How Sez Sees It

It's that time of year again when I look back at all the things I have done and compare them to things that were going on in the world at the time. Here we go then. January: I had the flu over Christmas and it only left me at the beginning of January. This means that I was still recovering for a lot of the time. Back to work for me though. I do discover a new favourite band though in SID (said: shido) who are a visual kei band from Japan. They did the theme for Black Butler among others and are amazing! 3-7 January Boko Haram kill more than 2000 in Nigeria. 7 January Islamist terrorists kill members of left-wing satirist French paper, Charlie Hebdo, in Paris. February: Dave and I started house hunting and got our mortgage approved in principal. We also found Scoops, a brilliant little ice-cream place in Portswood highstreet. House hunting began and this was most of our lives to be honest. We celebrated 6 years together on Valentine's Day with a trip to Bournemouth a

...and it was great! Don't worry, I am not going to give any spoilers at all. It is commonly known that some of our old favourites from the original trilogy are back (Han Solo, Leia and Luke Skywalker). There are plenty of new characters that you will grow to love over the course of the two hours as well. The studios moved to Disney a couple of years ago and that is when it was announced that Episode VII: The Force Awakens would be made. People were skeptical at first as Episode I, II and III were not the greatest films in the world. In fact, there were complaints at the time (and since then) that they totally destroyed the feel of the originals. What I liked most about The Force Awakens is that director J.J Abrams has gone back to a more traditional way of filming with as many of the props being real as possible. Eps 1-3 relied heavily on CGI whereas the original trilogy didn't have that technology so relied on as many realistic props as possible. An example in this new

I remember that I started with the best of intentions to do a Christmas blog each day in the lead up to Christmas...but it didn't happen. I was going to write about the history of Christmas, how it is celebrated around the world, popular Christmas items like crackers and trees. I didn't and for that I can only apologise. The truth is that I have been really ill lately. For the last couple of months I have been really struggling with my anxiety which was brought on by my extended illness. In October I had a nasty virus that struck my digestive system and also brought on flu like symptoms. This in turn has left me with a post-viral fatigue. It took such a long time for me to have the tests to prove this...which is something I already knew I had. Now I am finally being taken seriously. The trouble is that in the lead up to Christmas I have been left totally exhausted and that is not fun. By the time I have been at work all day, gone home and done the bits of house work I nee

Initially this show was an uncertainty. ONE OK ROCK (yes it is spelled out in capitals) were being supported by We Came As Romans and DEAD! (yes, that is how they do their name too) at O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire on Thursday 10 December. Unfortunately, the week before, the venue decided it was the best time to start collapsing. Fear not though, the gig was saved! Luckily the Academy group owns a lot of venues and the O2 Forum Kentish Town stepped up. The gig had to be pushed forward by 24 hours because of clashes otherwise, but still the gig did go ahead! All tickets previously sold were honoured and a good time was to be had by all. DEAD! I have seen this band countless times. The first time I did was at The Joiners in Southampton and they were opening for William Control. This was about three and a half years ago now and I think they had only been together around three or four months. I think almost every member of the band had an injury at the time and there seemed to be iss

Some of this has surprised me and some of it not at all. There are some things that it turns out I am good and and like doing that I have discovered since I moved out. There turns out to be something that I genuinely seem to have a talent for as well. Baking: Somehow it turns out I can bake cakes really well. I am not sure when this happened or how I discovered it but, since moving in to my house, I have a real talent for baking. I would like to think that I have inherited this talent from my Nan who is an excellent baker. Housework: Turns out I am really good at house work. I always thought I would have an aversion to it, but actually I am really good. Driving: The one thing I really miss about living in my house is that I don't get to drive my car every day. I always used to but now I only get to do it a couple of times a week and that makes me sad. I used to love doing it as I am a very good driver and I used to love shouting at all the crap drivers on the road. Si

I am in an awkward position in that I didn't vote for my MP (not living in the constituency at the time of the election) and I didn't vote for my previous constituency MP either. They both voted for bombing in Syria. I did vote for Jeremy Corbyn to be leader of the Labour Party though and I totally agree with his stance and everything he has said about airstrikes there. Corbyn is totally against the airstrikes and would like a diplomatic end to the troubles with Daesh. Daesh (formerly known as ISIS, but we aren't calling them that any more) is a mentality rather than a geographical area. People will be radicalised wherever they are and bombing this one small part of the Middle East is not going to solve that problem. The fact is that innocent people will be put in harm's way. The most obvious is the people of Syria who will be caught up in this. How can we know we are not bombing civilians? Then there is Britain. Paris became a target after France joined in the ai

Stockings: There is no record of where the stockings thing came from originally. The most popular story is that of the poor man with three daughters. To prevent them from having to fall into sin St Nicholas snuck into the man's house and left money in the girls' stockings. There are similar stories from Norse mythology such as Odin sneaking into homes to leave gifts for children. The largest stocking on record was 168' 5.65" in length and 70' 11.57" from heel to toe. Crackers: Have been popular in the Commonwealth since the 1840s. Tradition states that Tom Smith invented the modern popping cracker with gifts inside in 1847 and there is a memorial to him in Finsbury Park in London. For those not in the know, a Christmas cracker is a paper tube filled with a joke, paper hat and a toy that pops when pulled apart due to a small amount of explosive. The tackier the toy and joke inside the better in my view.

