I Quit.

They say it's a good idea to keep a diary when you decide to quit smoking and so that's what I'm gonna do here. Cos I'm thinking since I haven't had one in over 2 days and counting, I might as well give it a try...

Why? Well, obviously there's that wee issue of a national smoking ban to contend with, but my main reasons are:

1. I've been feeling like shit since Xmas. Weird little aches and pains in my torso, occaisional numbness in my arms and hands. Doc said it was nothing serious - I just need to live a slightly healthier lifestyle. So I've been doing weights and eating the subsidised food in the Canteen here (cos it's a lot healthier than anything I can manage myself). The Doc said I really need to stop smoking, cos otherwise I'll be going down the same road as my father (quadruple heart bypass etc).

2. Fags are shit. They really are. And I'm not saying this as a reformed smoker in the slightest. I really could murder one. But why? It's not because I 'need' one. It's the evil Nic-o-teen telling me I need one. I actually went to a 'quit smoking' seminar at work back in March where I discovered it truly is a wholly negative habit. You want a Cigarette to satiate the fix your addiction craves. Destroy the addiction - Neutralise the craving.

3. Fags do nothing. They don't get you drunk, or stoned. I am not paying money for a drug that does nothing except relieve the fix that it creates itself.

4. That smoking ban. I can no longer smoke in pubs. I concede defeat. This is the whole reason I started smoking in the first place.

5. The Money. Nuff said. It's a total waste of cash.

6. Boredom - Aside from all this, I'm utterly sick of using the art of smoking as the grease around the wheels, the third leg to stand on and the missing link in conversation. I'm so busy at work nowadays that I'll often skip my afternoon drag. It only takes a little more willpower to cut it out completely.

So there ya go.

Apparently, the first 72 hours are the hardest. And I've done about 52 so far. The next hurdle will be getting to the 3 week mark, and then my physical addiction will be neutralised.

Anyway... I was thinking this would help and now I'm gasping for one. Touch wood I can go the rest of the day.... DOH!

Glastonbury: The Day 1 Aftermath

So there I was, minding my own business and having a pint in the VIP Bar, when a bunch of freaks turn up. I snaps away (since I'm in full on tourist mode this weekend) and that's when I realise that the dinosaur is actually Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkeys. As this blog more eloquently describes...

Greetings from Glastonbury

Ahoy there!

It's officially Day 1 now and so far I have discovered the following facts about Glastonbury.

1. It's massive. You could write a guidebook about this place. I couldn't say the same thing about any other festival I've ever been to.

2. It's a festival unto itself. When I was standing around near the Stone Circle last night I could completely understand why this thing is more about the event than the bands that comprise it.

3. It's the muddiest place in the world. ever. Slightest bit of rainfall and it turns into the bog of eternal stench.

4. Unlike other festivals, the food here is actually pretty damn good. It's not all burgers and hotdogs. You only have to go around by the Pyramid Stage and you'll find a whole 'food world' of places to eat. So far I've eaten a burger and bacon butty though, but the choice IS there... :)

5. Wigwams are cool. We went to Healing Fields last night and this family were to happy to let us bunch of geeks/journalists in. They had an ickle fire in the middle and everything. I felt like Charlie Sheen in Hot Shots 2!

6. This is the best festival I've ever been to. And I haven't even seen a band yet.

More elaboration and pics will follow, but for now that's all I have time for before I get chucked off this PC (which lives in a bus and doubles up as a useful shelter from the torrential rain) by someone with a more legitimate NME.COM reason for using it.

By the way, we interviewed 'The View' earlier, so we've modified our Glastonbury page accordingly.

Oh, and our bus is parked next to Pete Doherty's. And we have a webcam pointed straight at it!

New York - In Pictures

Phew. Just finished uploading all of my photos to google (if you click in the right spot below it should kick off from the start).



I'm in process of captioning them up, so bear with me.

JC has loads of cool ones of his own (especially of the nightlife we experienced), which I'll link to all of them once he's stuck them all online, but in the meantime, he's stuck some of his 'artier' shots up on his mySpace (You'll need to login before you can see them though).

New York - Day 7.5 (or Home Sweet Raining Home)

That's all Folks!

We spent our last day (or rather, afternoon) doing some last minute shopping round 34th Street, the deaprtment store hell that is Macys and Times Square. Couldn't get that 'Hiro' shot Stan asked us to get cos they were building on the only spot I can imagine they might have filmed it.

Got myself an NYPD T Shirt and a load of US Sweeties for work with my last remaining dollars. Got accosted by more rappers who insisted that press-ganging us into buying their hip hop was at least better than trying to sell us drugs, before trying to sell us drugs.

Once we were done shopping we used our remaining steam to high-tail it back to the hotel, away from the heat and sweat of the sidewalks...

...and then a yellow cab, airplane, tube, train & mini-cab later, I arrive back home, at approximately midday. I've skimmed over some of the highlights with Landlord/Housemate, Matt, but it's merely the tip of the iceberg until I can finish unpacking myself and getting my head around the change of location.

I literally emptied all my bags on to my bed as a means to find the motivation to sort through it all so that I might have a bed to sleep in once it's all done. And it IS pretty much all done now. Damn my organisisation skills :) I even have my photos uploading to picassa as I type. I am THAT organised. Doh.



Anyway, I'm feeling quite disgusted with myself for allowing myself to spend so much money on all of this, but there's no use crying over spilt milk now. It was absolutely worth every single penny. I just can't really allow myself anywhere near a pub for the month of June... :)

So yeah... Am uploading photos now so will add them into all my blog posts where relevant. I may also elaborate on things here and there if they come to me. After all, I've mainly done this blog for myself, so that I might remember the whole thing a bit better by, say... the time I return from my next trip.

