Busy bee

So, I have to write a book review for Styleclone.com on the new Audrey Hepburn: International Cover Girl book.



I got it free from the website last week and as it's about £25 in the shops, I'm pretty happy. Audrey Hepburn is an absolute style icon but I've never reviewed a book before. I will post it here when I'm done with it.

This post contains PR samples

Well..

You know theres always that one band that you just HAVE to see live, and although they aren't actually my favourite band, I had to see Green Day live. I've been a fan for years and years now and I've gone through stages of listening to them furiously and then not listening to them for ages.

I really wanted to see them live when they came to the UK last time, which was quite a few years ago now so I was mega happy that I got tickets to their 2009 UK tour and I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was for me to get tickets, I literally bought mine a minute before they were meant to go on sale, which was weird?!

Anyway, the show was amazing, intense, brilliant, inspiring and every great describing word you can imagine. For a band that are the same age as I am, they are extremely impressive live, they know how to hold the audience in the palms of their hands and they just love to lap up all the attention from the crowd. It was an awesome awesome awesome gig, one of the best I've been to. I loved every moment of it, especially the encore of Wake Me Up When September Ends and Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) which was played on acoustic guitar, with a spotlight and 16,000 singing all at the same time, which is the best sound ever.

I am just hoping they bring out a DVD of their current tour so I can relive it all again, haha. The only down side was that we had to leave early this morning because I had a presentation to do. I wanted to go into the city centre and do a bit of shopping, but maybe it was lucky that we didn't because I really can't afford it at the moment!

Tomorrow will be a day of work I think, have to pop to the library to take a book back because some damn person has requested it and I haven't even looked at it yet! But other than that, I'm going to try and get my Ugly Betty feature finished as well as trying to write a review of last nights show.

On with the pictures!

Shabby

Wow, I can't even remember what I've been up to since my last blog to be honest. I keep meaning to update here but I have so much work to be doing at the moment that I keep putting it off but right now I have a bit of spare time.

I think it's easy to overload yourself with work in the third year, theres no need to stress and panic, we don't need to be doing work 24/7, we need to have a life aswell. As long as it all gets done in the end, who cares that I'm currently sat in my room doing NOTHING? Not me.


So, since my last blog I went home for the weekend after my birthday and went for the best meal ever with my parents and Vince, it was a REALLY posh restaraunt in town that always seems to be empty - and now I know why after looking at the pricelist! Anyway it was such a nice meal and dad bought us champagne =] I got a lovely cushion and a digital photo frame from my mum and dad. My sister bought me a purple bag which I love and I got a very posh bracelet from my Nan and Grandad, a bracelet and a new jewlery box from my Nan and earrings from my Auntie. =] It was good to go home. I think I need another visit soon, I get this all the time. I'll be at uni for a couple of weeks and then suddenly I start to really want to go home and just be carefree and go shopping or make cakes with my sister, see my dog and my cat and just generally have a nice time being at home.

I'll be going home this Wednesday but I'm only going to be there for about an hour or so. Vince and I are driving down so I can pick up the Green Day tickets and he can pick up his contact lens solution and then we're meeting Kayleigh and driving to Birmingham for the Green Day gig. If I didn't have my presentation this Thursday I would have gone back home after the gig for the weekend but this presentation has totally messed everything up and it's also not going great either. Have I ever told you how much I hate presentations?! Yeh, well I really do.

I'm so excited to go and see Green Day, we have standing tickets so I'm bracing myself for getting battered and pushed around a whole lot. I haven't been to a gig for a band I love in SO long, I'm so excited. :)


Today I had a bit of a spring clean which consisted of me hoovering, washing and changing the bedding but now my room smells all fresh and lovely and I read somewhere that a clear workspace helps you concentrate better, not that mine is clear, it's just organised mess.

I can't be bothered to bore myself and you with talking about Uni work so I shall talk about clothes instead. Thanks to the lovely Vince, I had a TopShop giftcard loaded with £100 and I've been spending and spending and now only have £41 left, oops. I just love shopping, which is quite dangerous for a student, but the thing is I can only shop by myself or with one other person. It's strange.

SURPRISE!!!!

So yesterday my housemates and Vince threw me a surprise party for my 21st birthday! I totally didn't expect a single thing but when I got home yesterday from the pub there were balloons on the front door and Vince led me into the front room where everyone was and they shouted 'surprise' of course!

