He's big, he's black but apparently he doesn't take it up the crack.

   Sol Campbell played his first home game for the Toon the day against a Chelski side who failed to impress anybody, not even their mums.
   I should mention now that in an attempt to piss me grandmother off I told her Sol Campbell was gay and quoted the song but apparently he's not. Not that it matters like, couldn't give a shit meself. But he's not. He's married to a tidy Geordie interior designer and he's massive so Sol Campbell's not gay.
   But he is bigger than me.

Sol Campbell's gravitational pull appears to be a fanny magnet.

   But back the the game. Sol and wor Steve played well together at the back, even if Taylor (S) was a bit rusty after returning from a this-time-nothing-to-do-with-how-much-of-a-slut-Andy-Carroll's-ex-is-injury. I'm sure he'll be fine though, it just looks like he's been taking a leaf from Sol's book and none from any salads.
   Without Nolan we were a bit lost as a team, no real direction and that shows the shallow nature of the squad but all wasn't lost. Andy Carroll played his usual best, chasing the ball around like a nutter to slot Alex's streak of piss back to the helmeted wonder into the goal. Cech even did the FIFA 2010 goaly shuffle, hands a side like a crab, beautiful.
   Shola had a bad day, missing one or two barn doors with a fairly large banjo but he's a good lad, reminds me a bit of wor 'Tino so I'm sure he'll redeem himself.
   A drop in defence which can only really be blamed on Steven Taylor lead to a Chelski equaliser but to be honest, they didn't deserve it. Without Terry and Lampard they were left to throw it all up pitch, at the end on the game they had four strikers on and still Drogba was making Ameobi look good. Even when Didier did score, he'd handled it and the goal was disallowed.
   I've never liked the Cote d'Ivore international mind, not since that fateful night in Marseilles - we needed a nil-nil draw to go to the UEFA cup final and that bastard scored a hatrick through Ashington's third favourite son Steven "no Sir Bob, let Shay have his moment" Harper.
   A special mention for Ashley Cole who managed to behave like a child for ninety minutes because the Toon Army booed his disgraceful actions of sacrilege against Wor Peoples' Princess of Geordieland Cheryl of Tweedylass. I don't know, we send her down there to strengthen relations with That London and that's how they repay us?
   All in all we can't complain, Chelsea are shit this season and Man U will win the league but on form like this we could expect to finish sixth. Unfortunately, on account of results like losing five-one to Bolton f'kin' Wanderers we should really expect fifteenth.
   And on the subject of footballing figures and gay - Chrissy Hughton, best looking manager in the league? I would.
   That's my first attempt at real sports journalism, I hope you liked it. I don't know when my next publishing will be but Tuesday's jollies out to Newcastle as part of the walkouts look to be a good place to report on shit, so maybe Wednesday night, what with college and sleeping.
   For now, peace and solidarity,
-Nous.

I speak funny.

   I felt it was about time I explained to you why I speak funny.
   Born in Gateshead, raised in Washington by a Geordie dad and Oxford-hailing mam I've never had a Geordie accent really. When I was ten and we moved to Shitley Bay I had to change me accent to avoid sounding "like a mackem" but I wasn't there long and so when we then moved down to Aylesbury me idiolect was in limbo, still trying to sound Geordie in a vain attempt of overt prestige and yet having to slow me pace, flatten me vowels and clear me diction so this lot could understand worr'a wis sayin'.
   And so for a year or two that continued and then a strange phase of sounding like I was from Leeds, the less said about that the better. I think meeting Joe and David shaped my speech greatly. Dave's north east roots made it possible for him to understand me, same goes for wor Charlee and Joe's Glaswegian lilts made my stomach throw deep booming round vowel sounds into my chatter as we competed to be the most incoherent speakers in Vale.
   All this made me a bit nerdy about spoken language and linguistics and stuff and maybe that's why I picked up so much basic French while in France and why I want to study Arabic now. Strange really.
  Anyway, as the years passed my Geordie dropped somewhat and  this left my idiolect fluid and floppy. Visits to Glasgow have given me "yas" and "ketch'yiftir", reading Irvine Welsh has given me "likesay" and my seven years in Aylesbury, Multicultural London English staples "bare", "long", "eneh" and "peng", to name but a few, as additions to my vast and wonderful vocabulary.
   So moving back to Washington after being laughed at for the way in which I speak for best part of a decade leaves me in a bit of a pickle, do I fight the accent change and stay independent and unique or do I let me accent evolve like the language its based in and see what happens? Either way I reckon it'll be interesting.
   Thanks for reading this again, lucky you anyway, twice in two days, I spoil you.
-Nous.

