are you listening to Chris Martin?

I was prepared to post a frivolous blog post to celebrate the fact that it is Star Wars day, but then something far more worth celebrating came to my attention.

back in February, during tinnitus awareness week, i ran a post concerning our nation's coverage of the problem that i, among with many other people are afflicted with, and the fact that the tinnitus angle of the story is swiftly swept aside as the red tops prefer to focus on the celebrity angle

but what should turn up on the front cover of the daily mirror today

Chris Martin's agony and anguish caused by his own tinnitus problem 

yes, it is finally real news now that the Coldplay frontman has voiced the fact that he has been suffering from tinnitus for the past ten years

he now lends his voice to a new campaign called Loud Music for a rebranded RNID (now Action on Hearing) alongside Plan B and Gary Numan and this news blitz has resulted in coverage on BBC, ITV and Sky news programmes and seen far more people discussing the condition on twitter today

and all of this welcome attention can't come soon enough as far as I'm concerned

i have suffered with tinnitus myself for a number of years, and sadly it is all too often the case, as it was for me and it is for other sufferers, that it only ever becomes a problem that you care about when it is too late and the damage is already done

the hardest part to understand is why Chris Martin has not stepped forward a moment sooner in the past to make the larger public far more aware of a serious problem that affects music fans the world over, but it is better late than never and now I hope that with the support of high-profile touring artists will see a far more visible attempt to carry on spreading this awareness at the gigs, venues and festivals that will be housing Coldplay and Plan B this summer and beyond.

for more information on tinnitus and how to protect your hearing, visit http://www.actiononhearingloss.org.uk/ and http://www.tinnitus.org.uk/

today

today i should have been woken by a rather stupidly early alarm after holding down discussions as to when Sel would be round to pick me up

it wouldn't have really mattered as the build up of excitement would have kept me awake and the momentum of the day would have kept me going until i finally retired to our tent in a field in Sommerset amidst the familiar smells of camp fires and bbqs



but not today

sadly, this is the first year that we have taken the decision not to go to Glastonbury



it wasn't a decision any of us took lightly, but after failing to actually get hold of tickets at the very first hurdle we were distraught, but slowly came to accept that perhaps 2011 just wasn't gonna be our year

it all seemed perhaps for the best, me and my girlfriend had bought a house and, useful as the deposit scheme is, it would all come at the wrong time, and as the ticket price has increased eash year, we would have struggled slightly with it leaving our now-joint account

and Sel was planning on doing some travelling this year and would be paying out a lot for that

we then took into account that, since they had split up, a couple of friends that we usually camp with would not be going this year, neither would their friend, and another couple that have joined us the past few years didn't manage to get tickets either

last year's Glastonbury, bathed in glorious sunshine for the whole time was a perfect way to leave it, we'd witnessed floods in our times going and we have had one particular wet and miserable weekend that nearly drove us to the edge of sanity (and led me and my girlfriend to give Benicassim a go)

but it felt like those years that we had stuck with the festival had really paid off, as 2010 saw us camped with more friends than we ever have before, we didn't have to suffer a single drop of rain, and the intense sunshine changed the whole dynamic of the usually soggy Sommerset bash

the temperature was up, high spirits were soaring and every single person battled dehydration as we rejoiced, caught up in the giddy throes of a laid back, serotonin enriched festival that England so rarely witnesses

so we bowed out on a high!


i know coverage shall be hard to avoid, and i've cringed everytime there is even so much of a mention of this year's glasto, completelly racked with jealousy and sentimentality for the good ol' days

i've tried to ignore the innevitable stage line-up reveals, and tried telling myself that Beyonce, Coldplay and U2 won't be much of a line-up anyway

but Glastonbury is so much more than just the headliners, and it is so much more than just the music.


my memories of times, good and the bad, at Glasto are innumerable, but i shall have to leave it to all of this years ticket holders to create their own unique take on Glastonbury 2011 as i sit at a desk typing out this blog, considering putting the tent up in our garden, instead of being sat in a car filled to bursting with all our kit, eagerly awaiting the sight of Stone Henge and the requisite stop-off at Countess Services