Day 136 – Very vintage
Everyone has to go back to their respective homes today and as we gather round for a fry it feels like the last day of a holiday which has ended far too soon.
When I wake up this morning there are several mysteries which need to be solved. First and foremost:
Why is it that I still have my dress and shoes on?
What happened to the dancing?
Why does the boy have a fairy cake beside his pillow?
The only one question I do have the answer for is why on earth my head feels like it is going to explode; cocktails. 
The boy and I spend a little time trying to figure out answers for the other three which is when I discover my sofa sleeper antics and the fact that I refused to take off my dress because I insisted I would very soon be able to go to the club and therefore getting undressed was a silly option. The reason the boy has a fairy cake beside his pillow may be because he was afraid of someone stealing it. In his defence they are quite yummy.
We are all extremely lazy this morning and as we piece together last nights events over breakfast I am reminded of why I hate Facebook. Tagging. Unfortunately the gang have managed to get some pretty horrific photos of me fast asleep and I look more like Dracula than Sleeping Beauty. Perhaps because my lips are stained red from all the strawberry based cocktails. 
The boy at least finds me cute when I am asleep but he is blinded by love and an unreliable source.
We end up eating out for dinner as well as lunch and I start to worry that my vintage frock will fold under the weight of a fry and a Sunday roast. Luckily though the tailors of yesteryear were rather more skilled in their crafts and the dress withstands the extra weight with no noticeable strain.
We eat out at Enigma (place of the monster munch massacre) and also at a pub called The Stags Head. My mother treats us to the roast as she has been thwarted in her plans to plane it out to her hideaway in Ireland by the ash cloud. Luckily it has not upset the nice weather and once our hangovers subside it is a lovely lazy Sunday which ends all too soon.
For the first time in months the boy is able to stay the evening and not having to say goodbye to him makes for a much nicer end to my birthday celebrations.
- Today’s dress is from Best Vintage in Manchester. The manager there is an absolute sweetheart and gave us the dress along with three others for a reduced rate. I know I am pale but it does seem to suit something this delicate so I do not feel as self conscious about my milk bottle legs as usual. Saying that one of my bestest friends has spray tanned her legs last night and they looked gorgeous. I am seriously considering getting myself some which might make images a little more glamorous in time for the summer months. The label on the dress said it is from the 1950s and the shoes are again from Dune via ebay. The car is my mothers which sadly I am uninsured top drive though it doesn’t stop me wishing.
Day 98 – My baby brother
My baby brother took the photos today on the one condition that he would not have to get up from his chair to do so. He has taken them before but got so carried away with finding cool angles and forgetting to include the dress in the shots that he has not been given another chance behind the lens until now. We did not start too well, the first three photos were of the armchair in front of him and the next two had the dress but no head. He pointed out quite rightly that had I wanted heads to be the focus I really should have named the project 365 heads and not 365 dresses. Darn him and his impenetrable logic.
The poor boy is not feeling so well today as he has been visited in the night by the dreaded Balti bug and after a day of drinking only water he is apparently too weak to move. I pointed out that Jesus had gone for 40 days without sustenance which unfortunately reminded him that I had recently misquoted the messiah in the local press.
When Paul was born I think it was a bit of a shock to everyone. My mother was not entirely sure how to care for a boy and we were all fascinated by the fact that we now had a baby brother. Luckily for my mother she had six willing hands to help to get him through his early years. Though none of us were ever keen on barbie dolls, preferring to play cops and robbers instead, the temptation of a real life doll to care for was impossible for any of us to resist. I worry we rather spoilt him to begin with, there was always someone to cut up his food, tie up his laces or tuck him in when he was having a bad dream. We adored him and our willingness to treat him like a little angel was not helped by his sweet nature, dusty blonde hair and baby blue eyes.
Every night before he went to sleep I would read him Goldilocks and the Three Bears to soothe him to sleep. It was the most adorable thing in the world to watch as his little baby blue eyes fought to stay awake to hear the tale. I do not think we ever made it to the point of the three bears arrival to the story but I like to think this meant no demons ever entered his dreams.
When he first went to school he could sing the alphabet, read a book and even draw his letters. There was one little issue though. He did not have a clue how to do up his coat or tie up his laces. Sister Rosario, who had taught every single one of my mother’s girls, watched in sheer horror as my brother, asked to put his coat on ready to go outside to play, put his arms out in the air and waited for someone to dress him. It really was not his fault, he had never had the chance to learn because he always had one of his four mothers there to do the honours.
- Today’s dress is on loan from my sister. It is originally from Next but I think it is definitely better suited to her. She is taller than me and suits spotty dresses better than I do. I think I look a little too matronly and wide at the hips.
Day 90 – A sad day for shoes
Today has been a sad day for footwear. Back when I was a a 23-year-old with the world at my feet and a job as an events manager which paid a tidy little sum my main outgoing other than restaurant bills and bar tabs was shoes, I was obsessed with them. For the first time in my life since I was 18 I was totally debt free. Out of my monthly salary after all bills were paid I still had an indecent amount left over to spend on myself. Though I smoked and had a fondness for Marks & Spencer sushi and sausage and onion cobs every Friday when I was too hangover to use the phone, I had no children, no mortgage and no monthly car insurance or pension payments. I was young, free, practically single and absolutely loving the independence of it all.
