Real England

where is it and what does it look like

Raymond Williams says somewhere that most people who live in it live in quite small towns, but there is next to no significant literature about same.

Of course he was writing before Midsomer Murders aired.

http://i1.trekearth.com/photos/64476/dscf1947scrsfr.jpg

^^^wiltshire apparently (i'm not sure i know where wiltshire actually is) < /the lex >

i don't know how the demographics break down now but i wd say that a significant majority at least want to live in quite small towns. also i suspect quite small towns are increasingly really dissipated cities.

Anyone bothered with Paul Kingsnorth's book on this very subject?

but y'knaa this whole problematic word "Real" - is this intended sarcastically, like is this thread about "what are the sort of people who use the phrase 'Real England' talking about?" or are we positing a defining core of Englishness that has history and still survives however tenuous?

i think it would be facetious to pretend the issue can be approached entirely unfacetiously

i was not aware of paul kingsnorth but now i see he has written a book called real england colon something else, i would guess it isn't the only book/treatise/pamphlet with similar title

work filter has thoughtfully blocked access to my first google search result, some blog with the delightfully making-me-want-to-stab-the-author subtitle "The Battle Against the Bland". i assure you guys if there is a Real England it is not battling against The Bland and that is an excellent virtue in itself.

oh right, that is the subtitle of Kingsnorth's book. okay then i will probably never read it since i infer from the book's post-colonage that the guy is a big douche.

the usual English attention to the wrong details

and some sadness for stuff passing that has not passed or was not what he claims it was before it passed

is john terry 'real england' dyou suppose

i infer from the book's post-colonage that the guy is a big douche.

― Agyness Dei (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 November 2011 13:24 (1 minute ago)

h but f, nv, h but f

basically i was looking at the squad list for peterbrough town and noticed ryan tunnicliffe and lee frecklington and thought maybe those names were shibboleths that uttered in a certain way might usher you into the innermost real england

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01185/arts-graphics-2008_1185572a.jpg

the city hobgoblin as a good place to start! (of course he said british not english, right, re the wrong detail)

"... heir to an immense fortune, gifted by nature with a mind susceptible of noble cultivation, and a body endowed with admirable physical powers with the wretched drunkard who died in a gaol at the age of thirty-eight, a worn-out debauchee and drivelling sot... " <-- i am this very second ensconced in the village that surnamed this regency rake, tho he mainly lived on the other side of shrewsbury

nigel farage isn't real btw, he speaks for only his own constituency, which is seldom more than symbolic

is there a real england that is incapable of any sort of assimilation into colonned literature? a planar england that resists signification or commodification by interlopers from other englands

south dublin iirc

leatherhead is a promotory over a large and brackish inland sea that is never spoken of

beneath the leylines, the true underground

"Winter, 1981: the headless, skinned bodies of two bears are found by the River Lea."

real england is all mates and and blood sausage and big bottomed birds reading thew newsie-wewsies

nah it's hedgerows and birds and complete lack of public services

Oh it's all about the public services nowadays; a bus to take you into town so you can spend all night trawling the happy hour bars, a streetcleaner to mop up your vomit from the pavement, a policeman to give you a place to spend the night. No-one needed public services when an evening's entertainment consisted of watching the sun set over a russet autumnal hedgerow, lulled into a reverie by the carefree birdsong.

http://www.photohistory-sussex.co.uk/UckFrisbyPiltdown03.jpg

"Searching for the Putdown Man"

is there a real england that is incapable of any sort of assimilation into colonned literature? a planar england that resists signification or commodification by interlopers from other englands

Interesting question which I wish I could answer.

I don't know if I would like that England even.

is there a culture that can't be commodified? and i have to be v. v. careful not to paint my cultures, or the cultures i've drifted along the fringes of, as the only real England. the problem is that the word is usually only spoken out loud by a certain kind of cultural capitalist, whose vision of it is just as tangential as mine. bullshit about fair play and honest toil and love of the land that i'd counter with a nation of sneak thiefs, factionalists and urban wastrels. the contestedness is always part of the Reality of the nation, any nation really.

for every sleepy Sunday C of E-attending agnostic Tory there's an apocalypse-welcoming hair-splitting anabaptist

Everywhere north of Enfield is basically a wasteland isn't it? Brrrr... Nothing there. Just a man collecting lumps of mud and putting them into a cloth bag.

yeah but the determination of that which is essential need not be a question of mere majorities

everybody shd read The Uses of Literacy to see how you can constructively get this wrong in a way that doesn't just mourn real heritage centres. obv Williams and E.P. Thompson and Stuart Hall too

the determination of that which is essential need not be a question of mere majorities

quite so, how about the British Isles then as a dumping ground/refugee camp/Wild West for Europe and parts south-east, over millenia, fuelling endless negotiation and conflict over territory, and that is the quicksand underneath Real England that we think of as bedrock?

look mate there's no need to get fucking personal, alright

btw if i was gonna put forward one Real England it wd be old photographs of works sports teams or outings or other ceremonial jollies

it would be the commie permawheezing mustachioed drunk one in tinker tailor, tho no doubt they'd have you b'leev it's smiley or haydon

wait haydon was the commie?

SPOILERS

nah think he was the aesthete on a protest against the yanks more than anything else, wasn't the dude ciaran hinds played proper lefty in stated methods tho

the sparking point of Real England is where the plummy port-swilling foxhunter runs up against the chippy millenarian work-dodger and we drink each others' health and promise ourselves deep down that one day our kind will crush theirs

the phoenicians sailed up round to albion to trade tin for spice before the romans had even got out of bed, and if they weren't trading with aboriginal pre-celt and pre-pict inhabitants, then it was certainly aboriginal+1: an island of proto-druid shopkeepers since time immaterial

stonehenge is actually a kind of cashpoint machine

xp

oh, Roy Bland. yeah Bland is the angry Puritan I've been talking about, defending his country so's his people can crush the effete Squire class one day

but mark, who's to say the aborigines hadn't hopped off the boat from Boulogne just ahead of the celts themselves and so on and so forth??

irish close to turks dna-wise iirc

i think that's exactly what mark is saying, tbf

Of all the Tribe of Tegumai
Who cut that figure, none remain
On Merrow Down the cuckoos cry
The silence and the sun remain

xp he's called smiley, he has to be of outlander extraction

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Arts/Arts_/Pictures/2007/07/17/chalkhomer460.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8Xw7LplzFws/TpDJGHBmFGI/AAAAAAAAArE/CCJlpL9TMeU/s1600/yeo+valley.jpg

^ I wasn't at that FAP

clun forest all-mercian jug band champions, tractor runs on wattle and daub

never get away with haircuts like that up in the Danelaw

post pictures of men who look like offa's dyke

for every sleepy Sunday C of E-attending agnostic Tory there's an apocalypse-welcoming hair-splitting anabaptist

― Agyness Dei (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 November 2011 15:41 (58 minutes ago)

there is definitely a book to be written about those south-midlands dissenter sects, maybe in a sort of gently sardonic louis theroux tone, 'britain's very own wild east and its fire and brimstone pastors '

so a good effort, but not really real

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_4-CuQTcGVYo/TKdQeWpskMI/AAAAAAAAAoM/H64kcUh5Jjw/s1600/AvengersTV.JPG

real english dialectic demands picture of McGoohan dressed as hunt sab.

there is only one named wind in england

This suggests a few more. I sincerely hope that "custard winds" isn't made up.
http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/reports/wxfacts/British-Weather-Terms.htm

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/11/8/1320750745209/Members-of-the-public-wai-004.jpg

Sir Jimmy Savile's coffin goes on display - Members of the public wait to pay their respects

haha when i posted MES's mugg up-thread i genuinely didn't know his new LP was called "Ersatz GB"

nah i was deliberately misquoting "The Classical" and i haven't heard a new Fall album in most of a decade tbh

it has probably always been his topic, of course

the problem is the paucity of our national realnesses, we have nothing so resonant as la france profonde nor even REAL AMERICA

the place is too small and thoroughly gone over to sustain any really vital autochthonist fallacy

"Middle England" as a conceptual culture, rather than a geography, has a resonance with politicians. There's an element of it that links back to the idea of a 'real England', away from metropolitan fancies. Much more bound up with class than 'real America', though.

"Middle England" is a coy acknowledgment of the middle class that doesn't yet quite dare to speak its name

so here i sit in a real England on a sunny Friday morning, but trapped inside the gloom of the institutional looking out at the sun, of course.

is our realness a sense that authenticity lies outside? what kind of culture will we leave for the archaeologists that isn't a bastard-Norman legacy of tea-cups and arcane manners? fate of an island to be the sticking point for a lot of flotsam and jetsam maybe, a 5 mile high mountain of tide-stranded rubber ducks and fashions.

maybe real england is that real desire to never belong, to always get back to sea.

got a familiar soul-crushing view of our education "system" this morning, that impossible mixture of stolid, meaningless tradition frantically being stirred by idiots with no plan beyond the conviction that stirring in itself is the most important thing in the world, as long as you can do it on the cheap.

the most beautiful building in the panorama in front of me is a corn silo.

tbf that educational system perfectly prepares people for 95% of careers

that doesn't help :(

gramnivorous quadruped ftw

maybe real England is something to do with the grey, measured chunks of work as tedium shot thru with escaping to booze each night.

yeah you'd almost long for a good steepling in catholic guilt tbh

some fear of vengeance plus some contempt for order wd be a huge improvement i must say.

as a newly invested minor underling of the boss class i've got to say i'd like to stab the boss class in the throat

have to embrace the cunt to get that close, is the problem

http://old-town.co.uk/piccadilly/

??

Ugh, found those Red Lion photos sinister and unpleasant. but it's five in the morning, tired hungover and dyspeptic, so a good time to catalogue some real England fragments.

I went to the countryside around Folkestone a year or so ago, to find the house a favourite author of mine had lived in (Jocelyn Brooke, himself a subtle unsentimental explorer of sentimental Englishness). But it prompted a lot of thoughts about Real England at the time. I'd got lost cycling out of Folkestone, and ended up a dead end, at an army base, with nissen huts and bored patrolling soldiers, on the other side was a light industrial warehouse/office building, the LoveWorld Conference Centre. Outside that there was a coach idling, with a bored looking coach driver (this image felt very English) and a couple of elderly people standing on a bit of scrub by the road, looking a bit blank. This was all behind an empty outpost of the massive Channel Tunnel complex that sits just behind Folkestone. The skies were very grey and there was a little light spitting rain and a slightly too cold for comfort breeze. That's one imagine of Real England for me - the slightly out-of-town light industrial 'parks', small offices with three or four parking spaces. And that untennanted feeling of places that don't get a lot of people passing through, from one place to another. Office labour with no places to go for lunch, so tesco sandwiches at your desk, while overcoming that wash of beery hangover, brought about by post work drinks and not eating properly.

When I cycled up onto the North Downs to find this village, I passed a field with a rotting caravan painted in UKIP colours in it. That rotting caravan by itself would have been enough to symbolise something about England, but the UKIP colours added an extra obviousness and curiosity to the symbol - THAT'S what you're fighting for? Tiny caravans stuck in a traffic jam on the way to Cornwall?

