My friends have been badgering me for many months to go ice-skating, “it’ll be amazing”, “we are going to have so much fun”, they’d threaten. The last time I had ice skated was at the ripe old age of seven, while most of the memories of that day have been wiped, recorded over or forgotten I had one over-riding memory of that day pure unadulterated fear. You can probably guess where this is going…

Eventually, however, I was worn down and bowed to their peer pressure. The day was booked, the calendar marked and that fear began to reoccur. It lingered in my final thoughts at night, like flashbacks from a film, of a small boy screaming clinging to the barriers for dear life. I shook it off reminding myself that I was young, foolish and unbalanced (literally) back then yet it still remained. You may feel at this point that I’m over exaggerating for dramatic effect but let me assure you I am really not, the fear was real and not unfounded.

The day rolled round and we made our way to our doom. Doom easily accessed by public transport. Seeing small children and doddery old ladies slink elegantly around the rink gave me a glimmer of hope that perhaps I was being bonkers in fearing this. We soon made our way into the queue and traded my shoes in for bladed bowling shoes, shuddering at the thought of the plethora of other people who have shifted and sweated within them. Once the clasps were secured and my previous shoes disappeared around the corner there was no turning back.

Standing up for the first time on them felt odd but not bad and the feeling of perhaps I can do this began to rise, before being cruelly smashed when I boarded the ice. We waited ‘patiently’ shuffling our way towards the unopened doors like bulls preparing for the Pamplona while what can only be described as a freezer on wheels went around refreezing the rink and making it slippery once more. I took one more moment to pre-warn my friends that I had a bad feeling about this and then we were on….

If anyone has seen the film Bambi, when the title character finds himself on the ice and his limbs shift irrespective of the other, balance becoming lost in a frozen moment, will know exactly how I was on the ice. While I floundered and fell my friends found the balance fast and where off zooming annoyingly gracefully off into the distance.

The small children were allowed to use a Pingo shaped stabilisers (see photo). I envied them immensely as they sailed around with their penguin protectors. I’m not proud to admit that I sheepishly asked the stewards if they had larger versions (carefully omitting the word adult as clearly nothing about my panicked state was adult like).

I spend the majority of the time with an iron grip around my friends hands or linking arm in arm with my two male friends, which more than once resulted in a fellow skater “aww”ing at us.

The hour seemed eternal, time frozen like the rink. Again I’m not proud to say that I called time on my skating sorrows early and consoled myself with a stiff coffee (sadly there was nothing stronger within reach).

So while the whole sorrowful event wasn’t big on dignity, it was big on humour for you the reader and for anyone who was ‘lucky’ enough to witness it. Oh the horror of it all.

It seems to have become my yearly ritual now to create a playlist for my year. This last year has been a roller coaster, 2010 rolled into 2011 and India rolled into London. So these songs are representative of a some sort of transition.

So here we go…

John Mayer – Waiting on the World to Change

I wrote a blog about this song a couple of weeks ago and I don’t think it will ever stop ringing true to me. Read it here

Ed Sheeran – The City

A song about London, which really encapsulates how I felt about the city when I arrived to it. “The city never sleeps, I hear the people walk by when it’s late, sirens beat through my window sill, I can’t close my eyes”

Simon and Garfunkel - Homeward Bound

Its not exactly their song that has got on this list but a cover. I was in Paddington underground station headphones on and my mind placed firmly inside my own little world. It was then over whatever I was listening that I heard this woman’s voice. She was busking at one of the sites on the London Underground. I must admit her voice stopped me dead. I was on my way home for Christmas so the song held even more potency but it will be a moment I will never forget.

Leddra Chapman – Heartbeats (live)

Yes she may have been on this list last year but god damn it this woman can sing. This year she released a new EP which included her live cover of heartbeats by Nneka. Its a unique cover and annoyingly I’ve missed going to see her twice this year, once through illness the other by work so this song is the closest I’ve got to her live.

Bon Iver – Holocene

Listen to it. All I have to say on the matter. I see the sunrise over the Himalayas, what will you see?

Lee Evans – Suicide Song

Hardly ground breaking music but the memories behind it are what has made it onto this list. I remember being about 17 and my best friend and I listening to this song over and over again and laughing so hard that breath became a humours struggle over the laughter.  Now that friend is off in Afghanistan fighting for queen and country. So although him not being in this country and me spending this six long months worrying about him I put this song on and turn 17 again and he’s there.

The Smiths – Please, please, please let me get what I want

Not because of the John Lewis advert before you start hurling abuse at me. The Smiths have become the bulk of my escape the noise of London playlist. Its grown and grown since I started working in London in March and this song encapsulates why its slow, calm and incredible. Escapism with guitar accompaniment.

