X Factor 2013 (12th October)

It's that time of year again; the X Factor live shows are about to hit our screens. Yes, that weekly reminder that you don't have anything better to do with your Saturday evenings than watch yet another reality TV show whose contestants will disappear back into obscurity within a month of it ending, is back.

But it's okay because, as the late, great Zac Efron once sang, we're all in this together. 

Earlier I asked twitter whether anyone wanted me to do these recap bloglets again this year. The response was overwhelming non-existent, but I'm forging ahead regardless. Because I enjoy writing them and I find myself hilarious.

Tonight's theme is 80s. Excellent.

Dermot informs us that there will be a 'flash vote' at the end of tonight's show, which means that one act will be put in the sing-off straight away.

Hannah Barrett. What's Love Gotta Do With It.

Hannah is clearly loving the whole X Factor experience, but she's been on vocal rest for two weeks.

It's a good start to the show. A solid performance, though perhaps not as strong as her previous auditions, probably because her voice isn't at its best.

Louis thinks it must be daunting to open the show. He reminds us that we must vote for Hannah if we want to see her next week. Full of useful advice as always. Sharon thinks she's fabulous. Gary believes Hannah's raised the bar for the competition already. He's also pleased she got through a whole song without crying (amen to that, sister).

Nicholas McDonald. True.

Nicholas is only 16, so he obviously doesn't remember the 80s. He apparently hadn't heard of the song, or Spandau Ballet before this week. I'm 25. I was born in the 80s, but I don't remember them. I do however, know the song (and indeed the band) because I'm not a moron.

Miss Dynamix. Jump.

One of them is pregnant. "Just over five months" pregnant. So if they stay in the competition until the end (doubtful - they're a girl band) she'll be heading towards humong-o.

Louis thinks they need to work harder if they want to stay in the competition. Sharon wants them to enjoy it more. Gary doesn't disagree.

Sam Bailey. The Power of Love.

Sam wants to prove she has a place in the competition, Robbie Williams doubted her, you see. I really don't like this song, so Sam's got a job on her hands to win me round. 

She's bloody good. There's absolutely nothing to criticise or be sarcastic about, which is a shame for the purpose of this bloglet, but it's true. She's ace.

Gary thinks she's in a league of her own. Louis is nodding. Nicole is speechless, Sharon says she nailed it. Sam's just glad she got down the stairs in heels. Love her. Bloody love her.

Sam Callahan. Summer of '69.

Sam is one of those people who irritates me and I can't really give a reason why.

Lordy there's a lot of make up going on on his face. Exactly how much foundation did they use? The vocals are not great but he's trying hard. Teenage girls will love him, so he'll be around for a while yet. Joy.

Sharon asks whether Sam was happy with his performance (he was). She says he has the whole package. Gary thinks Sam looks like a popstar but that the vocals were quite poor (so he sounds like some popstars too, *snort*). Nicole says Sam has determination. Louis tells us Sam works hard and that he thinks Sam will be around for a while because girls will love him - yup.

Kingsland Road. I'm Your Man.

KR are rather excited to be in the final 12. Their excitement borders on irritating actually (can you tell I don't like boybands?)

Boyband checklist:

Synchronised dance steps: check

Annoying bouncy energy: check

Matching, but not quite matching outfits: check

Prancing around the back of the judges' seats: check

High-fiving the audience: check

Nicole is not going to lie, she was impressed. She's going to call them Hairland. Louis loves it, of course he does. Sharon thinks they'll go a long way and Gary says all the hard work has paid off and that there's no one like them out there at the moment (except One Direction?!)

Shelley Smith.

I love Shelley for her accent alone.

It always surprises me that people lose their accent when they start singing. In Shelley's case it's a bit of a shame actually. Would love to hear what How Do I Get You Alone sounds like in a strong West Country accent.

I've tuned out for a few seconds and Shelley's suddenly on top of a scissor lift. Louis loves it. Simple things.

Gary thinks Shelley was stuck in the 80s (rather than modernising the song). Sharon smooshes his face. Nicole likes the transformation. Louis says "Hey Shelley, you gave it welly." No word of a lie - those were his exact words. Idiot.

Abi Alton. Livin' On A Prayer.

I like Abi because she seems normal. She doesn't know what do to with herself during photo shoots and seems genuinely surprised to see herself "looking so nice" in the pictures afterwards.

A completely different version of the song, so much so that I don't immediately recognise it. It's nice but it's difficult not to compare it to, and prefer, the original.

Louis thinks it's an amazing interpretation and that it could be a hit. Sharon agrees. She also says it was unrecognisable (so I'm forgiven). Gary notes that the audience was silent during her performance when they'd been particularly rowdy up to that point. Nicole is proud.

