an american prisoner of war has been turned.

If you haven't yet watched Homeland, I urge you to do so immediately. I was hooked within about three minutes, and then proceeded to watch all twelve (hour long) episodes in the space of two days. It's that good. It did make me a little bit paranoid though. I keep dreaming that my friends are under cover terrorists and looking at ginger men suspiciously on the metro. I should probably stop that...


Claire Danes is good in everything, and I have sung her praises before, playing an angelic Juliet and a slightly psychotic secret agent are two very different things. This was a difficult role and it would have been easy to tire of the heroine, but she pulled it off with grace and ease. It would have been easy too to oversexualise the character, but she didn't - Carrie emerged a flawed, brilliant woman. She was clingy and confused and feminine - everything intelligent women are sometimes told they must not be. Overall though, she was just very likable. I stayed onside throughout, even when she was at her most ridiculous.

And what can I say about Damian Lewis? I remember seeing him in Stormbreaker when it came out (I would have been about fourteen). He played a Russian baddie, and I'm sure he was supposed to be scary, but really he just oozed sex appeal in his very ginger way (the best if you ask me). In this, he was a very different kind of almost-baddie - a marine who is discovered after eight years of being kidnapped and tortured in Iraq by an Al Qaeda cell. He comes back broken and changed to an unfaithful wife and kids he doesn't recognise.

The series is full of twists and gasps. The cast is solid (and mainly British). My favourite character was Saul-good-guy-Berenson who is brilliant from the start and only gets better as the series progresses. The story is very, very clever and told in a gripping, engaging way in which governments are corrupt and there are two sides to every story and two faces to every character. Now I'm just left wanting more, and searching for something similarly serious and dramatic to fill the void.

And I still really fancy Damian Lewis...

the future was our skin and now we don't dream anymore.

I have never really been one for blogging about music, other than to post a nice song at the bottom of the page that I think you might enjoy. There is one simple reason for this - I know nothing about it. I have no idea what makes the music I like good, what instruments are playing, the correct terminology for the different components or anything about keys and stuff. I don't want you to feel that I'm harping on when it's something I know so little about.

So I'm going to make a deal with you. The music stuff will remain a key part of what I write about, but you are not to expect anything more insightful from me than "ooh this is pretty" or "I like his face". Neither should you think that the songs I select will be particularly new or in any way cool. Okay? Okay.

Perfection exists in the form of a beautiful man from Sweden who is like a scrubbed up Bob Dylan with a voice just the right side of harsh and a super cool wife with odd hair. This song is gorgeous and I must have listened to it twenty times today.



Beach House's Teen Dream is an album I can listen to again and again without tiring of it. Take Care and Walk in the Park are my favourites, but the whole album is cracking. They have a new album out now which is just as lovely. For those of you in the clutches of exams at the moment, rather than being smug that I have none, I am going to be helpful and suggest that you let this band aid you in your revision. It worked for me last year!



I had a dream last night that I was on a boat with Conor Oberst. He renamed me 'Lua' and I remember being less than pleased. Nonetheless, it made me think about seeing Bright Eyes last summer and how much I have been obsessed with them (him) for such a considerable length of time. I think he deserves just one more sneaky appearance with this lovely live version of what is now my song (in my dreams at least).




I'd really like to go to some gigs this summer, so if you have any suggestions, or if you'd like somebody to keep you company, just drop me a little message. Failing that, there's always Greenbelt where lovely people like Gentry Morris come to play and I get to spend my days sauntering round a vegan café, picking up rubbish and making people tea. It's one of the highlights of my year.

ten men who know how to rock a suit.

The art of suit wearing is difficult to master. So many young men who wear suits look like they've borrowed their dad's Sunday best, and so many older men's best efforts are ruined by a sneaky bit of beer belly creeping over their nicely-fitted trousers. There are no hard and fast rules to making the smart look work, but sometimes timeless is best, and thinking outside the box should maybe only be left to the pros.

• Richard Ayoyade - Now this is a man who can pull off a bit of tweed. He is half Norwegian, half Nigerian, and one hundred percent comfortable in a suit, which is maybe not something you can learn, but should be appreciated nonetheless.

• Eddie Redmayne - He went to Eton where I hear they teach a special class on 'How Toffs Should Dress'. It definitely worked: the tweed, knitwear and pocket square make for a winning combination, and he has that public school boy hair down to a tee. 

• Douglas Booth - Of course, it is easier to do this whole suit-rocking thing if you are a Burberry model whose job it is to wear beautifully cut suits opposite Emma Watson, but I reckon the average Joe could learn a thing or two from him. I admit this post is rapidly turning into a pretty-boy appreciation post, but there's nothing wrong with that. Is there?

• Luke Evans - He played the simple yet hench farmhand in Tamara Drewe, and he has come a long way since. The hipster glasses don't hurt either...

• Tinie Tempah - phwoar.

• David Tennant - He wore a red velvet suit and it looked good. Velvet. Matt Smith may look alright in a suit, but he is no David in either the Doctor stakes or the fanciable stakes. Oh yes, I went there.

• Daniel Craig - He is James Bond. It's innate.

• David Beckham - A bit of an anomaly in this list, perhaps, but he's been showing the boys of our nation how it's done for years, and I think he deserves some recognition for that. 

• Don Draper - Fictional, yes. Poorly dressed, most certainly not! 

• Benedict Cumberbatch - Single-handedly making scarves less gay since 2010. 

• Andrew Garfield - I've loved him since he was in Doctor Who all those years ago, and now he's a fairly big name. Somewhere along the way, he learned to rock a suit. Good for him! 

• Thierry Henry - va-va-yesplease.

So there you have it. Pedants among you may have noticed that there are in fact twelve people in this list, but I didn't have the heart to relegate anybody, besides, I am an equal opportunities kind-a-gal. 

you should sit with me and we'll start again.

Once upon a time, I updated this blog every three days or so. Back then, I was in sixth form, living in Kidderminster full-time, and yet seemed to have an abundance of things to write about. Now, I am older and a bit more emotionally stable, this obviously results in less compulsive reading for me, let alone you lot. Nonetheless, I miss it, and I miss people arguing with every little thing I write, so I think the time has come to start up properly again.

At the moment I'm really enjoying being in Italy, even though it's rainy and full of men who tell you to smile as you're walking down the street minding your own business. This happens increasingly often, and I feel like apologising to them because my head is not always full of fluffy thoughts of puppies and lollipops. Sometimes I have thoughts. And sometimes I like to think about these thoughts, resulting in the smile momentarily disappearing from my face. I can't do two things at once.

Currently still off the Facebook bandwagon, I felt like I needed more of a social networking hit, so I've rejoined Twitter. For those of you interested, as of yesterday, I am now Mindbopping rather than just Mindbop. They wouldn't let me reprise my account after some scallywag hacked into it (there is a pattern emerging here) so I thought I'd start again. Simple. 

The thing is, I love the internet - probably far too much - but it simply doesn't love me. Too many unpleasant things have happened to me over the internet, and my interest is waning. The few sites now that are keeping me sweet are Skype (which has made this year bearable), Wordreference and Texts from Last Night (just because). Oh and The Guardian... and Tumblr... and now Twitter... forget it, I frigging love the internet, as cruel a mistress as it may be!

I have two months left here. I'd really rather not leave, but there are definitely things worth going home for, and I'm trying to arrange my summer so that I won't be too Romesick by the middle of August.

Here is some Bright Eyes, because if don't post anything by him for too long, the universe implodes.

And here is some Frightened Rabbit, to bring you back up.