music – University & Unicorns

2 September 2023

More On Blackpool

I haven’t really spoken too much about the trip to Blackpool, have I?

To begin with, I decided on Blackpool for a place to go and see Hamish Hawk perform after a rather thorough investigation on where we (ie: myself and Em, my partner) could go for the most affordable price. I looked at getting back to Luton and seeing Hamish in Bedford, or perhaps going closer to Northampton or Leicester. Northampton used to have a balloon festival during August and I looked into matching that up in line with Hamish’s gig there. That wasn’t going to work out and I think the balloon festival is back off in Northampton anyway. I then looked at heading to the south-west of England and looked into getting to Falmouth or Exeter for one of his shows but flying was costly even though accommodation was relatively affordable.

That then left the last two dates of the tour; Chester and Blackpool. I looked at Chester first but it was fairly obvious that Blackpool was going to be easier to get to. And with the MASSES of accommodation at a seaside resort(?) like Blackpool, accommodation could be sought out more affordably. Also travel was cheap enough and I could break up the journey between coach and train. A coach to Manchester and then a train to Blackpool North. The train station was just a short walk to the venue so I hunted around for accommodation near the train station. The Happi Hotel and Spa was literally just around the corner from Blackpool North station. I then got the tickets for the gig and then sorted the accommodation through ‘booking.com’. Finally I purchased the train tickets and then the coach tickets. I booked two nights at the Happi Hotel and Spa. The gig was on Friday night, so we travelled down on Thursday, stayed Thursday and Friday nights at the hotel and travelled home on Saturday. Sweet!

As we got closer to the time of the trip, both Em and I were not feeling particularly enthusiastic about going. Everything was all paid for by then. The accommodation was paid for two weeks before we were due to stay and obviously all the transport had been paid for so…we would be out of pocket anyway if we decided not to go.

The weather was forecast to be a bit iffy while we were away so that was kind of not having us feel that good about the prospect of going away. Who wants to be at the seaside in grey, rainy weather?

To be honest, I have been wanting to go to Blackpool for YEARS! I’m ashamed it has taken me this long to go! I’ve lived in the UK for nearly 25 years now and it’s taken me this long to get to Blackpool. Bad!

The coach journey down was smooth enough. I guess the slight delay we had in setting off should have possibly given us a little indicator on how the trip was going to pan out for the return, but I was trying to remain upbeat and calm. It was just a short delay. We set off about 20 minutes later than scheduled and had made the time up in the ensuing journey down to Manchester. I made sure I left enough of a space in time between the coach’s projected arrival in Manchester to the time of the departure of the train to Blackpool. It was all good. We arrived in good time and had no worries about getting our train.

What we did find out on our arrival was that our train back to Manchester from Blackpool on Saturday was not going to be running. Northern Rail staff were going on strike on Saturday so that caused us a panic and we needed to sort an alternative way back to Manchester on Saturday, FAST! We looked into National Express and whether they had coaches that went from Blackpool to Manchester. They did, yes! And they were regular as well but they had sold out in the morning and early afternoon for Saturday. The only coach left was departing at 2.20pm and that was projected to get into Manchester coach station at 3.35pm. Our coach back to Glasgow was departing at 4.30pm. But…more on that later. Suffice it now to say that with little option, we booked the coach and then tried to enjoy the rest of the time away and put Saturday to the back of our minds.

Blackpool North train station is very handy, as was the Happi Hotel’s location and proximity to the station. There’s a big Sainsbury supermarket right there as well.

The sun was shining when we left Glasgow and it was still shining when we got to Blackpool. After checking in we took a wander down to the seafront, which was just a 10 min walk from the hotel. We then walked around the town centre, checking out where the venue was and looking at what was around it. We heard many Scots accents while there. It seems to still be a popular destination for Glaswegians in particular.

For the first night we decided to just wander about and then head back to the Sainbury’s and get some sandwiches and snacks to eat and have an early night. We’d been up early to set off. Our coach to Manchesrter left Buchanan bus station at 8.20am so we were out the door at 7.30am to get the train into Queen Street at 7.41am.

During our late afternoon stroll around town, we stumbled across a cafe within the main pedestrian square called Ziggy’s Cafe Bar (which can be sung quite nicely to the opening line of Ziggy Stardust … “Ziggy’s cafe bar…can be found in the centre of Blackpool / it’s not very far (from the Winter Gardens)”). Lol. etc. It was closed for the day but the owner was inside cleaning up and as we were standing by the door trying to have a peek inside he said “you can come in and have a look if you like” and moved the chair he had blocking the door out the way so we could walk in. It looked fabulous and I said to him that we’d be back for breakfast before we left Blackpool.

The hotel room was pokey. I booked a twin room as it had private facilities. I had initially booked a double room but it had shared bathroom facilities and…I didn’t really want to share. I had done it before but I wasn’t prepared to do it this time, so I upgraded the room to ensure we had both tea and coffee making facilities as well as a private bathroom. It was such a small room that the twin beds were side by side. More than okay for me and Em but probably wouldn’t be great for friends or people who are not that close to one another, you know? The beds were comfy enough. We had a good and long sleep.

The next day we decided on just taking things easy. Having fish and chips for lunch, then going on a tram trip before the gig. We investigated what Blackpool’s best fish and chip shop was reputed to be and as luck would have it it wasn’t very far and was only a few doors down from the venue. It was pretty good. Was it the best fish and chips I’ve ever had? Nope. Was it worth the £14 EACH that we paid for it? Nope. I’d probably try somewhere else next time. It was good, just not THE BEST, you know. Certainly not worth its price tag.

