Tag: nostalgia

#oneaday, Day 36: School Bands

The delectable and sexy Mr Alex Cronk-Young came out with this little nugget on Twitter earlier:

(in other news, great job on that Twitter integration, WordPress. Love it. But I digress.)

Ahem. Anyway. Following that statement, I decided it would be a good idea to go back and investigate if the music I listened to back at school actually was shit. Well, actually, I know for a fact that some of it was shit, even back then, but I'm interested to see how it compares to the shit we have today, if you see what I mean.

I've carefully selected ten tracks for your delectation. Those of you who have Spotify can clicky-click the titles to hear them if you've never heard them or can't remember what they sound like.

So here goes! Let's jump in.

Oasis: Rocking Chair

Oasis were huge while I was at school. It was the height of the "Oasis vs Blur" nonsense, which I never quite understood because they were two completely different bands with very different sounds from one another.

Within the Oasis fans, though, there were a few subsets; the people who just bought the albums and listened to their stuff on the radio, and those who thought they were "hardcore" because they'd bought all the singles and thus had access to all the B-sides.

The thing is, though, most of Oasis' B-sides and album tracks were considerably better than the singles they put out. For starters, they didn't always stick to the standard "guitar, bass, drums, vocals" combo that most of their singles did. This track, for instance, includes a bit of subtle organ work (easy there) in the background and as such has a very different sound from a lot of their other work.

Most of the B-sides were just plain better tunes, too. Rocking Chair perhaps wasn't the best of them, but it's certainly one that I'm fond of, and less well-known than the now overly-played The Masterplan.

Alanis Morissette: You Oughta Know

Jagged Little Pill was the second ever album I bought. I'm not entirely sure why I bought it, because Alanis Morissette was on local radio on the school bus pretty much every single day and I wasn't entirely sure that I liked her voice.

I was pleasantly surprised by the album, though. There was a lot of very obvious angst throughout, particularly in this track. She swore, too, which made it A Bit Rebellious.

Now obviously I wasn't an angry young Canadian woman in my teens, so I perhaps couldn't relate to this album on a particularly personal level. But she wrote some decent tunes and had a distinctive sound of her own. More to the point, these songs still hold up pretty well today.

The Verve: Lucky Man

The Verve were one of those groups that I picked up the album for after much deliberation. I wasn't entirely convinced that the singles I'd heard on the radio were quite what I was looking for, and once I'd picked up the album I still wasn't convinced that they were actually any good.

This track stuck out, though. It may have been due to my friend Craig's incessant insistence that we try and learn how to play it in the school's music practice rooms every lunchtime—that and most of Oasis' B-sides, some of which we actually did a respectable job of—but, besides the over-over-overplayed Bitter Sweet Symphony (which still gets rolled out on TV promos today) this was one that seemed to be tuneful and memorable.

Listening to it now, it's a bit dull and morose, but it is better than the rest of the album.

Spice Girls: 2 Become 1

Too many guitars! Need more crap and cheese! (That sounds like the worst party ever.)

The Spice Girls were overproduced rubbish who couldn't sing live. They were supposedly "hot", but I found their aesthetic appeal somewhat questionable. Victoria Adams (now Beckham, of course) was too skinny and moody-looking. Emma Bunton looked a bit… I don't know, odd. It was unfashionable to find Mel C attractive and she had pikey trousers (but would go on to be by far the best solo artist) and Mel B was just too frightening and weird to find in any way hot.

That left Geri, of course, who was ginger at the time, and thus made anyone judging her to be the "hottest" feel a little conflicted thanks to the age-old ginger stigma—something else I never quite understood.

Also, this song made us giggle at the time when we all determined that it was about fucking. It's really not subtle. At all.

The Cardigans: Sick & Tired

I actually didn't own a Cardigans album until much, much later, but this track was on a dodgy compilation CD called "Essential Indie" (the rest of which was utter shit, as I recall) which I got free with my Discman. I remember thinking that I liked the combination of Nina Persson's sweet, girly voice and the unusual inclusion of flute and bassoon in the backing instruments.

Turns out I still do like all those things. What do you know.

