Matt Tuckey is a writer from Oldham, England. He covers celebrities, night life, Manchester, fitness, creative writing, social media, psychology and events. Some of this may, in some way, help others. Or maybe it'll just entertain you for a while.
I
really need to check my emails more often. 4 weeks ago celeb-based
gossip E-rag Popbitch referenced some information I sent them about Jeremy Paxman, and
how he recited a poem about poo at his book signing event. I got my
initials at the bottom of the email. I'll get them to link to this
blog one day, Goddamnit.
Also: I
read a Discworld novel for the
first time in about 16 years. Sir Terry Pratchett's comedy fantasy
universe and book series has become somewhat of a cult in the UK and
beyond, with over 80 million books sold. I read a few in my teens and
I loved them, but then moved on to other material as I stumbled into
adulthood. I had another bash at Pratchett recently, with a
second-hand copy of The Fifth Elephant, about a police chief running
from werewolves whilst trying to diffuse a potentially devastating
disagreement. Think Iraq in 2003, only Saddam's forces are dwarves
and oil is fat. Oh, and Dick Cheney is a
Frankenstein's-monster-reanimated-type called Igor. Relentlessly
inventive and surprising, the book constantly uses the fantasy genre
to its advantage, turning the everyday into ridiculous, colourful
scenarios.
Shame a
lot of the jokes fall flat. I suspect I've just outgrown the
franchise, in favour of more serious, hard-boiled stuff.
Also:
happened to spot the new Bulmers ad being filmed in Castlefield on
Friday night.
The
city's largest and most impressive public library has reopened after
a 4-year, £48 million restoration, and
it's every bit as modern as impressive as you might hope. Today saw
the official reopening, so I darted in (during another typical
Mancunian downpour) to dry off and have a wander around.
On
entering I found a historian dressed as a Somme solider giving a very
believable speech about the horrors of the first world war,
describing the sheer weight of his backpack. When emerging from the
WWI trenches, he describes, a soldier carried so much gear that it
was imperative he stayed on his feet. If he fell, his pack would stop
him getting back up. Nobody else would help. Also, the soldiers'
training taught them to stoop low when advancing on the enemy to duck
high-flying bullets. The Germans, however, positioned their turrets
close to the ground, and the “crouching running” style favoured
by the soldiers meant that they were taking bullets to the face.
Hence the disastrously high fatality rate during the First World War.
The
library is now part museum in its presentation. Old book archives and
notes are displayed behind glass; perspex cases show old student
notes found stuffed under desks from decades ago, unearthed during
the library's recent huge restoration.
Manchester
City Council have grasped that people search for information in a
multitude of ways, and the new library caters for a variety of
learning styles. There are books aplenty, as expected, but there's
also a healthy supply of bookable computers, scrolling LCD displays,
information touch screens cordoned off in circular booths,
interactive digital signage and librarians on hand.
Manchester
Library is much more in touch with what people today need from a
library. A room full of books hasn't been the correct resource for
research for decades (although that IS one method). Different strokes
for different folks, as the saying goes. An impressive and promising
redesign.
Took a
lot of preparing. The cutting off of the rind was easier than I
thought it would be. The pork itself came pre-wrapped in kitchen
string, which I made the mistake of cutting through on each spiral. I
needed this string for later, so halfway through I had to dart to the
local newsagent to buy some more.
The
Hairy Dieters cookbook crucially misses out a section on each recipe
for the equipment we will need, as opposed to ingredients. I also
found, for instance, that I need to buy a cornflour shaker to make
gravy with. The gravy came out lumpy because of this. Although,
having said that, maybe I should actually read the instructions
thoroughly before starting...
I've
found that the book doesn't always present instructions to create a
full meal. The pork was just that- the meat, and the gravy. No carbs.
No veg. They suggest “throwing out” the drained-off fat. I happen
to already know not to pour fat down the sink, but what's the
alternative? I had to phone the endless well of knowledge that is my
mum. Her advice: Pour it into a mug. Let it set. Cut it out with a
knife and throw the gelatinous lump into the bin.
Cooking
time: 90 mins. I got a gym session in whilst it was in the oven.
The pork
itself was delicious, a testament to how far I'd come from a complete
inability to cook a couple of years ago. I think now it might be time
to start trusting my intuition and not rely on the recipe
word-for-word.
Subsequent
to the trial, and despite the attention, South Africa's mental gun
laws and social attitudes will remain unchanged. The trial should
illustrate the issue of gun violence in the country, (16th highest murder rate in the world,
540 gun deaths in
the month after Reeva Steemkamp's murder) and should encourage a change,
but the country will be too stubborn to even breach the subject, let
alone alter gun laws.
