I am currently hiding upstairs while my French grandfather, his girlfriend, my aunt and uncle chatter and chortle below. Soon I will be ousted from my position of safety, as Mysterious Cousin Sebastian will be taking over my room as soon as he arrives, which is ANY MOMENT NOW. The suspense is killing me. Here is a list of all that I know about him:

• His name is Sebastian.
• He has recently fathered a child. It is a girl. I do not remember her name.
• He is not married, but has a long-term girlfriend. Again, I do not remember her name. (Thus, while my uncle Olivier won the competition to be a grandfather first, my mother won the competition to marry off one of her offspring first. I am unsure as to which is the more desirable competition to win.)
• Him and the girlfriend live in France, somewhere in Auvergne I believe. Somewhere beginnig with A at any rate.
  
• Whilst studying at college (in the US), Sebastian reputedly did no work whatsoever. However, as his father paid for his accomodation in a penthouse flat, he did not learn the importance of working hard to earn pretty things. (As this information comes from my mother, however, it may well be grossly exagerrated, if not completely backward.)
  
• He worked as a barman at some point.
• Apparently he is nice, and rather shy.
  

I hope he does not smell, as I would like my room to be in a habitable state when I return to it (Sunday night). Give me luck and strength for the long-awaited/dreaded Wedding Reception tomorrow night- crucially, I need luck to fit back into my bridesmaid dress. Stupid no-good fitted dress which disagrees with my hips...

***EDIT*** I have now met Mysterious Cousin Sebastian, and can say with all my authority that he is a very nice young fellow. The rest of the family are completely loopy over him- no one has seen him very much for the past 20 years or so owing to his living in the States. Whenever he left a room, a chorus of adulation would break out: 'Oh, he's so polite... so helpful... kind, caring...' etc etc. Which is true, but it did get a wee bit nauseating after a while. (The family's comments, not him. He seemed rather embarrassed by it.) He is also very quiet, and quite a solitary being- at quite a few points over the Reception day, I'd see him sat all on his own with a cigarette and so went to keep him company, but I suspect that he likes it that way. That's another thing- he smokes A LOT. This may have been down partly to nerves, but really, he never spent longer than 5 minutes without lighting up. Poor Seb's lungs. Despite this minor shortcoming, however, I would still say Seb is Nice and is an example of Good Cousin-hood everywhere.

Something incredibly amazing and awe-inspiring has just happened to me, and I just needed someone to talk to about it. And so, as ever, that person is YOU, big-faceless-black-hole of the internet.

I have just embarked on a biltz of my room in preparation for the arrival of The French Relatives later this week; cousin Sebastian, whom I have never met, will be staying in my room while I am shunted out variously to a friend's house/cheap hotel/local crack-den. I thought the least I could do for this mysterious cousin of mine is provide him with a room which he can retire to at night without waking up under a fresh sheet of dust in the morning. (While outwardly tidy, my room is in fact FILTHY. It actually makes me feel physically sick to see how dirty and dusty everything is. When I am older and have my own house and money I am so getting a cleaner.)

And so, to cleaning. I decided to begin with the shelf above my monitor, which houses a number of CDs, DVDs, pointless ornaments and various vessles containing money. Inside one of the latter objects is where I hold my vast collection of 1ps and 2ps, which one day I intend to carefully tip, one by one, into the charity box by the till at some shop or other, holding up the queue behind me for several minutes. I need to get my fun somehow. I haven't touched this little cup for months and months so, curious as to how many copper coins I had by now amassed, I tipped its contents out upon my desk for counting.

There, buried among their darker brothers and sisters, were a number of glorious 5-pence pieces, glistening in the cool Summer light. Not just one, or two, but ONE POUND FORTY-FIVE PENCE worth. I can only conclude that some of the pennies and tupennies had been there so long, crushed under the weight of all the others, that they were forcibly transformed into their new shinier, sleeker, more valuable form.

