Greenbelt Festival 2007 - Saturday 25th August 2007

Greenbelt Festival 2007 - Saturday 25th August 2007
Originally uploaded by Greenbelt Festival Official Pictures

Edward Monkton's monthly words of wisdom

Well, it's the first Monday of the month, and I've remembered to change at least one of the calendars in the office. This is what Edward Monkton had to share with me this morning:

It's not sounding too good to me. I'm sure handbags shouldn't make you cry...

Munchkin tours 2007 - part 3

Having been away at greenbelt for a week I've just finished trawling through all the emails (mainly from facebook!) and looking through the official photos from the festival. Can't see any pictures of me on the site yet this year, but that will hopefully be rectified by the time the rest of the photos have been uploaded.

The festival was, once again, amazing, although in a completely different way to last year. There was dressing up as a pirate, dancing around to bands with random names like rubber duck and the Kanda bongo man, and some hilarious stuff at a Richard and Judy style variety thing at the end of each day called last orders, including this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuayUmT8fWE

Saw some fantastic bands, who unfortunately very few of my friends have heard of but I'll try to rectify that. Favourites included:
Rubber Duck
Kanda Bongo Man
Rebecca Worthley (a friend of mine!)
Michael McDermott
Denison Witmer
The Gentlemen
Verra Cruz
This Beautiful Republic
Beth Rowley
and of course the highlight of the weekend, Duke Special!

I managed to get right to the front for Duke Special, and it was one of the best sets I've ever seen. I want to be a musician just because being in his band looks so much fun! I was a bit concerned after I'd told everyone I spoke to to go and see him because he's so good that they'd then not like him, but everyone seems to have loved him! The greenbelt facebook group is fast becoming the Duke Special appreciation group instead!

We had a great time site vibing too! This is what we do before the festival - we go round putting up flags and bunting and things like that to make the place pretty and less racecoursey. Although it does mean that I've been sleeping in a tent for a week, which is not so good, hence the 11 1/2 hour sleep last night!

One piece of advice - be very wary of the organic cider. 2 pints and I was as drunk as I normally get on 4 or 5 pints of beer! It did make carrying the flag we commandeered from someone quite funny, especially when we forgot it and left it outside the toilets on the way back to the tent and had to go back and find it at 4 am!

That may be enough camping for 1 year - I'm hoping any further parts of Munchkin tours 2007 involve real beds and proper showers!!

August advice

I'm definitely getting worse at this. It's now 9th August, and I've only just remembered to change the calendar. I'll go sit in the corner and think about what I've done, while you can read this:

If anyone happens to know this girl, could they please bring her to Bristol for the weekend so that we have nice weather?

Words of wisdom for July

Being the first Monday of the month (or the first Monday of the month that I remember to post on here), here is what Edward Monkton has to share with me and all those who visit my desk this month:
This specifically reminds me of a walk with a certain brother of my boyfriend's... He was at the time living in an RV on a campsite in the woods, and when we went round there one evening with a few of his other friends we thought we should all go for a walk. We were expecting this walk to happen before dinner, but somehow we ended up not going out until dusk with about 3 torches between 7 of us. Chris being Chris, strode off down the path, and so we figured that seeing as he lived there he must know where he was going. But no. We ended up walking for miles, got completely lost in the dark and ended up at some guy's house asking for directions and hoping that he wouldn't come out with a shot gun or something! So remember, if you go out walking in the woods, the person who lives there hasn't necessarily looked at the map either!

Munchkin tours 2007 - part 2

Munchkin tours this year seems to be primarily camping, and this part is no exception. Camping in this sense includes all manner of sleeping in fields, and in this particular instance I'd like to point out that a caravan is not cheating!

How to sum up glastonbury festival? Good company, good music, plenty of beer. Oh yeah, and mud. More consistencies and shades of mud than I'd ever thought possible! It rained every morning, so we stayed at the camp, ate fried breakfast type food and drank either coffee or beer. After the downpour of biblical proportions had stopped we ventured out, clad head to toe in waterproofs to find random music (and the odd bar - the alcohol keeps the mud funny!). And finding randomness was certainly not difficult. 10 feet tall Punch and Judy, people with inflatable giraffes tied to their heads and an Aardman penguin on a stick, and that's just for starters! I won't even go into the drunk Ninja Turtles...