The boy was living a hand to mouth existence as he was still studying for his music degree but I was free to fund our outings and as one of the girlfriend of Manchester’s hardest working band I got to play the part nearly every weekend; we would all hangout backstage drinking down the riders, dragging on rolled up cigarettes and generally just hanging out feeling ever so slightly like the cool kids.
At the time I guess I knew the life we were living would not last forever. I was having a hell of a good time but work was taking its toll on my health and I’d dropped down to my smallest size since I’d had a minor eating disorder back when I was 18. I remember looking at my bank statement and feeling sad at how little I had to show for all the brilliant nights out and evenings just spent drinking red wine round a rickety table listening to music and playing cards in between musing upon our dreams for the future.
Other than Sylvanian Families I had never really felt the desire to collect anything. My sisters had their key-rings, their badges and even at one stage their dice and my brother had the monopoly on every phase and craze out there including Thomas The Tank Engines, Thunderbirds, Power Rangers and even at one stage care bears which was extraordinarily cute. It was when I realised I was spending much of my money on momentary pleasure products that I decided to start a collection and as I had no particular interest at the time in tea cups I decided I would collect shoes. As my regular readers know I am a slave to Kurt Geiger. The shoes they make are so well balanced you can stamp around in a pair of stilettos for sixteen hours straight without feeling an ache. They are creative, original and considering how well they last lusciously priced.
This then brings us to today’s dilemma. There is a man in Market Harborough, his name is Andy but I have always known him as the saviour of shoes. Many times I have brought him a forlorn pair at the end of their life and he has carefully restored them to beauty. One time he managed to restore my red or dead spike heeled stiletto ankle boots to spanking brand new in spite of me having ground the five inch heel to a mere three inches after a weekend in Liverpool visiting a friend where we danced till we dropped to sleep in his dorm just before dawn. Today Andy very kindly explained to me there was sadly nothing he could do for two of my favourite pairs.
One of them was the first pair of pricey shoes I had ever purchased. Brought in my lunch break from Berties at Kendall they were soft white leather with five inch thick wooden heels. Generally I believe white shoes should be saved till ones wedding day and even then they should be hidden and if possible cream but these were divine. Unfortunately as I tend to run in heels as well as walk whilst racing to get the bus back to see the boy after an after work drink my heel snapped on Deansgate. It was humiliating and I actually sat down and cried. I hadn’t even had any hooch but I was just so sad for my poor innocent shoe. Andy said it could be saved in an expensive operation but the job would have to be sourced out and the operators may well break the wood in the process.
The other pair are of the Kurt Geiger variety. I bought them foolishly after getting made redundant from Webb PR a month before Christmas. I was a little heart broken about losing the job and in a fine example of someone who had temporarily given leave to their senses and indeed their financial situation I sneaked away on a Christmas shopping trip with the boy, and bought three pairs of shoes in the sale. Admittedly they should have cost £400 and came to just £120 but still I had just been made redundant and with no job on the horizon it was a foolish mistake. I guess I have never regretted it because today, 15 months after the fact, I still have the shoes and they are still stunning. Unfortunately one of them, a pair of mustard yellow t-bar three inch heels was mortally injured back in May. I was chasing a story at the time and as I tore down the road the pin snapped and I had to traipse around on tippy toes the rest of the day. Andy says there is no hope for them and though I know I should consign them to the bin they are just too lovely, perhaps at some time in the future there will be better technology for such injured shoes? I live in hope.
- Today’s dress is from the wonderful Rebecca Allison. She sent this in a lovely package from the states and as well as a pair of earrings there was a beautifully written letter. I realise the dress comes up a little short on me but I hope you will not take too much of a hump at me modifying it for the workplace by pairing it with the skin tight Lycra number from Zara sent by the lovely Clara, believe me it is to protect your eyes from a legging lovely sight. Again if you do get the chance take a little look at her website. It is a fabulous way to start ones day and has given me goosebumps in the past with the sheer poetry of her posts. http://solsticetosolsticetosolstice.tumblr.com/
Day 73 – A hippy dress or a cunning ploy to disguise myself as a fruit salad
My mother was a fast reader just as am I and she constantly fell foul of a rap across the knuckles because of not being able to bear reading at the level of the class which was always just seven pages too slow. One of her funniest but saddest memories is the fate of her panda bear toy when she was a little girl. Being the kind, generous and caring person that she is whenever a child would get sick at her boarding school she would gift them her panda bear to cheer them up. Unfortunately one of the nuns spotted the link between sick children and panda possession and stole the toy away throwing it on the incinerator as my mother watched with horror. Perhaps it was this story which made me so fond of panda bears. I used to have a ridiculous collection of knitted panda toys when I was younger and believe they are still in storage as neither me or my mother could bear to give them to an unworthy home. I once went to see the panda at London Zoo after hassling my parents for months to take me and instead of russian dolls I have russian pandas.