We wiled away a bit of time away down at the seafront. We walked along the north pier and enjoyed the views. Read up about the origins of Sooty. I posed for snaps in front of Blackpool Tower and then it was time to get the Heritage Tram for a coastal trip to Fleetwood and back. It was a fun wee trip and I could see that it would be particularly fun to do during illuminations season as the tramline runs along a section of the illuminations displays. We had around a half an hour to look around Fleetwood. Em spied a tattoo parlour named The Gentle Prick. Much hilarity ensued.

Blackpool itself is very LGBTQI+ friendly. There are LOTS of gay bars and people seem quite free to present themselves however they like without fear of reprisals or any of the sort. It didn’t feel unsafe at all heading back to the hotel after the gig. We only had a short walk but the streets weren’t super lively and there weren’t any sprawling drunken scenes or anything like that – perhaps it was more like that down at the seafront or closer in the town centre?

Saturday was VERY busy. I was hoping that we would get to go to Ziggy’s for breakfast. Check-out of the hotel was at 11am. We check-out around 10.30am and headed straight down to Ziggy’s for breakfast. We got a table inside. I had a light vegetarian breakfast and Em had scrambled eggs on toast. She had tea and I had a latte. We enjoyed our time there, people-watching, etc. We had a chat with a local lady who was waiting for her sister to arrive to have lunch at Ziggy’s. She nabbed our table and we got chatting for a few minutes. She wished us luck on our journey home.

A final wander down to the seafront to kill some time before we went to get the coach to Manchester. The tension in us was mounting. We knew we had just the slimmest of buffers in time between the coaches and if we missed our coach back to Glasgow then….we’d be in for a damn expense to get home. We’d already had to fork out another £26 to secure that coach from Blackpool to get us back to Manchester due to the train strike.

We arrived at the coach station early. It was really warm. Despite the forecast for a mix of sunshine and showers while we were away, we’d been blessed with mostly sunny weather the whole time we were there. The only time it appeared to rain was when we were inside having our fish and chip dinner on Friday.

The coach arrived early. It was at the stand by 1.45pm. But the driver had informed us that we’d be setting off a little later than scheduled. But there would be two coaches. He didn’t really explain why we’d be setting off late – but the reason was explained (rather grudgingly) later on. Oh, the whole thing became a real farce. The guy was an absolute fucking jobsworth! The driver of the other coach was not a National Express driver so he was unable to mark passengers off and get us onto the coach. It had to be done by Mr Jobsworth. He wanted to get the Huddersfield, Leeds and Hull passengers boarded on his coach first, which left all us Manchester passengers (and extra Leeds passengers) hanging about waiting to be boarded on the second coach. I mean…the other driver was not allowed to do ANYTHING because he needed to have his allocated break. He had to have his full break time before he was allowed to drive again. That seemingly also meant he couldn’t let us passengers even get our luggage loaded into the coach or anything. By this point Em and I were starting to freak out. Our buffer to make it to Manchester on time for our coach back to Glasgow was shrinking fast.

It was meant to be a 75 minute journey from Blackpool to Manchester. If the motorways were flowing nicely and there were no jams or any other slowdowns then even with a 20 minute delay in setting out, we might just make it. The added tension was that we were changing from a National Express coach onto a Megabus coach – they use separate coach stations. So once we got into Manchester, we had to leg it to the Megabus station at Shudehill. We also learned from a conversation that was going on with some of the passengers in the queue that it was Pride weekend in Manchester and there was a street parade happening. Oh, fabulous! The streets would be CARNAGE!

To say that Em and I were quite pent up by this point would be a slight understatement. Em far more so than me. I was trying to keep myself calm and remain pragmatic about the whole situation.

As we set off, I just kept praying that the roads kept flowing and were clear of jams. It went really well. All the way until we got to Salford the roads flowed and we made it in really good time. REALLY good time! We hit Salford around 3.30pm. Then it was a crawl from there into the coach station. I said to Em at that point that if it took us 40 minutes to make this last bit of the journey we’d still have time to leg it to the Shudehill exchange and make the Glasgow coach. It took a half an hour to make that last little bit of the journey. THIRTY MINUTES to travel like…three or four miles. Manchester was HOACHIN’! I dunno how we bloody did it, but we made it! We got to the coach station at 4.20pm. It was like salmon swimming upstream trying to get to the coach station. I had to ask people on the way as Google Maps was giving me a bum steer. A young woman said to just keep our sights on the Arndale and we’d get there. That’s what we did. I remembered where it was in proximity to the Arndale on our arrival.

Of course then because the roads in and out of Manchster were a heaving bloody mess, the coach to Glasgow was delayed by over an hour. But by then it didn’t matter. We’d made it. We were getting home!

It wasn’t quite over, yet. The delay in arrival time into Glasgow meant that we would have to leg it (once again) down to Queen Street to get the train home. We arrived at Buchanan Bus Station at 9.20pm. I knew there was a train back to Ashfield leaving at 9.33pm. We got to Queen Street at 9.29pm. We still had to buy tickets. I was hoping that the ticket counter would still be open. It was. I rushed in. Damn the expense. “Two singles to Ashfield, please” (returns are usually cheaper to buy but I knew it would add to the faff – and Em has her Saltire card which means her ticket should be cheaper again but I just didn’t want the delay!). The man at the counter could see I was in a rush. He got the tickets printed pronto. I tapped to pay. Done! We ran to the barrier, rushed through and made it onto the train at 9.31pm! PHEW! It would have been an hour wait for the next train had we missed this one.

