Getting a High Profile Twitter Follower

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Published: Plastic Glasses?

If you're in the Tameside area of Greater Manchester, keep your eyes peeled for a new night-life magazine hitting bars, clubs, shops and taxi ranks.

Barandclubbing.com, formerly sundaynights.com, has now gone into print. Describing itself as “your guide to what's happening in and around Tameside”, the new magazine features night-life-related articles, photos from your night out, jokes, DJ interviews and money-off vouchers for local outlets.

My article “Plastic Glasses?” has made it into the new edition. Find it out there, or, if you can't wait, check out the online version here:

http://www.barandclubbing.com/magazine.php

You'll find two editions of the magazine. Both are great, but to see my article you'll need to check out the left-hand magazine and turn to page eight.

Editor / photographer Richard has done a cracking job of putting it together. Here's to continued future editions!

Speaking Up For Students

They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
-Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)
 
Recently some students attacked a car carrying Prince Charles and Camilla. Further protests against tuition fees. Protesters threw paint over the Rolls-Royce, chanting “off with their heads”, and rumours suggest one of the crowd “poked Camilla with a stick.”
 
The press photograph shows the couple open-mouthed, aghast and terrified. When the news broke, Facebook news feeds became inundated with angered opinions- mostly pro-royalists venting their disgust. Royalty they may be, people said. But they are still pensioners. And grandparents. Attacking an ageing couple’s car? Disgraceful, people said.
 
And so, sympathy for students drastically ebbed. The majority of people- certainly in my Facebook friends- typecast students in general, describing them as “scum”.
 
Let’s put this into perspective. Millions of students voted Liberal Democrats- 45% of them- based on the fair deal that the party promised to give them on tuition fees.

http://www.today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Pol-ST-Students-261110.pdf

A few thousand turned out in London on 9th November. Out of those, only a handful damaged the Prince’s Rolls Royce.
 
Please don’t typecast all students based on the actions of these few individuals.
 
The flip side is this: The coalition went ahead and raised tuition fees, thereby breaking the Lib-Dems’ promise to give students a fair deal. The decision wasn’t made by royalty, but it also wasn’t opposed, as far as I can find. Prince Charles doesn’t appear to have done anything to prevent the increase of fees. He may be a pensioner, but he is a pensioner with power. A power he didn’t use.
 
If Prince Charles had voiced himself as a champion of higher education, things may have been different. People may have left him alone. If possible, he might have disallowed top-up fees from being pushed through parliament.
 
However, NOBODY- Not even Prince Charles himself- has pointed out how the original problem caused the fees row in the first place. University is supposed to be for the BEST people in the United Kingdom- a system to tailor the most capable individuals into the top jobs in the country. This isn’t happening now, and hasn't happened for a long time, hence the 500,000 people starting a university course in September 2010.
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jan/21/record-new-students-ucas
 
Shit, I’VE got a degree. I only got 1 grade C in my GCSEs. I am NOT the cream of Britain’s academia. Yet I’ve got a legitimate 2:1 after my name. Should UCAS have allowed me to go to university? Maybe not at the time that I did, especially considering how little work experience I had.
 
If the government set a system whereby only the best people in the land were given university places- either through exceptional qualifications or, more importantly, prior work experience, they wouldn’t have to charge students through the nose. They could probably reinstate grants, as there would be so few people going on to HE.
 
If you are in a position of power, yet you DON’T wade in on this debate, you can expect that the thousands of students will tar you with the same brush. As Neimoller suggests, if you don’t stand up for others, you can expect that they won’t respect you either. Whether you’re a pensioner or not.

Er... Well, Let's Just Try That One Again.

I really need to research creative writing exercises. Nobody at a recent writer's meeting had any new ones, so we tried this classic gem:

Everyone at the table has two slips of paper. On one, they write the opening line of a story. On the other, they write the closing line.

We pass the opening line to the left, and the closing line to the right.

We now have new opening and closing lines. Weave a story starting with one and ending with another. WARNING: This is HARD.

The opening line I received:
“He looked at the jar on the top shelf, hidden slightly by the jam.”

The closing line:
“Well fuck you, and fuck him too, I thought.”

I find you never know what you're writing until it's scrawled out in front of you. Here's what had appeared on my page when the timer beeped.

He looked at the jar on the top shelf, slightly hidden by the jam.

“Go on,” I said. “Pick it up.”

He reached up and nudged the jar aside.

“Bet you wished you'd eaten your greens,” I said, trying to be funny.

“Actually, it's protein that makes you grow. Dairy and meat. Greens have nothing to do with it.”

