I suspect I have new neighbours. All day there has been rock music blaring out of one of the houses over the road. Whilst this may be an improvement on the aural delights of Sting and a variety of reggae offered by the drunken, sofa-loving twunts up the road, it is still unwelcome and annoying. I hope they aren't going to make a habit of this. Or I may have to add the local police station to the speed dial on my new telephones. 20:31  

An interesting article in the Guardian about the promotion of celibacy to teenagers. Its conclusions are certainly worth noting: "Firstly, to confuse the nation's gynaecologists, always turn up to sexual health clinics dressed as a nun. And secondly, if you are going to have sex (underage or otherwise), make sure you get pregnant, in order to avoid cancer."

It was through reading the Guardian today that I remembered why I don't read more than news headlines usually - it makes me very depressed at the state of the world and the fact that I have such little influence on it and thus I avoid it all to protect myself from making my depression worse. Horrible that I have to do such a thing, but my health must be prized above all else. So I'll avoid the news until someone starts a newspaper which prints only happy things. And I suspect I wouldn't want to read such a thing anyway as it would be unbearably saccharine, like spending a whole day in a card shop, and would probably end up making me just as depressed. Newspapers: they're bad for your health. 13:54  

Probably inevitable I was going to be quiet after writing over 2,600 words for the last blog post. Life has not been special inbetween. I have watched a couple of DVDs, read a little, volunteered slightly, eaten lots, gym-ed somewhat, prevaricated much, panicked a bit and slept sweet, lovely sleep for many, many hours. I got a letter from college informing me of the timetable for the first two weeks of the term. It includes four trips to the pub. But also a visit to the Imperial War Museum / the Lowry, and they want £10 for the pleasure, gits. They also want us all to produce a response to one of the arguments in Ways of Seeing which I was quite scared by, until I realised they only want us to research other people's responses, not create our own. Then I got scared again after realising I could find fuck all about it on the internet and the library's still closed for the holidays. It won't all be doom and gloom though, we have a planned trip to Newcastle in November for two days, and a non-European trip during February half term. Last year they went to New York. Tonight I'm off to see 3 Iron with Robert Dane. Tomorrow I get a sleepin as SHIP takes two days for bank holidays. Woo! 19:46  

The trip to Hereford was supposed to be easy and simple. It would have been so if we hadn't managed to get mixed up about the time of the train to Manchester, where we had to change for Hereford. We were out by an hour. When our mistake was realised, the train we were supposed to be on was already half way to its destination. We caught the next one, scheduled to arrive in Manchester one minute before the Hereford train left. By some miracle our train arrived three minutes early, and on a platform adjacent to the train we needed. Such luck was surely a sign of things to come.

The rest of our train journeying was the smooth sailing we had hoped for, though we were quite restless once we reached Hereford, having been sat down for around three hours in one go. We planned on catching a bus to Hay on Wye from Hereford, but as said city is not quite the cultural centre that perhaps Leeds and Belfast are, buses were infrequent and the next wasn't due for over an hour. We took advantage of our spare time and sat in a graveyard near the station, eating chips and sunbathing. Rory kept expressing his fears about going to a place where he was expecting to be the only male not sporting a large amount of facial hair. In my usual, sympathetic manner I told him to shut up and stop complaining.

We made our way to Hereford County Bus Station, which had 8 stands in two rows, no shop and no roof. It was essentially a car park for buses with some bus stops. Is this the state of things in The South? Do people really put up with such affairs? I remember my trip to Bristol, en route to Glastonbury. At least Bristol bus station had a roof, though it was made from corrugated iron, giving the whole building an inflated cattle shed feel. Anyway, you could tell this was no ordinary day in Hereford - there was a huge queue twentysomething and late teenaged hippies standing a line with many bulky bags at their feet, with scattered OAPs looking very uncomfortable amongst them. In the queue I spotted a bloke I recognised from college, with long ginger dreadlocks. What an unusual place to bump into someone.