Bernard Butler: Not Alone

Bernard Butler's People Move On is another album that I don't remember why I bought. I also remember thinking that the vast majority of it was dirge-like, boring crap. This track, though, had energy and "power" behind it, and I enjoyed listening to it, even if the rest of the album was dirge-like boring crap.

Still sounds all right today. I like the strings. I'm a big fan of string parts in guitar bands generally.

James: Laid

Ah, actually, I think this one was also on "Essential Indie". It's also another song about fucking.

I was a bit torn on whether I liked James or not; "Sit Down" was one of those tracks that was played so often on the radio and TV that you felt a bit dirty liking anything that was associated with it. But this was a decent enough song, even though it doesn't really go anywhere and has way too much falsetto.

No, actually, it's not that great at all. Fuck James.

Britney Spears: I Will Be There

Time for more cheesy crap! Britney hit the bigtime while we were still at school and I found myself liking her cheesy bullshit despite myself—even without taking that video (which, for the record, no-one was quite sure if they were supposed to find sexy or pervy) into account.

I've chosen this track to prove that I have indeed listened to her whole album. I also quite liked the fact that Metropolis Street Racer spoofed this particular song quite nicely on its excellent, completely original soundtrack.

Mansun: Stripper Vicar

Mansun were weird. Their album Attack of the Grey Lantern appeared to contain some sort of rudimentary conceptual storyline, until the bonus track told everyone otherwise.

This track pretty much summed it up. A song about a vicar who wears plastic trousers and gets away with stripping, who then dies.

It's still pretty bewildering to listen to today, to be honest. Decent album, though—worth a listen.

Radiohead: Exit Music (For A Film)

This is the most depressing piece of music of all time, without question. It's not as if OK Computer was a particularly uplifting album at the best of times, but for this track to show its miserable, suicidal face just four songs into the disc pretty much made it clear that if you were going to listen to this album all the way through, you were in for a Rough Ride.

It's still a profoundly affecting track today, full of whiny miserable emotion and dodgy vocal synthesis in the backing. It's difficult to know what is the "right mood" to listen to this track, because if you listen to it while feeling miserable, it sure isn't going to help. But this song could bring a candy convention in Happyland to its knees, too.

Basically, it's a great song but no-one should listen to it if they want to smile ever again.

There you go. A super-uplifting playlist for your Saturday night, circa 1999. Enjoy.

#oneaday, Day 31: Looking Back Through a Lens

I love photos. In one of my many houses at university, I had a whole corridor whose walls were papered with photographs I'd taken throughout the course of the previous year. It may well have looked a bit serial killer-ish, but I liked it (until I took them all down shortly before moving out and discovered the wall behind was actually damp and mouldy—thanks a lot, scumbag landlord) and it provided a nice visual record of what had gone on.

This was in the days before digital cameras were particularly widespread, of course, so these were actual photos on actual paper. I took a lot of photos, but there was still no way it'd be possible to take as many as you can with today's cameras. That meant that each captured memory had to be just so, and there was no going back to try again; you caught it, or you missed it. Simple as that.

Of course, nowadays, it's much easier to capture and keep a memory, assuming you don't do something ridiculous to your computer like take it into the bath with you. But that doesn't mean photos lose any of their impact, or the memories contained therein. I'll bet I can take a random selection of photos from my iPhoto library and be able to explain each and every one of them.

In fact, let's do just that. I'll give you ten, just so we're not here all night. Hold on, I'll be right back.

So without further ado, here we go.

Would you look at that? We went and got a nice one to begin with. This is the wedding day (obviously) of my friends Rob and Rachel. Instead of confetti, they had bubbles. It was awesome, and we all ate a lot of food and got quite drunk. Fact: Rob and Rachel were one of the first couples I knew who got together at university and are still going strong today. I salute you, you lovely pair.

Aha. There are actually two separate stories behind this one. The guy in white makeup is, I believe, a chap called James Gaynor, who was starring alongside me in a production of Marivaux's L'Epreuve, also known as A Test of Character. He was playing a character called Frontin, I was playing a character called Lucidor. Lucidor was in love with a girl called Angelique, who was played by a most lovely lady named Sarah, but there was a long and complicated plot involving Frontin pretending to court her on Lucidor's behalf and it all got a bit French.

