Well it's been a while hasn't it? More than half a year. As always with my big gaps between blogging I think it's down to feeling like I haven't actually got anything to talk about. Not that anything on note's happened now, I just felt like I should mark the middle of the year.

It's kind of scary to think that a year's now gone by since I moved down south, and nearly a year since I started working at TPR. Maybe it's part of growing older but I'm findng the idea of letting another year slip by without getting anywhere or doing anything or meeting anyone to be vaguely terrifying. Not that I appear to be doing anything about it of course, but maybe I've just been frozen in terror. Yeah that's it.

I had a nice Christmas and New Year, I managed to drag people down to Charlbury for New Year's Eve which I think ended up being a bit of a mixed bag. It was lovely having some friends here, after six months of moping about and occasionally travelling up north, but for various reasons most of the people seemed a bit down at one point or another and I'd cunningly managed to not sleep properly for a week so spent the whole evening trying to get boozey and partyish but instead just feeling drowsy. ROCK + ROLL. I've had a few visits from friends since then which have been nice, and I still try to get up to Prestancaster on a nearly monthly basis, I've not really developed much if any of a social life down here though. I guess in my head I still haven't really moved, that's the problem, I'm not acting like someone starting a new phase of their life but instead like someone waiting for their normal life to kick back in. Hmmm.

We went to All Tomorrow's Parties in April, that was ace. I've not had much experience of festivals, I've always been put off by the whole camping aspect and the times when I did feel like the lineup was worth it I've ended up being too skint (or too late to get a ticket, like last year's ATP). But staying in chalets is awesome. I'm not totally convinced by the music venues themselves, there was something distinctly odd about standing in a giant shopping centre/dome in bright light while watching Low. But then again if we'd been standing in a field with the exact same setup otherwise it would have been normal. Anyway none of that matters because we got to watch Joanna Newsom play 1 and a half times and she was as awesome as I'd hoped. Also Glenn spotted Efrim from ASMZ playing on Ridge Racer in the arcades which is surely worth the price of admission in itself. I'm thinking of going to the Christmas one at the end of the year being curated by Portishead, if I can find some people interested and can sort out the cash before they sell out. I was a massive fan of Dummy when it first came out but lost interest in all that triphoppy business a long time ago - still I think they would be quite a cool band to see live. Plus they already have quite a few good bands on their early lineup - Ladytron, Aphex Twin, A Hawk And A Hacksaw, plus the distilled awesomeness that is Oneida.

The next couple of months should be pretty busy, I'm going up north next weekend for Sian's birthday, then later in the month it's the Truck Festival. I'm a bit unsure about Truck, I got tickets ages ago (it sold out in about three days) but they've only just released the lineup and I can't say there's anything on there that excites me. Still I guess that means there's lots of potential for hearing new stuff and being pleasantly surprised. More enthusiasm-inducing is Field Day in London in the middle of August, it's a one day music thing I'm going to and they have some ace bands on - Electrelane, Battles, Liars, Bat For Lashes. It's being done in the style of some sort of village fete, so there's a tug of war and welly throwing and biggest marrow competitions, sounds like a laugh.

The weekend before that I'm off to Leicester to see John 'Wild Man of the Woods' Woodhouse get married in a cathedral. A cathedral! I've never been to a proper religious type wedding before. I hope it's not one of those ones where the priest takes the opportunity to sneak in a sermon about Jesus and all that lot while we're all trapped there. I've been bullied into going to the one year anniversary special Indietron thing the night before, so like some sort of international jetsetter (only on trains and buses) I'll be going up to Preston from Oxford and then going back down to Leicester about 12 hours later. I have no idea what's happening after the wedding, I might try and get a train back in the evening or something. Though I suspect that will be a ballache.

The week after Field Day I'm thinking of going up north again so I can have some sort of birthday party type thing. I dunno, I'm in two minds about it. I'd quite like to have one, especially as it's the tombstonetastic 30th year, but on the other hand the shenanigans from last year kind of left a sour taste in my mouth about them, plus there's the pain in the arse of trying to organise something for up there from down here. I suppose I'll mull it over for a bit longer before I decide one way or the other.

The Indietron night might also be the launch night for the Superkings album, I don't know if that's still happening or not, everyone seems to be a bit vague and unsure. Be cool if it was though, I've barely seen the SK crowd other than Tash over the last few months (despite being labelled a "Superkings crony" on Prestone, LOL). I ended up sacking off doing the album cover, I just couldn't get inspired at all. I haven't had any luck doing anything creative so far this year really, which is a shame given the amount of time I'm just sitting around in my room. Sadly I don't think making mix CDs counts.

Anyway I guess I'm going to wrap this up now and go downstairs to watch some TV, see if those zany terrorists have tried blowing up anything else yet.

Here's this post's mp3, it's from Five Roses by Miracle Fortress which is easily one of my favourite albums of the year so far.

Miracle Fortress - Next Train