Day 2

(A day late due to internet problems, but I did actually complete it yesterday.)

Short and sweet, here are some new characters I introduced (the bit in bracets being the English meaning of their surname):

Klaudia Luft   (air)
Selena Roth   (red)
Marie Wexler (money changer)
Tobias Schwartz (black)
Max Vogel (bird)
Peter Wulf (wolf)

Underwater ballroom

A few years ago I was watching something on BBC 1 I think, maybe about hidden treasures in the UK or something. Anyway, I remember one specific thing which was about an underwater ballroom in Witley, Surrey. To find it you allegedly had to find this lake, in the lake is a statue of a person pointing, you're then supposed to walk in the direction that they are pointing, which should take you to a woods, in the woods you should find a small door, you go through his door which takes you down stairs, underground. Once down the stairs, you should find a little rowing boat sitting on a small river/lake (I'm not quite sure on the exact details here), you then get in the little row boat and then pull on a rope I think which takes you to the other side where you get off. After walking down a windy, damp, rather smelly corridor, you apparently find this...

                                                       (This is the view if you look up)
          ...Where you end up is under the lake you originally visited to arrive where you are now, the lake with the stature in it. Now watching this n the TV I was astounded, and made a mental note to eventually visit this place, but of course I never got around to it.

UNTIL! Back in February a friend started to talk about this underwater ballroom to some other, extremely disbelieving friends. When I heard I obviously piped up with my little bit of knowledge from the TV itself, and you know, always believe what you see on TV! (Obviously, that's a joke.) But even with my input to justify his story, which by the way, was that he hadn't just heard about this place, he'd been, about a year previous, himself and some friends had driven out at night and managed to find it, they followed all the instructions and ended up actually looking up at the picture above for real, (I was so, so envious) our friends still thought we were full of shit. So on a chilly, wet February afternoon, we drove out to Witley common, the  place where my friend was 100 per cent certain we would find the lake holding the statue that would lead us to the ballroom. However, after walking for an hour, we realised that this little outing wasn't going to be as simple as we initially thought. After a few phone calls to his friends, we discovered that the lake was not open to the public on National Trust ground as my friend had remembered. Turns out that in fact, it sits on someones land, PRIVATE LAND. Which of course, we found. We walked across Witley common, crossing a road, we came to the entrance of Witley Manor I believe it's called. Here is a picture from good old Google maps, and I've added some red stuff to make it more clear...

                                                                                                            ...After we got to the entrance, we spent about twenty minutes debating what to do, and my friend who had been to this place before suddenly recalled that they had actually climbed over a thick stone wall to get to it (a key piece of information that we really would of benefited from knowing before we ventured out, yes). So we now understood that our options were limited, and that our chances of seeing this inconceivably astounding attribute to our countryside was fading fast. We figured our choices were like this:

• A - Give up and go back to the car, accepting that the world is an unfair place, and also ensuring that the one of us who had work would make it on time.
• B - Climb over the wall, forgetting the fact that it's daylight and we're not exactly masters of breaking and entering, risking getting in a little bit of trouble, which at the time was far more serious for some because of work related positions.
• C - Walk back along the wall to arrive at the intimidating gates that are the entrance, and argue over who has to ring the big bell (ha) and ask if we are allowed to 'pretty please' see their lake.
• D - Come back soon when we can be less visible with the cover of night, and attempt to find it then - but to be honest we all knew this meant it would more than likely NEVER happen as it wasn't very often that we left the house, unless we were forced to complete some kind of foraging (either food shopping or going to earn money to buy the food).

Unfortunately with time and risk of getting caught being issues we had to consider, our options ultimately were A and C. And there was no way I was leaving this place without at least trying to get a look at what we had come to see, so C was indeed our choice. But the door bell didn't bloody work. So we waited in this driveway for someone to notice us, which no-one seemed to for quite some time. Eventually though, a guy who was doing some kind of work at the manor began to appear from behind the opening gates in his white van. As he was a guy, it was myself and the other female of our foursome who approached him, in the hopes that he would be potentially more inclined to give any information he had over, and maybe even get us in. We told him our pre-prepared story that we were four art students, wanting to photograph the lake for a project (complete bullshit of course). He turned out to be a pretty nice guy, but regrettably explained that he thought it unlikely we would be allowed to see the lake, as the owner(s) of the land liked to keep it protected from the public, especially as they had recently experienced a lot of problems with people braking in at night in order to see it. With a little persuasion however, the nice man drove back down to ask someone in charge if it would be possible for us to see the lake. But he returned with the answer he expected, a solid no. 

