Norman Ralph

Having spent the past few days moving my room around to accommodate some new furniture and to try and create some separation between the sleeping part of bedroom from the office part one of the bonus side effetcs has been the relocation of my record player.

Previously tucked out the way above my desk, it is now situated in prime position with plenty of room for botht the turntable and the speakers. I have been playing records on it pretty much non-stop since I re-routed the power in my room to accommodate the new changes.

For playing rock music and classical pieces nothing even compares tot he depth and richness of sound produced by a turntable and a 12″ vinyl. Artists such as Brice Springsteen, Eric Clapton and Billy Bragg really come to life and Gustav Holst’s ‘Planet’s Suite’ is transformed from a beautiful work of art to an emotive masterpiece – something that the CD and subsequent MP3-esque digital formats cannot replicate!

I have to admit that some music, like a lot of my metal and dance collection can be just as enjoyable to listen to in digital format as well as on vinyl and a lot easier to find in CD form!

I think next year’s Christmas list will contain a new record player system – ideally a separates system including amplifier, speakers and deck.

Regular readers of my blog will be aware that I have recently embarked on a new relationship with a lovely young lady called Liz. Well, for the past week I have been staying with her at her Nan’s house whilst her grandparents are away on holiday for a couple of weeks. The reasons for me staying are two fold, a) it gave me an opportunity to spend some real and quality time with Liz away from the pressures of Leeds, friends and family and b) it gave me an opportunity to recharge my batteries and take stock of my life in a relaxed atmosphere.

I think both reasons have worked out for the very best. Liz and I have really gotten to know each other this week in the way you only achieve through spending time together. Having the house to ourselves was a real bonus, it has led to our relationship really developing into a beautiful adult relationship. Liz is a pretty good host too, she brings me cups of tea in the morning! Although, to be fair, I have actually done most of the work in terms of cooking, cleaning, washing etc and I have decided that Liz only really wants me for my car – it seems my chauffering skills are second to none, literally as there is no one else!

The second reason has almost been as amazing. I have really gotten to know myself through letting Liz get to know me. I think I am now in a position to move forward with my life, to start again as it were. The future holds many challenges for me and until recently I would have shied away from them and stuck my head in the sand. Now it is different. I am up for the challenge, I am relishing the challenge and most importantly I am willing to fight for what I want and fight to win.

The week in Potter’ has been relaxed although not entirely without action. Liz and I arrived from Leeds on Sunday afternoon and chilled out for most of the afternoon, we had take away – which wasn’t really up the high stabdards of Milano’s but not entirely inedible, after watching some telly we ended up going to bed relatively early. Monday was fairly standard too, didn’t really do all that much apart from a bit of shopping and some work. Tuesday saw me head back to Leeds for the morning, I picked up some quality newvinyl which gives m an excuse to update my hi-fi system, which is in the process of coming to fruition. We ended up going out into Lincoln with Liz, Edd and some of Edd’s friends to a club called Sugarcubes. It was a dive. Your standard student rock based night. Cheap drinks though at £1 for a bottle of lager/soft drink. Liz got very very drunk and I took her home. We were both quite ill on our return and as I hadn’t been drinking I wasn’t convinced it was the alcohol.

Liz returned to work on Wednesday after a few days off due to stress. Whilst she was there I did some reading and caught up with some work. A few problems occurred during the evening, none of which are really suitable for discussion here. Thursday was a faily quiet day, we watched the Lincoln City vs Bristol Rovers play off semi-final 2nd leg and I was a little dismayed to see Lincoln lose. Lincoln are not my team, but as I have several connections to the city, I have a certain affection for the club. A couple of films and a late night later we arrive at today, Friday. Liz is at work from 4-9pm this evening and then I imagine we will be heading back to Leeds.

Our plans for the weekend include watching he Blackpool game on Saturday, followed by the FA Cup final then Wendy House. Sunday will be a chilled out day then liz will head home whilst I get on with some chores and errands. Finally, I thought I would mention the fact that I have tickets to see The Who!!

Saturday was the raison d’etre for me heading home for Easter. With Jon back from the Falklands and Dom and Beki up from London it was the ideal opportunity to relive some our youth.

Lunchtime saw us shake off our hangovers from the night before and fire up the barbeque for some lunch. The four of us were joined by Izzy and Nikki for some light refreshments and a few sausages and burgers. It was a glorious afternoon, good food and drink coupled with some lively company. We tend to get together a few times a year, but these BBQ’s tend to be well worth the effort. As the afternoon rolled on we headed our separate ways to get changed etc ready for our big night out.

I used the chance to go into Preston and pick up a new car stereo, one with a CD player and RDS – review to follow. Ended up at Izzy’s getting some CDs burned and came up with a plan to head over to Chester Zoo on Monday. Having got changed and ready I drove back over to Dom’s for the pre-party.

Joining Jon, Dom, Bekki and myself for this night of fun were Ash (Dom’s brother) and his girlfriend Jemma, Anja and Kirsty. We started off at Dom’s with a few drinks. The few drinks turned into many drinks and by 9pm we were getting ready to go into Blackpool. We have not been out in Blackpool as a crowd since we were at sixth form so we were all up for this night.

The taxi dropped us off at Schofield’s and we set off with the night. Drinks have definitely gone up since last I was in Blackpool – £20 for a round of 6 drinks! The tequilas were cheap though, so I got a round of them in! Walked up to Syndicate at about 11ish and after paying the princely sum of £10 to get in, we set about partying.

The rest of the night was somewhat of a blur, Jon and I were on the quadruple vodka and redbull’s! The music was funky house and the lights flashed a lot. It was a really good night, clubbing the likes of which I have not experienced for a good 5 years! Leeds has some good clubs but it just cannot compete with the size and atmospehere of the Syndicate. It may have been one of those nights that the fact I was with excellent company mean more than that quality of the environment, but still an excellent night.

Taxi and a kebab at 3am and we were back to Dom’s for some post-party drinks. Next thing I remember was waking up in Dom’s spare room. We fired the BBQ back up and had ourselves some BBQ bacon butties!

Seeing as I am getting four brand new housemates from the 1st July and I am moving rooms I now have the perfect excuse for thinking up some new toys, gadgets, space savers etc for next academic year.

We have big plans for a home network, 3.5 of us will be computing students next year, so I am acquiring a new computer so that I can a) have a linux machine that I can practice on and b) there is going to be some spare space for extra hard drives and other network paraphenalia. To this end I need to put together a list of stuff for my new computer – I have a case, PSU, fan, motherboard and a hodge podge of hard drives, optical drives and other bits and bats. The computer I have acquired was originally an AMD 688Mhz, with 20Gb hard drive, 128MB RAM, I seem to remember my brother putting a 64MB nVidia graphics card in there and on board sound. There is a prob a network card in it. I was planning on putting one or two new, larger hard drives in there, but apart from that I don’t know where to start to get it up to some sort of spec. I basically need it for running linux and as a storage system. Any ideas or suggestions welcome.

There is also a new stereo system, a new television, possibly Sky TV and i am definitely looking at some kind of back-up storage system. I don’t know whether a couple of large external hard drives are the way forward, or just use DVD’s – again advice would be useful.

I am also seriously looking into a new laptop, as portable as possible but with adequate specs so that I can use it for a variety of things like media, uni work and the odd bit of WoW/mobile blogging.