As for the mobile phone and the text on it: the mobile phone was mine at the time (Nokia REPRESENT), "sonicfunkstars" was the name of the fake band I made music under (using Sony's ACID Music software and approximately 24 CDs of samples, most of which I probably never used) and "txtr's thumb" was the name of my second album. Interestingly (not really), "sonicfunkstars" is still my Xbox LIVE ID, and it's one of the only places on the Internet where I'm not "angryjedi" or some variant thereof. The other is YouTube.

(Exclusive: I found the title track from said album. It used to irritate the fuck out of anyone with a Nokia phone. You'll see why.)

Ah yes. I can tell you exactly what is going on here. This is during my second year at university. The location is my friend Chris' bedroom. Under the desk is Sam, who is drunk, and spent most of the night seeing what tiny spaces he could contort himself into.

Lying on the floor is Steph, who is reading a book—possibly Bridget Jones' Diary. In the background is her erstwhile boyfriend Brett, my most enduring memory of whom is when he burst in the front door of Steph's house, furious that "someone's drawn knobs all over my car". Someone had indeed drawn knobs in the snow that was all over his car, and Sam and I naturally knew absolutely nothing about it.

But that was not the occasion in this photo. No. This was simply a social gathering at Chris' house—Sam, Steph and I were all flatmates in the first year, so we often took the opportunity to hang out together. We'd "lost" a couple of flatmates along the way to other social groups, but we'd stuck together for a lot of the time.

One of whom was the rather magnificent Beki, seen pictured here with Sam, again. This photo was taken on our hall of residence bar's "70s Night", a night where only the six of us from Flat A33, Hartley Grove Halls, Southampton, made the effort to dress up. Sam is wearing a woman's shirt.

Whizz forward to last year, and we have a picture of a game of Scotland Yard in progress, one of the very few games I'm aware of that provide you with a hat as part of its components. Pictured is Tom. Not pictured is Sam. And me. Obviously.

This Post-It space invader adorned the front wall of Ruffian Games' studios in Dundee. Obviously a little light relief after getting Crackdown 2 out the door.

Back in time to the first year at university again, we see here the midst of Operation Shopping Trolley, our attempts to stealthily remove the shopping trolley that had inexplicably appeared in our flat overnight. "Inexplicably" as in for once it wasn't one of us who had brought it up. Notice the cunning ninja disguises Sam and I have adopted.

This is Dungeonquest, one of either the best or worst games ever created depending on your outlook. It's a game where you have an approximately 23% chance of survival (they tell you this in the instruction booklet), and is almost completely determined by blind luck. Combat is resolved almost literally by rock-paper-scissors… except here it's slash-mighty blow-leap aside. I was astonished to discover that they have actually remade this monstrosity. I was also quite tempted to pick up a copy, but that would be a very silly idea.

To this date, this is still the most literary piece of graffiti I've ever seen, found on the back of the cubicle door in the gents' toilets in The Hobbit pub, Southampton. The whole door was something to behold; there were full-on conversations and slagging matches going on between various wall-writers, an excerpt of which you can see here. Theatre Studies was repeatedly accused of gayness. A bit rich coming from people hanging out in gents' toilets.

And why don't we end with this one, then? This offensive masterpiece was produced by the cast of Southampton "Rattlesnake!" Theatre Group's production of Alan Ayckbourn's Round and Round The Garden whilst finishing off rehearsals prior to taking the show to the Edinburgh Fringe. We'd all gone a little bit stir crazy by then, and so we took to lite-vandalising the whiteboards in the lecture theatre where we'd been rehearsing. ("Lite" because you could just rub it off. But we did leave it there for the lecturer to discover in the morning.)

Look closely and you'll see a selection of details; Pac-Man re-imagined to become Sonic the Hedgehog eating shit, some stickpeople having a threesome, some anagrams, a victim's eye view of the Ku Klux Klan looking down on someone they've just thrown down a well, an out-of-context stage direction from the play made to sound dirty just by the simple addition of "just the way I like it" and my excellent drawing of the entire cast of the show, except me, because while I was quite happy to draw all the others I didn't feel confident drawing myself. Also, BUTTOCKS.

