I went to work last night pissed off. The day had entailed a puncture, an argument with a street warden regarding cycling on the pavement, and leaving a multipack of Crinklin' Mini Cheddars at Sainsbury's, as well as dropping one of my rare and beloved Coffee Creation yoghurts on the floor in the kitchen, causing it to explode.

And in the evening, I saw two freshers, looking about 14 years old, sit on a sofa and nervously kiss. It reminded me of a time when I believed in it all: when there could be a magical first kiss, when there was romance and nothing else. I still don't believe in it, but just for that moment, a blade of light shone through a gap in my cynicism and I saw the look in the girl's eyes which said everything: it was nervous, it was a first kiss, though she'd told everyone that it wasn't. She looked at no-one, wanting to know who was watching. And perhaps, for the first time, she was happy.

Tags: freshers, kiss, romance, belief, puncture, bicycle

I got off work early. It was *Ladies' Night*, but they all just came for the free drinks and then left. I don't know what to write. Did I ever mention that the Health and Safety officer at UMIST is called Bob Nutter? I thought you might like to know. We just saw someone from Cancer research UK called James Nurse, or something. And the organist at Sherborne Abbey... his surname is Sentance (archaic spelling, probably) - guess his occupation? Yes, his day job is as a judge.

Everyone at the pub gets out of the way of someone is uniform much more readily than anyone else. Also, employees seem automatically to assume a kind of fast-paced, deliberate stride around the building, as if to assert one's authority. Freshers' week is coming to an end for another year. I suppose I will continue to see it each year and remember what it was like for me, how long it seemed, and how short it really was. I can't help feeling a twinge of sadness, a year on, that that time in my life, which I built up so much, has really gone by. Although I've made a mess of being a mentor, like I am destined to make a mess of so much, one thing I was ready to tell them was not to judge everything by their expectations. I'm sure I had an unusually high level of expectation, since the move was always going to be so crucial. And in many ways, in most ways, perhaps, those expectations were not fulfilled - but that is not to say that the situation which I'm in now, and all the events last year, are not really memorable and valuable to me. The risk for me, at least, was continuing to judge everything by what I wanted and believed it to be. I still run that risk with my approach to life, but hopefully now I at least realise that that is a risk. How prosaic are these last few sentences. I suppose I'm beginning to become an adult, and understand the duplicity in both understanding what those younger than you are likely to be going through, but at the same time having to understand that it's not quite going to be the same as your experience, and that in any case there is no avoiding the fact that it is their experience to be had and lived through. It has been happening for millennia. I just hope that I never become someone who thinks he knows everything.

Tags: footage, manchester, freshers, ladies, night, ladiesnight

Sitting in a McDonald's in the rough end of North East Manchester, having sinfully eaten thereat, I watched darkness and rain fall over thousands of people's lives. Something about the smells, the sounds and the weather made me feel comfortable today. It told me I was in the right place. It reminded me of this time last year, it reminded me of how much I have moved on.

Earlier today I was on the bus to Piccadilly, sat near three freshers. One was loud, dominated the conversation, thought he knew everything - but actually knew nothing. Another was retiring and gay. The last was in the middle - he actually did know everything - but didn't want anyone to know. Occasionally, though, he interjected to correct the many errors of the first. I realised again all the acting - all the mind games - all the deception that is necessary, that is natural, when you move to a new place. All three were uptight, apprehensive, and desperate to get on well with their new friends. And I felt good that I had been there, done that. I felt good that I was on the bus, and I knew where I was going, and the time for me to play those games has passed.

On the bus back, a man in his fifties asked the old lady who was sitting opposite me if she knew where Moss Lane East is. She couldn't tell him without her glasses, she said. I told him where to get off. Outside the Drabble and Allen dealership. Jaguar. He wanted to get to the Whitworth pub. It's just across the road from the dealership, I said. It'll be a while before I can afford a Jag, said the old lady. You never know, said the man, this young man might one day. You'll have to sell your soul, she said to me. I'll have to sell more than my soul, I said. I'm not sure I want to know about that, she said, chuckling dirtily. The conversation ended and I rested my head against the window again, and watched Oxford Road continue on its way, new freshers, same rain, same Saturday night.

