All The Fun of the Fair

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The next presentation of my 2022 Goose Fair collection was filmed walking around the fair at various points during the ten days. In order to fully capture the magic of the occasion I have kept the shots long and made as few cuts as possible. I have never really been too keen on the urgent cutting style, and I am sure that a lot of filmmakers only do things because nobody has told them that they don't need to. My approach to filmmaking has always been rooted in the 'less is more' philosophy. 

As for the sound, everything you hear is the genuine noise from the different aspects of the fair, the music, the crowds and the barkers. It's just a shame I couldn't capture the smells of the various food outlets.

This brings me to another influence on my filmmaking style. This influence is not the people behind the camera but those nameless figures in front of it. The archives of Pathe and Mitchell and Kenyon are just two examples of films of ordinary people doing ordinary things, and YouTube is littered with fascinating and totally random footage of street activity at various periods in time. A 1950s flickering black and white film of any High Street will present you with women in big dresses and hats pushing big prams, those babies being the only people possibly still alive, and men in immaculate suits, hats, moustaches and untipped cigarettes. Where were they going? What were they thinking? What was their story. Even street footage from the 1980s or 1990s will throw up surprises that remind us how life has evolved. Cars and vans of a different shape, town centres with far more traffic, clothes, hair styles and forgotten shops all spark something in us that we probably don't notice on a day-to-day basis. Even the most random slice of life from a Super 8 or VHS camera can present a social history lesson. 

During the pandemic I stepped away from the camera due to a decision about not capturing a moment that most of us would like to forget. I was due to start filming a comedy drama during the 2020 Easter holidays but obviously that went down the toilet. I resisted returning to this project during the summer when lockdown sort of stopped because I didn't want to feature masks or social distancing. In hindsight I kind of regret this because these details will be forgotten about and then remembered for reasons good or bad. Repeats of Eastenders on the Drama channel will baffle people in the future with their sudden use of shockingly obvious greenscreen and people having conversations from a distance, as equally baffling to future generations watching gameshows or panel shows on Dave when the furniture suddenly gets further apart. 

If anyone is watching my latest 'people' film All the Fun of the Fair in 100 years from now, then all of those differences and similarities will be noticed. Perhaps the Minions will still be around and as recognisable to children as they are today, Elsa from Frozen will have the same iconic status as Disney's Snow White has now, and of course the (the) mushy pea stall will still be there. I just hope that somebody carries on my photographic legacy once I am dead.

All the Fun of the Fair is available to watch for free here.

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Goose Fair

Before you read the main article, please consider making a donation using the PayPal button above or at this link. This enables me to continue providing films, music videos, documentaries, podcasts, comedy sketches and art. Every penny donated is used in the creation of these projects which are made available for free as a reward and thank you for your generosity. 

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The 2022 edition

As the world returns to normal, it was great to see Goose Fair return to Nottingham. Cancelled understandably due to Covid-19 in 2020 and due to Nottingham Council's greed backfiring in 2021, we saw Nottingham's Christmas return for a record-breaking ten-day stretch. Maybe it is going to remain that way, although I personally think it's a bad idea.

In my capacity as unofficial ambassador for Goose Fair, (although if there's an official role available, I'm on board), I was on hand to film as usual, both the construction and the ambience. Sadly, I was unable to make the opening ceremony this year.

Talking of tradition, 2022 also saw the return of my annual photograph at the (the) mushy peas stall, although I did keep this going despite the lack of the fair. Having had a quiet year workwise, I was looking forward to talking to the press about my comeback plans, but despite being given plenty of notice, inevitably not one representative bothered to show up. This was especially galling as there were plenty of them around. I imagine if Ladbaby, Vicky McClure, Jake Bugg or any other of my fellow Nottingham showbizzers had turned up it would have been a front-page story.

To get to my first released Goose Fair project, my usual construction videos are now available.

It wasn't until I started viewing the footage that it occurred to me to release two different versions. The first version is silent and inspired by the filmmaking of Andy Warhol. When I was at school, I first became interested in Warhol's art and later on I discovered his films. There is something about his audacity that I admire, a five-hour film of sleep and an eight-hour film of The Empire State Building are two examples of the anti-film. This is the approach I took with Goose Fair Construction 2022, which is only slightly edited footage of the week leading up to the fair, more of an endurance test than a film at one hour twenty-five minutes but will be of interest. Version 2 is a much snappier and viewer friendly watch.

Goose Fair Construction is available to watch here.

Goose Fair Construction - Version 2 is available to watch here.

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The centre of Nottingham on a lunchtime is a hive of religious people preaching the good work of Jesus and why we should all join in. It doesn't bother me for a minute because it is all about free speech and if you take theirs away then for fairness we should all lose it. If somebody believes in what they are shouting then I respect their right to say it, just as long as they don't overstep certain boundaries. Even freedom to publicly broadcast your opinions has limits and the police are allowed to step in if complaints are made.

