Can someone give me abs, please?

Old habits die hard. It's my day off from 'style advising' in high end retail hell and blogging has already been interrupted by 'style advising' Mummy Bowlface's lunch party outfit whilst simultaneously explaining my life plan. This wasn't even the old habit I was referring to dying hard. Because, friends, I've returned to the early weekend 'bed blog' - a means of psyching myself up for a run which has, naturally, resulted in me sacking it off. The sun's come out now - a couple hours ago it was still cloudy and under my duvet vague thoughts of dashing through fields seemed a bit like a Witch Hazel advert, from which I would return with rock-hard abs.

Alas and welaway, I shall remain podgy and maybe attempt a few crunches during Friends. Oh hai, being sixteen. Without distractions from the outside cultured world, such as The Creators Project, I find myself using sad bits of trivia and comments from the middle-aged ladies I serve as a root of autodidacticism. Or blog fodder, at the very least. Yesterday I repeated this feeble joke in both verbal and text form to at least four people:

'what's the best cheese to hide a horse?'
'mascapone!'

I got that gem off Radio One, which, Bowlfans, you may remember me shunning in light of Radio Four's erudite leanings. However, I just like 'chart and chat' of a morning when it's spent inside a car, driving to a place which insists on repeating the same Hits of The 80s CDs for eight hours a day. Yesterday it took my colleague about 4.9 minutes to comment on my 'neck beard' - a bit of tufty fluff which, contrary to the urban dictionary definition, was once my hair until an unfortunate sunny afternoon and a friend with scissors resulted in a feeble undercut attempt - before announcing that the septuagenarian she just served smelt like me. Upon entering the fitting room this lady had been occupying, I couldn't smell a thing, which proved her point. Apparently, it smells like 'dairy', more specifically milk - I'm hoping she's trying to describe the smell of cocoa butter because otherwise this is a whole new symptom of Shire Syndrome.

Later the influence of Gok Wan that all broadsheet weekend colour supplements like to comment on at least quarterly was realised as the following conversation occurred between two customers:
'oh, if you try that dress on you have to wear a belt with it'
'why?'
'because Gok puts a belt with everything, so it must be good'.
It's sad but true that the man who adorns high street items with hideous haberdashery really is transforming lives.

Add a couple of Italians who I overheard saying 'Mamma Mia' and the fact that the campest hairdresser in the village down the road isn't free to deal with the neck beard until THE 8TH OF JULY and I had a thoroughly gob smacking day. Lunch party later: cue scenes from The Graduate. I'm contemplating printing handouts with bullet points justifying my graduate existence to save repetitive and awkward conversations.

hey June, hey rain.

Even though I had been part of a collaborative prediction that today would be the worst day of the past two weeks; I hadn't foreseen drizzle. The prediction being based on the fact that I've spent the best part of last week and this weekend at Primavera festival in Barcelona. Primavera being a relatively, but gloriously, unknown event showcasing an impossibly well-curated selection of bands and DJs in a concrete jungle built upon Barcelona's coastline and attended solely by beautiful, civilised and international music geeks. That I didn't fall into this classification, and that we managed to blag a whole weekend ticket with our £15 Pitchfork tickets made my enjoyment even better from the position of festival imposter. There are some live reviews coming up on appropriately niche website This Kind Of Music all in good time...

Anyway, having spent the past couple of days in cold, predominantly wet, Newcastle; surrounded by the overdressed 'festival fashion' tweeny attendees of Evolution Festival, the contrast couldn't be greater. I was, however, still reeling from dancing barefoot to the Pet Shop Boys and their incredible dancers, screaming along to Major Lazer's remix of Say It Ain't So, lying on the beach, invading old man tapas bars and the like. Today I am bitterly aware that Primavera 2011 is a whole 363 days away.

The only thing that can provide solace is a healthy form of autodidacticism or mini-project. The former has become quite a list now, including Daniel Johnston, HTML, David Lynch and Evelyn Waugh. The latter, potentially more exciting, involves one of my favourite underrated British voiceovers: DAVE LAMB. The backstory involving a holiday that could potentially be ruined by a near-fascistic enforcement of Come Dine With Me competition, the challenge being to get a letter from Dave Lamb (Come Dine With Me narrator and general funnyman) to suggest this isn't such a great idea. It's become known, originally, as The Dave Lamb Project, a.k.a DLP.

