The Man In The Moon...

I think it's fair to say, that waking up this morning, I haven't felt this good for many many months. And I'm not sure whether it's anything to do with the Karms Nights I've been taking, or the 12-hour shift I just did, but I feel good. 

On the flip side, it's quite depressing that this flat is brightest in the middle of winter with all the lights switched on than it is at Midday on Midsummer's Eve.

Hey diddle diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle,

The Cow jumped over the Moon.

The Little Boy laughed to see such fun,

And the Dish ran away with the Spoon.

How long will I love you? As long as stars are above you, and longer if I may. I'm also finding it increasingly difficult to focus on just one thing at the moment, which is seemingly adding to my absent mindedness. I forgot where I put my helicopter the other day for about 45mins. 

For you I'd wait, til Kingdom come, until my days, my day is done. And say you'll come and set me free. Just say you'll wait, you'll wait for me. Tomorrow, I shall be wrapping all of my Christmas presents. Half of my colleagues think I'm being cheap with my wrapping paper this year. I must buy string. The other half like the traditional look. They're gonna be actual parcels, in actual sacks. Its gonna be good!

Shake it, shake it and we're moving again. Been a long time coming for the working man. Shake it, shake it and we're moving again. When the money is high, we can start to spend. Just 15 days left to go. And I'm working all the rest of them it seems. Fun times. 

I shall see you later. Pip pip, and more importantly Carpe diem...

You Guys Are Awesome...

Here are two things that made me feel inadequate today. The first being a video of amazing people's amazing stunts. They aren't those of kindness or love or a type of selfless caring for one another in a world of turmoil but just acts of awesome...

And the second is a reminder that creative minds like myself can make awesome things too despite being physically or even mentally incapable of doing any of the stunts in the former video...

Both stand as a reminder for me, or more a sign, that no matter how low you get there are always highs, and no matter how good you get there's always a way to get better. Don't lose it if you think you've got it, and when you've got it, never stop making it better...

Carpe diem...

Rumour Has It...

It has to be said that yesterday I felt like I had a very shit day at work. The long and short of it mainly spans from lots of little things (as well as big ones), as they often do, and a rather large rumour spread around about me not doing my job.

Either way it all escalated and caused me to march angrily home to an empty house with a nice note from Pill informing me that he would not be returning for dinner. I dumped my stuff and stormed from the house back to work and immediately asked any of the girls if they wanted a drink (there were only girls working there when I left). Thankfully one of them did, and my workmate and I got a drink in the Pen and Wig. I learnt a lot more about her, and there's more yet still. It was a nice evening well spent, and then I returned home to cook dinner...

Pill returned and was also in an off mood. We watched a small bit of telly before he phoned DarkHorse and then came back to a talk about weddings and finances and some how Christmas. I don't know about you, but Christmas for me has always mostly been about the giving. And I will admit I might have gone a little OTT with Christmas this year. All in all, I'm not 100% on what I've bought let alone what I've spent. It's always best not to look. However, when listing the people I've bought things for (Pill being on there) he goes: 'oh dude, I specifically told you not to get me anything!' And then leaves the room. 

I don't think I've ever seen anyone angry that they've got a gift for Christmas before. And I did lead into it with the giving statement, but he wasn't having any of it. Am I a dick? Is it just that day where I think I'm a dick because I'm actually a dick?

So there was a lot of downs before hitting the up and then back down to the depths. And what's worse is that I've not even finished Christmas shopping. I will finish tomorrow though. I've decided. I wish I had a concierge...

I think I might prefer the Ed Sheeran version, though this one's epic, and there's loads of awesome covers too. Who knew it'd be that popular. 

Today will be a better day.

Carpe diem...

Things I Didn't Know...

Did you know I like to lift my chin and look down my nose at strangers, flaring my nostrils in a primal and subliminal act to intimidate the intruder?

Neither did I.

I had a talk yesterday and I got some good advise: 'Contentment is fine at your age. You're not meant to know what your passions are yet. You're still, for a couple more years yet, trying to find out who you are, and if you're content with how you are now, then be content. But make sure that the contentment doesn't turn into complacency. You've got a good character and I don't think you will. You'll go travelling soon, you'll write more, you'll be happier than you are now. So be content for now, and don't worry what others think of it.'

It was a good talk.

Yesterday I was having a bad day. Did anyone else feel ill after Le Lake Poob Food? I was working my short day, getting in two hours later and leaving an hour later than normal - I felt weird all day. I don't think I did very much all day. But Sunday's coming, and I've decided that I'm not going to walk to Castell Coch - mainly because I want to do that with peeps if peeps still want to, so perhaps I'll just enjoy the park all over again. Starting the day with a nice walk around the park is a good way of starting your day. That and nice coffee, fruit, pastries, perhaps with a roast in the oven for dinner...

Ideas, ideas...

