Bag o'Bones #18. - Back to Skool , 2002

EARTH SHATT -ALLOV- ERING NEWS !

BRADFORD ,

The Prospective

"European Capital of Punctures"

Gets Even Dafter . . .

Forget Enron and WorldCom, the World Cup ticket fiasco, ITV Digital and the financial skullduggery going on apiece in the rest of the World, Bradford now wastes money faster than the Royal Mint can print it. They'll have to move it up here soon - you know ? - when no bugger has any money left at all and they open 'The National Museum of Manky Monkeys, Limp Lettuce Leftovers & Mouldy Minty Money' - no doubt featuring 'The largest collection of Gorilla Snot in The Universe' - (Adm FREE).

Millions of Urban Renewal Grant cash has gone to refurbish a museum and surrounding park, allegedly. (Cultural, y'see) - The needy locals this dosh was intended to help can now go eat flowers peed on by dogs when their dole runs out, or suck dead fish out of the lake, presumably ! - There's more ! - We've recently had an International Festival which hardly any bugger knew about. This was clearly a ploy to ensure that only people of Culture went. (None of the local riff-raff, y'know, they only pay for/suffer from it and, what's even more worser still, they want FUN, not CULTURE ! - Utter Barbarians . . )

Last year's Festival was run by the locals and seems to have pleased many people, but THIS year the Town Hall Twats sacked the good guys - (since settled out of court !) - and contracted it out to 'Experts' who made a complete balls of it and are accused of being the rudest set of pillocks on the planet by one local who got told that he couldn't volunteer to put on the show he'd successfully organised last year . . . He must've parted his lip on the wrong side . . . or happen he didn't shake hands in the expected fashion. Hell, he might have even come from Bratfudd and spoke Yorksher ! - Can't have that !!

(Even (allegedly) SIR Mick Jagger thinks Yorksher shouldn't die ! Well, Headingley, home of Yorksher Cricket . . . if that counts. I'm sure our Indian friends would wholeheartedly agree with his sentiment . . . but, back to the gist.)

As a result, hardly anyone went to this secret elitist Cultural pantomime, the local bands never got their usual look in and 'THEY' think it was a success, but the local rag was full of letters from locals (some CAN read & write) sounding off about inadequate bogs, food & drink facilities and how shat upon they feel. Of course, the local rag is exactly that. It was Popstar Gareth's 18th Ber-ber-ber-birthday recently and the rag advertised that they were only charging a fiver - (One hundred old shillinks !) - for the pre-teens with moist knickers to put their own personal message to the lad in their special birthday announcements section. Shithouses ! - Now HE won't sign autographs on his 'Day Off' !

There's absolutely no doubt about what young Gareth should revive in a year's time . . . is there, Mr. Hardcastle . . . ?

IS THERE ?

N . n . n . n . n . n . n . n . n . . No doubt at all, Sir !

Poor Lad . . . Will he last that long ?

Then there's the matter of Odsal Stadium - (once referred to as 'The Wembley of The North' - Eeh, we DO have a sense o' humour) - . . . . the giant bowl of which will soon become incapable of containing the volume of bullshit that 'THEY' have spouted about it over the past few years of 'shimfing' as they presided, but clearly with total Political Correctness, no doubt, over its demise into shameful dereliction.

They could always hold the World Games for Derelicts in it . . . the cough, spit and jump could be the blue riband event, either that or fighting with bits of pallets, fencing with car-park railings, choking each other with flying polythene bags, - (local speciality) - or the synchronised bottle smash . . . the participants would not, one presumes, bother about inadequate lavatorial facilities. Bound to bring lots of publicity, eh ? - Ideal for a family fun day out !

London only had The Millennium Dome, The Wobbly Bridge, Eastenders/Millwall 'supporters' and Wemberlee to be ashamed of . . we've got a whole friggin' Metropolitan District . . . a burned up, boarded up, derelict, vandalised, scaffolded, bombed out, sold out, weed-infested, litter-strewn, traffic-calmed, grid-locked rat trap . . . but in the most gloriously multi-coloured-tarmacadam (in parts where the potholes have died) replete with architectural mis-matches never bettered. . . ANYWHERE !

The Culture people have had signs put up at the roadside saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover" . . . That's like asking you not to judge the transport caff's hygiene standards by the number of fag ends in the sugar bowl . . . or the condition of its bogs . . . or the thickness of the grease on its spoons . . .

The New Urban Plan for 2020 - (named after perfect hindsight ?) - is called something like Community Regeneration & Urban Development - (CRUD ?) - and it looks like THEY plan to dig up the new bus lanes to build a Velcro Flyover on the Ring Road - (so called because everyone on it at rush hour rings ahead with their revised ETA). This plan is truly revolutionary . . just a load of paper and maps and notices of meetings and subsequent amendments and objections and cancellations and . . (go back 3 spaces or throw a six) . . . that go round and round until everybody yawns and poof ! . . . there it was, gone.

