A week ago today I went to Cardiff on a coach trip to see the musical The Sound of Music. I’d never seen it before this; okay, I’d seen like five minutes of the movie, but other than that, I had no idea what it was about (but I knew quite a few of the songs, quite obviously, heh.) If you watch the BBC, you’ll know that a few years ago there was a program called How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? where a handful of females performed and battled it out to land themselves the part of Maria in said musical. Probably not at all surprisingly, I hated the woman who won. Her voice did my head in and it felt like she always over-acted, and certainly made me feel uncomfortable while I watched her. But, back then, I had no interest in The Sound of Music, so I wasn’t really worried about having to sit through one of her performances. She stayed in the part for six months or round about, and then some other person replaced her.

But then my lovely grandmother told me that she heard Connie Fisher (the woman who won the program) is back in the role of Maria and that hopefully, we’d be seeing her in Cardiff. I didn’t know if this was true or not, but whatever, I suddenly wasn’t looking forward to it as much as I was. And then when we got there, and suddenly I was hearing that voice, seeing that face, and watching that awkward acting, I almost groaned out loud.

But, I enjoyed it all anyway. Quite rightly so, Connie fit into the role of Maria quite well; she was funny, and after months and years of practice she sang the songs spot on. I enjoyed her performances during the songs Do-Re-Mi and The Lonely Goatherd, but still I thought she over-acted when she wasn’t singing. Some things she did that were meant to make me laugh made me cringe instead; I heard everyone around me laughing, whereas I just wanted to scream at her to stop. But it weren’t like that all the way through. I’m not that grumpy; the cheerful songs put me in a good mood, and by the end I was warming up to Connie quite remarkably. I suppose some actors/actresses need an aquired taste for you to appreciate them all of the time.

But other than seeing my second musical and being overwhelmed by the atmosphere (I saw Wicked last year, and I remember loving how the audience clapped after every song) I felt myself being overwhelmed by the fact that we were in Cardiff. I’m a big Doctor Who/Torchwood fan, and as any fan will know and recognise, quite a large part of Torchwood and some of Doctor Who is filmed in Cardiff, at the Roald Dahl Plass/Millenium Centre. That big water tower thing, and those big welsh letters on this big bowl thing – yeah, there. While I was in the coach, I was buzzing – I just wanted to catch a glimpse of this setting to keep myself happy because I knew I probably wouldn’t be going back to Cardiff any time soon. Anyway, I was craning my neck around every corner once we entered the city, hoping the coach would just drive past it so I could press my nose against the window and stare. Just for a minute, just so I could act all teeny and say to myself omg, John Barrowman walked there… omg, the Tardis was stood there once… omg, this place has been on TV!!!!

Can you guess where this is going? What I didn’t know, was that the place we were seeing The Sound of Music at is called the Millenium Centre. What I didn’t know back then, was that the Millenium Centre was stood right next to the Roald Dahl Plass. So when the coach pulled up right below the big letters, right near the water tower, I felt like screaming. Not only did I get to see the letters and the tower and the place where John Barrowman walked and the place where the Tardis stood, I got to go inside the building the letters were on.

If we hadn’t had to go in to catch the musical before it started, I would’ve been stood there, staring like a goon. It’s times like that when I’m not at all ashamed of my fangirl-ism; if only I hadn’t been around loads of old people, I would’ve allowed myself to jump up and down in glee. Pity no one else would’ve known what I was talking about.

Just found out that another legend has passed away. Not as many people will be as familiar with Les Paul as they were with Michael Jackson, which is understandable. But basically, in a nutshell, when it comes to the electric guitar, Les Paul is the king.

Les Paul developed one of the first solid-bodied electric guitars, which is said to have contributed to the birth of rock. He also invented the eight-track tape recorder, and developed multi-track recording and overdubbing – techniques used regularly by every recording musician. Almost every guitarist you see these days plays a Gibson Les Paul, most notably Slash from Guns N Roses, who used that guitar to perform the famous Sweet Child o’ Mine opening solo.

As a guitarist, I’m pretty bummed by this. Although I don’t actually own a Les Paul Gibson guitar myself, to have such an iconic member of rock music history die is saddening. He was one of those names, one of those people, who we all just assumed would somehow live forever.

But, I suppose, thanks to his contribution to rock music, he probably will.

RIP Les Paul, 1915-2009

To find out more, check this BBC article.

Everyone feels the same thing during the summer months; you just have no motivation to blog, or tweet, or do anything except play on Neopets and listen to Mika songs on repeat while wondering why on earth you bought this domain and what the hell you’re going to do with it. Okay, maybe not everyone, but you get the idea.

I don’t know why, but I just completely ran out of motivation to blog these past few weeks. However, Yos coming back into the blogging world just completely gave me a kick up the backside. Thank you, YosYos, my awesome friend. Yuhuh.

So I’ll just use this post to describe, in hardly any detail (it just looks long cause my crap designing skills decided to make this column extremely thin), what my OMG SO HORRIBLE summer has turned out like, with only less than a month to go until I return to school and have to act like I’m 16-years-old again.

Firstly, I never got a job. Nope. Blame my dad, actually, cause even though both my parents said that the way to go if you want some spending money is to get a job, he still kept saying to me ‘you want to keep from working for as long as you possibly can’. So, on that note, I saved myself all the depression for another few months. Although I’ll have to get one eventually, I really think I want to save it until I’m 18. That might be pushing it a bit, but I don’t feel like I’m ready to have to work every Saturday in a lousy shop while I could be keeping myself happy, or even doing schoolwork. It’s stupid, really, cause I’m sat here doing nothing most days. But I’m only 16, my parents are still paying for my food and the house bills, and I haven’t much felt like going and blowing money on my usual stuff. So, despite everyone else I know having jobs in Wilkinsons, I’m laying off for now. Is that wise?

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