The new Arctic Monkeys offering: commanding bassline, hefty drums, deep lyrics; perfectly delivered.
Wow. This is good.
Clever, clever video, too.
Hometown glory, done right.
Category: sheffield
Temporary condition
This rather bold statement:
from here.
There are other interesting images on that post as well. Namely the two shots of the placard on (I think) Fargate in Sheffield, featuring words from the Bible.
It reminded me of going to the football as a kid and seeing the old man in the fluorescent orange waistcoat* on John Street with a placard. Every game, without fail, he’d be there, standing in the middle of the (closed) road outside turnstile 33. On one side of his sign was: “CHRIST DIED FOR OUR SINS” and on the other, more ominously ahead of any important match: “THE END IS NIGH”.
I suppose that “Nigh” (like “Temporary”) is a subjective measure of time: we’re 30+ years on and “The End” has yet to come.
Still, I guess that when it does, he’ll be able to claim that he was right all along.
* I didn’t think this memory could be right, but having looked it up, TIL that amazingly, hi-vis jackets have been around since the 1960’s.
Dambusters anniversary
Yesterday marked the 70th anniversary of Operation Chastise – better known as the Dambusters raid – on the Ruhr Valley in German Industrial heartland. A bit like Maitland, but with fewer taxis.
A new type of weapon, the bouncing bomb, was designed and tested by Barnes Wallis specifically for the mission.
Two of the dams were breached while another sustained only minor damage. In the valley, 1,600 people drowned.
The raid was carried out by 133 airmen in 19 Lancaster bombers who formed the RAF’s 617 squadron. Fifty-six men and eight aircraft did not return.
The bomb in question was tested on the Derwent dam in Derbyshire, just down the road from my hometown of Sheffield. And yesterday, to commemorate the anniversary, there was a flypast over the dam wall (which you may remember from this flickr set) in front of huge crowds.
Notably, there’s a lot less water in there than last July. And a whole lot more World War II bomber over it too.
There’s video too – click here.
All in all, the Dambusters Raid was a huge boost to the British morale at what was obviously a hugely difficult time. The effects of the actual bombing on the German war effort were soon overcome, but the bravery of those young airmen deserves to be remembered – even now, 70 years on.
Tonight The Streets Are Ours
Some Richard Hawley, just because.
Ah. Stay classy, Sheffield.
Sheffield is my planet
This is… odd. But strangely interesting and rather revealing too.
It’s an autocomplete map of the UK – what Google thinks you’re about to ask when you put in “Manchester is…” or “People from Birmingham are…”. This shows us the stereotype of each city in the UK:
Of the places I’ve lived, Sheffield is my planet (ok), Newcastle is a hole (I disagree) and Oxford is hellish (it had its moments).
Have a look around, but a couple of highlights include “Swansea is the graveyard of ambition” (allegedly a Dylan Thomas line), “Worcester is the Paris of the ’80s” (apparently a T-shirt slogan from Worcester, Massachusetts) and, in the words of Hugh MacDiarmid, “Edinburgh is a mad god’s dream”.
Meanwhile, it turns out that Cape Town has the disappointingly predictable responses, “Cape Town is it safe” and “Cape Town is a racist city” – the latter just like Aberdeen. Maybe it’s something to do with granite.
As for the title of this post, Sheffield is my planet is revealed to be a city council initiative to combat climate change.
How exciting.