The five-pence piece is a sedimentary coin. I'm out to go buy £1.45 worth of confectionary at the local shop and laugh as the cashier has to count all my tiddly money up.

ALSO: I have just decided on a whim to put the address for this up on my facebook, so possibly some actual real people I know may end up reading this. If that sounds like you, hello there! Don't be shy! Leave a note saying how much you've enjoyed my astounding prose/am amazed by my incredible self-absorption. I thought doing this would be a good idea if people from my humble school-days have any deeper interest in what I'm getting up to, apart from what goes up on that hungry-cesspit of a website. Does that sound like a good idea to you? I do hope so.

YAY YAY YAY :D

2 As and 2 Bs

In Biology and History (how the HELL did I manage that??), and Chemistry and Critical Thinking, respectively.

So the University of Sheffield it is!

To everyone in receipt of pleasing results today:

I'm not going insane, right? Milo Ventimiglia (Peter Petrelli from Heroes aka the actual hottest man on television right now and possibly ever) and Conor Oberst (he of the whiney off-key singing of Bright Eyes) do look really similar.














Not that it matters. It was just an Interesting Observation. And in no way just an excuse for me to scroll through many photos of them both.

It's been two Summers since I started this blog. I'm impressed I've managed it for so long, though maybe I shouldn't congratulate myself before I manage to update a little more frequently than every three months or so... Still, it's longer than I've managed any other kind of diary/journal type thing. If I'm honest, I guess that's down to vanity more than anything else; there's a little thrill from the thought that some complete stranger could be reading my personal thoughts and become fascinated with the little nothings that make up my life. I'm aware that it's incredibly creepy for me to get excited at this but hey, we all need to get our kicks somehow. Some choose drink, some choose drugs, I choose reverse voyeurism.

Anyway. Lots of stuff has already happened this Summer, namely my big brother getting married on the distant, sunny shore of Cuba. While it was absolutely amazing, I've already talked about it to so many of my friends that I can't actually face a full-on discussion of it now. I'll just let it be said that mojitos are gods among drinks, and I am so getting married abroad in a luxury all-inclusive hotel. Really, it was just beautiful. It's not like I could get married in a church even if I wanted to, being an unbaptised heathen. The only wedding scenario which could possibly better that of Jo and Fliss is one mentioned by some lady at dinner named Linda: that is, the groom parachuting from the sky at the feet of his lady and their getting married on the beach. I love the idea of my true love falling gently from the sky. Except, does that mean he gets married in a jumpsuit? I don't think that would be such a good look for the wedding photos.

The other big thing happening this Summer are the A Level results. Despite agonising over my performance when existing my exams, I'm now feeling pretty confident that I'll get my grades and be moving North to Sheffield. (Which will make it even worse if I have fucked it up...) I'm not as scared about uni as I was previously, having talked about it more with various people who are equally as anxious and nervous about being dunked into a vat full of strangers, as well as my good friend Flora who's just finished her first year at Oxford. So yes, although I shouldn't be excited before I actually get my results, little shoots of anticipation and impatience to just be GONE from this place have started and are increasing in both frequency and power. I have already decided on a list of people I shall make friends with:

• someone who can cook (to share a house with in 2nd + 3rd year)
• someone who shares my taste in music (to attend all manner of gigs with, starting with the Decemberists in October and the ARCADE FIRE in November, OH MY GOD)
• someone with admirable nerdy/techy prowess (to heal my computer should it decide to die at any point)
• someone incredibly rich (so they can buy me nice gifts and invite me to stay at their beautiful mansion over the holidays)

I guess it would be pretty good to make friends with general people that I like and get on with too but you know, I shouldn't be greedy.

I hope to keep writing in this when I've gone. Maybe I'll be too busy getting drunk, having it off with strangers and sleeping through lectures as the first-year student is traditionally wont to do, but I've never really enjoyed those things so far in my life and see no real reason why I should change my habits now. I like to write. And, while obviously I will continue to contact my school-friends via email (ALWAYS, Nish, ALWAYS) or facebook as appropriate, maybe I could start to use this as a proper means of communication.