When the bus arrived, the driver must have got a heart attack upon seeing the queue. Looking at the people dismounting from his vehicle, I'd say he was expecting around 10 pensioners with perhaps one or two younger persons. After all, this bus route takes around two hours, crawling through countryside villages, slowly making its way to Brecon, centre of one of our National Parks. And here were 50 bedraggled, lager- or cider-drinking youths, with bountiful bags and a desire to clamber into his bus, and who knows what they might do once on board? Inevitably we didn't all make it inside. It was a single decker, it was never going to happen. The next bus was due three hours later. I pity those who had to wait.

An hour later we all found ourselves dumped in Hay, a wondrous, mystical land full of books and hills. And no one had a clue about which way to go from here. After some general milling around, it was discovered some people had taken the initiative to ask the bus driver which way to get to the road to Clyro, the village nearest to our destination, as that bus service stopped in Clyro three times a day, but unfortunately not on the run we had caught. So we all began following these people, our self-elected leaders, the only ones who could help us find the chosen land. They went ahead, we followed. They crossed the road, so did we. They turned right and we were just behind them. They walked a little further along the road and stopped. The road forked, with no sign of which we should take. There was discomfort in the ranks. What would we do now? I knew how the Israelites must have felt during their 40 year long trek in the desert, though that disappeared quite quickly once someone decided to go down the road which wasn't a one-way road in the wrong direction. Luckily this turned out to be the correct choice and all were happy once more.

This happiness was also short lived however as it turned out we had to walk to the festival's park and ride field, which wasn't, as I had hoped, just next to Hay, but a mile away, just outside Clyro. The road we needed to walk along was narrow, hilly, warm and had no footpath, though it was a national speed limit road, which made us rather more exposed to becoming roadkill than I would have hoped. Luckily the road was bordered upon with plenty of blackberry bushes, the only thing to keep my discontent at bay. They were nice were them blackberries. Sometime later, when we reached the fabled park and ride, exhausted and hot from walking in the beating sun, we were furnished with wristbands and festival programmes. There were coaches to take us and our bags to the camping site. Which turned out to be just around the corner. Not impressed.

Baskerville Hall has a long drive, as I suppose most houses of that era would have, and in the fields on one side sits a riding school. The horses seemed immensely interested in all the commotion which was happening next to their dwelling. They mustn't have seen the likes of it since, well, last year I expect. They were lovely horses and I remembered the riding lessons I took as a child, missing them. I'd love to take up riding again. Though I don't think they make synthetic bridles and saddles, so there would be that to consider. But back to reality. We disembarked from the coach, located our bags, and tramped down to the field we were to camp in. Someone had had the foresight to make the people with children stay in a separate field on the opposite site of the house. A very sensible decision, I thought. We weren't sure which spot to select for erecting our tent in, until we came across two of the most gorgeous people we saw in the whole weekend, and there was certainly no shortage of those. He was thin, clean-shaven, had chin-length dreadlocks and suitably baggy, but not overly-baggy, jeans. She was of around the same build, with short hair and clingy clothes. A most appropriate camping spot, we felt.

The tent attached to the ground, our next task was one of exploration. Rory immediately headed for the alcohol hut (it wasn't a tent and it wasn't in the house, though it did look like it was a trailer, so hut seems the most suitable term for it) to buy some of their local "real" ale. We sat on a grassy bank whilst he drank this, then went for a wander through the rest of the garden. There was a huge old fir tree, must have been at least 500 years old from the size of it. So we lay on some lawn near it, inhaling other people's dope smoke and enjoying the atmosphere, and the eye-candy, which, as I said earlier, was plentiful and of good quality. Oh yes.

Later on I made a visit to the vegan food van and was delighted to discover they stocked my favourite chocolate milk, along with home made chocolate cake, home made carrot cake, home made chocolate biscuit cake and a large range of other goodies. I would have given all my money there and then, the cake was so delicious, but as usual my thighs restrained me. We looked round the stalls, perused the hippy clothes on sale, and I ended up buying a pair of silver elephant earrings, as they looked lonely and needed someone to keep them company. The rest of the day was relatively uneventful, which was something of a relief, having had such a busy time in the previous parts of the day.

