I love my music as I believe you may know if you follow my column regularly.

I’m quite content to listen to it through my headphones on the move or in the comfort of my own home but nothing quite beats the thrill of seeing your favourite acts live.

However there is many an irritation guaranteed to spoil your jollity whilst indulging in stimulation of the ears and eyes so with the festival season and castle concerts fast approaching, let me advise you on a couple of the most annoying so that you can be prepared and help prevent the spoiling of everybody else’s viewing and auditory experience with a little gig going etiquette guide.

So let’s kick things off with a personal bugbear and something that those classed as 5ft 3 and under will probably also identify with as being the bane of their life.

If you are lucky enough to be able to see no matter where you stand in the venue please do spare a thought for those who can’t as there’s nothing quite as gutting than having to spend the entire evening staring at the back of someone’s head or contorting yourself to catch a glimpse of the performance through the crook of an elbow.

Ditto anyone who puts up a large umbrella at open air concerts or thinks it’s ok to climb up onto the shoulders of a friend.

 The latter is only acceptable if you are a small child, if you are old enough to know better i would recommend purchasing a suit of armour from the merchandise stall if you plan on maintaining this position for the duration of the performance as by now not only will your ears be burning from the angry mutterings of those directly behind you but you are also now the prime target for any missiles and debris being thrown.

One for those blessed with beautiful long tresses now, if you feel the need to dance wildly, please be my guest, do your thing, go with the flow however do watch what you’re doing with your hair if the venue is packed tightly like a world record attempt at the biggest game of sardines as whipping someone repeatedly in the face with a follicular cat o nine tails isn’t the best way to create an amazing friendship bond.

And so to conclude we come upon the most recent annoyance to join us and perhaps the ultimate irritation for many.

If music be the food of love, play on said the bard, so it’s no surprise that many artist’s not just Adele get a bit miffed with and refuse to carry on playing to an audience that are so engrossed in trying to capture a tiny grainy often incoherent image that they don’t seem to be exhibiting  any kind of respect to what’s going on in front of them at all.

So  do your favourite artists and fellow audience members a favour, put down the iPads , tablets ,cameras and phones and use the amazing gadgets like your brain ,ears and eyes to create memories of the show.

 

 

A funny old game

Football, it’s a funny old game, so one beloved veteran football pundit of Saturday morning TV used to say.

As I’ve informed you before I’m no expert in this particular field of sporting achievement, so the question I have to ask comes from a purely curious point of view rather than that of ignorance and upon asking some who do have in interest in it it’s clear that it’s something that baffles some of them too.

 So let’s open up a right old can of worms in true football style, here we go, here we go, here we go.

A premiership football team manager gets sacked because his team haven’t been playing well and the best candidate the forces that be decide is suitable as his replacement is someone who’s been sacked from another team for exactly the same reason.

How no-one spots the glaringly obvious possible fatal flaw in that cunning master plan I’ll never know.

And they have the audacity to sing that the poor old referee should’ve gone to spec savers.....

EURO-2016-VISION

(Obviously this should be posted before the post on Eurovision , however as I am a technical dunce and have no idea how to rearrange it as such please do forgive me for the lack of order )

Now, I’m no football pundit, in fact if I were I’d probably be less the smooth suave sophistication of the silver fox that is Gary Lineker and more like the “I have absolutely no idea what’s going on Jeff, but I’ll just try to wing it by making it up as I go along and hope no-one notices” style of Chris Kamara, but wasn’t it great to see Leicester City waltz off with that Premiership League title.

There’s nothing we Brits like better than to see an underdog snatch a victory away from those who were so sure they were going to win just because of their popularity or notoriety who haven’t realised that you have to back up that sort of pomposity with a little bit of effort ,skill and quality .

So I was thinking maybe it might be worth a punt to get Claudio Ranieri to have a word with our UK Eurovision entrants, Joe and Jake, ahead of the song contest next week.

British Ham-stores

Hello children, are we all settled in?

 Sit up straight and face front please that’s lovely, let us begin.

Today I’d like to introduce you to some hardworking mice and tell you all about the trouble they had with a stout and portly feline whose name was Pip.

The main character in our rodent tale is a little mouse called Chris, who your storyteller had the good fortune to grow up with and learn great things from.

 So enough with this idle chit chat, let’s get straight on with setting the scene for our story....

Down amongst the nettles, beneath the brambles and the stones there stood a little store where a group of mice worked their fingers to the bone.