Kayne West et al – All of the Lights

A cracking song to keep me walking to London pace.

Ed Sheeran  – You need me, I don’t need you

Another of Ed’s songs. After being a massive fan of his music for ages he finally made it big this year, well done and well deserved. I still remember hearing this song for the first time on SB.TV in early 2010 and was blown away.

Adele – Someone like you

Not because I’ve had emotional turmoil simply because its an incredible peace of music. Powerful would be putting it lightly.

Jessie J – Who you are

Again same reason as above to be honest. This songs lyrics are repeated by my inner monologue on a numerous occasions specifically, “its okay not to be okay”

One Republic – Good Life

This song was in my 2010 playlist for this reason “This is the song I would always play as I walked up the road from my hotel to the main square in Dharamsala. When the sun was pouring through the mountains and everyone waving at you as they past and this song playing I always had a spring in my step.” Thats exactly the reason its back here again because I can put it on and imagine those perfect moments.

1. STANDING UP With his reputation for inebriation, you may wonder how Ernest Hemingway managed to write anything at all. In his later years in Cuba, while working on The Old Man And The Sea, he ascribed to a ‘done by noon, drunk by three’ routine in which he would get up at dawn, write standing up at his typewriter until he’d emptied his head, then empty the famous Floridita bar.

2. LYING DOWN In Cold Blood novelist Truman Capote described himself as a “horizontal author”, thanks to his languid approach to his craft. “I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy,” he told The Paris Review in 1957. “I’ve got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis.”

3. DRINKING VAST AMOUNTS OF COFFEE Like a lot of people, coffee was Honoré de Balzac’s poison. But we’re not talking the odd espresso. He would drink vast quantities of black coffee, ensuring that he could write through the day and into the night, once clocking in 48 hours straight.

4. ACTING OUT DIALOGUE As well as chain-smoking and index cards, the man behind The West Wing and The Social Network, Aaron Sorkin, has a habit of acting out his zippy dialogue while gazing at his own reflection. In 2010, he worked himself into such a frenzy that he head-butted a mirror. “I wish I could say I was in a bar fight,” confessed Sorkin, “but I broke my nose writing.”

5. NUDITY In order to stave off procrastination, French novelist Victor Hugo wrote both Les Misérables and The Hunchback Of Notre-Dame in the altogether. Being nude meant he wouldn’t be able to leave his house. As a safety measure, he’d also instruct his valet to hide his clothes.

6. IN A HOTEL A ritual that is at once lavish, pious and debauched: Maya Angelou, author of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, rises at 5am and checks into a hotel, where staff are instructed to remove all stimuli from the walls of her room. She takes legal pads, a bottle of sherry, playing cards, a Bible and Roget’s Thesaurus, writing 12 pages before leaving in the afternoon and editing the pages that evening.

7. HEAD-SHAVING Demosthenes was among the greatest statesmen in ancient Greece. In order to motivate his writing and public speaking practise, it’s said he would shave one side of his head. Like Hugo hundreds of years later, it ensured that he remained in the house working instead of outside looking daft.

Have a good day and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter!

Waiting on the World to Change – John Mayer

Me and all my friends
We’re all misunderstood
They say we stand for nothing and
There’s no way we ever could

Now we see everything that’s going wrong
With the world and those who lead it
We just feel like we don’t have the means
To rise above and beat it

So we keep waiting
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

It’s hard to beat the system
When we’re standing at a distance
So we keep waiting
Waiting on the world to change

Now if we had the power
To bring our neighbors home from war
They would have never missed a Christmas
No more ribbons on their door
And when you trust your television
What you get is what you got
Cause when they own the information, oh
They can bend it all they want

That’s why we’re waiting
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

It’s not that we don’t care,
We just know that the fight ain’t fair
So we keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

And we’re still waiting
Waiting on the world to change
We keep on waiting waiting on the world to change
One day our generation
Is gonna rule the population
So we keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

London is of course not aiding my sorry slide in madness; the underground really seems to test my sanity on a daily basis. Some of the nuggets of bonkersness are: being stuck in an entire carriage rammed with vampires at Halloween (should note that vampires don’t exist, they aren’t real people, move on), a 70 year old man swinging on the handles of the tube singing “I’m the king of the swingers” at about the third rendition the woman sat next to me lent over and muttered, “he does this everyday” and finally a man dressed as Batman at 3pm on a Wednesday, enough said.