Apart from Saturday’s stressful journey home, Blackpool was great. I really enjoyed it and I’d love to return there to see the illuminations. I’m hoping that maybe that can happen in the autumn of 2024 for my 54th birthday – but we’ll see.

1 September 2023

Believe In Better

For as defeated and melancholy I was feeling yesterday, I just wanted to be kind to myself and allow myself to “ride it out.” Let the storm pass. Hope for a better tomorrow. Because it does happen!

It did happen. Today is better. Still not 100% and it would take the slightest thing of something to topple me over again. There are things that if I dwell on them will bring me down. Jim. The Minds fandom. The state and future of my blog (the Priptona one). How mentally prepared (or otherwise) I am for the recommencement of uni next month. My partner’s mental health (always a VERY big cloud hanging over things, if I am being incredibly open and frank). Finances (or lack thereof).

But…I’ve had a shower today and I’ve washed my hair. I know there are many people that won’t get that. People that don’t understand the kind of effort that can take sometimes. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I get very angry with myself. A lot of the time, in fact. I was angry with myself yesterday. I wasn’t comfortable with posting what I posted on my blog yesterday. I sounded like I was just wallowing in self-pity. At the same time and as much as I tried to push myself, I tried being kind. Allow myself the time to hope that the bad would pass.

Some of the feeling also is dictated by having someone else living in my home. A person that makes me feel like a tenant in my own home. I am very mindful of accommodating them and working my day around theirs. They are moving out in a couple of weeks and I am looking forward to being “liberated” and being able to return to doing things in my house when I want to. From when I begin my study day to when I go to the toilet in the middle of the night. All of that! All of that has weighed on my mind for 21 months. Silly little accommodations, you know?

For instance…I’ll settle into bed around 11pm. I’ll listen to The Arches and a couple of podcasts, then be ready to settle to sleep around midnight. My brain and body are ALWAYS insistent that I need one last trip to the loo. But I’ll try not to go. I’ll ignore it. But that invariably means I’ll awake again a couple of hours later with a more urgent need to go, which I’ll also try and ignore. I feel like I am having the most interrupted sleep. These days, once I do get up and go to the loo in the wee hours I find it very hard to get back to sleep.

I’m just looking forward to getting up and going as and when I need to without having to consider someone else. I’m looking forward to a better sleep pattern once again. Maybe it won’t happen? Maybe I’m in a menopausal phase and that’s what’s disrupting my sleep pattern? I feel as though I will be less stressed anyway and that will help me.

My study days will begin earlier too. I will most likely begin my days between 9-9.30am, whereas currently I feel compelled to wait until after 10am (when my lodger’s work day begins). I know that doesn’t sound like much – but when you’re a morning thinker and you have ideas and things pop into your head and you want to get going with your day – thoughts pinging in left, right and centre but you feel like it would be rude to just get up and go and start your day, then yes – it makes a BIG difference.

I tried again with the Too Good To Go app and have a couple of new surprise bags to collect today. My Other Half will collect one (taking advantage of the free “old gits” travel she gets on the bus network) this afternoon and I’ll get the other one early this evening. I was able to secure a collection with the George Street Oaka, which is much more handy and easier to get to. A train to Queen Street, a quarter mile walk up George Street and I’m right there. I can collect and get the next train home. It can all be done within the space of an hour. Hurray! And this time I am prepared. Showered and ready to go in later today.

Finally, I realise that I haven’t even shared much from the time away in Blackpool last week. Although elements of it were stressful, in particular the journey back home to Glasgow, we did have some fun while we were away and really enjoyed aspects of the trip. I’d like to share select photos of the time away.

Thanks for listening. I know it’s not easy to read bad stuff and I am guilty as anyone else in trying to give off this air that I am fine and dandy all the time and life’s a peach every single day but the cold, hard truth is…it isn’t. It gets the better of me. I can get very low and dark and I have spent a long time trying to shield people from that.

I have a love/hate relationship with that “it’s okay not to be okay” phraseology, because although it is inherently true…I myself do NOT feel ‘okay’ with not feeling okay – if you get me?

Having said that – today is better.

*Panoramic views of Blackpool North pier and the tower*

Ziggy’s Cafe Bar in Blackpool. The owner let us in while he was cleaning so we could take photos of the decor. He’s been open for seven years. Some of the memorabilia was donated to him by cafe patrons and Bowie fans.

*Various photos of Blackpool, Fleetwood and sights in between.*

22 August 2023

Libraries And Learning

I feel I need to write a little more here. It seems it should be a natural progression that while my Priptona Weird blog is on its downwards trajectory that the University & Unicorns blog should be on the ascent – at least in terms of the frequency of my posts and interactions with said blogs, right?

I’ve certainly been more focused on the aspect of my creative writing and uni study than I have with music and more to the point, Simple Minds music.

*A sign of things to come (a street traversed heading to the university library. It was missing an R though…)*

Certain other struggles abound. I find my mood fluctuating wildly at present. Mostly I feel incredibly insular and I rarely seek the company of others. I have always been pretty comfortable in my own company which makes it very weird that I should find myself permanently craving the attention of one person in particular and I don’t seem to be able to shut this desire off. That I just don’t have enough self-esteem or self-belief to banish that desire and get away from it. I get eternally angry with myself for not being able to let this desire go because I KNOW how unhealthy it is and I know that this person really couldn’t give a flying fig about me….and yet. And yet.

