The news diary that leaves its Christmas lights up all year round and doesn’t give a toss what the neighbours think
1 October
It comes to May Contain Notts’ attention that its old school - Top Valley Comprehensive - has gone and changed its name to Top Valley Academy, which makes it sound like one o’ them sucky reality game shows they have on to fill time before the Lottery results. “Kayden, you were seen coming out of a Waitrose with some vegetables that weren’t in a tin. You are expelled from Top Valley Academy.” I don’t know why they didn’t just call it ‘Top Valley Unicorn Riding Centre of Excellence’, or ‘Cambridge University of Top Valley.’ Or, seeing as rival place up the road is actually called Big Wood School, why not ‘Massive Tits Comprehensive’?
2 October
And why stop there? Let’s rename Nottingham ‘Mega City 69’, ‘Sex Island’ or ‘BAAMMM!’
3 October
Goose Fair is the usual multi-vehicle pile-up involving the lighting rig of the 1979 Tubeway Army tour, the Viccy Centre food court circa 1983, and an abattoir of plush animals. Going
nowadays is like trying to mash your bits over the bra section of a Littlewoods catalogue; something you do every now and then, just to remind yourself that it was a really important
thing to do once upon a time. Personal highlights: 1. The posh farmer who had built an entire wall out of bin liners full of pork scratchings that he was offering for £100 each if you bartered him down, and 2. the woman on the fringes selling random helium balloons for a pound each, away from the five-pound-achuck Peppa Pig and My Little Pony ones, which had things like ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY NAN’ and ‘40 AND UP FOR IT’ printed on them. If I had been with an illiterate child or girlfriend, I would have had at least three off her.
4 October
A 64-year-old man gets done after chucking a drink over a 15-month-old baby in a pub in Arnold. The youth obviously chelped him, or they must have had a row over whose turn it
was to pull the fags out.
12 October
In one of those surveys that seem to pop up every month for no other reason than to remind us how horrible we are compared to Hull, Nottingham is named the third most congested city in the UK. Which makes us sound like we’ve got a really bad chest, and are about to cough up a gob of phlegm the size of Mansfield.
15 October
The Christmas lights already start to go up in town. Manky Santa lights going up a month before it means anything... massive pointless England flag every other summer... the Council House is slowly turning into that mentalist neighbour that mams warn their kids to cross the street for. They’ll be having 3,000 cats running about next, mark my words.
18 October
The council finally recognise that the revamped Trinity Square - TK Maxx in the front, 1970s East Germany in the back - is about as attractive as Ayatollah Khomeini’s come-face and needs a revamp. Why don’t they go back to how it was, when it was all flattened? It used to be great to come out of Viccy Centre and see this massive expanse of space, unencumbered by chainy rammel.
21 October
A local number one in the UK charts. Good old Jake Bugg, showing the rest of the country there’s more to Nottingham than crime and social deprivation with songs like Clifton’s A Hole, I Can’t Wait To Get Out Of This Dump and I Saw Someone Stab Someone Else, Because That’s What People Do In Notts.
22 October
The cinema in the Cornerhouse cocks up its half-term screening of Madagascar 3 when it accidentally shows Paranormal Activity 4. According to the Post, children ‘ran out screaming’, but are now probably bragging to their mates that they got into a 15-rated film, rather like the kids at our school who had bumfluff ‘taches who claimed to have seen The Warriors at the ABC and then got served at Yates.
27 October
Pubs in town announce that they are to ban anyone dressing up as Zombie Jimmy Savile on Halloween night, or at least they say they will when goaded into it by a Post reporter. But how would they be able to tell the difference between someone who has come into town dressed up as a decomposing corpse in a tracksuit, and someone from Bulwell who just wants a pint?
30 October
Plans are announced for another go at reclaiming Robin Hood for the Motherland. This time, it’s actually in Sherwood Forest, will cost £13m, and - if the plans are anything to go by - will be a bit better than Tales Of Robin Hood, which mainly consisted of knackered-up robots who stank of wee. One problem; the name. Discover Robin Hood sounds like the poor sod has been found under a pile of leaves, with his hand round an empty bottle of Lambrini and his trousers gone.
6 November
A nana in Bingham gets attacked by a ferret as she rides her mobility scooter to the shops.
8 November
Someone on Fletcher Gate goes batchy and chucks things out of a first floor window onto police cars below, including what a bystander described as ‘big silver barrels’. A crowd gathers to watch, presumably in the hope that Mario would suddenly turn up with a big hammer, but sadly GameCity finished a week previously.
14 November
Plans are floated for a £26m revamp of Nottingham Castle after a public consultation. Sod the public, listen to me, because I’m going to say this one more time and then hold my peace forever; you clad it with plastic brickwork and turn it into a massive Castle Grayskull playset, have a big He-Man figure in one of the turrets, and let kids fire polystyrene boulders at a big Skeletor on the Council House balcony.
19 November
Plans are announced to kill another pub near the train station - The Bentinck - and replace it with a Starbucks, in the latest attempt to turn Nottingham into every other city on this rammel little island, but with the same shops moved about a bit.
23 November
After the nana-attacking ferret, Bingham has another vermin problem when someone leaves a cross wrapped in ham on a Muslim family’s doorstep.
24 November
A convicted sex offender from Sneinton gets sent back to the Naughty Step after being caught in town trying to film up ladies’ skirts with his mobile. Sucky bell-end; all he had to do was go into town on a Friday night and pretend to be homeless. He’d have hen slappers wearing belts for dresses practically stepping over him as he was laying flat on his back.
25 November
What’s half man, half horse, and works in a pound shop?
26 November
The Broadmarsh Centaur.
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