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.
September
1997: I'm 15 and on work experience at the Oldham Evening Chronicle. My aunt, who was deputy
news editor at the time, managed to organise my placement and I'm now
following the journalists around town and shadowing their work,
making what notes I can. They take me to meet a Golden Jubilee
couple, we visit the police station, the fire station and the courts.
In
the latter of these, we watched as a number of people come
face-to-face with a judge. The first was a young girl, maybe 20 or so
with dark hair. She was terrified. The guard, a stocky-looking woman,
held her hand and walked her to the dock. She'd been busted
shoplifting in Boots, and timidly mumbled “guilty,” behind
shaking fingers. She was given community service I think, and the
guard took her hand again and led her away.
Next
up, the judge called up a lad in his twenties. He'd been done for
indecent exposure to a female on a country path somewhere. The judge
asked him if he had anything to say.
“Yeah,”
he said. “I just wish I hadn't done it.”
I
bet, I thought. I wrote down “I just wish I hadn't done it.”
I
looked to the left of me and my aunt and the other journalists were
writing in shorthand, something that looked like a foreign language.
But in the middle of the hieroglyphic squiggles, the quote from the
defendant was in clear English.
It
dawned on me at this moment that shorthand would be great for me.
Even as a teenager I needed to make notes due to memory difficulties
and, both then and now, I can't always get the notes I want due to
conversations moving too fast. It would also mean I could make
private notes- it's only journalists who can read shorthand, so
anything I might write would be fairly secure. Even today I kick
myself for not learning this skill. Meetings in work, book signings,
meetings with the NHS relating to memory or confidence- these
encounters would be much more streamlined if I could get the info
down quicker. There's normally silent pauses, particularly in
one-to-one meetings, to account for me taking down notes.
Occasionally I arbitrarily write the word SHORTHAND in block caps
next to the notes to remind me to learn this one day.
Nearly
20 years after I visited the courts with the journalists, I've
decided it's time to make time for this. I've found a series of
videos on Youtube that act as a guide for learning shorthand,
although there's some debate over which version is better to learn.
Shorthand has 3 popular forms- Greggs, Pitmans and Teeline. Greggs
and Pitmans, I understand, are more for secretarial work. It appears
Teeline shorthand is better for journalism, which is what I'm hoping
to get into. And hence I'll be looking into Liverpool John Moores
University's videos, fronted by Shorthand Sue.
Her
videos appear to have more hits than her competitors, so she's my
best bet. That said, there are only 6 videos in the playlist, so I
may need to do more looking around. Let's see how far I get in a
month.
Nope,
not an episode of Celebrity Deathmatch, although that would be a
strange pairup. Olympic diver Tom Daley and Comedienne Ruby Wax both have new books out, and are
signing them in Manchester this week. Silver and bronze medallist
Daley will be in the Trafford Centre Selfridges from 5:30pm tomorrow,
signing his cookbook Tom's Daily Plan and Ms Wax will be in
Manchester Central Library
on Wednesday from 7pm, signing her book on mindfulness and how it
helped her, titled Frazzled. The latter is sold out, though, so...
yeah. I don't believe book signings should sell out- if people want
to buy a book at the signing, let them buy. Do the authors want to
make the money or not?
Alex
Cox, director of chaotically violent movies like Repo Man and
Straight to Hell, may not be everyone's favourite film director.
They're hardly kids' films, and aren't always the most loved
(although both mentioned I thoroughly enjoyed. But, then, I loved
Freddy Got Fingered, so disregard that). Violence and controversy may
not, however, be restricted to the films he made- it sounds like
these spill over into his private life too. Here's another Alex Cox,
on Facebook, and presumably a singer.
There's
a guy on twitter who's convinced I'm Alex Cox, the film director,
despite him being (film director) Alex Cox's pal, and me being Alex
Cox the-not-a-film-director. I don't have the heart to tell him, and
his messages have been gradually getting more personal. The last one:
"Hey Alex, listening to The Clash and remembering that time you,
me and Joe Strummer went snorkeling (sic) in Puerto Rico. That poor
cockatiel. LOL"
Before
Christmas I looked up my oldest-standing personal bests for the gym
and wrote them here.
Before and after Christmas, I had a good crack at them to see if my
fitness had improved whilst doing other exercises. It appears it had.
The review of this is here. Next up: another month-long project, this time looking at the new
oldest-standing records, but only the weights movements- not cardio.
Taking a look through my notebook indicates I've identified my oldest
records inaccurately. I've found some that should have been on the
last 10 movements. So what are they?
What's
interesting is that a lot of these are quite recent records, in
contrast to the last 10. I really gave up on cardio a few years ago,
so it was interesting to get back to them at the end of last year.
This time, after losing nearly 9kg in the latter half of 2016, I'll
be aiming to tone up rather than burn fat.
If
you're January is anything like mine, it's set to be a quiet one. I'm
planning to stay in, read, and learn shorthand in the comfort of my
warm lounge. That said, a quick look on Meetup has thrown up an
interesting suggestion: Socially Awkward is a
group that has been around a while now, and I've avoided joining as I
was put off by the name.
Their
latest-announced meetup sounds like an interesting event: a series of
challenges that are designed to build confidence in an individual, in
a group setting in Manchester. Approaching women is something that
utterly scares the piss out of me, but when I do try it, on occasion,
I have a fair bit of success. It's just making the move in the first
place. This group might help me, and it might help you. It isn't all
about the opposite sex- some of it appears to be about making a fool
of yourself to get used to attention. They're starting in Ziferblat in the Northern Quarter, Edge St, 1pm Saturday.
And
that will be the first week of my January. I'll be blogging about it
on Sunday.