After attaining an indecent number of As for her leaving certificate my Mummy travelled across the Irish Sea to study at a teaching college. It was during the 70s, thus today’s dress, but free love did not extend to many of the pubs and rental agents round London who displayed an offensive sign in their windows which read; No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs. My mother was lucky to have friends and family to take her in but whilst she was studying she stayed in Coventry at a girls dormitory whilst studying to teach English to the boys who would soon be out patrolling the streets of her home town as the troubles escalated. It was whilst at college that my mother met the giant. I will save their story for another day but to cut a long, hilarious story short they got married within a year of meeting one another and lived a terribly romantic hand to mouth existence until they were able to afford to move out of their first house which they had hated. My mother fell pregnant with my eldest sister two years into their marriage and had my other sister a few years after. She gave up work soon after she had Catherine but had planned to return to it once they were a little older. They moved with both girls to Market Harborough to what would soon be my first home on Coventry Road
Apparently my mother knew nearly straight away she was pregnant because she had to stop smoking as it would leave her sick, I like to think she would have stopped anyway for health reasons but I am not so sure as the minute we were all born she would return to the temptation and liberation of a packet of Malboro Lights. I remember her smoking when I was younger, in the kitchen only ever at night with a glass of Chardonnay. I would do my homework at the table in between chatting away to her about my day and hearing stories of her childhood and teenage years. The smoke bothered my sister and my brother but I rather liked it and put up with smoke filled eyes because I loved just being in her company. 
My mother has a warmth which surrounds her which draws everyone towards her. One of her friends once got upset because after introducing my mother to her friend who had come to stay for the week, the friend became more attached to my mother than my mother’s friend. It is not necessarily anything she does which makes her so popular with everyone she meets it is I think more to do with her presence. There are few people who are accepting of themselves, flaws and all, but my mother is one of them and it means she is great fun to be around. She will never bitch herself but I believe she secretly enjoys it when I dish the dirt and providing I remember not to swear or be unkind I will avoid her tongue lashing and make her laugh no end. 
I sometimes worry about her kindness as people have let her down in the past and though I am not a particularly confrontational person when it comes to my mother I am fiercely protective and my claws have been known to come out quicker than Wolverines.
I am in awe of what she does and even though I was against it from the beginning because I worried she wouldn’t be able to handle the loss which is a part of the job I am glad she took the job now. Although it breaks her heart every time one of her patients dies, she is able to bring people who are sick and their carers and loved ones some comfort and warmth in what is an impossible period of their lives. It is a testament to how good a person she is that after working at the job for years she has not hardened one bit and is still devastated when they die.- My sister reluctantly leant me this dress as she is rather keen on it and is saving it for the festivals. I do love it but felt like a cross between a pregnant sunflower and a fat fruit salad sweet. I wore it most of the day with a polo-neck but wish it had been warmer so I could wear it with flip flops outside. The photos were taken after a brilliant game of scrabble where we made the board wide open and where I got the highest scoring word of the night but still came fourth because I failed to get rid of my Z. I do love Scrabble but wish I could win just once.
Day 68 – The three sisters
Cancer Research once ran a hateful little advert which showed three sisters running together in a beautiful meadow with the thoughtless tagline “One in three people will develop cancer during their lifetime.” The message was painfully clear, one of these girls is going to die of some form of cancer. Now obviously this was an incredibly strong marketing message and I am sure many people donated to cancer research as a result of seeing the advert. For myself however I was furious about the insensitivity of their actions and also I may as well admit a little bit drunk. I had been out with friends from college during the day and having come home to an empty house had polished off the leftovers of a bottle of wine so by the time I saw the advert my mind was in a rather altered state. To this day I feel terrible for the poor soul who picked the phone up to find a tearful teenager on the other day slurring sadly asking them again and again how they could dare to run such an insensitive campaign. In all fairness to her she was incredibly sympathetic and listened to me as I spilled my heart out about how much I missed my sister instead of telling me to go jump.
To this day thinking of the advert still makes me sick. It is partly because I struggle to believe how a charity who dedicate themselves to finding a cure for cancer can be so uncaring about those people who have been left bereaved by losing someone to this terrible disease. The main reason it makes me feel so sick however is that looking back at that advert I see the hidden story behind the statistic. It is not one in three, but more than one in three of us who will develop cancer during their r lifetime. It makes me feel scared but also relieved because it forces me to realise that I am at least lucky enough to still have one sister by my side.
The reason it has taken me so long to upload this posting is because although my childhood memories of my two sisters and brother will forever be tinged by sadness because of our loss I wanted this post to be a celebration of the love I had and still have for my two older sisters. I do not want to focus on the hurt and the sadness, I want to focus on these two brilliant women who I am lucky enough to have in my life; Emma Helen Marie and Catherine Yvonne O’Neill.
One of my favourite memories of when we were little ones is of our twice weekly bath time. My baby brother was still a babe in arms and so bath time was all about girl time. We would splash about in the huge tub attempting to create a giant tsunami which would cause the ducks to get tipped out of the bath. We would push our fingers in the taps and find hours of entertainment in pouring water into our three funny faced buckets. We were total water babies and only when there was more water on the floor than in the bath would our mother step in to get us washed and wrapped up in huge fluffy towels with tiny turbans. After getting squeaky clean we would be marched on through to our parents bedroom to get dried and dressed for bed in a two parent tag team production line. My father would dry our toes whilst tickling our feet before handing us over to my mother who would comb quickly through our hair ignoring the squeals and squirms as our tangles got tugged. They would then take it in turns to get us into a clean pairs of pyjamas with plenty of tickling, cuddles and the fabulous “Arms over your head and drop those guns.”
Although we never got bored of this routine, especially when it was accompanied by story telling and allocated time before lights out to say prayers and build dens there was one time the routine was made to be particularly memorable. The school had been hit by nits and after spending hours freeing us of the pesky parasites my mother decided that the reason all three of her children had fallen pray to the tics was their long hair. She therefore decided to lop it off into a much more manageable length. We all screamed about the unfairness of it all particularly me who was determined to grow my hair as long as my friend Sarah Jane who was able to sit on hers. 