There you go. Proof that I have an incredible memory for silly crap. And proof that even if you've forgotten me, I probably haven't forgotten you.

#oneaday, Day 290: Ever Onward

Something that someone told me recently (yay for specifics) has stuck with me. That something was the phrase "you don't stop knowing someone when you're not with them any more". Those perhaps weren't the exact words, but the sentiment stands. And it's true, whatever the context of you not being with that person any more is. It doesn't have to be a romantic thing. It could simply be a friendship thing.

I have two examples in mind here. Just recently, I had the good fortune to be reunited with a buddy from school with whom I'd kept in idle contact with—the occasional Facebook comment or tweet—but hadn't seen face-to-face since the time he visited me during my first year of university, got roaringly drunk with me and then proceeded to assist me in the consumption of a pound of Tesco Value mild cheddar cheese at about 3 in the morning. Actually, there was an incident subsequent to that which involved several people vomiting out of the window of a house onto the corrugated plastic roof of what passed for a "conservatory" in student accommodation. But the cheese incident is the one that remains fresh in my memory.

Said incident was at least ten years ago now, but when we met up in the village pub for a pint and a chat it was like that time had ceased to exist—or at least didn't matter. We hadn't seen each other for ages, and yet suddenly we were back to talking about the word "COCK!", driving in search of "old man pubs" and ending up in the local Tesco garage's forecourt at 2 in the morning eating pre-packed sandwiches because the nearest club (15 miles away) was shit and/or full, and the old man pubs in question were either shut or had vanished into some sort of rural space-time anomaly. It was, to say the least, awesome. Not all reunions go this way, and I'm sure there are plenty of people I was at school with who are completely different people now. But then I have no idea where they are now, so a reunion is unlikely anyway.

The other example I have in mind is something I wrote about way back on Day 106; the idea of crystallised memories. I probably didn't coin this term but it's one I'm particularly fond of: the idea that inanimate objects can possess memories and trigger powerful emotional responses simply by their presence. A crystallised memory can be a tiny thing, like a dirty penny you find in the depths of your coat pocket. Perhaps you remember how it got so dirty. Or where you found it. Or what you were doing when you dropped it into your pocket.

Alternatively, as the case may be, a crystallised memory could be a whole city. Cities are places that are full of life, constantly on the move, changing, morphing, filling with people during the day and evaporating them in the dead of night. But some things don't change amidst all the chaos—pretty amazing in itself, when you think about it—and those are the things which hold powerful emotional responses, powerful memories, senses of nostalgia, whatever it is you want to call it.

Sometimes, these things which have remained constant amidst the chaos of the daily tsunami of people that pass by them are enough to remind you of something or someone important, something that is, at times, long-forgotten. Tiny little memories which, at the time, seemed inconsequential, unimportant. And yet they are the ones which remained most vivid. A river that you once saw a hundred rubber ducks racing along. A swinging teashop sign and the delicious delights found within. The low beam that you bang your head on as you clamber into an "authentic" old pub.

Sometimes you see all those things again and they cause you pain. They remind you of what once was and what is now no longer.

And sometimes you see all those things again and they bring comfort. They still remind you of what once was and what is now no longer. But something, somewhere, causes the negativity and the pain to slip away and you're left with those things that you should cling onto, the crystals that shine the brightest, the ones which glitter eternally.

Time heals all wounds, they say. But the good stuff that all the blood and pus and "discharge" from the wounds hides? (That was gross. Sorry.) That sticks around a whole lot longer.

#oneaday, Day 270: Go Go Gadget, uhh, Gadget

I love gadgets. Anyone who knows me in "real life" will not be surprised by this revelation. But I'm always impressed by quite how much we can do with various little portable implements these days. And even not quite so recently, too.

The most recent mind-blowing moment I had was during this last week when I had my little expedition to the woods. I was standing in the middle of a forest with absolutely no trace of civilisation except a little crude wooden bench by the side of the muddy path. And somehow I had better mobile signal than I do in the house I'm sitting right now. So, without thinking, I popped out my iPhone and fired up eBuddy to say hello to my buddy Chris in California. He responded back and we had a nice discussion about music.

