50 Shades Of Breaking Social Norms.

This feels a little awkward for me, as it's been rather a long time since I last actually wrote anything, I mean I don't feel like I can come straight back to it like some pizza I've deliberately left in the fridge overnight. It feels like I've stood someone up and then run into them again. I mean I've never stood anyone up but this is what all the cool kids say it feels like. 

Basically I've been busy for the last week or so just sorting out the next few years of my life which is actually quite impressive and also worrying that I've managed to condense it into that short an amount of time. Either way I got a call from an apprenticeship-finding-company called DV8 whom basically offered me a place on their course. Sweet. 

So yeah basically I've been lapping up the culture in London and it's been a rather wonderful experience. For instance I now know that it is acceptable to crane your necks over on the tube and read other people's books. Regardless of knowledge of the story, context, character development etc. This has become a bane of my life due to a certain book which has recently come out and is popular with the ladies. I think we all know what I'm talking about.

Yes, correct it's the wonder that is 50 Shades Of Grey. This is basically the women's confessions page in any girly magazine just in long form and the names stay the same. Don't ask me how I know that though. Still it is an odd phenomenon that there is a book which men cannot physically read in public. I mean even taking the embarrassment factor out of it, if men were to read it in public it would be very hard to disguise certain physical 'perfectly natural' bodily reactions. No man would ever stand up and read it for the same reason that when we buy a Nuts magazine and slip it inside a copy of the guardian for the amount of time when we go up to queue, we don't just open that bad-boy up on the bus. 

Then again saying that I have absolutely no problem with women reading it. In fact I kind of enjoy it, standing there thinking "I am 100% sure that those women are feeling slightly aroused." Almost a sense of power about it. 

It also makes me feel like I have more of a shot. For instance on the way home on the train and I sit next to a woman who is perfectly nice and then she pulls out that fateful book. So I sit there while she reads almost feeling nervous that she might bite her lip and look at me, before I then realise. If she is reading that and her hormones are rushing about her body maybe making her want to do things that she normally wouldn't...What if she turns to me?

I realise that this is very unlikely but still there is science to it! I think...I wasn't concentrating on the teacher talking in PSHE when I was watching A BABY BEING BORN!

Also it's a lot of responsibility! To think that I may have to fulfil this random woman's hormonal bomb of emotions. I'm not sure I could do that on a train, I would feel to awkward. It would be like I was at a party and she was really drunk but I wasn't, afterwards she would be suffering from a '50SOG' hangover. 

Luckily she got off at Ely so it never came to that. If I was really creepy I would hand out copies of that book outside clubs and wait one hour before I would make my entrance and view my evil deeds at work. 

Still I'm not creepy, or rich enough to buy more than one copy of that book...

30 Degrees and Gingers don't mix.

So I was away for a few days recently at the wonderful gathering that is Rock Werchter. Its basically a festival with the best line-up I could have thought of (Not including acts who are disbanded or who have died...Obviously). 


It was pretty awesome I mean yeah there was over 22 hours of bus journey to contend with and apparently "Does this train go to Brussels Nord" doesn't cross the language barrier but still we made it. Also there was a bus driver who simply didn't believe in the concept of red lights in London so its actually much more of an achievement than it sounds. 


I realise that the summer you finish college or any other form of higher education is the usual time that people go to Magaluf on one of these incredibly boisterous 'Lad's Holidays' that I am not at all upset about not being invited to join...But no we thought Belgium would be the best place to go with it.


Still it was pretty awesome with so many bands, despite the 30 degree heat each day which attempted to turn my skin into well-done lobster. I also had to sacrifice one of the very few pairs of jeans that I can find that will fit me as I actually don't own a pair of shorts but I felt very Bear Grylls using a knife in such a context. 


It was a lot of hard work though I mean it was a good half hour walk from our tents to the main stage and I wasn't able to get my regular fix of two films a day in. But still, I found out a new way which the Belgian's are very fond of, of talking to women, it includes water pistols and many inappropriate 'girls being wet' jokes following. It didn't really work. 


But during my time there I did realise how lazy the English are, pretty much everyone we talked to there spoke English in one form or another, and yet my languages were limited to bad French and one thing in Spanish to which I will not disclose now. 


However they say never to fall in love in Jersey but I figured this was the small Belgian town of Werchter so I was okay alas. Veronica the Icelandic girl will forever remain a faint memory in my mind. Oh the 20 minutes we talked and you told me to slow down so you could understand me shall forever be memories. To be fair the only way I could remember her name, was by remembering the short-lived 'Veronica Mars' show. But still there was chemistry. I mean I gave her a beer she accepted. Now you tell me that isn't love.


Still there were some interesting moments on the trip back. Such as, the bus driver almost leaving two of our party at the Belgian equivalent of a BP on the motorway, after we screamed "NO" to his question of, are we all here. 
There was the argument that me and my friend Callum had. He claimed that if he could go all the way to the end on one of those mechanical rodeo bulls with the foam covering, then he would be much more likely to take on a real bull. Now I realise that some people may think that there is logic to this, but lets lay out the facts. 


The mechanical bull is soft, and cushy, if you fall the worst part is that you have spent £4 for 30 seconds entertainment. 
A real bull is hard and full of bones, and may have horns. If you fall off you may be gored. 


The mechanical ones move predictably in circles, using centrifugal force to make you fall.
Real bulls are unpredictable, angry, and will want to hurt you (Also if your a guy, they could care less about you 'special area').


So yeah thats why real bulls are nothing like mechanical ones.


Lastly, I'm just going to share some facts that I have learnt in my time in Belgium.


- People over there really do put mayonnaise on fries. "They drown them in that sh*t".


- Belgians like the head on their beer. Apparently it's the best part. And I just thought they never knew how to pour a beer correctly.


- There are words that people from Iceland cannot pronounce at all, funnily enough she couldn't tell me what they were.


- Deadmau5 has a picture of me on his phone. Don't ask why.


- Everyone is tall in Belgium. I feel short and I'm 6 foot 3.


- Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chillies looks like J. Jonah Jameson of Sam Mendes Spiderman when he has a Mustache.


- Getting into the main stage there is a scanner and two manual checks on your wristband to make sure you aren't sneaking in, but the rules are fairly lax on drugs and guns. 


- The girls that Lipton hired to represent Iced Tea at the festival sadly probably weren't hired for their personality.


- Lipton has some seriously attractive representatives.


- They do make 96% alcohol. And apparently it's disgusting.


- Belgian's have never heard of shotgunning a beer. They weren't impressed.


- If a bus driver has a time to keep, he turns into The Transporter and will stick to it, regardless of leaving passengers behind or road law.


- Riding a mechanical bull all the way to the end is not a good way to prepare for riding a real bull. 


- If it's the last day and communications have broken down, then getting on a train to the airport and hoping it stops somewhere in Brussels will pay off.


- Mayonnaise and ketchup with chips is delicious...