I just needed to air that thing here.

I haven’t been writing any fictional prose over the past 10 days. I’ve entered two writing comps and want to enter a few more before my new uni module starts. I had intentions of writing for much longer entries for a couple of writing comps – ones with entries that required a minimum of 2000 words written but I haven’t started on any of them. I’m not going to pressure myself. The fact that I have actually entered comps is good and I definitely will be entering a few more before uni starts back up.

As well as making sure I am continuing to write I am making sure that I am reading as well.

Last Monday (14 August), I took myself to Possilpark library (my most local branch of Glasgow libraries to my home) with an application form that I had picked up a few days before from the Hillhead branch that I had since filled out – and got myself a library card – AT LAST. Because Covid had struck barely three months after we moved to Glasgow (and also bearing in mind I was in Sydney for a month around Christmas of 2019), we hadn’t had the chance to get signed up to the library when the first lockdown happened. We did get temporary access to the library’s online resources but then the branches were closed for extended periods of time, etc, etc. When restrictions finally lifted and life went slowly back to normal, I was in the middle of study and had other things going on and I just didn’t find the time to get membership to Glasgow libraries sorted. Until now.

*It feels very surreal to have this. Hate my photo. My head is shaped like a bell(end), but hey ho. Lol. I never wanted to win a beauty prize.*

So now, not only am I FINALLY a cardholder of Glasgow libraries and have an ASTONISHING 32 branches across Glasgow at my choosing to visit (with Possilpark, Springburn, Milton, Woodside, Maryhill, the GoMA, The Mitchell and Hillhead branches all within my most immediate proximity for visitation and use) – over the past week I applied to have access to the University of Glasgow library under the UK universities SCONUL scheme. SCONUL access allows students from one particular university to gain access to the libraries of other universities around the country. So, I as an Open University student applied for SCONUL access. With that access granted, I was then able to apply to the University of Glasgow for access to their library – all TWELVE FLOORS of it. I was granted a card, which I collected from the library yesterday. I then spent a few hours investigating the library space. Checking out the various floors, the books on offer, the study spaces and…the views of Glasgow therein. OMG – the views from the upper levels of the library! There is almost a 360* view of the Glasgow skyline from there. And a lot of the study spaces face the window, so…you have that amazing panorama spread out in front of you. Okay, you might have your head buried in books for the most part while you’re studying – but when you need to take a breather, there is Glasgow right out there in front of you.

I began my exploration on Level 9. That’s where the English and English bibliography books were. I had no sense of scale from the floor plan of the library. It seemed as if it was going to not be a very big space with not that many books but OH MY WORD! There are THOUSANDS of books in there. I mean, the majority of books on the shelves are from authors and writers considered to be “in the canon”, with several copies of books of their work. Some of them are very, very old! I used up a good hour just on this floor, scouring the rows and rows of books.

From there I went down to Level 6 – this is where the Russian and East European books were meant to be but I got lost trying to find where they were, despite looking at the floor plan. I just could not find where they were. I decided to try again another time. Or to wait until I can book a guided tour of the library (they do guided tours twice a day at 11am and 2.15pm).

Next I went up to Level 12 as there is a viewing platform up there and I wanted to look at the views of Glasgow. When I got up there though, it seemed as if access was via appointment only which seemed odd – but I think it was the archival section of the library that was only accessible by appointment only and the viewing platform was accessible around the other side – I just didn’t know how to get there. Bugger! I’ll try again another time.

Down to Level 3 next and to the “high demand” area and group study areas – as well as the cafe. The cafe had just closed, so my plan to get myself a coffee and take a breather was scuppered. The “high demand” section is CRAZY! These books are deemed to be in such … high demand … that you can only loan them for 24 hours and some of them for as little as FOUR HOURS! Can you imagine? Being able to borrow a book for only 4 hours?!

Lastly, I decided I’d check out Level 4 – which I thought rather strangely, for a university, has junior fiction and non-fiction sections as well as the music section. Well, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I walked down one of the music book shelves and there were archival folders stuffed with copies of Sounds magazine dating back from 1981! I nearly died of excitement stumbling upon this pot of gold! I turn the corner to walk down the next row of shelves and there’s only bloody NME and Melody Maker mags archived as well! Neither of them date quite as far back as the Sounds archive but still. I was stunned! I even found a little bit in one of them that seemed very appropriate and timely. Little did I think I’d be stumbling across Jim at the University of Glasgow library…in a manner of speaking.

*The Sounds archive and the man himself in the pages of a copy*

Did I borrow a book? No. I was a little too intimidated by it all yesterday. Overall it was quite the jaw-dropping experience and I will DEFINITELY be frequenting the uni’s library as often as I can.

Before heading to the UofG’s library, I popped into Hillhead library. I had a book to return that I had borrowed from the Possilpark branch that I had just finished reading. I know! I read the book in just TWO sessions! I KNOW! It was only 160 pages long – but yes! Hark at me and my “speedy reading”. Lol

I promised myself I wouldn’t borrow too many books – even though you can borrow up to 12 books at any time with Glasgow libraries, we all know I don’t read that fast! I couldn’t help myself though and came away with 4 books. Two books by Jean Rhys. I enjoyed Wide Sargasso Sea so much that when I saw two of her novels on the shelf, I had to borrow them. The other two I was taken with their titles initially – for very differing reasons. But then they both reeled me in with their synopses. The photo below shows the titles. How could I walk past a title like The Pheasant Plucker – I mean, come on! Lol

So now I have much reading to do!

