So last week I wrote about pigeons, my fear of them, and the worst pigeon experience of my life. It was like therapy for me as I was able to relive the tale and get it out of my system. It allowed me to move on with my life.

This week I thought I’d do something similar and share something that I have issues with in the hope that I can overcome it and live a happier life. So here goes…

I can’t turn around in public and walk a different route if I realise I’ve walked the wrong direction. This is something I confided in Ethan a couple of months ago and is a genuine issue I face on a regular basis.

I have often walked an extremely long route just so that I can keep walking forwards and appear to be totally confident and in control of my chosen path to anyone who happens to be looking at me. I use Google Maps on my iPhone to help me get around London quite often, and whilst it is usually the cause of my route going wrong, it is also useful to plan an escape route from my disastrous direction.

I remember a couple of months ago I walked from Ethan’s flat and headed to central London. There is a large roundabout near his place, and I needed to take a certain road that was very long and headed straight towards central, whilst the road next to it was equally long, but ended up about two miles further east of my destination as it went off at a different angle. You can probably guess I took the second road, and I realised my mistake literally within ten metres – but there was no way I was going to turn around to rectify this. I was in this for the long haul and I was already on Google Maps to help me out. There was a connecting side road about 400m up the road, which then diagonally travelled to the correct road. Total addition to my journey was about a mile. It was definitely worth it though as I didn’t look like an idiot to those around me.

Another example is when I was on the tube (Jubilee Line headed East) I wanted to get off at London Bridge, but my mind decided to tell me to get off at Waterloo. I realised I was wrong before I even left the carriage, but as I’d already stood up and walked towards the door, I had to go through with my movement and exit the carriage. But it doesn’t end there. If I just stood on the platform and waited for the next train I would look silly, so I had to head for the exit. Luckily the Jubilee Line at Waterloo has two escalators at either end of the platform that both meet in the middle up the top, so I walked to the end, went up the escalator, then acted casual and just walked straight ahead and went down the opposite escalator to join the same platform at the other end to where I exited. The only thing playing on my mind was that a security guard may have witnessed this manoeuvre on the cameras and suspected something more sinister than my inability to publicly admit my mistake. But nobody came running at me with a taser so I boarded the next tube and was on my way after my 4 minute delay at Waterloo.

Does anyone else share this problem? And how do I sort it out? Someone must know psychology and be able to explain why I’m like this?

Tweet me @PobBoyBanned to reassure/diagnose/mock me please.

Love from Pob x

I have something to admit. I’m scared of pigeons.

There we go. I’ve admitted it now, and I’m sure I’m not the only one out there who is terrified of them. Send me a tweet (@PobBoyBanned) if you’re one of them and together we can form a support group.

Over the past few years I’ve managed to control my fear as it’s just not practical to live in London and run screaming from every pigeon that crosses your path. I’d never get anywhere. These days what happens is I will clock a pigeon out the corner of my eye, stop talking so I can concentrate, hold my breath to stop me visibly panicking, and then power walk my way out of the situation.

But why? Well pigeons are very unpredictable. They will be flying along in a nice straight line, then must hiccup or something and dive towards you, before rescuing their flight path and avoiding collision by just a few inches. Or if they are on the ground, they bob around eating grit thinking it’s bread, apparently unfazed by the hundreds of other people walking right past them, but as soon as they encounter your foot within a metre of them they decide to literally poo themselves as they accelerate towards your face in a flapping feather fury. And sometimes they are perched on something above you, cocking their head with curiosity as they watch you walk along, but as you pass below them they do a quick 180 spin and pop out a dollop of pigeon poo, timed to perfection to land on you.

My worst encounter with a pigeon was when I was driving through Cheltenham town centre on my own during the summer a few years ago. It was very warm so I had both front windows down all the way and I was enjoying having my music nice and loud. I stopped at a pedestrian crossing when the lights went red, and then the next thing I knew a pigeon had swooped down from up high and flew straight through the open window of my car. The main issue being that it failed to make it out the window on the other side. There were a lot of pedestrians using the crossing that I had stopped at, and it must have been fairly obvious to them that something was going drastically wrong inside my car as feathers were flying out the windows, the car was rocking from side to side as I battled with trying to evict the creature whilst protecting myself from tasting it in the process, and I’m fairly sure my screams were clearly audible over the sound of my car stereo. It became apparent to me that the only way out of this situation was to exit the car myself. To those watching the spectacle, they would have seen the driver door fly open, and then an exhausted body just fall to the ground as I jumped out. Luckily the now larger hole in the side of the car (my open door) was enough for the pigeon to use to depart seconds later, allowing me to stand up gracefully, dust myself off, climb inside the now filthy interior, put my seatbelt on and get ready to go. But by this time the lights had turned green, and were now turning back to red, so I had an agonisingly long wait sat in front of the spectators before I could drive away from the scene.