So every weekday Jesus gets a good round of PR from his followers and nobody seems to mind. They are easy to ignore of course (although I was guiltily pleased with myself for shouting 'Parklife' when walking past once, but only because the speaker had the correct rhythm to allow me to do it) and they aren't really hurting anybody. What got me thinking though, was how little Nottingham makes use of the Speakers' Corner. In actual fact the Speakers' Corner in Nottingham is just a paving stone near the statue of Brian Clough when it should I reckon be a raised stage. 

Also, if people are allowed to use the passing public as an audience to hear all about how great Jesus is/was, then why can't people use the public speaking gift to discuss other fictional characters? I would love to stop and hear a preacher extolling the virtues of Batman, or Grant Mitchell, or Stan Butler from On The Buses, or someone from one of those popular shows that everyone talks about like Game of Thrones or something. 

Actually, Santa Claus would be ideal for the Christmas shopping crowd on the busy weekends leading up to the big day. While you're shouting about a man with a white beard who can see you at all times, judging and rewarding you based on your behaviour, some people would think you were talking about God.

I feel a comedy video series coming on!

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I'm not sure if I've written about the Rastafarian busker who used to pitch himself at the bottom of the escalators at Piccadilly Circus tube station accompanied by a saxophone player. The saxophone player would play 'Pennsylvania 6-5000' and the Rastafarian would shake a big tambourine full of coins as percussion while singing 'Piccadilly 52 oh oh oh'. 

One of my big loves is terrible entertainment, not because it is so bad it's brilliant, but because it is just bad. Sometimes a really shit act becomes a work of art and it makes you wonder if these people have ever had a friend who was honest enough to tell them how shit they were. Does a truly bad singer really never reach that point in their life when it is time to take stock and come to terms with the fact that they should get a proper job. 

In York there used to be a busker that my daughter and I referred to as 'the singing dogs man'. He sat playing (if I remember correctly) an accordion with his two dogs barking accompaniment. For example, he would sing "How much is that doggy in the window" and the dogs would "woof woof" the next line. This was rather impressive the first time you witnessed it, but when you saw it more than once and got a bit closer you realised that the man was actually making the noise through his harmonica. Nottingham still has a handful of crap buskers, although we don't see the knife person anymore. The knife person had about an hour long routine involving laying on nails and inviting someone to stand on him, juggling knives and as a finish he would dive through a toy hula-hoop that had Stanley knives taped round it. He might be dead now that I think about it.

Today I saw a remarkable talent, a man who had made a sand sculpture of a dog (as depicted in the picture above). The sand sculpture was rather good, obviously a dog standing up would have been difficult because it is only sand after all. I was so impressed I gave him every bit of change I had in my pocket, which was somewhere in the region of one pound twenty three, but he was worth every penny. 

However, on the other side of the city centre, about ten minutes walk away, was another man making a sand sculpture. Somehow he had managed to make an identical sculpture of a dog, as seen in the picture below.

Either these guys were telepathic or there is some kind of scam going on involving a mould of some description. Obviously I am being sarcastic, these men are frauds. What bothers me is that people are walking past and seeing this for the first time and think that they are witnessing a true talent at work rather than some twat basically just making a sandcastle. How are they getting away with this fraud? Decent musicians get moved on and have to jump through hoops to get permits in some areas, yet utter shit like this and the annoying guy in the city centre who pretends to be a blues musician yet isn't actually singing or really playing the guitar. I don't want the devil may care travelling minstrel nature of the busker and think that they should be allowed to just turn up and play, but maybe there should be an audition process. As far as I'm concerned pretending to have made a sand sculpture of a dog is as bad as a singer miming in the street.

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 This week's edition of The Sunday Alternative is here. 

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I picked up Mike Reid's Pop Quiz game for £2.50 in a charity shop in Doncaster and decided that I had to have it, nowhere near as risky as the time I bought a Jim'll Fix It badge soap-on-a-rope. We got in in the suitcase too which was good news otherwise nothing would get done in Premier Inn if we left it there for the cleaning staff to play with. Talking of which, after singing the praises of the hotel we returned from the wedding to find that our room had not been cleaned. Mandi reasoned that people don't normally stay in a budget hotel for more than one night and that probably confused the issue. The bed hadn't been made, the bin was full, and the towels were still in the bath where we had left them to be replaced with clean ones. All very 'first world problems' I know but still a bit of a pisser to come back to. The guy on the front desk was full of apologies and brought us some new towels, clean cups, teabags and offered to make the bed but we said we would manage. He probably went away carrying our damp towels thinking us a pair of spoilt arseholes but it isn't like we kicked up a huge fuss, we just pointed out our disappointment. 