Ok, I have got very angry all of a sudden. These are a list of things that have pissed me off over the last week: 1. Bombing Syria It is looking likely that we will be going to war with Syria. It feels like a knee jerk reaction to the terrible attacks in Paris a week and a half ago. As horrible as that was, even British people who were there are saying that bombing Syria is not the right way to go. Leader of the Labour Party, the Right Honorable Jeremy Corbyn MP, has said he is against bombing and that talks are the only way forward. I agree. The problem is that Daesh (not ISIS or ISIL as they have nothing to do with true Islam or the Ancient Egyptian goddess) is a mentality and not a geographical area. You can't just bomb them in Syria and hope the problem goes away. It won't work like that at all. 2. People who smash up local shops This morning I was trying to go to my local shop and people from the nearby estate had smashed it up over night. The poor staff were havin

To what extent do we owe a lot of our Christmas celebrations to Charles Dickens? There could be an argument for a fair amount. Dickens wrote a series of Christmas stories in his career, with the most famous being A Christmas Carol (1843). There were others though, The Chimes (1844); The Cricket on the Hearth (1845) and The Battle of Life (1846). They cover themes we would expect of Dickens as a social commentator. A Christmas Carol and The Chimes' have moral messages to not look back to the past and to not be greedy at Christmas or any other time of year. They are tales of repentance and of making things right at Christmas and the whole year through. 'The Cricket on the Hearth' is a tale of love and one of the characters finds the joy of festive cheer at the end of the story in the style of Scrooge. There are elements of love and family and anti-greed morals throughout all the stories. There are some things in the stories that we have as part of our modern Christmas. T

How early is too early for putting up your decorations? When are you allowed to go around listening to Christmas songs? There are many factors at play and, of course, it is a personal thing. For me I have never been a fan of Christmas before December (and I am writing this on 30 November). I am very much a one for celebrating Christmas, but November feels too early. My birthday falls in mid-November and this has something to do with the way I feel I am sure. When I look around at all the decorations and adverts for Christmas and I still haven't blown out my candles I think it is too early by far. Now, I know there are people who have their birthdays in December and they have more right to feel like that than I do (I know several people born on Christmas Eve...what was happening nine months before???), but my point is that mid-November is just too early. However, when I was living at home my Dad used to get one of the fibre optic Christmas trees out on my birthday every year. Ye

It is said that you don't truly know another person until you live with them. I have spent a lot of time with le fiance before we moved in together but there are still some things about him that I didn't know or I have noticed since we moved in together. 1. He talks to himself... ...a lot! He is always mumbling away to himself. I think this is how he gets through the day. He explains processes to himself (e.g. what to cook when or what order to hoover the house). 2. He has his own jokes We will be sat watching TV or just walking down the street and then something pops into his head that makes him laugh. He will just randomly burst out laughing. 3. He has an evil sense of humour I never realised just how dark his humour could be until we started living together and I was exposed to it more during the day (well, weekends and evenings anyway). 4. His confidence has grown There is no way that he is the same person I knew before we moved in. The move out of his paren

I worked out yesterday that I probably saw more of my fiance for general fun (not that you dirty people) than I do now. We see each other every day now but we are always doing something like housework or shopping. Stuff for the house seems to take up all our spare time together. When we are not doing stuff together he wants to go and play on his computer. I decided to implement something I thought was a little tacky at first...date night! I know other people have them and I always thought, before we were living together, that this was a tacky idea and I would not really want to do that. Now I see why they are so important. The sort of lives people live today make spending time with their partner really difficult. We are all connected to our jobs too much and we all spend too much time glued to our computers and mobiles. Even when we are in the same room we have the TV on and yet we are both on our separate mobiles flicking through Facebook or whatever. I decided that we would hav

My fiance and I are celebrating our first Christmas together this year (awwww). We took the decision not to see our individual families this year on the big day and instead spend it with one another. There are many reasons for this besides wanting to spend it alone for the first time ever. We didn't want a fight. We didn't see that it would be fair to either side if we saw one and not the other. We will visit my parents on Christmas Eve and Dave's parents on Boxing Day when we see the rest of his family as per tradition. We didn't want to travel. Dave's parents are two minutes down the road and mine are 20 minutes down the road but that isn't really the point. I know that is no distance at all but quite frankly neither of us can be arsed and we just want a relaxing day sat around eating and drinking and watching shit TV. This is the first time we will have seen each other on Christmas day in four years! The last four times his Mum wouldn't let him visi

