Bloginning and Lifetime

Yesterday, I properly moved to my new home in Brighton; a bedsit in a house about 400 metres away from the seafront, parallel to the burnt-out pier. When I say I ‘properly’ moved in, I mean that I brought down my record player, skateboard and laptop: the three things that define ‘home’ for me.

Though I moved most of my stuff down a couple weeks ago, a number of things got in the way before I could ‘settle in’ – friends being back home where I grew up before going back to wherever (travelling, university, college) and going to shows around the south of England.



Don’t get me wrong – I chose to hang out with my old friends while I could. I chose to go to those shows and have rad, unit-filled nights of getting kicked out of clubs for having too much fun and talking out of my vulva*. But I guess it would have been to my benefit to really get used to living alone asap instead of procrastinating.

Last night I played a show in Dorking with PJ and Gaby and their ‘band’, which involves both of the skinny, hella-fashionable dudes from Apologies, I Have None. That was cool, because after a train journey surrounded by dicks getting tanked up so that later that night they could insert themselves into some ferret in a beer-stenched grease club without remembering it the next morning, it’s nice to be immediately surrounded by dudes that make you feel like you’re having fun 24/7. Even despite all the lame puns that are excreted from aforementioned dudes’ sigmoid colons.

I play shows under the moniker ‘cynics’. The reason being that my one underlying urge to write songs is in attack of those people that tell you can’t do what you want to do, and that say you’ll fail if you ever try.

I’ve been surrounded by those kind of people, and so have you.



One time I saw Bane, I heard a speech from the stage that I never thought I’d hear from that band. It made me feel as if all I ever wanted to do after the show was turn around, run out of the club and do something I wanted to do the best that I could. I still get that feeling.
Anyway, however pretentious creating a fictional name when it’s just me singing and playing my guitar, it’s one thing that rings the clocktower bell in my head. And that’s all I need to get out my front door, head to the train station, hop on a carriage to another city and just do it.

I play punk rock songs on my guitar. It sounds like it would if I listened to Billy Bragg, Gordon Gano’s Army and The Steal on repeat. Maybe ‘cause I do.

Right now I’m listening to the Lifetime self-titled LP I bought earlier from Punker Bunker, a bunker of a punk record shop in Brighton. I ALWAYS forget how good this record is.
I once saw Lifetime at the Mean Fiddler in London before the place closed down. I didn’t know them at the time.

I’ll leave you with that face-reddening thought. In a bit.

*I don’t have a vulva. I wish I did.