How Does Anyone Swim the Channel in a Day?!

I've clearly made a massive mistake.

I've taken it upon myself to join the Aspire Channel Swim (http://www.aspirechannelswim.co.uk), which is swimming the distance of the channel between the 12th of September and 4th of December. Doesn't sound too bad does it? Considering that people have swum this distance in a day. I thought the same, and so decided to set myself the challenge of doing it in a month. Still sounds pathetic though, doesn't it?

Now here's a quiz question for you: how far is the channel swim?
22 miles. Still not sound too bad for the course of a month?
It's a long way.

22 miles is 1416 lengths of a 25 metre pool. I'm going to be doing it in a 33m pool which takes it down to 1073 lengths.... which means I have to swim 35 lengths every day. That's 1155m daily for the whole of October. I currently swim once a month in lifeguard training, and that equates to about 5 lengths at the very most.

To ensure that I actually carry this out I've set up a Just Giving page and now that someone's donated the first £10 there's no going back! If you fancy a look/donation visit www.justgiving.co.uk/halderton.

To help me carry it out, I've got a hold of a waterproof mp3 player. This is an amazing creation that has suddenly made showers interesting, and dancing in the rain with music perfectly plausible. (Don't worry, this isn't regular but when there's a warm thunder shower it's hard to beat!)

This is now essential considering my latest discoveries. The swimming times don't fit in with my course on Mondays, and I lifeguard the Saturday pool sessions. This takes me up to 49 lengths a day. I really need to start training...

I've been a lifeguard for 4 years now, in fact I'm reassessing for my second time at the end of September. When I was 16, I enjoyed lifeguarding - watching people swimming was interesting. You could snigger at their techniques or find abnormalities to humorously name swimmers with titles such as 'Skeletor', 'Mole man' and 'Fishy Feet', or admire how a woman with a normal size arse could stick it so far out of the water when swimming front crawl. Perhaps even pray that the woman who makes the 'puk' noise with her lips on every other breath of breast stroke stops, just for a little while. My favourite was the man who hums underwater when breathing out on front crawl, who brings together a harmony of hums from everyone above the water whilst he is submerged. By this point, I've seen pretty much everything there is to see (including overshoe and Tesco bag swimming hats) and have lost the fear of having to rescue someone, leaving me hoping that someone will struggle just to give me something to do.

I think I need to find a new job.

It's now become a regular part of my shift to text one of my housemates with my 'highlight of the day' which is essentially the shittest part of my shift. This can range from being left on poolside for all but an hour and a half of an 8 hour shift or having to bin a nappy and sanny pad that someone has left ON THE FLOOR. Perhaps even being yelled at by a woman saying that I should not be allowed near children because I told her child, admittedly somewhat firmly, to leave the pool at the end of the session rather than mucking about and trying to sneak back in. I won't even start on how many rules they were breaking as a family... I was fuming at the end of that shift.

I was invited out to a company's launch party in Jewel Bar, Piccadilly Circus and they put a tab on for the entire evening to entice people into advertising the company. An open bar in central London is, well unheard of and was incredible. An open bar of course led to me drinking more than I had anticipated, and returning home later meaning that I had an interesting day on my course the following day. You may be thinking to yourself, surely a day of massaging can only help? Except you and your partner rotate the massaging, which means that you are seduced into a relaxing snooze that you have to force yourself out of so you can think about what you are doing in return. When you're already knackered, this becomes near impossible.

The things we're learning though are really quite interesting, although perhaps only to a physio... It means that I can find many more internal structures just by poking around and can trick the body into becoming more flexible, relaxed and painless. It's seriously useful stuff and I find myself thinking 'Ooo perhaps that's what so and so had!' and the like. Did you know that a bruise is normally lower than the area of the injury because gravity pulls the blood downwards as it travels to the surface? It's definitely a handy fact for torturing little brothers. Oh, as is pinching their heel. It's painful enough to be used to tell whether or not unconscious patients still respond to pain so works perfectly for them to succumb to your every wish.

