I try to be like Grace Kelly...

That's a lie, right there. I very rarely try to be like Grace Kelly. In fact, I don't think I've ever attempted a Grace Kelly imitation. I don't think I'd be very good at it.

Anyhow. So on Friday I came home and yesterday I drove to Exeter with my mum to see my brother in Exeter. Somewhere between the drive there and the drive back, I bought a new computer. I can't really justify it.

Anyway, that's not the point. In the car on the way back, we were listening to Mika. 

Mika's Grace Kelly is one of those songs that makes me unaccountably happy. There's something about the pace of it and the way he squeaks when he says 'purple', it's just... oooh. 

At uni, whenever Sideburns-Earrings comes over, we always play our wonderful YouTube music game. Basically, one of us puts on a rather fantastic songs on YouTube and then the next person does and then we go on like that for a few hours. But it's quite cool cuz Sideburns-Earring and I tend to play songs that make us happy, or songs associated with really good memories, which we can then discuss in great detail. Anyway, so, I decided to make a list of the happiest songs to have featured in this highly technical and complicated game (ie. mostly songs Sideburns-Earrings and I were in love with when we were fourteen :D). SO:

20. In Too Deep - Sum 41

Okay, so, yes, we are all quite ashamed of Sum 41 now... but it was a close call between this, Teenage Dirtbag and She Hates Me... this won because nobody I know can honestly deny liking it at the time ;)

19. Do You Know? - Enrique Iglesias

To be absolutely honest though, Sideburns-Earrings does genuinely hate this and won't ever let me play it all the way through. But come on! Enrique Iglesias! In monochrome! With table tennis! There is NOTHING about this not to like.

18. MMMBop - Hanson

You really can't help grinning, can you?

17. Carrie Anne - The Hollies

Mmmm... This reminds me of a certain barbecue in France. There was a pool, gluten free food, two gorgeous ginger kittens and strawberry sorbet. Very happy thought indeed.

16. Everybody - Sister Hazel

'Like a junkie to a rush / I'd trade my mama for your touch / oh wait, that might just be too much / well, I'd do anything but that' - a lovely, honest song ;)

15. This Kiss - Faith Hill

Because fairytale references in pop songs are the future.

14. What I Go To School For - Busted

Oh, Busted... why did you have to break up? I sobbed, eyes streaming with tears. Sideburns-Earrings disagrees strongly, but, come on, their videos were a laugh and the lyrics were clever. Not even Shakespeare could pen a couplet like 'she drops a pencil on the floor / she bends down and shows me more'.

13. Heaven Is A Halfpipe - OPM

This is the song that made Sideburns-Earrings forgive me for playing Enrique Iglesias. Also, I remember a boy in my form coming into a French lesson singing this in year seven, and all the boys in the class joined in. 

12. Follow Me - Uncle Kracker

GOD knows how Uncle Kracker managed to come up with this song, but, well, there it is. Simple, bouncy and lovely, and something that we've all sung on the way to seminars in the rain. 

11. I Believe In A Thing Called Love - The Darkness

This song was amazing because everyone at school was united about it when it came out. I remember walking down a corridor at school and hearing one of my mates singing it behind me; then I turned the corner and one of the peroxide girls was singing it. I went into my English classroom and my teacher was humming it. 

10. Sherry Darling - Bruce Springsteen

Because Springsteen is God, and this song is fantastic. I haven't been able to stop singing it all morning. Phwoar.

9. Save Tonight - Eagle Eye Cherry

Okay, so technically it's probably a sad song... but it works :)

8. I'll Be There For You - The Rembrants

I'm not sure if it's because it's the Friends theme or if it's just pure class by itself... but you play this song and everyone does the handclaps and then joins in on the chorus. You can't not.

7. The Remedy (I Won't Worry) - Jason Mraz

Jason Mraz is a) a lyric genius, b) gorgeous and c) a brilliant singer. Totally worth going from Swansea to Edinburgh to see him live ;)

6. Semi-Charmed Life - Third Eye Blind

Yes, well... it is a song about doing drugs... but it's so happy! 

5. You're Gorgeous - Babybird

Obscene lyrics and a truly bizarre video, but what sentiment ;)

4. Grace Kelly - Mika

Last year I was at home ill and listening to the radio. This and Ruby were the only things I heard all day. This is amazing; Ruby is rubbish.

3. Breakfast At Tiffany's - Deep Blue Something

The video doesn't make much sense, admittedly, but the guitars are genuinely a cure for depression. Genuinely.