Oscar Pistorius
is a trigger-happy, paranoid fool who lost everything. He deserves
prison.
South
Africa must update their gun laws- and their attitudes- or risk more
international condemnation. (Although possibly not from the USA,
where gun laws are similarly lax.)
Between
18 and 25 I trained in the 500-year-old noble martial art of Muay Thai, or Thai Boxing. For those
that put in the time and effort, the sport develops incredible levels
of strength, speed, stamina and flexibility.
I'm now
31, and I still use the gym and have recently got into boxing. My
cardio and hand speed is creeping back to a standard that I once had,
but my flexibility is nothing like it was. I would attempt the splits
twice a week in Muay Thai training. When I was 19, I had about 30cm
between my crotch and the ground. This was at the peak of my
flexibility. Obviously, in boxing the lower body's abilities aren't
as important as it is when training in Muay Thai. Also, when you get
into your late 20s, your flexibility plummets. I thought that process
would be largely irreversible... until I saw this.
Van
Damme was 53 when he filmed this. I'm curious- could I get my
flexibility back to my 19-year-old state? Could I surpass it and
stretch more than I've ever done?
It's
possible. It might take years of practice for some, but let's say
that I work on this for the next month. I could do this standing, as
Van Damme is in the video, or sat down with legs apart. The latter
would be a much easier (and safer) way. The more time you spend on
the edge of your flexibility, with your legs as wide as possible
without too much discomfort, the more you'll be able to coax your
legs further apart. Keep the room warm so your muscles are soft, use
a wall or a couch to push your feet apart on, and let your legs adapt to an
unfamiliar position.
As this
will take lots of time, and I'll basically be sat eye-level with the
seat of the bottom of my kitchen door for a few weeks, I may as well
get a good book in as well. Review post in 1 month will be split (pun
intended) between book review and project review. I'll be able to
extrapolate from that data how long it would take me to complete the
splits.
Current
stretch: 1m 37cm.
How long
it would take me to afford 2 Volvo trucks for me to do them between:
who knows.
Saddleworth
Leisure Centre played host to an incredibly popular series of
seminars on sleep last weekend. Oldham has a LOT of insomniacs, me
being one of them, so the local authorities funded the information
sessions to help the town's people. I took one of the places on one
of the 20-minute slots, where the presenter Nick gave us a taster of
what we can learn on a 4-week programme. He demonstrated his advice
using a mattress laid out on the floor of the room- Olympic cyclist
Sir Chris Hoy's bed. Dropping by to see how
the session unfolded was Debbie Abrahams, MP for Saddleworth. Here's Nick's information and advice:
Men
sleep heavier than women, as women are genetically wired up to
listen for babies at night.
During
work, tailor the jobs you have to do to the time of day. If you're
more productive in the afternoon, if possible tend to more taxing
jobs then and work on simpler tasks in the morning.
Sleep
is repair for your mind and body. You're not sleeping in your
“bedroom”- you're sleeping in your “sleep repair room”.
Going
to sleep is a process, not an event. Think of it as climbing stairs.
You're at the bottom of the stairs. Don't jump to the top. Climb
them one at a time.
Fruit
juice speeds up the process of digesting food, so this kind of drink
is good for before bedtime.
Light
from a lamp will keep feeding your body with light as if it were
daytime. So reading by a lamp will keep you awake.
Lamp
lights are necessary for getting to bed in the first place, though,
so in the bedroom try switching your lamp light from a white bulb to
yellow or red.
A
shower before bed will raise your body temperature. This will help,
provided your bed is cooler. Your bed should help your body to cool
down. Don't be too warm.
De-clutter.
If you can't drop off without thinking about the little jobs-
tidying up, doing the dishes, hanging up the ironing- do it before
you go to bed. Allow time for this. Think, what will I be thinking
about when I go to bed?
If
you have a late night- you come home after a night on the town, or
have been working late for instance, keep the routine. Don't just go
to bed.
Wake
up with a Lumie body clock.
These alarms will wake you with light instead of sound, steadily
illuminating the room.
The
best bed products are like trainers- you're not just using them,
you're wearing them for 7-9 hours. They are soft, not hard or
aggravating. Memory foam is the general term for many types of
density of mattress, many of which are soft in this way.
Melatonin
is a chemical that aids sleep.
This is currently available over the counter in the US, but not the
UK, according to Nick. Google shows some UK distributors. Can anyone
shed light?
Although
it is ideal to get a full stretch of sleep for 7-9 hours, short
bursts of sleep with regular wake-ups is more normal than you might
think.
