One of my favourite music festivals is currently under-way in venues around Glasgow; Celtic Connections. It’s not just my favourite music festival because of the always-eclectic line-up, but because none of the bands are playing in boggy field, you don’t have to queue up for hours to wee in a bucket and you can sleep in a hotel rather than a leaky tent while your neighbours stay up until 4am singing the hits of The Monkees over and over again and arguing over where they got their cheap fitted wardrobes from…
My busy schedule does not permit me to catch up with old friends. I do not have many friends because I am very choosy and fussy about my company. It has become more and more difficult to stay in touch with my close friends in the past few months. I finally got an opportunity when one of my best friends got married recently. I pulled out my wedding suits and made sure I was set to enjoy the event.
Some people go through their lives grabbing new friends at every opportunity. They see friends as numbers on Facebook, or people they can rely on whenever they need to find out something quickly. I have never seen friends like that, and that’s why I have had the same set of friends since I was at uni, when I was a mere 18.
When I tell people this, they sometimes look at me a bit strange and make out that that is weird and I should be making new friends all the time. But my argument is this: how can I have time for my true friends when I am busy making new ones all the time? It just doesn’t make any sense to me. To my mind, a friend is someone who is there for you whenever you need them, not someone who you have to chat on Facebook with five times a day.
Of course, it’s not always easy to meet up with my original friends from the olden-uni-days. They have busy lives and stuff to do. So, to counteract this problem, every year we all meet up at the coast for the weekend. Just me and my friends and no outsiders, no internet access either!
Great.
Henry: he’s a fireman and at uni he was the laziest person in our year.
That’s not to say that my friends haven’t changed – if one thing has happened that has. But it is an organic change, and they’d still be my mates even if they changed completely.
Take Sarah for example; at uni, Sarah was always getting in trouble for being late with everything. Now? She’s a commercial estate agent known for her fastidious approach to closing deals. Unthinkable. And then Henry: he’s a fireman and at uni he was the laziest person in our year. And then Laura, who was a seriously dizzy air-head…she’s now working in the courts with young offenders, in a role which is steeped in responsibility. And it goes on and on…really, if you just bumped into them in the street you wouldn’t ever recognise them from uni. That’s probably a good thing. I hate getting stopped and asked if I am me!
I don’t know, but I think I have stayed relatively the same over the years. Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe everyone changes and I have it wrong. But whatever the case, I’m not bothered; people either like you or don’t like you, and really, there’s not a whole lot you can do to change that.
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But do our tax revenues extend to these heights? Not only is the US government publicising propaganda about the good fight they engage in countries like Libya, Afghanistan More
Many would say that the UK industry has fallen so bad that it never makes anything anymore. That statement is partially correct and partially wrong. To begin with lets take a few names that the UK can be proud of - Brompton Cycles, Aston Martin, Jaguar & Land Rover, BAE; production of the MANTIS (the first fighter craft that will fight with an AI rather than having a human control like the Predator Drone) and the Typhoon Fighter (one of More
Local is the word these days, from local foods to local sports partners, why not host a local music festival of your own? It can seem incredibly daunting if you think only of the end product. What you need to do is break it down into manageable steps and get on with it. The first thing that you need to do is find a venue. Choose some place that wants to host the event and will be accommodating. It More
Our transition from folk to rock is very clear, we had an age of artists, folk music artists who suddenly one day plugged their guitars into amplifiers and conceived rock in a day. Yes it is true however fictious it may seem as a story to tell your friends, but trust me you will. It all started with Bob Dylan’s Maggie’s farm at the Newport Folk music festival in some year i’m not sure. He plugged the guitar in and More
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I’m sure many people have an image of folk music fans as middle-aged couples in sensible sweaters and walking boots, probably with glasses and slightly crazy hair, sipping halves of real ale while tapping their feet to some guy with a fiddle playing a tune about how “my true love went and left me when she fell a-down the well”.
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