2. I Wanna Be With You - Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen is the only person in the world who can pull off a lyric like 'I just don't understand it / you're not pretty at all', and this song is such a mood-enhancer. Mmmmmboy.

1. I'm Yours - Jason Mraz

This only beats Bruce by a tiny, tiny amount... I don't even know why it wins. But this song = happiest thought ever.

the land of my fathers... except, not, really... technically...

I'm Welsh.

I'd just like to get that out into the open.

Admittedly I was born in England in Robbie Williams/Denry Machin territory, but I've lived in Wales since I was about six months old and my grandparents had a Welsh collie called Glyn Bach, my GCSE certificates say WJEC on them, I swim in the Wales National Pool and I support Wales in the rugby. I've been specially commended in the Welsh Poetry Competition, and once last year I wrote several poems about dead sheep. As far as I'm concerned, that's Welsh.

Which is why when Wales SLAUGHTERED England at the rugby on Saturday, I had to spend £5 credit texting every English rugby fan I knew to basically say 'haha, gutted, England lost, you suck, we rock nyanyanya naaaaaaaaa'.

Replies were mixed. The Northerner, for example, replied in agreement, that England made some stupid, schoolboy errors. Sideburns-Earrings replied with a confusing:

'Hate 2 break it 2 u, but rugby doesn't matter...



howeva, u do. So how r u? x x x'

They both hid their heartbreak well.

I then went to tri training on Sunday night. When I ran into some of the club outside the sports centre, they were distinctly unimpressed by my red attire. We then discussed the rugby in detail at the poolside. The basic conversation went:

THEM: We were doing so well!

ME: Yeah, but you messed up in the second half...

THEM: No!

ME: Yeah!

THEM: NO!

Etc.

What with it being the time of the Six Nations and all that, I've sort of been pondering nationalities and this thing of whether or not you can really take pride in where you come from anymore, or even if you're allowed to. I mean, waving an English flag in our present social climate is pretty much the same as waving an advert for the BNP or UKIP.

In England, if you walk down the street in a Welsh rugby shirt, you get a bottle of water thrown at you from the window of a white van. Yep, that happened to me today. We never talk about the White Van Incident.

My friend Charly doesn't really approve of national pride, on account of the fact that you can't really choose where your born or what nation you belong to. Or what nation belongs to you. Either way, I have to disagree...

I really love loving where I come from, and, moreover, I really love other people who love where they come from. I don't mean that you necessarily have to love your leaders and your government or any of that stuff, but I mean that it ought to make us feel good seeing our nation thrash another nation at the rugby and it should make us feel good when Nicole Cooke wins the Tour or Joe Calzaghe wins a match.

Last year on St David's Day, I saw The Storys play at the Swansea Grand - genuinely, the Welshest spectacle of my entire life. There were daffodils and cuddly dragons on stage, the first support act, This River, played Calon Lan, The Storys themselves played Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau as their encore... it was brilliant. I mean, as a gig it went on a bit, but it was a brilliant atmosphere, to have this big band from the area come back and play with littler (but FANTASTIC) bands from around the place... it was the perfect way to spend St David's Day. Fact.

Also, at college a couple of years ago we got filed into the hall the week before the Six Nations started to sing the national anthem. We were given a little book of 'Traditional Welsh Songs' which included Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau, Calon Lan, Sospan Fach and, most peculiarly, Delilah.

But, anyway, what I mean is that it's great to embrace the weird little oddities of your home. I'm terribly homesick at the moment and it's making me more Welsh than ever before. It's only miles away in England, staring at pages and pages of English books about English that I'm realising how much I regret not actually being able to speak Welsh. Or at least, not properly. I'm now determined that after I finish uni, I'm going straight back home to the Graveyard of Ambition, where I intend to go back to college and learn Welsh, properly. I then never intend to leave Swansea again.

The thing about Swansea... it's only in that daft little town that a dual carriageway could ever be given the name of 'Sketty Lane'. Only there that a school could be called 'Olchfa' which, as we all know, translates to 'washing place'. Only Swansea serves Joe's Ice Cream. Swansea may be an ugly, lovely town and/or a pretty shitty city (depending on whether you listen to Dylan Thomas or the 'bent coppers' of Twin Town), but it has a personality.

Add to that a Wales rugby win, AT TWICKENHAM... Well. Move over, England.

(Photo: BBC News)