THAT is why I am scared of pigeons.

Love from Pob x

So yesterday I tweeted about a little accident I had that resulted in me going to hospital late last night, and I wasn’t going to elaborate much more on it – until the hospital trip overloaded me with blog material, so here we go!

For those of you who didn’t see the initial tweet, let me set the scene. I look out the window to see a group of 4 kids stamping on another kid on the floor (not a regular occurrence where I live…honest!) I live on the 1st floor in the middle of a very long building, so to run outside via the stairs would take a few minutes, but the window is open and ready for me. My hungover flatmate walks in to see what is happening, only to see me disappear out of the window seconds later! Anyway, our living room window is a lot higher than it seems, and I realise this as I fall to the ground…needless to say, it hurt. The kids run off (one of them shouts “Oh sh** that guy is jumping out the window”) and the ‘victim’ refuses to be helped, insisting he was ‘just playing’ before running off to join his ‘friends’ around the corner.

6 hours later and a considerably larger right foot than normal, it is time to head to hospital. And this is where the fun begins.

I arrive at a fairly full A&E department and am told to expect a long wait. No problem, I’m not dying so I’m fine to wait my turn. A few more people looking more painful than myself walk in and go straight into triage for initial assessment, but they must be more ‘urgent’ than me, so I’m happy to wait.

There are a lot of people here, and I’m thinking how nice it is that all different sorts of society are mixing, chatting politely, all bonding over the fact they are in pain and seeking help. That is until a large young lady wearing a tracksuit (I’m not stereotyping!) decides to shout at the guy next to her that she will “knock his face off” if he doesn’t shut up. An intervention from security and the arrival of the resident police officer soon sorts that out.

I keep my attention on the door the doctors come out of shouting patients names. No joy for my name yet, but not to worry. The doctors voices range from a timid whisper of the patients name causing them to have to repeat several times until the correct person hears them, all the way up to one doctor who full on screams the name every single time so that patients in neighbouring boroughs hospitals can hear him. My favourite is when a doctor shouts out the name ‘Vanessa’ and then a huge, massive, skinhead, beast of a man wearing a rugby shirt stands up and walks towards him. The doctor doesn’t have the guts to tell him he’s responded to Vanessa so takes him through anyway.

The three girls on reception are classic receptionists. Constantly gossiping loudly, and whenever someone comes in bleeding, screaming, whatever is wrong with them, the receptionists will continue to sit chatting with each other, and then look up at the patient as if they’d interrupted something really important and reluctantly book them in. Every now and then the triage nurse will come for a gossip before getting the next patient. This nurse is possibly the most unenthusiastic nurse I’ve ever seen. Kissing her teeth at patients who take her away from gossip sessions and shuffling along with no sense of urgency. One time she walks past me whilst I have my leg extended to ease the pain, and I have to move my foot to avoid her walking into it despite there being 5 metres of space in front of me.

Then there is a doctor who keeps coming in, but not announcing anyone’s name. Just wandering around looking like he is hiding from his work. He looks a bit like Postman Pat. Every now and then he’ll pop his head through the door looking at nothing, then head back to the main hospital. Maybe he’s lost his black and white cat.

By this time over an hour has passed and I’ve still not had my initial assessment from the lethargic triage nurse. There are still a few people arriving and going through before me, but I assume they are still more urgent so I sit still. When more than two hours has passed and A&E is nearly empty, another guy with a bad foot limps in and is seen straight away, so I hop over to reception to discover I’ve been listed as ‘discharged’ and am no longer on the waiting list. The reluctant receptionist apologises and says I will be seen soon, so back to my seat I hop to play the waiting game all over again.

Out comes the unenthusiastic triage nurse. Have I finally managed to be seen? No. She asks the receptionists if they have any food. After 2-3 minutes of deciding if she wants some Celebrations or chocolate digestives, she turns around and sighs my name at me, before disappearing into the assessment room for me to hop after her. “What did you do?” she asks. “Jumped out of a window” I reply, to which she says “Who were you running from?” whilst raising a disapproving eyebrow at me. So now I’m the suspect of a crime. Great. I try to explain the story but she clearly doesn’t believe a word I’m saying. She points out the door and says “Sit down out there.”

