Surgery and stuff

Inspired by Sam Parker, who recently had his tonsils out and blogged about it, I realised I might be (literally) sitting on a goldmine of writing ideas following my own surgery last week. Yes, my blog focuses on The Real Real World, but I'm sure there is a tenuous link there.

So, last Thursday I went to the doctors with the feeling I had tonsillitis. I had it a lot at University and felt, after fainting in the shower, I must be coming down with it again. My throat was swollen, my squeaky voice was replaced with a horse, gravelly murmur and I had a penchant for hacking coughs. All the signs were there.

"Well, your tonsils do look quite horrible," said my doctor, staring into my mouth. "But they're not infected."

I was stumped. As my doctor mused, biting the end of her pen, I half expected Sherlock Holmes to burst out the medicine cabinet, desperate to solve this marvel. Boy thinks he has tonsillitis, but doesn't. Guuh? Unfortunately, something else happened.

"Let's get you on the bed and give you a physical," she cooed. I'll point out at this point that my doctor, while lovely, was the size of SuBo and had hands like shovels. Her feeling my every curve was going to be rather harrowing.

So, after a bit of a feel, 1/3 of which I found strangely arousing, my doctor found the problem. What I thought was a nagging lower-back pain, something I expected I could ignore until it reared its ugly head in my later years and force me to stoop like I was inspecting pavements, actually turned out to be a big ol' infection.

Naturally, I'll leave the ins 'n' outs to one side, but let me break it down. I had to go and have some surgery to rid me of the infection that was purging my body, spreading like red wine knocked over a tablecloth. I imagine the infection looks like this:

I imagine 'groo' is the sort of noise an infection makes.

After surgery, I'd need about 4 weeks of doing sweet FA so my wound, which wasn't allowed to be stitched up, could be padded and re-padded with gauze until it healed naturally. Healing naturally? I'd just read Harry Potter 5, whereby they go to a magical hospital and a simple spell heals most wounds. This, in contrast, was a massive downer for me. Alohomora, or some shit.

When my family heard I was ill, and worse so, I was in hospital, they naturally assumed, in their Northern way, it had something to do with terrorists. After explaining none of London was blown up (to my knowledge; I had spend all day in A&E being examined by trainee doctors, who knows what I missed?), they still decided they'd come all the way to London to check I was ok.

After surgery, I was discharged and went back to Carlisle with the rents, which, due to the effects of morphine was dream-like and passed quickly.

It feels as if this tale is age-old, one I recite countless times, but it only happened a week ago. A week. Seven sodding days. Because the problem with sitting at home and doing sweet FA is that time goes very slowly. My Nintendo 64 has been sold, and my Nintendo Wii has bad games on it. Daytime TV is a clown-car of mild idiots, from the goofy homoeroticism on To Buy Or Not To Buy? to the vampish harpies on Loose Women. On Friday, they invited Ronan Keating to sing a song on the show, before clawing at him with their talons and devouring his manhood.

Luckily it's not been all bad; FHM, who miss me dearly while I'm away, send me series 1 of The Wire on DVD, which is good, because I never got into it, and always wanted to, and now I like it. I'm also going to get into Mad Men since everyone wails on about it a lot.

Next post will be detailing my hellish existence in the house as home comforts turn to nightmarishly dull things. Calm down, I know it's exciting.

Mandles From All Over (And Some From Nearby)

Wow. I’m so exited for Christmas. The tinsel, the presents, that time-honoured tradition of drinking with my parents, piecing together more about my conception and suffering horrendous ‘I-Know-Too-Much’ syndrome thereafter.


Oh wait. In the time it took me to write that paragraph, it seems Christmas came and left. Quicker than ever.
This is how Christmas works in The Real Real World, and experiencing this truth stings more than wading through a field of nettles looking for your dog.


The Uni bubble was soft and mallowy; students typically finish their 45 word essay 45 minutes before the deadline and have three weeks at home enjoying central heating and home-cooked stews.


But take heed, students, the real world is somewhat less forgiving. There isn’t time for Christmas spirit among postgrad deadlines, spreadsheets and general life-mongery. Hence me finding myself at home, about two or three days after Christmas, wondering where the bloody hell my Christmas spirit went.


Don’t get me wrong, the big day was as great as ever. Instead of just one large beast at our dinner table, we had two - turkey AND beef, supplemented by boxing day ham and day-after-boxing-day salmon because apparently every day between Xmas and New Years warrants a special off-the-cuff creature.


Can’t wait for December 29th Goose, New Year’s Eve-Eve Venison and New Year’s Day Finest Gourmet Horse. Tastes stressed.