I quite fancy Egypt actually...

New York - Day 7

This will be my last blog states-side (until I come back here again at least)



With nothing really left to see but shops and museums, we retrode our paths to the Empire State Building and up Broadway towards Times Square. We stop by at Planet Hollywood for lunch. The Stallone/Willis/Schwartznegger owned chain is part resturant/part movie museum, and amongst thye memorabilia in the New York branch is THE REAL DEATHSTAR FROM STAR WARS! Oh, and the Predator head too :)



Anyway, I have quite a delicious Lasagne which I can't quite finish and an amazing Strawberry & Banana smoothie (JC opts for a fat BBQ burger since he's been good enough to stear clear of them all week thus far). Planet Hollywood ends up taking a significant portion of the day, but we soon up and leave for the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art), which is actually JCs decision (for a change).



MOMA turns out to be quite cool. I've very recently run out of space on my camera's 256mb memory stick, but JC was happily snapping away at the various sculptures and paintings. I just have loads of different wallpapers for my phone now :( - hopefully some of them will come out OK on the PC. We wonder around the place until my legs take tremoundous amounts of force to work. Am I tired? Or is it just the sum total of all my hangovers this week?



After MOMA, we head back to the hotel down Lexington Avenue via Midtown Comics, where I manage to lose $100 in about 10 minutes. How?

A massive double compendium of the American Splendour comic
A Frank Miller 'Robocop' Graphic Novel.
The first edition of the new Battlestar Galactica comic
&
Action figures of Jay & Silent Bob.



I am my own worst enemy as far as buying pointless crap goes. Oh yeah - I saw what all the new Tranformers look like. Prime looks amazing, but they seem to have made Megatron look like some kind of alien made of crystals. Wierd. I'm sure the movie will rule anyway... It's Michael Bay after all.... um... :S



Anyway, in the evening we head back to some of the Bars we tried out earlier in the week around Alphabet City and Lower East Side. After warming up at 2 places, we head further downtown only to be sheperded into this underground bar where they have rappers freestyling around some kind built in Art Exhibition (How much Art can you have in one day?). It was OK, but we eventually wind up in a place called the Lakeside Lounge, which contains an old school photo booth that takes a strip of four different* pictures like in the olden days. We finish the night at 5am in pursuit of food. We go to a hotdog place on the corner of a road (somewhere?) and order the same as a chatty local who (suprise, suprise) remarks about our english accents.



We sit down with the chap and indulge in some idle banter as the sun begins to rise and before long find ourselves on the subject of 9/11. I wish I could remember the guys name, but anyway... he goes to give us his own account of what happened on that day and how it affected him. I didn't mean to provoke him, but I thanked him for sharing his experiences and he seemed pretty cool with it all.

And that, I believe, almost nails what it is I've enjoyed about this trip so much: The People. They've been courteous, helpful, friendly and entertaining in almost every instance. They just seem to want to get on, with us foreigners, as well as each other. It made the whole place a lot more intimidating than it could so easily have been (walking down some of those streets on the Lower East Side shit me up good and proper) and I'm sure - in time - it will be what makes me return...

*As opposed to four identical, which seems the norm in 21st century photo booths.

New York - Day 6

Damn, it's hot out here right now. I just popped outside for a cigarette and it's even hotter than it was yesterday. I so didn't expect to be chucking on the sun cream on a city break like this....

So yesterday we decided to take advantage of the passes for South Street Seaport Museum, which we got at the same time as our tickets for the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty tours. It's down below the lower east side of Manhattan, near the Brooklyn Bridge.



Since we're in the area, we take a walk across the bridge until we reach the halfway point, which contans some tourist info and some kodak opportunities. It's really warm by now, so we finally make our way down to ground level and the seaport itself. It's a strange combo of old sailing ships surrounded by skyscrapers and the sea. There's a Shopping Mall on Pier 17 as well as a convent-garden-like square surrounded by restaurants, swanky designer stores and the like.



The Museum is small but a worthwhile visit. In particular, there's an exhibit on Irish Fighting, which contains some cool memorabilia, from the preserved right arm of bare-knuckles fighter, Dan Donnelly (he beat Bill the Butcher in a scrap), to various props used in the movie, Million Dollar Baby.



After checking out the Museum and walking around on one of the oldboats in the harbour, we grab ourselves a delicious fish supper before catching the subway back to the hotel.



In the evening we head out to Tribeca to watch a few bands at a 'Barfly-scale' venue called the 'Knitting Factory'. The bands themselves turn to be somewhat more on the lighter side of rock than we were expecting (Think Maroon 5 etc), but all four bands are of an exceptionally high quality, even if the music they're playing isn't really our bag.



Like every night we've been out since we got here, as soon as the locals here as speak, they seem very friendly and delighted to speak to us English-folk. We wind up chatting to a very friendly (and really quite pissed up) trio, but they eventually leave and we can't be arsed to keep watching the last band, so we leave the venue ourselves and head over the lower east side.

There we find a very cosy (and somewhat busy) bar which we were too intoxicated to remember by name, but it was OK. A guy told JC that "We don't really take to visitors, but you guys seems cool'. We only stay for one beer anyway, deciding to save ourselves for Friday night.

And somehow I've picked up leaflets for a burlesque night and some kind of crazy BBQ/Party going on in Brooklyn tonight...