It is now pretty late, and I'm pretty tired. I'm going to bed. I aim to re-read the whole of Harry Potter from start to finish over the Summer (neglecting the mound of books purchased from charity shops that I had previously intended to work my way through, oops) and I am only half way through Chamber of Secrets right now. I need to get a move on. x

(Copied from the last.fm journal, what else?)

of Montreal, 2nd August at the Scala

Going to see of Montreal was less like going to see a band play, and more like going to see some bizarre circus with musical accompaniment. Which is, of course, no bad thing.

The first support, the Wave Machines, gave a gentle introduction to the visual oddity we were to experience later in the evening by wearing masks of themselves. They sounded pretty good to me, and appeared far more interesting live than the tracks on their myspace would have me believe. Unfortunately, the vocals ended up sounding very muddy down to a dodgy mic I guess, something which would be a problem throughout the rest of the night.

The second support, Pull Tiger Tail, were unfortunately a run-of-the-mill indie-schmindie guitar band, even if they did have a number of rather fetching tiger masks to throw out to the crowd, and two rather fetching guitarists at the front. Still, I was there to see weird and delightful things, not bland and attractive things, so was glad when their set came to and end.

From our prime position right at the front on stage-right, directly in front of keyboard lady when she appeared, we could quite easily read the setlist, and so were wondering what the song 'Verdi' could possibly be (I only got into of Montreal from Hissing Fauna and thus am mostly clueless when it comes to songs from their back catalogue). Turns out that Verdi was not an of Montreal song but was, in fact, a piece of opera- presumably by Verdi, someone name me what it was exactly?- which came soaring out of the speakers as the first sequin-masked putty man took to the stage. This being was soon joined by what looked a bit like a be-winged Elvis impersonator on guitar and the rest of the band, Kevin Barnes resplendant in skinny pink and white jeans, a red shirt with flouncy flower-petal collar, and plenty of glitter.

I can't think of much better jobs than being a player in the of Montreal travelling pantomime; on top of a whole troupe of the sequin-masked putty men, who had an onstage punch-up between themselves as well as a confrontation with Barnes, there was a man with a giant lobster claw (as seen in the Heimdalsgate video), a quiet newspaper-reading businessman whose sole job was to go absolutely ape during the chorus of She's A Rejector, and a reject from a 70s sci-fi show who generously ladled out what looked like red paint into plastic glasses for the eager crowd. At some point during the spectacle, Kevin Barnes chaned into teeny-tiny, very tight blue shorts with matching ankle boots and fishnet tights and continued to command the stage. (As with Rufus Wainwright, I found myself cursing him for having better legs than me- I really need to stop seeing pretty, cross-dressing men, it's bad for my self esteem.)

The music was great as well, of course, even though I did feel it was rather secondary to the antics of the characters on stage; The Past is a Grotesque Animal sounded brilliant live and held my attention for all of its 12 minutes, something which it struggles to do on record. The woozy feel of Oslo in the Summertime was ramped right up by playing it at about half the speed and with head-buzzing distortion. While the balance of the vocals bugged me a bit, I couldn't help just grinning like an idiot at everything, especially when one of the putty men burst a number of glitter-filled balloons over the crowd. When the last song ended, the whole cast came out to bow to the crowd, including the vision of cuteness that is Alabee. Unfortunately we had to leave before the encore, so I don't know what other songs and bizarre happenings we missed out on, but I'd already seen more than enough to make me happy.

While not the best show I've seen musically, this was definitely the funniest and the oddest, which are two equally important things. So, FANTASTIC. I wish Kevin Barnes were my dad.

(And thank you so much Arabella for coming with me despite the grating effect of Hissing Fauna on your ears!)




I didn't get to see this song as it was part of the encore, but the video alone makes me smile inanely.