We also had our annual gathering of Mandles From All Over (And Some From Nearby) where relatives come to see us, stick around for a bit, and bugger off. We will not see them until December 25th 2011. This is not because they live in areas devoid of communication. We simply don’t care about them enough to bother speaking to them the other 364 days of the year.


Now that I think about it, I definitely don’t know much about the outer-circle of our family. Uncle Keith works for a company (as opposed to what, I wonder?) and lives in a house (that’s based off an assumption. He might have a house-car or a box-hole).


‘Uncle’ John (he’s my auntie’s husband’s brother, so no blood there folks) is on Countryfile next week helping rescue someone from a mountain, but he did admit most the footage shows him with his hands in his pockets while other people do dangerous stuff.


Still, the Mandles From All Over (And Some From Nearby) celebrations are a speed-socialising day of frenzy; quick chats with one here, duck under there and mingle with such-and-such. And since we host, my brother and I are usually topping up drinks, offering a Terry’s Segsation from a large metal barrel or laughing at just the right time. Normally when an elderly racist relative makes wry observations about the French.


I think my favourite part of the festive period is the fallout from Christmas - people wander along the streets wondering what day it is, if the banks will be open, if they’ll receive post or whether there’s something good on telly. And it’s always good spending your afternoons violating a selection box while playing The Sims 2.


Having fack all to do is a rare treat in The Real Real World, so it feels very deserved. Especially when I have to sadly spend my birthday on a BA flight back to London to start work again. THIS TIME IS PRECIOUS - I WILL DO NOTHING!


The trip up was exciting. Despite Heathrow spamming up all week and cancelling flights, I went to Terminal 5 with a spring in my step. While sitting in the departure lounge bar (I managed to sneak in under some flimsy pretence of meeting a relative. Plus, I’m slim, so sneaking is second nature to me) I mingled with some people who were not impressed with the snow.


“Bah! This country!” snorted one man, his jowls quivering with a squelch. “We can’t handle the snow at all!"


“I know!” screeched another lady. I was absent from her contribution as my ears started to bleed from the piercing shriek of her voice, but from what I gathered, she said we needed to spend more money dealing with snow.


“What money do you propose we spend?” I asked, wadding my ears with cotton wool. “What services would you cut so the country can use more grit? For two weeks a year? Sometimes?”


“All I’m saying,” said Screechsome McDinosaur. “Is that Russia cope fine well. They use tanks to clear the road. Tanks!!”


As small children and dogs wailed at her shrill tones, people murmured in agreement. What the piss? We never get snow here, and if we do, we get very little for very little time. If planes can’t fly and trains get a bit scared then so what - we’ll suck it up and get on with it.


Proposing that the country spends a lot of money on a giant Acme-style shovel or a robot that vomits grit in copious loads is ridiculous, pointless and absurd.


Why not invest in a gigantic net so we can catch people who are flung around from tornados? You know, JUST IN CASE?


Or maybe we could spend £Six Trillion Willion putting every single building on a pair of comical stilts that would help absorb the shock from a potential earthquake?


Hopefully there are some more narrow-minded pleb-wankers on the plane back so I can have a good chuckle at their stupid views.


In other news, I’ve secured a cushy internship at FHM for the first few months of 2011. Lots of people applied for the position but I used my sharp wit, unflappable cunning and farcical blackmail to snag the job.
Hurray.


While there, I’ll be doing all manner of strange jobs for the mag, be it getting fired out a cannon, catching a bullet in my teeth and trying to speak Yak. If you have any suggestions for tasks you’d like me to do while there (including but not restricted to sleeping with your average-looking cousin) drop me an email at cmandle0@gmail.com.


And follow me on twitter, where I can be found at www.twitter.com/cmandle

Pret Couture

Moving to London (from up North, no less) is a big deal. I mean, there were no banners/balloons/clowns or anything, but it was still a moment in my life that was important. I think some people felt that this move - to pursue a career in journalism - was a brief stint; a phase.

  

When I was fifteen I got into the habit of buying plain white clothing (tshirts, polo shirts etc) and tie-dying them. Somehow, somewhere, it made sense and I was convinced it was a good idea. Maybe I was going to start a revival, or catch onto a new trend. Not quite. I spent one of my non-uniform days at school looking like a spiky middle class hippie boy thing. All incriminating photos have since been burned and the ashes ground into a paste that was used as a cement to construct a small hut that I blew up with TNT.

  

THAT was a phase.

  

People think this is a phase.