So today we are back in Nottingham and I noticed the difference straight away. On the tram to the train station on Thursday nobody gave up their seat for an old lady with a walking stick. Mandi pointed it out to me and I rather theatrically replied in a loud voice "WHAAAT? You mean to tell me that you saw an old lady with a stick having to stand because nobody offered her a seat?" and this didn't guilt the chavalry (my word - combining 'chav' and 'cavalry') into getting up, in fact they mocked me for caring, we were already standing by the way. What made things more unbelieveable is that a member of the tram staff was standing watching and he didn't step in either, when we got off at the station I sarcastically thanked him for his help, the ignorant cunt. In contrast when we were at Doncaster station we saw someone who first impressions would go against (cap, tracksuit, arse showing) help a woman up the stairs with a pushchair. This afternoon an old man got on the tram (we're back in Nottingham) pushing a woman in a wheelchair while trying to eat an ice-cream and when it got too much for him he dropped the cone on the tram floor without the merest hint of shame at what an act of twattishness he had just just carried out. 

As a city dweller I did find Doncaster to be a bit of a small town type of place but it isn't without its charm. Last night we went to a small pub full of old people and got into a conversation with what appeared to be the cast of Last of the Summer Wine who were a delightful group. There is scope for a visit when The Random Saturday Sessions gets underway as there seems to be a good music scene of sorts, plenty of pubs promoting live music but I can't say what they're promoting - it might just be pub cover bands although as there are a lot of students about (is there a University in Doncaster?) so hopefully there's open mics and stuff. 

Something I did enjoy was the breakfasts; aside from the Yorkshire pudding thing I had when I arrived I went out on my own before the wedding to the Minerva Cafe in the market place and had the biggest breakfast on the menu to put me on until the canapes came round and this morning we went to a place I can't remember the name of and had the Olympic breakfast, possibly named as a 2012 cash in and escaped the litigious committee who went around stopping everyone from using it. Although maybe not exactly what a top athlete would start the day with, I noticed a glaring omission that was all my fault for not reading the menu properly. Can you spot the problem?

No bacon! My fault for not looking properly and simply going for the biggest plateful but I just can't understand the reason why you would miss that particular ingredient out.

The Sunday Alternative #56 is available from here.

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September housekeeping

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@SteveOliver76

So much for Friday 13th being my lucky day, I thought after the last one that my curse guardian had agreed to keep out of my way and give me a reversal of fortune while everyone else suffered. With this in mind I decided to record the podcast knowing that nothing could possibly go wrong. This would leave me free to watch all the Comic Relief stuff and moan about how it isn't as good as it used to be in the glory days before second rate television presenters took control instead of comedians. What actually happened is the podcast didn't work properly and took ages until I woke up on my office floor at about one o'clock this morning having had one of my stress induced blackouts, something I am sure I should be more worried about than I am. If one good thing came from this episode it was that I missed a load of millionaires telling us how our hard earned money would be put to good use. It's Lenny Henry I feel sorry for, he goes to famine stricken parts of the world and sees such terrible living conditions and then gets jealous because they will at least never know the horror of staying in a Premier Inn.

At the risk of being controversial (far be it from me...), I am not a millionaire and could really do with some donations myself. I will spend it on making podcasts, short films, documentaries, comedy sketches and other such entertainments that in return will be available for free on the Internet. 

Having woken up on my office floor and made my way to bed, I woke up at noon today with my head full of candy floss and it took me a while to get going. Thankfully there was a can of a cheap version of Red Bull (I drink far too many energy drinks to pay Red Bull prices, the 35p ones are just as good) in the fridge which I had as an early breakfast with a cigarette or two in order to try and get my brain into gear. Once dressed in whatever was on the floor next to my side of the bed I took Jack to the park for an hour to let him run around and fetch his ball and the cold fresh air helped to blow away most of the fog. On my return I made myself some breakfast (three boiled eggs with soldiers - I wouldn't have had time to visit a cafe so the new breakfast podcast will have to wait, unless Leftlion start doing one) and had a shower and by about two o'clock I was starting to feel a little bit human.

Mandi didn't want to go to town this afternoon so I made a quick round trip to do a bit of bank related errand running and got back out of town as soon as possible because the streets were full of people who didn't seem to understand the basic points of walking such as looking where you are going. Clumber Street in Nottingham City Centre is said to be one of this country's busiest thoroughfares and I think it is time for the council to do something about it, luckily I have an idea. My suggestion is to paint several lines along the street dividing it up into four lanes. You would walk on the left hand side (the same as driving on the road) with the lane nearest the shops (immediate left) would be the slow 'dawdling' lane and the middle lanes reserved as fast lanes for people who want to get somewhere. If you wanted to enter a shop you would have to filter into the slow lane, no sudden left or right turns into shops. Failure to adhere to this system would result in a day in the stocks in the Market Square. To make this work I would also bring back the stocks.