Here's what I can remember of our line-up from the weekend:
CCQ
Pee Wee Ellis
The Coral
Sandi Thom
Hothouse Flowers
Damien Rice
Duke Special
The Klaxons (a really small amount)
Babyshambles
Some really random guy in a cafe
Show of Hands (Cornish pirate type people!)
The Killers
Another really random guy who'd been up for 3 days on cheap speed and couldn't tune his guitar
James Morrison
Shirley Bassey
The Manic Street Preachers
The Kaiser Chiefs
The Chemical Brothers

Favourite band/artist is a really tough one. Somewhere between Sandi Thom, Damien Rice, Show of Hands and James Morrison. Fondest memory would have to be dressed completely in waterproofs, sat on a folding stool drinking gin and tonic out of a paper cup while some hippies danced barefoot to 50's rock and roll while it was pouring with rain outside. Good times...

All in all, a fantastic weekend, mud or no mud. Well, I don't know what it's like with no mud, but I'm assuming that'd be good too! Same again next year anyone?

How-to of the year!

I, like many other people, have a google homepage, and one of the things on that homepage is wikipedia's how-to of the day. Normally they're fairly boring, but now and again one catches my eye and really entertains me. The last one that seemed really amusing was something along the lines of how to mosh to heavy metal music, but today's was even better:

http://www.wikihow.com/Talk-Like-a-Pirate

Yes, it is what the link suggests - how to talk like a pirate! I can't say I've ever wanted to be Keira Knightly, but it sounds so funny that I might have to do it anyway! There are also other links, such as how to celebrate national talk like a pirate day, and how to release the pirate within!

Anyone at greenbelt festival this year should probably prepare themselves for some pirating!

I don't feel like dancing

Well, actually I do feel like dancing, I'm just not allowed to do it. I had an appointment at the university sports centre open clinic this morning, and was told some not so fun news. I've always known that I've got weak ankles - it's something of a family curse. But it turns out the problem is much worse than I'd initially thought. My arches have partially collapsed, which is something that happened to my sister a long time ago except hers went completely, and the ligaments and things that support my left ankle have virtually no strength on the inside of the joint at all. The only reason my ankles are currently not in the state of my sisters is probably because I've been dancing for so long, so it's helped to hold them together as it were. But now my injury from January is back (again), so I went to get it assessed and it turns out I need physio or it's just going to keep getting worse. So no dancing, and no gym until I've at least had the full assessment and my physiotherapist can tell me exactly what I should and shouldn't do.

I miss dancing :(

Something to make you smile

This is what Edward Monkton has to share with me this month:
Now I finally understand why I can never get my hair to behave itself - I'm going to have to start drinking tea, so that the hedgehog has somewhere to sit!

Happy anniversary

On Saturday, Tony and I celebrated our one year anniversary! There was a picnic with champagne, a lie in the giant hammock and presents including a bear dressed as a sheep (no, this wasn't a result of the champagne) and tickets to see 42nd Street!


There was also a large quantity of chocolate and a lovely meal in the evening. I'm currently feeling very spoilt!

Words of wisdom for May

A few days late I know, but here are a few words to brighten your month

Munchkin tours 2007 - part 1

This will be the first installment of my holiday stories for the year, which will undoubtedly also include a couple of festivals over the summer.
The May bank holiday weekend was spent camping on the Gower. There was sun, beach, beer and far too much meat in the shape of barbeques and fry ups! (Obviously the meat itself wasn't in the shape of a barbeque - that would just be silly!) We talked, drank (in the case of the boys, before breakfast!) rode horses and played a game of throwing small rocks at a pileof bigger rocks to see who could knock it over, which was really far more entertaining than it should have been! All in all it was a lovely weekend, even if there was a minimal amount of sleeping on the last night, due it sounding distinctly like the tent was going to be lifted off the ground and carried somewhere by the gale force winds. It is nice to be back in my own bed though...

Happy Munchkin!

Today is a good day in Munchkin Country. The sun is shining, I have a giant mug of coffee in my hands (or rather on my desk - it's a little difficult to type while holding a giant coffee mug!) and I passed my dancing exams! I was somewhat annoyed seeing as I know I didn't dance my best in the exam, but having been doing dancing exams since I was considerably younger (although not much smaller) than I am now, I'm used to that - it's just what happens. But it can't have been that bad because I got commended (89%) in each of my latin dances and highly commended (90%) in my ballroom! So all in all, I'm a happy Munchkin today!

Now I just wait for the medals to turn up!

April's comedy calendar picture

Ok, I'm obviously getting really rubbish at updating my blog, since I haven't written anything on here for a month. Too much time spent on facebook maybe...

Anyway, here are Edward Monkton's words of wisdom for April.



Anyone else think he's been on something "special"?!

