AND IT WILL TAKE YOU TO OUR NEW FLASH MAG PROGRAMME, ON WHICH YOU CAN BROWSE THROUGH THE ACTUAL MAGAZINE BY TURNING THE PAGES. YOU CAN ZOOM IN ON ANY ARTICLE, INFORMATION OR  ADVERTISING.  GREAT INNIT!

The view when I arrived was a sight to remember…now i know why Fat Boy Slim agreed to come and play the wee festival years back. As you arrive at base camp the view was amazing, you were on a raised area overlooking the Loch and the entire arena. Our camping area was clean, and we even had a shower (with a door!) and a flushable loo!

The entire set up of the festival was slick, proffessional and comfortable, with a funky edge. Being set on the bank of the world famous Lochness is genius! Inside the arena, there were plenty of places to eat/drink and take a load off your feet. There also seemed to be lots of cover….to deal with Scotland’s fickle spring weather!

My only concern was the amount of Dance music spewing from every bar and tent. Im happy the organiser seems to presume they know the taste of the audience, but i heard many grumbles, even the happy hardcore gang was dying for a bit of The Kooks!

As for the atmosphere everyone was friendly, especially the staff - Rockness officially have the nicest security staff! They always had a smile and most of them remembered your face from the day before (which is rare!) Fellow campers were friendly and up-for-it (you scotts can drink!)!

On my first morning i woke to see a 94 year old man climbing out the back of of a van with a glass of wiskey, a few hours later he trotted into the arena on his own (never to be seen again may i add) With this in mind id reccommend the festival to all young and old.

Thanks Rockness, Im leaving with excellent memories.

Top Bands: Leftfield, The Strokes and 2manyDJ’s (werd up)!

Crap Bands: Ian brown…oh dear

Kimmyx

PS the fireworks on the last night were amazing!

I’m in a Will Smith movie- only my pursuit of employment and therefore happiness is not entertaining or dramatic; in fact nothing’s happening at all.

This time last year I was filled with optimism about finishing uni and getting out into the world of work. I knew it would be difficult to get a job after reading that 2009 graduates would suffer the worst year for finding work in recent history. But I was not prepared for what was to come!  

Seeing as a degree is simply not enough anymore, we graduates have been focusing on gaining work experience to supplement academics. So a few weeks before my incredibly drunken graduation I set off on one of my placements to London, city of dreams, to work for free for a fortnight at Total Film magazine- a film journalist’s wet dream. For the privilege of working for these people, often into the small hours, it cost me the last £400 of my student loan that I had saved especially for the occasion. Putting it like this, I feel like a little bit of a mug, but this situation of paying to work is getting more and more frequent. And it’s usually down to the fact that if you don’t live in London and want to get experience within the media you’re gonna have to pay to do it.   

As I was, at this point, taking extraordinary measures to avoid dealing with the financial mess I was in post uni, the money didn’t bother me so much as I buried my head deeper and deeper into a sand pit. And I loved it at Total Film so much that I did, in fact, contemplate chaining myself to my desk on the last day. But I decided that this sort of extremism might not be the qualities they would want in an employee. So I bid farewell and boarded the surprisingly comfortable mega bus (they’re great!) back to Hull.

OK so I’m now a whole new level of broke, with no essays, no work experience and living back at my mum’s house! How the hell did that happen?!?

mmmmmmmmmmm!

Don’t panic, I told myself, mum won’t make you do the hovering if she thinks you’re busy at the computer. So after Google imaging pictures of Gael Garcia Bernal, I had a think about anything I’d like to get involved in locally. I thought about the magazine I used to read before I went to uni in Leeds, you know the one that swears a lot and goes out of its way to be controversial. So after sending Nick an article I’d written I was welcomed into the bizarre bosom of tenfootcity. The next few months passed…not so much quickly, but at least coherently now that I’d replaced Jeremy Kyle with writing for tfc and digyorkshire.com.

However due to the majority of my work being unpaid (not by nick who gives me enough for a few drinks at team meetings- better than most trust me!)I was still forced to visit the most ghastly place in all the land, a place where the spirit is squashed by an acute patronization that only these employees have mastered, and you are left with an overwhelming sense of your own failure- Britannia House.

The foreboding of the fortnightly visits to this place is only trumped by actually being there and suffering the glue sniffing mothers (yes that actually happened) in a sea of Reebok. It’s pretty soul destroying for someone fresh out of the opportunity driven womb of uni (that totalled £24,000!) to end up here. And whoever placed it in that location is a genius! The shame of your failings on the job market is felt tenfold when one of the busiest junctions in Hull can humiliate you from 4 different angles! The one certainty that I can rely on in life is that no matter what time I arrive, the lights will be on red when I am trying to ever so subtly to creep into this place, and I can never fail to notice that the car driving employed folks have bags of time to idly stare and judge me accordingly. Brilliant.

After a brief escape to South Africa, where I volunteered for 3 peaceful months, I have been applying for everything even vaguely related to media, but to no avail. If HR do manage to conjure the strength to send you a one line email to let you know that they think you’re shit, don’t bother asking for the much needed feedback…’due to the overwhelming response …’

But it’s not all bad, after a point, the failed applications and lack of opportunities can bring on a sort of revelation. On this crazy hunt for a career it’s very easy to forget why you’re obsessively trying to achieve this allusive goal. I realised one day that the recurring sight of my CV made my eyes bleed and for my own sanity I just had to stop reviewing it and reassess my life. I looked at what all my uni friends are doing now, how are they negotiating this battle field? Well they’re not, probably quite wisely. They are either in the midst of their travels or preparing for their trip to escape the employment problems in this country and find work abroad. With the NatWest mafia hot on my heels and a saint of a mother subtly commentating ‘the house isn’t really big enough for two is it?’ Like a cd on repeat, I’m seriously considering joining them.

