toothpaste, cucumber, lettuce

once upon a time, the charts actually mattered to me.

it was of the utmost importance to me to know who had got to number one and what new entries there were.

now i don't know if it is just because i am getting older, or if music actually is getting worse, but i just don't care for chart placings anymore and i'm not even fond of listening to the radio, with most stations opting for depressingly un-inspired playlists that irritatingly have a very short turnaround, leaving you tiresomely bored and verging on homicidal tendencies at hearing the opening bars of even the tracks that you once loved, yet now loathe after having heard it played twelvety times a day!!!??

it all just seems so stagnant.

yet this week i can quite honestly say that i am a huge fan of the song that went straight into the top of the charts!


no, it is not the meteoric rise or shock ascension of an underground artist, i thought i might buck the trend of cooler-than-thou music blogs and profess my love of the latest single from Cheryl Cole.

Cheryl Cole - Promise This stream only


i don't mince my words when it comes to expressing opinions on music, frankly, everything Cheryl Cole has released since going solo had been hugely disappointing, of course relentless radio play meant that each single soon grew on me, but Fight For This Love, 3 Little Words and Parachute were all pretty dire, particularly taken on the merit of their lyrical content and in comparison to Girls Aloud's phenomenal track record for delivering solid nuggets of pop gold

from the first time i heard Promise This, not even knowing that it was Cheryl's latest offering, i was intrigued and quite quickly hooked into it.  to be fair, the lyrics may be a load of codswallop yet again, and i'd be quite surprised if they weren't, but the bizarre little repetition of something or other in french that kicks off the whole thing and returns in the chorus is some strange sort of genius and the up-tempo, driven track is a glimmering pop masterpiece that kicks serious arse, while every other RnB star on the planet is running after David Guetta hoping he will polish their turds and produce another bland 'dance' hybrid destined for chart success.

i certainly won't be in any kind of a rush to shell out for the new album, which has so far recieved  reviews ranging from 'mixed' to luke warm, and quite possibly tepid, even though Cheryl Cole is enough of a star to have a change of hair colour become front page news and even though she is fated to one day be my wife, i still wouldn't hang much hope on 'Messy Little Raindrops', instead i think her 2011 calender would be a much wiser investment.

foreign tongues

the short trip to France last week left me feeling like a completely stereotypical brit-abroad, leaving the confines of England completely unprepared to speak anything other than English.

OK, slight exaggeration, but knowing the French for hello, goodbye, please and thank you hardly counts as learning another language.

two holidays in Spain in the last few years haven't fared an awful lot better but the fact that we can get by on a handful of words while other nationalities accommodate us in their own countries is rather shameful.

The staff in Disneyland must have been versed in multiple languages to deal with holiday makers and i even overheard a young German girl taking pleasure in reciting the English she had learnt, introducing herself and saying that she likes swimming, fluent and to a degree I was only capable of managing when my secondary school began teaching us German at the age of 11, obviously it must have been a well thought out decision to teach half the new year 7's German, and a very worthwhile effort when you take into account that I'm yet to consider holidaying in Germany.

so now to try and reverse some of the damage done I'm loading my generic mp3 player with language courses with the hope of broadening my horizons, today i was learning how to ask where the gift shop is, not the most necessary question when you are surrounded by them in Disneyland.

and the relevance of Girls Aloud? Girls Aloud are always relevant, and who really needs much of an excuse to watch one of their videos?