Woolworths 2009
January 2nd, 2009 at 02:10

Poor Woolworths. A few weeks ago you were the shop that no one ever goes into, and now you’re destined to become another entry in the collective consciousness of uniquely British things that don’t exist any more, like Radio Rentals, BBC Choice and Opal Fruits – the sort of thing that Peter Kay might use as material in one of his stand up acts.

I walked past my local Woolworths today for the first time since it has closed down, and it was a shocking sight – just an empty shell.

I hope they replace it with something decent, as it’s literally the closest shop to my house and a mere one minute’s walk from my front door. If they could turn it into a new stop on the Bakerloo line it would be excellent.

I also went to Camden today, and was surprised to see that Camden High Street Woolworths is still open – so out of morbid curiosity and a desire to say we were among the handful of people to have been in Woolworths in 2009, my friend Dan and I decided to take a look around. It was bleak.

All the shelves were empty and there seemed little point of the shop being open – the only things they appeared to have not been able to get rid of were these:

2009 My Chemical Romance calendars.

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Anti-drugs film financed by McDonalds, starring every 90’s cartoon character
July 12th, 2007 at 17:56

I’m so, so sorry. I’m afraid I’ve just lost you the next thirty minutes of your time, as you’re going to be watching the embedded video below. It is the most staggering, yet unintentionally hilarious thing I have ever seen. I know its not my style to embed other people’s work, but this really is incredible. If I didn’t know any better I’d think I was I tripping out on some drugs.

It’s an anti-drugs cartoon, financed by the McDonalds Corporation, introduced by the first President Bush and his wife, starring Garfield, Winnie the Pooh, Michaelangelo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Muppet Babies, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Huey, Duey and Louis from Ducktales, Alf, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Slimer from Ghostbusters, the Smurfs and the Berlin Wall. Seriously. Just watch this:

If you’re a student you’ll love this. It really is unbelievable to hear the different characters talk about crack and marijuana. Its utterly bonkers. Endure the McDonalds promotions at the start- they’re on the first unbelievable bit. Watch it. And please make it become viral.

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RE: Bad Teaching
June 17th, 2007 at 01:51

Apparently they want to teach Religious Education for a post-9/11 world. Long story short, apparently Ofsted are saying “RE teaching is crap – sort it out“. That’s a gross generalisation – but one excellent sentence in the linked news article jumped out at me: “[Ofsted] says teachers should include ways in which religion is not always a force for good.”

Excellent!

Thinking back to my school days, which were four to six years ago now, the RE I was taught (for a “half GCSE”, which is a somewhat meaningless qualification really) was certainly a bit crap. I think it was mainly down to the terrifyingly apathetic teacher.

Admittedly, he had to teach a class of 30 kids about a subject none of them cared about. And most of the kids were little bastards anyway. This was GCSE, so it was full of the awful people who are filtered out of the education system before you reach A-levels. But my old RE teacher’s main teaching gimmick, by which I mean, his only teaching gimmick was his vast library of videos.

Every week for RE, he’d put a tape in the player and press play, and sit back and bask in the glory of being a teacher. This wouldn’t be so bad if he’d shown us… I don’t know, documentaries about religions and what they believe and all of the sort of stuff that might be useful in the study of religion. The unfortunate thing was that he tended to show us films – presumably whatever he’d taped a couple of weeks previously.

The extent of my education on Islam was to be shown the film East is East. Seriously. I think I learnt more about how grim Salford was in the 70s than Islam. Apparently back then people didn’t have phones in their houses.

When we were, er, studying “the afterlife”, we were treated to the Kiefer Sutherland film Flatliners, which Wikipedia describes as a “suspense thriller” where people who have near-death experiences have their sins come back to haunt them.

Perhaps most ludicrous of all, at around Christmas time – perhaps the holiest time of year, the time when the Bible has the most easily accessible back-story, the video we got to watch was…. Robbie the Reindeer. An Aardman animation about a reindeer competing in the reindeer olympics, voiced by Ardal O’Hanlon.

I think we were also showed The Life Of Brian on more than one occasion.

The terrifying thing is that we were shown these videos in order to try and get us to pass a (half) GCSE. The ludicrous thing is that I came out of it with a B grade. Thinking back to the exam, I remember writing at length about moral relativism and evolution – so I haven’t changed much since then, then.

At risk of getting serious (I don’t know if you’re ready for that sort of commitment yet), I think this “religious education” left me dangerously unequipped for life in the future – half qualification or not. Maybe my own hideous ignorance is to blame, but I grew up (and indeed still live in) a town that is probably 99% Christian – in culture if not active religion, and I now go to university in a city that is now full of people from all sorts of different backgrounds – and horribly, perhaps due to my own ignorance, but I’d prefer to blame my old school, I’ve had many, many foot in mouth moments because of it.