Edward Monkton's monthly words of wisdom

This is what Edward Monkton has to say to me this month:

"The wonderful man was strong. The wonderful man was handsome. The wonderful man took you in his arms and made you feel exactly how always wanted to feel. That is why they called him the wonderful man."

I hope you've got a wonderful man, unless you are a man, in which case I hope you are a wonderful man.

Tell 10 to tell 10!

This is from a post I got on my facebook account, which if you've not signed up for then you should, because it makes organising things and generally keeping in touch much easier!

Basically, the breast cancer site need people to click on their website so they can donate mammograms to underprivileged women. It'll cost you nothing, because it's paid for in exchange for advertising. It's a really worthwhile thing to do, so please go to the website and click on the link, and tell other people to do it too!

http://www.thebreastcancersite.com/

My feet

Yes, this blog is in actually about my feet. Not in a weird, gross way though, in more of a "Ooo look how pretty" kind of way.

I was in a dance show a couple of weeks ago, doing ballet. It was my first performance in pointe shoes, seeing as I'd not even worn them for classes for about 8 years. In my first ballet class in about 5 years I was asked if I was going to do the show, and there was a mention of dyeing our pointe shoes red. This was really exciting as I'm really not a fan of pink, and pointe shoes are only made in pink, so I'd had a pink pair since I was about 16 or 17. But not anymore!

These are my feet in my now red pointe shoes! And yes I was standing on pointe while the picture was taken - none of this sitting down pretending stuff!

February's comedy calendar picture

As promised, here is the next installment of my comedy Edward Monkton calendar:
See, it's a good thing to organise and tidy, otherwise the law of straightness won't be observed, and the world will explode. And we wouldn't want that now, would we?

Don't you just hate it when...

...people are incapable of getting back to with an answer to a perfectly straightforward question?
...people give you no notice at all of something you "need" to do, which either takes a few days to set up, or can only be set up on certain days as a result of other things you're doing, and still expect it done today?
...you work your ass of trying to get things done, only to have nothing work, and then get told it's all your fault because you "must" have made one or more utterly stupid mistakes, despite the fact you know you didn't?
...you find you're working for the least helpful person in the world and can do pretty much nothing about it?
...you're shattered, frustrated and grumpy most of the time as a result of the above?

End of rant, for now. I hope...

The world's most comedy calendar?!

If you've bought a card for anyone in the last few years, I really hope you've come across Edward Monkton cards. They're fairly simple, usually black and white cartoon type things, with some kind of comedy verse or story. These no longer only exist as cards, but also as books, cuddly toys and much to my amazement when my friend, the crazy duck lady, gave me one for Christmas, desk top calendars! This is possibly the most appropriate calendar I've ever been given, as on the front of it is:

The text under the picture is:
When I am grown-up I will understand how beautiful it feels to administrate my life effectively. Until then I will continue to torch all correspondance that bores me and to dance naked over the remnants of its still glowing embers.

Now I'll freely admit I don't actually do this, but then I doubt many people would honestly say I was grown up either!

Each month of this calendar has one of these type pictures, and they make me giggle so much that I thought I should share them. So every month this year, be prepared to be updated with the latest comedy calendar picture. This is January's:




I hope this provides you with as much amusement as it does me!

2007 POTW

I feel a need to go and sit in the corner and think about what I've done... It's the first phrase of the week of 2007 and I've only just round to it... Oops.

POTW this week is:
[object] made of cheese!

This has to be accompanied by an action reminiscent of mouse whiskers (i.e. having your hands next to face and wiggling your fingers). I'd also like to point out that it's not my fault, I didn't do it! Anna did it when she decided that cheesecake was cake made of cheese back in October. Since then, Tone has somewhat adopted this phrase, and uses it to refer to music, tv, the muppets, and pretty much anything else!

Happy 2007!

Hello one and all and welcome to the new and improved 2007 version of Munchkin Country! Ok, the new and improved thing mught not be quite so accurate, due it being neither new or improved, but it sounded rubbish otherwise! Anyway, happy 2007 everyone! I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and New Year, filled with much food, friends and general shinyness. This year I will endeavour to keep POTW updated more regularly and to post more comedy pictures and/or videos as and when they come into my possession. I'm also going to try to complain less, especially about work, but we'll see how long that lasts...

There will at some point be comedy new year pictures, including me dressed as a reindeer christmas tree fairy with at least one drink in my hand (I spent most of the night with a drink in each hand, although they were very rarely both mine!). Until then, you'll have to find another way to amuse yourself!