Tags: bus, conversation, encounter, mcdonalds, rain, manchester

I love Manchester almost as much as naked freshers reclining with a bunch of grapes, but occasionally the substandard quality of the road surface gets on one's titties. Oxford Road/Wilmslow Road is (allegedly) Europe's busiest bus route. There are about four buses a minute, provided by five different companies. The privatisation is complex, confusing, and doesn't really do any good - which is why the council are apparently planning to recentralise the bus network and put it under municipal control - but there are four buses a minute all the same.

The road is narrow, patched tarmac which has been ripped up and unconscientiously repaired by soulless contractors over the years. Parts of the road have fallen apart, been filled in and then driven over by the heavy load of buses and taxis before the tarmac was dried, causing a small mountain range. Drains are missing, broken, and sunk, and there are small reservoirs of water which collect all over the place. Part of the road where buses' braking is heaviest (for the following two reasons:)

1. They are approaching the most heavily-used bus stop on the road, outside the student union;
2. They have an incentive to approach it at speed, because there is a set of traffic lights immediately before it.

has been totally wrecked, and for a twelve-foot stretch of the bus lane the ancient cobbled street is visible.

One of the aforementioned reservoirs forms at the bus stop outside the Whitworth Art Gallery (you know, the one that was robbed back in... June?) because of an extreme camber and a blocked drain. Today, while we, the mysterious three, were stood humbly awaiting a F*nglands number 42, a nasty, bad, naughty, evil, gruesome Austin Mini did splash us with the muddy sewage within this horrid, foisty puddle.

I say only this to that rude, rude Mini driver: I do not know where you live.

Tags: bus, sewage, water, splash, mini, manchester

I am getting worried that the type of TV advertising that I usually end up viewing might be telling me something I don't want to know. All the adverts are for stairlifts, surface cleaners and life insurance. Surely, I'm only eighteen? Or did I drop off for a few decades and wake up an older man? That is, did I wake up as an older man, not, did I wake up an older man (sitting next to me, for example) by dropping off? Stuart frequently accuses me of being too old, because I watch Countdown, Newsnight and Inspector Morse and refuse to acknowledge Australian soaps as anything but socially regressive.

Tags: advertising, television, tv, stairlifts, oldman, age

Here's the link to the debate on kottke...

So we got jobs, at a Scream pub on Oxford Road. We were at training for five whole hours today, but I didn't learn much. We just poked a screen a bit and signed away all our dignity along with health and safety forms. Gradually, we will be fashioned into model Scream employees. SMILE!

The Victoria Baths won BBC2's Restoration, so we rock.

Tags: scream, job, bar, employment, student, victoriabaths

Two years ago Adam and I had just started running Freshlysqueezed.org, and September 11th gave an immediate creative challenge for us. It gave me a chance to experiment with rapid publishing, and to test out what a website could, and should, serve as. This was the case for a great many people. Weblog publishing went crazy. People reading weblogs went crazy, desperately searching Blogger, or Google, for website which were giving up-to-the-minute information on the day unfolding in New York. People became at an instant fascinated with people's individual accounts, unsatisfied simply with the rolling footage being shown on every TV channel. Perhaps for the first time, there was an incentive for people around the world to watch what was happening in the world through the eyes of workers in adjacent skyscrapers watching the attacks unfold.

For me, it was the first time I had really written anything about anything topical. Freshlysqueezed, and my desire to make it a success, gave me the opportunity to do this. I have the archives on a PC hard disk hidden away somewhere; I will find them one day. However, my opinions have matured and developed alot since that day. I'm sure you, as much as me, cannot believe that it is two years since it happened. I have become more interested, and gathered more knowledge, and formed new views. I worry that September 11th was an event which gave everyone, everywhere, a chance to do the same things; to question their assumptions and see what was really going on. But we can safely say that this has not changed. The fact that so many New Yorkers today are more concerned with the politics and architecture of what is going to replace the Twin Towers than with solving the problems in Africa, the Middle East, and, indeed, in the West, goes to show that these attacks are still totally misunderstood, that their message was wasted, and that, in allowing ourselves this lack appreciation of the situation, we are consigning ourselves to the same fate again.

