We Started Nothing

Nineteen days behind with my garbage. a) I have been away b) upon return I have been struggling to catch up on sleep c) my room needed repostering, and so 

Spring Harvest 2008

One of the biggest events in the Christian calendar; a conference, a festival. Either way over 20,000 believers and non-believers alike crammed into three weeks at Butlins (@ Minehead but a replication at Skegness also churns on) to listen to talks, to talk, play the punter at performances of every variety, to worship God, make friends, learn and live and learn to live. Be as cynical as you like, week 2 was worth waking up for. 

Unlike previous years, I decided to steward, mostly because this means the whole thing is free inc. food, accommodation etc. but also because I am an avid volunteer. . . Donned in fluorescent tabards and armed with radio headsets our team worked from 7.30am-12pm every day for the entire six day Week 2 (10th-15th April) and seeing as Abi and I had attended Good Charlotte's Southampton tour date the night before leaving on my excursion the whole thing was bloody hard work. 

As expected, the whole team was super friendly and up for a laugh (although there were a fair few fat/old stewards who did next to nothing but sit around at venue entrances) and I happily accepted hundreds of comments and compliments about my hair. Didn't get on the wrong train on the way home like I did on the way down, and collapsed for a few hours before waking up to go back to work the next morning. SIGH

It was worth it though. 

Good Charlotte

Tuesday 8th April OH YES

FYI my sister Abi and I share our birthday on 14th February. She almost burst my eardrums when I delivered her present to her; two tickets to see our long-time favorite band Good Charlotte. There was a tiny part of me that was panicking like nobody's business imagining the worst case scenarios i.e. Good Charlotte would suck live. But now I don't know how I could ever have doubted the band's ability to put on a good show!

After queuing for about an hour and a half in the freezing cold we got in near the front and were subsequently almost crushed during the first song ('The River') as the crowd surged against the barriers. Being used to rough gigs, I was far more worried about losing Abi/Abi getting trampled because apart from her being much shorter, smaller and lighter than pretty much everyone else in the audience it was also her very first concert, ever! Rightly concerned, I moved us a bit further back away from where a couple of mosh pits were breaking out - not soon enough, once we got outside afterwards we could see her feet were black and blue with bruises. My feet didn't feel a thing through my Docs, Abi will have to invest in some for next time. 

Anyway - it was incredible! Southampton Guildhall is smaller than a lot of big concert halls/stadiums etc so even though we were a good couple of hundred metres back we could see the whole band really well and pretty close up! Surreal, they all looked like they'd stepped out of one of my posters. Joel and Benji had a fair bit of banter going on; the band did a cover of The Cure's 'Love Song' dedicated to Joel's 3 month old daughter (w/ Nicole Richie) Harlow Winter. And they announced that Billy just got married. All the old favourites were played, including 'The Anthem', 'Get Your Hands Off My Girl', 'SOS' and 'Hold On' as well as 'East Coast Anthem', one of my favourite tracks all time, from the first album and ending with a massive 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous'. 

 See you at the show. 

Oh and it snowed!

Catch up: Jimmy, Baz, Sam and I went to the beach on the last day of term. Next day = ill, ill, ill and had to miss Soph's birthday infiltration of Guildford's clubs (sorry!), Tuesday was Southampton shopping and Good Charlotte (rock on!), Wednesday - Tuesday 15th @ Spring Harvest and the last few days re-doing the posters on my wall, sleeping, seeing Jim, watching the last episode of Skins, catching up on How To Look Good Naked and the new series of Shipwrecked. Today: driving to Basingstoke and re-dying hair. Funky.