Caution, this is the wind, you two play nicely.

   Although she wanted it to be, this blog is not solely on the topic of wor ever subtle Grogz but I am going to throw caution to the wind.
   Okay, so I'm doing it, I'm blogging but not on a Sunday, I know its new and scary and many of you may not like it but tough shit, I have too many things not to blog. You might not even get one on Sunday, then again, you might. The point is I am no longer tying myself to a fixed day of blogging, thou shalt now bloggeth on any day thou liketh.

   So I've started to think of song lyrics and I should probably write them down, they just appear in my head and usually about stuff I care to care about - ladies, politics, the football, getting drunk... This isn't particularly new, I've written songs before and music too, to an extent, but they've always been slow in coming and few and far between but now there're many things in my head. I just need my instruments back so I can musicalise them!

   It's started snowing up here of course. You'll all know this because weather is now the news and not, as is traditional in broadcasting, the f'kin' weather. In fact, Tyne Tees TV had the audacity to announce "tonight's top new story; the weather" which leaves me questioning why they had to send three weather folks to Jesmond Dene, Morpeth and the borders just to make sure it was snowing and yet still have that smiley mackem toss-pot and anorexic aald whore in the studio. But maybe I'm too easily angered.

And bears shit in the woods, read all about it!

   The first round of education cut walkouts were on Wednesday if memory serves and I couldn't make it. That was a bit shit but there's another lot on Tuesday! Which is all good. Two sets of national demonstrations in less than a week. Yum. I'm trying to get together a group from college to attend and a few of these lovely people seem up for it. I look forward to marching through Nye'casel toon centre in the snow with thousands of others, especially as last week's were the biggest the city had seen in years.

   In other political news, there's a team of guys occupying the Fine Arts building at the University of Newcastle, the afore mentioned Hufi is one of them and the blogspot is here. Read it, link it, show solidarity.

   So I need to move me doctor's appointment so I can unite and fight on Tuesday and I need to do a load of coursework before then too, it'll be fine, they're first drafts of stuff and short essays, calm down Mammy Stiles.

   I impressed the staff in Washington Village Chippy this week when I reached over and double wrapped me chips for the cold weather with professional skill. If there's one thing my time at Hi-Tide to taught me its how to wrap a bag a' chips properly. Not that that's a skill which will help me in any other career like, not one I'll be putting in me personal statement and maybe not me CV but all the same, a skill.

   The whole post thing: I haven't mentioned on here but I've got a bit Matt Woodley and decided that post is way cool and so I'm now many folks's postal correspondent, which is nice. Its far more productive to sit and write a letter than it is to send a text and my handwriting has to improve, as well as me spelling and grammar. And letters are cool, so shurr'up man.
   I've also been thinking of tattoo designs, I'm big into the idea of the chorus to L'Internationale atop a red star on the left of my chest, big curvasive font, likesay. Lovely.

C'est la lutte finale,

Groupons-nous et demain,

L'Internationale,

Sera le genre humain.

   And so between my grandmother's wrath for the Clay's Garden Centre advert and putting my beers in the snow for saving on 'lecky, I've decided this blog will now be spontaneous, let's not hope I piss it in the north easterly breeze. Be warned, see you Tuesday.

-Nous.

Cheaper than Beamish.

   There's a certain Sundayness to the qualities of a Sunday spent in Washington Village. The Village, for those of you not in the know of such things, is a proper actual village with all village-y things - two pubs, a church a village shop and a school -around which they built the New Town of Washington, Tyne and Wear with it's various "villages" of Barmston or Glebe. The Village however, is still as it was over a hundred years ago, with only a few additions, a bit like Walton in Aylesbury. Or the Beamish Museum.