The other day I was talking to someone I work with. In the past this person has been a lecturer and used to teach students from the USA when they came to Britain to study. He told me the following: "I used to say to them imagine this. There is a country where there are two house of government. One, the higher house, is not elected and many of the posts are hereditary. The other house is elected but the person in charge could get there by only having a minority of the overall votes. Both houses are accountable to an unelected head of state who is also the head of the nation's church." The students were then asked which country they thought this was. Many would answer that they believed it was somewhere in the Middle East or Africa. The reality is that this is modern day Britain. Yes, in 2015 we have an unelected monarch with half our Government (The House of Lords) unelected too. This has been the system for hundreds of years. Most of our system owes a lot to Victori

I was horrified when I was in my first year of university and I was told to argue against Rememberance services. The idea was that my side should say that it had been nearly 100 years and we would only repeat the mistakes if we remember. I refused to do that and asked to switch to a different group. The reason for me is that the information I was given and the instructions I was given were not good enough for me to want to argue that point. To me rememberance is about those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the Great War and WWII. It is about remembering those who have done the same in global conflicts since. This is why I choose to wear a poppy each year, take part in rememberance services and give to the Royal British Legion every month. I have mentioned before that my Grandad benefitted from the help of the Legion. His story was incredible. He was conscripted in WWII and worked in logistics. All of his brothers were also in the army and his youngest brother died at the age of

Gunpowder, treason and plot.' So goes the old rhyme. This weekend there will be many a firework display (weather permitting) up and down the country, but why? In 1605 a plot was uncovered which, if successful, would have seen Parliament and King James I (VI of Scotland), blown up. The plot was to be undertaken by a rebel group of provincial Catholics who were led by Robert Catesby. The idea was to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening on 5 November and this would kickstart revolt in the Midlands. James I's (VI's) daughter would be installed as a Catholic Head of State. The full list of plotters were: John and Christopher Wright Thomas and Robert Wintour Thomas Percy Robert Keys Thomas Bates John Grant Ambrose Rookwood Sir Everard Digby Frances Tresham Guido (Guy) Fawkes The most famous of the plotters today, after more than 400 years, is Guy Fawkes. Why is it we remember him over the others? Many of us remember building a 'Guy&#

Admit it, how many of us have done this? You have an ache or pain or you struggle to breathe one day and you Google your symptoms. The trouble is that if you do that some symptoms can be for more than one illness. For example, if you have a tight feeling in your chest and you have recently been ill it could be a chest infection or asthma or anything really. There is no way of telling unless you visit a doctor. Now, I am just as guilty of doing this as anyone else. I come from a long line of hypochondriacs and we are all dying of something all the time (according to us at least). In the last couple of weeks I have been genuinely ill. I have had a stomach bug and I have lost my appetite. Ok, so it is coming back now, but it was a horrible thing and I am not the only person to have had it in recent weeks. The trouble is that I have had other things wrong as part of it. I haven't been able to catch my breath and I have had dizzy spells. Don't worry, I have now been to the doctor

As it is the season I thought I would write about my favourite horror films that I would be watching (or would like to watch) at Halloween. This is in no particular order, but these are some of my favourite horror films and films with horror elements: 1. Death Note (2006) This is a film from Japan based on the Manga. I include this in the list because the subject matter deals with supernatural beings (shinigami) and death. I think it is a horror in a sense and therefore this film fits. The live film deviates from the original story but only because some of the elements of the story wouldn't be possible in live action on a budget and also because they tried to fit the story into two films that are about two hours long each. The characters are all there though, Light, L, Misa, Ryuk and Rem. The only real complaint I have is that Misa is not a blonde. The premise is still the same though. Light (Fujiwara Tatsuya-san) finds a 'death note' dropped into the human world by a s

Mental health can affect many aspects of your life. Eating can be one of those things. Before I go on I want to point out the difference between anxiety affecting your appetite and the anorexia nervosa and bulimia disorders. Anorexia is a medical condition where people keep their body weight as low as possible. Bulimia is a medical condition where people try to control their weight but binge eat and then purge through vomiting or laxatives. I found this amazing blog recently in which the blogger opens up about her relationship with food and anxiety. It is on Hello Giggles . I was so inspired by it that I wanted to share my own relationship with food and anxiety. I have had this problem on and off for about as long as I can remember. I think I first noticed by problem when I was at primary school. We all get nervous and that can put us off eating until the thing that is making us nervous passes. This is called fight or flight and is a natural response that we developed over t