Disappointment, such disappointment. We had been walking and waiting, and walking and waiting some more for almost two hours by this point, and more importantly, we had been really, really genuinely excited to see this treasure. And I don't know what your reaction was when you read the reason above of why people, even a few excited 'art students' just wanting some photographs, were not being permitted to visit it, but personally I was pretty pissed off, and even more stunned.

'So their not letting people in to see the amazing underwater ballroom, because people keep breaking in at night to see the amazing underwater ballroom. Surely the best thing to do would be to open it during the day so that people aren't forced to break in at night, unsupervised or whatever, this way it could be controlled and there will be a greatly reduced risk of things getting damaged.'

Now, firstly, I didn't realise that this sort of astonishing landmark could be kept as completely private land, if you look at places like Longleat house near Warminster, for example, a stately home where a family ACTUALLY still inhabit, it's open to the public 6/7 days a week I think, so how is it possible that this gem in someones mass of land is being kept solely for their viewing?! I kind of assumed that all those sorta things get picked up by the National Trust. Maybe that's me being a dumbass. And obviously I do understand the difference between the ease of controlling the flow of visitors in an incredibly large mansion with huge corridors, compared to managing all those people down tiny winding stairwells and onto a little boat, if my information is correct anyway. But I am honestly shocked that something so wonderful could be closed to the public. Surely this is something that we all should be allowed to view and appreciate? After all, what's the point in it existing if it is never seen and marvelled at? Even if the owner(s) want to keep it  as their own land, would it not be a good investment, or even just a beautiful thing to share by opening it for people to view, even if this has to be done with some kind of tour that you can get tickets for? I don't know, maybe I would want to keep it for myself too if I lived there, but I struggle with the idea that I could spend enough time down there to justify that selfishness. 

Anyway, here are some more mind-blowing pictures of this incredible wonder that I hope to one day see for real...

Day 1

Okay, so I know I didn't get around to uploading my first piece of the three-six-five challenge last night, I'm sorry, don't be mad, I got a little distracted. Now to the Batmobile!!
Right, so my first step has been to print off all of my writing I have so far, very happy I did this too because I forgot about half of the stuff I had, and that's the half that I think will be helping me over the next 365 days. So now I'm beginning to piece things together and work out a story and timelines in my head, and I may actually be beginning to form something in the shape of a very feather-light book thing. Now although I'm very nervous to do it, I said I would update this blog with little bits from my work everyday in order to keep motivated, so here is my first snippet..
         
            ...but before I do! Here's a lovely picture of very cute puppies in dungarees, because although it's probably bordering on animal cruelty, I'm hoping it will soften the heart of any person who does come across and choose to read what is below, because no-one should judge something when in a bad mood!

Actually just to clarify, I NEVER show my writing to people, yes I realise how ridiculous that is considering I genuinely hope to make a career out of it, but seriously, only two people in the entire world have read some of it, well anything that I wasn't forced to right in school anyway. So what I'm saying I guess, is be gentle...
And here's another cute picture of some ducklings in a sink, just in case your mood isn't quite light enough yet...

'I look at her, standing in front of me, so willing to give up everything in order to sustain this blurry picture of a relationship we share.  I rise from the chair and take two slow steps towards her, elongating the moment so that the future cannot approach so fast. Taking her hands in mine I look into her strong, destructively dark blue eyes, the colour of the sea as the sun begins to set, the blue is there, but it’s on the verge of some quiet shade of black. The situation reaches critical. Either I take another step towards her, kiss her bare pink, red lips, letting her know that I’m with her, whatever may come our way, or I take her soft hand to my mouth and gently kiss the back of it to say, ‘I love you, but this is our last kiss’, the wise choice to be honest. How could we have been so foolish to let this occur in the first place? But really there is no question at all is there. I know this. Whether I like it or not, I don’t have a choice, I haven’t had one since that first night with her. My heart is within her chest just as much as hers is within mine. Beating beneath my rib cage every second of every hour of every day. Eternal. Inescapable. Toxic.  I know I’m not strong enough to break it, just as much as I know I cannot live without her, and that this relationship will inevitably kill us both.  So I step into the gap between us pull her closer and kiss her hard. One swift movement and the decision is made, the deal is done, death will ensue but I’ll be damned if we don’t have a hell of a time before it comes.'


(I'm terrible at spelling, I don't get punctuation right most the time, and I certainly don't adhere to all those weird rules about how you should write, quite frankly it's probably because I'm a bit of an idiot, but I enjoy doing this either way, so let's just go with it okay.)

