To Man and Beast All Akin

Premier Unravel-Inn

2010-04-06T23:02:00.004+01:00

Forgive me, it's late.

Anyway - despite much happy diversion at Burton with Shane (plus unexpected others) and plenty of attractive TV - it's time to actively disbelieve the hype and gaze covetously over to where the action is:

Leek, Leek, Leek attack! Amen, brothers.

Workwise, meanwhile, if current trends continue, I'm set for accredited take-no-shit status in early to mid to 2036. Grr!

The downhill shalom

2010-02-13T20:24:00.008Z

So dear reader,

What of these times we live in? Firstly, I hope this missive finds you well.

And me? All in all, not bad... y'know, industrious enough [I'm feeling like what in football jargon is referred to as a 'good pro,' ideally without the imminent free transfer] though lacking a smidge in the momentum and inspiration departments, hence the intermittent service.

We have, and will have traveled both near and far, but mostly near: from beautiful telly (no, really: a rare, rare thing - TV that's a bit special) to The / A Beautiful Game in the space of a week, via a steaming heap of fresh horse manure for the allotment. And work, and Life, and normality, and b-o-o-k-s and the Sunshine Cafe - yes, those too, mm.

Good times are these - at least, quite good. I may even push the boat out this week for Everton vs Sporting Lisbon or (if I'm feeling logistically awkward) Loughborough Dynamo vs Leek. And I am childless on Wednesday, which leaves me free to visit the new People's History Museum. Happy days.

Furthermore, Sam received [gratefully] a new t-shirt from M and Q in Canada a couple of weeks back. The box-heckling result here in ST6 being: "sod the downhill slalom (initially - auspiciously? - mistyped): what we really want to know is what the cuddly mascot's up to!"

So thanks are due to them too. See? Times're not bad at all. They're quite good, in fact. The itchy question is: where do we go from here, or will we be swept away on the crest of some unforeseen (or all too predictable) wave?

One contemplates the next six weeks with interest, foreboding, and - most of all - mixed feelings.

Yours in hopeful anticlimax,

M.

Pixels

2010-02-03T11:03:00.005Z










(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

- e.e. cummings

Monarchists

2010-02-03T09:40:00.005Z

With Groundhog and I thwarted in our efforts to watch Leek play Kidsgrove, what better way to occupy ourselves than to case out one of the few pubs in the Potteries (maybe the only one) to appear in CAMRA's National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors?

"Hmm, I'm a bit scared," confided one of us - I'll not say who - as we chiselled our way around the knot of terraces and unannounced dead ends that lies just outside Tunstall.

The Vine - "offering an unspoilt atmosphere," claims the signage - is curiously uncelebrated by Stoke-on-Trent's thousands of hostelry historians. Effectively the three-room bit of an end terrace, it is rather out of the way.

Gently drifting dialect filled the building, and we ventured into the lounge bar area, where a regular was propping up the bar. Eventually the friendly veteran publican appeared, wiping his hands, from somewhere out back, looking - I like to think - as if he'd been busy with his Airfix.

Pints of Walker's Smooth - respectfully topped up - in hands (and New Year's resolution amended...) we perched behind a laminate-top to gauge our surroundings. A conversation bounced around the pub's three rooms, mostly concerning the pressing issues of the day*, i.e. whether the dominoes and darts teams would be playing at home or away this week.

A perfect opportunity to make a mental note of the reasons why The Vine is ace:

It is tiny and extremely local, yet survives.
It has an ancient embroidered sampler on the wall proclaiming it to be 'the best little pub in Stoke-on-Trent,' where such an object would normally read 'suffer little children...' etc. Indeed.
It has what appears to be the publican's back room at the rear of the building, and the pub is small enough for 'the wife' to be involved in all of the conversations while she knocks back a cuppa out back before taking over at the bar
Though there are no cask ales, the fizzy keg has proper old-school crappy beer in Ansells Mild.
It won an award for best external hanging baskets in the 1986 Garden Festival competition. How do I know this? Because the yellowing certificate is still displayed, proudly, 'pon the wall.
The memo board is covered in all the exciting news and results from the Potteries' dominoes scene.
The curtains are a really good three-tone 1970s orange.
The regulars warm themselves by a gas fire like my mum and dad had in 1984.
There are loads of black and white photos of regulars gone by, all old-school Potteries looking, hair swept up and brylcreemed into the perfect square (symmetry with the jaw), c. 1957 and beyond.
Loads of 1982 royal wedding china and framed photos of the queen in her coronation year. I must admit, Monarchists make good pubs.

Go there. But don't go alone if you can't hold your own at cribbage.

(* and earlier, in May St Chippy, the gathered customers were reassuringly, vehemently angry about the way in which their workplaces' shop-fronts had been put through and their Muslim colleagues abused during the EDL affair last weekend.)

Busy doing nothing...

2010-02-01T10:21:00.005Z

Bugger. The allotment's frozen and I have all but decided to take the risk of not applying for jobs despite various looming spectres. Well, then, what could be more productive than this?

Despite the prominence of some truly awful stock music, I particularly like the Hijo de Puta track that kicks in with beautiful timing around 19 minutes, the Carlos Valderrama stuff (the briefest CV cameo can polish any turd - any turd), the gentle ridicule of that certain-kind-of-masculinity, and the general lack of Premiership hubris throughout.

No more than a montage really, this, but a nonetheless superior one without the laboured Anglo-Saxon bias. Probably deserves a more inspiring title than it got.

Cross my palm with pixels

2010-01-03T21:41:00.010Z

In a rather whimsical moment, I'm loving* the way that Wordle is apt to cradle and arouse the spurious crystal-ball quality in any old one-horse weblog (mine).

And so, let is be said. 2010 will be: Tracksuited. Tea-puddled. [And] Less than international.

Ta-da! Happy New Year, readers.

*Parlance of the postmodern thirty-something, I'm told.

The REAL Football Factory

2009-12-01T23:03:00.003Z

Oi! Time for the off!

After I had infiltrated Belper's top boys (average age 73) with a plastic spoon (milky) I lifted from the condiments table, I spent the remaining 86 minutes behind the goal that Leek were attacking. In the lashing wind and driving rain, Groundhog and I were among the *six.*

Hardcore.

1-1, ill-deserved equaliser in the dying minutes. Squalid as sport goes. Posh clubhouse though. "We only do Guinness Extra Cold." Ha facking ha.

Photo is licensed under Creative Commons by Jonathan Gill.

Carsten Ist kunst?

2009-11-30T20:29:00.010Z

Crowded Penalty Area. Pork and Unripe Tomato, 2009.

And so it was, my three brawny bratwursts bore uncanny resemblances to Carstens Jancker and Ramelow (not the most demonstrative link in the latter case, but too good to miss). Shamefully, I couldn't think of a name for number three. A little more Bohemian and it could have been Jan Koller, perhaps.

Ah... food, football and national stereotypes. The gifts that just keep on giving...

I stayed on my feet, dear reader

2009-11-27T19:30:00.005Z

Name drop:

So, like many footballers of less-than-international standing, I contrived to happen upon Rio Ferdinand's trailing leg in the Pumpkin at Stockport station today. He was arranged around a tea-puddled table with some guy I took to be his agent, waiting for a London-bound train that had been cancelled. And I must say, the guy is incredibly tall and skinny, built like a human dragonfly.

All I can say is it's a shame he can't tackle Johnny Foreigner nearly as effectively as he can polish off three packets of Starburst. Obviously, my attempts to persuade him that his future lies in Unibond One (South) will provide the latest tapping-up scandal in tomorrow's tabloids. Sadly he didn't seem tempted by the offer of a fully-chauffered 1995 Ibiza and all the cheese oatcakes he can eat.

No matter. You heard it here first. And then he was gone - through the gaggle of tracksuited PE students with camera phones - to First Class, and that London.

Coinage

2009-11-16T10:59:00.006Z

Much water has lapsed under the bridge since last I typed. Most of it rather too introspective, concentric or just plain rantrospective (boilers, plumbing, cars, careers on which one doesn't break even) to 'do' here (leave that to the poets, eh?)

Still, what can now be made official is that - all being well - we'll be doing this again next year. And yet the birthplace of #1 has been razed. Hopefully also gone are the Entinox pipes that have to be both snorted from and held into the wall at the same time. And with them, say cheerio to the gaffer-taped linoleum and floral seventies wallpaper... the list could go on.

And the parking's more chronic than ever, but I will not, shall not - I refuse to - turn this blog into a place to talk roads and parking spaces (leave that to the Sentinel, eh?)

To be honest, I nearly shed a tear as we shuffled by the taxis, ambulances and smiling families. Sam's was a difficult birth, though not life-threateningly so. None the less, it was his place of birth. And there is (was) something about the old-style maternity unit that's very democratic by 21st century standards, perhaps enforcedly so: everybody in it together, for better or worse.

In that space everybody could hear you scream.

With the private rooms, the all-day visiting, and the LCDs blinking out car-seat adverts disguised as public information films, I dare say some of that will be lost. By and large, mothers will agree, it's A Good Thing. But I bet there won't be the [compulsory] state-sponsored camaraderie that was such a striking feature of that ward.

Or maybe there will - but that's a post for another time.

I am sometimes accused of negativity

2009-10-14T09:55:00.006+01:00

but the best place in the world is anywhere on a bright autumn morning.

In this case, Stoke-on-Trent.

*whistles, hops, doffs cap*

What would Cedric do?

2009-09-20T19:35:00.017+01:00

...with Stoke?

Every now and again, with a peckish tap of the ENTER key, the Web brings you something fragrant yet tantalising from the back of the fridge.

The Potteries Thinkbelt, a kind of radical/situationist university dreamt up in the 1960s by Stone-born architect Cedric Price, seems visionary even today, and appears still to be tickling today's architects to some degree.

The idea, so it goes, was to mobilise learning by using north Staffordshire's recently-closed railway lines. Educational facilities would be shunted about, combined and recombined in Hanley, Tunstall or Pitshill like Duplo with a doctorate - a kind of anti-university.

The dream was to create something that would never date, since it would be extensible, reconfigurable and generally open to erudite tinkering.

Given the age of the proposals, it's a shame there don't appear to be more remnants out in cyberspace. A search of Stoke libraries' catalogue promises to be a foregone conclusion, but we'll see... oh - WAIT!

(EDIT: hats off to Culturing Stuff. I'd missed this.)

Chopped liver

2009-09-15T20:06:00.007+01:00

Or, the feeling that is dicing your innards as your own flesh and blood leaves the club and goes out on loan.

It'll toughen him up, say the pundits, in a hackneyed and weary attempt to kill it off. Mothers (and they are, mostly) can sound a lot like Lawro sometimes, whether feminists, post-feminists, or - usually - self appointed mouthpieces of the free world.

In the morning, there are a few dull prods of the knife-point: begging - pleading not to be left there - and a sudden wrenching, panicking conviction that none of these people will look after him.

Then Kidsgrove station, and the slow prising of sinew becomes deeper and more intense as the fast trains whisk by rather unlike magic bullets. Suppositories, sir? That's the 09.05 Northern Rail service to Manchester Piccadilly.

At lunchtime a phone call; calculated, professional reassurance is anticipated, but instead there's a pregnant pause. They were about to phone, actually. They wouldn't normally.

Word is there was spontaneous panic at school, so it might be worth picking him up earlier than planned. There's something about him, she says - he's bright - but he's up and down. He's so serious and gets so anxious about what might happen, and she's never seen that in such a young child.

The premature train home breaks down. In my lap, Iain Sinclair is wandering by the A1 in Northants. My head and stomach, meanwhile, are wondering in Macclesfield.

Later, I retrieve the lad from his in-between place. I listen hard for sounds from within, then breathe and knock. Smiles, for now. He's proud of himself having drawn a boat with wheels. And he played oustide today. What a transformation from before, they remark. Those anaesthetic analyses wear off, and there is cautious, limp relief where sharp discomfort used to be.

Still early doors, Saint. And it's still a game of two halves. Tomorrow, he and I have the morning to enjoy ourselves, and we are glad of it.

Computer:

2009-09-14T20:36:00.002+01:00

Bread. Sliced, white. Margarine.

I wonder what Captain Picard's enviable Earl Grey dispenser would make of that? I'd imagine he might well reply that such a treat is no way to explore the Delta Quadrant, or indeed The Nether Potteries.

What of recent times and climes?

There have been no colourful trips on the 21 - it's been too long old friend. No major angst (well there was, but it was just the the product of an over-anxious mind and has been noted as such), just a fair bit of work stuff (upbeat but busy), and only the odd straggle of mildly interesting annotation in my diary. And therefore, no Sketches From Boz.

The Pittshill of Despair? Far from it. Today I abandoned our only child to Serco ... sorry... Stoke-on-Trent LEA, for the first time. He didn't love it but he didn't hate it either. And for a little while at least, there's the promise of some lonesome time on two weekdays, for the first time in what seems like forever.

I spy some room for a little dérive. Maybe riding the 6A from end to end and back again (and again), or something equally daunting / thrilling. I should probably do a course, but the chances of me abandoning learning in favour of cash or much heavier learning during the next year are too high, whatever the alleged flexibility of the colleges.

I started at Longton Library, where the extremely nice librarian helped me to find a choice volume. "Thing is," she said, "these things get sent to us, and then just disappear when they haven't been borrowed in three years or more."

But there it was, virtually unthumbed: happy days in the town where nearly-new books go to die.

Noose Lane

2009-08-18T23:06:00.004+01:00

A few weeks back, Groundhog and I ventured west to Oswestry, where TNS were sadly defeated by Fram Reykjavik. It was entertaining but felt a little artificial, with its sunshine and its Europa League flags, its regulation all-seatedness, and its Hugh Dallas.

So this evening we began our season proper with a jaunt down the M6 to Willenhall, which is anything but artificial. Somehow I knew we weren't quite pioneers, but this was to be our first away game with Leek Town, this season's adopted team, who had rebounded from 3-1 down to draw with Loughborough Dynamo at the weekend.

The match was played out beneath darkening skies thick like monochrome toothpaste. Thumping studs roused swirling dust storms like stetsons in the Nevada Desert. The smell of Deep Heat emanated spontaneously from the thighs of plucky midfielders. In the bar behind the Willenhall goal a fruit machine shuffled out a stream of cash-prize consciousness to distant spectators. Every now and again, a foghorn would sound across the Black Country night: "ANOTHER DISGRACE, REF!" Plus ça change.

2-1. Glorious. Life begins at (seven) forty-five. And thanks to work stuff, I won't even be at Vale Park this Saturday.

Birthday

2009-07-10T07:22:00.003+01:00

Yesterday I went with Sam to the induction afternoon at his school nursery, about which he had been very excited for days.

He's had good experience of schools during his short life, having even been unfazed six months ago by the process of a grilling from thirty seven-year olds on the subject of how toddlers are different from babies, and at the end of which he sat down contentedly for a story with them all.

In short, I was kind of expecting it to be plain sailing, which it was, right up until we had to go into the nursery classroom. Sam had been bantering - or at least happily making daft noises - with all the reception kids who had come over to the fence to investigate the gaggle of pre-schoolers and awkward-looking grown-ups; they seemed a thoroughly genial bunch of children.

Sam was reluctant on entering the room, but began to play with a 3D magnetic jigsaw, occasionally sharing remarks with another boy and his mum. But then, there was a moment where it seemed he looked up, his surroundings closed in, and his whole self melted spontaneously. It seemed to dawn on him that the fairly small classroom was thick with people - children and adults - milling around, with most of the latter simply ignored by the former.

Springing to his feet, he clamped himself to my neck and began to cry "I want to go home now, I want to go home now, I WANT TO GO HOME NOW," with an increasing anxiety shortness of breath. I could feel his heart belting like a drum machine as the tears flooded his cheeks, leaving little wet patches on the carpet, and his whole body became a white knuckle.

Probably for the first time since I was ten - deaths, illnesses notwithstanding - I sobbed publicly, visibly and nearly (very nearly) uncontrollably. A man not given to that kind of self-expression, surrounded by level-headed young children happily patting at playdough or charging around in their own little worlds with plastic dinosaurs in hand, and by adults that didn't know where to look.

We asked to go outside for a walk, and returned to the classroom ten minutes later, where it was all I could do to sit boy on lap beneath the coat pegs in the corner, as the pleas restarted. Pressed emotionally and physically into a corner, one of the other parents kindly took some sympathy and relayed a request for some train track to coax some sense of comfort and familiarity. Despite a couple of these half-effective distractions, the indoor parts of the afternoon nonetheless continued in similar recoiling vein.

The one thing that leaves me glad we stayed is that Sam loved playing in the outdoor classroom, forgetting his anxiety instantly and role-playing delightedly in the hidey house / pretend cafe with other nursery and reception kids and charging around on the various bits and pieces.

We chatted on the way home, and he told me that he liked the teacher and the children and the playground and the sing-song but not the banging [of drums and tambourines during the sing-song] or "all the grown ups... they were scary."