In spite of our protests my mother decided that as she had a pair of scissors and had once cut my fathers hair (she chopped off all the curls and made him near bold) she was essentially qualified to do the cutting. Fifteen minutes after our haircuts everything appeared to have gone well, and then the hair dried and it became apparent that our cuts were far from even. My two sisters were sent to the hairdressers the next day as they were old enough to be embarrassed by her antics. I however was too young to care too much and decided that it was all for the best as after all I did want to be a boy like George from the famous five who also had her hair short so in spite of the fact that I had a multiple directional slanted bob I was happy enough.
Although I wasn’t the youngest in the family I was the youngest girl and because of this my sisters were destined to spend much of their time acting as my defenders. I have always been ridiculously over sensitive and as I was always fairly slight this meant that my sisters always had an eye out for anyone who might even consider picking on me whilst they were around. 
I remember being on the school bus when I was 12 and a boy grabbing my wrist to stop me from opening the window; although it was the middle of winter I maintain I was in the right because the bus was jam packed full of teenage boys who were all convinced that Lynx was a substitute for showers and general good hygiene. Emma, my eldest sister pounced like a lioness from out of nowhere and grabbed the boy by the cuff and assured him that he ever laid a finger on me again he would live to regret it. Likewise when I started going to ATC, air training cadets, Catherine nearly clawed one of the senior officers after he made my cry by telling me off for talking during parade. I was always incredibly impressed whenever they came to my defence because at the time I think they both regarded me as a constant annoyance who was prone to temper tantrums and sulking if I didn’t get my own way.
One of the things we argued about the most when we were children is borrowing one another’s clothes. We would have screaming rows on discovering evidence of clothes or shoes being borrowed without asking first. We would scream accusations about clown feet having ruined our favourite pair of shoes and would point furiously at photographs where we were wearing each others dresses or sweaters. I remember once bumping into Cathy in the school corridor and wondering why she didn’t want to stop to talk just as she was about to walk away I spotted that she had on my brand new shirt and chased her all the way to the sixth form common room where she hid till I had to go to lessons. I found a quote which reminded me so much of this moment that I had to include it in the post. ” If your sister is in a tearing hurry to go out and cannot catch your eye, she’s wearing your best sweater. – Pam Brown
In spite of all our arguments I am so glad that I was not an only child; whenever I was getting bullied at school or when our parents were arguing downstairs we always had someones hand to held. When you have sisters you might have to compete for attention and always get stuck with second and third hand clothes but you are never lonely. Whenever we were sad we would climb into each others beds to get a cuddle and tell each other everything was going to be al-right. We would tell each other everything and secrets never stayed secret for long. It was Catherine who would tell me about sex when I was eight after she was traumatised by a booklet from the school nurse. I remember us looking at our parents completely horrified at dinner the next day and when the time came for me to have my talk I told my teachers that there was really no real need as my sister had already told me all I needed to know.
Emma who was the eldest of all of us was a great big sister. When I was a teenager and going through the usual angst she took pity on me and let me come to visit her at University even though I usually managed to get myself into some kind of trouble whilst there. She taught me how to handle my drink and introduced me to poached eggs, muffins and gin and tonic. It was Emma who would teach me how to surf and who taught all of us an alternative much more realistic way to cross the road which I can still hear her saying in my head to this day whenever I cross the road: “Look left, look right, look left, count to three then run across the road.”
My big sister still takes care of me to this day and no matter how many times I have head troubles she never gets mad she just gives me a cuddle, and helps me to pick up the pieces. When I last had a breakdown she travelled hundreds of miles to spend the weekend with me and give the boy a break from trying to care for me. She brought me up my favourite foods, drove me around to get us a takeaway and some rose to numb the pain and even cleaned out the fish to take away at least one worry as well as letting me moan like a child for hours about how miserable I was feeling. In the past she has paid for me to go surfing just because she knew I needed a break and even puts up with giving me countless lifts whilst I wait for my car to be returned from the body shop.
When I was looking for quotes and articles about sisters there were two that stuck ion my mind, one of them was, “What is the good of news if you do not have a sister to share it with.” Although it breaks my heart that there is so much I cannot share with Catherine, such as all the times I have fallen in love since she died, what results I got for my GCSEs, the day I got a frontpage by-line in the MEN, I do realise how lucky I am to have my Emma who always lights up when something good comes my way and who will always lend me a lap or a shoulder to cry upon when I am having a hard time.
The other quote which I fell in love with a bit was by Sara Corpening, “How do people make it through life without a sister?” It makes me realise how lucky we were to have had one another and for all the time we got to spend together. My childhood would never have been as fun without them by my side and I am a better person for having been loved by them.
- Today’s dress is on loan from my sister Emma Helen Marie. It is from some unknown designer and I had to iron it and combine it with an under-slip as it was pretty much see through. My mother and the giant were out and about in the evening so I tried at first to take the photos myself using the landing mirror but in the end I decided to wait up till my mother returned to get some better images. The flowers were a gift from my fairy god mother to my mummy and me.
Day 60 – It begins; the boy and I part three
At last I hear you say, the end of the story is nigh. Today I considered not finishing this little modern-day romantic fairy tale because I have had a bloody awful day. I thought that if I was going to write this blog, I was going to do so by waxing lyrical on how utterly awful I am feeling; how sick I am of taking tablets which leave me nauseous and sleepy; and, how awfully cross I am about finding I have put on weight, another joyful side effect of quetiapine. Instead however I have decided to swallow down the bitterness and rather than dwell on the present pain to immerse myself instead in the ghosts of my past in the hope I can fight off the persistent pull of negativity which has been weighing me down since yesterday. 