I was a fairly horrible sibling. Not enough that we've grown up to hate each other, just enough to look back and realise that I was really fairly mean. There was one incident where I locked him in his room simply by closing the door - he was too short to reach the handle. He was in there for hours. Another time, him, my best friend and myself were playing hide and seek. I found my mate and whilst we were looking for my brother, my Mum yelled 'Tea time!' up the stairs in her typical fashion. We legged it down, started scoffing away and about 10 minutes into the meal Mutter simply asked 'Where's Chris? It's not like him to not come to dinner...' My best friend and myself turned, guiltily looked at each other and frantically legged it up the stairs again to find him. Sneaky little bugger was small enough that he could hide under his quilt and appear flat. He's lucky we didn't jump on him in an excited tea time fashion.

My most scarring method of torture was also my dimmest. I used to hide upstairs just in the entrance to his room, and when he came up the stairs I would leap out and scare the crap out of him. This only backfired when he became scared of the dark, refused to go to bed by himself and so I had to go to bed  at the same time as my little brother. When you're three years older, this is significantly earlier.

All those hours of sleep and I'm still not taller than my own mother. Sigh...

I Will Follow You Into The Dark - Death Cab For Cutie

Songs of a Dead Cat

This adventure was to the north of France, Brittany to be a tad more precise. It’s a regular trip for my family and myself where we delve into the great French cuisine that is pretty close to my culinary heaven. It’s a week where I consume as much steak as I physically can, whilst also enjoying prawns dipped in mustard mayonnaise (a peculiar, yet scrummy, choice considering I enjoy neither mustard nor mayonnaise), crème brulee and Boursin lathered on French baguette, the remainders of which are later dipped in a cheese fondue. Not to mention my own creation: caramel Milka melted in a crepe placed on the barbeque served with Super U’s own vanilla ice cream and a barbequed banana. Divine.

We spend a large amount of time munching these delicious numbers on the beach, whether Quatre Veux or Pissot: our two clear favourites ...although Pissot is now a tad stained with the memory of my mp3 player’s unfortunate end. I drowned him: my chirpy little mp3 player. Here’s hoping he avoided the rocks, sea life and disgusting weed and has made it to some little fish’s ears who can enjoy my, now long lost, Jam collection.

Feeling a tad gloomy about the loss of my little friend, I made my way over to a favourite rock pool to admire its clear depths (without my usual soundtrack). I found myself perched on a barnacle covered rock, feet floating on the pool’s surface, admiring the variety of sea life trapped in this rather nice prison. I even let the seriously large shrimps (although not quite edible size) nibble on my feet, although this turned out to be a mistake as they used their surprising strength to try and rip off my toenail. Little buggers. However once I’d taken my feet out of the water the larger fish snuck out of their nooks and started pouncing on the smaller fish. One of them even pounced on snails, rolling their shells all over the place. I’m still unsure as to whether that was a game or they were munching on them, but it was amusing to watch none the less – it’s weird how possible death makes for a good spectator sport.

Upon the arrival of 3 small children who rapidly disturbed the calm atmosphere with their ripples and piercing screeches I headed back to our beachy camp, where I rapidly realised that those bastard barnacles had burst my largest blister (I obtained 3 from the building of a spectacular beach pond the day before). I have come to the full conclusion that barnacles are my least favourite creature that, in my eyes, serve little purpose other than as possible grip on the rocks suitable for those who are lucky enough to have some form of beach shoes. I don’t care if they have each a record breakingly long penis (in relation to their size), because their mating ritual is essentially rape and funnily enough I care for neither barnacle penises nor rape.

Regardless I, after days of Mutter’s begging, braved the chilly waters of the channel for a ‘family swim’. I edged my way in with an inflatable boat that slowly sank (we lost the cap and replaced it with a baguette wrapper and hot water bottle top) and once that had truly encompassed me, filled with water and dragged its way ashore I switched for my slightly more reliable lilo which, although had at least 3 holes in it, never actually sank… so plus points for that find. Who would leave it on a bin? (NB it didn’t have holes when it was one the bin, it was still packaged and lasted a good year before the holes appeared).

Bin finds are pretty incredible. People chuck out some brilliant items that make rummaging surprisingly worth it. My recently drowned headphones were found on the floor during a morning festival clean up (alongside with my new fudge addiction) and I found the frame to my recently stolen bike on the estate. It’s just a shame that they (or perhaps I) have a habit for destruction. There’s other items that have survived or been eaten though! M&S throw out some seriously good, untouched, but just out of date food and I’ve obtained a toy truck and trailer that I filled with unopened Lego. WHO THROWS THESE THINGS? I shouldn’t complain really, it keeps me thoroughly entertained.

