Well this post is a bit late, I got back from the South of France on Saturday the 8th of August. I haven’t got round to posting to my imaginary readers as of late because I recently found out I have been accepted at University in Liverpool, although not the course I originally applied for, they bumped me down to a foundation course and said something about ‘getting the required grades’ or some bullcrap. But I am happy, I will now be at Uni for 5 years instead of 4, that’s one more year of debt to pay off. I think I shall take advice from the Peep Show and ‘just change my address once and they will never find me again’. Although I am scared of those vultures in the adverts, are they there just to remind us that we have to go back to the shit real world after Uni ?….I think so.

What do you wanna do?

Anyway!

It was hot! Basically 30-35 degrees celsius every day, except the one day we had torrential rain and a thunderstorm which I called a Monsoon. And during this monsoon I was halfway through watching The Hangover (which was surprisingly good,  review coming soon) in a caravan with two Dutch people. And these two dutch people were fine watching The Hangover with the rain battering down on the caravan and thunder thundering every 2 minutes, all because they had Dutch subtitles… I had nothing, so we joint decided to run to the Bar for cover. Although…this plan did go unscathed, my holiday may have ended early, because to get to the bar, you have to go across a field the size of two football pitches…and in a thunder storm, that isn’t the best idea. Once we got to the bar, I realised I was missing a brother, so the worry started setting in. He likes to hang with all the cool kids, the kids that think its un-cool to be with their parents. Someone told me that he was under the bridge?? In this weather the river must have been above the bridge. But my worry subsided when I found him in the payphone area which is underneath the bar…with guess who…all the cool kids, smoking, hiding from their parents….lame.

Everyone who smokes was like this as a kid

So apart from my brother annoying me because he is the complete opposite to me, I had a great time on holiday. I went on a bike ride….up a bloody mountain, and what annoyed me even more was, all the people on the bike ride kept calling the mountain a hill…. I would hate to see what they call a mountain. On this bike ride I was kindly reminded how unfit I am by use of lactic acid in my muscles and the occasional Tour de France stray that would zoom past me…uphill.. After this bike ride I decided to get fit, which should be easy seeing as I am going to Uni, the one place where I wont be able to afford to snack.

A big part of my holiday was spent improving my photography skills. I took 450 photos over three weeks, and some of them are really quite nice.  Although one opportunity slipped past me, an old French lady was leaning out of a town house window about three stories up. With a really wrinkled face, she would have made an iconic photograph, but I wasn’t brave enough to take photos of people without their permission.

I am not going to show the photographs here, because I have been busy making a cool little website to showcase my creations…Click Photography, for those of you who have three brain cells.

We stayed at a place called Mas De La Cam in the Cévennes region of southern France. If you look hard enough on the campsites website you can find photos of me and my family. Although the campsite is 99% Dutch anyway, and that I learnt more Dutch than French which is ironic seeing as I went on holiday to France. The Dutch are nice people, although a bit samey, they all wear the same clothes, and listen to the same music. I could see no alternative people there who liked metal and hard rock. Anyone with long hair (like me) was called an emo. For example one girl asked me, ‘are you an amo?’, no that is not a typo, she actually said amo, instead of emo, either way she was wrong. What made me laugh is i bought a pair of aviators glasses before the holiday, and within a week all the Dutch kids was wearing them too! I am not saying they copied me, I am just saying they copied each other.

Be cool, wear aviators

Ok ok, I haven’t updated my blog for a while, so you will be pleased to hear I am going on holiday for three weeks! So the streak of no new content will continue a little while. In the mean time, check these photos out:

Walking about in Rainham I came across probably my favorite piece of graffiti Ive seen.

And the next day, excitement arose! An emergency helicopter landed close to my house. Photo taken from an upstairs bedroom. As the pilots got out, wearing grey jumpsuits, it was almost like aliens landing.

ALSO I recently got a new phone, the LG Cookie, It is cool because it is named after a biscuit, I keep telling everyone. The camera is pretty decent, 3.0mp, I took the two photos above with it, and this one below:

The camera seems to struggle with close up shots, this shot is the closest I can get without it becoming blurred.