  

But it isn’t.

  

So I moved ’Daaaahhn Saaaarrrff’ and, in theory, I’m not going to move back. And since moving down, I’ve been very busy, very drunk, very confused and very lost for words.

  

So writing about The Real Real World has taken a back seat. It’s a shame, because there’s a lot going on, and a lot to make sharp social commentaries on, yet so little time to do it. But as the days and weeks merge into a singular chilly blur, snapping at my fingertips and eating up my money, I shove responsibility to one side in order to tell the next part of my tale.

  

Moving to London carries something of a culture shock, but I hope you understand that this isn’t as radical as say, a panda adjusting to life in a caravan. While it’s odd, and different, it isn’t perplexing beyond belief - I’m able to eat and survive and communicate like any northerner should. But some of it’s just weird.

  

For example, look at coffee culture. Every corner has a bloody coffee chain on it. A coffee chain that sells pretty average coffee and foul food. This is a trend that bled over from the states, and you do find it in most big UK cities. But Carlisle has only had its Starbucks for a couple of years, and nobody really likes it. On the high street, we quicken as we near the confusing green lettering (and why a mermaid on the logo!?), eager to get past it and resume our normal pedestrian pace, looking at normal things and thinking normal thoughts.

  

The flood of stuffy businessmen that invade coffee shops in the morning is ridiculous. I’d be less confused if the coffee was good value for money, but a large cup in Starbucks roughly equates to a jar of Nescafe, and I know which one makes sense. Yes, working in a big city is a mad rush, but get up 10 minutes earlier and have a proper coffee you idiot.

  

I remember meeting a girl in my third year at University. She was somewhat precious, fragile to the ways of the Real World. Luckily, not only was she insulated by the student-university bubble, she was also kept warm by a thick layer of money her parents wrapped her in before scooting her off up t’north.

  

We met in the library. I had drunk enough coffee to give me bladder cramps and a twitchy left eye, while she was wafting left and right as if a desk fan was stuck up her bottom. I drank another coffee, fully aware I was going to externally combust before my dissertation was finished, this girl was opening a ‘fresh’ salad box from Pret.

“I love Pret,” she said in a honey-soaked croon. “Lurve it. It’s lush. I’m having a mango and crayfish salad. It’s totes delish.”

  

I looked at the wilted box of salad. There was a couple of mango chunks and the most pitiful looking array of seafood I think I’ve ever seen. A pot of dressing accompanied the salad, but the girl had set this pot on the edge of the table, glaring at it reproachfully.

  

“The dressing is full of calories,” she said. “Empty, empty calories.”

  

“Is that your dinner?” I asked. She nodded. “That won’t fill you up.”

  

“Oh, but no but it’s fine,” she reassured me. Granted, we had just met; she wasn’t someone whose general health and wellbeing was much of an issue to me. “I had a Pret snack bar at lunchtime.”

She continued.

“I had a bowl of porridge from Pret this morning. Pret snack bar for lunch and Pret salad box for dinner! Yum!”

  

Anyway it turns out that this is how the girl ate. Every day. WITHOUT FAIL. Coffee? Pret. Super healthy carrot and scrotum smoothie? PRET! And every meal in the day (though these seemed few and far between).

  

Not only was this the most unhealthy idea in the world, it must have been costing the girl an absolute fortune. She always stuck in my mind, because if you think about it, that mentality - that these high street café eateries are healthy, fresh and good value for money - is absolute rubbish.

  

It’s like going to McDonalds for the carrot sticks and apple slices. YOU JUST DON’T.

  

It shouldn’t bother me, but I see far too many people every single day looking like utter dickheads and saying “Sorry I asked for my skinny no-fuss extra-effort faecal macchiato to have cream made from the milk of a goat” far too often. None of that means anything! Have a normal coffee.

  

They look like 'Apprentice' rejects - the women wear quirky thick framed specs and Ralph lauren shirts while the men look like they’re thinking about feeling guilty for thinking about looking at their receptionist at work who feels like she’d like to look like Samantha from accounts and - CAN YOU SEE HOW IRKSOME IT IS?

  

So I’ve created a strategy for these pricks. If you’ve been reading this and think to yourself ‘Chris has captured the very essence of my lifestyle’ then I suggest you follow these words of wisdom yourself.