An attractive shade of yellow for an attractive new town.

   Anyway, taking a stroll past the village green to the shop in the light Sunday morning Geordie drizzle really is something to behold.

   Yesterday (Saturday) I went into Newcastle for the first time since arriving home in the North East. A visit to Waterstones ended in me acquiring copies of Lieth-hailing word-smith Irvine Welsh's Reheated Cabbage and Glue and that Great Depression-botherer John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

   My plan was to find a coffee shop out of the busy town centre, have a warm sit down in a battered old armchair looking through a moisture-covered window at the rain as the steam from the barristas' work filled the room, take a couple of hours to read a few chapters and write a few letters. But my other Sunday plans scuppered such goings on.

   The Northern March Against Racism 2010 was late but when it got going it was a great success. When the EDL did turn up, the other group of fascists in hi-vis jackets chased them away, Northumbria's finest trundled the Munkee 'Angers Division from 'Artlehpoowel doon Grey Street. Together we are stronger!

   I even made a new friend in Hufi who is very possibly the very coolest big sister on the planet. I mean, who else takes their wee sister and a box of biscuits to a demo? Too cool. Here we are on North East Tonight (ITV).

   Anyway, after that there was a social in Manors where I enjoyed a bit of munch from the All African Women's Campaign for Something I Forget and a bottle a' dog. There's always a right cross sample of folks at demos like this, I had a chat with a Kenyan refugee rights campaigner living in Boro', a French lass, a Glaswegian polis brutality fella whose accent I picked up by accident (damn my fluid idiolect!) and the usual lot from the local unis and NEAR. Then I went home.

   On Friday Kyle - whose blog I look forward to - took 'is up to the music shop here in The Village which I didn't even know existed, it is however, a strong contender for taking the title of Richard's Favourite Music Shop from Mackay's of Newcastle. Then in the evening I went round Jade's for a few drinks.

   And that was my week in a blog-sized nutshell, I need to nerd up on class and gender in socialisation so that's my task for the next week. See ye's all next Sunday.

- Nous.

Students of the UK unite, you've nothing to loose but your education, civil rights and your pocket money, you naughty boys.

   I love the internet, its fantastic, the internet has found me a place to stay, made me new friends and made me famous on a very small scale. The internet has kept me in contact with my friends, found my old ones and gotten me more acquainted with brief acquaintances. The internet is also an excuse to find the weird and the wonderful, wasting hours on end.
   Unfortunately, some of the internet holds the views of people we disagree with and occasionally, in moments of weakness, we can't help ourselves. To be honest, they're usually held by folks we don't like and so when we tell them what we think, we couldn't give less of a shiny shit if it bothers them and now that I've moved away and their opinions don't affect me socially I'm even less bothered, nice knowing you.
   Y'see, the thing is, I don't care and don't see why I should really, if I don't like somebody I'm too tempted just to tell them, sod the niceties.
   Anyway, that was just one highlight of the week. What else has happened?
   Went out with me aunty mid-week and got drunk in the Washy Arms, went round me da's Friday night and got drunk and I went out mid-week with the lads and got parred, strongly so. Other than that its only really been college and laughing at the telly.

Possibly better than "overthrow capitalism and replace it with something nicer."

   I'd have been there too, if only I'd've had the time, the opportunity, I'd have been there alongside my comrades smashing those bastards' windows. Oh the beauty of it all, the stunning panic on the faces of the Met as they failed whole-heartedly to hold back the pure anguish of the student population. There'll be more of course, and I'll be there. The Tories are going to struggle and the Lib Dems are finished.
   The issue of course is the way in which the media have portrayed those few as naughty school children, the bright side is that when the unemployed burn down their houses they'll be more careful with their words because this is not the end of civil unrest amongst those hit by slashes in the public sector.
   So yeah, that's that.
   I found myself on Youtube shouting at Abdul Salaam in Bradford, that was fun, and  there's this awesome punk cover of Bandiera Rossa by Pankrti as two more examples of internet brilliance but maybe I wont just be nice to everybody from now on.
   Oh, and a hello to Ashley. Thanks for loving this.
- Nous.