For example, talking to a Muslim on my first week at uni, which at the time was quite a new experience for me, I confused Ramadan with Divali – that’s two completely different religions (one is polytheistic for a start). This has happened over and over – although I now don’t mind asking shamelessly stupid questions, because its the only way I’m going to learn, after all.

I mean, yeah, religion in all of its guises is ultimately a pointless exercise, but it must be pretty annoying if not offensive that I’m so spectacularly ignorant to not know even the basic gist of a belief system that controls a big chunk of someone’s life. And I can’t endlessly criticise something if I don’t understand it – or at least justify why I dislike it.

I’m not sure what grand point I’m working towards in this blog entry. Let’s just assume it is “yeah, I agree with Ofsted”. Perhaps not my usual controversial self, but still.

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My old driving instructor
December 23rd, 2006 at 20:01

Have I ever told you about my old driving instructor? No? Then gather round, kids.

He was a funny old man. He was 64 when he taught me to drive, and he had all of the age based stereotypes to go along with it. He complained about his ailments, complained about the youth of today- telling me how being a student is a “waste of time” and how I was just “leeching off the state”, and he was a bit racist too.

I say a bit racist: he’d point out black people when he saw them and draw comparisons with monkeys, that sort of thing. Yeah, I thought comments like that died out in about 1930 too. He once spent an entire ninety minute driving lesson telling me racist jokes, and this is unfortunately no exaggeration.

“What does God say when a black person is born?”, he’d say (he told me this joke a number of times)…. “Whoops, burnt another one”- and then worst of all, he’d wait for a reaction, and sort of lean towards me expecting me to burst into fits of laughter.

The trouble was, I didn’t know how to react. I mean, do I confront him over his horrific views? Bearing in mind he was basically in charge of my life, as I was trapped in a car with him, and I was driving around small country lanes ideal for dumping a body, or around towns I was unfamiliar with. I generally opted for a sort of “groaning” noise, as if to say “that’s not funny, you awful racist”, but in a fun way.

What made it worse that on the few occasions where I actually considered what was going on: the fact that I was trying to pilot an automobile through town centre traffic whilst an old man made comments that would look out of place in a BNP manifesto, I actually laughed at him. The absurdity of the situation was funny- the trouble is, he interpretted this as me saying “I find your jokes that perpetuate racist stereotypes amusing, please tell me some more”, so he dutifully complied with my, er, request.

He’d protest when he sensed that I was perhaps not enjoying his humour as much as him “I’m not racist”, he’d repeatedly tell me, “I know as many white jokes as black jokes”, he’d say, before telling me yet another ‘black joke’. This happened constantly.

He was a bit sexist too- he’d often make comments like “look at the arse on her” towards women aged anywhere between like, 14 and 70. He’d also point out the opposite: “look at her, she’s built like a brick shit house“, he said to me on a number of occasions. Needless to say that I tried to remain focused on the task at hand (driving!) as much as possible.

Once, he made me pull up at the side of the road so that he could point at a pedestrian walking along and ask me “do you think he’s gay?”, based entirely on the way in which the pedestrian was walking. Seriously.

I suppose the worst part is that he wasn’t even a very good instructor. It was 15 months before I attempted my first test, and I failed that anyway. I got a new instructor a few weeks later. I think I’d blame his teaching equally as much as my ineptitude at driving for it taking me far too long to learn to drive.

He was a weird old man.

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End of Summer
October 2nd, 2006 at 00:40

Tomorrow morning, I will be attending University for the first time since May. It’ll mark the end of a summer, that against all odds, turned out to be pretty excellent. Much like I did last year, here is a list of the exciting adventures I’ve had:

• I went to see [Spunge].
• Did some invigilating.
• Went horse riding.
• Went to see Capdown.
• Passed my first year at uni.
• Unexpectedly ended up at a gay pride event
• Saw Sin City.
• Did yet more invigilating.
• Failed to get a job at the BBC.
• Had a power cut.
• Went to see Flogging Molly.
• Feared for my life.
• Went to see Superman Returns.
• Went to see The Peacocks.
• …and 7 Seconds of Love.
• Did an emergency stop.
• God paid to do some enveloping.
• Drank some Mexican Coke.
• Got a new job at the tax office.
• Went to see Leftover Crack.
• …and to see some silent movies.
• Broke the handbrake on my car.
• Saw Pirates of the Carribean 2.
• …and SNAKES ON A PLANE!
• Went to see Presidents of the USA.
• And ended up at a secret Alexisonfire gig on a boat!
• Saw Snakes on a Plane, again.
• Went to see Less Than Jake supported by Capdown!
• Dreamt about rollerskating.
• Started my new job.