Saturday was when the bands started in earnest. There was entertainment from 5 or 6pm on Friday, but no one I had ever heard of. Again there was no one we wanted to see until 3pm on Saturday, when Half Cousin were playing so we took the chance to go back to Hay, for a proper survey of those magical bookshops. Rory enforced a limit upon me though, I was denied entry to over two thirds of them from his mean, cruel rules. I was also told I could only buy books I could carry myself. What an unfortunate regime! I offered to let him sit in the pub for the day whilst I went on with my shopping, which he refused for no good reason. I would have sulked but was scared he wouldn't let me in any of the shops at all, so had to make do. I ended up with only two books, Running With Scissors and a small volume on English folk traditions. We had lunch in a pub with running water! Flushing toilets! Loo roll! We took full advantage of such luxuries.

On our way back to the campsite, we stopped off by the river and sat awhile on its banks. There were two swans with a cygnet who we watched as we listened to gentle flow of the water. It was wonderfully peaceful and we ended up staying there too long, arriving back in the middle of Half Cousin's set. Though having to be dragged from several blackberry bushes probably helped too. Later we sat on the grass near the stage, something I could manage as everyone was sat down so I didn't feel too anxious about the crowd, and watched the fantastic Aberfeldy, followed by the ones responsible for the whole affair, It's Jo and Danny, who were also wonderful. Afterwards we returned to the tent, drooled at our neighbours, and later set off to see Alasdair Roberts. He was, quite simply, amazing. Though the fuckers in the crowd were happy to talk over him, meaning we had to move two or three times until we could find a spot where we could actually hear. He sounded like he needed a hug so desperately, but then I suppose anyone who makes a career from singing songs about war, death and other happy topics always will sound as such.

Rory and I decided not to stay for Bonnie Prince Billy as it looked as if it was going to be quite crowded, and in any case, all would be perfectly audible from the tent. Thus we retired to our spider haven. I was already feeling quite stressed about the festival as a whole. Compared to other festivals this was a heaven. Only 1,200 tickets had been available, there were bins provided, there was no people around just to get extremely drunk and make large amounts of noise, in fact the narcotic of choice amongst the festival goers was cannabis. Rory reports only seeing three "proper" cigarettes being smoked the whole time. But it was still a little too much for me. There was rubbish on the ground despite the bins, cigarette / joint butts were everywhere, food was expensive, the toilets, whilst being an improvement on the average festival toilets, were still dirty and no where near as populous as they needed to be. The second stage was in a tiny room which was permanently crammed, and the only normal, flushing toilets were located at the far end of this room. The spiders in our tent also didn't help my mindset, nor did the heat which was bothering me, and the cold in the nights. In summary, I wanted to go home. In turned out that the choice was taken from me and we were forced to set off back for Leeds on Sunday as my cheek piercing had become inflamed and the small bar which was in it was almost wholly covered by flesh. I had no replacements with me, nor could one be bought at the festival. There was a chance of buying one in Hereford, but that was 20 miles away and we didn't know if the city had a piercing shop or not. It was a long way to go on a chance.

And so on Sunday morning at 9am we started off for home. We planned on getting a taxi from the hall straight to Hereford but the taxi numbers I had printed from the festival website were either not being answered or turned out to be the number of one bloke running a taxi service on his own, and who couldn't collect us. We had to walk to Hay, down that evil road again. Once there we sat near the river as Rory desperately searched the internet on his mobile for other taxi numbers. Eventually, miraculously, we found one who would collect us. If there had been none, our only option would be to have returned to the festival, there is no bus service from Hay on a Sunday so we would have had to wait until the day after and catch our train as planned. Luckily that fate was avoided and by 10 o'clock we were in a warm car heading towards Civilisation. Upon reaching Hereford it was discovered we had an hour and a half to wait until the next train going anywhere near Manchester, so we stopped off at Morrisons for some breakfast, eaten in the graveyard again, then sat on a bench at the station and read The Independent on Sunday.

The train journey was difficult to endure. It was an old train with little leg room and it took around four hours to reach Manchester. There we caught a train to Leeds within 15 minutes but only managed to make it as far as Huddersfield before the train broke down. We were herded onto a service heading to Scarborough but stopping Leeds, but this was hot and overcrowded. A far from pleasant time was had. We were exhausted upon disembarking in Leeds and caught a taxi home. It was half past five when I managed to collapse into my sofa, we had been traveling for 8.5 hours. My bar changed to a more sensible size, we rewarded ourselves with curry, mine a vegetable balti, and soon fell fast asleep.