Let's just think about that a minute. I was in the middle of a wood in Cambridgeshire, England. Chris was somewhere in sunny California. And yet there we were, chatting away like this was a perfectly normal thing to do. That's awesome.

One of my favourite gadget moments, though, was a good few years back now. I was up in Edinburgh at the Fringe with the Southampton University Theatre Group, or "Rattlesnake!" as we'd inexplicably decided to call ourselves. At the time, I had somehow managed to end up with the responsibility of keeping the Theatre Group website up to date. I'd prepared a special Edinburgh page and everything, and I decided that it would be pretty awesome to keep an online diary. The concept of "blogging" was but a pipe dream for all but the biggest nerds (even bigger than me) at this point. And doing so via a mobile device was absolutely out of the question.

I did, however, have my Palm Tungsten with me, to date my second-favourite gadget after my iPhone. You could play Shining Force on it, for heaven's sake. That's awesome, if beside the point. No, the reason my Palm came in handy was that I could type up my diary entries into the Notes application on it and then use the handily-provided SD card (32MB!) to transfer said material to a computer in the conveniently-located Internet café we found one day.

One may ask why I didn't just type said diary entries straight into the computers. Well, the advantage of doing it on the Palm was that I could write things as they happened. I could write a rehearsal report. I could write what we were up to in the park. I could write about flyering the Royal Mile. The Frankenstein pub. (AMAZING) Being on top of Arthur's Seat drinking sake as the sun rose. (DOUBLEPLUSAMAZING)

Sure, I could have written about these things after the fact. But the immediacy of being able to write about it there and then was pretty damn cool. Each new generation of gadgets makes this sort of thing easier and easier to do. And while it has its downsides—the sea of people filming concerts on their mobile phones instead of actually watching the damn things being one—on the whole I think it's really great to be able to share life's exciting little moments (or, in the case of some of you out there, the details of your latest bowel movements) with people that you care about it. Of course some of this is vanity. But the other side of it is being able to share things with people that you don't get to hang out with as often as you like.

So gadgets are awesome. For everyone. Not just nerds.

#oneaday, Day 261: Random Access Memories

It's weird, the things you remember over time. Perhaps it's just me. But I've found over time that I have a fantastic memory for completely pointless crap and yet I can quite easily forget the things I need to buy from the shop in the space between stepping out of the house and reaching said shop.

So I thought I'd share a few stupid memories today for no apparent reason. I have hundreds of these. So this topic may return at some point in the future. For today, I'm going to focus on memories from my childhood.

First up: the ad starting at 2:17 of this vid right here:

Phurnacite. I'm still not entirely sure what it is, or was. But I remember this advert freaking me the fuck out when I was little despite, I believe, only ever seeing it once. Watching it now, it's completely laughable, overacted and utter nonsense. For the longest time, I couldn't even remember it was something to do with cookers. I remembered the image of the "doctors" with the masks on, though, and the woman crying going "HOW WILL I FEED MY FAMILY?"

Why do I remember that? That holds absolutely no benefit to me whatsoever unless taking part in a particularly specialist pub quiz on the subject of TV adverts from Christmas 1989 that freaked me the fuck out.

On a related note, the magazine advert for Mindscape's surgery-em-up game for the PC, Life and Death, also featured doctors in masks, bloodstained swabs and the like and also freaked me the fuck out. I have never been in hospital for an operation, and those adverts were the reason I was terrified of the prospect of ever having to do so. Disappointingly, Google Images has let me down on an actual picture of said advert. But it was in an issue of A.C.E. magazine. Which was 1) possibly the best multi-format magazine of all time, now sadly defunct and 2) the only games magazine I'm aware of that rated games out of 1,000.