Nottingham couldn't be arsed to vote in favour of a mayor, if they had then I would have run as a candidate. Your loss Nottingham, your loss.

Listen to this week's edition of The Sunday Alternative here.

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March housekeeping 

To purchase my audio books, albums, and books, please visit my Shop & Donations page.

I am trying to raise the money to extend The Sunday Alternative, read about it here.

We also need to fund a pilot episode of a new music and cookery show, read about it here.

Every penny that I receive via the PayPal button will be used to fund future projects such as podcasts, short films, comedy sketches, documentaries, and more. They will be made available for free online and I will not personally benefit financially. All help is greatly appreciated.

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@SteveOliver76 

My inbox continues to fill with music from around the world so I want to get back on track with the podcast as soon as possible. I have said before about the first time I recieved a CD in the post rather than a cassette and realised how much the world is changing, and the postman is no doubt pleased that 95% of the music I recieve is now emailed to me either as an MP3 file or download link for me to consider playing on The Sunday Alternative (and if you miss it there's another podcast in Nottingham that plays local bands so if you miss them on The Sunday Alternative you can hear them on that about six months later). This evening I arrived home from a hard day of trying to look busy at Crown Court to find the now rare sight of a Jiffy bag on the mat containing the brand new album from UK Subs for airplay consideration and a review if I get round to it. I have three nights out in a row from tomorrow so it might not happen straight away.

Just when I thought I had the podcast computer up and running I had another disaster with it. The recorder worked perfectly as did the music player but for some reason I have lost all sound. This happened a while ago and Mandi did a system restore and fixed it, I tried to do the same and the icon for system restore didn't appear. This is typical of my luck really. I don't want to stop doing the podcast and I also don't want to take too long away from it so I will persevere, as long as I have plenty of sweets, crisps, and cigarettes to keep my stress levels down I should be okay. On Sunday I tweeted that I had thrown my computer out of my office window but I didn't really, although I fucking well felt like it.

My wish to record the podcast in a studio with live music sessions is fading a little due to the fact that finding a studio isn't proving easy. This sums up Nottingham; everybody and his dog has a recording studio but wants ridiculous money up front for the priviledge (that's assuming they can be trusted because reliability isn't a concept in this city) of recording therein. I'm not saying that everybody should work for free but nobody seems to have any sense of negotiation around these parts, especially when presented with the chance to have their name emblazoned all over a hugely popular podcast with a name known far and wide. I have bands waiting to perform a live session for a podcast that matters but nowhere for them to play.

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March housekeeping 

To purchase my audio books, albums, and books, please visit my Shop & Donations page.

I am trying to raise the money to extend The Sunday Alternative, read about it here.

We also need to fund a pilot episode of a new music and cookery show, read about it here.

Every penny that I receive via the PayPal button will be used to fund future projects such as podcasts, short films, comedy sketches, documentaries, and more. They will be made available for free online and I will not personally benefit financially. All help is greatly appreciated.

steveEoliver@gmail.com

@SteveOliver76

Can we really be on the third month of the year already? Where is the time going? It only seems as if 59 days have passed us by since the year began, at this rate we'll all be sitting around our Christmas dinner wondering what happened to our lives. Although we still have a way to go before the curtains close on 2015, I am starting to panic about certain items on my to-do list perhaps not coming to fruition for yet another year. I wanted to get everything finished before I turn 40 as I have planned by then to reassess everything and make a decision about what direction I want to take. It was with a small amount of relief that I realise that in fact I only turn 39 this coming August so at least I have a little more breathing space. 

This morning I posted a newslaetter regarding the future of The Sunday Alternative which hopefully spelled out my plans to improve and evolve yet again. The show (in whatever form) is four years old this September and I have big plans to celebrate it although not as big as next year when we achieve a nice round fifth anniversary. Funding is of course the issue and I will need all the help I can get to move things forward. I wish to start recording the podcast in a proper studio and host live music sessions in addition to the new music that I have been playing. There are plenty of studios around Nottingham although reliability is another issue because that seems to be a problem in this city. It would be cool if I could video the sessions for the cobweb covered Sunday Alternative YouTube channel but again I need someone who is able to commit to it. If there are any local businesses who wish to sponsor the podcast (it isn't selling out as I won't make any money because it will all go into the fund for making new projects) or an eccentric millionaire then please get in touch.