Really, there was enough to suggest that he'll be fine once he finds his feet, and the reception children especially were all thrilling to play with. But, as I write this post and say to myself. "he'll be three tomorrow," it's all I can do to choke the tears once again.

Ambition

2009-07-05T10:37:00.016+01:00

After yet another Tuesday night of teenage rampage - though quite positive and enjoyable in the end - I came in late and popped upstairs to see Sam.

The boy snored quietly in his pit with hair scruffened and body slackened, right up against the wall and with one leg rooting indolently down the side of the bed.

Ample opportunity, then, for me to recline beside him and stop for a little oneversation (hmm, I'm acutely aware but ... does this sound like a sign of madness?)

Whatever:

"[...] missed you, would have really enjoyed a little play this afternoon [...] teenagers blinkin' obsessed with roflcopters [...] hope you had a nice day too, Mummy was really proud of your burnet moth drawing so we've put it on the wall [...] what do you fancy doing on Thursday, I though we could go on another little adventure up at Berryhill fields, and take some crayons and a picnic this time, eh? [...] so anyway, I'm really chuffed 'cos Ian Miller and Stephen Foster are staying - I guess Colin Todd is a safe choice in the circumstances - and did I agree to take you and Aidan to Vale Park...? Err, maybe that's not such a good idea at your young age, um...."

During this ramble, Sam would loll gently away from the wall now and again. Each time, he'd dribble a bit and then his head would incline itself back to the wall again with a gentle, repeating thud (great for fatherly self-esteem, that).

Manoeuvring him back towards his rocket pillow, this all rendered me speechlessly glad that it's not me banging my head on brick.

Get by. If you can, strive to get paid doing just enough of something you enjoy. Then; work less, play more - ideally caught up in a whirlwind of playful young child[ren] doing his [their] stuff, with crayons.

Like the man says.

Vayamos con Dios

2009-06-25T14:05:00.002+01:00

KABOOOM!

"For a herbal touch, add sweet smelling herbs, such as lavender, or
powdered frankincense. As each ant explodes, a cloud of incense-like
smoke will appear, scenting your kitchen or garden."

Ooh, this I like! Sam and I are off to try it now.

Brand values

2009-06-24T22:46:00.004+01:00

As you ascend from Lime Kiln traffic lights towards Hanley, you pass a hand car wash facility on the right, which merrily proclaims itself to be "the best hand job in town." In fact it's pretty much adjacent to the venerable horse-trough from which this blog takes its name.

Today, while queueing interminably to turn right, I noticed that Soap Suds also carries signage for a well-known local taxi firm. Also printed on the sign were the logo of Staffordshire's only Premier League football club, and the initials of the club's well-known firm, the N40.

I find this discouraging. In passing, I was mildly shocked by it. I can't think of any other business that would identify itself so obviously and officially with that sort of stuff.

Bizarre, at best, no?

If you try sometimes

2009-06-19T12:41:00.003+01:00

These past few days I've had too much time to reconsider all the ruminating and reflection I've done these past few weeks.

Needs, wants, shoulds, could haves, what ifs and other general angsts that loiter all about me much of the time, especially when thinking of The Future (his, hers, ours and mine).

Solely from a personal perspective, it turns out that my conclusion is the same as my starting point, and the journey only ever took me round the houses. I think this is good, though I don't think the loiterers will take that as their cue to leave.

Suffice to say that when you stick your neck out, it's nice if there's at least someone else that can be persuaded to agree that it's a good idea - even if it is a far-from-sage miserabilist or a guy with an unfeasibly rubberised face.

Fickle webhead ration book

2009-06-18T07:23:00.016+01:00

For thick-rimmed bespectacled hipsters everywhere, the sweetest app on the web, period.

App! Period! Check me!

And for the young pretenders, your own virtual allotment to visit. Now that's hip.

¡Maravilloso! (via Red Pelirrojo)

And in these times of B.N.P. and B.B. maybe you were thinking of moving somewhere more F.A.B.? Before you go, consider that Burslem now has fruit and veg and (most spiffingly) pies, and be sure to check Quin's cautionary pointers first, eh!

As daylight wanes

2009-06-15T20:46:00.005+01:00

My cycle route from Stoke station to home is indirect but almost entirely off-road - a pleasant diversion at this time of year, certainly. On reaching Westport Lake I bear south east along the sheltered railway cuttings, a stretch that features three short tunnels. It's been getting on for ten by the time I make the journey, just as daylight wanes in earnest.

Infrequently, an unspectacular ritual - like my laboured homeward trundle - throws up an entirely surprising and beautiful sensation. The tunnels to which I refer have been reinforced with corrugated steel in recent years, and so are much reduced versions of the prolonged brick arches that once contained and channelled the billowing steam of blackened locomotives.

By day, they're a wholly predictable tale of lightly scorched tarmac, intervals of broken glass and hastily-sprayed appendages (though the greenways are fine on the whole). But in the half-light between day and night, you can't see the tunnel walls or the black surface beneath you; there's no time for your eyes to adjust (and I have tended to forego the lights since I don't use the road and the light lingers longer on the towpaths). You just pedal towards the horseshoe of light, visually dispossessed of all but the shining front edges of handlebars and spokes, until you emerge once more into the muted light and sleepy vegetation of the greenway cutting.

What makes this really compelling is that at least one of the tunnels absolutely teems with bats. Amid the gloomy chill they're all about you, coming straight at you - dancing, so it seems - but of course they'll never collide. And as you approach the shining tunnel-end, their intense flickering and dotting lends a vivid filmic quality to your own feeling of movement, especially when allied to the steady cranking of pedals.

It's a fleeting experience lasting mere seconds, defying easy description, but beautiful.

Things to do in bed when you're not really dead

2009-06-15T09:29:00.004+01:00

I write this from a horizontal position following yet another effing back spasm at the weekend, yet again suffered whilst doing nothing in particular. I've barely even touched the allotment in a week, so more likely it's a delayed consequence of hoisting Sam around on my shoulders for mile after mile.

It's easy enough to Google the causes, effects and cures. Suffice to say that anyone able to maintain an upright position through the knife-twisting agony clearly must be the proud owner of a utterly freak physique. "Lying down is a real no-no," insists the nurse practitioner, before proferring diazepam and cocodamol. I wince back at her for effect: "um, ok..."

So, after a cover-to-cover Affluenza marathon, five RSA lectures on the iPod, and some vague surfing this is getting a bit much. Personally, I think that back spasm is evolution's own special way of saying, "stop being a twat," when we get 'too puffed up' (as Pepys would have it) and convinced of our own indispensability to this, that or the other.

Moi? Guilty, probably.

It would be nice to say that I wouldn't wish this stuff on anyone, but that's not quite true. It would be nice to see it happen live and exclusive to the self-proclaimed project managers that you get on Sarah Beeny shows. Ideally just as they stride over to curtail the brickies' hard-won tea break. Happy days.

Well. If anyone has any innovative suggestions for things to do when prostrate, I'd love to hear them.

Pomp and Celerymony

2009-05-31T22:19:00.005+01:00

Well, we had a fabulous day at the races - the unexpected result is that I feel like I've discharged my best man duties amply enough.

In appropriately manly fashion, we gloried in just enough pomp to make it an occasion. Just enough pennies were won [none by me] to prompt a few short-lived chest beatings. And just enough pints [Guinness] were partaken of to make it merry, merry, merry.

None the less - grrr! Silver Adonis (13-2) and James Pine (100-1), you should be ashamed of yourselves. But at least neither of you ran the wrong way [chortle].

Now it's back to homelier pastures and earthier pleasures.

Madness to the Method

2009-05-21T21:20:00.005+01:00

(Photo - P.E.S.H.)

This weekend I make my second ever trip to the races, with access to the enclosures and all that general hanging about. It's a stag do - to boot, one of my instigation - though probably not an excessive example of that heady genre.

I hope they have real ale, while recognising that constant Creamflow would help to prolong the relative sobriety. I've also done my pissing best with half-hearted rumours of bandstands, gaffer tape and nudity - but it turns out I needn't have bothered since some low-rent local wit has already done the hard work for me...

Here are my tips - an update regarding this folly will almost certainly follow in time. I include the names of the races because they warm my cockles as do the names of GM Vauxhall Conference official matchball sponsors. Glamour ensues:

No. 8 Fairyland in the 5:40 selectracingclub.co.uk - Experience Ownership For £59 Handicap Hurdle (Clairefontaine Trophy) Cl3 2m110y
No. 11 Dynamic Rhythm in the 6:10 Happy 80th Birthday Joe Furlong Amateur Riders´ Handicap Hurdle Cl4 2m3f
No. 4 Dishdasha in the 6:40 Jon Pinfold Industrial Cleaners Handicap Chase Cl3 2m1f110y
No. 12 James Pine in the 7:15 W + S Recycling Stratford Foxhunters Champion Hunters´ Chase (51st Running) Cl2 3m4f
No. 1 Mr Boo in the 7:45 Llewellyn Humphreys Handicap Chase (In Memory of George Jones, for the Gambling Prince Trophy) Cl2 2m5f110y
No. 13 Nobody Tells Me in the 8:20 Interbrands (Europe) Ladies´ Hunters´ Chase (for the Stratford Millennium Rose Bowl) Cl5 2m7f
No. 30 Aintnonancy in the 8:50 Di Runs The Stable Lads Canteen Novices´ Handicap Hurdle Cl4 2m110y

Still, I have no idea what any of this shit means.

Night rider

2009-05-14T14:16:00.005+01:00

Last Tuesday night, I trudged through the drizzle from the station to Hanley following another giddy evening of teenage rampage.

It's a forty-five minute wait for the Glorious XXI at that time of night and it makes as much sense to walk up to the bus station via the Coachmakers: "we've got a visitor," riffed the couple at the bar as I necked a swift half.

In damply pixelated daydreams the waiting area at Hanley Bus Station is easily transformed into a 1980s platform game - one has to vault the onrushing "spare a smoke" folk and splat several randomised drunks, all whilst dodging some half-programmed fist-shakers from the Street Fighter auditions.

While I counted my golden pennies, a senior gent breezed out of nowhere, enquired keenly about which bus I was awaiting, and seemed delighted to inform me that, "you'll have no trouble with that one, duck - Pawel's on tonight." Producing a dazzling golden pocket watch from within, he was able to add that I'd only be waiting three and a half minutes (precisely).

He was absolutely correct. Acknowledgments duly exchanged, we both took separate seats on the bus, me surrendering £1.70, he twitching his cap and bus-pass.

On passing Cheque & Pawn (auspicious), an appreciative rumble broke out amongst the kindly old fella and three of his peers - a spontaneous outbreak of positivity that I guessed could add years to their lives, though I've no idea what prompted it.

I inferred that all were ex-PMT workers who had never stopped riding the buses, keeping time, or doing that thing that bus drivers do when they pass one another - even when sat in the very same saloon and deprived of their drives.

I'm not sure why, but I love those moments.

Meanwhile, the boy awakens...

Dub steps

2009-05-11T13:40:00.006+01:00

We have new neighbours, an older woman and a thirty-something man.

The latter loves to languish with his mates on the front step. Feet up, smoking, swearing and drinking, mostly. Basing my general foreboding on the family a few doors up (high incidence of Team England official sportswear) I was bracing myself for wall-to-wall Ayia Napa compilations cranked up on repeat.

And I would ask him to turn it down (especially at 3am - Victorian bricks weren't designed for bass) except that, instead, he appears to have a penchant for Johnny Osbourne and King Tubby.

We were so not going to get on - but this, this might be the saving grace...

Flanning and flailing

2009-05-11T10:49:00.004+01:00

Today is a day off, from both of my employers. For some unexplored reason, I have a head full of Morrissey. Some dizzy whore, eighteen hundred and four in particular.

I had intended to spend it flanning about productively - or at least in a meaningfully non-productive way. I guess the latter is what the twenty-first century flaneur should be all about, isn't it?

But here I am, not really having got started. And so, I'm off to buy a nematode colony. Really they're for the brassicas. But this month I could really do with some newfangled intracranial ones, ideally swimmable in something tasty like chinotto.

Never written down

2009-04-26T21:49:00.007+01:00

An oddball weekend; if not a rollercoaster, then certainly a cash railway. A weekend full of lots-of-things-long-ago-arranged-but-never-written-down. Like one of those meteorite near-misses, we got away with it without the need for excuses. Cash duly stashed by railway clerk, and never seen again. AMEX reported delighted.

And so, to recount Friday and Saturday:

The lurgy - duly despatched /a visit from a real-life blogger, pleasantly fragranced / a visit from a real-life morrisman with a chainsaw who believes blogs are for weirdos / quickfire doses of rocksteady, a washboard, and a monster set of dreads / The Coachmakers and the omnipresence of asparagus in Worcestershire discourse / a quick play, a morning flyer to London and a thwarted attempt to visit a mermaid / sister suggests Wagawotsit instead - meanwhile I, Wag-A-Finga, wouldn't be seen DEAD in there / echoes of a Pulp song *yum* but feel a bit like a dirty celeb-stalker / on the tube, I daydream of surfacing in Trafalgar Square, but can only muster air turbulence in South Kensington / attempting to experience museums the way others do is another post for another day, but enjoyable (I learned something today!) / we hang around a lake full of flapping youths named Clara and Ptolemy - it's pleasant / as are drinks with Milos and Q / then it's the last train home for me and the boys from Bury, Burnley and the Brit, plus a long sojourn in Milton Keynes awaiting the rozzers / back home, and the fans file silently past the train crew before breaking into "if you've all shagged a virgin..." - but only once safely below tracks in the subway.

Sunday, simpler. Japanese knotweed, pirate ships in Longton Park, and wondering how to get your two-year old to share the bridge of the latter. "Ask nicely when you want a go and take it in turns with the other children," we urge.

He shows faith, and asks the vacant looking kid - nicely. Oops - that'll be a big fat "NO!" right in the face, then. So Sam reflects briefly and lamps kid, a child twice his size and age. The child's vacant-looking twin dad can barely be bothered to notice as he sups from his can of Stella. Vacant twin child remains - well - vacant.

I apologise anyway and we drag our normally-shy toddler away for a time-out by the ducks. It must be hard to understand when others don't play by the same rules, or indeed any rules. I angst about this for some time, until we return. Sam promptly offers the bridge to another boy. We all feel better and take our turns on the rope slide. Then, ice cream.

And the lady working in Middleport Co-Op thinks the 1/3 off pasta offer would be really good were it not for the fact that "these new trendy foods just taste like slime to me, duck." In her honour, we conclude with the awesomeness of pasta e fagioli.

Goodbye to all that

2009-04-15T21:48:00.004+01:00

Saltergate's final Saturdays slip by, certainly my last. A place absolutely shot through - too often soaked through - with a sense of collective memory. Pissy, piecemeal, impossible to replace with shit-for-purpose uniformity.

Gratuitous plumbing shot fitted as standard.

Tuesday Night Music Club

2009-04-09T19:18:00.006+01:00

This week... *reflects*... objectively a good one. Nonetheless, I now commit its muted highlights to pixels, prematurely. Sorry, it's all dragging of boots and backward glances tonight.

And so, the cutaway shot. Tuesday evening:

A Stopfordian slosh of Extra Stout, while stalling for the 21.23 home. Your faux-humble narrator holed up in the snug, arousing the curiosity of the more philosophical regulars while poring over something wordy-looking.

It could all have gone so wrong, but - having politely declined the pick of a dozen large shoulders-of-lamb (out of a suitcase, "half price, son - Asda's best!") - I was spontaneously treated (emphasise passive form of the verb) to a one-man skiffle revival.

There then followed a procession of pasted-smile anecdotes about Lonnie Donegan's top Fleetwood nightspots. Oh, it were grand.

Places to go, suddenly so many people to see! I just had to hit the rails.

Then, the home straight, a sighting of Elvis Himself - perhaps - arranged convincingly on my rear windscreen courtesy of some deft avian artist. A genius: the indisputable craft of a sparrow, the prolific arse of a Crow.

Meanwhile never stops - we fly over Chesterfield the day after tomorrow. The Dreaming Spire, no less (singular - this noted church a childhood shorthand for We Are Really Not Nearly There Yet, and in 2009 we're still not There yet).

Nil-one certainty, and a drive home predictably laden with the usual heavy sighs.

Oddball queries

2009-03-27T12:26:00.003Z

Sheepishness, possibly rank hypocrisy follows:

Oooh, isn't it so passé to list allegedly hilarious search queries on one's blog-site?

Indulge me just this once:

have stoke city fans ever thrown their scarves in the trent?

The Horror! Well, I'd like to think that any offenders might be just a few of the many Mentadent squirms that wear their colours around Burslem. May they discover the error of their ways.

And just to clarify, I don't mind Stoke City one bit - just not if you're growing up in the north of Stoke-on-Trent.