Lampshades and school uniform, cutlery and bedding, vests, pants, socks, stocking fillers, something for your wedding.

You name it and they’d have it, it used to be the only place to go but now business wasn’t quite as brisk, in fact it had become quite slow.

They were struggling to make ends meet one day when a stoutly pussycat came calling, he could help them out he said, he seemed so welcome and warming.

I’ll invest my money in you, I’ll make you happy, just wait and see, purred the stately puss as he requested the crème de la crème for his tea.

One mouse however had her misgivings about their furry saviour; there was something about Pip Vert she didn’t trust, which smelt somewhat of a traitor.

Her suspicions were confirmed one morning as she diligently toiled away, she had yet to meet the new boss face to face and they were due a visit today.

She became aware of someone staring, talking behind her back; she spun round to be confronted with a rotund smug looking cat.

 Who are you she enquired as his breath into her face he blew,

“Don’t you know” he growled into her face, “I own this so I own you”

Angered at his pomposity our heroine did retaliate, you’ll be glad to hear she replied to him with “no-one owns me, mate”.

He chuckled to himself, said I like her she’s got spunk then slunk away to gorge himself on a great big business lunch.

Now Chris Mouse she retired a while ago, left the business well behind but others carried on working for the feline boss thinking they had peace of mind.

That was until Pip Vert jumped ship and their future plans hit the skids as he sailed away on his supermodel laden yacht and sold British Ham-Stores for a quid.

Now they wish they hadn’t trusted the fat cat with the big palatial house and wish they had listened to a small outspoken mouse.

 

 

 

 

EUROMIZMOG

Eurovision, it’s the ultimate in metaphorical marmite, you either love it, hate it or think you’re much smarter than everyone else just because you don’t watch it.

It’s no surprise then that the know it all’s were out in force on social media come May  14^th, with their smart Alec cries of “ maybe I’ve been living on Mars or something but I’m pretty sure last time I looked Australia weren’t part of the European union so how can they be taking part in the competition “

So to set the minds at rest of those who claim not to care but obviously do care quite greatly, our friends down under were invited to take part as guest participants in 2015 to celebrate the 60^th anniversary of the world’s favourite song contest.

 It has been broadcast over there every year since 1983 and has gained a huge cult following.

It was originally meant to be a one off thing however they were offered the chance to take part again in 2016 if this time instead of a guaranteed spot in the final they were willing to compete in the semi finals to secure their place just like everybody else did.

This big hoo-ha over their involvement does make me laugh though when you consider the fact that we, the United Kingdom, have been willing on more than one occasion to let one of our Aussie friends take the lead vocal reins on our entry over the past 60 years of the competition.

In 1974 , Miss Sandy Olson herself , Olivia Newton John trilled Long live love and landed a 4^th place on the scoreboard for the U.K that we could only dream about achieving today .

And who can forget Oohing and aahing just a little bit along with the statuesque antipodean beauty that was Gina G back in the summer of 96.

 Plenty of other countries have enlisted the talent of vocalists that might not necessarily come from their own shores to lend their tracks a helping hand, Celine Dion for example first came to our attention if you remember as the French Canadian singer of 1988’s winning Swiss entry so maybe it’s time to stop taking it all quite so seriously and just enjoy it as the glorious bit of human eccentricity we take much delight in either adoring or berating year in, year out.

After all if it wasn’t for the dulcet tones of a certain lady vocalist from the United States letting her love shine a light in every corner of the world back in 1997, step forward Miss Katrina Leskanich and your assorted group of waves, then our run of not getting anywhere might have been a lot longer than almost 20 years.

Full of " it "

You see the thing about teenagers is that they’re full of it, aren’t they?

We should know we all used to be one once and let’s face it when we look back on ourselves and the way we acted at that age even we cringe about some of the things we got up to, said and did.

It doesn’t take long across the everyday grapevine, let alone any social network, for something said in jest and japery to be passed along like Chinese whispers and turned into something that sounds much worse than it actually is, so it’s probably a little understandable that the head of Chatham grammar for girls reacted in the way she did to rumours of year 11 pupils coming in on their last day dressed as militants and letting off fireworks.

However had she and the staff taken a moment to remember what it was like to be a teenager, i think they might have realised what they were hearing was quite highly likely to be wildly exaggerated.

APOLOGIES

My updating of the blog has got a bit behind recently so some of my column pieces aren't in the same order they were published in
Nina x