In the months leading up to creating a Neocities site, I'd been dabbling in long-form social media content and predictably having limited engagement beyond my 12 Instagram followers - but I didn't care, because I enjoyed it so much! I'm hoping that my shiny new blog will lend itself well to this kind of writing because it's both near and dear to my heart and also incredibly niche. If I'm going to rack up another 12 readers I feel like this would be the place?

The object of my affection is, of course, the rock pub. A criminally underrated British Institution where I cut my teeth on Aftershock shots and learned the words to Tenacious D Tribute (kidding, I've had those on lock since I was about 8). My fervour for these sorts of places has taken me to places I wouldn't go with a gun. Rock Pub is a pretty broad category, but I think the thing I like about them is that any decent one has its own niche - emo/pop-punk is a pretty common one these days, and I do like it, but finding a hair metal joint is a rare delight, especially when it's somewhere like Blackburn which is where I last came across one!

While basking in the familiar warmth of a punk bar in Madrid, I slurped my bucket of vodka coke and decided that I needed to tell everyone about this place, immediately. In a lull between Green Day and Social Distortion B-sides, I surveyed the whole place on my shaky iPhone camera, composed the accompanying prose, and gave it a rating out of 5 beers, which would become the format for my dedicated rock pub review Instagram page. Hopefully, one day, I'll pull together all the things I like best from each one and piece together my own Franken-pub, optimised for my enjoyment like the Moon Under Water. Where Orwell had draught stout and a roaring fire, I'll have £4 pints of cold Stella Artois and Sky Sports-style flatscreens beaming the Warrant - Cherry Pie music video directly into everyone's brains in ultra 4K. This will violently clash with the architecture of the premises, which will be at least 100 years old and have its own ghost. I'll have to mull a bit further on the name but it will be a little bit sleazy and definitely phallic.

Anyway, I'll post my next review here...

Is anyone there? It's Mimi!

This is less of a post and more of a test to make sure my boxes are working correctly...

I'll have to do a few more to make sure they scroll as desired, I'd better get writing?

Here's a nice pic I took on a recent trip to Cannes :)