I’ve somewhat diverted from the point. We were swimming: as a family. Except I was sinking, Chris was trying to repair the boat, Dad was snorkeling with his wetsuit AND t-shirt like the wimp he is and Mutter, having been scared by the seaweed, abandoned us for less weedy waters. Mind you, that was considerably better than the Caribbean where she was “attacked” by an admittedly large shoal of fish. She tried to “save” herself by climbing out of the water using Chris as a rock, which subsequently just shoved him further underwater and closer to the “demon” fish. That’s motherly love for you. She then spent the rest of the day trying to convince us that a re-enactment would make a best selling horror movie, and the rest of the holiday for that matter; somewhat irritating considering the pathetic-ness of the whole situation.

Her piece de la resistance this holiday was a close call between her completely and utterly most definitely undeniably shattered (self diagnosed) broken toe and her renditions of Jess’ classics. On the one hand we have constant moaning yet refusal to rest and on the other we have occasional outbursts of our dead cat’s “favourite tunes”, which is essentially her miaowing famous songs. Really close call, ‘ey?

When we first turned up at the French house we discovered that not only had the gravel drive filled with weeds and one of the bushes had made a valiant attempt at stopping us from entering the house, but a few hornets had made a nest in the roof. After much plotting as to their demise, Dad decided that the plan was to get them when they were sleeping on our last night. So, we closed all the openings to the outside world and Dad made his way up the stairs to sneak up on them. It was at that moment that I realised I could see one on the window from the sofa, and upon further inspection we realised that they were attracted to the light and had accumulated with at least five at each of the three windows. So none of them were asleep in bed unsuspecting of their, now non-existant, doom. I thought that was the end of it, we would be living with the tens of hornets which to be fair had actually only been violent to the neighbours. That was until I went and took the last of the rubbish to the bins the next morning. On my walk back I was met by a frantic looking family, all in the packed car, opening the door to pick me up on the way out of the ferry. Good luck neighbours.

Say - John Mayer

Marvellous Bollocks

The third festival of my summer was Marvellous, which is a tribute band festival and is the second largest festival in Reading (no prizes for guessing which festival is first). I realise the whole tribute band aspect seems bizarre, as you’re paying for a weekend of not seeing the real bands and in general I agree with you but if the band is dead? Like T-rex? Well then it’s the closest you can get to seeing the real thing live, so why not enjoy it?

If I’m honest it’s mainly a family festival, which means that a load of golden oldies get to relive their youth whilst their children get their first taste of outdoor concerts in a safe environment. If I’m honest pretty much the only reason I go anymore is for the annual meet up of stewards and fudge, but the music, rides, food and atmosphere are all brilliant and it’s a good laugh once you’re there. I spent most of my time in the children’s tent this year and so made masses of badges, coloured lots of paper shapes and even ‘supervised’ children on a Treasure Hunt; except they were much faster than I was so I was essentially chasing them around the site.

And to top it all off I got to watch Torchwood at Kate’s ‘cos she’s got internet that can deal with iPlayer. The internet where my parents live is so slow that at its best iPlayer functions on a 1 second play – 2 second pause system that repeats throughout the 45 minute program. Ridiculous! Although, it matches the rest of the house. It’s a fairly old place so you’re fairly likely to get a cold shower and the pressure is so appalling that the shower relies on gravity for any force, as demonstrated when we plug a sprinkler into the hose and the water merely drools over the edges. In Winter I had to request that friends bring over extra layers of clothing, as the bricks are so poor for insulation that we rely on fires to economically heat the new part of the house. Going to bed was like torture, and there was a whole new difficulty added to getting up for school in the mornings.

I got my first ever facepaint this August. I always thought I'd had one as a child, learnt to hate them and never had one again. Turns out that I hated the idea from the word go and avoided them like the plague from then on. It was at our village fete, where my Dad sneakily paid for me to have one and then I couldn't really refuse without looking like a real spoil sport. Mutter leapt upon this occasion with endless photos and squeals of "oh this has never happened before" and "oh she looks so adorable!" It's okay though... Dad was a pirate by the end of the day. That evening someone told me I was 'lovely' and I realised, only then, that I couldn't remember the last time someone complemented me. I'm fully aware that my memory is shocking nowadays (I realise I sound about 70 but it is like that of a 70 year old. I'm pretty sure it could be mistaken for early, early onset dementia), but I think it's been that long a time. I'm going to start complementing people more often, in the same way that asking bar staff, or reception staff or anyone on shift how they are can give a massive boost to their shift and make them realise that not every human being is an ungrateful, never satisfied arsehole.