At some other point during my childhood, another completely random memory I have is to do with visiting the chap who was my best friend at the time. We'd acquired some weird little toys called "Wiggly Gigglies" (yes, laugh it up, it was the 80s) and much to my chagrin, friend in question had acquired a glow-in-the-dark one. I was fascinated by the idea of a glow-in-the-dark anything at the time, so one or both of us decided that it would be a really fantastic idea to lock ourselves in his airing cupboard to see that luminousness at work. Unfortunately, the airing cupboard wasn't really big enough to even fit two kids inside, so I ended up shutting two of my fingers in the door and it really fucking hurt. It didn't break them or anything, but they were bleeding a bit. I went home shortly afterwards, and resolved never to do two things: touch a Wiggly Giggly again, and shut myself in an airing cupboard again.

In that case, the pain is probably the trigger to the memory. But as I kid, I hurt myself quite a bit—kids will be kids and all that. It's strange how that incident in particular sticks in my mind.

Let's cap this off with a third memory. What I like to call The Great Injustice. It was lunchtime at primary school, and I was enjoying a game with a girl called Anna with whom I had something of an off-on-off-on friendship in that way primary school kids do. Particularly kids of the opposite sex.

I forget the exact details of said game, but it involved swordfighting. Or rather, stick-fighting. Our school field had a number of big trees on it, and they often dropped decent-size sticks that were great for mock swordfights. And so it was that Anna and I were staging some sort of battle for some reason. It was fun. Lunchtime ended and we went inside.

When I got home that evening, I got absolutely bollocked. Turns out my mother had been wandering past the school field at the time we'd been playing our game, at a point when I'd evidently been "winning". As a result, I found myself in a lot of trouble for "hitting a girl with a stick". And no amount of protestation could convince my parents that it had, in fact, been just a game, and if you talked to Anna she would back up my story. Because, after all, who believes the screeches that come out of the mouth of an eight-year old when they're in trouble?

Hmm. These aren't terribly positive memories, are they? Perhaps I should make more of an effort to remember things that didn't freak me out or make me incandescent with an eight-year old's rage!

#oneaday 214: You're Not Tom Cruise

I'm not Doctor Who, you're not Tom Cruise. So don't even think about attempting to invent your own cocktails.

I say this as a result of a memorable evening one night at university, a good few years back now. It was one of those evenings where we had just decided it was vitally important to get as blind drunk as possible, as is often the wont of people at university. At least one member of our circle of friends was in possession of some of the more "creative" spirits and liqueurs available, so we pooled our resources in an attempt to create The Next Big Thing.

To be fair, given the evidence we'd discovered on how easy it is to make a putridly-coloured yet remarkably tasty cocktail, we had faith in our own abilities to produce something delicious.

Shortly after arriving at university, we had all discovered the joy of the Juicy Lucy, a pint-based cocktail made up of a glug of vodka, a splash of Bols Blue, a bit of Taboo and then the remainder of the glass filled up with roughly half-and-half of orange juice and lemonade. The resultant glass of green liquid looks remarkably like what happens if you fill a pint glass with water and then squirt too much Fairy liquid into it. It also turns your poo green if you drink too much of it, a fact which several of us were unprepared for and thus spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time fretting the next day that we had some form of terrifying bum-cancer.

Alongside the Juicy Lucy was the even-simpler concoction dreamed up by our hall of residence's bar on "Hawaiian Night" (a night when everyone was supposed to wear Hawaiian shirts, and they turned the heating up full)—the Passion Wagon. The Passion Wagon was, again, a pint-based cocktail consisting of a shot of Passoa (passion fruit liqueur) and a bottle of Reef. That's it. It came out bright orange and tasted like Five Alive. It did not, to my knowledge, do anything unpleasant to the colour of one's bodily fluids or waste matter.

So going on that evidence, we figured that making a cocktail was pretty much simply a case of finding things which might taste nice together and then combining them together in a glass. Also, that vodka, when added to any drink, immediately makes something "more alcoholic" without making it taste any different.

How wrong we were. The first mistake we made was forgetting that Baileys curdles quite easily. After creating a number of drinks that looked like someone had spunked in, we decided that we weren't skilled enough to do that clever thing where you make the Baileys float on top. So we left that alone. For a while. Then we elected to try combining various different flavoured liqueurs together. The least (or most, depending on how you look at this) successful attempt was dubbed "The Brown Sauce", owing to its resemblance in taste to HP Sauce. For the readers unfamiliar with the wonder of HP Sauce, it is good on a bacon sandwich. It is less good in liquid form and drunk.