And so the boy and I after spending a night and day together but had parted ways with no way of contacting one another. Luckily our mischievous matchmaking friend had more up her sleeve having decided we were the perfect match. The next day whilst I was daydreaming about the boy and puzzling over whether or not I should go on a date with the other Chris, the boy was sending a message to our friend along the lines of, “Niki I’m a total idiot, I forgot to ask her for her number. Please can you send it to me.” Niki did not hesitate to strum the strings of fate and shortly after I received a text from the boy asking if I wanted to come and see him play a gig at Glass in Fallowfield. In all honesty I wasn’t terribly impressed, in spite of taking a fancy to him whilst he was on stage, I was certainly not about to behave like some kind of groupie girl and go along to watch adoringly as he drummed away like a toy soldier. 
Instead I went out with some friends and it was not until he invited me on a proper date, to see Gideon and The Deadbeats, now known as The Ten Bears, that I conceded to come along.
When I went to meet him I arrived early so I could catch up with my friend and after admitting I was rather terrified about the prospect of going alone to a gig with a man I barely know she decided it would be best to come along to assist with the magic, and also because she really fancied seeing the band. As this was the wonderful hazy days before the smoking ban, the Academy looked rather magical and with the hippy smoke floating about it was hard not to relax a little and take in the music. Gideon Conn is a bit of a lyrical genius and when he played the little ditty, Londonderry, which is about a first date between two people who are from Derry gosh darn it not Londonderry, I leaned back into the boys chest and felt rather loved up. 
We ended up all going back to his place for some drinks after the gig and when my friend and her lover went to bed we shared a little kiss before I went on home. I was mad at myself because i was being so careful to take it slow, because I knew I really liked him and was aware most of the last years affairs had ended as a result of me becoming too quickly involved. Though the kiss was nice it was a little too much down to how much we had drunk to steady our nerves.
After this date I tried to back away a little bit and after talking to some friends decided the best thing to do was to play it cool. I was in the middle of doing a dissertation on dating literature and though I had condemned the Rules as utter rubbish more dangerous to women than sexist males there were a few things I had taken from it. For example if you make it too easy for a man it can take away the fun of the chase and they will soon be looking for another lady who is willing to treats them mean. Though there is no way of knowing whether the boy would have been as keen on me if I had turned over on the night we first shared a bed and given him a good snogging, I am always glad we took things a day at a time. 
It made everything so much fun and meant we went on a host of date nights including a disastrous cinema outing where I demanded we leave after 10 minutes because it was so dire and a pub crawl which was rather messy but all of them ended in the same civil manner with a bit of a peck and then a goodnight sweetheart.
As our first date was spent in the company of a chaperone, we have come to the conclusion over the years that the night on which we should celebrate our anniversary is the first date we had by ourselves. I was completely nervous about the whole experience as by then I knew I really rather liked him but was still technically dating the other Chris though I knew it was just a matter of time before it fizzled out. 
After several hundred outfit changes I settled on a knee-length reddy brown leather skirt, a pair of black Red or Dead pointy ankle boots with a silver spike heel and buckles which one of my exes had brought me, a black T-Shirt and a frilly sleeveless black polo neck over the t-shirt to hide the ridiculous print on the t-shirt. Over the whole thing I had to wrap myself in my Burberry Mac which I was cross about because it meant the first thing he saw when I walked in would be the coat and not the carefully chosen outfit.
We were both late for the date, though I had messaged ahead to tell him not to hurry he still got there before me and was sat with a drink and a cigarette looking nervous. I couldn’t spot him when I first came in and the butterflies in my stomach started to dance about. He smiled when he saw me and I myself felt all a flutter when I saw he had made an effort to look nice. 
I fancied him and we had the nicest evening chatting about music, life, art and even our mutual friends and our own families. The evening took a bit of a turn when he decided, or maybe it was me that it was only fair we brought a second bottle of wine so as not to leave the other person out-of-pocket. I am by my own omission a total light weight and when we got on the bus I was horribly aware that I had drunk too much. He had suggested going for another drink in Withington at Solomon and Grundys which would soon become our local hang out, but when the bus started to move I was suddenly aware of how much I needed to get some fresh air. Turning to him I muttered something vague about having had a lovely evening and how it really was time to go home, then I lurched off the bus. 
I still could have retained some of my dignity if he had not stepped off with me sensing something was amiss and had the pleasure of watching his date throw up outside a building site in Fallowfield, a friend of mine later moved into the flats and I never had the courage to tell her I had thrown up in the foundations of her flat.
In all credit to him the boy was an utter star. rather than leave me to stagger home poorly and vulnerable he looked after me and took me back to his house. He tucked me into bed fully clothed but got me lots of water and a bowl, just in case. He shared the bed with me but surprisingly enough didn’t try anything funny and when he got up in the morning to go to work he kissed my forehead and brought me a cup of tea and left me some money just in case to get a cab home. I was utterly humiliated and as soon as he had gone I pulled on my jacket and bolted out the door. After a daytime nap I came clean to my flat mates about the dreadful date and was subjected to hours of teasing and even drawings to illustrate the incident as well as cries of, “well at least you’ll know he is not calling you because you slept together.” After it got past three however they seemed to have exhausted their insults and were now acting quite sympathetically as it had become clear he was never going to text back. 