Who pays for it ? - Who gets his ten percent of the residual unallocated stipend ? . . . I bet he isn't called Jeffwy . . However, I've recently been told to "Think Positive" (sic) - just another way of ball-tampering to put more spin on, if you ask me ! - But here goes.

New season started to take our minds off it all. Avenue have signed a new player or two and things are looking up. We estimate that they'll pass City - (currently convalescing in post-fiscal limbo/raggedy arsed shorts, no doubt, and waiting for the elderberries so they can dye their shirts) - in about two or three years. Oh, sweet memories of the Third Division North . . . By then, The Bulls could be playing in Paris or Berlin or Sweet Home Alabama . . . the latest from the Council is they're gonna give them Odsal and three dozen body-scannersworth of rate-payers' samolians . . .but my money's on the Madchester Commonwealth Games Stadium as their eventual home. You heard it here first ! - They wouldn't even have to change their name, now, would they ? - There's another Bradford just down the road from there . . . Just watch, they'd be 'mad for it' . . . World Champions, y'see ? - "Lear Jets from Home Counties to Terminal B, please" . . . especially after the romp at Twickers !

It could start a trend, we've got a Bolton and a Canterbury district, for example, (not forgetting Egypt and New Brighton), so we might get a dog track again . . . or a camel piste ? - and we've got street names that encompass the globe . . . (not in the way LlanfairPG tries to - Gulp ! - I grew up next door to "Little India", but they pulled it down to stop lads throwing bangers into old biddies' outside lavvys on mischief night. Then they engaged a bunch o' cowboys who built an entire estate in porous concrete that was gone within a generation. Two communities bulldozed in short order . . . and they still say we deserve to be held up as a paragon of Culture ? - I fear I must gainsay that view and would, nay do, posit the counter argument !)

We could still hold the Federations Cup on Federation Street, or - better still - in the cobbled passage at the back, just like we did in the old days when I was 'Bert Trautmann' in arseless pants . . . (blown off by a rip-rap) . . . Sod "jackets for goalposts", we had no need o' jackets . . we used dustbins. No arguments there, (except from the biddies - "Go where ya live !"), and NO SIMULATION ! - Yeah . . . That'd sort the divers out ! - Yon Klinsmann fellah wouldn't half ha' sulked !

"Oh, for sure it woss a faoull . . . Aach, mein leg ist kaput . . ."

He'd have had to go in goals while they sent for his mam . . . and him in his new wellies . . . !

CULTURE ! . . . We had it by the snotty nosed, skinned-kneesed, saddlebags-with-jam-sandwiches-and-a-bottle-of-liquorice-water-full. It cost sod all except effort and imagination which, though of humble working class origins, knew no bounds. Was the Solomon-like 'Three Bat Handles' invented on Elysian Fields ! . . . ? - Or that strange language that sorted out the batting order ? . . (I used to bid 'Niggy-Laggy' . . you were safe with that . . . much like claiming to be Barlow at tig . . . whoever He was ! - Anybody know ? . . . I thought not.)

Man pretending to be Barlow

It's all lost in the mists of time . . . I hear they're gonna scrap algebra and trigonometry . . . Shame that, I were brought up on Roy Rogers . . . him an' his Thesaurus done me proud as a lad . . . the horse played a blinder too, as I recall . . . Reminds me of the old constipated Mathematician joke, about the guy who tried to work it out with a slide-rule, but it eventually came out in logs . . . Are you old enough to remember enough to 'get it' ?

I wonder what happened to the REAL culture. Who stole it ? - Was it while we were all sharing a Cadet thinking we'd never had it so good . . . and some shifty bugger had it away on his toes ? . . . Or did we just leave it lying about at half-time one Whit Monday and it bleweth away in the wynd ? . . It might even be blowing about round Odsal Tip . . . No-one'll find it there the way things is going, except maybe that pink pidgin' - (politically incorrect local joke) . . . Shame ! - I wonder if Hockney managed to paint it before it went . . .

Will the last one to leave chuck a match on it ?

New Owner

Trying on The

Odsal Bowl ?

LATE NEWS : The hardy locals have got their own back. Thanks to those resilient souls in that cultural haven by the name of Thornton, we've had our very own version of the internationally renowned 'PUCK FAIR' one early September weekend (7th - 9th). Hundreds of honest entertainment, loadsa bands of all descriptions and all within striking distance of as fine a collection of boozers as any cultural haven must have. Needless to say, a couple of 'Revellers' liberated the goat in the early hours. It could be a hardy annual in future.

BE THERE NEXT TIME IF YOU CAN MAKE IT.

The 'jury' to decide if this former textile capital of the World is fit to become the future European Capital of Culture (2008) came for a look see t'other day. Had the Town Hall Twats arranged a tidy up ? - Had they hummer ! - But they HAD imported tons of sand to be dumped in front of the Town Hall to make it look like a beach. The poor little kids were all rolling about in it and building sand castles, blissfully unaware that every incontinent in the area had pissed in it on his way home that week . . . The decision's due in November.

Don't hold your breath.

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