Get It On - T-Rex

Mighty Mighty Sounds

Mighty Sounds - the 'summer ska punk explosion' of the Czech Republic. Regardless of only knowing five of the bands (an improvement on the one I had known the previous year), it remained an incredible event.

Three days of music and camping (£25) in a country with gorgeous weather, cheap beer and some crazy people. Even with flights out (£100) and a few days spent in Prague either side (£10/night) the whole experience still works out cheaper than Reading, Glastonbury, Download or other UK festival.

 Prague is a stunning city. It is undoubtedly my favourite tourist city thus far. It's filled with unique shops or areas that are hidden amongst cobbled streets and stunning architecture. One cafe, dedicated to hot chocolate, serves mugs of what seems like melted chocolate with cream. It is so thick and sweet that you have to choose wisely, as more than one may leave you feeling slightly ill, but the selection is beautiful. A short wander left us stumbling across an 'Erotic City Supermarket' which made some attempt to disguise itself as a supermarket but contained nothing other than endless amounts of porn, toys and outfits. This visit was abruptly brought to an end by the realisation that all the pharmacies were going to close. To explain, one of the guys realised he'd been given pubic lice. This was genuinely from an elongated hug, poor guy, so all of his body hair was at risk. On arrival at a pharmacy, it suddenly dawned on us that no phrasebook was going to be of use. Our Czech was completely insufficient to help this guy out, leaving only one option. Charades.

Now in the middle of a pharmacy, scratching your head, acting like an insect and pointing to your crotch is not an ideal act. Luckily, the guy was able to effectively communicate 'itchy insects on my head, except down there' before having to whack out the eccentric hand gestures and facial expressions.

Trains in the Czech Republic are a little like those in Harry Potter. Now, I know very little about Harry Potter but you even have a little trolley that travels down the train, opening the compartment doors and offering various snacks; although these are far less magical and more crisp and beer orientated. The greatest thing about these trains is being to plug in your headphones, put on some shades and stick your head out of the train (NB sunglasses are essential unless you enjoy insects squirming in your eyes and endless tears from the rushing air). This is endlessly enjoyable.

The festival itself then consisted of beer, music, dancing, Sharpie mono-brows, accountants, yoga, sunsets, Czech look-a-likes, fire shows, getting tied to a bottle, endless amounts of Lucozade jelly beans and a huge storm strong enough to cause the merch tent to collapse and panels to be torn off the stages.

During this storm my tentmate went to sleep after 36 or so hours of being awake. This meant he was dead to the world. On my return to the tent I realised that our poxy £10 two man tent was really not holding up well, and realised drastic waterproofing action was in order. When I opened the door, my tentmate was knocked out with his sleeping bag slowly absorbing the puddles of water on the inside of our tent. I found emergency blankets, bin bags and anything else I could think of to create a waterproof layer over the top of our tent. All I needed was duct tape, which George was in possession of. After poking, shaking and yelling I eventually got 'nn the brg' out of him. Oh the bag! The bag under your head.

After a lot of hassle I found the tape and braced the storm. The emergency blanket slapped around my entire body by the wind. Using my body to place it on the tent, I tied the corners down, but even pulling the other two corners over the other side proved difficult. After roughly 20 minutes of battling, significant waterproof changes had been made and I braved sleeping inside. That night I slept in a sleeping bag placed inside another two bin bags. My tentmate slept through the entire debacle.

On our return to Prague we visited a must-see of Prague: the Cross Club. It's a bar/club or sorts with loads of little sections with furniture and designs built from old machinery and scraps arranged into what feels like a maze. Every year they hold after parties with a number of DJs across multiple rooms, allowing you to explore the venue and adventure between the different styles you fancy.

Prague is somewhere that has to be  visited at some point in your life. Alongside the stunning city cenbtre, the river and its islands provide some gorgeous scenery, relaxing bars and pedalo races... and for a pound a pint with some gorgeous beers, you can't really go wrong!

Houdini - Foster The People
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04TXoFI6CSM&ob=av2e

Shh! Angri La!