The sooner I can start doing the podcast in this way the better as far as I am concerned, because my podcast computer really is starting to struggle. It is my fault for being confident after last week because I forgot that I am cursed and as soon as something goes well it will be followed by the crashing back down to earth into the pile of pants that is my regular luck. I didn't have time to record it this morning so I got straight on with it when I returned home from lunch. The actual recording, although still a bit of an ordeal with the new equipment, went surprisingly and suspiciously well so of course something had to give. If the recording represented me falling into a barrel of tits, then the fact that it wouldn't save was me coming out sucking my thumb.

No podcast this week!

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March housekeeping 

To purchase my audio books, albums, and books, please visit my Shop & Donations page.

I am trying to raise the money to extend The Sunday Alternative, read about it here.

We also need to fund a pilot episode of a new music and cookery show, read about it here.

Every penny that I receive via the PayPal button will be used to fund future projects such as podcasts, short films, comedy sketches, documentaries, and more. They will be made available for free online and I will not personally benefit financially. All help is greatly appreciated.

steveEoliver@gmail.com

@SteveOliver76

If I had any musical talent I think I would be a busker, there seems to be something romantic and nomadic about the lifestyle which involves a guitar being your tools for work. I’m sure the reality is something quite different; weather, indifference, and worst of all idiotic people shouting abuse are all factors that buskers no doubt have to contend with. There are several familiar faces on the streets of Nottingham with varying degrees of talent, and although a lot of you will be reading this outside of Nottingham I am sure you have your favourites in your own town or city. I have lived in several parts of this country and I have my own busker memories of these places.

One of my favourites, (and I was gutted to see that he is no longer around), was someone I used to see every day when I lived and worked in That London in 1995. I worked at Hamley’s toy shop on Regent Street and had to take the tube from Piccadilly Circus. At home time at the bottom of the escalators pitched two men, a saxophonist and a Rastafarian guy who collected money in a tambourine and combined the skin of the tambourine with the coins to fashion a percussion instrument that he shook while the saxophonist played the Glenn Miller tune ‘Pennsylvania 6,5000’. The Rastafarian would improvise words to the song before booming the chorus line, every now and again he would instead shout “Piccadilly 52, go go go”. They seemingly never deviated from this tune, although it is possible that they simply hit that part of the act when I left work. Another one that sticks in my memory was a man in York who had two singing dogs. Actually he didn’t of course but his dogs did appear to join in as backing (or should that be ‘barking’ – sorry) vocalists, for example doing the ‘woof woof’ bit of the song ‘How Much Is That Doggy in the Window?’ My daughter used to love the ‘singing dog man’ so we would always stop and have a listen. Becoming a regular audience member was a bit of a mistake as I soon saw through the smoke and mirrors to see how he managed to train the dogs to join in; he blew into his harmonica to make a barking sound to which the dogs would react. I also saw him give them a slight tap with his foot although I am not going to suggest that he mistreated these dogs in any way. It isn’t as if he stuck pins in them to make them do what he wanted them to do like a parent of a child contestant on Britain’s Got Talent. Years later we saw him in Leeds where he had just one dog as the other one had died, as he told me this I could see genuine sadness in his eyes portraying a sad lonely man who just wanted to bring a little happiness to passersby.

To return to London briefly, I noticed that the Underground system now has intermittent areas for buskers to perform. I don’t know if these have a time limit or whether you need some kind of licence, they might be a free for all area like a speaker’s corner for singers, or singing corner if you will. Nottingham seems to want to make things difficult for buskers, but that could be just because Nottingham council is against the idea of people enjoying themselves. We have our regulars such as Mogs Morgan, the saxophonist who is regarded highly among the music scene and Opie Deino, a talented musician who can be found around the city centre most Saturdays. I have never seen her perform a gig for some reason but have often wished I had time to sit and watch her all day. In every city we have our ropey acts too; a familiar face around town is a musician called Smithy Row, who had a doorway named after him.

Fact of the day: #Nottingham blues singer Smithy Row is the only busker to have a doorway named in his honour. pic.twitter.com/E70BzvXoak
— Steve Oliver (@SteveOliver76) July 15, 2013

Smithy Row makes a noise with a guitar that from a distance or when you walk past him quickly might be perceived as blues, although closer inspection reveals that he is just moving his fingers around and playing nothing. He has somehow managed to make a worthwhile living out of this.

Many of Nottingham’s musicians have busking experience and still keep their hands in on occasion. Marc Reeves is one such person as is Adam Clarkson (Captain Dangerous funded their debut album by busking at various cities and have said in interview that Nottingham is not a busker friendly place). My former radio colleague Rapunzel M.A.P. used to busk between midnight and three o’clock in the morning and became a local celebrity on the back of it (you can still see her on YouTube). A couple of years ago I tried to get her to play a comeback performance but she didn’t go through with it and sadly she and I fell out over it (although I was never told why). I do think it is a shame that she doesn’t play anymore as she had real talent and so many overrated singers are being courted by the local media and inexplicably gaining nationwide attention.