I looked at the floor for a second. “Okay...”

Bob said he'd find it funny. I hoped he was right.

His fingers reached the rim of the giant jar. It made a noise as it moved slightly, pushing the jam aside. It was blue and opaque, with no lid.

Bang.

The jam jar slipped off, shattering on the cans on the shelf below, firing red goo in all directions. The blue tub followed, scattering peanuts over the shelf and over him. He made a spitting noise, like he was choking.

“I'm allergic to peanuts, you dick!”

“I didn't know! It was Bob's idea!”

Well fuck you, and fuck him too, I thought.

November.

“You can have my answer now if you'd like. My offer is this. Nothing.”
-Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), Godfather Part II


Bit of a non-blog this month. Still decorating. Taking forever. Help needed. People in the Oldham area- get in touch with me. Part time employers should also give me a heads-up as I need a second job. Outgoings are more than incomings, and I'm hardly going out at all. Ridiculous. Agencies I’ve been to can’t help me because I already work at the start of the week. Looking for stuff at the end of the week is impossible.
 
“Well... We shot a lot of people together. It's been great. But today I retire, so if I do any shooting now, it'll have to be within the confines of my own home. Hopefully, an intruder and not an in-law, like at my bachelor party.”
-Frank Drebin (Leslie Neilson), Naked Gun 33+ 1/3
 
RIP Leslie Neilson. Total Film magazine may have described you as “The King of Crap”, and your final few films may have been horrendous, but in the eighties and nineties you proved that you were a comedy legend. You will be greatly missed.
 
I’m also still looking for guest bloggers. If you fancy getting involved and joining Caleb J Ross and Lynn Myint-Maung, follow this link.

http://powerisastateofmind.blogspot.com/2010/09/would-you-like-to-write-for-power-is.html

It never hurts to spread your work around. After all, as Vito would say...

“Do me this favour. I won't forget it. Ask your friends in the neighbourhood about me. They'll tell you I know how to return a favour.”
          -Vito Corleone (Robert DeNiro), Godfather Part II

How to Drink Whisky Like a Man

Fri 12th November

“I'm a simple man. All I want is enough sleep for two normal men, enough whisky for three, and enough women for four.”
-Joel Rosenberg, Author

We're around the back of the Natwest in Lees, where there’s a row of nondescript terraced houses. Ollie knocks on a door. The five of us, we wait.

A stern-looking guy in his forties answers. We tell him we're here for the whisky night.

The guy takes our tickets and leads us up a staircase to what appears to be the landing in his house. When he opens the door, however, the room we're taken into must take up half the terrace. Lees Labour Club is a small venue, compares to most clubs, with a tiny bar in the corner and a pool table and school tables pushed against each other in blocks. The wood décor hasn't been updated in a long time. Neither have the fashion tastes of the patrons, who are all male and mostly in their forties.

An ageing man in a kilt welcomes us and begins to tell us the origins of whisky production.

I was trying to jot down opinions on each whisky when it occurred to me that successful whisky–tasting is an impossible feat. Many tasters will suggest this technique for good tasting:

1)    Take the whisky in the glass with no ice.
2)    Take three deep sniffs. On the first sniff, you’ll take in the alcohol. Kilt Man says that many people don’t get past that first sniff. At 40% alcohol, it’s understandable. On the second sniff, you’re likely to notice the cask- the oak or sherry that the whisky was left to age in. On the third, you’ll notice the elements fused into it’s distillation. You might pick out the charcoal used to ferment the husks of grain, before being cooked up to liquid. You might note the smoke from the burning peat, placed under the grain in the distillery.
3)   Sip the whisky. Chew it over. Let it mellow on your tongue. Again, the alcohol hits you first. Then the brand’s distinct taste becomes evident.
4)    Swallow. Different whiskies will give differing types of after burn. This glow is all part of the whisky-tasting experience.

Here’s why you can never accomplish successful whisky tasting. To compare whisky, you must take into account all of the above- smell, taste, after taste. To get all three of those, you must swallow.

For want of a better expression.

As each shot is at least 40%, it won’t be long before the whisky impairs your judgement and you don’t know what you’re tasting. Brighty exacerbated this problem when he hid the water jug under the table and wouldn’t bring it back out. We were on-track for steamingness.

Many whisky enthusiasts recommend spitting out the whisky after tasting, so you’re sober enough to appreciate other samples. But by doing this you miss out on the afterglow- and what fun would a whisky night be if you didn’t get hammered and dish out the banter?

