The Breezeblock

From TermiSoc: A WikiHistory

What is The Breezeblock?

A breeze block from Plymouth that was lost in the Great London Trip in January 2005. It was destined to have a promotional NanoHead EP attached to it, along with biog, covered in stamps and shipped to The BreezeBlock, a radio show on BBC Radio 1.

What is the tale of The Breezeblock?

Well, a long time ago, me and Chris Morris, who calls himself NanoHead for musical reasons, decided to send a copy of his new EP 'Imperfect' to The Breezeblock attached to just that, a breezeblock. The idea was initially scrapped due to overall weight and handling costs.

However, a few weeks ago, I found I had to travel to London to see some exhibit for an art project, and invited him along. He, just finishing his EP in time for this, thought it would be oppertune to try and get a breezeblock to Radio 1. However, one problem emerged. *Nobody will sell you a single breezeblock*. Oh no, your local Travis Perkins will happily sell you a hundred of the giant blighters, but a single breezeblock? Can't be done apparently. Many thoughts were had about how to solve the issue. Ordering 100 and doing 100 CDS and 100 biogs to go with them... sending back 99 of them due to being 'defective'... all perfectly bad ideas.

Eventually, it got to the night before, and we still hadn't got one. Time was running out. We thought of buying one when we got to London, but concerns grew about *actually* finding a builder's merchants in the centre of London. We were on the brink of giving up. We even tried scavaging on building sites for a small one that could be nabbed, but to no avail.

As we were heading back home, not long after a sudden decision to go to London on a 00:20 train fell flat on it's face due to cost, we had given up all hope.

"We'll never find one." I said. "Yeah, agreed." said Chris, wandering up the steps outside our house. Spotting a couple of grey square rocks on the steps, I said "What are those?" We stared for about 15 seconds before Chris replied "That's a breeze block."

Yes, my friends, we did indeed scour the whole of Plymouth only to find one on our front step. Oh how we laughed.

But, bizarrely enough, the story does not end there.

We decided to catch as early a train as possible, so off to the train station we go at 4am, very tired due to not having any sleep since 9am the previous morning. But wait, we find that only Rich has a railcard, and the ticket office don't open until 5:20, 20 minutes before our train. After much to-ing and fro-ing to home and back because people not having the right papers to get a railcard, we buy some tickets. Oddly, 2 of the tickets are 20 quid cheaper than the other 2. We blame it on the passing time, and get on a 6:50 train.

Whilst sitting on this train, Breezeblock about to be coloured with permanent markers, a ticket inspector comes round.

"Oh no, these tickets are not valid on this train, you'll have to get off at the next stop and buy some new ones, or pay another £130 to stay on here", says the Ticket Inspector.

"Bugger" we all think, but dilligently jump off the train.

Now, about 10 minutes later, I feel something is wrong. I turn to Chris, and say "Chris, where's the breeze block?" We'd left it on the train.

We realised that this was all too much for our sleep-deprived minds to cope with, ended up on a train to Glasgow instead of London, and it all went downhill from there.

In the end, we acquired a Jiffy bag, claiming a complete loss of will to find another breeze block, and handing it in as purely a CD.

Curiously though, at 7pm when we returned to London Paddington, we actually bothered to ask in Lost Property. They hadn't seen it, and we even bothered to fill in a lost property form!

The epilogue

The question on everyone's lips is, so where is it?

There are two theories as to the current whereabouts of The Breezeblock:

1. It was pilfered by a breezeblock-loving townie,

2. It is sitting in a lost property office somewhere, purely because no-one in Lost Property expected it to exist, and so threw away our claim form, or:

3. It was blown to smithereens by the bomb squad thinking it was some sort of terrorist device.

As of March 2005, it has not yet been found.

Trouble is, we probably will never know. If you do have any information about it, please e-mail us at termisoc@termisoc.org and let us know.