Just recently I have seen some new faces up and down the shopping areas, mainly performing covers. I am against cover acts in theory (despite being well known for my love of covers), but I can understand why a busker would have popular songs in their set. If someone is walking past you on a busy shopping day then you probably have less than a minute to impress so a recognisable favourite will grab him or her. There are a few good singers on the street so I would like to think that they do write some of their own songs.

I’m using this blog to formulate ideas for a thing I am writing about buskers and would like to talk to buskers about their experiences, so if you have a tale to tell my email address is below.

Listen to The Sunday Alternative Saturday Bonus Podcast here.

Listen to this week's edition of The Sunday Alternative here.

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February housekeeping

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@SteveOliver76

picture from The University of Nottingham

There’s nothing quite like a swift visit to hospital in which you are seen to straight away and are all patched up and home in time for dinner and Eastenders. What happened this evening was indeed nothing like. Mandi visited a walk-in centre in town to try and get something done about her neck which has started to niggle as an after-effect of her falling down the stairs recently. As I hadn’t had an after lunch email from her I started to worry as I was stuck in court unable to use the phone, with my mobile in my locker. As soon as I was ready to leave work for the day I noticed several missed calls and a text saying that Mandi had been taken to hospital, the Queen’s Medical Centre to be exact, the scene of my visits following my bicycle accidents. I arrived to find Mandi on a stretcher wearing an uncomfortable looking neck brace and in a lot of pain. She then told me that the walk-in centre had been great with her, but because the place isn’t staffed by medics they are too scared to do anything for fear of getting it wrong. Therefore she had a big box like neck support fitted and was left in the same position for two hours before an ambulance arrived. I didn’t have any change on me (buses in Nottingham have a stupid policy of only accepting the correct money and not giving change) and didn’t want to waste time trying to break a note, so I walked from Crown Court to QMC in about twenty minutes, so how an ambulance took two hours is anyone’s guess.

After waiting an hour Mandi was taken in to have an x-ray, and was then wheeled into a bay while the results came through (I’m not sure how the process works but I reckon they’d have been quicker going to Snappy Snaps). Every now and again a member of staff came to see how she was before announcing that they would be back ‘in a minute’ and never being seen again. Most of them said that they were going for the x-rays so I assume they all got locked in and could be still waiting to be rescued.

I nodded off in the chair next to Mandi’s ‘bed’ for a bit and when I woke up it had been two hours since the x-rays were taken. The desk staff denied that their colleagues had been accidentally locked in the x-ray room but a nurse arrived as I was returning to Mandi to check her over and then left to ‘get the x-rays’. I wasn’t prepared to lose another member of nursing staff so I offered to accompany him to fetch the mystical x-rays but he assured me that he would be straight back, which he was after about fifteen minutes.

The NHS are under pressure, I appreciate that and would never disparage the work they do. However it does make you feel useless when you can’t do anything other than wait. If someone popped in to say hello and offer reassurance that the patient had not been forgotten about it might help because that is how it feels from the patient point of view.

Thankfully, we were home in time for the repeat broadcast of Eastenders on BBC3.

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© BBC

I’m writing this blog from Nottingham. Not Brighton. Nottingham.

Whatever bad luck curse it is that follows me around well and truly kicked me in the bollocks today, resulting in our much anticipated mini-break in Brighton turning into a day trip. By day trip I mean an hour spent dragging suitcases around and getting increasingly angry as time wore on. It started when we arrived at the hotel just before the two o’clock check in time to be told matter-of-factly that check in was three o’clock. It went over the guy’s head when I pointed out the superfluous nature of having a twenty four hour manned reception, but this arsehole was not going to budge. What annoyed me more than that was the total lack of apology, we couldn’t come in until three o’clock and nothing was going to make him relinquish this moment of power. It also wasn’t possible to leave our cases there while we had a wander around getting to know a bit of Brighton, how strange that such a big building didn’t have a cupboard.

We dragged our cases up a hill and found a nice place to have a coffee, and all the while Mandi kept going on about a bad feeling she had. Mandi is naturally an optimistic person and I’m the one with a bad feeling (I just assume the worse and when something good happens I can be pleasantly surprised while at the same time wondering what the pay off will be for something going right). Mandi’s bad feeling turned out to be the hotel having no record of our reservation, and despite it being November they claimed to be fully booked. By this time I was at my limit and thanked the two gormless, script reading to the letter cunts behind the reception for ruining our break and headed off. The receipts for the money we had to pay out to change our travel arrangements   are now in an envelope along with a letter to the manager of the hotel demanding that they pay. I will not let this go, and even though it is only just short of one hundred pounds I will hound them until I get it back.