The rest of this week has been rather dull. Not much is happening at SHIP, August is always a quiet time for us as people take their holidays. I've decided that, based upon my reactions at Green Man, it wouldn't be a good idea to risk attempting Electric Picnic, which isn't too much of a disappointment, I was mostly going for the experience and not the acts, though I would have liked to see Mercury Rev and the Caesars. And that's all I have to report. 21:17  

I got a B in my A-level. Neither great nor crap, just average. I'm not depressed about it, nor very happy, it just is. Hmm. I did get an A on the essay though, which I'm happy about. And now I must go shower for we have to leave to go to the festival in an hour. Adieu. 07:55  

The Pansy Project - planting flowers in places where you've received homosexual abuse. As pretty as they are, let's hope he doesn't have reason to plant many. 11:40  

So then. New layout. That green was horrible. Let me know if something doesn't work please. 09:17  

Back in Leeds once more, to a large pile of post and the dilemma of my missing cordless phones. I bought a set of three on Ebay before I went away, figuring that as we're doing up my cellar into a work space for me, if I was down there and the phone rang, the caller would have hung up by the time I managed to get upstairs to answer it. Whilst in Belfast I contacted the seller to see if the phones had been sent yet, I hadn't received them and Simon, who had been round to water my plants, said there was no sign of them at home, nor a card informing me of a package needing collecting. The seller responded saying that they had been dispatched the day after I transferred payment to them, and had be signed for the day after that by a "Mughal". This was news to me, especially as I live alone and know no one going by that name. I told them as such and they said they would send me a replacement pack whilst they chased up the matter with Parcel Force. Two days later they contacted me once again saying that the parcel had been sent and signed for by a "Mr Liaqat". Again a name I previously had not heard of, and seeing as I was still in Belfast, definitely not me. The seller didn't like this, saying that they dispatch 36,000 parcels a year with Parcel Force and have never had one go missing before, let alone twice, and that he was very suspicious of the situation and considering reporting it to the police. I encouraged him to do so, as I wanted to know who's been stealing my post. When I arrived home I found two cards informing me of packages needing collecting. I typed the number of the second into the Parcel Force tracking system and it was the one which had been taken care of by Mr Liaqat. I managed to make it to the post office yesterday, taking both cards with me on the off chance that somehow the parcel was still with them. It was indeed, and the first package was the first set of phones. Mughal and Mr Liaqat must be employees of the local post office then, though it would have been nice if there had been some way of communicating this to me, instead of having to assume someone by that name or pseudonym had stolen them. Still, at least the matter is cleared up now, and I can use my phones in peace.

Other exciting news includes the fact I bleached my hair yesterday, or rather my mum did it for me. It's very scary, I shock myself every time I catch a glimpse of it in a mirror. Luckily it won't be staying like this for long, I plan on dying it in a fortnight or so.

Amongst the pile of post waiting for me was my new credit card from the bank. I say new, I suppose I really mean first. I took advantage of it immediately and signed up for a Suicide Girls account. Wheee! Pretty girlie porn! You can see my profile here.

I also got a letter from college telling me when I have to start my degree. Yey! They've accepted me onto the course! I was very happy and bouncy about the news, though eating Opal Fruits for breakfast may also have helped somewhat. They sent me a list of the degree electives too. I have to choose two in my first year and one in my second. The list is Jewellry, 3D Form, Print, Drawing, Video, Photography, French, Spanish, Experimental Drawing, Object (very similar to the 3D option, I think), Multiculturalism, Image and Culture, Fashion Accessories and Millinery, Gender and Visual Culture, and Film. The one I'm most interested in is Image and Culture, but I suspect that most of its content will be covered on my course anyway. I'd be interested in doing French, except it's a beginner's level class and thus would be completely pointless for me. I'd also like to do Print, but the things they teach you I already covered in my diploma Print classes. I'm considering taking the first drawing class as I'd like to improve my drawing skills, it's an area that needs working on. The Video option also looks interesting, though you have to work in groups and I tend to prefer working alone. The Film choice is also attractive and I have the basic skills necessary for it from the A-level I did in Media Studies. Multiculturalism would be very interesting, I suspect, but I've been wanting to work on my physical skills and less on the theoretical ones, though having said that, the Film option is completely theoretical. I'll probably end up taking Photography, now I have a good grounding in it it would make sense to continue with it. However I don't have to choose yet. Apparently there will be talks about all the options to help us decide better once the course actually starts. Who knows? I might end up doing Millinery and 3D work yet!

