the war may be over but the rain looks set to stay…
it’s a sunday and the last day of july in the year 2005. i’ve been to church and gazed longingly at a girl i’ve had a crush on for somewhere between ten and fifteen years, had my ‘sunday dinner’ and watched the hungarian grand prix. at the time of writing i’m listening to an old cd by the amazing pilots and have been repeatedly choking on one of the grainy bits of a hobnob biscuit. this is currently what passes for excitement in this life.
in these times of historic ira peace settlements, where the prime minister ensures us that only peaceful progress will prevail in a week after his police force put eight bullets into the head of an innocent man, my days currently seem to follow the homer simpson mantra of “without tv it’s hard to tell where one day ends and another begins”. yesterday was definitely a saturday… i watched casualty. in fact, when combined with the changing of a wheel on my dad’s car, that is the grand sum of my achievements for the entire day. the previous night had been spent at the aforementioned christian youth group gig. it went well considering it was my first real solo performance for a long long time. i was more than a little wary of playing to a room of mainly christian girls between the ages of 12 and 15. what if they didn’t recognise any of the songs or what if i forgot to sing “flying” instead of “fucking” in the middle of the james blunt track? thankfully it all went a little better than i’d planned. two little teenage emo brats even turned up so i treated them to an acoustic version of my chemical romance’s ‘i’m not okay’.
it went slowly downhill from there… a little something like this… bright eyes’ ‘first day of my life’ then a medly off the top of my head including u2, black eyed peas, the darkness, mcfly and green day… the first twenty minute set was wrapped up with a boyish acoustic version of ‘complicated’ and ‘mr brightside’. by the time i was about to do my second set some girls had got up and stunned the crowd into complete silence by telling dead baby jokes… and wrapping up their set with “what’s brown and found in a little boys pants?” (drum rolls) “michael jackson’s hand!” from then on i could do no wrong. set two was a little singalong moment featuring james blunt, damien rice and snow patrol… yes, the same songs you will hear at any christian gig ever! by the time my third set came around i was giving up on having a serious gig and enjoyed a bit of a travis-esque run through of ‘hit me baby one more time’ mostly incorporating me standing back from the mic grinning like an idiot while everyone sang for me… i think that move is known in professional circles as “the gary lightbody”. after winding a few girls up about lipgloss, i wasn’t exactly one hundred percent surprised to be covered in the stuff by the end of the night and wrapped things up with another cheesey singalong moment. ‘sleeping with the light on’ with my face covered in lipgloss hearts and flowers. that my friends is rock and roll!
by now my aural experience has become booley’s late nineties epic ‘bathroom floor’ and i’m contemplating the preparation of the millionth version of my cv for prospective employers. the job world has still rendered me unemployed but at least i have an interview coming up… not until the 18th august though so the brokeness will have to endure for another while at least. this may keep me from attending radiation or other scene moments for another few weeks, if ever again. it’s now been 24 days since i last went out for a night or enjoyed the taste of alcohol. has it improved me as a person? no! have i lost any weight? no! has it left me bored on countless evenings, watching shit dvd’s and chatting to people online in lieu of a real life… well, as a matter of fact…
in these times of historic ira peace settlements, where the prime minister ensures us that only peaceful progress will prevail in a week after his police force put eight bullets into the head of an innocent man, my days currently seem to follow the homer simpson mantra of “without tv it’s hard to tell where one day ends and another begins”. yesterday was definitely a saturday… i watched casualty. in fact, when combined with the changing of a wheel on my dad’s car, that is the grand sum of my achievements for the entire day. the previous night had been spent at the aforementioned christian youth group gig. it went well considering it was my first real solo performance for a long long time. i was more than a little wary of playing to a room of mainly christian girls between the ages of 12 and 15. what if they didn’t recognise any of the songs or what if i forgot to sing “flying” instead of “fucking” in the middle of the james blunt track? thankfully it all went a little better than i’d planned. two little teenage emo brats even turned up so i treated them to an acoustic version of my chemical romance’s ‘i’m not okay’.
it went slowly downhill from there… a little something like this… bright eyes’ ‘first day of my life’ then a medly off the top of my head including u2, black eyed peas, the darkness, mcfly and green day… the first twenty minute set was wrapped up with a boyish acoustic version of ‘complicated’ and ‘mr brightside’. by the time i was about to do my second set some girls had got up and stunned the crowd into complete silence by telling dead baby jokes… and wrapping up their set with “what’s brown and found in a little boys pants?” (drum rolls) “michael jackson’s hand!” from then on i could do no wrong. set two was a little singalong moment featuring james blunt, damien rice and snow patrol… yes, the same songs you will hear at any christian gig ever! by the time my third set came around i was giving up on having a serious gig and enjoyed a bit of a travis-esque run through of ‘hit me baby one more time’ mostly incorporating me standing back from the mic grinning like an idiot while everyone sang for me… i think that move is known in professional circles as “the gary lightbody”. after winding a few girls up about lipgloss, i wasn’t exactly one hundred percent surprised to be covered in the stuff by the end of the night and wrapped things up with another cheesey singalong moment. ‘sleeping with the light on’ with my face covered in lipgloss hearts and flowers. that my friends is rock and roll!
by now my aural experience has become booley’s late nineties epic ‘bathroom floor’ and i’m contemplating the preparation of the millionth version of my cv for prospective employers. the job world has still rendered me unemployed but at least i have an interview coming up… not until the 18th august though so the brokeness will have to endure for another while at least. this may keep me from attending radiation or other scene moments for another few weeks, if ever again. it’s now been 24 days since i last went out for a night or enjoyed the taste of alcohol. has it improved me as a person? no! have i lost any weight? no! has it left me bored on countless evenings, watching shit dvd’s and chatting to people online in lieu of a real life… well, as a matter of fact…