Eventually we gave up and went back to staples like Archers and lemonade. We didn't have another home-made cocktail night after that. We left it strictly to the professionals.

#oneaday, Day 138: Days in the Sun

It was another gloriously sunny day today. It's easy to forget that England gets nice weather sometimes when an estimated 85% of our days are overcast.

Everyone is in a better mood in the sunshine. And, judging by the number of people in town, everyone skips work in the sunshine, too. I went to the park and sat in the sun for a bit and there were people from all walks of life all around. There was the chav in the open shirt who kept stroking his chest. There were the noisy, screechy girls. There were excited little kids on their half-term break headed for the playpark. And there was me.

Sitting in the sun is nice. There's something extremely pleasant about the weather being good enough for you to be able to sit (or indeed lie) on the grass and just relax. If it's been raining or snowing, or if it's cold, you'd never even think about lying down on the ground and dozing for a bit. But as soon as it gets a little bit sunny? Everyone seems to come down with narcolepsy. Well, except those people playing frisbee.

Lying in the grass is one of those things that triggers memories, particularly of being very young. I can remember lying on the grass at primary school on hot sunny days. Sometimes my friends and I would just lie there. Other times we'd talk. Other times still we'd attempt to do those stupid moves from P.E. that no-one ever does in real life. And on one memorable occasion, a friend became convinced that by doing a shoulderstand and "squeezing a bit", he could make himself fart at will. (He couldn't.)

Besides school, other grassy memories are mostly picnic-related. I have oddly strong memories of visiting the Imperial War Museum at Duxford and sitting in the grass having a picnic as we watched the planes take off, land and do various pieces of death-defying aerobatics. Thinking about it, I don't think we were actually sitting on the grass, more hanging around the car in deckchairs eating sandwiches. But sandwiches always taste better outside, as everyone well knows.

So it's been a nice day. A very nice day in fact. Even the fact that I clearly got a bit burnt judging by the tingling on my ears right now (either that or someone's talking about me) didn't detract from the niceness of the day. So that's good. Nice days are good. Nice days are much-needed. Nice days have been away for a long time, so it's, well, nice to see them again.

Let's hope this lovely summery weather continues for some time, and that we see more in the way of girls in tiny shorts and less in the way of shirtless bald chavs staggering through parks with cans of Tennents Extra clutched in their desperate sweaty gorilla-hands. And maybe some English people can get a proper tan instead of feeling the need to pointlessly slather themselves with orange paint.

#oneaday, Day 52: Nostalgiarising

Been feeling a little nostalgic over the last few days. The Final Fantasy story I told last night was just one of the things I've been remembering. I've been finding all sorts of other crap around the place recently – one of the most recent rediscoveries was a cardboard document wallet containing some play scripts, posters and a few other bits and pieces from when I was at university. I love finding old playscripts in particular, because we always used to scribble all over them and sign them on the last night of a performance. I'm glad we always did that, because it means I have great keepsakes like this. Ignore the dreadful attempt to draw Cloud Strife that is inexplicably on the front page.

Four points about these pages:

1. I have no idea what the stains are.

2. Yes, I am aware my script is bound using duct tape.

3. Don't try and email "Costume Lucy". She's not there any more.

4. The "makeup" mentioned in several of the comments is referring to this:

(I'm the one on the right.) My mother inexplicably told me that me being dressed like this reminded her of my Grandad. I don't remember my Grandad ever looking like that, unless I didn't know him that well. (Yes, Mum, I know that wasn't what you really meant.)

My time with the Theatre Group at Southampton University is one of the things I most fondly remember from my past. One day we'll manage that reunion that Anja and I are always talking about. Maybe even this year. Who knows?

Also found in said folder:

Programme from an episode of Songs of Praise that our extremely non-religious secondary school attended, signed by Diane Louise Jordan of Blue Peter fame.

Programmes from other productions I was in – our extremely over-budget, ambitious, futuristic Macbeth from the time when everything had to look like the Matrix; our first attempt at taking a show up to the Edinburgh Fringe (A Month in the Country by Turgenev, performed outside. Not the wisest decision, but it was fun.)