I started to cry a little and decided to stop obsessing about it and leaving my phone in my room I joined the boys for our Friends and scrubs marathon. When I came upstairs to bed later on it was to find he had sent me a message after all: “Hey sweetie, you looked really pretty this morning. Was horrible leaving you. Hope you are feeling better, thanks for a great date x The rest as they say is history.
- Today’s dress is on loan from my lovely Auntie Bridgeen. It is from Primark and she loves wearing it on holiday. I managed to do something to my hair in spite of being fed up, put it in a bun after washing it then letting it down in the rain, and am wearing it with a vest for the cold and some suede black boots and opaque black tights for the warmth. The giant took the photos today thus why they are as my mother said a lot more demure than usual.
Cloud Sounds Interview
Cloud Sounds started out as a one man radio show ran by a local Withington lad, mainly from the comfort of his own home. In spite of apparently modelling himself on Oscar The Grouch, once one gets over his provocative sense of humour, (which leaves you shoving your fist in your mouth to keep from laughing as you wag your finger disapprovingly) Cloud Sounds is really just a six foot two inch teddy bear with a face better suited for TV than radio and one gets the feeling, if he abandoned the grumpy act, the ladies would be queuing up to talk music after every show. Even though occasionally coming across as a bit of a cross-patch, he is a savvy businessman when it comes to promotion. By making use of every social media platform available, he has ensured an admirable listener-ship and a respectable following none of whom could be bored by his bone tickling tweets.
Although the name Cloud Sounds has no air head attributes, his business sense and willingness to work hard to gain and keep followers means he has survived for four years in a market saturated by pod-casts. Part of the reason is his recognition of the importance of keeping his listeners keen, by treating them mean and teasing them with just one show a week. But perhaps the main reason for his success, is his refusal to compromise his taste and his carefully nurtured relationships with some of the UK’s most popular and talented unsigned bands.
Whereas other pod-casts usually only last a few months, after producers realise sourcing music is harder than it sounds, Cloud Sounds has continued with his weekly radio show. He manages to fit in working towards an MA in Arts Management, releasing the music of bands he likes through his own record label and even running a successful gig night at fuel once a month.
As the night is approaching its second birthday, I catch up with Ted to see how he enjoyed Christmas, what his thoughts are on Manchester’s music scene and his vision of a future for downloading music upon the guidance of respected gatekeepers.
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E.O: As an impoverished student, how is it you have been able to keep the monthly Cloud Sounds Present nights going?
CS: We get to use Fuel for free and as a venue they have their own PA. They often give you some money for the bands which comes in use, especially if they have come from a long way away. It’s not much, but it’s enough to cover the petrol money. We don’t charge entry for the nights so we don’t make any kind of return, but they’ll give us a couple of free beers and help out with promotion.
E.O: How do you go about promoting the Cloud Sounds night; do you have a team that can help out?
CS: We don’t have a huge amount of money, so we don’t print very many posters. Those that we do print, we put up around Piccadilly Records and Fopp and the Northern Quarter. What we tend to find is that because we are far outside of town, it is difficult to convince people based centrally to leave where they have started their night, this is why you will see most of our promotional material down here at Fuel and around Withington.
E.O: Have you considered starting up a new gig night in town to cater for the lazier lovers of unsigned bands?
CS: I’ve got lots of plans and ideas of which way we can be taking things. One of the plans is to take it in the direction of getting individual bands to play, bigger names than we can afford to pay at the moment. In order to get these, we might unfortunately have to start charging entry and that’s something we have been able to avoid doing at the Cloud Sounds Presents night so far.
E.O: You seem to be getting a lot of bands on from Wales of late. Is there any particular reason for this?
CS: I have focused a lot more on Wales of late, as that is where the music I like is coming out of. I think people appreciate the time and effort that we put into searching out bands. For me, the bands who have come from Wales are delighted to be getting played here, having never really gigged anywhere outside of Wales. They have travelled a long way and because of this they are usually well up for putting on a great show. For the end of the year Christmas special we put on a Welsh band called Y Niwl and they went down really well. They are Wales’ finest (and possibly only) surf band super-group and they were playing their first ever gig in England. They have ex-members in their make up of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, Eitha Tal Ffranco of Cate Le Bon’s band and Alun Tan Lan.
E.O: Does putting a lot of Welsh bands on, mean a lot of your fan base for the radio show are now stemming from Wales.
CS: We do get quite a lot of listeners from Wales. But then to be fair, at the moment if you look at where people are accessing the site from, we are getting people downloading the podcast from all over the world. It’s hard to see a pattern of where they are coming from especially, but we will see a couple of listeners from lots of different obscure places who have stumbled upon the site and then coming back to listen in to other shows too.
E.O: How do you manage to jiggle around studying for a masters in Arts Management with running the gig nights?
CS: There are three people who I would say together make keeping the show going, myself and two others. One is in charge of designing my website, he is a friend so is happy to help out free of charge. As we are re-designing the whole site at the moment, it’s a good way for him to showcase his talents and is a great help for me. The other person who helps particularly with the gig nights at Fuel is Tim from The Generalissimos. He does my sound on the night and has a hand in helping me decide which bands to put on, as I run a lot of stuff we get sent from various bands past him to get another perspective. His band have also played the unsigned night at Fuel on multiple occasions over the years.
E.O: What are the patterns of your listeners? Are a lot of them rather fickle in their habits?