This is why I don’t like holidays, when you live with a curse of bad luck hanging over you this sort of shit happens all the time. I feel as if this is some kind of career pay off; my podcast is doing really well and I have just released an audio book with another two on the way. Maybe I can’t have it both ways, if I gave up then would things go right in my day-to-day life?

This has soured my feelings towards Brighton somewhat, even though I know it isn’t Brighton’s fault and maybe when this has blown over from my memory we’ll go again, but all I wanted to do was get the fuck away back to Nottingham today.

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Some time ago I was fined for riding a bicycle on the pavement, a fine which I paid without contest as I knew that I was in the wrong having decided that it would now be quicker for me to carry on although the cycle path had ended than it would be to join the road. The roads in certain parts of Nottingham are not legally governed by the usual laws; an amber traffic light indicates that the driver should speed up to beat the red light, if they manage it they get the pleasure of arriving at their destination anything up to four seconds ahead of schedule. For this reason I felt safer breaking the law and riding on the pavement than I did on the road. This feeling increased after I was hit by a car and spent a night in A&E, when I followed it up I was informed that the driver had not committed an offence; knocking someone off a bike is not an offence under Nottingham’s alternative Highway Code (I once saw a learner driver stop at a red traffic light, as he did it in Hyson Green, he failed his test). What the police meant when they told me this was basically ‘he was a foreign driver in an unroadworthy, untraceable car, frankly we couldn’t be arsed’. It appears that certain activities that were once considered crimes have now been quietly legalised for the convenience of the police.

Whenever I see someone cycling on the pavement I refuse to move and point out that they should be on the road. 

I have tried to find the paperwork for my fine but must have thrown it away once it had been paid as I didn’t see the merit in keeping it with my financial papers; presumably I paid it in cash. Had I found it I would have sent it back to the police for a refund seeing as these things aren’t a major worry for the police. Maybe they keep the papers archived at the station so they might be able to trace my case (doubtful, they can’t even arrest the bastard that knocked me off my bike). I’m an easy target because I work hard and pay tax and am registered to pay council tax.

There are three key points that need a zero tolerance approach from the police. It is pointless issuing fines because a false name and address can be given, so immediate action is the only way. The three key points are cycling on the pavement, litter, and dog shit.

If the police had the gumption, they could announce a zero tolerance approach that would send a clear message. All they need to do is give advance warning that there will be no bleating about human rights, no comp-en-say-shun-innit and no excuses nor exceptions. The police drive around in vans on random operations and stop anyone cycling on the pavement. Bicycles are permanently confiscated and the cyclist is put in the back of the van and taken to the station where he or she will spend 24 hours in the cells and be let out with no court case, just a criminal record and a lifetime ban on owning or riding a bicycle (a similar rule should apply to drivers who stop halfway across the crossing, ignorant of the line in the road). The same goes for dog owners allowing their pets to take a dump on the pavement with no effort to clear it up (or not having the dog on a lead in a public area); the dog is taken away as you have just proved that you are an unfit owner, you spend 24 hours in the cells and are banned for life from having a pet. Any pet, not even a goldfish. People dropping litter would follow the 24 hours lock up with a lifetime of having to spend at least one day a week picking up litter and repairing vandalism under supervision.

Little things like this will send a message that making a mess is anti-social and that it is not something you will get away with. We also need something doing about leaving furniture outside on the street instead of making arrangements to have it collected. I know someone always takes it for his or her own use but that isn’t the point.

In 2012 we had the chance to vote on whether or not Nottingham should have a Mayor but unfortunately the apathy disease struck everyone and not enough people made the effort to leave the house and make the only sensible vote. Although Nottingham regrets it now, it is too late. I would have run for Mayor and turned this decaying city around within six months (if I’d won). Be proud of your decisions Nottingham, and be careful out there because the pavements are dangerous.

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Mandi was working today and I had intended to crack on with some work, including bringing the blog up to date and recording The Sunday Alternative. I woke up with a banging headache so went back to bed until noon before taking Jack out and making breakfast. Having previously made a long list of jobs to do today, I didn’t complete them due to my late start although there was a satisfactory amount of crossing out by the time I had decided to knock off for the day. It was mainly a day of catching up, nothing I can call proper work apart from the podcast, although all work related. In between this I also managed to do some laundry, washing up and cleaning the kitchen sides (especially as my fried eggs and bacon for breakfast had caused the most spectacular mess of the hob) and edited my blogs before uploading them a few at a time.