So now I’m sat in a pretty empty A&E room, with the police officer staring at me from the other side of the room, and I’m wondering if I give off the look of a criminal, and if so, does the police officer think I’m on the run. Another thought going through my head is how do I walk now that there is a hot girl in the room. Do I act hard and pretend there is no pain, but then risk not getting the right medical attention, or do I walk as I should and scream like a girl with every step? Dilemma.

20 minutes has passed when I feel lethargic triage nurse grab my shoulder and say “Come with me” before power walking off down a corridor. I’ve never seen her move so fast! But then I have to hop double fast to keep up. She then stops and decides she’s walked far enough and gives me directions to the X Ray department, leaving me on my own. I make it to X Ray and a very helpful doctor sits me on the bench, sets up the machine and places my foot carefully on the board, and then out of nowhere decides my foot should be a different angle and pushes it. OUCH! Several more angle changes and x rays later, he sends me back to A&E to await my fate.

People in wheelchairs in hospital appear to get dragged backwards everywhere. Whilst making awkward amounts of eye contact with a girl being dragged in front of me whilst I hop back to A&E, I wonder why I’ve not got a wheelchair. When I sit down, I notice a large flatscreen TV mounted on the wall, complete with a red sticker that says ‘This Is Not A TV.’ Lovely.

It’s just me and one other foot person in A&E now. She tells me she fell off a see-saw. She’s the same age as me. A doctor comes out the door. He’s one of those name whisperers, but see-saw girl is the one he’s after and he just tells her that she’s bruised and should go home. It’s just me left now. And the police man of course. Still giving me evils. The doctor door opens, and out steps Dr Shouty. I’m sat about 4 foot from him so get a false sense of security for his volume levels before he screams my name out for those neighbouring hospitals to hear. I don’t get sent home like see-saw girl, so I know it’s going to be worse than bruising. Luckily this Dr believes my window jump story and sees the funny side before telling me it’s not broken, but I need to stay in bed and not move for the next 2-4 days. AMAZING! The doctor goes to get painkillers leaving me sat in a cubicle. Then disaster strikes. I’m sat on a chair which has been placed on top of another chair. But not very securely. My weight shifts and the top chair decides it doesn’t want to be on top any more and I slide off. Loud bangs and swear words follow as I grab the bed next to me to avoid a catastrophic fall, and I look up to see Dr Shouty at the entrance to the cubicle looking at me. Hello! In my haste to leave, I stupidly decline a set of crutches (which I’ve been regretting ever since) and get a taxi home to be in bed before 2am.

So now I’m bored in bed for a few days, hence the length of the blog. If you read this far you deserve a medal. Please tweet me to say you survived the blog so I know how many of you need to get out more.

Love. POB xx

..here goes!

We revealed ‘Summer Rain’ on Friday at the end of a very wet and rainy week here in London. And ever since, it’s been lovely and sunny! Typical!

But with regards to the music, it’s definitely my favourite track we’ve ever worked on, and a sign of things to come! When we put Lovesick out on SoundCloud before releasing it on iTunes we were really happy that it received 300 listens over its first weekend. But Summer Rain had about 600-700 listens by Monday morning so hopefully that means you guys are liking it (and hopefully not linking it around saying ‘listen to this pile of ****’)

In other areas with the band, we are preparing for a few weeks of gigs which we can’t wait for. Starting off this coming Saturday with a trip to Torbay to perform at Pride in the Park, where I’m very excited to see Chelcee perform as she looks rather nice :] Also on the lineup is Joe McElderry who has recently signed to Universal and has been recording an album following his success on Popstar to Operastar, so it will be great to meet him and watch him perform.

I think we are staying in Torbay for the weekend, so I imagine that means a party on Saturday night! Apologies to those of you in the area in advance for anything that might happen…

Hello, it’s a blog from David. It’s about time I did another! So last weekend was our AMAZING whirlwind trip to Paris where we tore up the Moulin Rouge with our gig, shot a beautiful new video and still found time to party rather hard!! However, Paris, Moulin Rouge, free champagne aside, one thing was the highlight for me. My AWESOME onesie that Damian Marquez provided for me!! It looked great and was super comfortable as well! Apart from when I got it caught in my microphone wire! Haha! I spent the rest of the night telling anyone who would listen that ‘I LOVE THIS ONESIE!’ Look out for it in the gig footage in this weeks mailer! BON SOIR!!!!  David x

To see Damian’s collections, including the onesie, click here.