*The views of Glasgow from various floors of the university library*

6 July 2023

How’s That Summer Break Going?

Hello! It’s been a wee while. I was hoping that I would be posting here a little more than I have during the summer break away from uni.

I guess June was kinda crazy. Busy here and there. A few gigs and one that I couldn’t make due to Glasgow receiving a downpour of biblical proportions. I set out to go and made it as far as Buchanan Street then spent 45 minutes sheltered under a shop frontage before trying to continue on to the venue before finally and swiftly admitting defeat and heading home.

Towards the end of June I started getting my teeth into writing. I’ve taken out a subscription to a writing magazine and an online membership to their website. I’ve compiled a list of writing competitions that I am interested in entering over the next few months and have already been busying myself with researching and writing down ideas and actual fictional content and short stories.

I’m also reading as well. I read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and am currently around a quarter of the way through reading Thackery’s Vanity Fair.

I am also still a consumer of podcasts and have recently been enjoying series two of Uncanny, as well as a few documentary style podcasts – one called Shiny Bob about the Edinburgh judicial system. Another titled A Very British Cult, about a life coaching ‘company’ called Lighthouse – which I’m quite bloody scared to mention here to be honest, given how they were portrayed.

Currently I am nearing the end of a podcast on the K-pop sex scandal. It’s called Burning Sun and is a series aired as part of the Intrigue podcast series on BBC Sounds. It’s really a very disturbing listen. The systemic sexual abuse of women in South Korea is absolutely abhorrent. And the fact that these outwardly looking ‘shiny, clean’ male K-pop stars behaved this criminally and disgustingly behind closed doors is beyond alarming. It’s truly frightening what lurks behind some country’s cultures – how we believe we see them and how they outwardly project themselves to be compared to how they truly are. How these kinds of behaviours can somehow be regarded as mere “cultural differences” is shocking.

If you can deal with the darkness of this podcast – for there are very stressing details on sexual assults and incidences of suicide discussed – then I recommend you listen to Burning Sun. You can find it on BBC Sounds – Link to the podcast HERE

I have another couple of weeks to wait before I get the result for my previous module and find out how well (or otherwise!) I did on my final assignment. Of course, I will let you know here (as much as I can) about it – bearing in mind that I will need to be careful just how much I can share about my mark and pass.

I’m also hoping to write here a little bit more often, in between writing work for the writing comps I’d like to enter.

For now, take care.

31 May 2023

And In My Downtime…(Downtime? What downtime?)

I’ve been meaning to catch up with you, but by gawd, I’ve been busy! Jeez-o. I feel like I’ve hardly stopped since uni officially ended on 18 May.

I went to Pollok Park and the Burrell Collection with my partner the following day (Friday, 19 May). Knackered myself by walking nearly 20,000 steps and just over 13.5km that day. I spent the weekend recovering from that. Then on Monday 22 May, I did a massive spring clean of my bedroom, which took me most of the day – stripping my bed, vacuuming the floor and walls, making the bed back up with fresh bed linen, etc, etc. Knackered myself again.

On Tuesday (Tuesday week) in the evening I went to the Mitchell Library to attend a creative writing workshop that was being run in partnership with the University of Strathclyde and conducted by one of their CW lecturers. It was titled ‘What You Need to Know about Point of View’. I thought it would be beneficial to me in the hope it would provide me with clear definitions of how point-of-view within a narrative works. It was really good and I am SO glad I went. Even more so for the fact that I didn’t pre-book as I was unsure whether to go or not or whether I should go to one of the other CW workshops that was happening later in the week. I read in the Aye Write brochure that you could buy a ticket from the Mitchell Library on the day, so I decided to just turn up and buy a ticket then. What will be, will be kind of thing. Long story short, they couldn’t work out how to issue me with a ticket without a lot of faffing about, so they decided that because they hadn’t made the process very straight forward at all, to let me attend the workshop for free. Yes! Part of my ‘should I, shouldn’t I?’ dithering was about whether I could afford to go or not, so I was quite pleased to end up being allowed to attend for free. And it was really very good and cleared up some things about point-of-view that just weren’t sticking in my brain.

On Wednesday, a voluntary work colleague of my partner’s gave us tickets to see him perform as an extra in the Theatre Royal production of An Inspector Calls. It was a great show and we really enjoyed ourselves.

Thursday I did some writing and caught up with laundry. Friday it was the Sparks gig at the Armadillo. Sunday I caught up with a friend that was on holiday in Scotland from the U.S. We met up at the Barras market and wandered around there for a while. Visited the Blitzkrieg Shop, Glickman’s and then had lunch at Mono before perusing Missing Records. It was a full day and I had walked another 10km.

Monday, I went to see The Lemon Twigs at SWG3. Then yesterday I went and got my haircut. So, today feels like PROPERLY the first day I’ve had to just take a chill pill and rest up a bit – and do a post here.

Even just going over what I’ve been doing for the past (almost) two weeks is exhausting me! Lol. Lots of sight-seeing, writing, theatre, gigs – LOADS of walking and some dancing too. It has felt absolutely non-stop. I’m giving myself a quiet one today though.