Despite today being a working day for me I still managed a little Twitter silliness based on today being International Robin Hood Day. There has been a lot of hype about this on social media, although typically for Nottingham it has been greeted with a certain level of apathy. The trouble with Nottingham is the fact that not enough people who live here care about the place and its history. I have met this issue head on with such campaigns as The Old General (nobody round the Hyson Green area has lived here long enough for it to be important to them) and Mushy Pea-Gate, something that affected everybody in the city. Robin Hood is a fictional affectation based on myth and legend but Nottingham has never pushed the character far enough, I agree that he should be used as a tourist pulling figurehead for Nottingham (as should Ayup the Duck but that’s another story) but it needs doing properly. First of all it needs to be admitted that Robin Hood wasn’t real and that there’s nothing wrong with using a fictional character. The best tourist attraction I can think of using to a better advantage is the film locations aspect, something that we hardly acknowledge. Why aren’t we operating an open topped bus tour around the settings for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, The Dark Knight Rises, Control, Once Upon A Time in the Midlands and a great deal more? There hasn’t been a single Robin Hood film ever made anywhere near here so the whole thing is a little insignificant.

I think my main source of amusement was the ambitious use of the word ‘international’. The Robin Hood legend has international appeal and it does bring overseas visitors to Nottingham to see the statue outside our ‘castle’ and to see the visitor centre in Sherwood Forest. However, if Robin Hood had been an American character then they would shout it from the rooftops and have an enormous theme park dedicated to him. So I took the ‘international’ and then I took the piss. By pretending to retweet messages from world leaders I was pulling what I thought was the perfect satire, especially when I put words in Barack Obama’s mouth about having a mushy pea stall on the White House lawn to honour Nottingham on this day. By the time I tweeted on behalf of Russell Crowe, including an apology for the dodgy accent used for his portrayal, I had grown bored of the fact that nobody was playing along and returned to my work.

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It must have been the sea air at Saltburn that gave me one of the best night’s sleep I can remember having. I stayed in Middlesbrough last night with my mum and stepdad, but had my mum to myself for a while giving us a good opportunity to talk. They both left the house this morning giving me a key and the code to the alarm system, and I made the classic error of going back to bed with a cup of tea. Just before twelve o’clock I woke up with a cup of cold tea next to the bed, and rather than having a shower and breakfast, I packed my bag and left the house.

I posted this tweet in the morning, just to draw a line under a little wind up I had attempted to stage yesterday.

I had a weird dream last night involving David Bowie.
— Steve Oliver (@SteveOliver76) October 17, 2014

When I arrived in Middlesbrough yesterday I posted this…

Just my luck! I'm in Middlesbrough and David Bowie is doing a secret show in #Nottingham tonight.
— Steve Oliver (@SteveOliver76) October 16, 2014

Throughout the day I tweeted a handful of posts referring to the fact that David Bowie was playing a secret gig in Nottingham last night. Although some people immediately knew I was talking bollocks, I did manage to pull a few people in. it was risky but I had to mention a venue at some point, so I nominated the Rescue Rooms and ‘announced’ that it started at half past ten and that it was forty pounds on the door. It would have been cool if the venue had played along with this wheeze, but apparently they had already started telling anyone who phoned that it wasn’t true, which prompted me a little further…

Rescue Rooms are playing their cards close to their chest. No info given, they don't want a media frenzy.
— Steve Oliver (@SteveOliver76) October 16, 2014

Feeling mischievous, I managed to concoct a fictional commentary about how I had managed to wangle a lift in a helicopter from Teesside Airport, (I didn’t even realise that Teesside Airport was renamed Durham Tees Valley Airport in 2004 until I tried to Google it, but nobody pulled me up on it) and would be landing at East Midlands Airport at half past nine to catch the Skylink bus into the city. All the time I deliberately didn’t reply to anyone on Twitter or Facebook as I wanted to try and keep things slightly credible. It wasn’t until I received a text message from Adam Clarkson asking if it was true that I texted back to say I was trying to start a rumour, that I decided to up the silly a little bit…

Is it true that Captain Dangerous are supporting Bowie at RR? I'm at Teesside Airport all raring to go. Never been in a helicopter before!
— Steve Oliver (@SteveOliver76) October 16, 2014

There wasn’t a single report in the newspaper about this potentially huge event, so I doubt that too many people actually bothered to take my ‘news’ seriously. A part of me hopes that at least one person turned up at Rescue Rooms hoping to see David Bowie; if they did then my work is done. This morning I read back through my Twitter feed and replies, and spotted that some people had been slagging me off on Facebook for doing this kind of wind up before. Mandi told me that I have cried wolf, considering that I achieved my Warhol-allocation of worldwide notoriety a few years ago when I convinced the world that Adam West was going to be in The Dark Knight Rises.

On the plus side, if Bowie ever does do a secret gig and I find out, nobody will believe me and I’ll have a private show.

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All donations received via the PayPal button above will be used to fund creative projects such as podcasts, short films, documentaries, comedy sketches and a whole lot more. You are under no obligation of course, but thanks in advance if you do drop something in the pot.