Lorna Simpson. So Emotional.

Lorna's the meh act for me this year. Apparently she's the meh act of the show because Sharon's determined to get her noticed.

You know what I just realised? There's no joke act this year. There's no Rylan or Wagner. I'm a little sad.

She has a great voice but I don't think she'll stay for long. She's just quite forgettable. If she was on a show like I'm A Celebrity she'd stick around because the public just wouldn't notice her for a while. She may actually be the one who loses the flash vote tonight.

Gary thinks the first 30 seconds weren't good, but that she saved it from then. Nicole agrees. She also says she didn't remember Lorna from before. Seriously I could judge this stuff. If they want a replacement for Gary next year I'm available. Sharon's full of praise.

Tamera Foster. Ain't Nobody.

Now I think that Tamera got a place in the finals over a girl that I preferred, so she had better impress tonight.

She's very good but again I'm wishing there was a joke act right about now. At least there's some weirdness with the backing dancers, who are for some strange reason wielding metal fences.

Louis likes her style and confidence. Sharon things she's exotic. Gary says she has the X Factor (shall we all just pack up and go home now then?) Nicole is proud again.

Luke Friend. Every Breath You Take.

Luke's hair has its own twitter account. Of course it does.

Despite the silly hair and the purple velvet jacket and the fact that I shouldn't, I quite like him. He's different to all the other teenagers on the show. The stupid video of his face in the background is stupid and annoying and unnecessary, but I like him.

Sharon says the performance value was bang on but his voice wasn't the greatest. Gary thinks his voice is an acquired taste. Nicole likes the sincerity and rawness. Louis loves the energy. He thinks he brought it, whatever 'it' is.

Rough Copy. In The Air Tonight.

Rough Copy's back as a three because Gary's pulled some strings.

They're very good at harmonising, which I think just goes to show how great the groups can be when they're not shoved together at the last minute and expected to have chemistry.

Nicole says they might be the best band she's ever seen on the show. Louis thinks it was the surprise of the night. Sharon says they delivered a perfect performance. Gary loves everything about them.

After a decent amount of filling, it's time for the flash vote, and because I'm not good at building tension, I'll just tell you straight away that Shelley (nooooo) loses the flash vote and will be in the sing-off tomorrow.

If you enjoyed reading tonight's bloglet, do come back again next week. If you didn't enjoy it, don't come back next week - it'll be more of the same and you'll only find it annoying.

Would You Rather ...?

Topic three: You must choose between having toes where your fingers are, and fingers where your toes are, OR, having both your nose and your ears attached to your bottom. Which do you choose, and why?

A fine question for a blog of such rambling inanity as this.

My immediate reaction was to go for the finger/toe swap because the alternative sounded awful. What the human body can do to food and drink you give it is disgusting. Amazing, incredible, necessary for digestive bliss, but ultimately disgusting. Sensory organs being near all that jazz? No thank you, sir.

But, seeing as my instructions specifically said that I must consider a few consequences to both options, I will refrain from making a decision just yet. Let's consider the pros and cons, shall we?

(By the way, I am assuming that having surgery to try to correct anything is not an option.)

Option 1: The toe and finger swap
Advantages:
- I could refer to the digits on my feet as 'foot-fingers'.
- Being able to type/write with my feet would be an excellent party trick.
- My new, monkey-like feet would help me climb trees more easily.
- I have exactly the same number of toes as fingers (I know, what are the chances?), so could do a straight swap.

Disadvantages:
- None of my shoes would fit anymore (my fingers > my toes).
- Basic tasks (doing up buttons, holding cups of tea, tying laces on my new, presumably size 9 or 10 shoes, etc.) would have to be re-learnt by my new hand-toes.
- It would freak the heck out of people, myself included.

Option 2: Ears and nose on bum
Advantages:
- I would learn sign language (I don't imagine butt-ears work well through knickers and trousers).

Disadvantages:
- Unless I taped them to my face, I could never wear glasses (sun/reading).
- I already get ear infections. Putting them nearer the poop hole can't be good for them.
- Nothing that comes out of the human butt smells good. Nothing.
- Sneezing would confuse the heck out of me.

So, awarding +1 for every advantage and -1 for every disadvantage, the scores are:
The toe/finger swap: 1
Ears/nose on bum: -3

And option 1 wins.

But those are just my thoughts. Maybe you have different ideas. If you do, and you'd like to share them, please leave a comment.

The Soundtrack To My Life

Just in case you haven't read my last couple of bloglets, a friend is setting me topics to write about over summer.

