Having given London a bit of a hard time in my last blog, you may be under the impression that I am of the belief that my "neck of the woods" is somehow superior. I am not, because it is not, so I think it only fair to give you a little insight into life on my doorstep. I am informed that there is a travel writer type chap by the name of Bill Bryson that mentions Bradford once or twice and can undoubtedly do a better job of it than I, although having never read his books I can't possibly comment on his opinion of the City, but I was sent this recently which made me chuckle, so I'll blatantly plagiarise this to validate my point:
16 Reasons Bradford is so Shit?
1. The M606 is the only dead-end motorway in Britain not to have a beach or a funfair at the end of it.
2. The Kirkgate Shopping Centre is there solely as a meeting place for crap parents to batter their crap kids without incurring the wrath of crap Social Services.
3. Heroin is not a drug in Bradford, its Breakfast, Dinner and Lunch.
4. Regeneration amounts to demolition and a giant crater that just keeps getting bigger. If this is the case, don’t stop at BD1, do every BD postcode (and HX3 just to be on the safe side).
5. Bradford police are just a call centre for providing crime reference numbers for insurance purposes. They are scared of the dark and have no legs or authority.
6. Only one person in your extended family needs a drivers licence, it just gets shared. Highway codes and traffic laws are optional.
7. You shouldn’t get a taxi in Bradford unless YOU know the way to where you’re going, Bradford cabbies couldn’t find a dog turd at Crufts.
8. Outside Bradford ‘Rita Sue and Bob Too’ is a film, inside Bradford it’s a fly-on-the-wall documentary.
9. G-G-Gareth Gates is from Bradford.
10. Peter Sutcliffe is the city’s most famous person and the reason No More Nails was invented.
11. If you sign on the dole in Bradford and DON’T own a Range Rover, you obviously haven’t filled the forms in properly.
12. The lingering impression Bradfordians have that the city is a rival to Leeds. Is it fuck, its not even close.
13. Nobody under the age of 70 will remember when Bradford actually had ANYTHING going for it. And even then it’s only because there was a war on and they got evacuated from Bradford to the countryside.
14. There's a constant need to examine your shoes for dog muck until you realise its just generally how Bradford smells.
15. When people say “Can you smell take-away?”, its actually the offal plant and the wind is blowing south-westerly.
16. Rupert Austin.
Having only in recent years moved to Bradford I can agree quite strongly with some of the "reasons" above (especially #15 - I actually work inside the "abattoir triangle". Lovely.) as I am not influenced by some sort of completely unjustified local pride, and I can only imagine the original writer of the above is of the same misfortune, and if I had to guess, I'd say this wasn't by choice and he is less than happy about it (step aside, Sigman). I am however a little disappointed that only 16 observations have been included in the list. Without even putting my mind to it I could offer a few more, such as how every plot of council owned grassy land has a horse tethered to it, how both my green wheelie bin and black wheelie bin are collected by the same bin man and are taken to the same landfill site, the fact that my neighbours think I'm a "hippy" because I recycle my glass bottles, my local Working Men's Club contains no working men - unless flogging copied DVD's or stealing to order can be classed as occupations, and that only in Bradford is "sorry I'm late, I was stuck behind a horse and cart on the roundabout" accepted as a legitimate reason for lateness by my boss. But I'll save these for another day.
Plus I have a weird OCD thing, particularly with numbers, and 16, although technically even, seems odd.
Oh, and as you may have noticed, as promised, I've changed the name of this blog. Well, if I am to keep up my squatting of this miniscule plot of the internet real estate, I think it's only fair that I at least hint at what the hell I'm actually waffling about, rather than what I originally intended to waffle about. After asking my friend Hazel what to call it, although her suggestions were all good and true ("Rant of the Day", "I Hate You All", and "Your Existence is Merely Tolerated") I decided to be a little less Emo and instead make reference to a point I made a couple of posts ago. "Simples", as I believe all the cool kids are saying these days.
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