Then when I got to the village there was a village fete going on, an archetype of Englishness. But I couldn't shake the bad taste in my mouth (I had been arguing with my g/f it's true). The very fact it was an archetype of Englishness worried me. I talked to a few people to see if they knew where the house was, but most of them hadn't lived there a long time, not long enough to know about a very very minor 20th Century writer who might have lived there. And I got the impression that they were city types who had bought in to the English village thing. This isn't new of course (nor is it reprehensible, depending on yr capacity for 'city types') ! But the takeover - the buying into it - seemed complete, as if revived or maintained to keep up the fiction that had been bought into. I get the same feeling from farmer's markets. I like markets! I don't like expensive markets so much - why are these vegetables, and these eggs and this milk so expensive?

So yeah, what's this? The complete appropriation of village culture by the wealthy, as a sort of open gated community? I buy this to a certain extent, although I also know people who make a living from working in the countryside, itself not a romantic or sentimental activity obviously, and also clearly not totally redundant.

And of the rest - well NV's corn silo feels appropriate as an image. + boss class as a consciously boorish casual psychological bullies. A sort of frightened belligerence to them - male and female, although in different ways, and it still feels male driven. The whole lexicon that goes with that - the 'mate' and the 'footy', and the 'what you need to understand is' the mixed up with the dated, ford-sierra sleek meaningless facility of management speak.

Some fragments:

A roads (how you get to those offices, but also walking down them in the middle of the night because it's the only way to get home, drink wearing off, just the humming and clicking of the amber lights).

Complexes of artificial fishing ponds always strike me as bleak, but then I don't fish.

Middle-aged corporate car obsessed men who talk about women drivers. (A subset of the Top Gear world). Is there a part of Real England that they come out of? I mean surely you get the male superiority type in many many countries. But what's their flavour? I guess you get a strong sense of Imperialism from them. That dessicated 'common sense' that is in fact the hangover of a thousand and one fictions about Britain being morally great, right, and no need to reassess. There's the obsession with maps and how best to get places - surely an offshoot of Britain's tangled road system (see A Roads - a favourite topic of these men, with their bottlenecks, cut throughs, traffic lights and speed cameras).

Mark E Smith singing on live versions of Repetition in 1978/79 - (doing that seagull screech he does) ENGLAND! ENGLAND! (goes into bored dreary tones) Look over England, what do you see? LUST and DRUDGERY. (this seems more apposite than his definition of England as 'white bread and cynicism' which feels positively optimistic really).

a+

Wetherspoon News. Editorial. First sentence:

As we all know, a strong current of tribalism flows through the veins of humanity

― Fizzles, Saturday, April 7, 2012 5:30 PM (4 minutes ago)

it does in Wetherspoon's pubs tbf

http://i.imgur.com/cd07j.jpg

A simple solution to a taxing problem by Tim Martin: Successive governments’ misguided belief that increasing excise duties solves all ills within the pub trade actually threatens this vital British industry and the jobs and community benefits which it brings. As we know, a strong current of tribalism flows through the veins of humanity. Even in apparently orderly and well-behaved democracies, the vitriol of political differences is astounding, as witnessed now between democrats and republicans, in America, or perhaps even more vehemently among republican candidates themselves.

http://www.propelinfonews.com/pi-Newsletter.php?datetime=2012-03-30%2008:00:00

tim martin singlehandedly undermines the rationale behind your 'public intellectuals' thread

The Tim Martin pages of Wetherspoon News are incredible. The only writing which comes close to matching it is Ken Bates' programme notes.

Oh yeah, I actually read this article the other night.

In the last edition of our customer magazine Wetherspoon News, I discussed “euro tribalism”, whereby the highly educated elite of Britain and the continent sought to subvert the democratic control of the masses they distrust by diverting democratic powers to remote institutions, such as the European Central Bank and the European Commission. Another great tribal divide, more significant perhaps that Liverpool and Everton or City and United, is that between pub-goers and dinner-party-goers – and rarely do the twain meet. The last Labour government members were dinner-party-goers to a man or to a gal. Tony Blair was no lounge bar lizard, and none of his ministers resembled a pub regular that I’ve ever seen. Gordon Brown wasn’t a pub-goer, but, then again, he wasn’t a dinner-party-goer either, but that’s another story.

Made me spit out my pint of 'Veto Ale' I can tell you.

i've seen (and been) the guys who frequent Wetherspoons at 9 in the morning, you wouldn't accuse us of being a highly educated elite that's for sure

oppet otm. I read the rest of the editorial and wanted to take the rest of it with me, but a v v pissed Glaswegian sat opposite me and asked me to speak to his mum to let her know he was fine because he was too pissed. He then asked me what I was reading and I said Wetherspoon News and he started laughing so hard he began to cry. When he asked me what it was like I was still incredulous from the first article and told him it was like some weird Tory UKIP agitprop rag whereupon he became extremely angry and took it off me and ripped it up. Then he shook my hand and buggered off.

I had had a chance to read the letters page tho - and Tim certainly takes his letter answering duties seriously, with more soap-boxing. Thing is, I vaguely remember however many years ago the wetherspoons magazine being a half decent trade-ish magazine. It's totally fucking nuts now. I'm going to find a 'spoons first thing tomorrow to read the rest of it.

http://i1063.photobucket.com/albums/t516/diasyrmus/Photo1.jpg

Fuck. That didn't come out very clearly. The New England pub, dilapidated, boarded up, with a front yard full of rubbish and weeds, greenery crawling up and from within the pub itself.

so many dead pubs with hopeful "To Let" notices on them now

Some kids found a rotted corpse hanging in the New England a year or two ago.

Ah, they weren't kids, they were unemployed residents of Brentford looking for scrap metal. This story has all the decayed England tropes you could wish for.

http://www.hounslowchronicle.co.uk/west-london-news/local-hounslow-news/2010/01/29/pals-discover-man-hanging-in-brentford-pub-109642-25717583/

No wonder my dad seems to be spending all his time in Wetherspoons now he's retired, Telegraph obviously too tame for him these days.

oppet bringing realness

Unemployed Luke from Hornbeam Crescent, Brentford, said: "We climbed through a hole in the roof and it was really dark and hard to see.

"We made our way down the stairs and saw a light shining at the back behind the bar, it looked like candle light, we made our way towards it as we thought it was maybe someone living there, and then we saw the guy hanging from the ceiling.

"At first I couldn't take in what I was seeing, I thought it was my eyes playing tricks on me. We got out of there pretty fast and phoned the police."

why does this 27 year-old man read like one of the Goonies?

A prestigious gated community development of 14 cutting edge 1 & 3 bedroom apartments, set within the conservation area of Barnes Common.

prestige vs haters of prestige = very Real England, still maintain the reality is the dialectic, no coincidence Marx worked it out fully here.

or maybe Real England is the glazed crust of the ruling order bobbing on the seething lava of the underclass whilst the surface dwellers insist that the world is stable and eternal

i like that one, but i mean i've only been over for the football tbh

hmmn i was going to a thread about the numbing mediocrity of current british domestic architecture once upon a time. you can find some really grotty stuff by gising 'prestigious development'. the insertion of 'community' into the usual PGD scheme is the worst.

rugby league is pretty real

theres a lot of confusion abt realness and representation, as if something being a sectional or communitarian interest means it says nothing about the rest of the population

rugby league speaks for an england beyond its own narrow constituency

Tories eh, not a fucking clue. Detached. That's a big part of this. The detachment. What a grim subject. I've slept on a few London pavements 205 years ago, I remember the 80's, the Strand and Waterloo, everywhere in the centre of London really, just overflowing with then Irish, ex-squaddies, ex-cons, junkies, and the mentally ill that Thatcher evicted. Senile 70yr old rent-'boys' with no shoelaces. Bullrink shanty town, nothing but piss and misery and death looming. I thought I'd really never see that depravation again in London. Yesterday I heard about Serbian people eating rats camped out in a Vauxhall park. Rat poison immune sewer rats, spit roasted.

some real fuckin realness courtesy of a guardian commenter.....

A Google User reviewed 2 years ago
Overall Very good
cheap booze. mid stop on a night. the toilets are scarey very small space with sex toy machine digging you in back.

swan-dived off the wagon

love this joint

http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/40/69/2406959_c761ded9.jpg

http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/45/16/2451616_aeeffffe.jpg

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6108/6339847459_63f11493fb_m.jpg

am frightened of death and responsibility, think that might be what england really is

Where is that please?

on Beverley Road in Hull, two old rail carriages living in an arch under a rail bridge, it's v. rough and ready but the booze is cheap, the drinkers are lovely and the music is 60s/70s joy

it's v. ull and therefore v. england, albeit the mad seafaring slightly vikingy exclave of england

got a horrible feeling i'm going back there in a bit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9pRBL1oYHA

A pattie is a fried mashed potato dish, originating in the north-east of England. It is thought to have been invented in Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire where patties are readily available. The original pattie is a mix of mashed potato and sage blended together and made into a disc or square shape, then covered in batter and fried, much like a fish cake.

Never had an urge to visit Hull before, but that does look cool.

everybody shd visit Hull, i'm available for guided tours on request

Is the Adelphi still there?

somehow, against all odds, yes

wd tour hull with nv.

work drinks last night at a pub that does v good indian food. got gloomy and down on myself so left early. apparently someone's curry never came. i walked for miles down this stretch of road. took shit photos. felt like real england all of it rly.

http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n601/gamalielratsey/2012-10-16211843.jpg

http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n601/gamalielratsey/2012-10-16212102.jpg

http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n601/gamalielratsey/2012-10-16212547.jpg

those huge semis are v. real england

is that like perivale or somewhere

it always seems strange seeing those identikit 30s sleepy suburban semis next to a dual carriageway

both otm - tho it's hounslow/heathrow/a4 rather than perivale, tho i was in perivale the other day. 50m pool for some reason. A wall comes up after the morning 50m swim and makes it into two 25m pools. weird.

walked past one of those semis earlier in the day (they often have sketchy cracked driveways rather than a front garden) and the front room curtains were open and inside it was empty apart from a large tarpaulin covered motorbike or m'bike plus sidecar or something.

i could go and find houses exactly like that along some of the tonier streets of Hull. toney for Hull, anyway. but we have some oddball, tattier properties with almost spire-like or battlement-y roofs

or a minaret, even

http://www.arc-online.co.uk/retrieve/1296f0659fc4fc009d506042dd683382

I keep on urging all my friends to move to Hull with me, on the proviso that it's still the cheapest place to live in the UK. And Spiders is still open.

Through various means i discovered the other day that the lowest priority BBC regional news channel is Hull.

those battlement roofs used to amaze me as a kid. such a literal intepretation of an englishman's home is his castle. used to fantasize about hiding up there and shooting at nazis goosestepping down the street should world war 2 ever happen to have kicked off again

the suggestion of hidden derangement behind the twitching lace curtains seems such an artifact of british culture that it would be surprising not to find something untowards

the realest suburban house would be one recently reclaimed by an absentee buy-to-let landlord after a vietnamese grow-op has fled, nothing but soiled carpets, walls hacked apart to bypass the mains and a damp ganja smell that will never disappear

I keep on urging all my friends to move to Hull with me, on the proviso that it's still the cheapest place to live in the UK.

this does make it difficult to leave, willingly or otherwise hohoho

I keep on urging all my friends to move to Hull with me, on the proviso that it's still the cheapest place to live in the UK. And Spiders is still open.

