Month: August 2007

Up North for the weekend. Partly this was so that I could see the family (including a sibling who has briefly returned from the other side of the world), but also so that I could exorcise a long-standing demon.

I’ve now been embarrassed about not having a driving licence for over a decade. I took lessons when I was 17, like most people do, but I never really knew what I was doing. And so when I went off to university, where there was no real pressing need to be able to drive, and I had other things on my mind, I basically gave up. When I returned, almost seven years ago, I tried again. This time I actually managed to learn something, but I still managed to do something stupid in my test and fail. Then the test I rebooked in early January 2001 was cancelled due to icy roads, I moved to London to start working, and, with no real pressing need to be able to drive, and other things on my mind, I gave up. Again. Perhaps you can detect a theme developing here.

And so as time passed I gradually changed from being embarrassed about being in my early twenties and not having a licence to being embarrassed about being in my mid twenties and not having a licence, until finally I was embarrassed about being in my late twenties and not having a licence. Whenever the subject of driving would come up in polite conversation I would quietly try to change the subject or hope that I didn’t need to reveal to anyone who didn’t already know that I *gasp* couldn’t drive. I cringed when Dylan Moran’s character in Shaun of the Dead explained how he “didn’t really need to drive in London”. I endured the taunts of Sal’s Australian friends who laughed at me for my inadequacy–the concept of someone of my age not being able to drive being almost as ridiculous to them as it is to the car-obsessed Americans.

So earlier this year (with only a slight push from a girlfriend fed up with doing all the driving whenever we hire a car on holiday) I resolved to do something about it. And despite all the pain and anxiety I’ve associated with the subject of driving for so many years, it turned out to be remarkably straightforward: I took my theory test back in July, which proved to be as stupidly easy as it was the first time (“An old lady is crossing the road in front of you. Do you: a) Speed up, rev your engine and try to take her out, Grand Theft Auto-style; b) Beep your horn, swear at her and gesture for her to get off the road; or c) slow down and wait for her to cross“). After that, it was just a matter of booking in a few refresher lessons and a test, which just happened to be available on a Saturday afternoon in my home town–where I could use my mum’s car and the roads are nice and quiet–on the weekend when I was planning to go home anyway. It was almost like it was meant to be.

By the time I turned back into the test centre at the end of the test, aware that the examiner hadn’t made many marks on his little exam sheet (and that I hadn’t done anything really stupid this time) I was feeling fairly confident, but it was still a shock to hear him say the fateful words “I’m pleased to tell you that you’ve passed”. He might have said these words with no emotion whatsoever, conveying the sense that he was in fact in no way pleased to have unleashed another driver onto the roads, but he said them nonetheless. And I have a piece of paper to prove it.

So there you go. Something that has been such a big deal for me for so long suddenly isn’t. Feels like a bit of an anticlimax really.

So somehow I’ve ended up on some kind of official mailing list for former University of Bristol students. From time to time they email me with desperately dull missives about recent events at the university.

When they’re not doing that, they’re spamming me with promotional bumf about “The Big Bristol Reunion”, which they like to pretend is something organised by a few ex-students who fancied a get-together.

Thing is, I’ve looked at the website for The Big Bristol Reunion and I can’t help thinking that it looks rather familiar…

Oh yeah, that’s because there’s also The Big Birmingham Reunion, The Big Durham Renuion, The Big Bath Reunion, and The Big Reading Reunion. I wonder how many other unique reunion events these people are also organising?

Anyway. The latest email tells me that they’ll be recreating Wedgies. I can’t think of a worse way to spend my time.

The best thing about these events, though, is that their website has a sign-up form for you to register your interest. If you fill it in, then your details will be automatically added to the list of who’s coming that appears on the site (linked from the bottom right corner of the main page). Let’s ignore for a second the fact that this is probably a breach of the Data Protection Act (and isn’t something that they bother to mention in their privacy statement) and just think about the fact that the names are automatically added to the list: there’s no attempt to verify the specified email address, for example. If you have a look at the list then you can see that there are some interesting names on there: “Adolf Hitler”, “Joseph Stalin”, and “Anne Widdecombe” are all planning to attend, apparently. (Actually, that sounds like one hell of a party–maybe I will pop along after all.)

They weren’t even all mine. Perhaps you know a few people who might be going too…

[Oh, and it looks like they’ve forgotten to strip out any HTML tags that might happen to appear in your “name”…]

I’m not sure if I have anything particularly profound to add to all that’s been written about the passing of Tony Wilson… He was one of those figures who seemed to pop up all over the media when I was growing up in the North West in the 80s and 90s. Well, I guess I watched a lot of telly as a kid–he was the guy arguing the toss about something or other on a chaotic late night discussion show that you stumbled across after you came back from the pub; he was that bloke off World in Action and Granada Reports. I’m not sure if I ever really connected that Tony Wilson with the man behind Factory, the Mondays, New Order, Joy Division and The Haçienda until many years later. And of course, I certainly wasn’t anywhere near cool enough to have actually been to the The Haçienda (and I still remember the jealousy of talking to people at Sixth Form College who had, when I was still stuck at the Kingsway on a Friday night with their godawful cheesy chart music…)

I see that the NME have been continuing their recent run of quality journalism in their coverage. I was particularly amused by this piece, in which they’ve successfully managed to recycle some five year old quotes from Steve Coogan into a “Steve Coogan pays tribute” news story:

Steve Coogan, who played Tony Wilson in the 2002 film ’24 Hour Party People’, has spoken about his love of the Factory Records legend…

Speaking about the legend at the time of the film’s release, Coogan declared: “I’ve got a kind of respect for Tony Wilson.”

They don’t even bother to change the quote into the past tense after the first sentence…

Really very sloppy. And the Tony Wilson tribute coffee mug that they’ve linked to on ebay? Might give it a miss, thanks…

Good old NME, keeping things in context as ever…

Well, if Amy Winehouse can’t make it, I mean, what’s the point of having the V Festival at all? Might as well all just stay at home…