After my adventure in the South of France, I will be sure to document it in detail when I get back. I am taking three 2gb memory cards for my camera. No not my phone camera, a slightly better digital camera (7.1mp).

BRB

YOU HAVE TO PAY TO USE THE TOILET!, as if giving them my own excrement was not enough, and don’t they get enough money from the drugs and prostitution. We was traveling to Holland, and on the way through Belgium we had to stop at a horrible service station to empty the main valve. And inside this toilet, much like the scene in Trainspotting, it was the Worst Toilet in Belgium, and what made me laugh the most was the graffiti on the walls, and on the toilet seat itself. First I saw the nicely written ‘Fuck England’ to me left, which made me giggle a little. Then I looked down to the toilet seat and it said ‘Czech Scum’, then, the most pointless bit of graffiti I have ever seen was on the toilet roll holder, Ive been so kind to Photoshop it because, who actually brings a camera into a toilet apart from George Micheal?

And that was it….

Pointless graffiti and having to pay to piss aside, Holland, and Belgium, was very nice countries to visit. Well I cant really say I visited Belgium, I only stepped foot onto Belgium that time I needed to goto the toilet. Holland was cool, very different to England for obvious reasons. But one thing that surprised me was, unlike England, there is very few ‘youth trends’ or ‘classes’. In England we have tons: chav, emo, goth, grunger, scene, hardcore, the list goes on, and often these have different names depending on where you live. But in Holland all I really saw was two, Hardcore, which is basically chav, and Alto, which is short for Alternative, which is basically anyone with long hair. Dutch Hardcore is very different to English Hardcore scene. Example:

Dutch Hardcore

Basically what we call chav in England. They listen to Drum and bass, they look like wannabe gangsta’s.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPaMdxC6CQI]

An epileptic in mid fit standing up?

English Hardcore
One of my favorite genres of music, very similar to Punk, but with the similar guttural vocals from metal/Death metal.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qACnquW0y_Y]

Hmm which one is more ‘Hardcore’? let me see…

Another thing I noticed is, no offense to the Dutch, I think they are awesome, but most of the youth all dress the same, I hardly saw any ‘Alternative’ people, and me walking around with long-ish black hair everyone stared at me as if I was a freak.

Walking around Amsterdam was an experience. I was just walking around and I turned to my left and there was a big high street and at the bottom there was a big building with a massive Neon sign above it saying SEX SHOP, so naturally I walked down there. I also saw the most famous ‘Coffee shop’ in Amsterdam.

I am pretty sure no one goes in there for their coffee.

Down the high street there was various porn shops, kinky dungeons, and smaller coffee shops. I even passed two prostitute windows with a Childcare Center in the middle of them. And just as I thought I had seen it all, I saw a shop that ONLY sold condoms! All different sizes and shapes, and designs. One had Big Ben on it:

After browsing an extensive selection of condoms I came out of the shop only to be staring straight at this shop:

I am not even sure if this is a shop, it was probably some sort of kinky dungeon where you are given a ‘safe word’ before you enter.

Prostitutes… it was strange walking around a public place with semi-naked women in every window. And what made me laugh was, down the alleys there was not so good looking middle aged prostitutes, and on the main high street there were the porn-star look alike’s. Some looked really young also, and I’m pretty sure one of them that I saw was a man, which is dangerous for drunken English tourists.

Holland reminded me very much of America, the roads are very similar, very straight, and every half mile there is crossroads.

ONE other thing to mention. The Dutch are mad cyclists. They cycle everywhere. There is even a separate bike lane next to EVERY road. To show you how much they like cycling I took this photo…of a Multi Story Bicycle Park:

Mental

So after Holland, we drove all the way back to Kent, South East England, only to set off an hour later to North Wales. I was in the car for 16 hours that day and it sucked.

Wales was ok, it was cold, I had to sleep fully dressed, plus a jumper, because we was in a static caravan. We went on walks…hiking…the most pointless (sport?) ever, I will probably make a post explaining to hikers the errors of their ways, and why they cant just do something normal like running, its so much faster.

P.S I have added all the photo’s to my Flickr which you should see to the right of this page.