Red came over yesterday for dinner, it was nice with wine and everything. No one else was invited because I was told by everyone else that they had already had plans and there was only one spare bowl of food going, not four. I will admit that I've been very lazy recently. Pill has cooked everything I've been eating for a while now. I will cook Banoffee Pie on Sunday with, perhaps, a small roast shoulder of pork (I love crackling). Though DarkHorse doesn't like Pork. Maybe I won't. Perhaps something new. To the cookbooks I go!

Have a better day than me, Carpe diem you beautiful lot!

The Twelve Trials Of Big Tom...

Yesterday was my birthday, and it went up there with one of the greats. Admittedly there were too many people, the Christmas Market was over saturated, and the Christmas Lights were already switched on, but when we went to the pub we could sit and catch up. There's still time for Massive Frankfurters, Admiring the Lights, and shopping in the Market, without the crowds and hordes of people there were last night. 

And as it was a birthday, there were presents, and lots of those. Apparently today I receive my brother's and Saturday I get El's and Wodge and Owen's. Birthday's are fun. I got a percolator and some coffee from my parents, as well as a crocodile onesie, Iron Man 3 from my Sister, Arrow Series 1 from Clareg, a nice scarf and a notebook from Clareg's family, a hand crafted broadsword from HB, a notebook with one of the lines from Real Magic 2 from Tag, a companion cube of my companions from Red - plus spare instergerm pics for it, and a Jigglypuff and Wigglytuff t-shirt from Pill and DarkHorse which reads:

Working my Puff into Tuff

And I love them all, that you very muchly. I accidentally threw Red's present up in the air and it came apart. That was entirely my bad, and I think I really pissed Red off, so much so that drunk Red and I bickered like the married couple we will inevitably become about anything and everything, and she also made me realise I can't answer the question: 'what are you passionate about?' without some proper long thought...

But now it's a new year, and my 25th one at that. I've been thinking I require to do something more with my time, so I'm going to set myself 12 tasks for the 12 months between now and then. Some might be easier than others, but I hope I'll sort them all out. So without further introduction and in no particular order:

1. Write the first story of Farcliff and Real Magic 2 and 3. (Tag's already helped there.)
2. Cook/Bake something new once a week. (Pill will let me!)
3. Explore somewhere new every month. (Anyone want to come? Doesn't have to be around Cardiff - roadtrip?)
4. Finish Vin Diesel. (End Him!)
5. Read the Lord of the Rings. (Pahahaha...oh, you were serious?)
6. Read more in general.
7. Travel to Places You Think About.
8. Learn How to Draw again.
9. Learn a new Language. (I was thinking French or Italian, though Welsh might be a good start.)
10. Do something memorable. (Venice was a year ago, Uni was 2/3, we need new memories that we're all apart of.)
11. Live Healthier.
12. Enjoy Life, Yourself, and Your Friends.

As I said, some are easier than others. And I'm quite certain that half of them are naff and immeasurable. But I'll figure it out. I didn't want to put something like Skydiving on there because a. that's scary as shit and the thought of falling is making my palms sweat even now, but b. I wanted it to be something that we could all potentially do together at certain points. Without the risk of death. If we wanted.

It's going to be a good year already without me adding more things to it, so bring it on. I woke up to this today, Carpe diem guys! x

P.S. I'm passionate about my friends. Their quirks, thoughts, personalities. Their overall characters create my own, and their jokes, stories, and lives keep me going. I enjoy capturing their best and worst qualities in my writing and drawing, and I wouldn't change them for anything in the universe.

Cause And Effect...

Yesterday was a good day. And it wasn't just a good day in the sense that nothing cataclysmically bad happened to me, there were no train derailments, or tsunamis, or alien invasions in my life yesterday, it was just an ordinary day, and yet one that made me smile more than usual. And I think that was just about it, smiling. My workmates saw it, some even pointed it out (and some even got suspicious of it). Why was I smiling? No reason, and yet every reason. And now I'm starting to sound like a rather pompous swine with nothing better to do than to watch a daffodil grow through the seasons, from life to death to re-birth. 

I can't actually remember much of what happened, apart from my workmates' suspicions. I was kindly complimented on my previous blog, I was observed by the general public as being happy with my job, and as I slept last night, or as I tried, a line or two of a poem or a song entered and twisted and simply popped into my head. I rolled over and typed this into my phone:

'When Winter Leaves and Winter Trees

Bring Summer Long to her knees,

We shall battle on, we shall battle on...'

I'm not entirely sure if those lines are good or not, and I'm not even sure if they'll come to anything. But I'm glad I wrote them down, because a few lines I've been having recently, whilst in the grips of the sleepy pathway to slumber, have been lost to the recesses of my mind, not to be recovered. 