On which note, I'm off to Cefn Druids with Groundhog this evening - wOOt, &c. I am also seriously toying with the idea of emigrating to Oz next year, Friday night footie appearing to offer more family friendliness despite the country ramble to get there.

Hmmm. And of course, no compromised loyalties.

Social Shrapnel

2009-03-23T20:27:00.004Z

And so we have our modest furrow near the bottom of the Scotia Valley, complete with soon-to-be murky pond, bodged-up greenhouse and weather-beaten shed-thing.

Currently it's throwing up rather more pottery than produce (see the makings of a fab mosaic once Sam's a little more careful with his hands) but let's give it time - every window sill in the house has been colonised determinedly by gutsy seedlings. There may even be enough celery to prompt a whimsical jaunt to Stamford Bridge later on in the year.

The best thing is the number and variety of connections that are quickly cemented via the twin media of seed and frogspawn. There's even a nice fella with a Harris Hawk and a fire engine (Sam impressed).

With its recycled aesthetic and general cobbled-togetherness, the sum of the whole doesn't seem to pair gracefully with the quasi-marketese guff du jour that is 'social capital' - rather it's earthier (clearly, inherently) and more instantly uplifting. Plus of course, no hint of a large bank loan.

And now, this looks interesting (via White Llama)

Curva Vox

2009-03-22T19:44:00.003Z

It's been a while, with much water beneath the bridge. Sadly, poohsticks remains a sore point (metaphorical poohsticks, that is, mm.).

On the morning of the Vale match - last weekend - at which I was due to host various part-time 'loids and hangers-on, I woke up unable to get out of bed thanks to a particularly agonising back spasm. My inner Danny Dire felt like the facking mankey, fer sher.

I'd been waiting five years for Darlo to visit the Potteries. Rather, I would have been had it not been for this worth-rehashing quirk of fortune.... heh - I love the way the Stoke defender just looks embarassed after Carlos Logan's goal- childish giggle, bit of wee .

Premiership, you're having a laugh dum-dee-dum, etc.

In any case, I wasn't going to be perching contentedly on any desolate yellow plastic for 90 minutes anytime soon. Therefore I had to make do with the sounds of Darlo's failings drifting in on the breeze through the open window - an experience brought to you by some left-over Cocodamol, a drug whose opiate qualities might have been handy.

Failing to attend a Darlo game taking place less than a quarter of a mile from my home was a crap experience at the time, but in hindsight I Am Not That Gutted To Have Missed This. Now we can concentrate on survival etc, with a possible trip to Rochdale into the bargain - ooh, now then.

As pain avoidance I considered the great issue of our time whilst listing to the left with the support of some pillows, a true clash of ideologies... That is:

A) Should one watch a match panopticon-fashion? i.e. in a diagnostic stylee and from a detached and elevated standpoint (such as the comparatively enormous Air Products Stand at Gresty Road), or;

B) Should one actively and deliberately seek a position close enough to lose the objectivity? i.e. placing oneself to glare straight into the whites of a centre half's eyes, attaining involuntary synching of heartbeat with the nervy symphony of studs in the 'greasy' floodlit turf.

Hmm - I should point out that most of my football is taken at a modest lower-division dose, and I would assert that there's a strong dichotomy of experience - the atmosphere of an 'end,' home or away, rarely carries to the grandstanders in the way it might do here (actually, Spangly Princess' post did a grand job as a surrogate football-going experience, though the Curva is a long way removed from the Hamil).

Actually, at the football as in any theatre in fact, I tend strongly towards the latter. Admittedly, the lack of anaytical perspective does render me as foul-mouthedly bemused as anyone when some battered old cushion (typically Julian Alsop or Leo Fortune-West, Aldo Serena if you like old-school Serie A) ghosts in at the back stick to shin a last-minute winner.

On which note I'll alt-tab to the epic 'white corridor with office plants and awkward officials' shots that are such an endearing feature of Bet365's half-time Serie A coverage - a refreshing if irrelevant counterpoise to the usual half-time hyperbole.

Without a paddle

2009-03-11T20:05:00.003Z

An excellent article by David Conn in today's Guardian.

"Reynolds refused to be sunk, bouncing back with a business selling "adult bedroom furniture" and S&M equipment, under the unbeatable slogan: "Your home may well be your castle, but where do you put the dungeon?" But in October 2005 he was back in prison himself, convicted of defrauding the Inland Revenue of more than £400,000 tax.

"Now, when the fans sit watching their team in that cantilevered bowl of grand pretension, it is as if they are paying, every week, to spend time in Reynolds' head."

I couldn't have put or pictured it better.

Oh Crap

2009-02-25T12:15:00.003Z

I'm off work with tonsillitis.

It's poo, it goes on for days, and I could have sworn only small children were supposed to get it. Anyway it's left me a little paranoid as I ended up in hospital last time I had it, on a drip that single-handedly destroyed The Illness in just a few hours.

So I mumble as I type, sounding a little like a mousier Shane McGowan would, if he were sucking on Strepsils, which isn't much good when your job entails a certain soupcon of semi-assertive can-I-have-everybody's-attention-please.

I move away from the keyboard, to spit.

Actually I sound so slurredly drunk (and clearly appear slovenly ragged) that the nice ladies at the Co-Op Pharmacy took one look and simply assumed that my mega-consignment of penicillin would be a nothing-to-pay jobby.

So, I tell myself, I'm lucky to have very supportive colleagues and yes, I'm glad this didn't happen when I was doing freelance work. And then while I was counting my blessings and thinking of something cheerful to do (see, I'm determined to find the positives), this.

At least the spittal glass is more than half full. Anyone got any old wives' remedies to share?

Perspective

2009-02-20T22:14:00.004Z

Once in a while, I venture round the corner from my home to watch the Vale.

This evening, I hadn't even realised there was a match on. But when the sky bleaches with floodlit aquamarine out the back of our house, then inner child makes for the door.

Thus I took my place beside some Norwegian groundhoppers. They were taking great pride in doing as the Romans do. Given the sedateness of the lawn bowls, this consisted mainly of lively appreciation of Boomer. Especially the bit where he rubs their various Eliteserien scarves around his family-friendly anatomy.

Ten minutes before the final whistle, the groundhoppers departed in (mock?) disgust, one of their number (dressed by Norwich City) turning briefly to scream, "SHATE, VILE!"

That rather sums it up - except that when you support a different team, as I do, it's better than counselling.

Rage Against the Mewchine

2009-02-15T10:59:00.004Z

Ventilation of spleen.

I'm generally happy to let live when it comes to cats. Sam likes to coo at them, and I have little beef with them - except when I amble out into the back yard following the wet weather and count no less than twenty-nine little heaps in a space little bigger than a small garage.

Within seconds, I've exceeded my yearly quota of expletives and I'm suddenly overcome by loathing for the little... fuckers! A couple of months ago, the council put a card through our door about 'dog fouling' - did we know whose canine was responsible etc.

I'm not sure there's much they can do about our feline friends.

When you present this image of cats to cat owners, they tend to shrug their shoulders and smile in a smug sort of fashion. "You should just get a cat," they say, in a tone of voice that would accommodate "a job," "some qualifications", or "a life" with equal condescension.

It's a curious twist on a world of haves and have-nots - like a cuter, paw-printed version backyard Thatcherism. Grrr.

Whodathunkit?

2009-02-14T19:43:00.003Z

Message received from Meanwhile's economic advisor...

Hey Meanwhile,

Did you watch Newsnight on Friday? I highly recommend Paul Mason's 'Road to Wigan Pier' piece. He spends most of it in Stoke listening to locals. The basic message seems to be:

Stoke is screwed - but actually they're used to that so relatively it's not so bad.
The rest of the country might look like Stoke soon and is in for a big shock
Stoke-on-Trent is the future. Whooda thought it?

This is a judiciously-edited and sober piece of the provinces. Mason's Road to Wigan Pier - via Hanley - begins fourteen minutes in. The taxi driver's contribution is excellent.

Highbrow

2009-02-11T00:33:00.003Z

Once in a while, I feel compelled to spend money on an item whose only recommendation is its dire packaging: Lucky Beer.

Conjunctivitis

2009-02-09T21:23:00.004Z

Monday.

I could have been gadding importantly around very inspiring youth participation projects in Manchester's most enviable museums and galleries. Sam was exceptionally chirpy too, despite the soufflé and custard around the eyes.

It's one of the those pesky ailments. Even toddlers aren't bothered - this one doesn't mind gunk, just bits and bumps - but there's still a 10-mile biohazard exclusion zone around any form of childcare.

Crap weather.

And so too much time, frankly, has been spent contriving little inukshuks from the piles of damp cotton wool that rise inexorably from the arms of the sofa. We ~~went~~ planned to see the nurse (but she despatched us, fully prescribed, with a telephonic turn-of-phrase), we popped to Morrisons, we played trains, we read, we drew, we bartered and bantered.

We wiped again and again, outwards and gently.

About halfway through the afternoon I was prodding a lapsang souchong in the kitchen, and thinking too little of it (maybe). Sam, cheek to the floor, chuffed and clattered a chain of tiny cabooses to their familiar, fluffy fates beneath the armchair.

Semi-rhythmically, I was mumbling and remumbling some of my favourite lines as I do, rarely. The gooey-eyed guv'nor leapt to his feet and proclaimed joyfully at the top of his voice:

"You were being a train or a river!"

Thus compelled, we immediately stomped about to a tinny version of The Night Mail and then progressed - with ritual success - to Where the Wild Things Are.

A marvellous afternoon. A total balalaika show, in fact!

Essentially...

2009-02-05T22:44:00.015Z

While perusing Shane's musings upon life's essentials, I recalled that I had idly snapped this bedside scene a couple of days back.

I was thinking that it represented (very allusively and essentially, probably ambiguously) most, or even all of the things that, for me, coincide with happiness.

Answers on a postcard, please - preferably one of a windswept coastal resort...

And with that I'll be off to the very scene. In the dark I'll listen to some premium World Service stuff while my toes freeze.

Meanwhile, the other half will nod off.

Go analogue

2009-02-02T20:02:00.005Z

I guess I won't be going to Valley Parade tonight, then - though I'd already returned from work early, what with those pesky Londoners and their "adverse weather conditions" screwing up the West Coast.

The journey is great - if late - in such climes. The Cloud hangs vague and distant in the snow, and ice formations cling to the morning trains like tatters. I've spent a lot of time on the permanent way in the past few days, which is agreeable; it's given me an opportunity to re-read JK Galbraith's The Great Crash, 1929, and to regret (slightly) not bothering more with economic history, now that my studious phase belongs to days gone by.

Or so it feels. Dangers of anachronism and all that, but there are some scary parallels to be had in that book. Anyway, as I was saying... oh, Milos is particularly good on that sort of stuff. Now where was I?

Ah...

This week we finally get the keys to a new allotment garden, which will no doubt feature here on occasion. If anyone has any insights, comment away - I'm especially interested in social gardening anecdotes from far-off lands like Canada and even Longton.

The great thing is that the plot has only recently been vacated, so is workable. Here is the initial to-do list:

1. Cover most of plot to make things easier and enable gradual approach with occasional, unscheduled half-heartedness, and anticipate 'losing battles' with weeds.
2. Repair greenhouse roof and paint shed.
3. Weed strawberry patch.
4. Create dedicated toddler area, easily accessible with miniature wheelbarrow.
5. Plant some potatoes when the time comes.

Then scratch head &c, &c. All of which may be handy when we have to get frugal again later this year, children being as good an incentive as any...

Are you sitting comfortably?

2009-02-02T16:54:00.008Z

At the weekend I gave a group a short chataround of the place I work. They come from all over the world, largely having been displaced from distant news-ticker territories of the world: Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Angola, Senegal, Sudan, Senegal.

Their previous experiences of 'my industry' seemed to suggest that their expectations had been shaped by one or more threads of colonial claptrap or by the witterings of sycophantic parrots back home (we have them too).

Thoughtless cliches abound about diversity and multiculturalism, and some of them ring hollower than others when you hear them every day. However, it's genuinely touching when an unlikely stateless someone grasps a point of connection in an unlikely, homely something.

Traditional building methods, pots, herbs, the hanging and drying of meat, the place of fire as a focus for the household and family, textile production techniques - one woman sat back and told me, smiling and shaking her head, "you know, I just can't believe how much is the same in my country."

Which seems like a good place to begin, if you ask me.

Desire Paths

2009-01-24T20:20:00.006Z

What was I saying about being the happiest I've ever been?

This week, I've been reading The Selfish Capitalist, a readable work of popular psychology in which ranting psychologist Oliver James has some agreeable things to say about the link between excessive materialism and mental illness.

At the moment the only paid-for product I'm coveting is an internet radio, so that I can listen to wonderful programmes like this sans laptop in the kitchen, before realising - inevitably - that good radiophonics only happen at stupid o'clock.

Still.

Today delivered the mighty Quakers to the Midlands, through the medium of Shrewsbury Town. I felt moved to go. I'd never visited Salop's new stadium, though I knew that it couldn't match the cobbled-togetherness of Gay Meadow.

So, I abandoned my car on a link road between the Park and Ride and Sainsbury's. The Meole Brace area of Shrewbury harbours an enormous retail drag-net that conceals the adjacent football ground. In these places, all roads really do lead to nowhere, unless you're looking for a parking space.

It seems that with no obvious pedestrian access to the rest of the world, the disenfranchised fan must find his own path. The New Meadow was clearly built for the car but features pre-bought permit-only parking. The developers were also keen to force pedestrians to circle the stadium at a distance before the pavement descends and sweeps towards gates at the far end.

None the less, just as at the 'pioneering' Sixfields, real people have forged 'desire paths' between foliage and on either side of crash barriers, and by eking out treachorous footholds on deadly-looking slopes.

I like this - the map would probably suggest that a giant octopus had fallen roadkill to a large alien spacecraft. The [relative] directness and occasional daring append some downtrodden humanity to an otherwise aseptic scene snapped together in fresh concrete and perspex.

Believe it or not, I do acknowledge - whilst casting around nervously - the superior and onobstructed views in these new stadia, with their echo-free PA. Guilt. Must spend evening flogging self in penance.

So what did we learn from this game? Rob Purdie, he's important. Franz Burgmeier can play. As can Pawel Abbott - so skilful, so slow, so good to see him back. And Ricky Ravenhill, there's a ball-winner who at best plays like the pimped-up progeny of a mini motorcycle and a combine harvester.

And that, moreover, I don't believe in fate - but fate trumps form, every time. The latter-named fellow was shown the red card amid a 20-man brawl, a good 77 minutes after the Shrewsbury winner that all seasoned Darlo fans know we never come back from. We're always crap at Salop - but at least we played football this time.

Later, as I stared hard and close at newly-pointed breeze blocks following the final whistle, I could only wonder why the urinals are always seeping over, even in grounds with such recent plumbing. I don't know the answer, but I'm sure as dammit that it's a significant motif.

Homeward bound. The skies darkened around Market Drayton, and a Spanish radio broadcast bled into Five Live - it was a phone-in on the subject of La Primera Liga, of which I am ignorant. There were grumbled cliches worthy of Lawro himself: witness, "futbolistas que jugan por la camiseta" (or better-rendered, better-remembered Spanish to that effect).

In Sainsbury's, I had bought hot-cross buns. In the one-basket queue I overheard a shopper confide to his companion that, "they don't know what eventually killed her." But me, I'd hazard a guess - and venture a few quid on a season ticket at Leek Town or Kidsgrove into the bargain.

Note to my autumnal self

2009-01-22T23:32:00.009Z

Enough introspection.

You have no money to throw at the problem. You still haven't a clue how you're both going to keep on top of things after September, be it this or the next.

There are simply too many ifs, ors and buts. You'd (still) rather just ignore the small-if-significant iceberg that's looming ever larger on the horizon.

But you know what? That's fine.

At home you've been the happiest you've ever been in your adult life. You should require no reminding of the reasons for this. You've never loved your work so much. Your long-term friendships remain mostly intact.

Life is very, very good. Step back and look at the big picture. You'll muddle through, and you should be thanking your winter self for this helpful missive.

The devils lurk in too much detail. So shut up, look up, and you might just perk up.

I ain't lost, just wandering...

2009-01-18T20:01:00.033Z

Winter weekending in Warwickshire

And so, another trip to the place of my birth, where the air is neither thick nor opaque. Mainly to catch up with family, friends and the like. But in between meals and ales, a chance for a moment's nosey around the neighbourhood where She and I shared our first flat together.

There's a real north-south divide here, with the south - reached by dodging the pigeon poo beneath a steel railway bridge - often regarded by 'northerners' as the wrong side of the tracks.

It's a peculiarly affluent prejudice - the south, playing the student neighbourhood to a well-heeled university, has gone upmarket in recent years as a visibly (and probably healthily) mixed-up place.

None the less it retains its posh cooker factory, the old rec, the scruffy canal, the dated flats and maisonettes, the cheap shops, and the drunks shuffling up and down to no purpose.

