Laura's first venture into blogging land. Comfy shoes and backpack - check. Torch and Kendall Mint Cake, we're away ...

First off - origins of the name - can't take credit for it and am not going to try. There's an excellent song called "Emergency!Emergency!" on an equally excellent album called Very Emergency by an (unsurprisingly) excellent band called The Promise Ring. All of the songs on it are lovelylovelylovely. The first one that I ever heard is called 'The Deep South' - if the lyrics 'I know that bridges and houses are learning to fly, secretly so - I don't know why - but good for them' don't make you want to hear it, what's wrong with you?! Listen to it anyway. I will happily be held responsible. 

A lot of the things that I really really love make up who I am and those are the things I like to talk about. These things are, in the main: books, music, and Inspectors Morse and Frost.

Books first ... I have just finished reading 'The Book Of Joe' by Jonathan Tropper which was excellent. I started reading it on my way back to my hometown without much idea of what it was about - only to discover it's about a chap who's written a fairly scathing chronicle of his own hometown (something I have on many occasions been tempted to do) and is now forced to go back to it ... he spends longer than he'd intended to, for a variety of reasons, and has a bit of a breakdown but comes out of it 'a better man' - I don't intend to do synopsiseseseses, but it turns out some fairly harrowing stuff happened while he was a kid/teenager and it was made a lot worse by the small-town mentality he was submerged in ... he meets up with the people he went through those things with, neither of whom he's spoken to in years, and some stuff happens. 

It's my first recommendation for anyone looking for one - very very good. 

This week I have listened to: The Courteeners, Wild Beasts, and The Joy Formidable. Favourite track out of the three has been 'Austere' by The Joy Formidable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbYghzgt9IU - it makes me feel like spinning around with my arms over my head until I fall over (about 3 seconds) and really makes me smile, it's wicked to listen to on the way to work. 

Insult of the week: furry traffic warden.

I'm gonna do this '30 days of me' thing that seems to be doing the rounds - as if y'all didn't have enough mindless information floating about in your heads relating to people you actually know ... but I always read them and don't imagine I'm the only one. Next post down though.