#25; It’s not quite Autumn but it’s more than Spring

So it’s the typical British summertime rolling out once more it would seem – in a season that should bring sunshine, warmth, colour and clichés of a summer variety, we once more seem to put up with the usual stuff.  I’ll admit we’ve had some beautiful days so far this summer but that’s the thing – I’m having to say ‘some’' rather than mostly! See, our summer seems to be full of cloudy clouds, showery showers and generally generic weather, 3 descriptions that I’m sure will blow you away with sheer visual oomph. To get myself out of this non-descriptive summer we seem to be experiencing once more, I’ve decided to remind myself of everything that makes me look forward to the summer and gets me back in the mood of the lovely few months they should bring…

• Cornettos! OK not necessarily Cornettos’ themselves but ice cream in general. yes we’ve had the massively inflated prices of 99 Flakes contradict their actual name but Ice Creams and summer go together like peas in a pod! Whilst at Goodwood with that beautiful blue sky horizon I can’t even begin to tell you how many Ice creams I treated myself to, pure heaven. You just simply can’t go a summer without ice cream. Yum. Also, you all know secretly Strawberry Cornettos’ are the best ones. 
• Blue! No, not that absolute drivel of a band. No, not the Blue Man Group although they are kind of cool. I mean those glorious blue skies that stretch for miles and miles with the whispers of clouds stroking through their gentle views. Bliss! Absolute bliss! It’s not something us British folk tend to get treated with so often throughout the year it feels. Plus it means lovely weather of course which is always welcome. Just the colour blue itself looks so relaxing in the sky. I almost put tasty there, but I think that’s the though of Cornettos’ getting to my mind. Blue Cornetto sounds wrong.
• Relaxing! It does feel like the summer is the time of the year when everyone seems to take a step back and just chill for a bit, or so in my experience. I have no uni work to necessarily worry about, it’s a fantastic opportunity to travel and go see people and laces, books to read and catch up with, there’s lots of good music to look forward to and listen, again with the ice cream, and it’s just such a relaxing time compared to the new education beginnings of the Autumn, the Christmas stresses of winter  and the general springyness of Spring. Actually Spring’s quite nice too… but Summer is more Springier. If you get what I mean.

It’s quite wierd really because despite all this loving for the Summer, I do prefer the winter. I love the cold and the festivity and, as I am completely wierd, I find rain very relaxing. But the summer, when we get it, is absolutely brilliant because it is just relaxation central with the surrounding of bright, wonderful colours, that gorgeous breeze that brushes past and just a few months of chilling out to a cold drink and good music. When we get it, of course. I think I’ll just remind myself of this entry when the skies go grey over the next month or two…

#16; We are not amused

Let’s get the obvious thing out of the way; Muse are beyond my favourite band. Everytime they come on TV, or I hear their music, they get my undivided attention. The band have been in my mind with their incredible musical ability and what they do for years and years, and I have only seen them live once, as well as missing out on the biggest gig of their career with Wembley Stadium in 2007. No matter what mistakes they make, I continue to support them and listen to every individual piece of musical brilliance I feel they make. This year, we are getting their fifth studio album in “The Resistance”, what is expected to be a symphonic, completely bat-shit insane rock opera type of over the top thing that Matthew Bellamy seems to fascinated over creating, with the main attraction of the album expected to be a 3-track long “Symphonic Monster”, as the band call it, to close the album starting from a quiet build-up and ending in a clash or orchestral bliss. Just describing it now gets me so excited to hear this – the last album was out in 2006, and finally, we’re here with a new album! Fantastic! So… why am I so fed up of hearing about the band I love so?

The World Tour was announced yesterday. “The Resistance” tour, as the band put it, sees the threesome making their way around Europe (European Tour, surely?) from the snowy horizons of of Scandinavia, the peaks of Switzerland, and the sweltering luxury of Spain. Of course, the band will be coming home to their native United Kingdom to address their adoring fans with their new material, their classic hits, and maybe a surprise thrown in with a grand stage show. So for me, I sit there yesterday evening reading the dates in November… London, of course… Birmingham, for sure… Sheffield, ok… Liverpool?… Glasgow…and… that’s it for the UK? No Cardiff? No Manchester? Nothing? Just these measly few gigs in a 30 gig calendar? No Cardiff. And at £42 a ticket… what a disappointment. A horrible sense of anger and frustration ran through my body when I saw this, and whilst it seems a pathetic issue to get angry over, let me try and express myself to give you a greater understanding.