1. Buy a jar of Nescafe or other branded coffee.
2. Get an alarm clock. Set it earlier than usual.
3. Get up earlier and have a coffee before you leave the house.
4. If this may wear off due to a tumultuous commute, buy a flask. Fill it with a bounty of coffee and you won’t need to drink expensive rubbish all day.
5. Like mango? Like crayfish? If it’s too pretentious to buy in a supermarket, don’t buy it at all (this includes SUPERFOODS, ie assorted magic beans)

It's tentatively known as the Buy-Get-Set-Have-Flask-Magic-Beans approach.

If these point’s prove useless, a 6th, emergency point, is give yourself a massive kick in the head. If you aren’t limber, get a friend to do it for you.

Until the world follows these steps, it seems like London may be gripped by Pret Couture for quite some time.

Just another facet of The (Real) Real World.

Tweet Tweet Tweet

Just a heads up; if you have twitter you can follow me at http://www.twitter.com/memandle

Current people following: A wall-street banker, a John-James (BB11) obsessive, a pizza entrepreneur, The Sun's showbiz writer and a Lady GaGa tribute singer.

Sounds like one hell of a party, right?

Singles Round-Up

Writing two posts for The Real Real World at the moment, and while I'm catching up on new moosic and cool things since I've been away, I thought I'd compile a round-up of the best/loudest/most promoted singles at the mo.



Nicki Minaj - Your Love

Sassy, foul-mouthed and somewhat prickly, Nicki Minaj has every chance of turning into a ball-shredding ladette who can drink beer faster than you (and we wouldn’t want that). This time, her razor-sharp lyrics are blended with a sample of Annie Lennox’s “No More I Love You’s”, softening the sharp edges from her otherwise gritty and aggressive rap persona.



Mark Ronson - The Bike Song

What’s this? Mark Ronson ditched brass? He’s stopped covering other peoples songs? But he’s still getting guest vocalists in to do most the leg work? And you can’t really get a sense that he’s put any effort in at all? Yet its still his name on the bloody album? And is that Kieran from The View singing on this one? Wait, who are The View?



Everything Everything - MY KZ UR BF

Yes, EE fever has well and truly struck - and after knockout sets at Reading and Leeds, perhaps the Mancunian’s eerie brand of yelp-pop will spread like butter on hot toast. This, one of the standout tracks from debut album ’Man Alive’, demonstrates the four-pieces panache for clever quick-time lyrics and thought-provoking imagery at a high enough pitch that your Labrador will be able to enjoy it, too.



Cee-Lo - Fuck You

Or, if you listen to Radio 1, ’Forget You’ (what a clever clean-up). The obscenity-splattered solo single from Gnarles Barkley’s crooning front man is a blatant middle finger to a cheating ex, with Cee-Lo cheerfully yelling “and while there’s pain in my chest/I still wish you the best/with a ’fuck you’ ooh-ooh-ooh.” Upbeat whilst still having plenty of sting, it. puts a nice sing-a-long spin on being completely done over. It also sounds like that Muller corner song, ’I’ve got my head, got my face, got my fingers got my lungs’ or something. Which is BAD. But everything else is good. So yea.



The XX - Islands
These guys are, in my opinion, the ones who deserve the Mercury Prize the most. This year, the artists nominated are all of a very high calibre (particularly Foals, who have outdone themselves) but I think the XX wholly deserve it. ‘Islands’ is a reverberating statement of smoky ecstasy; husky lyrics sinew around an echoing loop, with each repetition bringing renewed beauty. The motif of “I am yours now/so now I don’t ever have to leave” gets more heartfelt, more wonderful, more meaningful with each breath.

Delta Spirit - History From Below

Delta Spirit - History From Below


Originally published in NME 30/07/2010



Onto their second album, and Delta Spirit still seem to face comparisons with Mumford & Sons, Fleet Foxes and, er, that other popular hairy nu-folk troupe.

‘History From Below’ draws on the spiritual and religious concepts that propelled their debut, with ‘Salt in the Wound’s ‘If there’s a god in my head/then there’s a devil too/how can I tell the difference/when they both claim to be true?’.

Their follow-up is more adventurous - a garage-band twist on a format getting staler with each check shirt. The result is difficult to characterise - but then there’s something incredibly satisfying about that.

7/10

Download: 'Salt In The Wound', '911'

Money

Money is not cool. It's a problem for almost all students, exclusing of course, those whose parents are the Baron and Baroness of Kirkby. Once you notice how salaries work in the real real world, student finance and the whole concept of living on absolute pitence becomes a joke.


Obviously there are several options available for students who are a bit short on cash. You can get a job, like working in a restaurant, bar or high-end lapdancing club (I'd reccomend Diamonds). Of the three, I'd say lapdancing is probably the most social; the added perk of sometimes working horizontally means you literally won't be on your feet as much as if you were making Cosmopolitans for retards.