― emil.y, Wednesday, October 17, 2012 11:32 PM (3 minutes ago)

some of the london councils with housing shortages are sending ppl to middlesbrough i think

the suggestion of hidden derangement behind the twitching lace curtains seems such an artifact of british culture that it would be surprising not to find something untowards

the realest suburban house would be one recently reclaimed by an absentee buy-to-let landlord after a vietnamese grow-op has fled, nothing but soiled carpets, walls hacked apart to bypass the mains and a damp ganja smell that will never disappear

Leadville, the book on the A40 by.. someone, is pretty good on some of this sort of stuff.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/Hope_Island.JPG/640px-Hope_Island.JPG

The 32-year-old from Kent spent her first night of married life in jail and was still wearing her wedding dress when she arrested by police in the early hours of yesterday morning.

She was released without charge as the 29-year-old victim did not want to press charges.

The groom, a 54-year-old man, was treated at the scene for a cut to his elbow by paramedics after he tried to intervene in the fight.

realest

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2245908/Priest-shocks-mourners-fathers-funeral-eulogy-detailing-life-crime.html

http://www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk/Lightwood-death-crash-driver-Terri-Ann-Harrington/story-17523482-detail/story.html

RIP brother. You will be sadly missed. Meir lad through n through and as game as they come.

Same goes for Jim as well, another top notch Stokie.

The lads will be having a drink for you tonight in the Staff.

GOD BLESS

http://i.imgur.com/e2Hcm.jpg

oh god

http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n601/gamalielratsey/F94A4BC5-BC04-4103-8165-525A647862C6-584-000000485DB019CC_zps869d9296.jpg

This sort of red brick and glass building.

also, i've been meaning to update with the latest wetherspoons news, cos the most recent editorial about how wetherspoons pays more in taxes than it makes was a-grade.

Two mums were hauled into court after they fled United star Rio Ferdinand’s celeb-haunt restaurant without paying.

Carla Stanway and Nicole Wainwright, both 24, racked up a £110 food and drink bill at Rosso on?Spring Gardens in Manchester city centre – but were so boozed up they were told to leave, a court heard.

They refused to pay and left the trendy nightspot, but police quickly tracked them down to Sacha’s Hotel, off Market Street.

Manchester magistrates court heard how officers also found a crude, home-made weapon – a metal ball in a knotted sock – in Stanway’s bag, which she claimed was ‘for self-defence’.

At the time of the offence, the two mums were already on bail for a vile racist rant outside Sugar Buddha on Deansgate Locks a month earlier.

Stanway, a single mum, told one of the bouncers ‘go back to your own country Polish b******’. But when collared by police a few moments later, she begged: “Please don’t arrest me, I have a three-week-old baby.”

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/suspended-jail-sentence-drunken-mums-1322799

http://media.global.tilllate.com/eventflyers/1h1gmbvp25w0tm4i8g1mk8nrg_19jfni14t1.jpeg

vile racist bantz

i know he supports chelsea but maybe give trev the benefit of the doubt there deems

a metal ball. what like a boule? a modern variation on the sockful of shillings or billiard balls I guess and a handy alternative to the tightly rolled-up tabloid struck firmly upwards into the underside of the chin.

Ah yes, the Millwall Brick.

http://oi45.tinypic.com/20ixa3q.jpg

even when i know people wd probly be a pain in the arse irl i can't help warming to them slightly when they become demonised Mail monsters

clearly calling someone a "Polish b***************" is not cool but then neither is being a gutter hack so

yeah i am pretty sure I would find them terrifying but they have some reasonable things to say:

When police caught up with them at a nearby hotel, they unleashed a foul-mouthed tirade, calling them “c***s” and “f***ing horrible bastards”.

yeah, you have to acknowledge the broad sentiment of their argument there

I can't think of a b-word with that many stars in it.

butylmethoxydibenzoyl

yep, plastered public swearing is admirable.

Now beginneth Glutton for to go to shrift,
And caireth him to church-ward his coupe to shew.
As Betty the Brewer bade him good morrow
And with that asked of him whitherward he would.
“To Holy Church,” quoth he, “for to hear mass,
And since I will be shriven, and sin no more.”
“I have good ale, gossip,” quoth she, “Glutton, wilt thou assay?”
“Hast thou,” quoth he, “any hot spices?”
“I have pepper and peony,” quoth she, “and a pound of garlic,
A farthingworth of fennel seed for fasting days.”
Then goeth Glutton in, and great oaths after.
Cess the Souteress sat on the bench,
Wat the Warrener and his wife both,
Tim the Tinker and twain of his knaves,
Hick the Hackneyman and Hugh the Needler,
Clarice of Cock’s Lane and the Clerk of the church,
Sir Piers of Pridie and Pernelle of Flanders,
Davey the Diker, and a dozen others:
A Ribibour, a Ratoner, a Rakiere of Cheap(side),
A Roper, a Riding-king, and Rose the Disher,
Godfrey of Garlic-hithe and Griffin the Welsh,
And of upholders an heap, early by the morrow,
Gave Glutton with glad cheer good ale to hansel.
Clement the Cobbler cast off his cloak,
And at the new fair named it to sell.
Hick the Hackneyman hit his hood after,
And bade Betty the Butcher be on his side.
There were chapmen y-chosen this chaffer to price:
Whoso had the hood should have amends of the cloak.
They rose up in rap and rouned together,
And priced the pennyworths apart by themselves.
There were oaths an heap, for one should have the worse;
They could not by their conscience accord in truth,
Till Robin the Roper arise they besought,
And named him for an umpire, that no debate were.
Hick the Hosteller had the cloak
In covenant that Clement should the cup fill
And have Hick the Hosteller’s hood, and hold him y-served;
And whoso repented rathest should arise after soonest
And greet Sir Glutton with a gallon ale.
There was laughing and louring and “Let go the cup!”
Bargains and beverages began to arise;
And sat so till evensong, and sang awhile,
Till Glutton had y-glubbed a gallon and a gill.
His guts began to gothele as two greedy sows;
He pissed a pot in a Paternoster-while,
And blew his round ruwet at his ruggebone’s end,
That all that heard that horn held their nose after
And wished it had been waxed with a wisp of furze!
He might neither step nor stand ere he his staff had,
And then gan he to go like a glee-man’s bitch
Sometimes a-side and sometimes a-rear,
As whoso layeth lines for to latch fowls.
And when he drew to the door, then dimmed his eyes;
He thrumbled on the threshfold and threw to the earth.
Clement the Cobbler caught him by the middle
For to lift him aloft, and laid him on his knees.
As Glutton was a great churl and a grim in the lifting,
And coughed up a cawdel in Clement’s lap.
Is none so hungry hound in Hertfordshire
Durst lap up that leaving, so unlovely it smelt!
With all the woe of this world, his wife and his wench servant
Bore him to his bed and brought him therein;
And after all this excess he had an accidie,
That he slept Saturday and Sunday, till sun went to rest.
Then waked he of his winking and wiped his eyes;
The first word that he spoke was — “Where is the bowl?”

that makes me want to drink v much.

yah me too

Realest of Englands

the conviviality and licentiousness of daytime drinking is a thing of beauty and wonder, especially on a hangover, barreling about town, and laughing a lot, which I simply cannot sustain any more.

i love that feeling that the pub was still the pub 650 years ago

but for me, for now, ze war is over

hallowed ground. but also v expensive ground these days, wch is why Wetherspoons is such a locus classicus for this thread.

it's a war I can't participate in either - my health is too shaky I'm afraid to say.

would be seriously interested in organising a long-distance walk through some unexpectedly archetypical corner of England in the warmer months ahead - the hard bit would be to nose out a region of potential and then accidentally-on-purpose discover its English integrity

how about walking round the whole of the M25?

not sure you can find real england with a flaneuring/dériving head on. wetherspoons has to own a part of you.

That said, I'd be on for a walk.

Real england dont walk, wtf is this tammylan bullshit

"integrity" dodgy I'd say too. cynical distrust of authority, self-interest and greed, + whacko religion and socialism. the last to I suppose might be considered out of the way, tho for religion there's always east grinstead.

walks always good. High Weald of Sussex holds my heart, tho their Englishness is mixture of projected past and actual past, conserved and surviving thru not being noticed (still just-about-lucrative traditions of coppicing n woodland industry.)

fuck, darragh - u remind me of a thing - that Chris Petit update to his documentary driving round England. thought it was quite good and wis going to do a comparison of that and the weird triangular track/road system around South Downs where Jovelyn Brooke used to live. Forgetfulness and the modern pastoral or something. But it was baloney you'll be surprised to know + required effort. Still might have a go at some point. Got the notes somewhere.

Christ, just seen a chap i think cark it on Paddington Station. Deserved an in memoriam on this thread perhaps. There was an avenue of onlooking smokers formed for the paramedics. it was quite touching.

fine, High Tea at Spoonies it is then. dear christ @ that last post (or Last Post if you will)

RIP Man of Paddington

Yere a wonderful race all the same, full of oddities. Is it protestantism or is it a locality based historical or genetic thing i wonder

ooer xp

RIP Paddington Man. I was listening to Lie Dream of a Casino Soul and posting itt when you went. You will never know.

Older brother was on the piss in edinburgh few years back, auld fella sez gimme that seat lad i'm dying, done and done

we were Protestants before Protestantism, Pelagius baiting the Pope before England existed tho I guess he's a Brit or a Celt not an Angle, like Fizzles said half-cracked millenarian sects bordering on anarchism or communism is the stock in trade and all it all amounts to is two fingers at the lord of the manor and his thugs really

the latter pair as english as the rest of ye

aye well power is its own nation really but i suppose a lot of them was imported French if we want to split European tribes about it

Dont tell the mail

well that is a strong integrity is it not, unless you double-up as one of the thugs xxxp

Requiescat In Paddington, big man

http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n601/gamalielratsey/2013-02-28203922_zps0bc76e44.jpg

I recognize Mike Gatting. Who are the other two? (Phil & Frances Edmonds?).

John Emburey, right-arm spinner, one of the main cricketers behind the two apartheid-breaking tours (only one to go on both?), and Wendy Richard, Are You Being Served and v long-running Eastenders actress.

It was partly for the people, and partly for the look and feel of the people and the pub. Not that I have any particular love for any of them, but it's a photo saturated with childhood nostalgia for me.

WR also famously featured on "Come Outside" (1962). I didn't realise (or had forgotten) that she was such a big Tory supporter. I also wasn't aware that she had died.

The photo looks like a Lord's Taverners fundraising for children's charities kind of thing. Taken in the early 1980s by the look of it.

Bit later, I'd say. And it's from The Windsor Castle, which I think must have been WR's local by the looks of the other photos on the walls, and is nearish Lord's. It's an excellent pub, rammed with curious memorabilia, but not self-satisfied about it - it's clearly been a well-run, well-liked local for a long time, and so has a sort of atmospheric patina or provenance, that can carry off any amount of eccentricity. If it had been newly-designed that way it would be insufferable. The bar staff also have an excellent inclusive reticence about them.

