May Contain Notts: Oct - Nov 2011

5 October
Goose Fair opens, and it gets more and more like visiting a decrepit auntie you never got on with. You go once a year out of duty, you don’t really know why you’re there from the minute you arrive, they barely recognise you, and there’s a funny smell.

6 October
The death of Steve Jobs inspires a heroic bit of pre-pubescent bragging from one eleven year-old to another in the queue for the bus; “My Dad’s got two iPads – one in his bedroom and one in the living room”. It would have been so easy for May Contain Notts to turn round point out that the one upstairs was obviously his ‘wank’ iPad and that his parents’ beached-whale of a relationship was virtually over. And you know what? It really was. Incredibly so.

16 October
Occupy Nottingham begins. And without being a snarky twat, I think it’s mint what they’re doing, and it’s so nice to see people rolling up and donating stuff to them and just being decent to each other. 

19 October
It is announced that Darren the Waving Goat has died at the White Post Farm at the age of 11. And I’m sorry, but I can’t let this pass, even in Nottinghamshire’s moment of grief and loss, but in a pig’s arse was that goat waving. Look at the videos of him on YouTube; the goat is clearly – clearly – making the wanker sign at folk.

21 October
Rumpus at the Occupy Nottingham site, when a bloke gets taken away by the police and cautioned in the back of a van for holding a placard with ‘UP YER BUM’ written on it.

23 October
An Aston Villa footballer gets battered in Leeds, drives home pissed, crashes on the motorway, finds himself in Bulwell, panics and runs like a bastard, and is eventually arrested.

27 October
The owners of Oceana go into liquidation. Somebody tell the management that I am offering them fifty quid to take that disco flooring off their hands; it’d look bleddy lovely in me Mam’s kitchen.

5 November
Thieves break into a pub in Bakersfield, stab the landlord in the hand and nick cash, jewellery and – bizarrely - a child’s tooth. Hopefully, the courts will slap them with damages totally a whole pound, to be left under a pillow. Meanwhile, Bonfire Night on the Forest is sponsored by a supermarket.

9 November
A woman from Forest Fields blames the breakdown of her marriage on her obsession with Westlife, which has driven her to having massive tattoos of them on her legs and spending thirty grand on seeing them and buying low-grade-Irish-boyband-related tat. Can you imagine being her husband? You’re on the settee with your missus, and you’re feeling a bit fruity, so you run your hand up your leg – only to discover you’re caressing Ronan Keating’s lumpy slab of a face?

10 November  
Hang on, wasn’t he in Boyzone? Him who died, then. The gay lad. So was he? Oh, bollocks to it.

12 November
Someone nicks all of Derby’s Christmas lights. By the time you read this, all them will be on someone’s house in Top Valley, leading to burns victims as far away as Bulwell and causing satellites to crash into each other 

10 November
The Australian owners of Pound Solar System – er, the Broadmarsh Centre – look at their plans to expand the place one more time, suddenly realise that they might as well spend all that money on giving every pig in the country pig breast implants and an anal bleaching while they’re at it, sober up and flog the dump to the owners of Viccy Centre for £55 million. Who probably wake up the next morning hungover to buggery, slink downstairs scratching their nuts, see a big chatty shopping centre in the hallway still in the bag, silently scream to themselves when they realise they’ve bought a big hunk of pound shop that looks as attractive as Ayatollah Knomeni’s come face, and then go through every bin bag outside frantically looking for the receipt.

11 November
Heartwarming story of the bi-month: a couple in Shirebrook are warned by the council that their garden is in such a state, they risk eviction. Their son - who has the words ‘MUM’ and ‘DAD’ tattooed on his neck – responds by filling the garden with items nicked from other peoples gardens, including a bench, a bird table, hanging baskets, wind chimes and even gravel. After he’s done his community service, he needs to pitch Garden Teef – a makeover show where Alan Titchmarsh and that tosser with the poncy cuffs show you how to break into other people’s conservatories - to a TV company.

13 November
A Channel 4 documentary about Mark Kennedy reveals that, as well as helping the police smash up a school to get at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station protesters, he also spied on people in twenty-two other countries and help shut down a community centre in Copenhagen so the building could be bought up by right-wing Bible-bashers. And he’s a Chelsea fan. He also mentions his life is a ‘pretty big negative at the moment’, what with his missus leaving him after she found out he was slapping it about like a shithouse rat.

14 November
The first ever flight to America from East Midlands Airport takes off, offering a service to Newark Airport in New York. US anti-terrorist fighter jets are nearly scrambled over the Atlantic when 32 confused nanas start banging on the cockpit door and asking if they can be let off at Balderton.

24 November
Our Christmas lights are turned on by the Lord Mayor, Mick Wildgust, which is the coolest name for a Lord Mayor ever. It’s like having a wrestler or a Gladiator for your civic representative. If the Council want to get the kids onside, they need to get him to travel about in his own official Atlasphere, and make him open garden fetes with a swish of a big ornamental jousting club.

25 November
A bloke from Hucknall fakes a burglary of his laptop at the house he lives at with his Mam in a doomed attempt to stop her finding out he was subscribed to porn sites. Mate, if you’re reading this, don’t bother; mams know. I brought home a copy of Men Only in a complex trade involving a bag of lead figures nicked from Games Workshop and buried it as far under the mattress as possible. The next morning, it had appeared under my pillow.