Why is it that Muse feel necessary to ignore the entire west-country as well as Wales? It makes no sense to me! There will be people who will travel to the Birmingham gig of course, it’s the nearest to any of Muse’s Welsh and West Country fans, but not everyone has that luxury of splashing out £45 + travel + accommodation every so often in life. This includes myself. As I say, I love the band but there’s no chance I can even begin to justify spending that much for 2 hours of something I still have no guarantee of making, and getting home from without any issues as well as the fact that it’ll be during a year of University where my future just may be depended on. We’re also stuck in an economic climate where money is a necessity; there are something I’m willing to travel for and I have my undoubted priorities in live that means the world to me no matter how far, but I’m sorry Muse, this is one area that you don’t come into. Cardiff would have been perfect, but alas, Cardiff is obviously not perfect for them.

Furthermore, 2009 is the year they’ve been touting for months and months about the new album, and finally coming back to the UK for a tour to us fans, something that has stayed on my mind for such a long time and I’ve been so mega excited for. The feeling of being at a Muse gig and seeing them perform to me is indescribable; a flurry of emotions, the incredible sensation of power, excitement, everything that the body can emotionally conjure up comes out in their live performances. There’s a reason why they’re widely considered arguably the best live act in the United Kingdom at the moment, and now I’m stuck with the feeling that I know I won’t see this after years of waiting for it so much. But…. that’s life. Life would be boring if it were too perfect, as they say.

The point of this entry is to not act like a selfish, self-centred spoilt brat who throws his toys out the tantrum – I apologise if it does seem that way but I am simply trying to convey just how much of a disappointment this is not only for me but thousands upon thousands of Muse fans nearby for sure. My sister, for example, got off the phone with me earlier today and her disappointment as I told her the new was unparalleled; she was mega excited such as myself to finally get the opportunity, after 3 years or so, to see this incredible band once again. She had constantly told me to remind her when the tour was announced, when  we could see them, when they were coming. To phone up and tell her we weren’t going because they simply aren’t close enough absolutely crushes me and her reaction comes as no surprise. Hopefully 2010 will bring a proper tour of the UK and proper dates for us to enjoy. I can only hope for now.

The new album is still on the horizon and I’m still so very excited for it. The band are still an amazing collaboration of 3 guys who create sheer excellence in their talents and like I say, I’ve missed out on Wembley Stadium, so I’ve already had stuff like this before. It still hurts knowing what could have been. It really annoys me deep inside that they simply just haven’t accommodated for all areas around the UK. For 18 months after Black Holes and Revelations, the band toured around the world with gigs never tiring and losing faith in what they were doing so there’s still hope for next year. Onwards and upwards, I myself have a fantastic summer to look forward to in my personal life and events like Goodwood and other things occurring. Luckily for me, this hasn’t ruined anything at all. I’ve probably annoyed far too many people about this, and this is absolutely the last time I shall talk about how I feel about it all. However, I still love the band, I still love their music and I’ll continue to support them. This world tour will still make me ask myself though…

…why?

A question I suppose I’ll never know the answer to.

#6; Summertime Blues?

We've entered the Easter holidays it seems and as I've previously mentioned we're well into the Springtime now. Easter's a nice time for me, I'm certainly not a religious person so the pleasant feeling doesn't come from the religious aspect of the holiday but these 2 weeks for pretty vital personally in charging up my batteries in a rush for the final few weeks of university where assignmetns flood in and stress levels rise. So it's nice these weeks to have a chance to relax before the storm comes in.

I've been thinking a lot these past few days about the summer as well and what possibilities it holds for me. I don't have many plans at all; I'd absolutely love to go to Devon or Cornwall for a few days and have the opportunity to relax in the sunsets of the cornish coast with a pasty or ice cream but I can't see it happening sadly, which is a shame. My driving lessons are coming to a close now though, as I slowly make my way towards the final steps before my driving test, so if I pass by the summer then fingers crossed for that possibility.

There's also other little events like the Goodwood Festival that I'm hugely interested in attending this year. Every year I see it on TV and it amazes me to see these classic cars in what seems such a lovely atmosphere and from feedback from friends it's an amazing few days to experience as a fan of motorsport, so I'm definitely looking at that to get away in the summer.

To be honest the summer does give me much mixed feelings; the weather really is lovely and you get some beautiful days in the summer, everyone seems to be in a good mood and it's a lovely time but I personally get so much time off University (from stat of June to end of September, so 3 months) that it eventually gets extremely tiring being off so much and not finding much to do with my time. As bizare as that probably sounds, it doesn't take long before I want to get out of Uni when it starts up again! It's a very strange set of feelings...

There's not much point to this entry, I just felt like rambling about the summer because it's so lovely outside at the moment. Another highlight is the fact Muse's new album will finally be out towards the end of the summer/start of the autumn so I'm mega excited for that! I'm excuted for the year in general to be honest as a few spects of my life have evolved so much in the past few months and there are new areas of my life that make me incredibly happy, so much more than I've been in the past year or two, so yeah. I'm a happy chappy!

I may do another post later on something else as I'm in a big writing mood today but we'll see.