Topic two - List the soundtrack to your life based on the following terms and conditions:
- 12 songs or pieces of music that can relate to specific events or time periods
- reasons must be specified
- songs should be listed loosely in chronological order

1. I Think We're Alone Now (Tiffany)
The very beginning seems as good a place as any to start. So the song that topped the UK charts on the day I was brought kicking and screaming into the world was Tiffany's I Think We're Alone Now. It's not a song that I particularly like or even own, but it was number 1 when I was born and that's got to count for something.

Incidentally, if you ever want to feel old, go and watch the video of the song that was number one when you were born. Geez.

2. Two Little Monkeys (Sarah and Me)
After being born, the next most important event in my life was the arrival of a new toy sister a couple of years later. I'm told we got on very well most of the time when we were little. One day, in the spring of 1993, Mum decided to record us singing some of our favourite songs. The result was 26 minutes of Jingle Bells, Five Little Speckled Frogs, Nelly the Elephant and many more. For the purposes of this bloglet though, I've shortened it down to just one song. A song that demonstrates how sisters can be quick to fall out but quick to forgive.

(Okay, so the laughter didn't actually come immediately after the song, but it wasn't much later.)

3. Cauliflowers Fluffy and Cabbages Green
One of my favourite songs from Infant school. Back then no one could really read well/fast enough to warrant the lyrics being on display (on an OHP - not a whiteboard - obviously) so you just learnt them through repetition. Judging by how much I remember now though, I must have switched off about halfway through the second verse.

4. Alice the Camel
If Cauliflowers Fluffy represents my time at Infant school, then Alice the Camel does the same for Junior school. By this point we were allowed to read the lyrics, but no one needed them for this song. We'd all merrily link arms, bob up and down and whack our hips together as hard as we could on the 'booms'.

By the way, I didn't include a video of this one partly because I'm sure that most people will be familiar with the song and also (mostly) because none of the videos I found sang it in quite the same way as our school used to, which distressed me.

5. Say You'll Be There (Spice Girls)
Because really, who didn't like the Spice Girls? They were the first band that I liked because I liked them. Before them I'd really only listened to albums that my parents owned and it was a happy coincidence if I enjoyed any of them. I'm fairly certain that Spice was the first album I owned (on cassette!) and that this song was the second in the tracklist. At the time, I only knew it as 'the one where they're all in the desert in the video.'

6. Hip To Be Square (Huey Lewis & The News)
This was one of those happy coincidence songs; my dad owned the album but I loved it so much that I'd sneak it upstairs into our playroom and listen to it over and over again.
I loved the whole album (all killer no filler, folks) but chose this particular song because there was also a Sesame Street version that I discovered at about the same time. I think I may have actually seen/heard the Sesame Street one first, thought it was the original and just accepted that Huey & Co probably liked it so much that they'd put it on their album.

(Yes, NOW I understand that the songs have completely different lyrics but this was not the case for 7/8 year old me. Lyrics are, and never were, a strong point - 5 year old me, for example, was convinced we had to sing about a 'party ginger pear tree' every Christmas.)

7. Say You'll Be Mine (Steps)
Steps were a big part of my childhood. I loved them. I got all their albums, recorded all their TV appearances, read any magazines which had interviews with them, collected their posters, basically if it was Steps-related, I wanted to see or own it. I (obviously) made a scrapbook about them (complete with different sections for each band member) and even went as far as hand writing the lyrics to all of their songs. As we already know, lyrics were not my thing, so this meant listening to an album with a pad of paper and a pen at the ready, and pausing the song after every couple of lines.
If that wasn't enough, crazy-obsessed 10 year old me, one day decided it would be an excellent idea to make a PowerPoint presentation about them, presumably so I could explain just how brilliant they were to others.

8. Step Into Christmas (Elton John)
Everyone's got their favourite Christmas song, this is mine. Christmas has always been rather magical in the Groves household and for me this song marks the beginning of all the festivities.

9. Opa! (Giorgos Alkaios)
You didn't think we'd get through this list without a Eurovision song, did you?
I've watched Eurovision since Gina G asked for a little bit more in 1996 and love it a little more every year. Did you know that the competition originally started to try and boost morale after the second world war? (If you've read earlier bloglets, you probably do - apologies for repeating myself) Okay so things have changed somewhat since then, but I really like Eurovision's humble beginnings.
This song was my favourite of the 2010 competition. It didn't win - none of my favourites ever win - but I did actually try to learn all the lyrics a while ago. Did I mention lyrics are not my thing?

10. I Can Go The Distance (Disney's Hercules)
Because it reminds me of Miss Dormer, who taught me Latin at school. In the last lesson of every term we'd try to persuade Miss Dormer to let us watch Hercules instead of doing work. If I remember rightly, she never took much convincing.