The weather has been AMAZING! So warm and dry. Yesterday it was 25 degrees in Glasgow! It’s not quite as warm and sunny today but it’s still into the 20s and ahm still roastin’!

I’ll probably get out and go for a wander tomorrow, just so the old bones and legs don’t clam up on me completely. I don’t have anything pre-planned until Hamish Hawk on 9 June (then Ian Moss the next night) but I want to keep active and make sure I do some things and make good use of the fabulous weather. But today I definitely need to allow myself to just chill and relax.

This has been the main reason for the radio silence since the break-up of uni is just…I’ve been as busy since the end of uni as I am during it! I mean, it’s great. I’m glad I have so much to do. I’m looking into being able to do some other things while on summer break. I’ve been looking into taking a trip on the Waverley ‘doon the watter’ sometime in the summer. One trip takes you all the way out for a circuit around Ailsa Craig which would be AMAZING! I’d love to do that! I’ve spoken to my partner about it, but the decision is hers. We’ll see. It won’t be until August but we’ll need to book early to secure a place.

We’ll have another night away in Newcastle in around five weeks time so that’ll be fun. Other than the odd gig here and there, my calendar is now pretty free. I’ll still keep creating and writing during the summer, that’s for sure.

Anything of worth that I write, I’ll share here. I just wanted to check-in for now and show off my new locks. I tried a new salon yesterday. They’re just five minutes away around the corner but I had been scared to try them until now. The lady who cut my hair did a grand job and I’ve already booked to have a trim in the second week of July.

One thing I’d like to do within the next week is go to the Kelvingrove and see the Mary Quant exhibition. Possibly over the weekend. If not then early next week. We’ll see…

P.S. You can read gig reviews at the Priptona Weird blog.

8 May 2023

A Happening At Hartlepool

I had a night away in Hartlepool to see my other favourite band in the entire universe, Warm Digits. They were playing at an event called Lost In The Woods and they were the headline act. You can read all about it on the Minds blog at Priptona Weird. The following day I had a few hours available to explore Hartlepool before getting a train back to Newcastle for my onward journey back to Glasgow.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with my time. I was worried that I’d be suffering too much from all the standing about and dancing about at the gig the night before. It was dependent upon a) How well I pulled up from said gig, and b) Location and price of any attractions I might have been interested in exploring. The weather was also another aspect to consider. On the days leading up, it wasn’t promising of being that good and it seemed as if quite a bit of rain would be about.

My accommodation for the night – Room 8 of the OYO Studiotel

I didn’t feel that great on my feet the morning after the gig, but a shower helped to limber me up a bit and the forecast for the weather had taken a turn for the better and it looked as if it would be remaining dry for the remainder of my stay in Hartlepool. I thought I might as well make the most of it and headed to the marina.

On the way down, I was approaching The National Royal Navy Museum and decided to go in and have a look, see how much it would cost to go in and explore. An adult ticket is £10 and it lasts for 12 months. That is exceptional value for money. With enough spare money on me to do it, I decided to head on into the museum and explore.

There is quite a bit to see in there. There’s a huge naval vessel called the Trincomalee, and there are displays around the marina – old style shop fronts with full sized figures inside portraying workers, business owners and householders. There were various kids play areas, both indoors and outdoors and there was also a tearoom/cafe there as well. I wiled away some time exploring the shops and having a coffee and a piece of cake in the tearoom. Considering it was the day of the coronation, I decided on a slice of Victoria sponge. You could serve your own slice and the plates provided had little Union Flag napkins on them. The slice had a little toothpick in it with a little Union Flag on it. I brought it home as a souvenir. Lol

I also spent time exploring the Trincomalee. The ship is HUGE. There must be about 24 canons on the ship. I explored the upper deck and three lower decks. All I kept thinking was geez – you neither wanted to be tall or suffer from claustrophobia being a naval officer! Not to mention REALLY needing good sea legs. Talk about cramped. One can only imagine it teeming with hundreds of officers throughout the ship, sloshing about in the ocean out in the middle of nowhere. That kind of life was for the hardy!

Hartlepool museum is extended through the side area of where the entrance is and there were some good displays there as well. I particularly enjoyed learning about the “monkey-hangers” – something that Andy from Warm Digits had mentioned while we were walking about the town centre the afternoon previous. During the Napoleonic Wars, a French ship was sunk off the coast of Hartlepool. One survivor was found washed ashore – a “little hairy man” (aka a monkey) that the locals were convinced was a French spy, so the locals had the poor wee monkey hanged. There was a song about it that you could listen to by pressing a button on the wall. I recorded most of it. You can hear it below.

I really enjoyed my exploration around the National Royal Navy Museum at Hartlepool. If you ever find yourself in Hartlepool, I do recommend that you take the time to visit the museum, especially if you have kids.

Plenty of photos to view and look at below. Click on the images for better viewing options.

Before heading back to Hartlepool train station, I stopped and had McDonalds for lunch. That’s another handy point for visiting the museum – the McDonalds is just across the road from the museum’s entrance. And yes, I have not partaken in a McDonalds for many a year but upon a recent trip to Milngavie, I tried their McPlant burger and I have to say it is REALLY good! I had the McPlant Double on Saturday and that’s a 10/10 for me! I know! Who’d have thought I’d be recommending McDonalds! But honestly, the McPlant is a great burger!

I’d be happy to return to Hartlepool in the near future. I had a really lovely time there. Thanks for the fun, Hartlepool! Hope to see you again one day.