Since I moved away, it has also acquired bustling Portuguese and Polish grocery stores to go with the nearby Thai supermarket, and communities to frequent them.

It's much the most compelling part of town, and the only one I'd really consider moving back to.

While mooching about after popping into the shop formerly known as Kwik Save, I noticed these unregenerated bits and pieces (as here pictured) that I loved when I used to pass them every day.

In other news, this is one of my favourite forum posts of recent times. I've no idea why. Come to think of it, I've no idea generally.

We were not moved by them

2009-01-12T21:45:00.005Z

By means mysterious and enforced, I've been meditating a lot on the many station platforms and points failures of Greater Manchester in recent days.

A few years back, at Sandwell and Dudley, I recall watching as one businessman's good humour evaporated following a diversion away from New Street - he hurled his expensive briefcase onto the tracks in a torrent of anger. Helpfully, a man from Central Trains offered up insight aplenty: "your papers are all over the shop there, sir."

At best, the huffs and sighs are understandable. Situations of this sort can be stressful, but I'm fortunate that it doesn't happen to me often. Still, there's something I enjoy about the enforced slowness of it all - it's a bit like an involuntary version of lying in bed, staring at the ceiling.

So. I stared out at Manchester through the January gloom. The city seemed to lose its visual unity - or at least its long-standing mishmash of built coincidences - in the mist. The tall buildings were divorced from their skyline and stood about awkwardly as if blindfolded in an empty room.

Momentarily, I abandoned myself to the hypnotic reveries of urban winter fog, to mills named Daisy, and to oily canal bends. Nothing at all happened until the train began to whisper its way into the terminus.

An hour later, I hung around for another half an hour at Gatley station having run an errand at the end of my half day. Every few minutes, an airport express busied by, whipping up the drizzle and stirring a tumult of wrappers and polystyrene kebab trays.

I sniffed deeply, and resolved to polish my shoes. Enormous barques of cloud shifted silently over the M60. I listened to the gentle hum of the live wires, and thought about Kate and Sam. Good, glad thoughts - nothing deep, that's all.

Every waking second brings something to be neurotic about - one reason why I don't equip myself with ubiquitous computing capability. I think it's good to have time imposed on you, to allow yourself to daydream, and not to be bored by sweet nothings.

On that vaguest tangent, I've always loved these simple lines, which I'm quoting completely out of context here. They entered my head as I boarded my train home:

And the times that we all hoped would last
Like a train they have gone by so fast
And though we stood together
At the edge of the platform
We were not moved by them

Thanks, Billy. Meanwhile, here's a link to a long-forgotten version.

Zombie Movie

2009-01-11T19:10:00.010Z

Having secured Saturday afternoon off without delaying to dither over the weather forecast, I embarked for deepest Lancashire harbouring some noble intentions - principally to travel north via Rawtenstall, there to imbibe invigorating herbal nicenesses in its Temperance Bar before taking to the windswept terrace in the cold fourth division weather.

Alas, 'twas not to be. So after a short Sandbach sojourn to assess my options - very few - I chose to screech left at Thelwall and set a course for Goodison Park.

This, as it happens, was the first football ground I ever visited - back on 5 May 1990 with my Swedish pal Jaws - and I last visited in 1994, a rare punctuation mark in my mostly televisual relationship with the Blues.

Family never bequeathed me a football team. Instead my parents sent me to a different school at which all 'the glories' (except Jaws) supported Liverpool. I dutifully chose Southall, Nevin, and Stuart McCall. Everton remains my second eleven - but I grew up, started to go to football, and - critically - never got Sky.

One fact remains: I still need some motivation to watch Match of the Day infrequently.

That summer day, I can still recall, we followed a group of Aston Villa fans with an airhorn past freshly-planted beds in Stanley Park. The roaring nineties were barely underway, and teams could get away with fielding moustachioed centre halves like Derek Mountfield.

We blinked in the glare as we ascended to our seats from the dank intestines of the Bullens Road stand, with its vast and gloomy shadows. I remember the visceral impact of seeing more people than I'd ever seen in one place before, and that huge Main Stand opposite. I can still hear and feel the thudding of feet on the balcony at moments of excitement.

The place felt epic, as things do when you're a child. That was my first experience of a football stadium, and it still shapes my expectation. While I've downsized since then (a lot), I still like a football ground to have a relationship and a sense of interaction with its surroundings.

Goodison epitomises this, and feels both lived in and lived around. This part of Liverpool is among the purest of tarditional football landscapes in England. Grandstands from the 1930s, 1970s and 1990s (boooo - the old Park End looked great) tower above tightly-packed terraces and narrow streets, a picture offset by a majestic Victorian park (currently under restoration, looks good) and the occasional glimpse of a distant dockyard crane.

Today, Hull City were the visitors. I haven't been to a top-flight game since Highfield Road (RIP) some thirteen years ago.

I felt a guilty sense of anticipation, and, on approaching the ticket office, not a little paranoia. Like a tourist I clutched my wallet anxiously, especially since a real-lifeLiverpudlian had in real life offered to look after my car in exchange for a real-life tenner.

Ten notes, they tell me, is normal. Fourth division it ain't. Which is genuinely grim.

Very nearly deterred I demanded the cheapest ticket in the house. A large sum of money secured me a berth in what felt like steerage, an enclosed position way back beneath the upper tier of the Gwladys Street end, a steel-and-plank structure dating back to 1938.

It was close enough to the ceiling that I could inspect the botchy repointing of the balcony floor, and well behind two enormous steel girders with mighty rivets, big ones like they don't make anymore.

If you like traditional football grounds, Goodison is a thrilling survivor. There's only one Premiership-era stand at the Park End. The rest is true vintage. Even the titanic Main Stand, erected in the seventies, could never have been built to a standard pattern - it's wedge-shaped design created to accommodate the surrounding streets. In aerial photos, it doesn't look all that different to its predecessor - it's still a snug fit with its community.

Despite being built years apart, Gwladys Street (1938) and Bullens Road (1926) retain the unity of a pre-war Leitch design, although their upturned roofs are later additions. There's also an antique combination of wooden panelling and cross-hatched balcony trusses that inspires a real sense of timelessness if you've ever seen it in footage of Pele, Eusebio or North Korea in the 1966 World Cup finals.

To our right, the old church, St. Lukes. Offering refreshments before the match, it still occupies a corner of the ground, despite long-forgotten attempts to demolish it in the thirties.

So, what is Premiership football like in 2008?

Eek. It's different. It has those animated advertising hoardings that made Serie A look exotic in the last century. Gone are the ticket stubs (I rifled through my coat, convinced I'd lost mine) replaced by a swipey barcode system awkwardly appended to the old turnstiles (this had to be explained to me, step-by-step). Fancy.

Newly arrived are far-eastern tourists doing John Lennon peace signs next to a superhuman-looking bronze of Dixie Dean. Oh, and you're supposed to turn on your Bluetooth so that a low-resolution version of Mikel Arteta can invade your handset with various offers. Anthropologically, it's interesting, as academics like to say indifferently.

But - I also noticed how well-kept the ground is. Not in a flower beds kind-of-way, but just in the sense that it seems painted and looked after, rather than peeling and rusty. The scrawled "NF" and "Keep Everton White" graffiti seems to have been consigned to a bygone era, which can't be a bad thing either, with all of today's bile reserved for Nick Barmby, who moved across the park to Anfield back in 2000.

And - there's a strangely intensifying effect to be had when watching from a darkened vantage point that's way back beneath. The game - a 2-0 win for a striker-less Everton against a team that barely made its presence felt - wasn't that inspiring. But Goodison Park is like being in a rowdy zombie movie. The noise is amplified, hoardes rise and groan as one, and you can't see the sky - only the crowd and the pitch.

Since I normally spend long periods looking at other fans or at the surrounding landscape beyond low-rise terraces, it's a novel - or at least, half-forgotten - experience. It's a long time since I've been stuck in traffic after a game or swept along with the crowd through a narrow street, but it's one worth repeating once in a while.

Oh, yes - and this was very exciting indeed. For just a moment, I recalled vaguely the allure of following a team that can play a bit. But only a bit ;-)

Reprise

2009-01-05T22:16:00.002Z

Squinting and squirming my way through the .xml files from my old Wordpress blog, I'm thinking of restoring one or two of the posts that I still like or which diarise some of the personal things that I'd rather store as something other than a torrent of metadata. So, here goes - 2006 and 2007, reprised.

Textbook Toddleager

2009-01-01T19:10:00.006Z

Happy 2009? Like, whatever. Dad.

We recently adopted a zero-tolerance approach to Sam's habit of mithering, whining and occasionally flapping at us when he doesn't get what he wants, and with some success.

I say "some" success - it's a pyrrhic victory, big time.

Gone overnight are the hallmarks of the so-called "terrible two"; now witness the studied savvy of the urbane toddle-ager:

Me: OK, matey, we're going somewhere nice...

Sam, hopefully: Are there steam trains / fire engines / cakes / angel babies [don't ask] there?

Me, wearily: No Sam, I really doubt that.

Sam, pauses, considers screaming "but I waaaaant one!" Instead, deploys the verbal musicality that unlocks old ladies' sweetie jars: Hmmm. We'll see shall we - when we get there? I suppose you never know. Maybe later, eh? And mummy says yes too. And then at bed time we can have FIVE stories!

Me, speechless: O: Um...

Cue panic. How the devil am I going to outmaneouvre this slick operator when he's a sagely six?

Lesson learned, too late: Deploy only the simplest language when dealing with the Pampered proletariat - do NOT give them the tools to outfox you comprehensively before they are out of nappies!

Nonbussed

2008-12-17T20:47:00.001Z

"Deeply fascinating" debates on the new rail timetable have some distance to run perhaps. We'll not go into that right now. Not much, anyway...

Upon inspecting the new destinations on Stoke station's departure boards this morning, my first thoughts raced straight to Ninian Park, Whaddon Road and Ashton Gate... with no need to change at Birmingham. Wu-hoo!

This is wonderful news. Our horizons seem instantly expanded and the service seems generally better on paper. A nice empty Pendolino to Manc at 7.45 replaces the crowded four coaches at 7.36, but - nnngh! - the return journey is now totally out of sync with The Glorious XXI, making it infinitely more difficult to arrive home in time for Sam's bath.

And there's no improvement to the Longport service. Many northbound trains in the morning, with crap all coming back. Not that one would ever expect it - nice new information screens, but barely a departure to display... (it would seem all the Londoners want to visit Kidsgrove instead)

And now the last train home is even earlier! FFS! It's a very personal slant (ok, an unpolishable rant) on the issue, but there's surely mileage in the idea that this stuff - that is, being able to access opportunities afforded by adjacent big cities at night, be they work, education or leisure - is fundamental to persuading people to live and stay in Stoke.

"Try pulling your eyelid down as far as it'll go..."

2008-12-15T20:26:00.001Z

Away at Morecambe.

It's ~~not~~ quite often one of Britain's leading football bloggers can be tempted from his secret scribing facility somewhere in deepest Staffordshire (I've seen it: think your cool best-mate-from-school's Optimus Prime toy, but with more with more grounds under its belt) for a brief encounter between perhaps the two giants of the modern game - that's Morecambe versus the mighty Quakers to you.

Saturday's fixture at Christie Park presented just such a temptation, and our guest expert was kind enough to buy me a pint of Black Sheep into the bargain. For my part, I hope to bust my Brightonian cherry at Edgar Street in February. There may be foine coider on hand, albeit in very small driveable quantities.

Thanks to Groundhog for the company and continued tolerance, in any case.

And so on towards Morecambe through the mist and HGV spray, up the M6 and down the A5105 Coastal Road, passing en route through the mighty-sounding Bolton-le-Sands and Carnforth, of Brief Encounter (the real one) fame. All the while wondering if - like last year - this afternoon's game was somehow predestined to be postponed or abandoned.

Neither of us was too confident, least of all myself - and thus I delivered my finest Celia Johnson:

"If we control ourselves...
and behave like sensible human beings...
there's still time!"

If. And. Would we have a sufficient window to make Fylde or Squire's Gate - if the Gods were with us?

Speculatively, I fumbled the radio buttons for information. None was forthcoming from the once-rocksteady 693 Medium Wave (nowadays "the home of live sport," long vacated by "useful information delivered in a timely fashion.")

Alas, Radio Lancashire starts its football broadcast at the ungodly hour of 2pm, and so we listened respectfully to some homely programming about humble garden wormeries instead.

Happily, anyone familiar with last year's corresponding fixture - or, with the wormicide witnessed at the hands of Darlington's River Skerne a few years back - knows that this course of action was entirely appropriate.

In any case, Morecambe shows its best side when approached in the roundabout fashion. Last year I shunted through Lancaster's seasonal traffic for what seemed like hours (maybe it was just Lawro-on-the-Radio effect).

Taking the Coastal Road, on the other hand, lays the seafront before you like some magic carpet made of asphalt and salt water. It was high tide, and a winter murk hammocked the air, nearly abolishing the tonal difference between sea and sky.

Wading birds pottered around in the wet sands and standing water. Groundhog vaulted the concrete wall and ninja-rolled like Bruce Lee onto the promenade. Self-consciously, I probed for an ample gap to squeeze through. He is more athletic than I, despite his advancing years...

We stared out towards America, and contemplated its possibilities. Or those of Grange-over-Sands. Not for too long, though.

While we're here, I'm disappointed to learn that Morecambe's Jug-of-Tea is no more. And I keep meaning to go and see the Midland Hotel, but I'm sure its resplendence won't quite measure up.

Onwards to the ground, featuring a high-class chippy by the away end - om nom nom nom! - and with a whole would-be grandstand accounted for by the presence of an ARC car wash where the lukewarm pie counter should be. With a little under an hour till kick-off, we plumped for a short walk to the York Hotel.

Cantering briskly along, I liked the way that the intermittent terraced street was composed of short-then-tall house and shop frontages, looking a bit like the joined-up letters of a child's handwriting. Out and about in Morecambe, there's plenty of rambling shorthand for faded grandeur and past glories, but most of all there's a welcoming humanity.

The pub was ace, the bouncer very personable. The back room was what all "sports bars" should be and won't ever be, one day.

OK, so the big screen with Sky Sports is concessionably a necessary evil, but the walls - all festooned with the scarves of lower-divison and non-league opposition - rendered the place welcoming and inclusive.

Here's a place that feels like it belongs to Morecambe, full of the names of old mutual acquaintances you didn't know they knew: Bedlington Terriers, Droylsden, Farnborough Town, Kidderminster Harriers...

The ninety minutes were disappointing, Darlo losing 1-0 and slipping to sixth. "Never at the races," sighed the bobbing, twitching woolly headgear at the full-time urinals. And, having announced that I felt like some "atmosphere" we had taken our place behind the goal amongst fans who'd decided that referee Jarnail Singh's alleged resemblance to Monty Panesar was too hilarious to let pass. Much of the first half was spent warbling on about it. Wonderful. We were so going to get on...

But when all's said and done we've been here before. We've been much worse before. Good results, most fans understand, are far more exhilirating in adversity. In fact we've rarely been much good at all, ever since 1883. Who can claim honestly that the prospect of success is what it's all about? Though admittedly it is nice to have a decent team this year...

For me, the great thing about following your team away (and I think it's better in nearly every respect at this level), is that you spend time in all kinds of places you'd rarely venture otherwise.

Each season brings a new promise of peregrination. Were it not for the football, instead of Boston (a few seasons back, that one) you'd choose... well, would you ever need to make that choice anyway?

There, we sat in some pub on the old Lincolnshire harbourfront, a little spooked by the fact that a middle-aged couple were taking notes on us and exchanging giggles in a fashion they clearly thought clandestine. Like two kids at the back of the class. More likely stories on Boston here.

As often than not, there's a wonderful sense of place both outside and inside the ground (though this is changing, as I'm sure to discover at Shrewsbury).

Morecambe is a great example, but there's something to recommend every seasoned ground, even in the places that otherwise privilege grit and character over any ostensible charm - see Dagenham and Redbridge's pie and mash (and of course, liquor) shop and the beautiful 1930s pub round the corner from their Victoria Road ground (one that looks a dive from the outside, but which is stunning within).

It's not that the football isn't important. It's the fact that it comes embedded in the landscape, with such a rich hinterland. More on this in future posts, no doubt. But I think that's why I rarely go home disappointed.

This is England

2008-12-15T15:53:00.001Z

At least, it is today. Painted, chipped boundary walls, shoulder-high. Next door's dog soiling the back yard (just out of shot). Chimney pots. Plant pots. Sheds and prefabricated garages. Gable ends and hotch-potch bathroom extensions like the connectors in a fragmented jigsaw. Redundant pegs and plastic shower caps on the washing line. And skies that should be leaden, but aren't.

Now Pirates Get PMT!

2008-12-09T22:07:00.001Z

[clarification for outsiders]

A truism, perhaps, but it's great fun when toddlers reimagine everyday stuff.