The results for my A-level come through on Thursday. I'm not too nervous yet, but there's plenty of time for that to change. I'm still expecting a B, hoping for an A. I don't think it's likely I'll end up with a C, though it's always a possibility. Rory comes over on Thursday evening, then on Friday morning we're off down to the Green Man festival. Again, not something I'm too excited about yet but I'm sure that will change. Then a fortnight later, we're off to London to see Múm, two days before my degree starts. Exciting times, indeed. 13:39  

Still in Belfast, don't go home until Thursday. My days have been relatively quiet, spent mostly browsing charity shops and eating bagels from Tescos. On Friday I went photographing with Paddy, who came to the festival in Draperstown last year. We went to Nendrum, the site of a medieval monastery near Belfast. It was wonderfully peaceful and remote, just what the monks were looking for, I suppose. It wasn't a very large site but it was still beautiful and enjoyable. We also had a drive around the countryside, spotting gorgeous, expensive houses and a variety of wildlife.

On Saturday, Rory and I went for a curry with some more of his friends at Gingeroot, a local Indian restaurant. The food was wonderful. I had a mushroom and spinach dish which was delicious and I shared some ginger rice with Rory which was heavenly. Ginger rice is definitely the way forward.

Rory took the day off on Monday and with Paddy again we had another drive, taking photographs. We went to Donaghadee (it had a lighthouse and several chip shops), Grey Abbey (unfortunately we didn't know it was closed on Mondays and thus didn't get to see much beyond the graveyard) and one or two other places, mostly by the sea. At least I think it was the sea, it could have been a lake or lough, one flat expanse of water looks much the same as another really. We also went to Tescos where I was deeply distraught to discover they did not have the wonderful caramelised onion hoummous available from their website. Afterwards we watched But I'm A Cheerleader and there was much hugging to be had. 21:42  

I might have mentioned this before, I forget, but I seem to be having something of a mid-twenties crisis, as I'm a little too young for a mid-life crisis. I turn 24 in 4 weeks and all of a sudden I've become obsessed with the idea that I'm no longer young, that's things I should have done with my life which I've failed to do, and that I'm becoming irretrievably Old. Simon had a similar crisis when he turned 24 or 25, and Lister worries that as he's 27 soon he'll be too old to go on drinking and curry binges and will soon have to start playing squash.

So I'm certainly not alone. But what do I do about it? It doesn't help that most people my age have done so many things I haven't: got a degree, traveled round Europe / the world, been to bed with a large number of people (or at least enough to decide on their sexuality), taken a variety of interesting drugs (not just prescribed ones), learnt to play an instrument or two (or three), and basically lived.

What have I done? Failed to even achieve my A-levels, let alone a degree, spent many years being ill and refusing to leave the house, had a variety of one or two night stands with people who now (admittedly for unrelated reasons) hate me or ignore me, cost The Taxpayer large sums of money, cost my parents (ever-increasing) large sums of money, forgotten the little I learned of French, read many books but failed to form a firm opinion on most (possibly due lack of self-belief and -confidence, feeling sure that any opinion I have will be wrong), learnt HTML which is superfluous nowadays anyway and failed to implement it in any attractive way whatsoever, complained at all and sundry (including faceless strangers on the internet), helped screw up several people over a range of years, and generally been a big waste of space.

But still, what do I do about it? Somehow I have to make the time I have left Worth It, though I don't know how. I'm doing a degree with no obvious options at the end of it, so my only redemption will be to find a way to make it as useful to as large a selection of people as possible. I should take up learning French again. It's too late to start learning the piano or the violin, though there may be a slight chance of becoming competent at the guitar, if I'm lucky. I need to take all the chances to travel that I can, try to Do and Learn what I can, read books instead of novels, find some way of Making A Difference. It's not too late for redemption, at least I caught it this early, but all those years I've wasted... Almost a quarter of a century. It's unforgivable. 21:36  

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