Terrorism evident on September 11th, and before, and since, told us two things. Firstly, terrorism has always existed, does exist, and always will exist. Secondly, that terrorism nevertheless has definite causes and motivations. Western action since has failed to acknowledge both of these things. Bush and Blair have both undertaken a war on terror, in which, no doubt, they strongly believe. But there came warning before both Afghanistan and Iraq wars that military action would only worsen terrorist problems, domestically and worldwide. This warning has been vindicated in events since these wars. Afghanistan is still being bombed, and warlords rule. Iraq is descending into civil war. The U. S. and U. K. have made the assertion that terrorism can be defeated; but it cannot. The nearest we can come to defeating it is to allow it to affect our lives as little as possible. If we allow terrorism to determine our actions, we give it credit that we are in the same breath trying to take away.

But this is different from ignoring terrorism. The war should be on the causes of discomfort that drive terrorism, and not on terrorism itself. So what are they?

Of course, there is no simple answer. They come broadly in two guises: religious motivations, which one will never overcome, and economic motivations, which can be overcome. But it is these same motivations upon which the West acts also. Islamic fundamentalists reject Western religion and economic ideology; Judeo-Christian Westerners reject Islamic religion and economic ideology also. The one attacks the other repeatedly, in its own way. The West attacks the Middle East and Africa by keeping it in economic oppression, quite deliberately, and the Middle East and Africa attack the West with bombs. Because what more power do they have? The West then attacks the Middle East with wars, worsening their already impoverished conditions.

It is the West who began the cycle of terror and it is the West who are continuing to perpetuate it. Things can only get worse until we, in the West, are able to step back, allow fair trade, and adopt some measure of humility in our religion and culture.

Tags: september, eleventh, 911, 2001, anniversary, 2003

Stuart and I have spent the day looking for jobs. Or, looking for ways to look for jobs. Or, looking for ways to look for jobs with a view to eventually looking for jobs. I had forgotten that the exercise is far from simple. I tried it last summer when I was planning to work for the year, and ended up just spending the money I was hoping to earn (back) sat in cafes wondering where to go next. Writing application letters, covering letters, application forms, and sending off CVs, all to receive no reply. Even when my brother applied for professional, full-time, important teaching jobs sometimes the schools never even replied to his application. This is to be expected for Britain.

There is a Miffy exhibition at the Central Library. There are lots of other prints by Dick Bruna too. But they're not for sale :(

Yesterday I hoovered my room for the first time. It has made it feel a bit nicer and more homely, since now I do not have to worry about treading on the last girl's hairclips all the time. It just still feels a bit foreign, and not quite warm enough (in an entirely non-temperate sense). We went round to our next door neighbour tonight to ask her if she had a corkscrew. She said no, but all was well and we are now drinking our Cotes du Rhone wine.

I feel duty bound to comment on the utter inadequacy of every variety of fake (ie, non-Pritt Stick) glue sticks. After years of principled evasion thereof, I thought I would give them one last chance by buying some half-price Partners the Stationers' own-brand glue sticks. But, lo and behold, the glue does not actually fulfill its primary function; that is to say, the glue is not sticky.

Tags: footage, jobs, manchester, jobhunt, student, wine

Limited internet access in the house, general apathy, and my preoccupation with other things have conspired to prevent me from posting very much recently. I trust blindly that there is someone still reading this. Hello? Hello? Anybody there?

IBO, SE and I returned to Leicester from Bournemouth in IBO's car a couple of weeks ago. I spent a week getting drunk and celebrating my and Stuart's six-month 'anniversary' (do you know how much that pains me?), going to a wedding dressed as a deckchair, and seeing DW sloshed on gin at his summer party (where it got dark at 8pm).