My second attempt at freewriting from when I first found out about it – dated 16/9/01 at 21:36.

My "P" for "passed" plates for my car (which I never put on the car, because having "P" plates on is an invitation for other drivers to treat you like even more of an arse than they do already)

And, finally, this delightful 20th birthday card, hand-made for me by my friends Sam and Chris.

Rediscovering stuff like this is awesome.

#oneaday, Day 51: Final Fantasies

Picked up Final Fantasy XIII today, but I'm not going to talk about it too much just yet. I want to do a proper "first impressions" post. Suffice to say, though, I'm enjoying it so far. It has been extremely linear so far, as people have been saying, but it's certainly not a worse game for this fact. So far all the characters seem appealing, and the dynamic between them, now they've all met each other, is shaping up to be interesting. I look forward to seeing what happens.

I wanted to talk about my memories of the Final Fantasy series generally, as it's a series that will always be close to my heart for a variety of reasons. I'd never even heard of it prior to Final Fantasy VII's release, but I was intrigued when I heard my brother discussing it and he mentioned the oft-quoted fact that it was "one of the only games that had ever made anyone cry". It sounds trite now, of course, as everyone knows what FFVII's "big shock" was, and the moment has lost its emotional impact. But I remember playing that game for the first time and not knowing what was going to happen – so when that moment at the end of Disc 1 came, I genuinely felt something. It hadn't been spoiled for me. I knew something tragic happened at some point in the game, but that was it. I wasn't prepared for them to kill off a main character like that. It was, of course, even more traumatic for the fact you could rename every party member in FFVII, so it was like someone I actually knew died. (Shush. I was young and stupid.)

Of course, killing off main characters isn't something that FF has traditionally shied away from, but being unfamiliar with the series prior to that moment, I wasn't to know. In fact, not only was I unfamiliar with the FF series, I was unfamiliar with the RPG genre in general, my only real experiences with it having been Alternate Reality on the Atari 8-bit (which, when I played it as a young child, I really didn't understand) and the dreadful Times of Lore by Origin on the Atari ST. Neither of them had gripped me, perhaps because of the deficiencies these games held in the narrative department. Alternate Reality just didn't have a story full stop (besides that which you made for yourself) and Times of Lore was just… well, crap. So, suffice to say I hadn't felt particularly inspired to pursue an interest in the RPG genre – not until FFVII turned up, anyway.

A particularly fond memory of VII comes from one long summer when my folks were away in America for a few weeks. It was the first time I'd been left home alone and, among other things best left for discussion another day, my friend Woody and I spent a lot of time playing Final Fantasy VII. At one point, we played it for thirty-six hours continuously, whacking each other over the head with couch cushions when the other looked like they were falling asleep. Eventually, we did pretty much both pass out, with some peculiar dreams and talking-in-sleep going on. The tequila probably didn't help matters.

We fell asleep as we were in FFVII's Ancient Forest looking for the Apocalypse Sword prior to the endgame. I remember falling asleep to the music there and it infecting my brain. I can't hear that track these days without thinking of the peculiar sensations of sleep deprivation, slight drunkenness and square eyes from staring at the TV for too long.

It was some time after discovering FFVII that I decided to explore the rest of the series and uncovered the world of the music of FF. I managed to track down some scans of the elusive "Piano Collections" books for FFIV, V and VI online and tried playing them. They're wonderful arrangements – actually properly written for the piano, rather than simply transcribed – so the performance of them has become something of a trademark of mine over the years. Hearing any of those tracks always fills me with a sense of deep joy and nostalgia – not necessarily for the games as such, but because they remind me of times past – of good times with friends, of things that happened around the same time as me playing them – all sorts. Playing the games themselves has much the same effect. It's actually been many years now since I played FFVII, VIII or IX. Although they are now somewhat aged, I don't think the soft spot I have for them will ever leave me, and I'll always carry the memories of what I was doing when I played them. (FFVII – that long summer. FFVIII – first year at university. FFIX – visiting my bro in America one Christmas.)

Yeah, I know. How lame to tell a Final Fantasy story. But I don't care. 🙂