Ever since we have had televisions in bedrooms and mobile phones in our hands at all hours of the day and night the question has been there. Do we get enough sleep? Recent studies suggest we may only get as much sleep as our ancient ancestors did. Apparently with all the looking out for dangerous things sleep was light anyway and that is something that we have kept through evolution. Blue light emitted from televisions and mobile phones is thought to prevent the brain from creating melatonin, which we need to go to sleep. Keeping our brains active later is also not helping. If we read emails and try and work later into the evening we are not giving our brains time to 'switch off'. Also, we tend to panic if we think we are not getting enough sleep. A few times in my life I have been laying awake in bed and worried that I wasn't getting to sleep. Really my body and brain probably didn't need so much sleep that night. Or perhaps I was too worried about something happ

For the last four days I have felt very ill. I am nauseous, light headed, exhausted and really just scared of the whole thing. I have lost track of the number of people who think I am pregnant. It is no longer funny. I have a virus that has been doing the rounds and I have an upset stomach as part of it. My question is this...why is it that a woman in her late 20's must automatically be pregnant the moment she says she is ill? Now I admit, I am an adult and I live with my fiancé and we are not exactly 'waiting for marriage' so I can see why people would think that I might be pregnant when I say that I am ill. The thing is that we are incredibly careful. We are certainly not in a position to have children yet and I do not intend to go down that route for a number of years. The fact is that it is a virus that I have and nothing more. There are some women who would love the thought that they might be pregnant, but there are others who never intend to have children. I d

This is all my own opinion. If you don't like it then fine. Remember, we are all entitled to an opinion so don't take this the wrong way and get the hump over it. Right...here we go... Women who play video games part 1: Women now make up around 50% of all gamers. It seems women are more likely to play mobile games or wii games and men play more Xbox games. Well, that is according to studies. However, there is starting to be a shift and more women are playing the same games and consoles as men. Portrayals of women: Often, women are sexualised and appear as the 'damsel in distress'. They appear with large boobs and impossible figures. They are this way because the gaming industry is still geared up to the male market. With more women playing games this needs to change. Lara Croft from the ' Tomb Raider ' franchise is a rare thing, she is a protagonist in a major franchise. Often this goes to male characters who might have a female sidekick or a woman

I used to have a subscription to the largest British weekly music magazine dealing with rock and metal. I stopped that subscription and I had some very good reasons for doing so. The main reason was that I had just moved house and I couldn't justify the subscription fee every few months. I just figured that it might be better to buy it on a weekly basis if there were any articles I liked. For example, a wonderful human I know was in the magazine a couple of weeks ago because his new band were in a feature on the 'New Grave' scene. Regular readers will know that I have been supporting Solace in Nightmares for about a year now and it was this band being featured. As I lead their street team I kind of figured that I should buy the mag just for that article. The other reason is basically around the content. I had already decided to cancel my subscription but I was fed up that my favourite bands were not getting the coverage. Just as I cancel they all start getting featured

Got bored. Did a vlog as you can see below. I am going to tell you the 10 things here, but I will leave you guessing as to the context of some of these things. You will have to wait and see in the video what the hell I mean by number 4... I cosplay I like pandas I run a street team for a band I once punched a police man in the balls I burnt my fingers and feel nothing in them now I love Japan despite never having been there I am a hypochondriac My favourite food is cheese I hate my birthday I can recite 'Withnail and I' word-for-word So, as you can see, there are some odd ones in there. I will leave you to find out more in the video below.

I'm studying a course on poverty and inequality with the Open University via the learning website Future Learn . It is really interesting and I thought I would just share some of the things the course has so far made me think about along with some of the recent news stories doing the rounds. We need to pay more: I am a socialist and, as such, I believe we need to be paying more taxes. I for one would be happy to do so and I certainly think the rich should be paying more. I also believe they should not be allowed to put it in off shore holdings in order to avoid paying tax. I have heard the argument before that if people earn the money they should be allowed to keep it. Great, yes, keep some of it. We are all human beings though and it should be within us to want to help our fellow humans out. By paying more in the way of taxes we ensure that people have a good education and access to health care or that they can afford to travel to work (I am also in support of re-nationali

So this week I did the unthinkable and bought a Southampton football shirt. This may not seem like the unthinkable to you but it is to me. You see, I was a life long Chelsea supporter. Actually, let's back up here, I still am a Chelsea supporter. Let's start this again or rather go in to more background detail. I have lived most of my life in a small village in Hampshire which is about 6 miles from the city of Southampton . Recently I moved to the city itself and this is likely to be my permanent home now as I have no intention of moving for many years if I can help it. My fiancé was born in Southampton and raised in the nearby town of Eastleigh and has been a life long Saints supporter himself. I have been to more Saints home matches than Chelsea (I have never been to a home Chelsea match actually and only seen them play when at St Mary's against Saints). I can even name more Saints players than Chelsea players (though we are not doing that one right here an