Last Friday, as Sam and I were plotting a course to the library, we briefly watched some workmen erecting Burslem's new bus shelters and scoffing chocolate hob-nobs ready for the Saturday switch-on of the lights.

Slinky windbreaks, so they are. Steely curvacious numbers with wavy wanderings printed on the glass. Each one has its own lofty spike which I take to be an aerial for the bus info feed. About as burlesque and suggestive as a bus shelter can possibly get. Appropriate for Burslem.

Well, maybe.

It appears they're also designed to echo the old Ceramica shop. Prepare for a letters-page boreathon in the Sentinel...* Luckily, two-year old skippers have no time for such petty seditions!

"A PIRATE SHIP!" boomed the potty-training privateer, perched with outretched finger 'pon the foc'sle of his speedy caravel. And a very sci-fi pirate ship at that, if slightly landlocked there in its berth beside the Methodist Mission. Indeed, a sci-fi pirate ship with live bus information!

And thus was the precedent set for the remains of the day. Cool day. The bus stops aren't bad really - maybe a bit slimline for the demands of the Potteries microclimate.

And expensive? Fuck it. Motorists are far more subsidised than bus users anyway. Not a point you'll see made very often in the Sentinel, although I do remember one comment to that effect by Tom Whiteley a couple of years back.

Credit where it's due, see! But as for: "*" ... ok, ok, I'll give it a rest...

Hymn to PMT

2008-12-07T23:33:00.002Z

Hanley, 5.45pm.

Five lads, beered and bullshitting, mounted my homeward bus at that very special stop outside Cheque & Pawn, and thence lunged for the back seats.

A polyphony of choking and coughing commenced in earnest as the chari passed Staples. Small lakes (no solids) formed in the time it takes to reach Pets at Home - possibly the shortest geological period yet recorded.

By the time our young gods alighted at Commercial Street, there were damp little tributaries running all the way to the disabled seats, and - bizarrely - the strong smell of oranges. They all remembered to thank the driver: "traaa, mate."

Those boys need feeding so that they have the energy to learn about what beer is.

Being the sympathetic type, I was inspired to produce the following, which I'll proceed to devour at work over the next couple of days [edit: microwave FUCKED! This CANNOT be!]

Scaleable, simple piquant chick pea lunch thing

Many, many chick peas, soaked (like, 60% of it)
Lots of green beans, chopped
Some carrot, diced
Some shallot, chopped
Paprika, much
Cumin, some
Garlic, two cloves - um, whatever
Some root ginger - damn, I ran out
A few revolutions of the WC2006 souvenir peppermill
Mustard seeds
A little passata
Olive oil

Chuck it all in the frying pan and cook severely until it looks and taste nice. Disco!

Line thy stomachs, my children!

My kingdom for a window seat

2008-12-07T20:01:00.001Z

Early.

One of the things I erred briefly about when I left behind my last job in ~~the Potteries~~ commuterland to work "up Manchester way" was the travelling.

So it transpires, twelve months on, that driving can be a faff sometimes (and, oh, the guilt of a Guardian reader!) but mostly the train service is very solid indeed, if expensive. In fact, some mornings it's an unequivocal pleasure. At worst, it's still preferable to wearing some Londoner's armpit in lieu of space for a hat.

Hopping on at Stoke, I can almost always secure a window seat before the chattering hoardes besiege the Quiet Zone at Congleton. For these forty revolutions of the clock (sometimes fewer), reverie is mine, punctuated only by the prodding enquiries of a ticket collector or the sudden snagging of a curious conversation.

The recent bad weather has only heightened this waking daydream feeling, even if the permanent way was really made for anything but. Northbound, we've Mow Cop and Bosley's Cloud resplendent in teetering silver. An ethereal flash of wending canal. The Dane whispering and winding far below us.

Later, we're retracing our stealthy slide-path, this time all wrapped up in provincial shadows and with only pale reflections of ourselves for eye contact. There are blue-chip cellphone accents and pinched corporate letterheads, things that only ever pass through Stoke on fast trains.

There are heads-in-notebooks and 3G wireless cards blinking neurotically. There are four seats, four Windows desktops and barely a waking moment as we shoulder-charge the A500 at Longport.

One face - uplit as if with a child's torch - scrunches briefly as a door beeps and plunks, letting in the cold Staffordshire air:

"How long to Euston?"

Anomienous

2008-12-02T22:29:00.001Z

Journalists at the BBC have finally nabbed the exclusive that many of us here in the Potteries had been hoping to keep to ourselves until - OoooOh - at least 1993.

The results of their survey show that Stoke-on-Trent, our very own town(s) that time forgot, is(are) in fact the most marvellous place(s) on earth, most of the time. This is based, apparently, on the relatively low pervasiveness of anomie (feeling feint? wiki it instead).

This might have seemed a little strange to the researchers in question had the state of local politics been accounted for. As it goes, the vital signs seem to go uncorroborated by any kind of living, breathing survey based on attitudes - no matter, see a nice video here and get yer sweet, sweet schadenfreude here!

They'll be dancing in the streets of the Mother Town (or, at least, its hinterland).

Whatever. They'll also sigh knowingly and offer up a "right y'are then, duck," before ambling off down Waterloo Road with a wary chuckle. Still, we/they can rest contentedly in having the strongest sense of 'belonging' of any (ahem!) 'local radio area' in the UK - a finding that has spurred the most unlikely comparison between Burslem and Bayswater.

I've blogged about this before, from my own perspective as an outsider who is both peeping and creeping in with my swagbag full of anomie and dislocation. It's fairly clear that all is not well in Stoke-on-Trent generally. However it's great to see something so bluntly (if inarticulately) positive all over the national media, especially after this and other recent media beatings.

Incidentally, Bramhall, where I sometimes haul my trolley of job-related oddities, is supposed to be the UK's most 'rooted' community... *adjusts collar*.... spot the mysterious connection, folks!

In fact Sam and I were interviewed by Radio Stoke (token male at toddler group, see) on this very issue, but before I could slavishly reprise Benedict (or even Brett) Anderson, Sam had lunged at the terrified reporter yelling "scary biscuits!" at the top of his little voice.

Which is probably about right as an erudite response; for my part, I just blathered twitchily about knowing and trusting our neighbours, the toddler group being very welcoming, and so on - though I'm still not sure I'd commit to that fortnight in Benidorm out of 'street solidarity'...

Postscript: Curiously, a quick bash on 'anomie stoke-on-trent' chucks you this beauty...

NOM NOM NOM: that's the sound of the Police...

2008-11-30T23:34:00.001Z

Ahahahaha snooort! Pure GOLD!!!

I should probably let it lie, but this recent front-page outrage is a Sentinelism of the highest order.

Revealed: Contrary to popular belief, officers of the law in Stoke-on-Trent are a bit partial to a sandwich and banana for their scram. Quite awesomely, the MASSIVE headline comes complete with shocking illustration: the offending carrier bag photoshopped into some innocent bobby's hand, or, "our mock-up of how an officer may look doing his shopping at Asda."

Um, right then...

So has some jilted journalist at the Sentinel picked up a speeding fine of late or something? Poor soul. An earnest paragraph acknowledges that the Force is investigating the alleged naughtiness. And, if you press your ear to the cold steel gates outside the back of Hanley police station, you may just detect a weary sigh carried along on the breeze from the copper canteen.

To underline the daftness, even the send them back brigade over at thisisstaffordshire.co.uk is failing vociferously to detect any sort of problem whatsoever...

Brilliant.

Psshhticooof!

2008-11-30T22:03:00.001Z

During the summer, we took our two-year old brio fanatic for a carefully choreographed wander through the cattle fields of Staffordshire and beyond to ~~Burnam~~ Dilhorne wood.

Not only does this huddle of trees conceal a "secret" railway station, but it also confers a fraction of the requisite mystique upon some rather theatrical red-coated gentlemen wielding period rifles, thermos flasks, and severely re-enacted facial hair.

"Mind out for the live rounds, kids!"

Granted, I have a known weakness for steam trains, but Stoke's own Foxfield Railway features the coolest of them all. Going strong (well, ambling, on and off) since 1874, it merits this title in part on account of its fearsome and rather steampunk-sounding name. Except, there's no punking required for this most genuine of articles.

More than that, it's the only train I've ever known that pssshticoofs exactly like Ivor the Engine whilst trundling about its north-west corner of Staffordshire. Ivor, you'll recall, had his whistle changed for organ pipes and sang in the male voice choir.

If you've no idea what I'm talking about, you suffered a deprived childhood of cultural denial and your mum and dad should be pilloried by the outraged townspeople of Llantisilly.

That, children, is Bellerophon - creature of myth and slayer of monsters.

Sentinelism

2008-11-27T23:37:00.001Z

Pic via Wayne Williams on Facebook.

Now then - this may become a recurring theme here, but the terminally slow-news-dazed Sentinel today gets to table the idea via a suggestive whisper (a sentinelism!) that sacred landmark and undisputed fount of civilisation Burslem town hall is about to be wiped off the face of the planet.

Fffrrfff!

Is this mischievous or just a bit rubbish, or both? Do readers swallow it? I dunno, but fortunately for the rest of us, Northcliffe Newspapers has plenty of highly entertaining previous - and that's without even bringing the Mail into the equation.

While the subject of the article is valid enough, is it too much to hope that if (or when) Stoke's governance improves seriously, one or two of our city's opinion-formers might just have to raise their game too, or at least find a new story that's actually worth fucking about with?

Burslem by night

2008-11-26T22:30:00.001Z

There's a teetering, unspecific restlessness about Burslem at night, when the drone of traffic has passed and the streets are all but left to the cats, even if it's just the anticipation of nothing in particular.

Thanks to the jaundiced uplighting and fractured textures of blistered gable ends, Queen Street really does seem to twitch and tense its sinews in the cold night air.

[With apologies for the limitations of my compact camera...]

Close encounters of the First kind

2008-11-25T20:04:00.001Z

It may be an oldie, but here's a sweet and affectionate (if slightly ambiguous) sketch of Hanley bus station, soon to be gone. Or not. We all love it none the less.

Still, it reminded me of my homeward commute from Stoke station the other night, courtesy of the Number 21 bus towards Bradeley. Dicing up the Potteries all the way from Trentham to Tunstall and on to the outer nebulae, a gaslight cruise aboard the 21 is the *only* way to experience the Potteries in all its twilight glory.

Anyway...

A well-nourished but wobbly fella hauled himself aboard in Hanley, by Cheque & Pawn. With ample cheer and breath like napalm, he sat himself down and commenced broadsiding merrily at anyone and everyone that wouldn't listen. Something about I'm a Celebrity and how he used to know Robbie.

All this was but background noise as our chariot swept by the wipe-clean lap dancing club and onwards to the labyrinthine headfuck that is the Festival Park Experience.

Suddenly, I was hurled from my reverie as the driver hit the anchors. I sensed an exodus of ruffled, elderly passengers. Evidently, they'd suddenly remembered how much they'd been coveting one of those dainty USB fishtanks from PC World.

Big fella danced around the maypole and thlumped his adequate arse down on the seat in front. Like a beery barn owl in Bukta, he deftly rotated himself and presented a battered wing-tip for inspection. Foolishly I detected little harm in shaking it - for what bother is a friendly drunk anyway?

Two minutes and an aeon later, he released me. By now he had anointed himself Gorgeous George, King of Tunstall ("that's what they call me!" - no shit!) and had begun to wonder loudly whether I fancied a buying him a pint in the Globe by way of small tribute.

Being every inch the considerate monarch, he ensured that I was fully briefed on the fortunes of that old friend of mine [also, conveniently, his ex-girlfriend] Tracey. Uh-huh. Oh, that Tracey... um... wow, who knew...?

From thence we proceeded regally to more pressing matters of state. The State of the Nation, no less. Cobridge, if you're particular. George, you see, had once been a member of the Socialist Workers' Party - "protesting against that lad that wouldn't sell to a nigger," apparently.

The bus took on a demographically representative sample outside Sageer Barbers and tiptoed apologetically past the Mosque with the onboard polemic in full swing.

"Hey, all this... makes you glad to be WHITE BRITISH, doesn't it?"

I rubbed frantically at the condensation and stared determinedly out of the window.

"Makes you PROUD doesn't it? To be white. BRITISH, Eh!?"

"Um. I dunno. I'm half Italian," I squeaked with the it's-a-pound shrug 'n' smile combo of a desperate man; a slightly, if wilfully embellished version of the truth.

Note to customers: For your comfort and peace of mind, all PMT buses are fitted with clearly-marked MISSION ABORT! buttons positioned throughout the vehicle.

Also, don't forget the Chlamydia Advice Line!

And so it was that I alighted prematurely and with no little relief outside Coin Crazy. Drawing deeply from the sweetly scented air of Waterloo Road (yum... Hanging Mangoes), I began to reflect wearily on this, my unexpectedly close encounter of the First kind.

Nosey Park-er

2008-11-25T19:25:00.001Z

Cool. The City Council website now has a map of some £2m of prospective improvements for the wonderful Burslem Park. Despite the bad press, the council has done a very decent job of revitalising our parks, considering their previous state of decay.

There's also a fledgling Flickr group dedicated to the life and work of the park's planner Thomas Mawson - other commissions of his included Hanley Park, the garden at Wightwick Manor, and Brockhole Garden in the Lake District. More on him here and here...

Splash!

2008-11-25T18:54:00.001Z

Like an unloved Pepsi-Cola can this blog has been re-deposited in one G. Wedgwood's drinking trough, along with the autumn leaves.

So, after a good ol' bit of feedback, the not-so-old name is back - but never mind usability, I'm not changing the URL again.

That, dear friends, would be too much faff by far...

Halfway to fifty-eight

2008-11-24T15:46:00.000Z

Wonderful.

Day off. A rare day all on my own with nothing to do - no-one to please, no-one to displease, as my Grandad once wrote of his preferred pastimes. Great. Or at least, a chance to do the little lazy things I do rarely seeing as I'm someone's dad.

So, off back to bed for two hours, then long bath and into (sorry, up...) Hanley to spend someone else's money on two records by local bands (my first and last CDs in ages) - see he-arrh and a-he-arrh!

Interval: a highly decadent vanilla larr-tay and cookie, costing about the same as two fry-ups. Quick bout of Guardian reader guilt, quickly dispelled by reading said chatter-paper and therefore about someone else's liberal guilt instead.

An idle perusal around some little shoppes, speccing up wooden castles for S's Christmas present - very important task, this. Expensive, but very cool.

Then a quick ascent of that hill at Trentham with the monument on. Grrrrr-anville! he's called. Nice view of huge distribution centres to the fore and away to Shutingsloe in the distance. A beautiful clear day.

Feel great, lungs bursting full of fresh wintery air. Guilty cup of fairtrade tea by the lake. Then off home to blog this and mastermind some tea for la famille, after test-driving new cezve (or Aladdin's lamp if you're two).

After Sam's bath, story and bedtime, I fancy I'll finish watching Persepolis and maybe rock some washing up, such is my no-holds-barred lifestyle.

Glorious fuckin' stuff you increasingly old bastard, I tell myself.

Mmm, coffee...

2008-11-24T08:30:00.001Z

I'm still smiling from Saturday night at Coventry's Tin Angel, where Ish Marquez - on his first trip to the UK - put on a splendid set for a small, appreciative audience.

Squeezed into a corner cafe somewhere between the huge new blue Ikea and the brutalist blocks and precincts, this was a very personal show - a little bit Pixies, a bit Herman Dune (blame my untutored ears for the bad comparisons).

While Ish confessed (with surprising sincerity) that he was "blown away to be in the city of The Specials," companion Stanley Brinks looked rather taken with the living lights on that tower block in the Lower Precinct, in addition playing the sweetest of sets midway through Marquez' gig.

Coupleted with nearby Taylor John's House, this has to be one of the best small venues in the Midlands and certainly outside the south east. It'd be easy to take issue with the vaguely antifolk circle that rarely plays outside London, Brighton and Bristol. But it's great to see a Midlands venue that privileges this stuff - with (bonus!) David Thomas Broughton bringing his loops in January.

And a quick tip-of-the-hat to the proprietors: it's great to have access to nice coffee when you're driving back to Stoke in the small hours. Very goodly, that.

Nearer to home, this and this also look promising...

St. George and his cardboard castle

2008-11-20T08:53:00.000Z

Interesting that the BNP's electoral strength (relatively speaking) in these parts isn't borne out in its membership strength.

Oh, to live in Charnwood or Loughborough. Not.

There will be Bloods

2008-11-18T23:36:00.001Z

Oh well, 0-1. I've just returned from the appropriately-named Butchers Arms in Droylsden. The first twenty minutes aside, the mighty Quakers were outfought by The Bloods. It's a fair reflection, and all a bit too familiar, but I'm still not feeling magnanimous enough to buy into the 'romance' of the cup thing. At least it wasn't as bad as Hornchurch, and what's more we're still top of the league.