CS: A lot of my listeners tend to just listen in for the Christmas special, so I try to put a lot of work into creating a good show. When I get back from Christmas, I usually have a lot more listeners as a result of the break and people just making New Years Resolutions to make more of an effort to listen in. There are some shows where we have done hardly any promotion, but for whatever reason we will just get a huge listener-ship. Then there are other times when you try and repeat the formula which you think may have made the previous show a success and the numbers go down again. You just can’t really tell what makes one show more popular than another.
E.O: What promotion do you put in place prior to the gig nights?
CS: There are some nights for which we do lots of promotion, but fail to get much of a mention in the press. We were plugged in The Guide by The Guardian just after Christmas which was pretty special. They did get the wrong date and were a little late on the information about the Christmas special (they listed it in The Guide in early January), but they said some really nice things about the show and it was great to get a mention.
E.O: How long ago did you start putting out the podcast?
CS: It was nearly four years ago now I started putting out and back then for a while I was doing a daily show on Unity Radio. We switched over to weekly slots and unfortunately, although they are doing really well, I had some difficulties with putting the show together. Unity were pretty small and I would turn up to record, having told my regular listeners when to listen out for me. I would have trouble getting into the studio as there would be nobody around to let me in. Now I do it from home it works out quite nicely. As it now gets released as a pod-cast, it means people are able to listen at their leisure once they have downloaded it for free.
E.O: The gig night coming up in March, what’s it for?
CS: As we cannot decide upon a fixed date from when the radio shows began, we have chosen to celebrate the anniversary of the Cloud Sounds Presents nights at Fuel. Although it is difficult to choose a birthday for the radio show due to all the stops and starts, it’s important as it is the root of everything else we are doing. When I started doing the pod-casts there weren’t many people out there doing what I was doing. At first I was just playing stuff I liked, often bands who I’d gotten to know and then I started moving more towards the unsigned stuff. There are hundreds of people now who put out pod-casts, but many seem to stop after a couple of months. I don’t think they really understand when they first start, the amount of work that goes into sourcing bands. It takes an awful lot of time and effort, but still there are a lot of people in Manchester who want to put out the tunes they like to listen to, stuff that isn’t necessarily available through Spotify or I-tunes.
E.O: How do you source new music for your shows?
CS: Back during the Myspace boom, everyone was doing Myspace and being really active about getting their music out there . It has tailed off a bit now, but I managed to form some good relationships with a lot of bands whose music I like and as a result I get a lot of their new stuff through to use on the show. I also get a lot through from PR companies and the Red Deer Club are especially good, the best I would say in Manchester. Sometimes I can get bands to email me individual MP3s of bits I want to play on the show, but you tend to find the better a band are, the more reluctant they are to send you stuff through. It’s the bands which are rubbish which usually do the most promotional work. What I do tend to find is we get a lot more through from bands who are interested in playing the gig night rather than sending in their stuff for the show, as you can reach a lot of people through the gig night and of course that means I will be mentioning them on the show in the run up to the gig, but it’s still good to get new material sent through.
E.O: What gig night’s do you particularly rate in Manchester?
CS: After a painfully long silence and some gentle encouragement: I guess they put some good stuff on at the Academy but I have been a bit busy of late to get out to many nights. Seems to be a lot of nights in Manchester who don’t really put on bands that I like to listen to, I feel as though the bands I play at the unsigned night are really very good and don’t understand why they aren’t getting as much of a chance to gig in more venues throughout the city.
I have never played a band that has gone on to become really huge. Wave Machine are obviously doing pretty well now, but even they haven’t yet become as big as I thought they would be. I haven’t yet seen any of the bands I have played over the years appear on the front cover of The NME. When I started doing the show the top two bands I was playing a lot of were Onions and The Loungs and I really thought they were very good at what they were doing. It was a few years ago now but I remember when I was listening to their stuff that I thought they were soon going to be two of the biggest bands in the country.
There are a lot of people out there, obviously not people who listen to Cloud Sounds, who just listen to what they are told to listen to and don’t put too much thought into trying to find new bands due to lack of time or inclination maybe. People tend to listen to what has been already validated and I have no doubt that if Onions were being plugged on Radio One and other more popular shows with all the power of the NME and their DJs putting them on their playlist, they would be huge by now and be featured in the NME but none of them are going to do that, perhaps because it’s the way they look or the way they don’t look.
E.O: How do you fit the show in around the masters?
CS: I usually have Christmas time off after the gig night and the end of year special, but this year due to deadlines I ended up taking six weeks off so it’s been great getting back to it. I do think it’s good to take a bit of time off as it does give people time to start to miss it and make New Year’s resolutions about listening to the show on a more regular basis, plus it gives people time to catch up on pod-casts and the special which is usually a good few hours of thirty tracks and the all important banter.
E.O: Have you ever considered doing live interviews on the show?
CS: This is something which has been on my mind now for quite a while. The difficulty is with doing the show from my house, is that they would have to come in through our home which isn’t really practical at the moment, also I only have one microphone for the time being. I say every year that I am going to find a way of doing it, so hopefully we will be doing them soon as it would be a good addition to the Cloud Sounds label.
E.O: Would you ever consider filming the show?
CS: Not really, for the same practical reasons, but it’s not something I would rule out. At the moment I am more interested in the idea of filming the gigs, as I am conscious of the fact that we have listeners from all over the world who I am frequently telling about fantastic upcoming gigs they aren’t able to attend unless they are really hardcore, so it would be good to share them on the show though I am not sure how difficult that might be.