We had party food courtest of Jess and Sarah, complete with birthday cake from Boris! We had pin the cherry on the bakewell and a pinata which just would not break! We went out afterwards and everyone insisted on buying me shots which lead to me throwing up, oops. It was really great though and I loved the surprise! THANKS!!

find in us the faith, the faith to bring you home

So yesterday I interviewed Funeral For A Friend for my University magazine, Sonar.
It was kind of a last minute thing as I only recieved the email the night before so I had to come up with some questions pretty quickly!

The bands PR were, lets just a say, no help at all! They told me the venue was Portsmouth Pyramids but on the internet I had seen both the Pyramids and Portsmouth's Wedgewood Rooms listed as the venue so I was a bit confused, however the PR girl assured me it was the Pyramids so off we trotted. We arrived there at about 2:30 (interview at 3pm) and asked where abouts the gig would be and the girl tells us it's at the Wedgewood rooms! ARGH! I rang my dad who quickly directed us to Albert Road and we were able to find the venue with 10 minutes to spare! =]

There were various people milling around and the tour manager ushered us into this tiny little dressing room and went on the hunt for band members (who were all sitting on their laptops!). He found Darran and Gavin who play Guitar and Bass in the group and they were really nice. They introduced themselves and shook our hands. They gave great answers to all my questions and were laughing and joking with eachother and just generally having a nice chat with me. The interview lasted about 15 minutes and I was so pleased with it because I felt much more calm than I have before and a lot more professional, I thanked them many many times and we cheekily asked for pictures which they were more than happy to do. :) I just need to write up the interview into 300 words somehow!

We got to go to the gig for free aswell and although I'm not really a fan of the band I still wanted to see the show and it left me thinking 'why the hell did I stop listening to them?' They are a really good live band and they played a 19 song set full of fan favourites and they even surprised fans by playing Juneau for their last encore song. I'm definitely going to download some tracks tonight.

Week two

So week two of Uni begins and it's all going ok so far..the house is sooooo good, so much more homely than the other one we had last year and I think I actually like my room better here aswell, plus theres no heavy fire doors (though that means we're stuffed if theres an inferno!).

I have a bit of work to do, mainly dissertation (sorry I mean major project) research to do but I have finally decided what I'm going to do and just need to run it past my lecturer before I properly delve into that one.

Unfortuntely I no longer have any hours at the Union. I understand it's probably because I wasnt at the induction and couldn't start working until the start of term, but I think having to stay at home longer because my Grandad died and I had to go to the funeral etc, is pretty much a good enough excuse. I emailed about 4 times, I even went in to try and speak with someone (though nobody was there), I even emailed the admin people and filled out an availability form and gave it to them and they just completely ignored all of my efforts and said I would only be working there as 'cover.' Which is better than nothing I suppose, for the next three weeks I'm going to be selling NUS cards to earn a little extra monies so come and buy one!

I have spent the whole weekend with Vince which has been really nice though he is really ill now! I don't THINK it's my fault as I don't have anything for him to catch, which means I'll probably have what he has now, great! I dragged him to a fashion show on Saturday! Taking your boyfriend to a fashion show is quite interesting, Vince had some interesting opinions on the models and the outfits, hehe, but by the end of the day we were able to just chat normally about the whole thing. =D

The show was opened by model Lisa Snowdon who was also sat in the front row watching. All the clothes were from shops in West Quay so we could actually go and buy the outfits the models were wearing (if we wanted to that is, it's always nice to have that option!)



I do have LOTS more photos, too many to put up but I want to use them elsewhere so they might be up at a later date. :)

They had the former editor of Clash magazine there giving a 'lesson' in fashion (nice step from music to fashion?) which was interesting and I wanted to try and find her to get a contact for the contact book but nothing came of it.

I emailed the Daily Echo as soon as I got home and offered to do a write up of the event along with photos but they replied and said they actually had a reporter at the event and were already running a piece in yesterdays paper, which was unfortunate but at least I tried. I'm hoping to maybe write something for Sonar magazine but no reply as of yet.



Yesterday I recieved an email from the music editor of Sonar magazine asking if anyone wanted to interview Funeral For A Friend tomorrow before/after their show in Portsmouth, aswell as reviewing the show so I jumped at the chance. Even though FFAF aren't a favourite band of mine I think it's good to interview a band you don't know much about because it means research, research, research! I'm just waiting to hear about times and confirmations and it should be going ahead! It also means I get to go to Portsmouth and whats really strange to me is that the gig is held at Portsmouth Pyramids which is wear I used to go swimming! I'm not sure if the pool is there anymore, maybe they have gigs above it? Hah, well, I will let you know. :)

One last thing, any ideas for 21st birthday celebrations are very welcome please!