22 December 2022

Necklace Gold Dream

I went out for a Christmas meal last night at the stellar Non Viet Vietnamese restaurant located at the section of Sauchiehall Street near the M8. Great food was had with Birdy and Michelle as fellow dinner guests.

Michelle gave me the most wonderful gift – pictured below. I was knocked for six by it. Such a lovely thought out present.

18 December 2022

First 79, Now 80!

I received my mark for my assignment this afternoon. I honestly was not expecting it until the New Year. I always feel ssoooo nervous when the email notification comes in letting me know that my mark is ready for collection.

I can see the mark before I actually collect my tutor’s assessment and feedback. Again, as I arrived to the page to collect, I see a score of 80 and I’m just bloody stunned!

I can’t really go into any more detail than that. I have to be careful with what I discuss. Once again I am incredibly happy with my mark and fully understand and realise why I was deducted marks – or not scored as highly – for certain things I didn’t do right or shouldn’t have done.

Overall my result is really good and I got very positive feedback.

The tough stuff is to come next year. Tough in that these are the subjects I am doing my diploma for – English Literature and Creative Writing. I have William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre to tackle next with 600 word essays to write on each one of them.

In the meantime, there is some stuff happening with the house that’s going pretty crappy. When one part of your life seems to be going okay, other areas will be crap. It’s always the way!

I must apologise for the disruption to the blog today. I was sorting out my domain linking and changing over the blog’s theme to something I liked more. I hope you like it too.

Lastly, here’s another bit of Kerr Christmas fun. Yes…Jim will feature here now and again…he’s unavoidable. I’m more comfortable with him featuring here than my personal stuff and uni stuff featuring on the Simple Minds/Music blog.

12 December 2022

The Relief Of Making It Over The Finishing Line In Time

That’s another assignment completed! Two assignments completed by Christmas! That’s pretty good going. I’m not sure when we’ll get our marks back, but I guess it won’t be until the New Year – probably the middle of January. Maybe at the end of the first week of Jan if we’re lucky. Either way, I won’t be stressing about how well I did. I’ll just relax and enjoy Christmas and think about the next phase of the module to come. It’s all down to the nitty gritty next because we’ll be tackling the English Literature and Creative Writing topics in the New Year and into the spring. I’m feeling quite a bit nervous about it. Will I really be any good at this? Who knows. In the meantime – IT’S CHRISTMAS!!!!

*Yes, one fell off the wall and I’ve yet to get the frame sorted out and replaced. And the is paint peeling off the wall. Such a great look! Lol*

One thing I will say is that for one part of my assignment we were asked to write a short piece about a portrait that we’d recently come across. With the image above in mind – just one of my bedroom walls adorned with an endless array of Kerr portrait photographs, I seriously contemplated doing this short piece about one of my photos of Jim but I became waaaaay too worried about how that might reflect on me to the other students and decided to make a different choice. All for the better, I think! Which one of the Jims would I have chosen? Well, to have made myself a little less like a woman of 52 acting like a girl of 12, I probably would have gone for one of the photos of him on the stage performing. Our task for this part of the assignment was to write about what we thought the portrait’s purpose was. I’d have had a better justification of explaining the purpose of a photo of Jim on a stage than I would have of one of the promo photos of him.

It’s all irrelevant now anyway but, yeah…talk about spoiled for choice had I gone with my initial idea of choosing a photo of His Kerrness to go on about. Lol

I’ll take a final look over the assignment tomorrow, make sure it’s all reading right, the word count is correct, references are correct and…in she goes! And then the next assignment is just under a whole two months away. Phew!

3 December 2022

Hello Again – Let Us Reintroduce Ourselves…

This blog has been dormant for some time and…I’m not entirely sure what the impetus for this is…but let’s run with it.

And since this blog has lain dormant for so long, and there may be new people who are coming to have a gander at it, then let us reintroduce ourselves.

My name is Larelle and I run a blog called Priptona’s Simple Minds Space. As you may have deduced from the title, it is ostensibly a Simple Minds blog (*cough* Jim Kerr *cough*) and broader music blog. That “broadness” just kept on creeping into the personal more and more, especially during the pandemic when not a lot was happening in the music scene, especially when it came to Simple Minds. This past year has changed that. My personal life has changed in the past year also. This resulted in so much blending of the personal and the SM fan blog becoming somewhat blurred.

Last December I enrolled into the Open University to take a Diploma in Higher Education in English. Creative Writing was the pull. I want to be able to write better. I want to be able to use language better and express myself better and I am hoping that Creative Writing will give me the tools I need. It may eventually lead me to somewhere else…who knows?

I’m now about one third of the way through my second module of my uni diploma. I have four modules to complete before I get my diploma – roughly another two and a half years to go.

The last time we “spoke”, I was still living in Luton with my Other Half, Em. At the end of 2019 there were some dramatic life changes that happened. Within the space of a few days we moved to Glasgow (after a whirlwind search to buy a property here) and my mum passed away. I spent Christmas 2019 in Australia, praying I would make it out there in time to be with mum. It wasn’t to be and it is something I still probably haven’t fully come to terms with.

At that point I felt relieved for Mum, I still do. The pain she had been suffering for years was over and she was in peace. I was also starting life in a new city, in a new part of the country – a new country! Just a few months into life in Glasgow, Covid struck and the world went weird.