Unfortunately the whole evening, romance or none, was overshadowed by some trouble and by a rather serious injury. Liam Hatch, who has been outstanding during his loan spell from Peterborough, has a suspected broken neck. Facilities are limited at this level, there was no ambulance on site and so the match was suspended for at least half an hour while Hatch lay immobile in the cold, awaiting the arrival of trained medical staff.

It's a long hour down the three motorways from Tameside to the Potteries when you're out of the cup (a fact underlined by the jubilant pitch invasion from Droylsden's resident scallies). Still, a young man's basic health and livelihood are in question all of a sudden due to a chance collision, and I'd imagine most Darlo fans will be willing enough to call this one a write-off.

Well done Droylsden. You deserved it.

Let's end it here

2008-11-16T09:09:00.001Z

So. Ventured out to the teen haunt formerly known as The Coliseum with Matt last night to see Ladytron. I like them, but I'm never quite sure what to expect with electropop when performed live - lads hunched and nodding rhythmically over a keyboard or two? There's a time and a place called Thursday night.

And there's not much to scribble either. The music was delivered very proficiently and the vocalists were excellent if a bit brooding (maybe that's their territory). The hunched lads hung back and did what it says on their tin. But still, forty-five minutes (including one-song encore) for your fourteen notes, and out on the streets before ten...

It was pleasant enough, but so's the near-identical CD. On the bright side it was a decent opportunity to pop for a beer, or would have been if we weren't both driving.

This, friends, was what a gig review looks like when written by someone's dad. But - I may just pop back to Coventry next week for Ish Marquez.

Retrovictoriana

2008-11-14T00:08:00.001Z

Just occasionally, the internet brings you something wonderful that you almost didn't click to.

Check out this beautiful steampunk silhouette animation, and just imagine something similar set in some retro-Victorian version of Longton.

Even better, there are a few tantalising echoes of Conrad (I think) in the heavy sense of nautical apprehension that runs through the plot.

Perfect. Thanks to alec-m for noticing!

The Greater Glory of the Invisible Hand

2008-11-12T22:14:00.002Z

Hmmm. For what seems like the 1,143rd consecutive day, the every major news organ reannounces what they had already reannounced time and time again:

1) It might be an actual recession now;
2) It might get quite bad;
3) It might last more than a week.

And on point 3, you get to wondering what exactly they were all expecting, if not this?

But, hang on, what's this? Um... has anyone seen property fetishists Kirsty and Phil recently? No? Marvellous - I am willing to undergo any amount of negative equity, just to make this moment last!

But if I'm wrong about the last point, I'd rather not know, thanks!

Bad Carma

2008-11-12T21:50:00.001Z

The wandering urchin that spontaneously appended a silver go-slower stripe to the side of my car last week was rather perceptive, it turns out.

He/she seems to have figured out that I never take the speedy or more direct path to anything whatsoever; the aforementioned stripe seems a genial work of unstraightness and charming whimsy... some kind of psychogeographic metaphor, perhaps.

I don't mind too much. It's not worth much (though I am expecting it to go twice round the clock before nature reclaims it irredeemably, please). People are too fucking precious about their paintwork, and spend far too much time stroking their bountiful tubes o'Turtlewax.

Likewise, restless natives like to complain about the occasional vandalism and often non-specific 'trouble' round here, but based purely on personal experience we had more grief more regularly when we lived in leafy Warwickshire.

So there y'go, dear readers.

Being Stoke

2008-11-10T21:21:00.001Z

Jesus, I've been living in the Potteries for nearly five years.

During that time, a lot has changed both for me personally and in these, my adopted towns (though I think I've managed to avoid ever stopping in Fenton except to visit the bike shop). This is the place where I arrived an outsider, where I settled and ultimately started a family.

To some extent I'm still a distinct outsider. I know of people who grew up five miles from Stoke and claim to feel like outsiders in a way that I'd never imagine feeling in, say, Coventry. And despite the fact that I too grew up watching those Potteries derbies on Central Match Live, Burslem is the one place that I've ever been called 'immigrant' to my face (and that's just plain odd).

It's too easy to overstate the parochialism cliche, and just as easy to underestimate it. There's a distinct a multifaceted identity here, and it's dripping with saccharine sentimentality. "In the old days, way back when... we were poor but we were happy, and you could leave your front door open," and the like.

This scent of roses may be equally pronounced elsewhere, but in the Potteries I challenge anybody to escape it. People so often sound fantastically proud in one breath, dejected and disinterested in the next. On the buses, in the street, and pretty much wherever you care to turn - "it's a shithole, mate..."

By the same token, we know and trust our neighbours and they know and trust each other. And much as they bemoan 'the way the country's going' - whatever way that is - there's a real sense of community that I've never experienced anywhere else, beaten down and diminished though people may feel. Things worth cherishing - "...it's *our* shithole, in't it."

And still, disillusion abounds and rebounds, whether it's about regeneration, immigration, low pay, the ills of Federation, whatever. Community pride ever vying with the sense of betrayal by complacent city fathers and fly-by-night council managers. Is it justified? I don't know - cheap shots at the council are ten-a-penny in these parts.

Know what? I'd hazard a guess that many outsiders settling here have very similar feeling - certainly more akin to the 'local identity' than you might expect. I don't think I ever expected to stay, and others I know tried living elsewhere. But here, eventually, we stayed. And we grew to like the place in a way that perhaps we never expected to.

This is a city that doesn't seem like it was ever really finished, such are the rubbled, empty expanses, even in the city centre. Some days it's depressing, a relentlessly downbeat place. But there's a really compelling undercurrent here - true Stokies and newcomers who sense possibility and potential, who coax out and sometimes broadcast the sense of "unconventional beauty" that prevades these parts.

History has not been kind to the Potteries; this isn't some Richmond or Knightsbridge - and yet people are creative; they acclimatise, develop ways of seeing and learn to create nothing less than A Beautiful City by looking closer.

None of this is overtly political. But our political climate is crying out for optimism, creativity, warmth and a renewed sense of perspective. This can come from artists, council managers, bloggers, whoever - just people, at the end of the day. In pubs, on websites, at the civic.

So it goes.

After all, this Being Stoke, it's our shithole too. And that's the great thing about living in this of all places, the city that's not quite finished yet.

Let Them Eat Oatcake!

2008-11-10T15:56:00.000Z

I unna goin Benidorm anytime soon, but....

On the blog...

2008-11-10T15:08:00.001Z

So, then.

I feel another blogalapse coming on; perhaps this one won't be so short lived as the last.

Maybe this is the only blog in the whole world named after a horse trough.

Doubtless someone will be along shortly to prove me wrong.

Parklife

2007-08-29T22:13:00.001+01:00

Winsford United vs St Helens Town

The boy had hit the sack early and instantly; a last-minute dash up two junctions of the M6 to Winsford saw me arrive at the stadium five minutes late. As usual I'd noted that the stadium was somewhere near the main road and breezily assumed it would be easy to find. It was, kind of, but only once I'd sped five off miles in the wrong direction. Such was Winsford's hold on my imagination that Sam's Animal Jungle compilation was still jingle-jangling cheerily in the CD player. Doubling back, the floodlights were helpfully aglow, sitting high above a roundabout - Bethlehem, boys! - so I swung into the car park, guzzled the last of my jelly beans (don't let me buy petrol, ever), and relinquished my four quid. The guy on the turnstile seemed startled that I looked so eager.

Thank heaven for proper floodlights, anyhow. It's not the first time that they've saved me from my own incompetence. For this reason I firmly believe that the traditional stadium skyline is nothing less than a Public Good, whose characteristics should be enshrined in law as a mandatory requirement.

I stroke the chin and reflect a little, but not for long, on the links between Winsford's salt industry and my adopted city. Then I stop faffing and head for the terrace. I don't know much about the Cheshire salt industry, but I'm told that the John Rylands Library used to store rare books in the town's salt mines - I wonder if there's a copy of Give My Regards to Queen Street down there, crammed in amongst the first editions of the German Ideology? It's a scheister to find. It does seem like much of the local interest is underground; and as usual I can never quite understand the alleged wonders of the County Palatine, pleasant though it is.

The Barton Stadium, renamed after the war, used to be called The Great Western Playing Field. I like that. The best way I can describe it is as endearingly crap, but I don't mean that pejoratively. The floodlight electrics are protected by mangled chicken wire. The main stand is missing a huge chunk of roof and the pitch is surrounded by various blackened relics - a mud soaked fire hose, still anchored to its hydrant, several old tyres, and a couple of rusty mowing devices long since reclaimed by nature. There's even one of those adjustable hospital beds on wheels that line the corridors in A&E. The refreshments counter is a full-on transport caff, and the tea is a baked-bean shade of lukewarm permatan - superb; I had another.

Surrounding the entire pitch is a dog track, with concrete lighting in front of the stands lining each straight. To allow for the curvature of the track, there's a semi-circular grassy void behind each goal, manned by yellow-vested youngsters who brighten their gloomy station by spending most of the game throwing themselves into knobbly-kneed pile-ons. The 'keepers keep having to ask for their ball back, please.

For whatever reason I can't remember the Winsford goal at all - I was probably hassling the nice lady for a brew in the caff - but St. Helens' two strikes were excellent, the first a cushion-and-volley from twenty yards low into the bottom corner, the second the product of an excellent build-up, finished assertively from close range.

The visitors looked better and better as the match wore on, and while their "poncey" (or sensible, if you are) stretching routine provoked mirth amongst the home supporters ("are you actually going to play second half, lads?") they were clearly the fitter side. It showed.

At half time, the Winsford manager threatened rather dryly to have me arrested after I encroached on the players' gangway between the dugouts and the dressing room. I thought they'd all run out by then but there you go; people don't make it in football for being prone to politeness and timidity, even or perhaps especially at this level. That's one reason among many why I was spending an evening skulking around an old dog track.

Anyway, there are no pictures (yet) - I managed to offload £400 worth of camera / wedding present on some concrete while retrieving a ball, immediately prior to getting threatened with the Cheshire Constabulary. Hard surfaces aren't good for cameras, y'know, and I have had some explaining to do in the morning.

At the final toots of the whistle, the club officials forgot to open the gates, thus preventing an early or even timely home time for everyone. It was fun to see the fairweathers denied their exit - they seemed kind of embarrassed to ask someone, while mutting about health and safety - but if you've ever had that ffs, what am I doing here? moment at a match, then this was the reaffirmation.

"Crapball would be ok if it just lasted for 10 minutes," reflected Mrs. TUTD sympathetically as she spooned some more porridge into a little mouth at breakfast. She was ok about the camera.

"BALL!" cried the fourteen-month old enthusiastically, ignoring his tasty slop for a second, thrusting his arms skywards and grinning toothily.

I'm not sure whether to be heartened or mortified by that.

"Football is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings."

2007-08-19T22:12:00.001+01:00

Queen of the South vs St. Johnstone

With apologies to Robbie Burns.

This, readers, was how football should be. Goals, enthusiasm from the players, occasional flashes of skill, plenty of local character in the groundscape, and a big old echo-chamber of a terrace upon which to perch one's ample self.

Portland Park, home of Queen of the South, hosts Scottish football's largest remaining standing area, the Portland Drive Terrace. It's a throwback in steel and blue Dulux, being rather louder and loftier than the rest of the ground, and with just the one tiny hatch at the top dispensing more Ribena than you've ever seen in one place.

One thing I love with traditional grounds is the way the stands are flanked by huge floodlight pylons, and in this case four halogen beacons stand proudly above the town and its attractive position on the River Nith.

We had taken the train north to Dumfries, home of Robert Burns, following a rather sodden night's camping in the Lakes (Tesco Value Tent -£7.99 - its purchaser did claim it was the next model up from value, and insisted that 'value' or not, there shouldn't be any difference in the quality of waterproofing; anyway, I digress...)

It was a welcome, warm day with blue skies, the first day of the Scottish season. These things make a difference to the great unwashed (I'd had a shower, but then I'm not a real groundhopper in the overnight-train-across-three-European-countries-with-all-your-clothes-hung-out-to-dry sense). We mooched around the very pleasant town centre and decided to plump for a themey-looking pub called the Hole i' th' Wa', which turned out to be the fans' local, full of Doonhamers watching Inverness Caledonian Thistle take on Rangers (more on the QoS nickname and the pub-quiz Bible thing here - I also heard a couple of people cheering on the 'Rievers,' but I've no idea how widespread that one is). Anyhow, for once, Mr. Murdoch and Co. did me a favour. Calie's ground, whilst modern, does appear to have plenty of uniqueness, with a view across the water and over to the mountains. It joins Ross County on my all-new Highland hitlist.

After we'd sunk a couple of 70'- , we made for the ground, just across the river from the town centre and round the back of an ice rink. The stadium filled nicely, though the open terrace was closed. At this time of year, it's nice when you can saunter round the side of the pitch and into a sunny spot. In so doing we got a better view of the impressive terracing where we stood during the first half. Apart from the (I guess) obligatory guy with a drum in a kilt, there was also a woman with an old-fashioned football rattle, something I got for Christmas when I was six, but that I've never seen at a ground.

The match was excellent, ending 3-3 - though very much a case of two-nil up (including a missed penalty, and you all know the rest) when St. Johnstone got their equaliser on 89. The Doonhamers' Steve Dobbie looked especially worthy of the 'great touch for a big man' cliches. His opener, a smart lob from twenty yards after three minutes, was the first of many great touches - skilful, strong, but not too quick, a bit like our own Pawel Abbott.

An appreciative and upbeat crowd in a superb football setting helped make this a great experience. As Scottish fans will know, it's just great to have football back a week earlier than everyone else. As one columnist wrote in last month's WSC, "we need football like we need air."

That just about sums it up, regardless of the absurdities.

Ten notes lighter

2007-08-19T22:11:00.001+01:00

Stafford Rangers 1 vs 3 Walsall

24 July 2007

A scintillating pre-season encounter that featured what is perhaps a non-league first - an amazing footballing cloud formation ghosting in unnoticed at the back stick... say no more (somehow I can't bring myself to write anything anyway, except that one really does feel ten notes lighter at the end of it).

Urban Countryside

2007-06-03T22:05:00.001+01:00

A few weeks ago, Mike Wolfe - who I often find myself agreeing with - wrote a strange opinion piece (sadly not on the website) in the local rag, criticising plans to create green corridors between Central Forest Park and Hanley Park.

Stoke-on-Trent's urban countryside is one of its best features. It also helps the place retain a humane sense of scale and space. In fact I'm off there in a min.

Anyway, there was a good show about urban biodiversity on the radio the other night, which makes these points far more elegantly than I can.

A500 Apartheid Road

2007-05-29T22:04:00.001+01:00

Alec enquired today about what else I rant about if not the more masochistic extremes of our national game. It's as if I have a one-track mind and the only break I give my mind is the lunch-time trip to Soo's Shop for a carnivorous treat. No, fair point though, actually, all things considered.

Well, the debate that I totally own on a regular basis - mysteriously unblogged until today - concerns the relative merits of Stoke-onTrent and our dear, near neighbour, Newcastle-under-Lyme, home of those two twins off Big Brother (ha - and we're like, "one-nil!").

It does seem to be emphatically the case that our sub-region is a divided one. The 'professionals' flock in their waves to 'nicer' Newcastle via Checkpoints Penkhull and Porthill, eschewing the glories of this illustrious city for all they are worth.

I just don't understand what makes Newcastle such an attractive proposition by comparison. Don't get me wrong, I don't *mind* Newcastle particularly. What winds me up is the widely-held and frankly barmy perception that Stoke is the abyss to Newcastle's Arcadia. That is to say, it's just bollocks.

Nil thread!

This man is a genius

2007-05-29T22:03:00.001+01:00

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuXSZJjSWf8]

Arrington de Dionyso, Taylor Johns House, Coventry
Sunday 27 May 2007

I first encountered Arrington de Dionyso (formerly of Old Time Relijun) at Festival Mo'fo in 2005, when Holty and I stood stunned before the stage as the performer greeted the crowd in broken French and proceeded to open his improvised set by blasting and snorting down the wrong end of his saxophone (or bass clarinet, whatever). We rapidly retreated for the bar, trying suppress a tipsy snigger each.

Fast forward to May 2007 and long-time mate Matt has texted me saying he's back in the country for a few days. A quick ride on the internet is enough to enlighten me: there's a gig(gle) on in Coventry and one Mr. de Dionyso of Portland, Oregon is headlining. Woop! Time to give him another spin - and drag along an unsuspecting primary school teacher too. Mwahahaha!

Tonight's venue, Taylor Johns House, is situated in Coventry's canal basin, an area regenerated in the late eighties but cut off from the rest of the city centre by the ever-dispiriting marble-chute of a ring road. The bridge providing access is wobbly enough to put its more famous London counterpart in the shadows - amateurs! The canal basin did however find fame on the back of a Specials LP. In all, though, it's A Rainy Night in Covo, and the wind wasn't whistling any charms (yeah, I know, wrong band).

