Tag: Students

Middlesbrough Boro Ironopolis

Trying to free up space on my hard drive, found some old footage of Middlesbrough I shot before I left (yes, I used a potato – very funny.) Decided to stick it on YouTube with a Ghostbusters tune behind it.


The Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art is a wonderful way to spend an afternoon. The staff are friendly, knowledgeable and don’t check pupil dilation. Paul Daniels is from Middlesbrough.

Every man, woman and child should try a Parmo before they give up the ghost.

I wish I’d filmed more; there’s another video a comrade and I made for Teeside University: it can be found here.

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Please Ensure That You Write at Least 200 Words per Box.

A photograph of a poorly finished Gibson.
They taught us to always include an image with an article so here’s this one of the guitar I’ve just stripped down and finished. It has nothing to do with the post itself, but then nor does my sex life, which is what it pretty much replaced for a fortnight. It doesn’t have any strings because I was an idiot and thought I’d save a pound by ordering them online.

I remain connected to my Teesside classmates through Facebook and Twitter. It’s fun to see the relationships between them growing; strangers becoming buddies, flirts becoming fucks – all that dirty romance. Continue reading “Please Ensure That You Write at Least 200 Words per Box.” →

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Lukewarm Turkey and an Ode to the Single-Bed

The height of Summer 2000 in the north of the great State of Victoria. Cells like these were home for itinerant farm workers. On moving in to this one I discovered my bed was home to a Redback nest. It was too hot to cry.

Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.

– William Gibson

It’s good that, isn’t it; I love that sentiment. Saw it on a t-shirt the other week and looked it up. Not familiar with William Gibson, but from scanning his wikipedia entry he sounds interesting. I think Rickerby told me about him, back in the day.

Anyway, it was with this thought in mind that I decided to radically cut down on the little white pills proffered by a long line of GPs with an angle on going straight. None of them have ever been able to adequately explain what is ‘wrong’ with me anyway; and, oddly, most seem to lambaste my desire to find a label, calling them ‘unhelpful’. Continue reading “Lukewarm Turkey and an Ode to the Single-Bed” →

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Our Rock is an Alcoholic and We Are Happy-Hour. Part Three

G.A.Harker. Don Quixote: Windmill
‘Tis better to gasp one’s last breath twixt the unspoiled hill and valley than suffer the ignominy of the turbines!

Question Time. BBC One, 10.35 Thu, 17 Nov 2011

Against a more newsworthy day’s backdrop of the biggest strikes in 30 years and my own Senior Lecturer – a former journalist at the News of the World – being arrested in connection with the Leveson phonehacking enquiry (later bailed until March), I have a deadline. I should’ve written this a week ago but I’m shit and lazy and I think I might be losing it, again. Continue reading “Our Rock is an Alcoholic and We Are Happy-Hour. Part Three” →

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Video Killed the Radio Star

Pterosaur’s-eye view of Click Teesside

I’ve decided to put my stratospheric rise to the peak of radio broadcasting on hold for the time being. Perhaps I’ll go back to it once the NCTJ exams are out of the way or perhaps it’s not the right medium for me.

There was the feeling that I was just one slip of the tongue away from getting sued or stomped; I mean, I can’t go to a party without telling some nice chap from Singapore that my Grandfather cut off heads there for Her Majesty, back in the day. It’s like I have no internal filter – my inner monologue just spits out whatever, be it harsh truth, niche humour or phonetically remembered foreign chat-up line. Continue reading “Video Killed the Radio Star” →

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God is in the Radio

The Lord our God
“Give me three Hail Marys and the rest of those chips.”

My Mother once said to me, “You can go to Australia on your own but you can’t go down the corner shop.”

I find that succinct in a way no GP, shrink or bar-room confidant as yet has managed.

I can’t seem to get out of this slump but the show goes on around me so rather than hide in Hyrule or Modern Warfare or – God forbid – an actual book, I gave it my best today. This morning began at 7am and saw me presenting my second solo radio show for ClickTeesside – ‘Your Campus Radio.’ Continue reading “God is in the Radio” →

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Our Rock is an Alcoholic and We Are Happy-Hour. Part Two

Empty bottles and cans; a big bag of papers and a broken piece of redundant electronics – a typical week’s worth for an unmarried male in his thirties. Teenagers produce twice this.

I’ve spent the majority of my adult life living abroad, and for the most part I found it more bearable than not doing so; but if history has taught us anything it is that all foreigners are little more than vile savages before a fear of the Christian Lord and a good command of the Queen’s is raped into them.

One thing that some of them do seem a hell of a lot better than us at though is recycling; from India’s slums to the supermarkets of Denmark, it is understood that there is money in ‘waste’, be it sorting through what others throw away or collecting the deposit on all the dog-end filled empty bottles littering your apartment after a party. Continue reading “Our Rock is an Alcoholic and We Are Happy-Hour. Part Two” →

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