In
the office, you may find that having meetings straight after lunch
can make your colleagues / employees lethargic. Try moving the
meeting time to around 2:30pm, after we've all digested our food,
and you'll find people are much more attentive.
My plan
is to book on to this course as I'm tired of being tired. I'll let
you know how it goes.
Feedback group Writers Connect arranged a homework exercise a month or so ago: write a rap verse to perform at the next meeting. I whisked this up and "spat it" at the group two weeks later. It seemed to go down well, so I decided to make a music video of it. I wanted to make it as decent as possible, so I rehearsed it a few times, checked pacing, breathing, saliva control, gathered a few props, practiced with sound levels (a bit)... and then my computer broke. 2 weeks later, it's fixed and the verse is complete. Just a bit of fun. I'm not the next Immortal Technique.
Or am I...?
0:20-
snare starts
0:40-
beat starts
From
early beginnings on the outskirts of the city
I
always bring unlikely circumstance with me
pick
out a moment in space and time
on
a radio show at the age of nine
Baloo
arranges to take the club out
to
commemorate the founding of the cub scouts
The
group in their uniform are very well-dressed
But
out of a sense of rebelliousness
I
rock up in T-shirt and jeans
I
figure we're there to be heard and not seen
everyone
else is in woggles and scarves
leaving
me looking the one who's half-arsed
An
older cub, he was the type born to lead,
had
numerous badges adorned on his sleeve
The
presenter he asks what each one of them means
and
the kid explains symbols supported by seams
He
spoke with charisma aged only eleven
a
popular jock who was known as Kevin
Or
Sinny, a kid whose name you might know
was
picked to play rugby for Leeds Rhinos
and
later he rose to the top of his field
This
kid, his name was Kevin Sinfield
Now
I don't need any form or type of citation
As
captain, he's one of the best in the nation.
But
wait, let me take you back to '92
Cos
with telling this story I'm not even through
The
presenter agrees that uniform's irrelevant
as
with radio, you don't have the visual element
It's
liberating knowing that a city can hear ya
Then
afterwards we darted to a little cafeteria
A
floor or so up from the station's studio
We
walked in the room, and what do you know?
Who
do we see sat huddled there? (SWALLOW)
It
was Peter Simon from Double Dare!
An
opportunity we out not to pass
So
Kev Sinny walked up and got us autographs (SHOW PIC)
I
expect today that if the two were to be found
together
that it would be the other way around!
The
fate of the rest of the team is a mystery
So
I'm signing off now from this scene of Oldham history.
To
clarify, the following is a work of fiction. This writing exercise
involved a group of people writing along the same outrageous premise.
We passed around one sheet of paper allowing each person in the group
to contribute to a premise from which we would write. We folded the
sheet back after adding each section so no-one could see the other
details of the story we'd be writing. Between each pass of the sheet,
a group member added one of the following elements:
Name
Age
Place
Time
Occupation
Something
they are doing
A
problem they are facing
Our
premise was as follows:
Buster
Wanksniffer
14 years
old
In
Chester Zoo
At
4:55pm
He's an
archaeologist
He's
smoking a cigar
He's a
transvestite.
For the
record, I did not put forward the “problem” section. Some of the
group are a bit “old-school”, and although being a transvestite
would probably come with its
problems, we agreed that the fetish is not a problem in
itself. Also, I acknowledge that
a transvestite is someone who cross-dresses for sexual thrills and a
transsexual is someone who wants to change, or already has changed,
their gender. I got this wrong during the exercise.
Gently,
gently, like the woman he wishes he was, he brushes the sand away
from the crevice emerging stubbornly in the pit.
Buster
is fortunate that a kid his age got the placement at all-
professional archaeologists have been denied entry to the zoo as to
not disturb the colobus monkeys. Mating season or not, Buster has a
deadline. The primates are cordoned off in another enclosure as
Buster digs, scrapes and tentitively brushes against the bone
structure, emerging proud from the floor. It's an emergence, a
transformation.
Just
like he is.
He
pushes the wig's blonde fringe away from his eyes again, noting the
smaller details of his life changing- beyond the dress and the
knee-high boots, regardless of the lycra and mascara- even his
brush-strokes were becoming more effeminate.
He
felt the cigar balanced him out- he is not a transexual, nor does he
want to be. He's not a man either, yet. He's a boy with a tool, in a
number of ways.
He
sucked on the cigar, lost in thought. The ribcage of the find- a mere
65 million years old- was protruding now, like his own in his
crop-top.
The
patrons may have stared, but the monkeys were indifferent, free from
prejudice. And they were the ones put out by his intrusion, displaced
by Buster's foray into the zoo's Jurassic past.
