor above all, torture.

It is now very clear that the Labour government - especially, but not exclusively, in the Blair days – authorised the intelligence services to facilitate the transfer of British citizens and residents to countries where they would be tortured.  It is equally clear that British agents then supplied questions to the torturers to ask during their ‘operations’, whilst also asking questions of those victims and overlooking both physical and verbal evidence of torture.  Meanwhile all this occurred with the explicit approval of Tony Blair who had to sign off the guidelines to intelligence officers approving the above activities (whose office intervened on multiple occasions to reassert the right of agents to do so) as well as many senior members of the government.  By my measure of those holding the responsible posts (Foreign, Home and Justice secretaries) any list would have to include at least: Jack Straw (as both foreign and justice secretary), Jacqui Smith, Alan Johnson, Margaret Beckett, Lord Falconer, John Reid and, of course, David Miliband.

Yet despite all this, despite the fact a Labour government authorised and encouraged British intelligence agencies to break numerous international laws and to allow the torture of British citizens (these laws don’t just mean you can’t torture, they say if you know of torture and don’t stop it you’ve broken the law) we get silence from the leadership candidates.  D. Miliband has a clear reason for this, to protect his back (plus his concern with being twice bitten. I will never forget him looking like he was about to cry as he apologised to the house for misleading them about the US using the British base of Diego Garcia to refuel their rendition flights), plus he fought a long battle to stop the courts knowing about the activities of these British agents whilst in office.  But the rest of them have less of an excuse. They’re ready to stomp all over the government’s record on everything you name, but this is the great unspoken amongst all this.  To be fair to her, Diane Abbott is the only candidate to really make any noise about this, and well done to her (if I had a vote it would be for her).  But, even she has generally lumped it under New Labour’s general authoritarian nature.

It’s depressing that in 2010 I’m writing about how the candidates for leadership of the second largest party in Britain will not condemn the fact that the government has tortured people under their watch, or promise not to do it any more. We’re talking about torture here!  Surely this is beyond the pale? Surely we decided long ago this was something to leave in the past? How is it that this is the one controversial thing they won’t touch? I could get all high and mighty and point out that Kier Hardie or Michael Foot wouldn’t have done this, but surely anyone wouldn’t allow this?  How is it that I have to wait for a Tory government to even get an inquiry into all this?  I’m waiting for answers to all of these questions and more.

Leadership of the Labour party should be seen as a hallowed office, one of which we should expect high standards.  However I find myself in a position where I can’t even expect 5 of the 6 candidates to condemn torture.  Before we even get to the question of how we protect welfare, how to create a fairer society, the best way to cut carbon emissions etc. we should have some basic sense of humanity and moral right. The fact we don’t and that I’m not expecting it from these people is an incredibly depressing set of circumstances.

So before the finish time I mentioned in my last post I decided to have an weekend off, a 3 day weekend in fact. It just got to the point where it felt like I needed it.  In all honesty I should probably have a longer break, but I can’t afford to go anywhere and with the end in sight I do want to dedicate to that. It’s been quite nice thus far though, nice coffee and croissants at 9 am, some good relaxed walks and a good book, what more could you want? I’m reading a book which chronicles the US Presidents of the 20th Century, I’m up to JFK. Tomorrow I will do my one consistent holiday activity, going into town and having a good cooked veggie breakfast. To have the kind of life where one could do that once or twice a week consistenly would be bliss. I’m a man of simple pleasures…

Today I managed to finish the conference paper I’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks. So this means it’s now back to the PhD.

Such a thought is now somewhat menacing, for the simple reason that now is finishing time, I only have two chapters left and then it will doing the introduction and conclusion and editing it down to the final product. I’m sort of hoping at this point to have something close to a finished product, if not a first draft by the end of the year, with the goal of sitting the viva next March/Aprilish. It has got to that final point now where with my supervisor we’ve talked about the examiners and my mind has started drifting to what exactly I will be doing next year.

It’s kind of exciting, but also quite scary, so anyway, I guess I know the next few months will be very busy no matter what.