Dealing drugs is another effective way to earn money quickly. It also comes with no emotional attchments; while restaurants are focused on keeping the customer happy, drug dealers lack empathy for their customers problems (the main problem is the drug itself. However pale skin, no money and deviated septums are also problems for the avarage generic drug-taker). This means you can be emotionally void and still earn a lot of money. Your customers are also very loyal, since heroin, crystal meth and Yorkie bars are way more addictive than say, Piccolino's herb-crust sea bass. People who love drugs always find the money. In Emmerdale once, a drug-addled ne'er-do-well-er sold his neighbours cat for drug money.



There's also something tentatively dubbed The Dealer/Lapdance Paradox. Drug Dealers probably earn a lot more than lap dancers, although that depends on the drug, and 'lapdance' on offer. BUT surprisingly, lapdancers spend more money on drugs that drug dealers spend on lapdances. So hard profit, between The Dealer and the Lapdancer, is about equal. Hence The Dealer/Lapdance Paradox.



Being a dealer, however, has consequences; many Brit flicks, like Layer Cake, The Business, or occasional episodes of Skins feature a drug dealer getting his head kicked in, or his family getting murdered, or something else gruesome. What if you witness a murder, or try to topple some druggie pyramid of power? Hilarity (and death) may ensue.


Anyway it's post-uni now - University is officially behind me. While my only part-time job at Uni was a brief stint behind a bar, I did do some freelancing for a little bit of cash-moneyz. And upon my arrival in That London, said freelancing will still commence.


However, looking at the prices for everything in That London has made me realise - more than ever - that money makes the world go round - Ke$ha had to put a dollar sign in her name just to get noticed (the poor tramp). Rappers who have lots of money love to rap about money, and Dizzee Rascal managed a trashy disco-tune about the importance of pounds sterling.


The problem is I have always had a loose relationship with money. We are never together long, because as soon as I have some, knowing I have some spurs me on to do something with it. I'll buy something expensive - splurge in Eldon Square, have a Fino side at Nandos, that sort of thing. I have embodied the wise words of my (late) Great Uncle George: "There's no merit in being the richest man in the graveyard". Ironically, when he died, he left quite a lot of money. In hindsight, he could have done better things than give me enough money to buy a drumkit and subsequently never play it; a heroin binge around the streets of Carlisle might have been a more exciting way to avoid the fate he warned me of.



With the exception of my freelancing, it seems I won't be earning money until February 2011. Added to that the cost of living, the cost of beer (£4 for a bottle of Becks, kindly fuck off, capital city) and the cost of tube travel.....my oh my, this slow-burning start to my career is costly.


"If it is any help," pipes up a friend. "Journalists also don't start on a handsome salary. Statistics also show that the oppertunity to earn MORE is small; don't expect to be raking it in."


Said friend now has a snooker cue lodged firmly in his eye socket.


He has a point; journalism is not like other careers. As I'd mentioned previously, we generally don't get paid to do work experience - people expect us to work for free (but then that's because the industry itself, in many cases, doesn't generate a lot of money). I've been working at Accent Magazine in Gosforth for a month, and the work has involved assisting with editorial, writing content, pitching ideas and even sitting in on meetings with the Editor, planning their coverage for the next few months. I've been able to write food, technology, music, travel, lifestyle and - er - interiors. My cuttings folder has never looked so schitzophrenic.


But, like a lot of journalism work experience/internships, it was free. Contrastively, a friend is working near Tynemouth on work experience and sits at a desk making tea. He comes home with £160 a day, five days a week, for ten weeks.


Karen, the inept Technology Writer (who didn't know what an iPad was) said, upon me producing a piece on 'The Best Apps for the iPad' - "If you ever want a job here, it's yours."


I was touched, but felt that a career in Newcastle wasn't for me. Due to the lack of desk space, an elderly computer was put in the boiler room, and was subsequently dubbed 'The Editorial Suite' - it had my name all over its sweat-infused chair. Furthermore, while the talk of a potential career had been flattering, I very much doubt she intended it to mean in any paid capacity. In the office last week, the Sub desk had bemoaned the budget cuts that resulted in only ONE beer fridge for the office (a fridge that would be empty at the end of every week), so employing me, even on minimum wage, isn't even remotely in their interests.

So as I carefully attack my map of London with a highlighter, marking yellow for 'nice', pink for 'stabby' and blue for 'convinient', I realise that it's going to be some time before I can afford that nice flat in London.

Until then, just call me Chri$.