Its been a good few months- I’ve seen an incredible 36 bands live, if you include support acts. Have you had a favourite James O’Malley moment of the last few months? Why not post it in the comments below so we can relive it? I bet its the one where I went horse riding.

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Roller Skating Dream
September 3rd, 2006 at 15:22

I had a really strange dream last night. It’s nearly as bad as last time.
For some reason, my friend Matt and I were in a multi-storey car park. It was night time, and the area was bathed in yellow light from the sort of lights you get in every multi-storey. For some reason, I was wearing rollerblades, and I was pretty damn good at using them.

I was skating around the half full car park, jumping and landing whilst wearing rollerblades, occassionally grinding the motorway-style barriers around the side.

In one part of the car park, there was a man in a kiosk, operating a rollerblade hire shop, and he told me to make sure I didn’t hit any cars. I only had a few close scrapes.

The most annoying thing was that when I woke up, for a brief few seconds I thought I was a world class rollerblader, before realising where I was and that the most sporting thing I can do is spectate (badly).

What does this mean? Why am I dreaming about rollerskates? I want to know. And I really want to go rollerskating.

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Tube Violence
September 1st, 2006 at 01:30

Following my jaunt down to London just over a week ago, its got me thinking about one of the other times I went to London and used the Tube.

It was early 2005 (or 2004… everything prior to the start of this blog is more or less a dream sequence with blurred edges), and my family and I were going to see BBC Four’s excellent Late Edition being recorded. It was the episode in the first series where human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell and Barmy Aunt Boomerang Toyah Willcox were the guests.

I bloody loved the tube. I think its brilliant, and I like its colour coded and topographic navigation. This was before the July 7th attacks too, so I wasn’t running though defence scenarios everytime someone with a large bag got on the train. Unfortunately, it wasn’t international terrorism that caused me to dislike the tube a bit (that would have been a good blog entry), but something slightly more mundane.

On the way back from the recording (which would have been a blog entry in itself, but is a rubbish story told over a year after the event) we had to take quite a long tube journey back to Cockfosters at the top of the Jubilee line, where the car was parked. It was about half past ten at night, and yet the train was still packed with people, each more suspicious than the last. Sitting opposite me was a man who looked as if he was hard as nails. He was of large build, skin head, sporting branded clothing, and had his eyebrows set to “stern”. He was holding a single rose, presumably to either throw into the canal on top of his latest victim’s corpse, or for his wife, to make up for smacking her up earlier in the day.

When the train reached Holborn station, the doors swung open and stayed open for much longer than usual. On the platform behind my head, there were two men fighting- proper swinging punches and stuff. In the middle of the two of them was a woman, presumably the girlfriend of one of them (or both of them?), crouched on the floor against the wall, screaming at them to stop fighting. They were screaming at each other too, and fighting. For some insane reason, the driver of the train kept the doors open, and announced over the tannoy that we were going to stay in the station for a while, and “wait for these gentlemen to sort themselves out”. This obviously lead me to think that the fight could easily move into the train and on to my currently unbruised and unbloodied face.
There were no police around, although British Transport Police were apparently “on their way”, according to the driver. The doors were still open.

Being London, the general public cannot help but hate each other, and argue constantly. The burly man sitting opposite me suddenly got up and walked to the open door at the end of the carriage, and leant out. Unbelievably, he shouted in the campest voice I have ever heard “Oh do hurry up you two, this rose is going to dry out if I don’t get home soon”, and continued to antagonise them. This (figuratively) scared the shit out of me more than the fight itself- I was expecting one of the men to drag this guy into a fight, and for it to spill over into the train.

It was terrifying. To make matters worse, there was another couple on the train. They appeared to be achingly middle-class, and were dressed as if to say “I have a boring but well paid job as an accountant“, basically card carrying Daily Express readers, and they confronted the camp bloke, telling him to stop. Tempers flared. It didn’t result in another simultaneous fight, but it got pretty heated- to the point where the middle class husband had to tell his wife to calm down.

Eventually, after what felt like a terrifying lifetime, but was in reality a mere terrifying ten minutes, the police arrived and carted off the fighters, and the train got going. I bet if there was a Brazillian on the train, the police would have been there like a shot.

Its funny in retrospect, as it sort of confirms that all Londoners seem to be either unneccessarily angry or nutters.

That’s my tube story.