We roll up during the soundcheck and are a little disconcerted to discover that the venue has been kitted out specially with those wooden chairs you used to have in school assembly's. I half expected to be told to pick up your chairs, 6P, and file back to the classroom. As it stands, we're politely ejected and informed that things are to kick off at 8.15. So we sod off to Wetherspoon's in the pouring rain, only to find there are no real ales on. Nnngh. Pivovar Herold is a worthy substitute. How very Bohemian.

Back to Taylor Johns and Mr. de Dionyso is busy fingering his iBook, pretty much the only other person in the bar. It's a bit like following Darlo away in the LDV vans trophy, when the only other people in the Maxpax queue are the subs, texting away on their mobiles instead of warming up or something. Nice venue though - bijou, housed in a couple of old coal vaults, and with (in the bar at least) nice chairs of comfy varieties.

Gradually, a few punters drizzle in, invariably looking like the sort of people that read The Wire. The only exceptions, us aside, are the group that can only be music lecturers, and the two EMO kids, who have probably come because it's the only gig on tonight. All in all, that makes about 16.

The first act is about to start. One of the staff is very anxious that we all amble over to the other vault: Adrian Palka awaits, with his home-made "bow chime" - a clutch of metal rods, a bow, a drumstick, and an amplifying "thing" that reminds me of a Roman centurion's shield, only much tweer. Palka produces an improvised series of textures, a strokes his instrument as if it it were an embryonic painting. The aural textures are gorgeous, but it's not my thing visually. I do think he should run some ante-natal neuromusical programming sessions - it's just that sort of meditative effect. Great anyhow. I like pop music and it takes me time to adjust, but great.

Ignatz is next, a quietly spoken Belgian who plays geetar kind of like a seetar - and treats the resulting vibes with a range of distorted drones and fizzes. It's the kind of soundscape that used to shake our student house when Ben was in his bedroom reading that massive blue book of Chaucer by which all English Literature students are to be identified. The textures are coarser, perhaps a little harsher, but I'm starting to adjust. Getting into this kind of stuff is a bit like the feeling in your ears as the plane climbs and descends.

It's just as well, since Arrington does not disappoint. His set commences with a freestyle montage on the sax / bass clarinet / whatever. He then carefully disassembles his piece, and experiments with each component in almost every conceivable way. Throughout the set, a cast of several instruments is introduced - two carrier bags, some bits of rubber, a sheet of tin foil, and one of those jaw harp thingies.

The EMO kids slouch in their school chairs, arms tightly folded.

Dionyso's star turn is his Tuvan throatsinging - like an impressive, and passable impression of a didgeridoo. Lungs and throat built at Shelton Bar, clearly. This is probably why critics (via his record company's website) describe him as "some fuckin' scary shit." He is.

After the gig, Matt wondered whether the guy was mad or a genius. I love the fact that he can tour the world and make a living on the back of a very idiosyncratic talent. Long may he continue. As a gig, it's not the sort of thing I'd go to regularly, but it's a damned refreshing (and relaxing) change.

Taylor Johns House is a really friendly joint that seems to specialise in this sort of night. Apparently The (excellent) Chap are there on Friday, so you never know, I may be back.

First the Dudgeon, then the Spurn...

2007-05-05T20:52:00.000+01:00

First the Dudgeon, then the Spurn,
Flambro' Head comes next in turn,
Whitby Light shines clear and bright,
Sunderland Light lies in the night,
And if all gans well, we'll be in Shields tonight.

Today I received a consignment of photocopied notes that my grandfather had apparently made towards the memoirs that he never wrote up before his death. All I know of him are the odds and ends, the ships and exotic places named in his old log books, and the occasional song and rhyme passed down through our family. So this bunch of papers, with that wonderful wrought-iron handwriting that nobody uses nowadays, is the closest I've ever come to the old seaman himself:

"South Shields: a back street just off King Street and at the corner of Chaplin Row and near the G.P.O: Merkel's the Pawn Shop. Window filled with instruments of all descriptions, mainly nautical but other things as well, treasures brought home from afar, or so it seemed to me. This shop always had a fascination for me and became my first stop in a journey around Shields. At this time I would be around 13/14 years of age. Always alone out of preference. No-one to please or displease. It was at this shop that I would in a few years time, having acquired a B.O.T. certificate , buy my very first sextant. This would be in the year 1924. Mr. Merkel took me into a back room in which the mahogany sextant cases were piled high right up to the ceiling, rank upon rank. Each one represented a 2nd mate or a chief mate or a master down on his luck. One thing that a mate or a master never parted with was his sextant. In much the same way the cabler with his awl, the gunner with his linstock, the seaman with his sheath knife, and so the navigator with his sextant: all of them tightly bound up with the tool of his trade. There was a saying in those days which ran: "a sailor without a knife is like a whore without a fanny." And so in 1924 in one pawn shop alone, hundreds of sextants, a bitter indication of the state of the Merchant Service.

Lots more to get through, including a description of a visit to South Shields by Gustave Hamel and his monoplane :-)

Death of a football ground

2007-04-30T22:01:00.001+01:00

Nuneaton Borough vs Vauxhall Motors

I'd hazard a guess Manor Park is just the place William Carlos Williams had in mind when he took such delight in the 'anarchy of poverty.' It's exactly the sort of creation you'd expect to find down the local allotments, and today we were witness to the final competitive game ever to be played here, prior to the Brewers' move across town to Liberty Way.

Nuneaton's sun-soaked town centre was brimming with riot police when we arrived; presumably Warwickshire's finest were expecting some spin-off from Coventry's game with West Brom, as there wasn't a great deal of tension surrounding the main event. The ever-clandestine Holty had considered covering his face with a Greggs' cheese and onion pasty, but somehow slipped by unprotected and undetected.

After walking round the ringway and down Queens Road for probably the last ever time, we arrived to find the Cock and Bear End - a fine vantage point - bedecked with countless flags, and playing host to most of the 2,000-plus souls who eventually turned up to enjoy the sunshine.

Vauxhall Motors' coach had suffered a breakdown on the way from the Wirral, and it wasn't until around 3.30 that their squad gingerly entered the arena, red-faced and besuited and to a derisive chorus from the home crowd. Sufficient time, then, to visit a urinal so deep that Skippy is kept on standby in case of lost children.

A lively enough game ensued after some prolonged parading of 'legends,' and an extended encore from the Scotch pipers, whose repertoire was dragged to wedgie point with a wailing rendition of Auld Lang Syne, deep into what should have been first half injury time. On the pitch, Gez Murphy scored for the Boro' before Motors' excellent number ten equalised. Some tidy play followed, but neither team was incisive enough to particularly deserve the victory.

Two male streakers (and no police) later and the match was over. Both teams gathered for a squeeze of Lucozade and a rendition of The Last Post before a netful of perhaps fifty ballons was manhandled onto the pitch by some enthusiastic young 'uns.

Three neckless specimens in hi-vis jackets tried manfully to free the contents, and after five minutes managed to liberate a lone balloon. This in turn quivered back and forth on a breeze of indecision, briefly motioning towards the sanctuary of a corrugated stand roof, before bravely mounting a noble cross-wind (and doubtless popping on a TV aerial somewhere quixotic like Bedworth).

Then the customary pitch invasion, and that was that. "We'll be coming back next year," raged a small quorum of die-hards, as the curious onlookers (myself included) dissipated towards our rail replacement buses.

The words that you heard when you were young

2007-04-29T22:00:00.001+01:00

The Levellers, Warwick Arts Centre, 27 April 2007.

At what point should one become concerned about one's experience of live music becoming a matter of nostalgia? Well, if that sort of thing makes you cringe, be warned; the Wordpress servers are poised to splatter my youth incontinently across the blogosphere. Notionally at least, I hauled forth my Alsatian-on-a-string, adjusted the greasy dreads, pulled on the German army surplus overcoat (ironed by mother), and - erm - popped my Saver Return to Coventry on the plastic.

This gig was the soundtrack to my teens, my adolescence bunsen-burnered and reduced to a crystalline musical form in just ninety minutes. I didn't feel particularly wounded that we'd had to settle for 17 quid's worth of upholstery (standing sold out) and a rather acute view of the stage. I was knackered because I'd hopped a train straight from work, but in the (ahem) 'old days' I'm sure we would have boinged our way in with the groundlings. As it was we'd come from Cardiff, Norwich and the Potteries, and I for one couldn't be arsed.

Living in Stoke-on-Trent, I'm largely deprived of double-decker buses nowadays, and so it was with a distinct sense of old-time glee that I rode high above the leafy thoroughfares of Earlsdon and Hearsall Common, past the spot where Frank Whittle first witnessed powered flight, and swamped by gaggles of prospective management consultants whinging about what a shithole Coventry is (their opinion, not mine).

Presently, we approached the university campus. INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL, proclaimed the puffed-up banners on every lamp-post. Ha, clever, these milkround men! FESTIVAL PARK WITH AN IQ would have been my offering. I've never been one for campus universities, and this one is awash with high-end eateries, multi-storey car parks, its own branch of Fopp (a sizeable adjunct to the bookshop) and a massive Costcutter. An oddly repellent formula, but clearly seductive to students. Indeed, it's 36 years since E.P. Thompson wrote a critique called Warwick University Limited and then packed his bags (fat lot of difference that made, then). It's certainly gone upmarket since my dad used to bring me to work on Saturdays, and I'm fairly sure it was rather upmarket in the first place.

A couple of Black Sheeps swiftly sunk (in the upscale arts centre bar) and the three of us wobbled to our seats in time for the last number by a support act whose name evades me. Once the gig was underway, I became painfully aware that I was tapping my feet sedately to the classics - Riverflow, The Road, Hope Street etc.

There may be better bands, but few are as much fun live and on returning from the bar (where some forty-somethings are complaining about the 'fascist stewards') we perch ourselves in the heavens on some handy steps and bob about while the band belts out Beautiful Day. Jon and I righteously concurred, once upon a time, that this song indicated the band's inevitable sell-out, but it certainly sounds grand tonight. Did I say fun? Well I enjoyed it, and surprised myself by not feeling at all envious of the throng below.

A couple of us once secured prized passes for the Levellers' backstage 'party' (same venue: an ice bucket with a solitary can of Guinness, while the band wandered off to watch Match of the Day), but tonight we simply headed off for a curry with the warm echoes of Classic Gold resounding in our ears.

Any free-thinking radicals wearing army surplus had been no doubt intercepted by security upon breaching the boundaries of the Business School. That or they're too busy pursuing MBAs to bother with this sort of stuff. And me? Well, I'd love to blog into the small hours, but I've got work in the morning.

Campaign for an Elected Editor

2007-04-24T21:59:00.001+01:00

It's scarcely a good day to bury bad news when your windswept local outpost of the Daily Mail gleefully cultivates it by the spadeful.

The ten BNP candidates, we read, are all terribly concerned individuals with strongly-held opinions on fly-tipping in back alleys, hoodies, bobbies on the beat and the return of the parkies.

Working people, just like us. This, of course, is why these charming folk joined the BNP in the first place. Time for a bit of common sense (and so forth).

Two out of three irk-faced mugshots intend to vote for common sense, we read. After all, why on earth would we ever wish to know about all of Mr. Batkin's spectacular achievements in the last two years?

That would make wonderful reading. What happened to journalism? Time to Ctrl+C another replica press release, people - go to it!

In other news, the city has shortlisted architects to, err, do some stuff to Hanley's beating heart - the area round the bus station, that is, for those in the know. Not that you'd ever know that something positive was afoot.

TUTD says: Doubtless Wayne Hemingway was OVERWHELMED by the attentions of the local paparazzi. Oh well, at least the letters pages are full of fun. I vote Mike Wolfe (who actually wasn't a bad seed)!

Dissolution in the Dales

2007-04-20T21:58:00.001+01:00

Matlock Town vs Whitby Town

19 April 2007

Small-town charm springs from the Dales at Causeway Lane, home of Matlock Town Football Club. Insofar, that is, as charm can spring from a motley collection of 'grand' stands and brieze-blocks-for steps. But that's not bad at all, is it?

Loftily surveyed from the heights of Riber Castle's lofty but crumbling crenallations (do all of Derbyshire's buses look like this?) and soundscaped for 90 minutes by the tireless campanologists of St. Giles (which is illuminated into the night), this place oozes 'modest provincial sport' and 'corinthian spirit' like almost no other.

Those who've been to the Gay Meadow, Tunstall Road or Feethams (rest in peace) may pciture the scene, however, and it's a small but vocal crowd that doubtless enjoys it that way - a gaggle of well-lubricated patrons who can visit the Gladiators' Social for a plastic pint of Mansfield Best, then perch themselves contentedly on the steps outside. From here, they can watch the game as it bobbles back and forth against a backdrop of church bells and blossom.

The to-ing ands fro-ing of drinkers elicits spirited resistance and no little defamatory mirth from the bar staff, who have left their realm unattended to hang lazily over a couple of crush barriers (though I hesitate to use the term in the context of Causeway Lane) with little intent to return to their posts.

Every now and again, a squadron of ducks strafes the arena, picked out in the halogen glare as the skies darken. A handful of spectators have taken cover in their cars, with Thermos flasks and a brace of marmite-'n'-mighty-white, no doubt. These drive-in die-hards evoke TUTD's magical mystery tour to Prestatyn two weeks ago (an occasion I probably won't blog about, save to say that Sammy was born in Stoke and therefore It Is Done: he must embrace Rhyl and Prestatyn).

The effect doesn't last long, but it's a nice sunny evening, and there's a similarly refreshing breeze skipping down from the hills. None the less, the occupants of the vehicle in question continue to monitor the Matlock goal mouth as if they're daydreaming a path towards the distant horizon, trying to visualise landfall in the soft-focus of their mind's eyes.

In all, 263 souls witness the razing of Whitby's resistance, and the dissolution ends 5-1 to the home team. The visitors are managed by former Quaker legend Lee "Nogoals" Nogan, who spends an appropriately ascetic evening agitating the gravel on the edge of his dug-out.

Nogan was a sturdy enough centre-forward in his day, but spent so much time running sideways that you suspected he was mounted on an invisible fussball axle. He is joined by fellow former Feethams men Alex Janes, Phil Brumwell, and Matty Appleby, who have amassed league games aplenty between them.

It all leaves me reflecting on how utterly naff Darlo must have been in the last few seasons. Perhaps - despite the introduction of two up, two down a few years back - it remains fair to say that the Football League is all but a closed shop, with the door to the Conference still only slightly ajar. Most of the clubs in the fourth tier really are much of a muchness, I guess, and our seasons tend simply to wilt as spring approaches.

"Whitby were away so Whitby lost again" surmised the Seasiders' webmaster cheerily. I'd imagine he didn't feel much like appending a fulsome report, but, hey, it may have seen the light by the time you read this.

Diary Milk

2007-04-10T21:56:00.001+01:00

Meir KA vs Cadbury Athletic

10 April 2007

Unbelievable, even for me.

I've just returned from a trip to the Springbank Stadium, my second time in two weeks, and indeed only my second time ever. It'd been a while since The Groundhog and I had popped out, and therefore about time our plans coincided. That's my excuse, anyway. That, and it was a particularly nice evening in north Staffordshire as the yawning floodlights oozed pale disinterest throughout tonight's big event.

While the self-regarding Man Ure kicked seven bells out of their 'other' some fifty miles north, Cadbury emerged from the dressing rooms with the purple swagger of a brummie Viola stuck indefinitely on step six. By the end of the night they'd be more a discarded pack of Silk Cut, as KA grabbed one goal for each graduation in the hallowed pyramid.

About thirty tifosi took note, including one undisputed ultra - a pleasant fellow and sometime acquaintance of TG's who really has to be a fan if he's going to do this every week (which he does).

Several miles up the food chain, the 92 clubs that traditionally define our 'national game' are asking for more and more so that they can keep reinforcing the mega-brand values of the Premiership and Champions' League, either directly or as the knock-on effect.

Fans, meanwhile, can less and less afford twenty quid plus travel to watch our fourth-tier teams flounder every week, and while I'll still travel with the mighty Quakers, that's as far as it goes; the rest is just TV.

Egan's post on the corinthian spirit of football in Finland seems to apply equally to the Meirs of this world: "it's safe to say that they will retain the personal touch that often makes smaller football clubs friendlier, more welcoming places. So what if [our] pro teams aren't the best in Europe?"

A place in the sun

2007-04-04T21:55:00.001+01:00

Stone Dominoes vs Squires Gate

4 April 2007

A radiant spring evening announced the beginning of a long weekend and with Sammy and I having fulfilled our obligation to the ducks - who were engaged in a mass exodus from the lake to the rose garden - I myself fled the homestead for what is surely Meir Heath's third most prestigious visitor attraction.

The Springbank Stadium - normally home to Meir KA - sits in a pleasant acreage a little way out of the city. Endearingly, it boasts an improvised 'hospitality suite' picked out in bright red and perched inhospitably above the gents' urinals.