During the drinking, Kilt Man tells of the history behind whisky production, describing how the Irish first learned how to cultivate grain using acidic soil. This type of earth, he says, is best for growing oats and barley. He describes the mashing, fermentation, distillation and maturation needed for a good single malt and how the techniques of the late 1400s started to develop towards today's whisky-making systems. The Irish then gave the idea to the Scots, who began to mass-market whisky as their own.

Whisky is one of the “spirits”- an alcohol type that got its name centuries ago when drunk people believed a “spirit” had taken over their mind. The name stuck.

Whisky ages in barrels. When it’s taken out and bottled, that’s when it stops ageing.

A Christies auction once saw the selling of one bottle of whisky for a record-breaking £2000.

Some whisky brands use one individual batch of grain from which to distil their liquor. We refer to this as “single malt”, and all the whiskies we tried fell into this category. They were:

Glen Parker
From the Tommy Tool distillery. Pretty good, of what I remember. GP is one of the lowland malts, which are always good to start a session with.

Glengoyne
A smooth, before-dinner whisky.

Glentauchers
An eighteen-year-old malt, also a “session whisky”. The most “middle of the road” whisky and the most popular of the night.

Singleton
From Dufftown. I already have a bottle at home. A fine malt.

Lagavulin
“With this one,” says Kilt Man, “You might get a hint of TCP. This is from Isla, and it’s the most expensive of tonight’s whiskies. It’s one for the road. You’d basically give this to someone to get rid of them.”

I take a sip. It’s dark, and somewhat pungent. It ain’t the best of tonight’s samples.

“It’s also good,” Kilt Man says, “for removing sheep ticks.”

Throughout the talk he’s getting the punters involved by asking questions about Scotland’s history.

“What happened in 1745?”

“Fez bought his shirt,” mumbles Brighty, glancing at Fez's militia-style black button-up.

“The Jackobyte revolution,” answers someone on the adjacent table.

“Correct.” Kilt man dishes out an extra shot for the man with the right answer.

We all agree we should have paid more attention in History.

Dun Liere
For a bit of variety, Kilt Man throws in an Irish whisky. It’s pretty good, considering that it’s a supermarket’s own brand. I might pick up some Dun Liere next time I’m in Sainsbury’s.

Auchroisk
An any-time whisky. This eighteen-year-old is particularly good for drinking outdoors. Kilt Man tells us that whisky was, for many years, an outdoor drink. It was what you took with you in a flask, when you went shooting stags or fishing trout and salmon. Today, whiskies are all generally marketed as indoor drinks. Mostly…

http://www.videosostav.ru/video/1bcf8645742f8dac9e9e2fb07dd000f0


Like you'd get any signal there anyway...

I can’t resist cracking an old Bobby Davro classic.

“Personally I like my whisky like I like my women: a good sixteen-year-old mixed up with coke…”

Brighty takes my notebook off me. A few minutes later, he hands it back and there’s a biro image of a bald head with it’s mouth open. There’s a phallus pointing at the head, with tiny dots coming out of it. The picture’s title suggests it represents one of our team. There’s also a speech bubble implying that the man loves “schlong.”

Kilt Man mentions that, in certain parts of Scotland, you can buy personalised kilts like the one he’s wearing. “They’ll print any name,” he says, “especially British names like Patel.”

The night is sponsored by Stanley Ogden Butchers of Grotton, who have provided a giant portion of cow. One of tonight’s organisers is cutting steak slices off the cooked platter and slipping them into buttered muffins. They are the best steak sandwiches I have tasted to date. I hammer three of them. The record is seven, apparently.

I'd like to say Glentauchers was my favourite of the night, as it was the best of the scotches... But the Irish Dun Liere had a strange appeal. Looks like my personal whisky collection is going to have a bit of variety... after payday.

Whisky night runs again next May. I got a ticket through word-of-mouth. This kind of joint don't do no internet marketing.

Cold Whisky Nights

I'd like to welcome Mark Ferris back to the fold, with his answer-back piece.
FYI- my nickname in certain circles in “Lord of War”.

Don't ask.

With a bite in the air, and a chill in the bones
These fine young connoisseurs have broken the mould.
November's cold air cracks the wind like a whip
The boys hold fast as they take their last sip.
Now they head to the venue like a rolling storm
An old single malt to keep the boys warm.
One turns to six, and six turns to twelve
Young boys are broken at only 10 bells.
They old boys, they laugh: ''They've much to learn''
''not just a drink, but a way of the world!''
Now they wait for the night when they're all back together
......to do as Lord says, and simply get leathered