E.O: What has been the best gig you have ever seen at Cloud Sounds Presents?
CS: This month it will be two years since we started putting on the gig night and I think the best nights I have seen are the ones where the bands really seem to be enjoying themselves. Sometimes you will see bands that have to play in front of ten people and I get very embarrassed when this happens. If a band is playing a gig to a big crowd of people it really makes a night, especially when you have the bands coming up to you afterwards to tell you how much they have enjoyed it. At Christmas time we had a band come up from Wales called Y Niwl which was put together by a lot of people in Wales interested in creating surf music. This surf band played for us at the special at Christmas and the bassist who plays with Cate Le Bon is a part of them. He came over at the end of the night and asked about Cate getting a slot on the night; now she is far too big to be playing here but it was really nice that he asked and although she is on tour at the moment if we could get here playing here it really would be very special.
E.O: What do you look out for in a band who you give air time too or who you like to put on at the gig nights?
CS: Of all the things I look out for in bands, the one theme that runs through both the bands I play on the show and those who get a slot on at the gig night is the fun factor. There has to be a level of enjoyment running through their music. Cate Le Bon who writes some really very dark stuff and even Sweet Baboo write heart breaking songs, but they then dust it through with an element of humour. If a band does not have this streak they end up being over the top, they would end up being Razor Light.
E.O: Have you ever considered increasing the amount of shows you play?
CS: I am happy enough at the moment with the amount of shows and I think the listeners are as well. I have tried myself to keep up with other pod-casts that run more frequently than once a week and although I try to download it and make an effort to listen through before you know it, another week has gone and all of a sudden you have a massive backlog to get through and that isn’t terribly appealing. Obviously it would be great to be doing a weekly show but without being paid for it is an awful lot of work, especially at a time when I am studying for the MA.
EO: Do you ever consider charging for the gig nights?
CS: No not really because it doesn’t cost that much to run, other than the small amount of money I pay for air time and initial heavy costs such as buying a microphone. I guess for the sake of the show there has to come a point where you are prepared to put more of one’s own money in and take a risk on losing it but it is difficult to know when this point has come.
Releasing the 7” with Onions and Generalissimos was a bit of a risk and to be fair we all knew that due to the cost of putting it together, we were going to make a loss no matter what. But we didn’t really put it together for money, we just had some good songs we wanted to get out there and we were really pleased with ourselves as we recorded, mastered, promoted and even designed the record sleeves without having to go to any outside companies. It is pretty cool to produce something you have made from scratch and though we are not making profit on them, they are selling well and more than half of the limited edition CDs are now gone. We wanted to break even if possible, but it was released more out of mutual respect and a love for the music these guys are playing at the moment; what was eventually produced was really worth something to all of us.
A lot of people always advise you to get into music for the love of it, not because you want to get famous or be paid for it. There are bands however who are getting the money, there has to be as great an idea as it is we can all keep going for free. At some point bands have to be recognised for their contribution as records can’t keep being released at a loss there has to be some kind of reward financially so they can continue without becoming so submerged in their day jobs they don’t have time to record, gig or create new songs.
E.O: Do you feel the government or the arts departments are supportive enough of musicians at the moment?
CS: Not really, I think popular music tens to receive a lack of funding because people still see it as a corporate venture where a lot of people are making a lot of money. It’s a nice idea but so few bands get signed and even those who do don’t necessarily make large amounts of money from it. A lot of bands are recording their music themselves and trying to get it out there in that way but there is an awful lot of music on the internet now and jus because its there doesn’t necessarily mean people will buy it or even listen to it.
Perhaps the internet emerges we will start to get gate keepers who advise people on where to go for good new music. They would be tested sources and if a music lover liked a started genre he would follow a particular gate keeper who would put him/her in the direction of new music so they wouldn’t have to filter through a huge amount of information which few people have time to do these days. Perhaps Cloud Sounds will in time become one of these gate keepers directing people to decent music. If his happens I think we will see an increasing divide between the god stuff and the X-Factor dominated pop charts. Some stuff will leak through to the charts and vice-versa but at the moment I honestly can’t tell you of any band I like in the top 10 chart.
E O: I see you have recently become a tweeter, how has this helped the show?
CS: I only started with the twitter account in the last few months and like the way you can get your personality across to your followers. Perhaps social media makes the show seem a bit redundant as I guess I could post links but I think people still like listening to the show and its the banter they enjoy in-between as much as the songs otherwise they could just download a playlist or some of the pod-casts out there which are just a DJs listing of his favourite tracks without any talking bits which are of course the part of the show I enjoy doing.
E.O: Any plans for putting another album out there?
CS: I was reading an article the other day about the best bands in Manchester and it got me a bit annoyed as I didn’t like any of them and I started to think I should perhaps put a pod-cast of bands in Manchester that myself and my listeners have enjoyed, bands which perhaps are often overlooked on the scene. It is too much of a financial risk at the moment to put it out during the next six months whilst I’m still studying.
E.O: Albums and bands people should look out for in 2010?
CS: Well Onions have been keeping quite hush hush about their latest project so it will be interesting to see what they end up producing. Then there is the latest album from The Loungs and I swear you would struggle to find a better album this year. Finally there is a guy called the Voluntary Butler Scheme; I played him on the show last year and since then he has got really big. So it’s those three really that people should be keeping an eye out for.
