The Market Square finally re-opens, Wollaton Hall gets a £9million facelift, Sneinton market burns down and Ken Clarke gets beefy about the new tram system
April 3
Princess Anne officially opens Nottingham’s most popular Emo crèche and place for people to fall off skateboards, The Newer Than It Was Before Old Market Square. Presumably by smashing a bottle of washing-up liquid against the side of the fountain and blessing all who vomit in her. It turns out to be a slightly lighter grey.
April 5
Some bell-end burns down a mosque in Forest Fields. Seeing as it’s a converted church, that’s two deities someone has managed to piss off in one go. Why didn’t they just graffiti ‘Buddha sucks his mam’ on the wall and go for the hat-trick?
April 6
Wollaton Hall completes a £9M facelift, but God knows what they’ve spent the money on. There’s no loft extension, doubleglazing, or even a nice fascia. Rubbish.
April 10
Sneinton Market goes up in flames, damaging seven shops. Police estimate that local businesses have lost up to £7.31, and are anxious to trace two youths who were spotted on CCTV rubbing Lonsdale trackie tops together.
April 14
165 people dress up as Robin Hood at Nottingham Not-Really-A-Castle-When You-Think-About-It and set a world record for, well, most people dressed up as Robin Hood. Obviously. The Guinness Book of Records adjudicators move on to Mansfield later that day to judge an attempt on the most people dressed like the peasants in Robin Hood films record.
April 19
Six new talking CCTV cameras are unveiled in town, specially modified to tackle anti-social behaviour. In St Anns, Hyson Green and Sneinton, a robot sucks its teet’ and calls you a ‘Dezzeh Waste Man’ when you drop a fag on the floor, while one in Hockley has been programmed to laugh at anyone holding a TK Maxx bag.
April 25
Some more greedy city-rapists launch another bid to turn Nottingham into the Happy Shopper Las Vegas, with an attempt to build Europe’s largest poker (which, as we all know, is fivecard brag for the sort of gibbon who believes everything they read in FHM) club. “We will be making Nottingham one of the world’s largest poker centres” says somebody in a suit, as if that was summat to brag about.
April 27
According to the Home Office, crime in Nottingham dropped last year by 9%. Well done, everybody. Meanwhile, a security guard gets stabbed in the leg on Clumber Street, which is trumpeted again as Europe’s busiest shopping thoroughfare (translation: “it’s really badly designed, and has loads of trainer shops and a McDonalds”).
April 28
There’s a massive fight at a wake in a pub in Clifton. At one point, John Wayne and another American actor with a ludicrous Irish accent are seen punching each other in the face and throwing each other in the Trent, before having a good old laugh about it and having a pint.
May 4
The citizens of Nottingham stop writing whining letters to the Post that blame Nu-Labour for everything that has gone wrong in their pointless, pointless lives and wreak revenge on the Council in the local elections by, erm, increasing their majority by four seats.
Meanwhile, enough people in Broxtowe scared about someone from Poland taking the benefits owed to them for sitting on their fat arses watching Trisha, manage to stand upright long enough to vote in BNP councillor Sadie Graham, who is also the East Midlands Organiser of the party.
May 5
Notts County end a better-than-last-year-but-still-desperately-cack-season by helping Macclesfield stay up in Division Four.
May 13
Nottingham’s spoon crime problem rears its ugly head once more as the Phantom Fork-Flinger himself, Chris Tarrant, chucks some cutlery at a bloke in Memsaab and is arrested by four coppers in flak jackets. “But why didn’t he go to 4550 Miles From Delhi?”
says the entire population of Nottingham.
May 18
Notts County and Mansfield supporters behave like that Palestinian woman with the Deirdre glasses on 11 September 2001, as rubbish useless bag-o’-shite Forest let in five goals at home to Fred West’s extended family, because they’re shit. Yes, Forest lose 5-2 at home to the mighty Yeovil Town in the second leg of the first division play-off semi-final. Calls at the end of the game for the sacking of manager Colin Calderwood, to be replaced
by former Forest legend Stuart Pearce appear to fall on deaf ears, as Chairman Nigel Doughty immediately comes out in support of the current manager. Nottinghamshire football sucks a dog’s arse, doesn’t it?
May 19
Rushcliffe MP, former Tory Chancellor and well known Forest fan Kenneth Clarke launches a formal objection to the plans for two new tram lines to be built in the city. He does this on the basis that he believes the plans are driven by enthusiasts for ‘prestige and glamour’ and would divert cash from other public transport. Some might say he’s just being mardy from the night before.
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