So why has my December kicked off my mumbling grumblings? I could blame it on the winter blues, the never ending noise of London or the long work hours. That would be a lie though, it’s that balance I spoke of. The work to play ratio is clearly not equal, making me feel lopsided (not physical, I’m not up a bell tower, yet). My evening entrapments usually revolve around working or melting whatever still exists of my brain in front of the telly box. Escapism is king. You can now probably understand why I haven’t blogged in what seems like eons simply because my imagination has been stifled. Held captive by the mundane and the routine. Nothing has sparked my imagination ‘fire’ (not an imaginary fire, I’m not seeing piles of wood and kindling everywhere).

So how have I cured this? I was going to lie to you and tell you I have been dabbling in booze and drugs but I’m not even slightly rock and or roll. In truth, my remedy was simply finding somewhere for me to think, to mull over ideas and to observe. In Durham it was a bridge over looking the stunning Cathedral and in India I would sit on the rooftops and watch the streets below. London’s solution, however, is less glamorous but incredibly effective: the tube. The place full of drunks, bright lights and indescribable smells shouldn’t work. The abundance of things that shouldn’t inspire does the exact opposite. I sit on the tube for hours and scribble away furiously. Crazy? Of course. But when has anything I’ve ever done made sense?

So I’m back and at full capacity firing on all metaphorical cylinders. Right, must dash, this is my stop.

Not the drug kind of hit, that would be dangerous. No my 10,000 blog hit, it happened sometime during the night like Father Christmas coming or foxes eating your boots (it happens). I have amazingly reached the grand old age of 10,000 and in all honestly I cannot believe it. I didn’t for one moment 6 weeks ago when I first started blogging away that anyone would read my random ramblings, let along in the colossal numbers that it has, it’s really extraordinary. All my life I never thought of myself as a writer, at school teachers were always telling me how bad I was at any sort of writing. So to reach five figures today is a big two fingers up at my demoralising teachers.

So why did I start to write?
In all honesty because of a two tiered unenthralling motivation. Firstly, boredom, that’s right not inspiration coming to me in a dream or God willing it, pure unadulterated boredom. It was my way of filling the nights when I couldn’t sleep or to escape from my solitude living. The second is my constant driving force through life; to make people smile. Anyone who knows me will readily admit that making people laugh is what motivates me. I’ve tried many other methods to make people chuckle: drama (too scripted), improv theatre (too unscripted), music (if you’ve heard me sing you’ll know why that failed) and finally I ascertained that putting pen to paper (or finger to key) created the perfect outlet. It allows me to witter away the hours by wittering away.

10,000 is a huge milestone and I hope to high heaven that I can add another 0 onto that number in the distant future but for now I am more than happy making people all around the world laugh virtually. That feeling is by far the best feeling in the world, even better than watching a slinky race down some stairs. So keep reading my scribbles on life as there are barrels more of it rattling around in my head.

In the mean time this photograph was taken on the South Bank in London and while his paintings might well have been bordered with inspirational speeches and filled with famed leaders the artist himself felt anything but empowered by those he was recreating.

His reply when I asked why he chose to paint them, “beliefs are easy to fool”.

“People, define a place” is a saying I’ve had for many years, mainly when travelling but when I arrived at a bar that saw many of my student days/finances spent in, it became evident that this saying was now applicable to Durham too. Despite being fit to bursting, the place seemed void of people I had spent some of the best years with. You are probably all now shouting at the screen that I am being ridiculously sentimental and I am but for those who have been back to old haunts such as university towns or cities you used to work in, that unsettling feeling of not belonging anymore haunts you.

The city itself was as beautiful as ever, the light installations added to its indisputable beauty and my friends remain as always my brilliantly bonkers family. I don’t want to say that it felt like a concluding chapter to my Durham life but it did feel, however, like it could be. If I never go back, I would not be filled with the regret of not returning.

Durham will always, always holds this incredible place for me. I’m sure I am not the only one who walks down the streets of somewhere they have spent many years in looking at places and vividly picturing your past self creating that memory.

Its a sad thing to look back too much as you end up not looking forward at all. However, the majority of the weekend has been spent by all of us looking back: our first meetings, parties, loves, leavings, the whole spectrum of memories relived through a city where memories pervade its walls.

We have all moved on since then: City jobs, Phds, doctors, teachers, working for charities (myself) or -like many graduates- looking for work, but Durham was where we all started our career’s choices and future fancies and in that way it will always remain the same. As the place our lives began.

Sorry for the rather self involved and rambling post and also for the considerable lack of posts these past few months, I am working on a few of them at the moment, normal service will resume soon.