The 365 Challenge / Weekly picture

I saw on Facebook that a friend is doing the 365 challenge, as she is a photographer, this entails taking a photo EVERY DAY. The photo can be of ANYTHING, it just has to be a photo and she has to take one every day. The point in this challenge is to encourage and motivate her to get her camera out, because anyone with a hobby knows that it isn't always easy to fit it in around life, we get distracted, and before you know it, it's been a week since you posted on your blog, so you have to do three in a day because you have all these things you wanna talk about and get out your head.

So, I have been inspired to set my own 365 challenge, now I tend to take a lot of photos anyway, so to keep that up, I'll keep to a weekly routine of putting a picture up every Monday(ish). But my personal 365 challenge will be to write a page, at least ONE page, of a SPECIFIC piece of my writing. This should mean that in a years time, I will have a minimum of a 365 page book, so far. Now it may turn out to be incredibly shit, or it may turn out to be quite good, honestly, I don't know, obviously I hope for the latter, but I'll have to wait and see. Whichever way it goes, I'll have done 365 pages, and I think that is certainly positive progress for my writing, and for myself really. I won't upload my page to here everyday, because I don't want this blog to become completely orientated around a potentially shit novel, because that's pretty dull, and honestly this is just a place for my brain notes and strange ramblings. What I will do however, is either sum up the page I've written (if it's interesting) or just post my favourite line, this way we all know that I am actually doing it. So by midnight, I shall have put up ANOTHER post today.

For now, here is my picture for this week,

(Always be aware of the angry birds.)

New names

A few people to keep an eye on, because hey, if anyone does read this and I do influence at least one person out of 7 billion, I'd like to point them in a good musical direction.

No.1   Hobbie Stuart - A friend of mine came across him whilst traipsing through Youtube for good covers about two, maybe three years ago. He's very talented in my opinion and he does seem to be making some serious ground with his followers and views on the up 'n' up. One of my favourite covers of his is 'Fast car' by Tracy Chapman...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqj-sZrh12I
If you like his voice subscribe to his Youtube channel, he's uploading new songs pretty regularly and has some awesome songs of his own too.


No.2   Amity Ray - I may have spelt their name wrong, it is potentially Amnity Ray, I absolutely cannot remember to be honest. But what I can tell you true is that they are a new girl band, which isn't normally my kind of thing at all (although I am the first to admit that I do find myself singing along to disturbingly catching songs like 'DNA' by Little Mix, I hate myself but what can you do?!) and their are 4/5 members between the ages of 18 and 24, their first single will be released in July and they have already been signed up to tour with famous faces such as Pixie Lott. Now I can't speak for the whole group as I haven't heard their music yet, but I can talk about their lead girl, Sophie Goodwin. I haven't known her personally for a fair while, but I can say with great confidence that she is genuinely a lovely girl, and shit, she can sing! I first heard her voice whilst playing Playstation Singstar age 13, along side her equally talented younger sister, Priya (who may also be a name to watch by the way). Sophie had a strong voice then so I am very excited to see her perform 8 years on. I managed to find this clip on Youtube, seriously take a look, this is genuine talent...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlYiWyZ9gaY


No.3   Imagine Dragons - Okay, so they are not exactly a secret, in fact you probably know this song for being on the trailer of the new Stephanie Meyer film, 'The Host'...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu-xFvLaE68
But I can't get enough of it, or them. I'd say more, but either you'll love this song the way I do, and find it speaks for itself, or I guess you just won't like it.

Comedy Central

You recognise this logo, correct? (If not then you genuinely live in a cave, so congrats on having Internet!) Well, if you don't know it, it's the emblem of Comedy Central, home of such television shows as 'Two and a half men', 'The Office U.S.A.' and my personal favourite (probably one of the best series ever made), 'Friends'.

So if you watch this channel, and you are unable to fast forward through intensely annoying, only occasionally entertaining adverts, that forever curse our televisions and make us want to pull our eyes out with the nearest sharp instrument, then you may have seen one of these before...

Okay, so these appear for about half a second during the ad breaks, no-where near enough time to read them in full, or even the first line in fact, hence why these have all been paused on. The colours used are always black, red and white, the three colours of the Comedy Central logo. As you can read above, the paragraphs share nothing in terms of subject material, they seem to be the very interesting, odd brain notes of an anonymous person, and I seriously mean it when I say anonymous  I have been searching the Internet for an hour or so and I cannot find ANYTHING about these messages or who wrote them, even on the Comedy Central website itself. There are a few forums and other blogs where they are being discussed by people, like myself, just wanting to know what they are and the point in them. And of course numerous conspiracy theories are also being chucked around, for instance, people are saying that the highlighted words on each individual paragraph are some form of either subliminal or panic messages, which I don't personally really believe, I think it's more likely that someone is probably just having some fun at the expense of bored/observant people like myself, however, if you do string together the highlighted words, they can sometimes make up weird sentences, i.e...