It's a bit difficult to describe exactly what I mean about that patina. It's something perhaps you get more on the continent. I remember a very clean well-ordered, not expensive but smart restaurant I went to in Rome. It had an unchanging history of being well run, being kept clean and smart, with a professionalism that is not professionalism, but a quiet undefensive pride in knowing that a thing (in this case feeding and briefly housing customers) is being well done. And it's as if the good habits that come with that have worn grooves in the place - there are things there that have stood the test of time and do not need changing. When you find pubs like that, or bookshops, or restaurants in this country, it is a rare and precious thing, and redeems even the most indifferent of pubs. We seem bad at it in England - maybe that's just London, with the pressures of rents, and high-density transient population making it hard or meaningless to maintain it. I think a national indifference to food, which isn't entirely unpleasing, is possibly to blame for the restaurant side of things.

I understand exactly what you mean, including what you say about things that have stood the test of time and don't need changing. I don't know about restaurants but there are still pubs that have the quality you're talking about, but there are far fewer of them (especially in London, as you say) due to so many being part of chains. When I go out for a walk in the country, I like, if possible, to end up at a village pub. I reckon about 20 to 30% of the time the pub (if there is one) will still have that feel about it. But the outlook is not good, obviously, with so many pubs shutting down due to dramatically falling business.

Here are a few pubs that I've liked, for similar kinds of reasons to those you mention:

The Red Cow, Harpenden, Herts
The Red Cow Inn, Pontsticill (S. Wales)
The Royal Oak, Paull, Yorks
The Tudor Rose, Upnor, Kent
The Three Horseshoes, Cheddington, Bucks
The Fox and Goose, Hebden Bridge, Yorks
The Half Moon Inn, Balcombe, Sussex

That list is making me thirsty to go to those places and walk around then drink in the pubs in those places. Yes, and agree I think with your figure of about 20-30% and the outlook not being good.

yeah i dunno you can wander any city and find shitty restaurants in great locations, and be surprised by the odd hidden gem, i don't see it as an englande thinge

it was more wendy richard photo > in nice pub > this is why i like it > why isn't there MORE dammit?

i still think there are some specifics beyond there are more shitty things than nice things, which agree is unlikely to be a national characteristic of anywhere (tho the proportion of the two may be significant - feel vaguely gesturing to the 'high street' thread here). i do think there's an indifference to food, which may be to do with the entire archipelago than being strictly English, but is more than a n. of viticulture cultural difference shared by all countries north of that Danube/Rhine boundary. restaurants are a special occasion, not a place to congregate - or rather 'we' tend not to congregate around eating, but drinking.

I always feel sorry for tourists clustering round the menu outside my lunchtime local, clearly not recognising it is English Chain Pub and that tells you everything you need to know.

There is significant otm deposits in each of those posts, but then tbf fascism

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-21753748

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li2XRVt9Clo

http://i.imgur.com/CpvTSdJ.jpg

just want this itt for posterity

Will these hands ne'er be clean?

http://i.imgur.com/T79alD6.jpg

the edl photos from this weekend are redolent of realness but they are far too contrived to be really real, their mourning for salman rushdie and their banners misspelled so ludicrously that they suggest some cheap internet parody of themselves

they even have an lgbt sub-faction, no lumpen street thug can submit to this communitarianism in good faith

in terms of realness

gary bushell's england nationalism party or whatever the fuck it's called >>>>>> ukip >>>>>>>>>> bnp >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> edl

The white working classes are so alienated from society that they should attend citizenship ceremonies with immigrants, according to David Cameron’s poverty tsar.

Frank Field said some working class people were increasingly unsure of their identities.
He suggested that going to the ‘wonderful’ citizenship ceremonies could help them feel like they were part of British society again.

Tuesday 27 June 2006 16:16

Children’s charities and campaign groups have welcomed the appointment of a child poverty tsar following the government’s failure to meet its own poverty targets.

Lisa Harker, who previously worked for Save the Children and the Child Poverty Action Group, has been recruited by the Department of Work and Pensions as an independent adviser on child poverty.

Chris Huhne has asked the Labour Lord Whitty to take up the position of fuel poverty tsar, the Financial Times reports. Malcolm Wicks, former Labour energy minister, and Lord Adonis have both turned down the job.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/michael-wincott/sets/72157609644291183/with/3081002958/

big thing on Twitter of ostensible lefties and centrists picking on any and all antifascist protesters for being middle-class posers, one is only Real if one at least dabbles in fascism, even just a wee bit.

http://i.imgur.com/E0G6NSA.png

Didn't know there was an lgbt EDL! They always claim to have members from minority communities but every single one I saw yesterday was white and male. One guy was wearing a Liam Fontaine shirt which I guess you might not get with the BNP.

It looks to me like they are, to a man, displaced football hooligans - nostalgics largely too young to have fought on the terraces or fucked up small French cities but want to feel like they're part of a firm. They are the antithesis of realness.

yeah not many girls for Saturday's big do; this was their own photo too.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BLRzR6lCUAEYe5r.jpg

Wanderers this afternoon confirmed a two-year deal with the pay-day loan company.

QuickQuid - replacing online bookmakers 118BET, whose deal with the Trotters expires this summer - will have its logo on Bolton's matchday and training kit and will also be involved in club-run initiatives across the community.

QuickQuid ‏@QuickQuid 14 May

Not a fan of Caribbean Chicken? Check out recipes from our customers here to find one you fancy more: http://bit.ly/Z6QcnC

http://www.flickr.com/photos/michael-wincott/3080167369/in/set-72157609644291183/lightbox/

thought this one was a Steve Coogan character for a second

http://i.imgur.com/R6GpzNK.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_izjAoetZY

Greene King striking a blow for Real England:

http://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2013-06-07/suffolk-brewery-accused-of-cultural-vandalism-after-scrapping-more-than-200-traditional-pub-signs/

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Feckenham_High_Street.jpg

Feckenham in the 21st century is a rural community with a traditional English village green, and is a starting point for several bridle ways, established country walks, and rambling routes based on Ordnance Survey maps, including the long-distance public footpath, The Monarch's Way, that passes nearby.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dnHU3g4geQ

(A Black Man's Leviathan)

It is with great sadness that we received news of the recent death of Robin Smith.

A staunch royalist, Robin delivered a humorous and most informative presentation at the AGM held at Wolverhampton in 2010. His selection was titled 'A Pint at the Kings Head' which featured most of the kings of England through the ages. Robin frequently contributed articles to the Society's journal and was busy on another when he became too ill to write.

Robin lived in a delightful farmhouse at Wookey, near Wells in Somerset. The Inn Sign Society extends its deepest sympathy to Robin's family.

http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1059/5117782956_f020f50aa3_z.jpg

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2068/2381927589_4d3da62f88_z.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkyDzpwIVI8

nice

ReceivD 1 year ago

UPLOAD MORE

MOCK THE WEEK IS A BEAST OF A COMEDY

AND HUGH DENIS IS JSUT TO FUNNY

god yeah reading the new argos catalogue is the crushing realness

i adore this thread

just checking through some old pics from *family gatherings* and 'real ireland' kept going through my head tbrr

"real ireland" = everything outside of Dub amirite?

Ya but even moreso with the maternals, so real shane meadows didnt fancy it

Workers in the UK currently work the longest hours in Europe, take the shortest lunch breaks and enjoy the fewest public holidays. Childcare is expensive and difficult to find, care for older people is of inconsistent quality and financial
support during family-related leave is lower than in some other parts of Europe. The quest for higher productivity and the long hours' culture limit the effects of improved rights and can undermine equal opportunities policies.

The TUC estimates that if all the unpaid overtime worked by the average employee were put together at the start of the year, it would be until mid-February before they started to be paid. This is marked by Work Your Proper Hours Day which takes place on that date around mid-February.

we call that the american dream

Str8 justice for ur plundering ways imo

my people was the serfs not the plunderers

xp yeah i know compared to the US we are feckless workshy fops

David Cameron was today challenged by rising star Tory MPs to tackle “lazy” Britain — and bring in tough new work reforms.

The “young guns” from the new Right of the party called for a culture of “graft, risk and effort” to propel Britain into the “superleague” of nations.

They branded Britons among “the worst idlers” in the world and said the country should emulate the hard work ethic of Asia.

“Too many people in Britain, we argue, prefer a lie-in to hard work,” they said. The call for action is being made by five Tories from the “class of 2010” — Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore and Elizabeth Truss.

Their vision, laid out in a new book, Britannia Unchained — Global Growth and Prosperity, will pile pressure on the Prime Minister to step up reforms to boost Britain’s economy.

Ah yes, if only the british could be more like johnny foreign the country would be great again.

NV denying his privs btw, record shown

no, i accept that i am fortunate to belong to the master race, even in a minor capacity

http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1174252425l/372877.jpg

probably need a thread about work, productivity etc

Couldnt be fucked to start one, cuppa?

been thinking about this too. no f'ing ilx time recently tho due to productivity work etc.

Lazy sod

i've been trying to maintain a little more focus too tbh

how many public holidays do the rest of Europe get then?
I was in Italy recently and they had one... on a Sunday

Spain gets a ridiculous number, as do most of the Catholic countries, i think. Russia always seems to have lots too (today, for example).

9 plus the odd day or two at xmas iirc, also lol amounts of annual leave

http://i.imgur.com/hU3BgTa.png

Idk if a gang war started by a petty criminal's mum throwing a bottle of blue WKD at another petty criminal's head is Real England or whether it goes all the way through Real England and comes out the other side.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/noodle_vague/1008890_350767278359922_459629828_o_zpsccac8a28.jpg

photo reminds me - p much all of the Gene Vincent UK Tour documentary, tho this bit (up to 32.00) was the specific bit that just occurred to me:

http://youtu.be/IuYfqJMIiyk?t=31m9s

That photo is p much the sperm donor team that resulted in project milner

love the foppish guy on the left and the preponderance of bottled beer and half pint glasses

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/818963/brawl.jpg

shouldb heiriess 2 25million says...

northwood ruislip ect has become a dangerous rough place to "live" only last sunday my 5 year old daughter was served up a large piece of glass from santa at the orchard beefeater ruislip the manager tanya thought nothing of it,a serious threat by staff To a 5 year old of the beefeater. WHAT NEXT!!!

"live"

(xxp)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3d/GordonBarenakedLadies.jpg

o/t but it looks like it would be fun to hang w those guys

fight is good but Argos catalogue guy is definitely the realest thing here.

http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1282/1251799341_561fc29f48.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7142/6817245137_85a7726fd2.jpg

http://farm1.staticflickr.com/23/33729809_90b9b6b479_o.jpg

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4122/4736373847_642311b7e4_z.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7289/8741226798_dfcbd78af9_z.jpg

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3003/2392813149_9861698480_z.jpg?zz=1

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3078/3151378761_15fb42379f_z.jpghttp://farm4.staticflickr.com/3335/3450709593_19b04bb0ae_z.jpghttp://farm4.staticflickr.com/3547/3306008673_46b255a9c6_z.jpg

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3139/2551545170_18d0c51db5_z.jpg

Jeans, shoe, Metro 'Police errors le Rachel kill', rainy bus window = Realest picture so far in thread.

lol i have one of those

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc1/578679_10151006710147671_660810063_n.jpg

what lovely feet you have NV

shaving them is quite difficult

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc1/420602_165418990234694_2036380287_n.jpg

here's some photos I took years ago during my first summer holiday home from london...pretty 'real' I think
http://autumningothenburg.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/home-sweet-home.html

You Real England smalltowns which actually have railway stations, you don't know how good you have it. Or maybe the areas which got thoroughly Beechinged are insufficiently Real for this thread.

(Enjoyed the photos btw.)

it would be nice to think pointy men's shoes were a dispiriting vulgarity contained only to england

The street with 18 betting shops

THE MUSIC ROOM CREW

Then: You ever sit down and wonder who actually likes Muse? Or Biffy Clyro? Or John Frusciante? Well, consider that every school in the country has at least three guys who wear Fender T-shirts and spend their lunch breaks arguing about the correct way to play the "Under The Bridge" intro. And that there's, well – I dunno – a lot of schools in the UK, and you begin to understand these bands' popularity. At first, I wasn't sure they were still a "thing", but then I looked at the line-up for Reading this year and instantly realised that these young men were still ploughing their own furrow. Still got love for Flea, still not loving electronic beats.

Now: Unsurprisingly, in this troublesome economic climate, it seems most of them are still refusing to give up the snuggly world of education; still enrolled in various obscure universities (Buckinghamshire New, Anglia Ruskin, Glyndŵr) doing studies in obscure technical bullshit (RPG Design, Turf Technology, Josh Homme studies). They all grew wavy ponytails, started Reddit accounts and became the "rock" guys you see in every Wetherspoons; studded wristbands, 3/4 length pleather jackets, talking about UKIP and dragons.

They resent fashion in all its forms; every T-shirt has to refer to something else, be it a band or a Red Dwarf character. The strange thing about this particular subculture is that it doesn't seem to be something that people grow out of. We've all had our stages with different scenes, but mostly they're just fleeting obsessions with a rebel ideal. For guys like this, it seems to be more of a long-term lifestyle choice – a monastic vow of uncool.

that is c&ped from a mostly not very good article on vice.com but anyway

one night recently after missing the last train back from a suburban London town of debatable realness I ended up at the only place where drinking could be prolonged, a night at the local rock club. It was remarkable, exactly the same as it would have been in 2001 except everybody's a bit fatter and a bit balder and a lot more empty inside.

rock club people always seem reasonably affable to me except odd one with genuine booze/drugs/mental health issues

Saturday
Reading
24th August

EMINEM
Chase and Status
Foals
White Lies
Brand New
Twin Atlantic
The Blackout
Lower Than Atlantis
Mallory Knox

i only know three of those and one of them is from an ilx thread clowning a bbc sound of 201x thread

and one of the others is eminem

i think i know the same 3 as you and i only know what 1 and a half of them sound like

Mallory Knox sounds like a short lived US detective show from the 90s

rock club people always seem reasonably affable to me except odd one with genuine booze/drugs/mental health issues

the rock dudes in my old market town (7,000 people) were good guys who would seek out and stand up for the other youngish oddballs and misfits in town - as a mere badly dressed indie geek I felt honoured to tag along with this ragtag bunch of metallers + eastern Europeans + about half of the very few non-white people in town

then you go to the rock pub in the nearest 100k town (except you don't in the one I'm thinking of / living in now, because it's closed down) and the bar staff all completely blank anyone not in the exact same regulation leathers, band shirt and haircut as everyone else there. and everyone there would be white, since I brought up race in the first paragraph.

speaking of white I think I first heard of White Lies in the same month as another White Something band and now I can't remember if I used to like them or if I'm thinking of someone else

Yes. ^

http://www.nickelinthemachine.com/2009/07/petticoat-lane-market-and-ras-prince-monolulu/

After hearing the religious revivalist Gypsy Daniels attracting crowds with his shout of ‘I've got heaven’, Monolulu adopted his own slogan ‘I've gotta horse’, sometimes alternating with ‘Black man for luck’.

http://www.oxforddnb.com/templates/article.jsp?articleid=76829&back=

[Jeffrey] Bernard had brought with him a box of Black Magic chocolates and offered the famous tipster a ‘strawberry cream’. Unfortunately, Monolulu started to fatally choke on the chocolate. Bernard backed out of the ward bidding farewell.

xp if I express my disappointment at that not being a website dedicated to Oxford drum'n'bass I won't be veering off topic right

There were some great photos on that link earlier, particularly the one where it looks like Hendrix has stepped out of the tardis at the 1923 Epsom Derby. They're gone now, must have been some copyright issue.

ignore I clicked on the wrong link.

I once saw a guy do the whole of "Star Trekkin'" by the Firm pitch-perfectly in a karaoke bar in Ilfracombe, Devonshire.

― Pingu Unchained (dog latin), Thursday, 27 June 2013 13:02 (1 hour ago)

Accidental Partridge is thataway

How Rupert Grint became a £13million property wizard: Harry Potter star, 24, magics up a huge portfolio of houses
    Harry Potter star sets up new company Eevil Plan Properties
    Rupert Grint, 24, has a £12.9million property portfolio in Herfordshire
    Includes his own £5.4million mansion and his parents' boutique hotel

http://i.imgur.com/D0zUHgJ.jpg

http://www.kckrs.com/wp-content/uploads/A5_BU9zCUAEuDMj.jpg

is this real or

http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/robbie-williams-concert-fight-sickening-2021035

it's amazing anybody can have anger in their bones after an evening of support act Olly Murs and great pop songs from the 90s and 00s done badly

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/50126000/jpg/_50126108_-7.jpg

haha yes

http://i.imgur.com/N8TR122.png

omg weather pic

I sniggered at this standard xenophobic thread title on a football message board: "Hope Andy batters the pole now."

The Camerons - along with their children Nancy, Arthur and Florence - shared a private lunch with the estate’s owners before heading to the main arena at the festival.

The Conservative leader was then seen admiring a stall of colourful tutus with eldest daughter Nancy before the family were whisked away from the festival’s campsite.

The festival boasts music across four stages and also has an exclusive VIP area.

On the festival’s website, the 'eclectic and eccentric' event is described as a 'dynamic summer festival disguised as a country fayre - a lovingly crafted, top notch, very English open air party, tailor-made for the whole family'.

The site adds: 'Like the best of England, Cornbury is eccentric, charming and irresistible - a homespun melting pot where music-lovers share pies and a glass of champagne with superstars, toffs, rockers, crooners, Morris dancers, farmers, urbanites, fashionistas, gourmet chefs and the little old ladies who make exceptional cakes.'

http://i4.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/incoming/article4310872.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/3-Dale-Cregan-4310872.jpg

ws of shame

Haha on my way back from Cornbury. Will report later.

Was in the exclusive VIP area, saw Clarkson and Alan Davies there.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8475/8124223488_d4009237aa_z.jpg
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4026/4686074900_9d72e8b3ce_z.jpg
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8392/8643551935_edbb979921_z.jpg
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2232/1870487492_c799da1458_z.jpg

RFI: micro-item in this week's NME about David Cameron and Jeremy Clarkson watching HMHB perform at the Cornbury Festival, whatever that is

― DJ Mencap, Wednesday, 16 July 2008 17:04 (4 years ago)

I hadn't really heard of Cornbury Festival before. My gf got press tickets for it + presented it to me as a good thing to do with the kids, so I agreed a few months ago without investigating beyond a glance at the suspiciously boring line-up. As this weekend approached & I found out more, I realised I was going to a music festival for Tories & that there were no bands I actively wanted to see. Obvs the 'right thing to do' was smile & take one for the team & find something to enjoy, but I had been doing that several weekends running & I am selfish. I came up with various plans as Cornbury approached, mostly involving finding and taking hallucinogens and walking into the Oxon. countryside on my own, or hide in tent and read about the Great Tew Circle (since festival is actually at Great Tew) (it was too hot to do this).

On arrival, I realised that I was in a Real England zone, and thought about this thread.

Did my best to 'be present', but I was drifting off even by the appearance of Imelda May (who has played 8/10 Cornburies) and my dislike of that monied Cotswold world was too clear. I quietly pointed out that it was unusual for a festival to be sponsored by an estate agent (Savills), which provoked a blazing row with my girlfriend, right before Beverley Knight. We more or less reconciled, but agreed I had to sort myself out. The next day, I went – without hallucinogens – for a long walk to the Rollright Stones. It was fun: Range Rover twee of those villages; dream-idyll country lanes; friendly yokels who could not comprehend that I had not driven to see the stones; finding a fawn with its neck broken as I was making my way along the pathless verge of the A44 (then almost getting killed by an Ocado van myself); stinking out a farm shop/tea room gas centre w/ my foul and sweating body (I think I saw a chef laughing at me); crossing wheatfields, still green, with massive mobile masts at their edge; a miscalculated route that meant I was still miles away from the festival, & was waterless, sunburnt, dying in the heat when two little old ladies from Woodstock who were stewarding the festival and had popped out to find copies of the Oxford Mail (forgetting it was Saturday) stopped to pick me up (I wasn't hitching; they were just being kind, thoughtful) and brought me to the gates. I drank water, then beer, made proper peace with my girlfriend, then went to see Echo and the Bunnymen. I imagine Cameron was there somewhere too.

I don't really want to rant but it's a terrible festival to me. I mean I really don't enjoy the 'do the hits, like they are on the record, and make sure there's a bit where we get to sing along' atmosphere at this sort of thing & even for the smaller acts I can't really be among tanned Cotswold dads listlessly applauding The Silver Seas. It does something bad to me.

Actual best thing: Wilko Johnson.

This has only been a bit of a real England post.

sounds like living through A Field in England without the comfort of being a spectator

Good old Beverley Knight.

I felt really sociopathic for enjoying her set tremendously, despite the destructive + difficult argument I'd just had.

finding a fawn with its neck broken as I was making my way along the pathless verge of the A44 (then almost getting killed by an Ocado van myself)

this is going beyond real into the realm of contrivance, nothing could be that real

ha, was just scrolling down to c/p that part - mental image of a mutant Ocado van roaming the Oxford countryside running things over

A career criminal who committed his first theft during World War II and has spent 50 of the past 56 years in prison was back behind bars today – aged 75.

Dennis O’Brien is one of Britain’s longest serving criminals and boasts 35 convictions for 70 crimes since he was caught stealing aged nine years old in 1945.

The petty criminal, who is described by fellow lags as ”a bit of a rascal”, has been locked up 13 times for burglary, forgery, arson and handling stolen goods

Your Real England smalltowns which actually have railway stations, you don't know how good you have it. Or maybe the areas which got thoroughly Beechinged are insufficiently Real for this thread.

The realness of beeching'd towns was something i was thinking about a while ago when i visited the South Downs round Folkestone.

A spurious excursion - i'd gone to to see a place of childhood significance for one of my favourite authors - Jocelyn Brooke, the equivalent of Proust's Malbec.

He had this passage about going there:

In the ordinary way our annual pilgrimage to the cottage - that remote outpost of civilisation beyond the hills - was accomplished by train (S.E. & C.R., Elham Valley Line); the journey, moreover, necessarily began at Folkestone, and from long habit I had become so accustomed to it that I should have found it hard to believe that the village could be reached by other means, or from any other direction. This year, however, we were to approach it not from Folkestone but from London; odder still, we were not even to travel by train, but were to be drive down in the large green van which delivered wine for my father's firm. Mr Mummery, the driver of the van, was a bluff, fatherly figure in whom, if the circumstances had been less extraordinary, I should have had the utmost confidence; yet the journey before us was so strange and unprecedented that I was privately convinced - for all my faith in Mr Mummery's sterling qualities - that we should never reach our destination. In the first place, I still couldn't quite believe (despite my newly-acquired metropolitan sophistication) that our village could really be reached except by way of the Elham Valley line…

Notions of place are dependent on how you get there.

That line was closed in 1964, so there's now no easy south-north route out of Folkestone for the motorist (as far as I could tell):

http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n601/gamalielratsey/folkestone-map_zps953bf14e.jpg

The main road out of Folkestone is an effective barrier to anyone not in motorised transport, and cuts Folkestone off from its curious hinterland - both in the physical and psychological sense.

Brooke tends towards a psychological interpretation of landscape and place so that once Beeching's Axe dropped Brooke's village ceased to exist - falling into an alternate universe and maintained only by his books (themselves characterised by the preservation of delicate margins of uncertainty).

Once you've negotiated through the boundary zone and are in the downland proper the roads constantly interconnect so they form a series of triangles that are quite confusing to navigate - you can easily make two left turns and end up where you started without having quite understood how you got there.

The roads felt like networks of memory and forgetting, a pattern of mental processes, of going back and forth to the same points, rather than the process of an A road or a motorway.

Yet these lanes had fallen into desuetude - they had grass down the middle, a decroissance of infrastructure - the people who had moved into the village usually needed to get to the nearest A road in order to get to London - for this the network of lanes was useless. This conception of them as a pattern of remembering, or a network might seem fanciful, but I don't think it is - after all, the reason for that pattern is because they formed networks of communicating between farms and villages - supportive of the area's economy. that economy has changed considerably, the main money in those areas is commuter money and, I got the impression, City money. The network of memory becomes an expression of forgetting. There are farms of course, but they are no longer part of an interconnected local economy - not the little triangles between named fields, named farms, named copses and woodland. Though whether the intangible concepts that can associated with local names and places also die with the last memory of them is perhaps a different matter. It may be the case that things which are less tangible and have less physical presence in the first place are more likely to persist past the demolition of their locus classicus (see Kipling's Dymchurch Flit and They for opposite points of view on this.)

Brooke writes in The Dog at Clambercrown that 'the village of Acrise (pronounced Ay'kriss) evoked more disquieting phantoms' and writes that as a child he was particularly afflicted by night terrors:

On such occasions I would be afflicted by a species of convulsion or nervous paralysis: my whole body would become rigid, my limbs immoveable, and I would lie thus, transfixed with terror, for an hour at a time.

What was curious was when I was navigating these roads in the area of Acrise, there was a definite gloom, a sense of psychological damp, of feeling disheartened, of unwelcomeness, darkness, chill - as if the sensations Brooke felt persisted across notions of the subjective notion of place. In fact these sensations of psychological disquiet, of haunting if you like, are the things that do persist when the infrastructure of their reality is dismantled, and passed into landscapes of the imagination.

The following day I watched Chris Petit's Content, his motorised appreciation of England, and of memory and forgetting, where he speaks of how the main roads of England are also its main landscape, its area of memory, the viaducts down which our thoughts travel as well as our bodies.

Places such as that area of the South Downs are unreal England if you like.

With the forgetfulness of their content they are easily projected upon by incomers (and these places have for centuries had people coming to then in search of their own notions of pastoral). This is the rural gated community, with ersatz fetes and expensive markets - money recreating what it perceives to be a continuity.

Does this perception of 'play-acting' matter - does it render real england unreal england, or real england only in terms of the propensity for it to take typical English characteristics? A sort of peevish morality, which is associated with notions of decency and the 'good old days' - white, monied, a tacit Ukipism that need not admit it:

-- I just wanted to say, he said. Ireland, they say, has the honour of being the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know that? No. And do you know why?

He frowned sternly on the bright air.

-- Why, sir? Stephen asked, beginning to smile.

-- Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemnly.

The trip ended up in absurdity, as I realised a couple of weeks later that I'd misidentified the village from his description, a Nabakovian failure of literary comprehension.

In fact I had never been to the place I had decided did not in reality exist.

Sometimes feelings such as these become extreme, and psychologically destabilising - standing on Clapham Junction, the platform you are on containing an inherent subjective determination of destination, all other platforms containing the meaningless portent of the rails curving out of sight, with even known destinations having the same fictional quality as those forgotten fields and lanes that I’d explored on that day.

Also went to Thorpe Park with my brother recently. V Real England.

Strange serpents and flowers infesting Mountbatten's former new educational Eden/parkland utopia:

http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n601/gamalielratsey/2013-06-21125216-1_zps1d984d0a.jpg

http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n601/gamalielratsey/2013-06-21122054-1_zps4e8b7817.jpg

http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n601/gamalielratsey/2013-06-21125330-1_zpsef36b86b.jpg

http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n601/gamalielratsey/2013-06-21144442-2_zps7050ec4a.jpg

http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n601/gamalielratsey/2013-06-21135708-3_zps6a12fa46.jpg

i was unable to find a suitable picture of alton towers, but it's another english mutant

I can imagine.

I myself am often in a position to hear its screams.

Fizzles that long post is one of the most extraordinary things I've read on ILX

practically moved me to tears

Is it fucking tragic nobody else has commented on this? I'm a bit drunk but fuck it; Fizzles yer a bloody marvel

well it's a hard to act to follow and my initial thought of responding with a marriage proposal seemed a little hasty and might perhaps have been thought peculiar

<3

bravo fizzles

the DSA's Hazard Perception test videos are excellent realness simulators. a dream-like purposeful motion sweeps you from one anywhere/nowhere ringroad, bypass or mini-roundabout on to the next, breaking only for the odd black-trousered schoolgirl on a puffin crossing
http://www.driving-test-success.com/hazard-perception-test03/hazard-perception-test-03.htm
http://www.driving-test-success.com/hazard-perception-test07/hazard-perception-test-07.htm
http://www.driving-test-success.com/hazard-perception-test09/hazard-perception-test-09.htm

Lol I did those earlier this year

Real Scotland bonus edition, welcome to my hometown.

http://s21.postimg.org/qcoufmbpz/IMAG0164.jpg

more realism

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/noodle_vague/P1000511_zps49640b63.jpg

As league champions, the players of Hoghton Cricket Club are well versed in teamwork and presenting a united front in the face of adversity.

And it was those traits – with a bit of “Ashes spirit” thrown in – that stood them in good stead when a group of travellers invaded their pitch and even tried to set up home on the square.

If the gypsies thought they were in for an easy ride dealing with a bunch of genteel cricketers, they were sorely mistaken.

Caught unawares by the first four caravans, the players and volunteers formed a human barricade at the ground’s entrance to stop more of the gypsies getting onto the pitch.

Now they are celebrating by not only holding back “dozens” of travellers, but managing to evict the group who had set up home within 24 hours of them arriving.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10182627/Village-cricket-team-form-human-barricade-to-deter-travellers.html

I happened to visit the estate where I was born this weekend. The first photo is of the back of the chippy (recently closed down), right opposite my Primary school. The place that is now a pharmacy in pic two was where I went to play school about three times before my screaming fits convinced my mum that I hated it.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/0721354036345faa079a242cd12fce74/tumblr_mq8x0aam5J1sy67obo2_1280.jpg

http://24.media.tumblr.com/8f50e678db6b5c16ea283fa6001d2c24/tumblr_mq8x0aam5J1sy67obo1_1280.jpg

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2106/2241733381_5706f52050_b.jpg

I should've taken a photo of my old local chippy, which around ten years ago was knocked down, along with all the other shops and houses alongside it, with the massive pile of rubble and now weeds still remaining. But then I can only offer this thread so much Real Scotland before I get kicked out.

http://i.imgur.com/YRcwjtk.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/HNpgqlV.jpg

Now that one hits home

http://www.flickr.com/photos/90896760@N08/sets/72157634786255146/

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-g2-C1fZ9x40/Ufgs2d3ijUI/AAAAAAAAC6k/kwYdVdFpGO8/w894-h557-no/Brit.Front.jpg

i thought it was some kind of joke when i saw it last night

still not sure what the fuck its about

slow news day?

greenslade explains: http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2013/jul/31/sun-paywalls

obviously there's the possible leaking of some tapes in the offing too

typically crass branding exercise

ah right

dunno man, i'd go with extraordinarily crass meself

Xp weirdly its their way of launching their online paywall. cool that jt made it. cld say wayne bridge is more real but is be kidding myself. mb that "got a new name for a snake" song cld go in the time capsule as the definitive document

this is so full of awful gold:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/5042756/At-dawn-of-Sun-where-The-Sun-stands-on-issues-vital-to-us-readers-and-Britain.html

" The Tories are trying hard to dig us out of the economic mire.

But that didn’t stop us giving them a kicking when they tried to tax working people’s pasties."

The version in the Scottish Sun is the same but different - I don't know if they have their own editor but it looks like they were sent the English piece and asked to give it a lick of tartan paint.

http://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/sun_says/1460642/The-Scottish-Sun-Says.html

Interesting that the English version doesn't say "And we certainly hold no truck with the swivel-eyed fanaticism of Nigel Farage and his UKIP crew."

the question "who the fuck do they think they are kidding?" springs to mind

Scottish Sun also seemingly blithely unaware of the renewable energy industry/sector in Scotland and how it is (A) a big thing and (B) pretty broadly supported.

fracking is the new green

As for Ireland, the north gets the wraparound

Hmm...

Witness the sheer excitement created by Celtic’s heroics against the cream of Europe last season

Lol 15% possession in the Barca win and got spanked 5-0 by Juve after surviving the group stage.

so? It was still exciting

Accepted but not enough to gloss over the appalling state of Scottish football.

Get this fucking Scottish shit off this thread.

"Northern Britain" shurely

Get this fucking Scottish shit off this thread.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, 31 July 2013 12:07 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^ real English

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51czgLpJn2L._SL500_AA280_.jpg

We're Northern Uproar, we're dead real we are

need the full size to appreciate the photoshop work

http://static.flavors.me/dynamic_images/background/5ea0577840074063846e95ccfe004887

Funnily enough, you know, given the state of culture in the city depicted on that album sleeve, it wouldn't be so out of place if those banners on poles actually did just say 'Northern Uproar'

the famous "purple aki" (idk about this nickname) is in the news again:

Akinwale Arobieke, 52, approached well-built men in Manchester city centre, Trafford and Bolton and touched their arms or shoulders, prosecutors allege... He was jailed in 2003 for 15 charges of sexual harassment and on his release he was given a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO). It bans him from certain activities, including feeling a person's muscles or getting them to carry out 'squats' in public

“Mr Arobieke has had, and continues to have, an interest in bodybuilding.

“His interest extends beyond that which is legitimate and manifests itself in a way that we say is criminal.”

iirc he went to prison for manslaughter after someone ran away from him onto a trainline & was electrocuted

thats definitely crossing the line into transgressive bodybuilding

theres something very northern or provincial about him, he seems to have a criminal and folkloric reputation over a large metropolitan area

yet i just cant imagine there being a lol purple aki equivalent in north london, he would simply be demonized but without any of the meta stuff

and an east london equivalent would probably have been killed by now

he is a living bit of folklore; i first heard about him in a pub & the way the story was told I didn't really expect it to be real, felt v strange to see it confirmed. photoshopping him into pics has become a bit of a meme in certain corners of the Northern Internet (tm)

What is the Northern Internet

Collins died for it, doff yr caps

garu g

He proceeded to the promenade above the club and relieved himself on the bouncers who chased after him until he was cornered in a nearby pizza parlour, where he was heard shouting "Help! Help!" Securing him in an arm-lock, they hauled him back to the club and called police, the reports concluded.

http://i.imgur.com/dLysS3v.png

He proceeded to the promenade above the club and relieved himself on the bouncers who chased after him until he was cornered in a nearby pizza parlour, where he was heard shouting "Help! Help!" Securing him in an arm-lock, they hauled him back to the club and called police, the reports concluded.

far cry from all the talk about bowling in "good areas". bizarrely/hilariously out of his public character.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/MC_Party.jpg

lol my frontal lobe started thrashing about like a drunk thing at that photo.

there are some other choice photos by the same contributor on wikipedia scattered around various monday club related articles

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WACL_Delegates.jpg

alas i'm not sure how to get a complete list

http://www.esherwalton.com/

the entire site, really.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dave_sinclair_liverpool_photos/3232893730/sizes/l/in/photostream/

http://www.wiganworld.co.uk/album/1/en35hy8x.jpg

http://www.soultsretailview.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/woolworths_bhs_hartlepool_graham_soult2.jpg

http://s0.geograph.org.uk/photos/56/84/568459_2e6f08f8.jpg

http://v4.sportnetwork.net/mainadmin/img/4841130867008.jpg

http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/23/01/2230182_0ea654b0.jpg

Oh come on. That last one isn't Real England. It just isn't representative of the country. I know this thread has its tongue firmly in its cheek, but no. Too far. It is Liverpool, I guess? Derby?

Loved the old Tory pics above though.

last pic looks a lot like a Manchester street i've visited

Just found on Twitter. I think we have a winner.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BME6U7eCEAAvsf6.jpg:large

Haha yeah I came here to post that. Bonus realness points for it actually being in Stoke at 5am.

A useful indicator of realness is the bar named after its home postcode. Stoke has a strip club provocatively branded as ST1.

what is stoke actually like irl

my kwowledge of stoke = amalgamation of six or seven lil towns from, football team, high level of support for bnp

i need an editor

I haven't really spent enough time there to say. I was sick in the Wetherspoons while eating breakfast though. I think it is so ~nothing~ it eludes any real interpretation. The city university is Keele, full of nondescript 60s modernism. There's nothing to say about any of it.

so is ST1 meant to = STI?

nice

oh yeah keele

a girl who went there was talking to me about her time at university and eventually i realized i had absolutely no idea where keele was

Keele is a university and an M6 service station and nothing else. It's weird.

The thing with ST1/STI is that surely it can't be deliberate, but then how could nobody have noticed during the early branding stages.

maybe they are still in the std or vd paradigms

no nightclub called vd, closest is the velvet dog in cleveland

Keele is far enough from Stoke to be Not Stoke but does represent its own corner of Lucky Jimland

Private eye fitted GPS tracker to off-sick call centre worker mum's car

Almost immediately, the fire service employed a private investigator to spy on her after her bosses suspected that she was working full time running a business from her hobby of balloon making.

If only it was meth-making

Is there an English equivalent to DIY meth labs?

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/818727/thumbs/o-GREAT-BRITISH-BAKE-OFF-570.jpg?7

^you may have a point, there...

the realest suburban house would be one recently reclaimed by an absentee buy-to-let landlord after a vietnamese grow-op has fled, nothing but soiled carpets, walls hacked apart to bypass the mains and a damp ganja smell that will never disappear

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Thursday, 18 October 2012 00:35 (9 months ago)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BR817dNCIAETdVm.jpg

You can find us located in coach F, towards the centre part of the train

the trafford centre is hyperreal england, a £1.65 bn "people's palace" in the parish of eccles, the last & greatest out of town shopping centre in the country

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3731/9319946011_0b55a9fa72_o.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7303/9322739992_eff177736c_o.jpg

opulence largely down to one john whittaker, a billionaire & bruce forsyth lookalike who has sold up & gone to live in the isle of man. it's full of gold leaf, marble floors & murals depicting the manchester ship canal (who used to own the land) as well as various members of his family wearing laurels in front of roman villas &c. the exterior is covered w/ gold griffins that have a faintly 3rd reich vibe. in barton square, they quietly pipe in stirring music so that you are put in an appropriate mind to appreciate the grandeur. it has the busiest cinema in the uk, an enormous ship-styled food-court w/ a sky that changes from day to night, & what is apparently the largest chandelier in the world:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7421/9322739256_619fcd0257_z.jpg http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3770/9322739716_b04953217e_z.jpg

had a semi-transcendent feeling hanging out there for a day this summer, mb due to codeine, but there is something exotic about its 90s optimism & generosity. despite it's ornamentation it feels socially unpretentious, it's not somewhere ppl go to be seen. its filled w/ bathos & foreign ppl taking photos. i don't think mancunians appreciate it. i harbour hopes of it being dug up hundreds of years hence by very excited, clueless archaeologists.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7399/9319945995_3c02447a15_z.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7331/9322739784_69ef1d712e_z.jpg

*peoples', ugh

Thank you for "Cinema Laserquest/New Orleans"

on a Sunday evening when the Trafford Centre closes the nearby M60 routinely slows to a crawl as the mass of shoppers hits the road

I didn't appreciate it when I lived in manc but I feel quite fond of it now

Nigel Farage was a couple of seats in front of me on a London-bound train on Wednesday. I can exclusively reveal he was reading a Thatcher biography, but I couldn't tell which one.

http://www.executedtoday.com/images/Countess_Dracula.jpg ?

ogmor otm

although I think people do go there to be seen, but on the whole people just go there

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EACHHRI?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=B00EACHHRI&linkCode=xm2&tag=musidelmund-20

?

Lakeman i am ambivalent about but calling yr folk group shit like "The Full English" makes me think he's more bad guy than good

If it's a Photoshop, it's pretty seamless

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BU6h6tjCMAE9F05.jpg

The plaque is real but Roger Bucklesby isn't.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/tomphillips/the-roger-bucklesby-bench-plaque-is-real-sort-of

The Jonathan Ross Show
SERIES 5 - EPISODE 2
ABOUT THIS PROGRAMME
2/10. Chef Gordon Ramsay talks about his latest projects, Chelsea and England midfielder Frank Lampard discusses life on and off the pitch, and Julie Walters provides a preview of her forthcoming film roles, which include One Chance, based on the story of the first Britain's Got Talent winner, Paul Potts. QPR manager Harry Redknapp is also on the sofa, and rapper Dizzee Rascal chats and performs.

lol

2/10

wonder what dizzee's up to

http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/resources/images/2680155.jpg

https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/p206x206/1376616_10152285892728146_1555114901_n.jpg

"UKIP 4 ENGLAND" overwritten with "BNP 4 ENGLAND".

The owner of a Staffordshire Bull Terrier that ripped the head off another dog has admitted that the animal was dangerously out of control at the time.

David Savage, 44, threw the body of Elvis, a Pomeranian, under a car, after the attack, a court heard, as a four-year-old girl looked on.

David Savage, who has a previous conviction in 2006 for having a dog out of control, pleaded guilty to owning a dog dangerously out of control in a public place at Halton Magistrates’ Court, Cheshire, today.

The dog, which is called George, bulled through a gate at a property belonging to Margaret Antell when it snatched Elvis in its jaws, tearing the pet’s head off in the attack last month.

pomeranians are some fucking awful shit but this is not a thing that should happen to them

maybe belongs in Cheshire thread

http://imgz.ermiao.com/2013/08/article-0-1B18EF38000005DC-26_638x651-280x285.jpg

yap! yap! yap! yapyap! yap! feed me! yap! fuck off! yap!

o elvis, your microdominant ways met their end in the teeth of an underfed & abused biting machine

There were lots of photos of Elvis on this woman's twitter feed after this was first reported in the summer, she protects her tweets now, though.

obviously no lenient words for the owner

punishment for being such a fucking awful human should probably be being tied up in a cell with own dog (untied). if still alive after 12 hours then freed. good test of human-dog relations, command-giving etc

you might not like pomeranians but that seems excessively cruel to her

well obviously - I said so myself! probably a him given the name btw, and given the mauling - probably tried to be dominant, poor bastard

http://www.border-wars.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/staffordshire_pitbull_terrier_rips_poms_head_off-225x300.jpg

oh shit it was Elvis in your jpg

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/09/17/article-2423364-1BDF1288000005DC-115_306x423.jpg http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/09/17/article-2423364-1BDF134C000005DC-650_306x423.jpg

Elvis in happier times.

want to cry now

a couple of years ago i saw a young mixed race girl with a staffie thought of matt dc' post about them only being owned by racists

/and/ thought

my ex-dog (;_;) was 1/4 staffie and on our walks we regularly met staffies I can only describe as 'delightful' - when treated well their default character is lovely, playful, loyal & really quite amusing

idk if that's innate though or just what happens when you train a dog to be affectionate. talented dogs: discuss

http://www.politicshome.com/uk/article/40195/staffies_come_to_westminster.html

andrew rosindell must be the worst realness queen in westminster, never misses a photo-op that could appeal to the mythical retired cab driver in canvey island

no results for rosindell / pie and mash but second time lucky

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/5318810/MPs-expenses-20-most-bizarre-claims.html?image=7

LAD

is it just me or does the newsie-wewsies pic of the dog bear a certain similarity to:

http://global3.memecdn.com/newspaper_c_177400.jpg

MemberofParliamentforRomfordLAD

http://i.imgur.com/rBOQ5tZ.jpg

Romford’s royalist MP Andrew Rosindell said he “couldn’t believe his eyes” when he pulled an unscathed portrait of the Queen from the burnt-out ruins of the British Embassy, during a visit to Libya last week.

The Foreign Affairs Select Committee member, and vocal advocate of the Royal family, requested a special visit to the gutted building in Tripoli during a two-day meet-and-greet with Libya’s new democratic interim government.

“Everything inside the embassy was burnt out, there was just ash,” Mr Rosindell told the Recorder, “but I saw something white out of the corner of my eye, and underneath the rubble was a portrait of the Queen - practically untouched - I couldn’t believe my eyes.

squatting like a toad

seen that trick before. in his back pocket the whole time

http://i.imgur.com/zfFxZ16.jpg

In September 2010 Rosindell again courted controversy when he sponsored the first Erotica event to be held in the Houses of Parliament. Rosindell maintained that he was promoting the hosts, a Romford based business, as is his constituency duty.[13]

that Libya pic is totally a shop! I found the original:

http://i.imgur.com/PxjpZ8Q.jpg

straight fire sarah!

Sadly,

:DDD

best beloved elvis, guvnor

lol supoib

btw some realness i found earlier

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/noodle_vague/P1000762_zps21266b72.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/noodle_vague/P1000685_zps6aeb9f61.jpg

packed fairground under apocalyptic rainclouds = otm

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/noodle_vague/P1000733_zps7399a2c8.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/noodle_vague/P1000775_zpsac3b7397.jpg

also found old photo of my Nan, mom and Elz keeping it real

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/noodle_vague/P1000683_zps23e45b9d.jpg

genuine sheltered housing interior c. 1995

http://apg.ap1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Dunblobbin-3.jpg

The Tesco value pepper is a product I had tried recently and this is my review.

I have been trying out some of the items in the Tesco value range to see if they are any good and I think some of them are rubbish but some of them I would definitely buy again.

I use pepper in a lot of cooking and preparing meals. I also like it on some of my meals to. I usually use ground pepper but when I saw this in my local Tesco supermarket I thought I would buy it to give it a try out as I use pepper a lot.

The packaging is very basic and this is the case with all of the products in the Tesco value range. This is because it is a 'no frills' range and you are not paying for nice looking packaging. The Tesco value pepper comes in a little plastic pot which is white in colour. There is a white label on the front to the little tub and this has the name of the product on and the usual Tesco value logo and wording which is all in red and blue.

When I went to open the pepper pot I thought it was a bit fiddly because of the way the pot had a sticky label covering the little holes on the top of the pot. Once I got this off though I thought the pepper came out the holes in the pot just fine and this let me garnish my food and season my cooking.

The pepper tastes nice and it gives a kick to my food. I did not like it as much as my ground pepper that I usually use but I did not expect to as there is such a difference in price. The Tesco value pepper does not look that attractive either but again this does not really bother me and I am more worried about the taste than how it looks.

The taste is like other pepper and can be quite hot if you use to much of it. I like this though so it does not bother me at all.

I would buy the Tesco value pepper again as I liked the taste and thought for the money it was a good buy. It only cost me about 20 pence or so for the little tub and this has a lot of uses in it as it is a good little size.

I would suggest giving it a try and think it is a good product for the money. It is not the nicest pepper I have ever eaten but it is the cheapest. I think it is worth a try and will buy it again.
Summary: PEPPER FOR PENNIES

I have recently tried out the Glade Magnolia and Vanilla Air Freshener spray and this is my review.

The Glade Air Freshener Magnolia and Vanilla was a scent that I had not seen before so I do not know if it is a new one or if I just have never seen it. I like flower scents and quite like using vanilla candles in my house so I thought the Glade spray sounded very nice.

I bought my spray in Sainsbury's and I paid £1.23 for the spray can. The can is a good size and is 300ml which is the same size as most air freshener cans that I usually buy. The picture on the front of the can is very nice and it has a pretty flower on it.

I like to keep an air freshener can in my bathroom and I also spray some in my hallway after I have dusted and cleaned it. I do not spray to much just a couple of squirts and my hallway is very big so the fragrance does not feel to strong when I spray it in there. I also use air freshener if I am having guests over and I usually spray one squirt into each room so that I know there is a nice smell for my visitors coming over.

The Glade Magnolia and Vanilla air freshener smells very nice and I liked the flower scent in the air freshener. It is a very fresh smell and is not to over powering and I thought that the smell lasted a long time in the room after I sprayed it. I thought the smell was quite strong and it was very easy to notice so I did not need to use to much of the spray to be able to smell it in the room so I knew the can was going to last me a long time.

The only thing I did not like about the Glade Magnolia and Vanilla Air Freshener was the type of vanilla scent they had used in the air freshener. The vanilla part of the scent was not to warm which is what I like most with vanilla scents. I thought the vanilla was very sweet and sickly and it made the air freshener catch in my throat. The magnolia part of the spray was very nice and quite flowery and subtle and it is a shame that the vanilla in the spray was so sickly cos it just ruined the lovely magnolia scent of the spray. It put me off from using the spray a bit and I went and bought another one instead and will just use the Magnolia and Vanilla one in the bathroom and not when visitors are coming round.

I thought that I was getting headaches from this Glade Air Freshener after I had sprayed it into my living room or bedroom then was in that room for a while I would start to feel a headache coming on and I think it is cos the vanilla in the spray was so sickly and very sweet that it made my head feel sore. This put me off from using the Glade Air Freshener again.

I would not really suggest giving the Glade Magnolia and Vanilla Air Freshener a try out cos I thought the vanilla in the scent was very cheap smelling and it was to sickly and sweet and ruined the lovely smell of the magnolia so it put me off from using it. I would not buy it again and it is a shame cos I really liked the magnolia flower scent.
Summary: A SICKLY AIR FRESHNER

i don't read books any more, just dooyoo reviews

you hardly see white pepper nowadays, i wonder if it's due a comeback

real england fair grounds look a lot like real american fair grounds

no doubt. there are probably certain kinds of realness that are transcontinental

digression (because academic study of the real is not itself real. Usually): thinking about realness of minor celebrities in airbrush fairground art led me to the National Fairground Archive, & its articles on the miami, and airbrush art.

and now the works of Paul Wright.

Whilst the 1990s saw marked new genres and practices on the fairground, buttressed by a terrific upsurge in the spectacle and amplification of pop culture on the fairground via the monopolisation of dance music

this is cock on, the experience of fairground rides pre: Happy Hardcore/2-Step/Bassline is v. hard to remember for me

i love fairground airbrush art btw, it is unique and precious

totally - I'd never looked for it on the web before, heartened to see the enthusiasm for the stuff of now rather than just the old-timey tootling wooden horse stuff (which is fine too, but I also want giant airbrush Cheryl Coles).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/noodle_vague/P1000724_zpsd4f07b91.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/noodle_vague/P1000708_zps3c5e0a52.jpg

packed fairground under apocalyptic rainclouds = otm

― HAVE YOU SEEN ME? Please don't hesitate (imago), Wednesday, October 16, 2013 11:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

Did they airbrush over Mel B to make that Keith Prodg picture?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-24574923

Drunk students who brought Newcastle city centre to a standstill while singing and dancing along to a cult football chant have been criticised by Northumbria Police.

Footage of dozens of people joining in a song praising brothers Yaya and Kolo Toure was posted online.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6ta37kgSBo&feature=c4-overview&list=UU902aI-4snZhxFkiWNzISwA

ugh

Do you have an arts secret you would like to share? review@observer.co.uk

Kate Jackson
Singer with the Long Blondes
Go Sheffo fanzine

Go Sheffo is a fanzine about Sheffield and its potential to be the coolest city in the world. Previous editions have included last summer's 'Sheffield Is Beautiful', which featured photographs of Sheffielders enjoying a brief hot spell, while the recent 'Death' issue was about the potential for reusing disused factory works for creative spaces such as band practice rooms and artists' studios. Last year, Go started a competition called 'Cooling the Towers'. It's aim was to save these sleeping beasts from certain demolition by turning them into a symbol of what Sheffield stands for: a proud and fiercely creative city. The famous cooling towers (pictured below right) would become an Angel of the North for the Tinsley Viaduct. One suggestion was that the towers would light up as cars passed on the M1, one a tower of red lights and one a tower of white. Go Sheffo petitioned the city council with these suggested uses but met with mute response. So the secret potential of the towers may tragically never be realised.

sometimes i just remember fragments of guardian articles from 2006 or whatever and have to look them up, it's like a degraded reverse clairvoyance

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-24624639

Hoax bomb threat bridegroom is jailed in Liverpool

A would-be bridegroom who made a hoax bomb threat to a wedding venue after realising he had failed to confirm his booking has been jailed.

I've found the above story oddly haunting for reasons I'm not sure I can quite explain.

i feel like altho he done a bad thing 12 months was a bit of cunt's sentence on the judge's part

Can totally see myself doing something like this in a similar situation, I think that's part of it. The same queasy feeling I get when I watch certain episodes of Peep Show.

have a vague feeling i may be at least distantly related to that scouse dude. my mum is a scouser and has the same last name. it's not a wildly uncommon name though i.. guess.

"You probably done the bomb scare yourself" is a key part of this tale.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DartfordPriory4878.JPG

not so much as the picture as the series of decisions that led to that person uploading that photograph to wikipedia and then annotating it on the dartford wikipedia page

Basingstoke is peculiar. you exit the station and, well they've basically taken a load of high street shopping conglomerations (debenhams + sundry satellite stores, next + etc) that previously had formed mini-malls and covered the *all* over, so the second you enter Basingstoke it's totally a huge covered mall that you have to walk through to get to the "Top End of the Town", which is old market-town Basingstoke and more pleasant in some respects but full of shit shops and an excellent looking local museum.

that's barely coherent I recognise. the Mary Poppin, yes, bakers is incredibly expensive bad and slow.

my only experience of Basingstoke has been passing thru on a National Express coach i think. didn't look like i'd want to get off and look around.

those towns where they have typical high street chain shops cafes etc in 18th century buildings with low ceilings are quite real

hi Chester

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T6fEp02s6ac/TjB-BU64lLI/AAAAAAAAFIA/2QXazx8Evzw/s1600/Oxford-Pizza-Express.jpg

Oxford's a city of real/not real contrasts.

i went to sixth form in basingstoke, it's a desperately awful place to be a teenager. nothing at all to do there and unless you're going to that cock-awful shopping center it's totally impossible to get to anywhere else in the town without a car. went back two years ago on a cold and shitty day for my mate's funeral, twelve quid for a taxi to the crematorium and an earful of racist drivel from the cabbie. lots of big shiny new buildings there and still fuck all to do

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Northallerton_Pizza_Express.JPG

has any youth culture oriented media outlet ever done a 'least bad provincial town / suburb to be a teenager in' listicle

Pizza Express seem to specialise in this shit. Leamington Spa is another "tawdry shops in neo-Classical buildings" classic as i remember

i know i'm biased but brighton ftw xp

Oxford's a city of real/not real contrasts.

― he had tons of money in the bank and left the toilet seat up (NotEnough), Thursday, October 24, 2013 8:49 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Cambridge has a "reality checkpoint" but it overstates the case imo.

irreal england

http://www.blokesandbirdschicago.com/about/

This place claims to be British, so we'll use a Brit term to describe it: It's a bit shit.

Feels like a rant worthy morning, so lets do that. I feel like the creator of this place was once told about GB, a few words and phrases, and maybe a brief overview of the food, then 10 years later he recounted what he could and tried to base a restaurant upon it. Words and phrases are strewn about the menu with no regard for meaning or context, and it ends up making the customer feel like a jackass when ordering.

Cocktails: Seriously, why do restaurants feel the need to name their cocktails this way? You know what I wanted? Something with bourbon. You know what I had to order of their cocktail menu? "Mind the Bollocks". Now, I realize that this is probably in reference to the Sex Pistols (edgy...), although when it comes to it, drinks are like, one word phrases. So I have to order a "bollocks." Barkeep, please give me a "testicles" on the rock. That being said, it wasn't very good. Too sweet. Their entire cocktail menu appeared uninspired, and named like something from a themed restaurant like a Hard Rock Cafe.

Food: The menu was nice and short, although I might argue TOO short. The curry, albeit tasty (and also stupidly named,) would be unrecognizable as a curry to any Brit. It felt that they had filled out the menu with standard bar food but put "English" or "the Queen's" or something in front of it. Buckingham Baked Mac N' Cheese? Marleybone Mozz & Toms? Posh on Beck? Come off it.

"Amish chicken"
"Fancy curry"
"Queen's Oreo ice cream"
amazing

The thought of an 'English' theme pub serving 'brunch' is enough to make me choke on my bowl of shreddies.

Butcher & Squeeze

artisan cheese, serrano ham, dried & fresh fruit, water crackers & quince's membrillo

http://www.wsc.co.uk/forum-index/27-football/852607-mascots-observing-minutes-silences

Pompey v Norwich Sept 1997 - minute's silence for Lady Di - our mascot = over-sized mobile phone bowing its headset.