42: A plague on both your houses!

I was pretty sick when we recorded this show. I'm all better now. Sometimes when you have a near death experience like that your whole life flashes before your eyes... This is one of those times. I know I bullshit a lot but all of these are true.

To hear this episode (which mostly consists of me coughing...)  press

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Track Listings

 '2nd Sucks' by A day to Remember
Memory one... it's sports day and in order to make myself run faster I have bought myself a Mars Milkshake drink. I am pretty quick for a short kid and manage a half decent time in the 100 meters. Then I heave over and puke that milkshake all over the floor.

'I Could Never Break Your Heart' by Fol Chen
Memory two. I am on a German exchange programme. I am 14 years old and wandering around a zoo in Hamburg with a kid called Gavin from Weston super Mare. Before we went to the zoo we had been to visit the Burgermeister  (Mayor). There had been a hospitality table with free cokes and I'd loaded up on that shit. Now, back at the Zoo, I badly need to piss but all the signs are in German and to make matters worse they seem to lead me on a route that goes all the way around the damn zoo before going anywhere near a urinal. To cut a long story short, somewhere near the Penguins I piss myself. Gavin and I walk around until my trousers dry off. Then we get back on the bus with all the other kids and go back to the hotel.

'Side projects are never successful' by Bomb the Music Industry 
Memory three. Despite a crippling lack of talent my mum is convinced I can follow in her footsteps and play in an orchestra, she plays the cello (so does my sister) and I play violin. I fail the audition but they let me in anyway because mum is one of the teachers and they are worried that if none of her kids are involved she will stop volunteering her weekends and they will have to find a new cello coach.
I am a fourth row second violin. I am mostly lost and holding the bow above the strings so that I don't mess thing up for my mum by actually making any noise.

Sometimes we play a piece called 'Andrews piece.' All I know is that I like it and it's by one of the kids in the orchestra. I assume one of the soloists or  front row 1st's.  There is another kid in my row called 'Scabby' he stinks like a tramp and is badly bullied. Word is he'll do anything for half a chew-it. I find out weeks later that he is Andrew. The contradiction blows my mind.


'Highways' By Joe Purdey 
Memory Four. It's the last year of GCSE's I am reeling from the fact that my parents have finally divorced. My sister is dating a psycho boxer and I am getting regularly beaten up in the street, (mostly for being small, white and confused).

I decide that talking is over rated and that it's easier to get through school if I just stop. I don't say another word for two months. On my last day a group of kids tells me that they are going to gather in the stairwell to beat me up when the bell goes. I don't even try and avoid them. I just walk right over and let them do it. After a while they get bored and I walk home.

'Hands down' by Dashboard confessional
Memory Five. I am standing with my old best friend at the top of a hill called 'Dangerous Hill' We are looking at the view of the city. In that moment we are in love with the city. We love the reality of it. The ugly beauty. This city of tiny lights is spread out in front of us like a mirror image of the milky-way. In my mind each one of those lights represents another human being, another life, another perspective on the unknowable nature of the universe.

Years later I try and skateboard down dangerous hill and bust up my ankle pretty bad. Guess I should have taken more heed of the name.

'I walked' Sufjan Stevens 
Memory Six. I am sixteen and living in rural Wales. My route home takes me past some crazy ass one-eyed farm-dogs that like to chase cars. Usually one of my step brothers is with me but today I am on my own. The dogs look at me. I look at them. They bare their teeth and growl. I decide to go around the block to avoid them. It turns out that 'Around the block' is about five miles, this is the trouble with applying urban logic to a rural problem.

'In the Offing' by Worn in Red 
Memory Seven. I am 11 years old and lying on a beach, everyone else is body-boarding later on I will have a go and realize how fun it is but right now I think it looks silly, cold and dangerous. I am next to a four month old baby who is playing with some pebbles. Just as I am drifting off into a day dream the kid picks up a rock and smashes it into my head. It doesn't break the skin but it hurts like hell huge lump comes up like in a cartoon. The baby laughs and laughs.
 
'Walkin' by My Morning Jacket
Memory Eight. I am thirty years old and I'm not happy about it. My cousin has just died in an avalanche on Ben Nevis. the dude was amazing. Pure smile, muscle and heart and now I'm off to his funeral.  There is snow all over the road and in order to get my car out I am having scrape it off the road with a shovel and lay a trail of rock salt that some guy has brought out from his house. I hate snow is a way that I never thought I would.

Goodnight.