But, as with all goodness, there's a flip side. Pill's convinced (as always) that I'm coming across as wonderfully fake, and wanted me to sit down and talk about the future again last night. DarkHorse is on about buying a house early next year, and wishes for Pill, HB, and I to move in. I can only see a handful of problems ready to occur and none of which he wishes to discuss with me. There are just two things I require from a house/flat/place I'm living in apart from the obvious ones:

1. It needs to be within walking distance of town, not really any further than half an hour. I can't rely on public transport again like I was before Christmas. So much time wasted, 10 hours a week, 40 a month, 120 over the three months I waited. I spent the equivalent of five days waiting for trains to and from work, and I don't want to have to do that, or something similar, again.
2. It needs to have somewhere green to explore. That's an obvious one, for me at least. Somewhere to get lost, and somewhere to find things you weren't expecting to find.

There are of course other things concerning me, and convincing me that moving out alone would be a better option entirely, but none more so than Pill and DarkHorse wanting me to be a part of the decision. I may live there, but in the long run, it would be their (her) first house together. Why should I get a say in where they live? And for that matter, why would they want anyone else there apart from to make it conveniently cheap?

Maybe I'm just having doubts because doubts are worth having, unless every instinct in me is saying 'this is a bad idea', I'm not sure. Cause and effect, do something and make something else happen. You make a decision, and make something else happen. And never before have Ioan Gruffudd's words made more sense (two days since viewing them). If I do this now, I have a few ideas on how it plays out, and likewise if I don't do it. It's another big decision, especially after I just got settled into our flat and everything. I've just about dulled myself to the bean related meals and subsequent flatulence from across the room, doors slamming at the 6am wake-up call, and the 'you cook, I'll clean' regime.

It's a tricky one, and it'll take some thought, but in the meantime, I've got to take every day as it comes, and be happy in the fact that tomorrow the sun will rise and that opportunities are ready to be made, found, and explored to the fullest...

Carpe diem...

Also, have you heard 'What does the Fox say yet?'...

The Second Coming...

Yesterday turned out okay in the end. Who knew? Though today I have a limp, a head cold, and a sore wrist (keep your thoughts to yourself)...

It's amazing how the smallest things can affect your mood. Music for example. I've been listening to a lot of Mumford and Sons, and when that banjo kicks in an the epic, emotive, awesome jump starts the song, I tend to smile and thrash my fist with the beat. And until yesterday, my favourite poem was The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Dark, apocalyptic, and wonderful imagery, I hope you'll agree. And then we started talking about poetry during our daily commitments, and Biddy suggested a poem I should read, and it sounded like a very intelligent person wrote it. The Blind Men and The Elephant by John Godfrey Saxe. It's a good read, if you haven't read it only eight stanzas long and it blows apart almost every single religion to date, by saying you're all sort of right but at the same time, you're all incredibly wrong...

I got to speak to Wodge again last night, we chatted about this and that for hours. It's good to know that she's still around, and kickin'. And the gauntlet has been laid down, real-world fiction (lol) will be written soon! Thank you again Wodge!

But now the new dawn is here, I feel like death warmed up, but today is a new day...

Carpe diem...

AWESOME FUN!...

Let's face it, I've had some pretty fun weekends, but last weekend took all the biscuits, ate all the pies, and generally stomped on that belief that life couldn't get much better...

And do you know why? Because I did something new, and I enjoy doing somethings new. I enjoy them very much, although there is the risk of disliking the new thing. For instance, I don't like high board diving, I've done it, and I don't like it - or falling in general for that matter. But last weekend, we the special chosen ones, ventured to the oldest pub in the Diff and sat in a stuffy upstairs room, paid to be there, and viewed a lovely acoustic concert put on just for us. 

We were mainly there to cheer on Cherry's Friend's Boyfriend, which we did. And then, as the evening went on, other bands started to appear, like wild pokemon, and entertain the hell out of us. If only there was a large room for dancing and not upsetting the band with your poor dance moves. Oh well. 

So we heard from Jack Barnett, Firewood Island, and Old Colours and they were all very very good. Tag and Cherry had to leave for a train about half way through though. But that left the drunk pair Red and I to enjoy the rest of the gig, and to then see another gig downstairs, wander over to Live Lounge for a dance, complain about the size of the bag she was carrying, contemplate seeing her boss in Pulse, walking to the Bay, getting Subway, trying to get into a rave tent, and then sitting in the moonlight getting blown about by a nice sea breeze. It was a good night out, and you don't get many nights out that start with a gig, so I'd be more than willing to try that again. 

I want to go proper dancing and clubbing again, but not in the crappy clubs. Payday is next week, possibilities and all that jazz!

Then on the Sunday, instead of Date Night, I had a shift that lasted 12hours until I was sent home purely because I had work in the morning. 2am is a funny time to be getting back from work, to say the least.

And Pill loved his present from me, and is now planning a Friday night in with Rocket Joes pizza (look it up), drink, and the Game of Thrones board game. Just to warn you.

The World's End is happening tomorrow, and I can't bloody wait. I'm sure it's been ages since Hot Fuzz, we need another cornetto, and I want to relive watching a WrightPeggFrost movie in the cinema, and rekindle some childhood memories (I'm not that old!)

Day off tomorrow, endless uncertainties to come. Bring it on... (Amandi!)

Carpe diem...