There's also a two-step terrace set some way back from the pitch. The roof of the latter rises only a little over six feet in height, and leaves you feeling like an extra in <i>Being John Malkovich</i>. Behind the dugouts is a proper paddock backed by leylandii, a steep and vacant slope that recalls the way in which most modern stadia began. This also saves the embarrassment of having to run and get the ball from under the bushes (such is Stone's big-time status), as wayward passes tend to drizzle back towards the field of play.

So, under a blood-red sky, a rather sparse crowd of 45 or so had gathered - the chosen few, U2 might say. The game was unremarkable, though fast-paced, and 'The Gate' were easily one up by half time, having enjoyed the best of the play. A gaggle of Blackpool supporters to my right began to ponder loudly on whether to give up on the Tangerines altogether.

For only the second time ever, though, I left the match early at 0-2. Doubtless one or two of you hardier souls will scoff, but I'd pledged to return home nice and early so that we can plan tomorrow's trip to the seaside with the offspring.

None the less, I witnessed one of the finest goals I've ever seen - a 50-yard volley from a Gate midfielder that nobody realised had gone in until the centre was taken. Such outrageous skill was thereby celebrated to a fitting backdrop of rapturous slurps from Thermos flasks.

Can't wait for the trip to Notts County now :-)

Saturday, 3.40pm

2006-12-18T21:53:00.001Z

I stumbled across this post about the Valley Parade fire today, and suddenly realised that the TV pictures of the disaster on the Six O'Clock News must be among my earliest football memories - nothing much to speak of, just the bulging inferno etched somewhere on a childhood memory under the name Valley Parade.

The archive film remains absolutely shocking, though I'm not sure I've seen it since I was really young. Perhaps it's no wonder that I used to have nightmares about fires as a child. But it's particularly sobering when I consider how I love these old ramshackle football grounds nowadays; many of the most atmospheric grounds I visit with Darlo still have an old wooden stand or two - and Everton cram thousands into the thundering wood-floored Bullens Road balcony, which dates back to the 1920s, and gives Goodison Park a real sense of memory.

3.40pm - when the fire started - signifies a Saturday reverie for me. I'm generally people-watching, reflecting on how dull the match is, or just generally ignoring the game. In all likelihood my toes are freezing and I'm contemplating a half-time cup of tea.

Granted, things have changed since 1985, but it's sobering to watch the initially unremarkable footage - management and supporters sat or stood looking equally glum - and know that in four minutes' time over 50 of those people would be dead or fatally injured. Then Heysel happened just days or weeks later.

I'm sure that thought will cross my mind again, and I have found myself wondering what would have happened if that grandstand had been filled with plastic seats in the name of safety - and only the occasional stairway along which to flee, as is the case with the majority of grounds 'improved' since Hillsborough.

Nothing less than chilling.

Lull, lol.

2006-12-01T21:52:00.001Z

My first post in over a month and FAR be it from me to debase this blog by lauding a multinational pharmaceuticals corp - but this product is officially worthy, and **oh!** such good value at something like ten quid per precious, soothing drop. Indeed its every appearance has in recent times been heralded in these parts by a choir of angels.

So now that wee Sammy is colic-free and chitter-chattery again by day (this boy quite literally has an appetite for his books, many of which are currently spread around the house drying off), it's about time I gave this radio station the TUTD endorsement, a little sleepy somewhere to stream to in the small hours. Almost as good as the Metasciences' Intergalactic Lullaby, which I keep plugging but gets greater with every play.

"These things aren't real until you blog them"

2006-11-02T21:28:00.003Z

And they're barely blinking real afterwards, either.

Born Stoke-on-Trent City General on 11 July 2006, at 05.16am, weight 8Ib 6oz.

Early signs of labour began with the final Italian penalty, Kate was in hospital from 2.30pm on Monday, and delivered the baby by Ventoose at 5.16am after too many brave, exhausting hours. She's the greatest, and he looks just like her.

His name is Samuel James (maybe after the dreamer Coleridge; Js. in memory of my brother), but we'll just call him Sam for now.

Off to see him again in a min :-)

The Enemy Within

2006-10-09T21:49:00.002+01:00

Via pendletoday.co.uk

"TWO Pendle men have appeared before Pennine magistrates accused of having "a master plan" after what is believed to be a record haul of chemicals used in making home-made bombs was found in Colne."

Sadly, we can't send this lot back.

Another Disaster, Nine!

2006-09-17T21:47:00.001+01:00

Kidsgrove Athletic 0-0 Leek Town

My all-time favourite description of Kidsgrove records that this place is "happy to never be where the action is." This was never truer than today, local rivalry or none, with a big crowd and a sense of occasion initially promising better.

Leek's following, home or away, invariably comes packaged with a boisterous soundtrack. A collection of foghorns bellows "WHAT AN EMBARRASSMENT, REFEREE" and "ANOTHER DISASTER, NINE," at intervals of about five seconds throughout the match.

There's rarely any foul language here, as offenders this far down the pyramid can so easily find themselves the subject of a glare and a tap on the shoulder with the thermos flask or walking stick.

Indeed, the Kidsgrove number 9 looked rather overtaken by anxiety as he was taken off, chewing his shirt all the way to the touchline, just as my wobbly-headed two-month old sucks the top of his dungarees.

A brace of excellent saves by Kidsgrove keeper Matthew Conkie followed by the withdrawal of Leek's best players Adrian Littlejohn (what, THE Adrian Littlejohn?) and Alan Naginton, and that really *was* it. Oh, and a corner sometime in the first half, which you can see in the picture.

The two sides will replay on Tuesday night for the honour of taking on, oooh I don't know, could be Glossop North End or New Mills (if they're lucky.)

And so England's best cultural and sporting tradition fizzes on; as does a busy footballing fortnight for me, with Darlington travelling to the Gay Meadow new weekend. Plus some serious evenings of payback when Sammy's on to the bottle, I sense... ;-)

Crass Observation

2006-09-06T21:45:00.002+01:00

Parenthood combined with the taking of annual leave heightens life's excitement in ways you could never imagine. And so descended the realisation that we'd two or three hours to waste before Sammy was due in Bradeley for his injections at ten to two.

So what could we do that we'd never done before? Inexplicably, to you and us, we plumped for a whizz round Congleton. Well, y'know, anywhere with pushchair-friendly surfaces will do nowadays - and they say this place has the best quality of life in the region (cue activation of the previously dormant "ooh, there's a nice school" chip.)

Until now I had only ever thought of Cheshire as the pancake-flat motorway county where you keep two chevrons apart (presumably under pain of being sent down to spend the rest of eternity in Alderley Edge, taunted by 10,000 wispish apparitions of Rio Ferdinand with Usher ringtones.)

I once met an otherwise stoical Congleton-dweller at Harrison Park who expressed his heartfelt sympathy that I'd ever consider living in Stoke-on-Trent, almost as if ST6 were the nailsest place on earth.

And to be honest, I've never been able to conjure up any grounds to disagree, chiefly because I've barely ever stopped an hour in Cheshire (Moss Rose excepted), despite now living six miles from it. Having been a Nowhere Midlander all my life (an unholy identity), I naturally look down on Birmingham, barely bothering with the North Wet, simple as.

Anyway, I present my findings below; some clearly authoritative observations about Cheshire (well, a representative square mile or so of it, I'm sure) that emerged once I had finished wiping the liquid culture shock from my brow.

1. It's mostly flat and wealthy-looking like my native Warwickshire; indeed, Congleton is a lot like Kenilworth without the castle and the Walter Scott novel, but with more of an economy. Still feels like a dormitory town though.

2. All of the parents out walking are at least twenty years older than you'd meet in Burslem, and don't seem to feel so compelled to pimp up their pushchairs. That said, I'm sure Cheshire's less-visible teen parents are all the more marginalised for being in the minority.

3. Contrary to received wisdom, there are only as many 4x4s as there are in the Potteries (Burslem surely has more if you count the huge Jeep pushchairs), but unlike in Stoke, they do not dwarf their owners' terraced houses.

4. Congleton's war memorial is far less solemn than in most towns. If anyone can tell me what the conscript perched on top of it is actually doing, then great. For my money, he's trying to stagger through the door of the half-timbered pub opposite, but has grossly misjudged the necessary distance of his forward lunge.

5. You can tell it's a Tory constituency and must have a Tory-led council because the parking's free (biggest issue they can think of in affluent small towns), and the town's cafes are all athrong with would-be electors whingeing loudly about the crime rate and asylum seekers, despite the fact that there's next to none of either in Congleton.

And that, I surmise, dear reader, is really all there is to Cheshire, apart from a nice boat lift up the road. Is the famed "quality of life" in this prestigious county palatine really worth the extra £150,000 you haven't got?

Say "bollocks!" to Sarah Beeney and co, stick with North Staffs.

Milk

2006-08-09T21:42:00.001+01:00

Accrington Stanley 0-2 Darlington

After weeks of high-level diplomacy, Kofi Annan announced yesterday that twouptwodown had secured the official nod for its first night off.

It was time to flee the metropolis and follow the hoards north toward the small-but-spreadeagled Lancashire (former) mill town of Accrington. There, in the alma mater of the Monkees' Davy Jones, the local first eleven were about to play host to the mighty Quakers in their second game of the season.

Preparation!

As ever I had consciously opted to limit my chances of a timely arrival by assuming that the ground would be either signposted, blindingly obvious, or that four halogen stars would make themselves manifest on the eastern horizon.

As usual I was very much mistaken. After acting the tourist in one of those places you'd never go otherwise (Oswaldtwistle is part of the Accrington connurbation - a town unto itself in theory, but a sweetly serpentine kebabfest, basically), I chose the process-of-elimination method from a town centre crossroads, once the "follow the crowd" method failed miserably due to the lack of any obvious crowd. For those in the know, it wasn't quite as desperate as trying to locate the "big game" after alighting at BR Wellington, Salop ("Change Here for Hades").

This revelatory plan clicked into place after I belatedly detected a limp fragment of brown aluminium. This was draped artfully around a lamp post with the aid of a rusty screw. Detailed analysis by experts at the University of Massachussets have since suggested that this may once have been a directional sign to a relevant local attraction, perhaps back in the days when Accy last hosted a football league game, some 40 years ago.

After an hour of pinball-about-town, a piece of Escort-ensconced shiny polyester glimmered keenly in the rear view mirror, offering imminent hope. Lo and behold, there in front of me were the fluorescent jackets, the traffic cones, and a gaggle of ground-bounds. Still almost an hour to kick-off and all.

Excitement!

Only six cocktail-stick floodlights betrayed the existence of a football stadium, squatting wearily behind some rather low-rise local authority housing. Behind the crouching colloseum, a new-build housing development stood disdainful and pretentious, like the rearguard pieces in a plastic chess-set (note to self: when you've got forty smackers handy, get down to Webberley's and buy a proper one).

A single turnstile offered refuge from the imminent downpour. But the surprising presence of a queue (and coppers on motorcycles... and closed-off streets... at a Darlo away game!?) signalled the fact that Stanley, used to a visiting complement of 10 from the like of Gravesend & Northfleet, had run out of coins by 7pm.

A shaven official in a black bomber jacket stalled the crowd in clearly the only way he knew how - by starting an argument with the next guy in the queue over how he couldn't take his bike helmet and keys into the ground ("Err, thing is mate, I'm not being funny, laark, but you could knacker someone with that, couldn't you.")

Inside, I was joined by increasingly enthusiastic Darlo fan Willo and a couple of Liverpudlian hangers-on, who had reached the front of the queue for *cough* the "Main St. Diner" prior to my arrival. We all made our way cheerily to the open terrace, standing immediately behind the goal. The heavens promptly deposited their contents on Lancashire, and the hangers-on began to look regretful.

Entertainment!

It seemed like the travelling Quakers had filled almost half of the ground, though that only required some 760 of them, probably the largest complement I've ever witnessed. The overall attendance was just over 2,600, Quakers gave us many reasons to be cheerful (both Vale defectors turned in good performances), and The Bald Messiah looked like he'd never been away, falling over and getting himself off-side a lot.

Sadly, Stanley struggled with their big occasion, despite the enthusiasm of the "Accy Ultras" (trouble is, there aren't many of you), and will struggle on, especially if they lack resources. It also seems likely that they might see a sub-thousand crowd at some point, maybe scraping their first win around Christmas. It's sad, really.

Other limited highlights included a chat with some ver pleasant Forest supporters at Charnock-something-or-other services, but that's about it, really...

Passion is the fashion

2006-07-04T21:26:00.001+01:00

Down came the flags of St. George, who was a Palestinian, wasn't he ... and brimming with passion?

Faster than Venables could grope for the old excuses ("penalties are nothing but a lottery"). Faster even than vultures Lineker, Hush Puppy and Wrighty could muster their claw-tongued lynch mob to take down the foreign coach they'd been circling for the last fortnight. And OK, tactically he was pissier than a bottle of Bud, but he was also no less than the equal of his predecessors.

England were true to their glorious heritage, contriving to miss more penalties in five minutes than Germany have missed in their entire World Cup history. And Portugal beat our ~~millionaire egos~~ brave boys again, clearly because they, like most other countries, are simply better at kicking and catching footballs than we are. "We deserve it," Beckham had claimed a few days earlier, clearly believing his own hype.

Sven was a calm and collected, if lewd sort of a fellow who - so sniggered Wrighty and Hush Puppy - lacked the 'passion' to manage the England team. The same passion, indeed, that had led Taylor, Venables, Hoddle, Keegan, and indeed the great David Hodgson to such invigorating successes.

Holed up waiting for the birth as I have been, this World Cup has been marked out by the wild variations in the BBC's quality assurance of punditry, which has been either very poor (lynch mobs - I might as well have watched it at the Jolly Carter) or very good. Indeed, the Leonardo / O'Neill combination has been the best, least cliche-ridden half-time discussion in years - more of this, please, Beeb.

Who gives a toss once the underdogs are out anyway? It's time to look forward to the return of proper footeh, i.e. footeh that's actually aware of its own absurdist futility (which - FYI, unbelievers - is precisely what makes football compelling).

As luck would have it, the mighty, mighty Quakers are away to lowly Stoke City in the Littlewoods Cup (or whatever vessel it is now). This will be only my second trip to the Britannia Satdium. The tickets are cheap, the seats largely empty, and the away ~~crowd~~ scattering stoical and humorous in inevitably heavy defeat. This, dear readers, easily beats the hysterical part-time England mob.

A typical lynch mob at our games inevitably peters as follows:

Fan A (singing): "This is shite, Hodgy, get ooouuuutttt!"
Fan B (disbelieving): "We've been shite since 1883!"
Fan A: "What pies have they got?"

Better than the dawn chorus on a summer's day, that. Well, childbirth imminent (I hope), so I'm off directly to ply the bump bearer with bolognese ("Go directly to the kitchen, do not pass go - or any inviting-looking books of poems.").

Then I shall be delighting (equally directly) in this assortment of lullabies, including an infant bedtime cert by a band called Fuck Buddies & Tutu Clash.

Real tenterhooks affair, this.

Dai, Azzurri d'Italia!

Expectation

2006-06-17T21:20:00.001+01:00

[The blog formerly known as] Two up, two down has spent one white-knuckled, vein-pulsing, eyeball-popping week, nervously pottering, drifting off into reverie, and looking forward to the impending birth of TUTD Jnr, as today Mrs. TUTD is officially "term," although that depends on which midwife you listen to. I hope this doesn't last five more weeks.

The only appropriate analogy I can summon is a footeh one I'm afraid; it's like being 1-0 up in a crucial encounter, excited, nervous, mostly gibbering (this post is just one instance, I'm afraid) and just hoping that nothing goes tits up. 90% of any cerebral substance not destroyed by career activity has turned to mush. I feel just like a SMASH robot, actually.

Now although Mrs. TUTD has been masterplanning and strategising her own regeneration for some nine years, I felt rather ambivalent for a long time, so It's A Good, Good Feeling, that mixture of high positivity and healthy apprehension.

Those dynamic, breezy, enviable folk at work keep asking why I'm so nervous and fidgety, but it's a trait that's innate in my case and, hey, it's just the way I'm built. Ta for that, ma. Anyway, this sorta state o'mind precludes coherent blogging of any sort.

Indeed, a certain lecturer at a certain north-eastern university once took the piss out of an essay I had written; "you seem to enjoy a dialectical relationship with clarity," he scrawled (leaving remnants of his satsuma stuck to the paper). "Bollocks" would have been more economical.

How perceptive. Readers will confirm that you were probably correct in your analysis, Dr. ~. Blogs are good for petty retribution, though, aren't they...? Actually, this isn't working, and so I promise to call time on this futile, self-indulgent pap as soon as this post is over.

I'll soon snap out of it by necessity. Meanwhile, is nothing sacred, I ask you? Patents and trademarks can bugger off, "I am what I am because of who we all are," etc. And that's the first time any operating system has every furnished me with The Moral of The Story.

I'll take a deep breath before my next tangent kicks in.