If you missed the clocks going back, its now five past the mackems.

   Evening blog fans. Hope you like the new design, that's some good quality Spanish Civil War propaganda, that is.
   So my first week back in the north east has been a relative success, I've bumped into a fair few folks I knew years back and made a few new friends too. On top of that, the Toon stuffed Albania-on-Wear five-one and today held the Arse one-nil putting us fifth. Fifth! I haven't felt this optimistic since 2002.
   Anyway, in my wide search for a topic for this week I've found pretty much nothing, yet again. So I'll just mumble.
   Let's see... School! Okay, so I've got two coursework pieces to do in English; one creative writing piece which could be literally anything, anything at all, I mean, even this! And there's an analytic piece on either how different news publications represent a story or how the story evolves in a particular news publication. This could be anything from a huge range of topics but trying to find something covered in the Morning Star in any depth also covered in a right-wing print is problematic.
   As regards the creative writing, maybe a return to the Welsh-inspired Geordie dialect fiction? Or a journalistic piece on the zionist call for an Israeli pledge of allegiance to a "Jewish state?" Either way, I'm confident I can manage.
   I've sort of dumped myself in a group with two other lads so my media course work doesn't have to be a print piece as they're doing a film opening scene for theirs and seem pretty open to my ideas. My sociology work is up-to-scratch so far too.
   Of course I'm missing Aylesbury, that place is a second home to me, but Washy's being kind so far and I'm getting back into the swing of it.
   I've noticed in the last week that my accent, as incoherent as it is to you lot down south, is actually piss-weak, the flat vowel sounds have gone as quickly as they appeared but the odd consonant that shouldn't be there in Geordie still turns up and calls me a soft, shandy-drinking southern jessie.
   Anyway, life goes on and unless I get a larger social circle it'll be more repeats of Darling Buds of May and jelly with Nanny Sharp on Sundays so I'll be back on the charm offensive the morra morn'.
   See ye's later.
- Nous.

Thank you and bye.

   To start, I apologise for the lateness of this week's post and I also apologise for the utter rage of last week's.
   Since last week a lot's happened if you hadn't heard, I've moved out, I've moved school (hopefully) and I've moved home to live with me Nanny Sharp.
   I wont go into the details of this week but tomorrow I've an early meeting with the staff at Usworth Sixth Form to see if I can attend their and continue my courses, if not I don't know what I'll do but I'd much prefer to use this post to thank Aylesbury for seven fantastic years.
   For every time I've woken up in mate's houses and not remembered why and for every time I've woken up in my house and remembered just as much, for every glass I've nicked from The Kings' and got all the way to the end of my road before dropping or left it in the taxi and for every friend I've made through those antics, thanks.
   To those I've known from day one, those who I knew before I arrived, friends of my family and those who I'm maybe not in touch with any more, thanks.
   To the best of you who I've known for years, to Kelly, Max, Becca, Crilly, Liv, Ben, Sam, Paul, Jack, Rob, Patirck, Zelie, Bethany, Ellis, DM, Booth - to all of you, thanks.
   To those of you I've not known for long, with whom the memories are still lengthy and plentiful like Jenni, hen, thanks.
   To those of you I've spent many a night in obscure places around the county in the woods, to Sergejew, Emerson, Stewart, Jake, Jarrod, Maisie - thanks.
   To Charles, John and to Dave, I'm gutted we wont release the album or gig with it over the summer and I'm sorry. Thank you for letting me vent my lack of any musical skill into something brilliant.
   To Ed, thanks for your endless hospitality and to you and Dave for your unbreakable friendship.
   And to my many mums, thank you all.
   And to you who if we hadn't been so busy, we'd have made it pretty good, thank you.
   In the seven years I lived in Aylesbury I've done some magnificent things and met many more superb people and I'm sorry to be leaving, I'm honoured to be welcomed back at any time and you're all welcome here in Washington too.
   Thank you all so much Aylesbury,
- Nous (AY4LYF)