My time at home in Cape Town was an amazing experience and I feel like I have rediscovered what it feels like to be a South African.

In the last week I visited an area in South Africa called Langa. I spent sometime chatting with some of the locals. I’m a massive fan of a singer called Brenda Fassie – she was very famous in South Africa but passed away a few years ago. She was born in Langa and some of her family still live there. It was amazing to look around the area but also very sad as the level of poverty is very high. I also visited a local day care centre which runs on public donations and the children there performed the national anthem and even did some dancing!!

I went to watch a football match at Cape Town stadium. It was the South African national team Bafana Bafana vs USA. The atmosphere was electric and I even got hold of my own Vuvuzela!!

I also went Great White Shark diving which was a very strange experience for me. I was quite calm throughout the whole thing, even while I was underwater with the sharks. There is something very magnificent about them – like they are the Kings of the Ocean, they are absolutely humongous! We saw three different sharks and the largest was 4 feet long. I have a video to put up which I am still working on so look out for that soon. The best part for me was spending time with family as I hadn’t seen them in almost 6 years! It was so nice to spend time there and I’ve realised now that Cape Town will always be my home and that I am very proud to come from there. It was very difficult to come back from the warm sunshine to the freezing cold but with all the excitement coming up in January I was very pleased to come back straight into rehearsals and other Boy Banned madness.

Freezing cold temperatures, one extremely slippery ice rink and some very excited Boy Banned members can only mean one thing – Ethan, David and Pob are going ice skating! After putting on hundreds of layers of clothing, we took to the ice rink, with the Natural History Museum providing a spectacular backdrop, and only one concern, who was going to be the one to fall over first. The first five minutes went rather well, with us carefully sliding across the ice, with the exception of me, of course, whose graceful movement resembled something out of a Torvill and Dean routine. Pob seemed to be a natural at this, David and I think he’s been having lessons all week just for this moment, whereas David was a little less capable. Every time we went round, he seemed to be holding on to the side, or other people, in a desperate attempt not to be the first one to fall over. We went on for at least half an hour, the only casualties being the families I accidentally ran into, but don’t worry, no one was hurt in the making of this blog.

It was getting late in the afternoon when it happened. The disastrous fall of David was only worsened by the poor, innocent lady he took with him. Whilst Pob and the Boy Banned photographer rolled around in stitches, I valiantly went to his rescue, but the damage was done, the mighty David had fallen – Ice Rink 1-0 David. Despite David’s fall from grace, we had a brilliant day and we’re hoping to have many more fun filled days out with Boy Banned!

Love Ethan x

Howzzzit London, UK…world!!?? I’ve been in my home town for 5 days or so now and it has been incredible. The first day I walked up Table Mountain and Lions Head in one day – I was just so keen to see it all! Today I literally jumped off Lions Head with a parachute and went paragliding around Cape Town. It was so chilled out and it was almost like I was flying with the birds as they sort of follow the glider as we fly along. For about 10 minutes we gently soared through the mountains and then went over the sea for a bit. Then the thermal winds which crash into the mountains took us higher and higher. I waved back at people as they waved from the top of Lions Head. The instructor then warned me of an upcoming G Force experience as we quickly desended to the landing point at Clifton Beach in Cape Town. Wow!! It was incredible!

So far my trip to Cape Town has been amazing, it has been truly inspirational and has really reminded me of who I am. Seeing my family after so long as been lovely and I’m really looking forward to the next couple of weeks. I am missing everyone in the UK and can’t wait to get back to start promoting with the band for when it all kicks off January.

I will do another update very soon! Hope you are all enjoying the freezing cold – it’s baking hot here!

Love Darrin x

Last night, myself and Ethan were lucky enough to attend the World Premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Unfortunately Darrin is away in South Africa visiting relatives before our workload increases dramatically for our promotion, and David couldn’t make it in time. But the two of us took one for the team and went along without them!

We walked down the red carpet side by side with One Direction, Katie Waissel, J.K. Rowling and many more famous faces before taking our seats near Helena Bonham Carter and the hilarious Boris Johnson – whom Ethan is very grateful for providing him with a healthy method of transport around London!

The film itself is AMAZING and it made me jump a fair few times, and Ethan only got upset when his popcorn ran out.

Judging by a lot of your comments last night when you heard we were going, not many of you need convincing to go and see this over the next few weeks, but just in case you aren’t too sure…GO SEE IT!

See you soon!

Love Pob xx