I sometimes read the online edition of the local newspaper for where I grew up. I don’t know what it is, but Northern newspapers just seem to have funnier stories, or write them up in a funnier way. They wrote this as a serious story, but I can’t read the first line without laughing.
I think it’s probably their end of the summer sound that’s doing it for me, but I’m listening to West Indian Girl a lot over the long weekend. Chilled out Summer music at its best. This is the sort of thing iTunes should have had in their Essentials Summer Collection, instead of songs with Summer in the title.
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Lots of us from work were in Lymington yesterday for Rob and Hanan’s wedding. Rob works with us and Hanan used to, so it was quite the IBM wedding.
There was a subtle Arabic theme to the day, with little Arabic snacks before the meal, Arabic name-cards and Arabic dancing. They also had a really cool singer, who I’m sure could get a part on The OC with her guitar, doing her covers of Coldplay, Gnarls Barkley, Jeff Buckley and Oasis. Anyway, as Sophie said during her speech, “I don’t really like lovey dovey stuff, but they do look good”. Pictures here. |
When I moved down South in 1998 one of the first differences I noticed (apart from the weird accents) was that you couldn’t get certain foods and sweets down here.
For a start, no supermarkets, or fish and chip shops, sold Holland’s Pies. No. Not Dutch spies. These are the North’s best food. As their site says, “Say ‘pies’ in the North of England and you’ll get a one word answer… Holland’s”, which you may think is some marketing slogan, but it’s actually true. Before I moved down here, I’d never ever seen another maker of pies.
Anyways, I could survive without Holland’s, I mean it wasn’t like I never ate anything apart from pies. The main problem was the lack of standard sweets. Down here they don’t sell Sarsaparilla Tablets or proper Northern Pear Drops. They do sell what they call “Pear Drops”, but they’re not real Pear Drops, which have to be yellow and red coloured on the same sweet, not red or yellow, that’s just wrong. I just found this great site though, which sells both Sarsaparilla Tablets and Northern Pear Drops. Isn’t the Internet great? 
The new football season started today. Blackburn’s first game was away to Portsmouth, which is handy given that’s near where I now live. I don’t get to that many games any more, but always go to the Portsmouth away game. Maybe I shouldn’t have. We were rubbish, got beat 3-0 and had two players sent off. Oh, and it rained.
Can’t stop listening to Made-Up Lovesong #43 by Guillemots since the BBC used it in one of their music trailers. I also have Nelly Furtado’s, Promiscuous stuck on repeat in the car, it’s the perfect Summer driving song. I don’t know if it’s the Timbaland influence, but she’s become cool.