'Glastonberry' is a fantastic festival, and I realise everyone says this and normally that raises your expectations beyond its true glory but in this case... that's not possible. There is such a variety of performances and you could easily go through the whole festival without sleeping, not just due to the continuous activities in a variety of settings but also the staff laxity on illegal substances. Yet even that is not overpowering, it is still family friendly and violence is pretty much non-existent. There is a touch of insanity and peculiarity, however.

One night on duty we came across four guys who were clearly a little pissed, and were doing one of the three things we had been assigned to politely ask people not to do. These were:

• Peeing anywhere that wasn't a toilet
• Smoking under a tent
• ...I can't even recall the third

Funnily enough the first two weren't that popular when the toilets are busy mudpits and it's raining.

Anyhow, this guy was pissing against a wall, but the advised approach to this situation was to wait for them to finish and inform them as to where the toilets are for them to use in future. Funnily enough no one really listened to this advice, as one quick glance over the route to the toilets revealed dozens of festival goers genuinely stuck in the deep mud.

So rather than pointlessly asking them to pee elsewhere in the future, we got chatting and one of the guys took a liking to my colleague, Sophie. There was no subtlety.

'Did it hurt?'

'...did what hurt?'

'When you fell from heaven?'

The textbook chat up lines were never-ending. This man was a cheese-machine! And just when we thought he'd given up and started playing about with his phone, he looked up and stuttered 'I can't find it.' After a few puzzled looks Sophie asked; 'Find what?' and he simply replied with:
'Your number.'

Funnily enough they didn't hook up, but we met up with the group after the end of our shift and had a few drinks. This guy just got more and more amusing. At one point of the evening we heard cheers and chanting and followed the noise to find him stripped down playing limbo with a group of (clothed) girls in the middle of the bar. Shortly after he appeared from the crowd and stated 'I'm going for a piss', but rather than walking out of the venue and to the toilets (or even the wall he had previously used) he walked straight up to the bar, got his cock out and pissed down the edge of the bar.

Okay, so that may not be the greatest advertisement of Glastonbury but if you get a chance, you have to go.

Oh, but Brother's toffee apple cider? It's like a pint of cinnamon. Bleurgh.

Onto the acts.
Due to volunteering in Shangri-La from 10pm-6am for a couple of nights, we missed U2 and Coldplay. Not so gutted about U2, but the secret sofa set approximately 50m from where I was stationed would have been good. As for Coldplay? Shame, but they didn't play the song I was after. That leaves Beyonce. Surprisingly good. I appreciate Beyonce's attempts to convince the world that women are undervalued and need to reach equality, it was far too over the top for my liking. Regardless, it was a quality performance and her inability to pronounce Glastonbury as anything other than 'Glastonberry' brought a smile to me face on every occasion.

On the Friday we saw The Naked and Famous who put on a good show, although would've been more suited to a closed environment. The Vaccines followed and put on a fantastic set, with us in the second row admiring the set without looking through a screen (a rarity for a short arse, although much less of a problem with the calmer crowds of Glasto). We were close enough that I made my first BBC festival coverage debut. Unfortunately on iPlayer analysis, this was primarily of my oversized nose sticking out from behind another person, with the rest of my body appearing shortly afterwards. Not quite the introduction I was looking for.

We also stopped by Jessie J who, as always, put on a crazy yet inspiring performance and Darwin Deez once again had the crowd going with their now well-polished set and genius dance moves. Cage the Elephant had some controversy with an over-the-top lead singer who although was acting like a bit of an arsehole, won me over when he tried to tie two security guards together by running around them trailing a mike lead. Noah and the Whale had a bizarre intro whereby they played an instrumental version of Bohemian Rhapsody, but didn't appear on stage. People started cheering and chanting, but they remained off stage with the Queen instrumental continuing. Gradually, the crowd started to sing along and before you knew it everyone was yelling 'Beezlebub has a devil put aside for meee, forr mmeeeee, FOR MEEEEEE!' and then erupted into a jumping, dancing and garbled mess. For a second everyone forgot who they had come to see, and were just enjoying the atmosphere they had created to a rock classic. So when Noah & the Whale finally appeared on stage, they had a well and truly warmed up crowd. Genius.

One of the smaller bands we watched were Wolf Gang who played so well it felt like they deserved a much larger crowd and stage. I have since purchased the album and seen them in Camden on the album's release date. Admittedly Camden wasn't such a fantastic performance, but they had some fantastic support acts. Definitely made my song choice easy:

Dancing With The Devil - Wolf Gang
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqV3qki4XUY