After a year, my coping mechanisms began to falter and … I dunno what happened, really. Shortly after settling into life here in Glasgow, and before the pandemic really took hold, we took in two rescue cats. A brother and sister called ASAP – a grey tabby, and Sultan – completely black (I had wanted a black cat for YEARS). These were the names they had originally been given by their owner, although their foster carer had been calling them Oscar and Sheba. I didn’t like either Oscar (I couldn’t have a cat with the same name as one of my nephews! Lol) or Sheba (I much preferred the name Sultan – especially that she was female and having a female cat called Sultan fucked up with gender norms. Lol), so decided I’d stick with their original names. They had been named after rappers. ASAP was after A$AP Rocky (I think is how you are meant to spell his name) – ASAP being an acronym for Always Strive And Prosper, which I thought was really cool.

I hold my hands up in admitting I rushed in to getting the cats. They were young. Less than a year old, and I told myself I would get mature cats. Cats 7 years+ because they were harder to re-home. But no one seemed to want ASAP and Sultan. They were awaiting re-homing for MONTHS! They had been with Cats Protection since early December and it was nearing the end of February in 2020 and no one seemed to want them.

Long story short we got them and they were lovely but not without their problems, esp. ASAP. After about 15 months with us, ASAP developed a urinary tract problem. The timing wasn’t great. Em was going through a bad mental health period and when ASAP required emergency veterinary treatment, things came to a head. We made the gut-wrenching decision to return the cats to Cats Protection. This doesn’t really explain entirely what happened. And I feel an enormous amount of guilt. I still miss them both so much. I pray they are in a new loving home (I do know that they did get re-homed. I kept an eye on the Cats Protection FB page until I saw they were re-homed) and are having the most wonderful lives. I wish I could have continued to provide that for them.

Those months after weren’t that great for me. I felt relieved that the stress of the babies (I always referred to them as my babies. I still do.) was gone, but Em was in a mess and I wasn’t much better. Other things that used to be a comfort, namely the music of Simple Minds and Jim…just Jim as a kind of focus, muse, someone who would lift my spirits or have me believe in myself and being a force for positivity wasn’t really there for me. And when that happens I tend to start believing that he just HATES me and I stew on it and it just becomes my everything. And I know how incredibly sad that is! Like, for me, as a human being…to express how much this man means to me like that. I was incredibly low. Just sitting here thinking about it. Writing about it. Yeah…it’s not good.

University has been a fantastic diversion and focus. Of course, it doesn’t always work. I still have many of those hang ups. I still think FAAAAAR too much of Jim. But I am working on trying to not have him be the focus of EVERYTHING and instead just be the focus of fun. The man he was at the beginning. The man who rekindled that teenage swooning girl. The one who has the absolute hots for him circa 1979-1984, with particular emphasis on 1981-82. The man I first *really* saw in 2014 (from 1979) and went “Holy fucking shit! That’s Jim Kerr?! Why did nobody tell me how fucking HOT he was?!” Eight years on and….I’m still obsessing! And man…what a journey! Never thought I’d get to meet him a million times over. Never thought, for good or bad…that he’d end up knowing be my name and have a face like a Russian winter every time he sees me, as if he’s thinking “Oh, fuck. Here she comes. HELP!!” In one respect, the notoriety is fun. In another, I miss the days when he seemed happy to see me. But that’s all my doing, I guess.

I can’t regret anything though, can I?

It’s an endless roller-coaster. Just recently I had another massive wobble. It involved the new Simple Minds album and personalised signings. I’ll leave it at that, as I don’t want to go over old ground. It is what it is and whether I have done my usual thing of over-analysing and misinterpreting or Jim really has finally had enough of me and wants me to take a fucking hint (short of a brick being thrown directly at my head, I tend not to see the obvious…but boy can I get fixated on and over-analyse stuff that actually ISN’T there!) – I need to just keep things in perspective and focus on the uni. “Get a life” – as they say.

So, where are we at now? It’s early December, 2022. I am, as I stated earlier, about one third the way through module ‘A112: Cultures’. This module is run through the Arts and Humanities faculty of the Open University. I started study in January, 2022. I have already completed module ‘A111: Introducing the Arts and humanities’ in which I scored a 75% mark, which is a clear pass (10 percentage points off a distinction mark – I can’t tell you how happy I was with that result).

A111 gave us a broad look at the arts and humanities subjects, so we worked through art, art history, classical studies, creative writing, English literature, music, philosophy, and religious studies. My choice of continuing on into A112 was solely for the Creative Writing aspect of it. The first 4 weeks of the new module was focused on Classical Studies and I really struggled with that and didn’t engage with it very well. Also, I was having my latest ‘Jim wobble’ so that didn’t really help. Despite that, I did really well with my first assignment of the module and scored a 79 mark.

And, well…I think we’re pretty much up-to-date. Of course I am hoping most posts won’t be quite this long in future but I may just rant from time-to-time for the catharsis of getting things off my chest. I’m not sure I still want to even call the blog “Antipodean – The Right Side Up” anymore. I used to feel like I was literally “the right side up” for being on the other side of the world. It was a pun I liked as the word ‘antipodean’ means ‘two places diametrically opposed to one another’ or ‘something that is the exact opposite or contrary to another’. My father-in-law, Gilly (Gilbert), used to say I was from “Upsidedownland” and so…. being here I felt I was “the right side up.” These days, I don’t know if I still ‘feel’ The Right Side Up…

What I call this blog instead, I know not. I will give it some thought. In the meantime, hello! Thanks for reading, and please be warned, I may talk about Jim’s nipples from time to time. Lol

Adios, amigos!