'tough military murder public satisfaction' (top left corner)

'labour seems laughed at' (bottom left corner)

                                                                                    ...due to this I can clearly see why certain people are becoming ever more concerned by these odd ramblings. It's also interesting to point out that subliminal messages are supposedly banned in England (supposedly being very over-emphasised here, because personally I think a lot of advertising use forms of subliminal messaging, hence why I, someone who isn't a crazy fan of fizzy-drinks, can end up craving a cola after an over-excited ad where someone ends up drinking from a can with a huge smile on their face), so technically these messages that appear cannot be certified as SUBLIMINAL. So what the hell are they?! I have absolutely no idea. But this is my favourite one to date...

Bus drivers are a strange breed. What's going on in their lives and minds that makes them behave that way? You'd think being entrusted with several tonnes of metal and glass would make them drive with diligence and caution. But no. They plough through streets in their hulking steel beasts with enough speed to rip a hole in the space time continuum, which is ironic as space and time are things to which they seem totally oblivious. As the old saying goes, you wait for a bus for ages then three turn up at once - and run you over. But don't panic live for today. You may be hit by a bus tomorrow.

(No personal offence meant to bus drivers here, any of you that read this and dislike it can disinclude yourself from this slightly harsh stereotype, because your reaction means that you are clearly not one of the emotionally empty driving robots being referred to.)

My completed video

Many, many moons ago I was given a piece of coursework to complete, the end result being a music video. I never finished that coursework, in fact I dropped out before the year was complete. However, to prove to myself that I'm not a complete waster, I finally completed and put that video together. I know, I know, it's not great, a fair amount of it is annoyingly just out of time, and I can't really draw, but I completed it, and that's not something I tend to do.

The song if you don't know it, is 'Keep your head up' by Ben Howard, from his debut album 'Every Kingdom'. If you don't own it, get it now, yes, right now. It's awesome, well I think it is anyway.

If this video is a bit fuzzy, and your curious/bored/interested enough to wanna see it clearly, try this youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skDShnoCZr8

(In the unlikely event that my old media teacher D.C. comes across this, I hope you like it, and I haven't forgotten about the wine.)

Strawberries

Strawberries. Classic, red, juicy, unanimously adored by many, if not for the fruit itself, then for the flavour which has been 'copied' and used universally for things such as sweets, deserts, milk, lip balm and even condoms. So what do you picture when you think of the delicious red berry? Pretty much every person will describe something along the lines of this..

                                                             ..reasonably petite in size, ripe red, top heavy, with an all-green leafy hat and a little stem. Generally a perfect picture of a strawberry. But we've all come across an odd ball whilst snacking on a punnet of the fresh red stuff, one that makes you go 'Oooh, look at this one, kinda looks like the distorted face of an old man smoking a pipe!' Okay, so maybe not that exact phrase, but you get my point. Now I can't speak for the entire strawberry loving population, but personally, and as I'm sure many of you would agree, out of these two berries, I would much rather eat the above one as it looks far more inviting. However, is it fair to so quickly dismiss the below, far less attractive strawberry, purely because it doesn't meet the average perfect strawberry specification? The chances are it's just as juicy and bursting with flavour as the one above.

                                                           Even so, I would still choose the more appealing looking strawberry to eat first, before I just as happily ate the other. Why? Because I'm a human being, and because it's programmed into us to judge things by their appearance. It's an instinct there to protect us, so that a few thousand years ago when we were still unable to form words or cook a Sunday roast, we knew not to eat that unhealthy looking piece of browning boar, and instead choose the fresh bloody mammoth meat that had just been caught (I realise those two animals probably never shared a timezone, let alone a cave, but they were the first two creatures I thought of). Luckily today we are evolved enough though, for the most part, to consider something that might not at first seem so appealing, because you genuinely can't judge a book by its cover, you can have an instinctual response to turn it away due to the strange looking boy in glasses with a scar on his forehead on the front cover, but ultimately our higher level of intelligence, and I think our natural curiosity, allow us to think and reconsider our options, not simply based on appearances alone. 

So I suppose my point, if I have one, is that we shouldn't feel bad about ourselves when we feel the urge to walk on the other side of the road because there's an unwashed hobo dancing with a tambourine for a bit of change coming up ahead. We should, however, be intelligent and open minded enough to consider all aspects of the situation, not just the physical characteristics, but all the other points behind it, because maybe that hobo has a really awesome story to tell, or even just a hilarious joke that will keep you smiling even when your boss is being an absolute shit head to you later that day. 

Who knows..well, no-one, until someone comes along with the courage to find out.