Music post: Joan Armatrading

So last night I went to the pub with a bunch of old school friends. "Old" being the operative word. Looking around a tiny nightclub and seeing girls you're pretty sure haven't a Junior Cert. between them can be pretty scary, let me tell you. That said, I had a lovely night, drinking cheap mojhitos, talking about blogging and rocking a denim jacket. As David would say: lookin' fresh til death. Or is it "to death"? I'm never sure, so I never say it in case someone calls me out. I'm cool.

This is myself and fellow (more successful) bloggers Megan and Danielle. You should follow both of them. Old friends and excellent bloggers. 

I arrived home from the night out at about half one and found my mam still up. She asked me about a song she heard earlier that day: The Weakness in Me by Joan Armatrading. I'd never heard of her before, but mum urged me to look her up, seeing as she'd been one of my mum's favourite artists back in the day. Wow, I'm glad she did. Go up there and listen to it. Right now.

There's something haunting about this song of love and loss -- it's spellbinding. Mum and I sat and listened to the whole thing through twice. I love singers in the vein of Armatrading, like Kate Bush, Patti Smith and other Lady Wonders -- but Joan is something else. Wow. The emotion in it is incredible. So here it is, for your Sunday night listening pleasure. Tomorrow, I'll (hopefully) be reviewing Django Unchained for you all and trying to get through the Romantic (and totally not racist) poetry by William Blake. The joys of an English degree. 

Madeira cake and a length of copper pipe

This is a blogpost brought to you by two things: my stress and my brother's taste in music.

I get stressed because I'm doing my Leaving Cert. When I'm stressed, I like to bake - but I'm not good at baking by any means. My best friend Zoe makes the greatest cake in the world - it's science - but I'm more of a "sure toss it in, it'll be fine!" kind of person.

This has occasionally gone very, very well (cinnamon and chocolate cupcakes, anyone?) but more often than not ends up in me feeding the mixture to Marley, our dog. I don't bake for the cake, though - it's a wonderfully de-stressing experience, like taking a bath or going for a walk. The mixing, the scooping, the measuring, and the deliciousness of a warm cupcake are just brilliant for chilling me out.

Madeira buns are the single greatest thing to make when you feel like something sweet and you've got feck all in the house, which I nearly always do. Sometimes, I make my granny's wonderful marbled madeira cake: it's plain madeira with chocolate swirled in and it's absolutely to die for. I'd give you the recipe, but I'll leave that to part two of the post...

My younger brother is quite the accent whizzkid, and lately, he can't stop singing songs by The Rubberbandits Spastic Hawk ("Spastic Haaaaawwwk") is his most recent find, and he will not stop singing it...at dinner, doing homework, playing football, he never stops!

He also showed me this recently enough, and I was in stitches laughing at it! I never normally go in for Irish comedy - particularly novelty-ish acts like these guys, but my god, this is perfect. Though it's ten times funnier when Enda does it.

Infinite cool and a bad case of verbal diarrhoea.

Since I got back into the blogging groove I have become a little obsessed with reading other people's blogs, both those I know and those I don't. To my utter delight, I discovered the fantastically written and damn cute To Be Quite Franki quite by accident the other day - it's a new-ish blog about fashion, art and life written by my lovely school friend Frances. It's brilliant, but I had absolutely no idea that it existed until the day before yesterday when I stumbled upon it.

This might sound a little, well, weird, but I really admire Frances' ability to keep stuff like a blog quiet. We've been friends for a good while now, and I never knew about her blog - whereas I set this one up less than a week ago and it's all over my Twitter, Facebook and I tell everyone in real life, too. Likewise, my long-suffering school friends hear stories about David on a daily basis, and great as he is - I'm not sure they care quite as much as I do. I'm naturally quite chatty and extroverted, but I just can't seem to shut up sometimes. It's a serious flaw in my personality. Being an open book is all well and good, but sometimes one needs to learn to keep quiet. Last week, I asked my friends to hit and/or berate me if I mention David or college - so far it hasn't quite worked, but I live in hope. I may not need to broaden my vocabulary much, but I certainly gotta work on my topics of conversation.

Like I said, I have an infinite admiration for those who are just cool - who don't need to broadcast their lives to the world. The sort of people who don't have their name on their tumblr and who, in my head, listen to cool music and wear a lot of layered, autumn coloured clothing. Actually, a lot of my close friends are like this - Kate hasn't posted a Facebook status in months - but it's just not in my nature to be introverted. In a way, it's self-interest. I'd love to be introverted in that way, though, because telling everyone about (almost) everything comes across as so childlike. I should probably work on becoming cool before college...oops, there I go again!

To sum up, here is a photo of Kate and I: she's a blur, trying to get out of the photo, wheras I...well, see for yourself: