Blue Saturday

i think cov probly needs him a little more, i've never found it an inspirational place whereas hull wd be hull with or without big Phil Silvers. they put a statue of him up in the train station now. to be fair he did all his useful work here and he seems to have felt at home in the place whilst still feeling not at home. only Cov poem I can remember is based on the train station platform i think? could be wrong.

Hull already has a decent claim to Douglas Dunn, Peter Didsbury, maybe Seaon O'Brien and now David Wheatley. Think Cov needs Larkin more tbh.

thing is, as i say, he's obviously a Hull poet in a way that he totally isn't about Cov

yeah, tbh he was rid of cov as soon as he could be and never looked back.

triggered a memory of some 'celebrating coventry' bullshit that the city put on, the main element of which seemed to be putting up lots of those lampost banner things in town with pictures of famous coventrians. the highlight of the whole thing was an oversized poster with an artist's rending of sir frank whittle with one arm around pip larkin and the other pointing to the skies. i loved my city that day.

ah, we sure do love us some engineering in the midlands

"artist's rending of sir frank whittle" - typo would've been even better than the real thing

things I remember about Cov: weird elephant-shaped gym by the bus station, some kind of car museum nearby too, heavily graffitied Specials-era train bridge on the way out of town, ring road, cathedral, couple of Tudor houses and a plaque, pubs not great tbh

the train bridge out of town into earlsdon is still there and still the same as far as i'm aware, although of course there is also a shopping centre underneath it now. v entertaining graffiti, one of the main cultural achievements of the city. fragment of my childhood. elephant-shaped sports centre with olympic sized pool i have found to be the main reason that people from elsewhere have been to cov. pubs still shite.

did you actually live in cov or juss lemmy spa?

neither, my first wife grew up in Leamington and lived in Cov for a couple of years after we broke up, used to travel there to see the boy on the reg

you always lived in hull, noodle vague?

does grandways still exist?

good thread btw

nah i grew up in a small town called Rugeley in Staffordshire, my fam are almost exclusively Black Country based, i came to uni in Hull in 87 and have stayed here since.

Grandways changed back to Jacksons, or was bought out by them, and then Jacksons sold the shops to Sainsburys a few years back, kept the Jacksons brand on the shop signs until last year and now they are just shitty Sainsburys. Jacksons bakery is still going strong tho.

y/n: lenny henry has propelled you thru a canal tunnel with his legs, the quintessential experience of black country life

tragically no, i have never even been to that Banks's Bitter 19th Century Aynoch and Ayli Museum Experience thing

oh it's Aynuk and Ayli apparent

ah. uni took me there too, in 1985. it didn't keep me there tho.

my old man had his 70th birthday dinner on a barge restaurant tho, lol you can take the boy out of Darlaston but

Have not read this thread but do tell me about the dapper young men in the first youutube.

MEGA-GIG

lol my tragic youth

today could've gone worse tbh

Stoned guys with long fringes doing the saggy-arsed shuffle in broad daylight = A++ nostalgia, would lol again

so much scrumpy

Yeah, I thought it was gonna be one of those government health warning films when it started. Half expected a hooded figure to appear stage left and shank one your dancers.

that's a rly good set of records

good hangover music. alarming thing is I have no memory whatsoever past about 8.30 last night and either I didn't spend that much or I mugged somebody at some point

i mean I lose chunks of time after a bender now I'm approaching dotage but man this is totally erased from the record with not even a peep of remembering

nah i grew up in a small town called Rugeley in Staffordshire

omg is this something I knew and forgot, or never knew!? Cos guess where I spent te 3-4 weeks I visited England in 1998? Haha.

(so if you know a guy called R0b P0rt3r I am going to die laughing)

nah I've told you before and you've forgotten! and I don't know the guy afaik, but then I was long gone by '98, except for visiting mom and dad. never see anybody I knew when I go back there. am cool with that tbh

Hah don't blame you tbh

how'd all this work out btw

stayed pretty sober Saturday in the end so things were quite placid really, didn't go out, no harm no foul. the stuff in my head and my heart well it comes and it goes

interesting thread

the thread of disquiet

there's a lot of those

how is rugely anyway? i was going kinda wtf at trayce's idea (in the miserable american cities thread) that the british midlands could be worse than american ghettos, but i've never spent 3-4 weeks in rugely

/rugeley/

sometimes it's good to let that stream of consciousness flow downhill.

Rugeley is small and ugly and stultifying but is surrounded by Cannock Chase and other prettiness which makes up for it.

My first love was from Chasetown. That sounds recognisable.

yeah from what I know of Chasetown it's true

+ i salute this thread, wish i'd been around ilx on saturday, was trapped with can't-take-it horror thoughts on cosy-away-trip to devon. No, dorset.

we didnt end up buying any body lotion, but went on a four hour drive thru connemara after that. No complaints. Should have taken camera prob.

been trying to work a scooby rooby roo joke around rugeley but fuckin mondays yknow

when yr most famous son is a 19th century poisoner you know you've gotta be a great place

was that a ref to ye or us?

wait our dudes wasnt a poisoner carry on

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Palmer_%28murderer%29

as played by

http://image.dealoz.co.uk/image/uk/277/99277.jpg

that scottish dude that managed derby?

that wouldn't even rank among the dozen most depraved things billy davies has done

Apparently Nicholas Winterton was born in Rugeley so poor old Palmer isn't even the evillest dude to come from there