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Dogs
July 1st, 2006 at 20:28

I consider myself an animal-lover. There’s nothing I enjoy more than watching yet another video of an animal doing something amusing on YouTube. There’s just one animal I’ve never really understood though: dogs.

I’ve never liked dogs. They’re just too big. They have massive teeth, claws, and are domesticised wolves. You could say that they’re like a wolf in dog’s clothing.

I’ve never understood why people love dogs so much either. The night before last, I was in a quiet countryside pub with JD, Fundar and Charlie. For some inexplicable reason, someone had let a dog into the pub. Charlie spent about twenty minutes petting this dog, stroking its stomach and letting it jump all over her, rather than listening to the live music on offer.
The smell was over-poweringly awful. The dog didn’t smell very nice either.

From where I was sitting, it looked as if Charlie was passionately kissing this dog. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. She later claimed that it was just licking her face. Horrible.

I’ll be honest: for as long as I can remember, I’ve been scared of dogs. I think this was perpetuated when I was about seven years old and on holiday at a caravan site in Cornwall. I was playing on a swing made from an old tractor tyre, no doubt having the time of my life, when suddenly a huge sheep-dog (that’s a dog that herds sheep, not some sort of hybrid creature) ran upto this swing and started barking in a violent way. Terrified, I ran as fast as I could back to caravan, but unfortunately for me, the dog chased after me. I could hear it scraping away at the door, like some sort of crazed serial killer.
It was like a film- I only managed to get the door closed seconds before the dog got to the caravan.

I think I just need a dog to save my life to balance this out.

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I demand RESULTS.
June 20th, 2006 at 13:39

At ten o’clock this morning, I should have been able to log on to the University website to get my end of year results. Unfortunately, the “managed learning environment” has gone down, meaning that I am instead sat here, getting more and more worked up about it.

I didn’t think I was that worried about it- I’ve barely thought about it until today. Clearly my subconcious is having different ideas. I had the most awful dream last night. The following happend:

• I had to go and collect my uni results
• …from a small room at the train station
• …and the results were cut into lumps of coal the size of bricks
• …and the bricks were stacked up like a brick wall
• …and an old French teacher from my old school was the dealing with handing out the, erm, lumps of coal
• …and I only got 30%- 10% under the vital 40% I need to pass the year.

Needless to say that judging by this dream, I think I’m a bit mental. At least the walls wern’t closing in around me. I “remember” being a bit pissed off with my low grade, and this French teacher seemed to take great delight in telling me that I’d failed.

To make matters worse, I woke up immediately after this dream at 9:50am… ten minutes before I was expecting to recieve my real results.

I hate dreams.

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Names and shame
March 27th, 2006 at 21:32

I had a horrible realisation today. I don’t know some of my friends names.

There’s someone on my course who commutes into University on the train like I do- I usually see him once or twice a week and talk to him on the journey to and from Uni. I’ve known him for probably around six months now. The trouble is I don’t know what his name is. I’ve got a good idea of what it is, but I’m not certain enough to be able to say “Hello $name!” or shout him at a distance.

The horrible thing is, I think he knows my name- or at least my first name, and that’s already one-upped me.

At the risk of sounding borderline racist (for once, that’s not my intention), this may well be because he’s got an asian name- as the town I’ve lived and been educated in is essentially Daily Mail Land, and thus my internal database of potential names is about as diverse as an album of bland James Blunt songs. For the sake of context, in GCSE RE (Religious Education), to teach us about asian culture, we were shown East is East. Maybe I’m just a horrible racist?

This said, I thought my friend Mickey’s name was Mark for a good 48 hours, and Michael for a couple more after that. I havn’t even factored in that I’m friends with people called Jeroen, Typhlosion, UKDMBFan and Iceduck. I’m sure those names aren’t on their respective birth certificates.
Thinking about RE though, we were shown the Kiefer Sutherland film Flatliners, about bringing people back from the dead who can remember what it’s like being dead, to demonstrate the afterlife. At Christmas, arguably the most important time for Religious Education we were shown Aardman’s Robbie the Reindeer animation.

Anyway, this name thing is annoying- after discussing this with others, it turns out that I am also the only person who worries about whether or not I should admit knowing someone’s name or not. Back at school, if I was tasked with handing out everyone’s exercise books, I’d sometimes play ignorant and pretend not to know some of the names- mainly because there’s no reasonable explaination of why I know a person’s name. I think this is because I assumed the chavs wouldn’t know the name of the quiet kid who did his work (ie: me), and as such, I shouldn’t dignify them by knowing their name.

Am I the only person who thinks like this?

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