So far, I've got as far as a twitter account; sadly without the option of direct messaging, and a seriously dodge-looking agency website. I am, however, going to call them. It's the only option for fun on a rainy Tuesday Blues morning.

Autodictactism is my friend.

So it would seem the Sunday Morning freak-post has become a double week tradition. The 'freak-post' title has been awarded this morning due to the fact that I'm no longer a student, having finished my degree officially on Friday and therefore have no procrastination reasons for blogging; and that given this student-finishing business I've had a rough total of ten hours sleep all weekend. Which, funnily enough, is probably a third of the amount of alcoholic units which have been imbibed in the same time. And yet, here I am, albeit still in bed (after all, it's not seen much of me), in a Newcastle University teeshirt (signs of denial over not actually being there), BLOGGING. Worse, blogging about blogging, yawn.

Moving swiftly on from such self-indulgent and pedestrian prattling. Due to no longer being a student I have decided to become an autodidact. Although I always have a mental reading list, I give it a week and a half until this is translated into amazon.com wishlist form, inspired by the recent activities of an autodidact friend and guru (she has them stuck to her walls). Alongside re-enacting a feeble form of my degree, this autodictacism will apply to the 'real world'. Not in the form of the CV-friendly 'transferable skills', but in being amazed by cool places and 'amused' by 'funny' people. Which is how, so far, this weekend has panned out.

Friday night saw me leave the country...for Edinburgh. Which, being only an hour and a half from Newcastle, is somewhere I should have gone far more than the couple times a year I have so far been managing. Beautiful city, not least when the sun's out; the tourist fascination is justified. My host, tourguide and clubnight-organiser hero for the 28 hours I was there lives on Broughton Street, which, like Jesmond, is possibly the poshest street a student can afford to live on in Edinburgh. Instead of buying booze from an offie, our nearest option was officially 'the best wine merchants in Scotland'. Walking in down a few cobbly steps (the only form of entry to any Edinburgh establishment, it would seem) we were immediately greeted and asked what we wanted to drink. Problem being that we didn't really know, as it's normally all part of the off-license experience, and, reverting to an embarrassed teenager state, muttered something about 'vodka, please'. This got all the more shameful when we could only buy a litre of the stuff from behind the counter, our cheapest option being Glens (we were in Scotland, so it's...justified?) at £9.99 before it was wrapped up in pink tissue paper and we handed over our grubby little English tenner. The chances of getting coke to accompany were null and void.

Broughton Street's middle-class excess came to a painful head the next afternoon, when we tried to track down not only an all day breakfast - or at least one which was served after 11.30 - but a greasy spoon in which to eat it. Crossing the road between the many, many bistros with a hangover and a tummy rumbling for cheap sausage only to be greeted with the option of £4.95 'doorstep toast' which ended two hours previously is a recipe for potential Edinburgh hatred. Luckily, our host and tourguide got us bundled into a cab, driven over to the other side of the city and plonked into Snax Cafe. £2.70 full Scottish (haggis and hash browns on the side, yes please).

Upon returning to Newcastle last night I donned DoubleDenim for a party which apparently is just another on a current DD party bandwagon theme, except it was hosted by a load of noise metallers who wear DD all the time and therefore the irony levels were far too low for this to be considered a 'scenester' vibe. Decked out in my PDSA and Sally Army purchases the visual treat of various skirts-worn-as-capes and bi-leg-jean combos was entirely comparable to the Royal Mile. I did, however, embark an essential piece of social autodidactism, being: 'COMEDIANS' WHO TALK ABOUT THEIR COMEDY AREN'T FUNNY.

I learnt this by getting somewhat trapped in a corner with a chap who announced that he was a stand-up comic; except when I asked him to crack a joke he clearly thought I was some kind of comedian-interviewer and proceeded to reel off his comedy CV at great and inpenetrable length. Apparently he makes jokes 'about English politics and American politics', doing a five minute set of each, a technique which compares favourably to.....well, actually at this point I got mesmerised by some double denim bunting and ran off to check on the whereabouts of one of the few females there. Essentially, I think he was claiming to be a better comedian than any others ever - something about 1995-2001 being the 'golden age of comedy' which he was single-handedly returning to the world - except he didn't make me laugh. Shitter.