E
is the most popular letter in the English language. It appears in the
majority of our words. Trying to write without it is HARD- your
staple words like “the”, “he” and “she” are out. Past
tense is impossible, as all verbs ending in “ed” are banned-
unless you write “did” before each verb (e.g. “Matt did ban
that symbol from his writing.”) Glance back at this paragraph and
you'll see what I mean. I haven't even engineered it this way, but
I've used “e” a lot.
Entire novels have been written this way- even in past tense.
So it's possible, but emerges very clunky.
We
tried this for a 10-minute exercise at a local writers meeting.
Before I told them what we were doing, I asked the group members to
think of their own word, that didn't include an “E”. This was the
title and theme for their piece.
Here
was my forced effort:
Function
“It
works!” Alan says. “My contraption is working!” Alan, though,
works solo, no assistant to throw around his thoughts or plans with.
Buttons
turn and grills hum, functions working from within that iron box.
Static shoots across Alan's workshop floor, startling Oscar, his
tabby cat.
“Sorry,”
Alan says. “You should go, Oscar”.
Oscar
slinks out as iron grinds, forcing history through.
So.
64 words. Incredibly hard. There were a lot of crossed-out words on
the page, and a lot of exasperated sighs coming from me and the rest
of the group. I found that, when thinking of a word, I'd realise the
word contained “e”, so I'd think of a synonym. But the synonym
would also contain “e”, so I'd have to think of a way of
rearranging the entire sentence. Hence, the construction of the whole
piece didn't get very far before the deadline. 2 out of 8-or-so
people at the group managed to pull it off.
An
exercise like this is great for stretching your vocabulary, for
thinking of alternative ways of writing what you want to portray.
Shot
down to London with the family, seeing more family. One particular
other purpose: to check out the work of filmmaker David Lynch,
experimental author William Burroughs and modern artist Andy Warhol, in three exhibitions held at The Photographer's Gallery.
I've
been a big Lynch fan since I was 16, when I got into surrealist film
at college, so I was really curious to see what his photography work
was like.
It's
not exactly as engaging or as eerily engaging as Blue Velvet, or as
absurd and unnerving as Eraserhead, but you can see that his early
photography work- and interest in industry- influenced the visual
choices made in his films.
I've
only been familiar with Burroughs' work in the last few years, when I
read Naked Lunch. I'd seen the movie (weird in another way
altogether) but it was nothing like the book.
Spent
a small fortune in the gift shop.
Next
up: Greenwich's Design Museum,
featuring an exhibition of objects paused during their creation.
Making the ordinary fascinating.
The
second exhibition featured the works of the master of stripes and
some of the most expensive clothes in Britain, Mr Paul Smith.
Just chillin' with my homie Paul.
The
curators had put together some informative behind-the-scenes video
footage of a day at Smith's office, featuring his team making
decisions, and weaving business acumen with artistic flair. Well
worth a look. Again, spent a further fortune in the gift shop.
We
then nipped over to the House of Commons to watch a parliamentary
debate. The
Houses of parliament are open to the public, for reasons of
transparency, and spaces are usually available with short queues,
depending on the day you arrive.
When
the usher escorts you into the viewing gallery, the first thing you
notice is how small the house- or room- is in real life. The
unmistakeable green pews were mostly visible as quite a few MPs were
out in their constituencies, but we did see Shirley Williams
in the corridor on the way up there. Present at the debate was Jacob Rees-Mogg
and Stephen Twigg,
among others.
I'll
be honest- try as I might I didn't understand what was being said.
The sound was fed through the BBC Parliament channel, playing on a
screen in the corner of the gallery, to a few seconds' time delay, so
it was totally audible but largely incomprehensible.
We
visited the world's smallest police station at Trafalgar Square. It wasn't manned, but there were bobbies floating about.
We
then dug out last year's passes
to St Paul's Cathedral, and climbed up the stone-and-iron staircase to the top of the observatory.
Nerve-wracking stuff but offers some of the best views in the city.
Next
door to the grandiose of the Cathedral is a tiny but classy coffee
shop called Apostrophe, where I had the thickest, gloopiest but
awesomest hot chocolate known to man.
I
saw this...
...and
thought of this.
Yeah,
mate, just on me walkie-talkie.
Whitehall.
Portcullis House.
Today home of the newspaper-producing sector, Fleet Street is renowned for its legal-field-orientated history.
Brilliant
weekend. Plenty more planned for future trips, especially after the
purchase of the Secret London guidebook, offering you alternative
ideas to fill your trip- locations and events that you might not be
aware of. I certainly wasn't.
