"It dawns upon me that I have spent the entire duration of an episode of Bullseye copping a feel of a husky’s breast implant"
8 June
A friend goes to Download. The first thing he sees when he gets on site is a greb wazzing over his greb mates, who are laughing and rolling about in it. He also points out that ‘Download’ is easily the most dated name for an event on the entire festival circuit, and wonders if they’re going to update it at any point. Probably to ‘Furby’ or ‘Cybercafe’.
13 June
The Queen stands at a balcony and waves at people. Her dress was the exact same colour as the front of the 24-hour Greggs on the other side of the Square; I bet she was sucking her teet’ that no one had warned her.
16 June
I go round me Mam’s for Sunday dinner. She’s looking after me sister’s dog, who has a benign lump of fat on his chest. As I’m watching Challenge on her telly, I get fascinated by this lump; it’s the size of a fist. Half an hour later, it dawns upon me that I have spent the entire duration of an episode of Bullseye copping a feel of a husky’s breast implant.
18 June
Someone at the Council thinks it’s a good idea to put up banners for the Olympics that read ‘ACHIEVE’, ‘PERFORM’, ‘ASPIRE’ and ‘CELEBRATE’, a move that the ruling classes of North Korea would look at and think; “Bleddy hell, they’ve gone a bit too far there, an’t they?” I wouldn’t mind, but this is directly opposite the Wetherspoons and its target audience is people who aspire to somebody inventing mobility scooter with a built-in chip pan.
24 June
Don’t you hate it when England get knocked out of summat, and the newspapers all go; “At least there’s Wimbledon”? That’s like saying “Yeah, your partner’s dumped you, but now you can stop at home and pleasure yourself with a handful of broken glass.”
28 June
The Olympic Torch comes into town. You stand there, wondering if anything is actually going to happen, and then three vans come along and throw corporate rammel at you, like a Happy Shopper Tour de France, and you wonder if that’s it. Then some marketing manager comes huffing along holding a stick with a bit of fire on the end, and you say; ‘Is that it?’
30 June
The Olympic torch goes to Derby. Hey Sebastian Coe, thanks for teaching them the secret of Man’s red fire, you irresponsible bastard.
5 July
There’s a milkshake and cookie shop on Parliament Street that’s started serving alcohol at night to idiot student girls who want to get mashed out of their skulls without the tedious process of drinking something that tastes of alcohol, and people wonder why town is dying on its arse. Every time I stand at the bus stop outside - something I avoid doing whenever possible, because I start to feel like Gary Glitter wondering why it’s taking PC World so long to fetch his laptop out the storeroom - I swear down I can hear The Childcatcher out of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang behind the bar, doing his skippy walk and shouting “HERE WE ARE, MY LITTLE ONES! COME AND GET YOUR SHOOTERS! FREE JAEGERBOMBS TODAY!”
12 July
Nottingham Forest get new owners. Let us all hope that their supporters spend the summer exuding the quiet, downplayed, dignified attitude their County brethen displayed when they thought Munto was going to buy them a time machine that would bring Pele, Maradona and Jesus to Meadow Lane a few summers ago.
13 July
A male hairdresser from Newark is reunited with his long-lost dad after the former saw the latter lobbing his man-breasts out on Embarrassing Bodies on Channel 4. How did the penny drop on that one? “Hey Derek, look at this lad on telleh - he’s got your sausage-tits”?
16 July
Some rat-boy parks a car outside my bedroom window and torches it. BLAAOOWWW! The flames shoot all the way up a twenty foot-tall Leylandii tree, until it looks like the party scene
in Rollerball. FOOOOMPH! Three minutes after this happened, a fire crew handled it, and an hour later, the charred hunk of metal was lobbed onto a wagon and carried off. Sometimes, it’s nice to live in a high Council Tax band.
17 July
Dunno if the Olympics brand police have been though Nottingham yet, but if they haven’t, they need to know that a certain sports shop in town is selling shockingly inferior t-shirts with an appalling logo on them, at a quarter of the usual price of a branded shirt. Oh, hang on - these are actually the official ones. No one gives a toss.
19 July
Government figures announce that the crime rate in Nottingham is the lowest it’s ever been since 1977. An impressive stat, especially when you consider that there were only four video recorders in Nottingham 35 years ago and it took six criminals to carry one out of someone’s house, and they also had to deal with being encumbered with beige flares that weighed a ton when it rained, unlike the light and comfortable sportswear donned by our modern-day scum.
20 July
American gun mentalists: the next time you want to go on a multi-weapon rampage in a cinema, but don’t want to hurt anyone, wait until they show something with subtitles at the
Ilkeston Scala.
21 July
The Beach comes back to the Square. Part of me wonders if somewhere in Mauritius or Hawaii the local council is dropping a massive concrete slab and clustering mini-Primarks around it. This year’s main attraction appears to be a recreation of the Titanic, from which the kiddies can slide off. Maybe, after we’ve all gone, their grandchildren will be spending the summer holidays gleefully jumping off an inflatable World Trade Center.
23 July
Police issue warnings to horse owners in Blidworth that someone is going round plaiting horses’ manes at night, leading to fears that before too long, they’ll move on to spray-tanning the poor boggers, and affixing sparkles to their hooves.
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