I was reminded of Wilco the other day and thus I gave Yankee Hotel Foxtrot another play. This is truly an outstanding album (my favourite review quote: ‘no-one is too good for this album, it’s better than all of us’). Anyway there are a few stunning songs on there and every time I listen to it I begin to fall in love with another one. Last time it was ‘I am Trying to Break Your Heart’, this time it was the finale, ‘Reservatons’. I also managed to find a very good video of what is a beautiful little song:

The first Cherry Ghost album ‘Thirst For Romance’ came out on the 9th July 2007, but I only became aware of it in the September of that year. That album was pretty special to me at the time, it got some pretty consistent rotation. At the time I was really attracted to the almost beautiful sound of the record but more than anything it was the lyrics.  They had this wonderful sense of road-worn, like someone who had lived through a lot, but what he’s lived through had been missed opportunities, moments of solidarity and snatched moments of bliss.  It was the kind of record which managed to be both both confident and insecure in the stories it told, where you’re never sure if the storyteller is happy about what happened, or a bit upset about how it all turned out.  He really has a way with a lyric as well: ‘beautiful and trivial and baby, just out of reach’ being one of my favourites, what a bundle of contradictions and uncertainty is bound up in that one line!

Not only was this a brilliant album which, at any point in my life I would have loved, but the time it hit in my life was significant, simply put it was a pretty low point; my mum had got breast cancer, a couple of friendships were on the rocks (one of which was hard to take at the time), I was working on an MA dissertation which can best be classified as a trainwreck and I was living back in Wickford, a town I thought I’d left behind, and working in a job at HMV Basildon I’d quit only a year before. Thirst For Romance for me is, and probably always will be, tied up with that time. It stands out as something enjoyable amongst all that or, as the album puts it, the warm in the silence.

The second Cherry Ghost album ‘Beneath This Burning Shoreline’ came out this Monday, 5th July 2010. Pretty much as close as you can get to three years later. This time I made sure to buy it on the day of release. At this early stage of course the album hasn’t seeped into my life in the same way as the first. What I found most shocking about it was the contrast between the way I received the first album and where I found myself with the second one.  All the things which were negatives when the first came out are now positives. My mum recovered fully, I have many wonderful friendships (including the restoration of that previous one), my academic work is going pretty well (in fact the album was released on exactly the same day this was published), I live in Brighton and I have the job I’ve always wanted, and one at which I think, I’m actually alright at.  The contrast between albums couldn’t be starker and it nice to think I have Cherry Ghost there to remind me of the contrast between these two times.

In the most interesting part of all this there’s been a change in Cherry Ghost’s sound, it’s now more band-based a fuller sound. Dare I say a more confident sound…

My ‘if anything can go wrong it will’ week which I mentioned in the last update continued through the weekend. It got to the point today where I thought I’d just stay in and work away…only to discover that my bookcase was on the brink of falling apart, meaning I had to remove all of the books and now I have to buy another one. Then, my washing machine decided to act up (which I managed to fix, this shocked me more than anything else).  As a result I haven’t even really been that productive.

It got me thinking about how these things happen. We all know, and perhaps use, the phrases like ‘one of those days’, or the one I used at the start ‘if something can go wrong it will’. Now obviously there’s no reason why a collection of bad things will all happen at the same time in a purely neutral fashion.  So I’m wondering which of two things happen.  Either, one bad thing happens which puts you in a negative state of mind which means that things you’d previously ignore suddenly seem really significant.  Or, upon encountering a couple of bad events, you suddenly seek out more (I almost did this today, my bookcase hasn’t looked perfect for a week or so, but it was just today I decided to have a look). I guess either one is as possible as the other.

This is why I’m trying to reverse this relationship, by emphasising the things which have gone well over the last couple of days. The major one is that I went CD shopping yesterday and I bought something I’ve been thinking about for a while, an album by Jens Lekman, who has been recommended to me for ages. Turns out that this could be the start of something pretty special. It basically plays like a Swedish Stephin Merritt, and there is nothing about that description I don’t like the sound of. Below is one of my favourites thus far, Sky Phenomenon.

The other one is less of an event, and more of a memory, I bought blueberries yesterday, which were great, but they also reminded me of the time I had blueberry soup. This was as wonderful as it sounds, and the memory of having it where I did is a nice one…I wish blueberry soup was available here