11. Survivor (Destiny's Child)
I haven't chosen this song because it helped me through a difficult time in my life, or has a deep meaning for me, nope. It just reminds me of university. In my second and third years I lived with a group of fantastic girls who loved to play Sing Star. Survivor was a particular favourite of ours. We belted it out, and by 'belted' I mean 'shouted it at the top of our lungs until other students, who lived in the next street, came and complained'. A proud moment for all of us.

12. The Hannah Song (Me)
I don't often watch this video. It makes me cringe a bit now (why I didn't just write a song that was in a range I could cope with, I don't know). But I do sometimes catch myself singing or humming it to myself. The song is (obviously) about a friend named Hannah whom I met at university. I wrote it because I was going to be away on holiday over her birthday and felt bad that I wouldn't see her. The idea grew and grew, and in the end I uploaded another 17 videos (not all of them songs!) for her, but the Hannah Song was always the best.
It was also the first song I wrote, filmed and actually uploaded to the internet for The World to see (unless you count the Cheese Rap) and the fact that people didn't hate it gave me the confidence to do more.

What If?

When I tweeted a link to my last bloglet, a friend set me the challenge to write weekly updates throughout the summer on topics of her choosing. Challenge accepted Tami!

My first topic: Explore how different your life might be if, instead of studying Latin, you had studied ice skating.

So, very briefly, I started learning Latin at the age of 12, then took GCSE, AS and A level exams in the subject before studying it (along with Classical Greek) at university. I now teach Latin to 9-11 year olds.

But how different could my life be now if, instead of spending my formative years learning about the ablative, I had been perfecting my arabesque? Well, to begin with at least, I suspect 'not very'. At our school we all had to study Latin in Years 8 and 9 (age 12-14) so even in a ridiculous universe where I ditched Latin, I would still have had to learn the basics.

Okay, once I got to GCSEs (and didn't choose Latin) I would have had the chance to study a different subject through to A levels, but because ice skating just wasn't/isn't/never will be on the curriculum, and because I very much doubt my parents would have let me leave school without qualifications, ice skating would have remained a hobby. Maybe I had ice skating lessons, caught the skating bug and even took part in some junior competitions, but the main focus would still have been on school work.

Fast-forward a few years to when I've got my A levels, though, and things start to get more interesting.

Having taken A levels in Maths, Greek and Physics (because 18 year old me, who is considering a career in ice skating, believes that understanding the forces in play during a shotgun spin or a bracket turn (Latin-lover 25 year old me had to look those terms up) will be useful), I head out into the big, wide world.

Now, because I'm just quite good at Latin - I'm no Virgil, but I can string a sentence together - I reckon I would be a quite good ice skater - not the next Jayne Torvil, but able to do a few tricks without falling over. So, after leaving school, I decide to join an ice show where I can skate every day and earn some money in the process.

I work my way up through the ranks and after a couple of years land the part of Mickey in Disney on Ice (I've never seen it, but Mickey's got to feature heavily, surely?) and spend a while touring the world with the show.

Finally, having had enough of international travel and fame (of sorts) I decide to head home and pass on my knowledge to the next generation, so I start teaching beginners' ice skating classes. That or become one of the professional skaters on Dancing on Ice.

Of course, if it's the latter, I meet Phillip Schofield, immediately befriend him and persuade him to reunite with Gordon the Gopher for a new chat show.

So how would my life be different if I'd chosen ice skating over Latin? Basically there'd be more sequins. And Gordon the Gopher.

Blogging Again

I'm not very good at having a blog. It's okay when I'm given a strict timetable that I have to stick to (like the A to Z challenge) because then I HAVE to update regularly (Bad Things would happen if I didn't). But you remove that lovely rigid schedule and I get very lazy very quickly.

Only one bloglet since the end of the A to Z challenge (that finished two and a half months ago)? I rest my case.

You may, dear reader, be wondering why, if I thrive on having a fixed structure in my blog-life, I don't just set myself a weekly/monthly schedule. It's a good idea but unfortunately it just doesn't work that way.

In the A to Z (apologies for always using it as an example - it's the only blog challenge I've tried) someone else is the boss: someone else sets the rules. The problem with me coming up with my own rules is that I'm a very lenient boss. I'm more than willing to grant myself time off.

So for the next six weeks while I'm off work (school summer holidays) I shall endeavour not to be Laid-back Leader, but a Tough Taskmaster.

Will it work? Perhaps. Maybe I'll really get into the swing of things and wonder why I ever stopped blogging. Or maybe I'll just give myself the day off for the next 42 days.

We'll see.