On one hand it’s a sorry state of an economy when all this fresh, creative and enthusiastic talent that is being spat out of universities up and down the country, is unable to put their skills to use. But on the other; is it really all that clever for a 23 year old to be spending her life at her mum’s kitchen table applying for jobs? After being pushed to the brink of unemployment madness, I see this situation now, which so many of us are in, as a kind of opportunity. Our countries a bit fucked, yeah? Well there are loads of other countries that have work for us… why not travel, live life and stop stressing about a career we don’t even have yet… we have the rest of our lives to do that!

-Antonia Musgrave

Strolling through the streets of Cape Town earlier this year I was surprised by the amount of references there were to the World Cup and football, even after coming from the black and amber city of Hull. To be the first African nation to be honoured with hosting the event, every shop window, cafe, bar and market is boasting about the upcoming fananza. The people are awash with preparations and speculation about June, and how their country will be portrayed to the rest of the world.

However, after speaking to a local taxi driver from Cape Town, I began to see that the image South Africa is tirelessly trying to represent differs greatly from the attitudes of the everyday Capetonian. By the nature of his job, Asharaf Julie, 40, meets all areas of South African society in his dusty white combi taxi. What concerns him and his customers is the extravagant expenditure on the new Green Point Stadium. 4.3 billion Rand has been spent in tearing down the previous stadium (that accommodated a Michael Jackson concert) to build up an incredibly similar structure that will hold 70,000 fans, although 10,000 seats will be removed post World Cup.

This consideration for football fans is a welcoming picture, however, as Asharaf explains; “After football fever has left South Africa we will be left with a stadium twice the size of Athlone and an ever increasing debt.” Athlone stadium holds the South African soccer premiere league games and has trouble filling the 30,000 seats. The fear is that after a R4.3 billion investment, the stadium will be rendered redundant once the football frenzy has passed.

Asharaf is concerned that the government is giving priority to South Africa’s international image rather than focusing on issues closer to home as he passionately argues; “why didn’t the government spend the money used for Green Point Stadium on moving the townships away from the airport and putting the residents in better living conditions? Because our government want foreigners to see the shantytowns; they want to encourage sympathy and aid.”

The shantytowns Asharaf refers to are clearly seen when travelling from the airport into Cape Town; little settlements of townships pop up into view and often give travellers their first impression of South Africa. The rich/poor divide in South Africa is extreme and while millions is being spent on the World Cup, people are still suffering in appalling conditions and are crippled by poverty.

I visited Langa, a township in Cape Town, here families take it in turns to sleep for lack of beds, homes are nothing more than crudely constructed tin sheds and sanitation is a foreign word. Like going back in time, this world of struggle and strife is ever more unjustified by the development just around the corner.

But even in these pockets of poverty you cannot escape the imminent football festivities as occupants diligently create World Cup memorabilia from recycled Coca-Cola cans. The resourceful creativity is impressive and offers a more positive perspective for June; when small businesses and entrepreneurs will benefit from the tourism brought by football fans. Bed and Breakfasts are springing up all around Cape Town and it’s heartening to see even the least privileged are capitalising on this event. 

Where the World Cup will leave the South African economy remains to be seen. Asharaf personally feels that his country is not ready for the 2010 World Cup and poetically confided that; “South Africa is painting the world and oil painting… and it’s starting to crack.”

-Antonia Musgrave

Nick Quantrill - Broken Dreams

This literary event, presented by Hull University’s Philip Larkin Centre, brought together two established crime writers – Robert Edric and Allan Guthrie – and also introduced a brand new crime novelist in the shape of Hull-born writer Nick Quantrill.

Edric naturally took centre stage for the majority of the evening, during which the capacity audience were treated to excerpts from Swan Song, the third of his “Song cycle” trilogy of crime novels, all set in Hull. Edric’s dry humour and encyclopaedic knowledge of the crime genre proved to be a heady mix as both he and Guthrie chatted cheerily on the subject of crime writing, and its inevitable links with the British inner city.

Edric, twice long-listed for the Booker Prize, was a down-to-earth orator and often displayed an entrancing dry wit (once explaining, “if my characters call each other by their first names, it usually means they’re about to have sex”). I found myself wanting to hear more of his anecdotes, and read more of his writing.

Allan Guthrie was an intriguing presence. Reading from his new novel Slammer, he showed an edgier approach to the genre than Robert Edric. Whilst Guthrie’s writing may be firmly rooted in the crime tradition, his individual style is further outside the box – there are no Sam Spade clichés to be had from this Orkney-born author. Slammer is that rare beast – the prison novel – and the short reading Guthrie gave us from the book hinted at a sharp, hard-boiled story that fizzes with tension and sharp dialogue.

Toward the end of the event, the two established authors were joined by local writer Nick Quantrill, launching his debut novel Broken Dreams, also set in and around Hull. The short reading from Nick’s book suggests he should have a promising future, and the scope of the book – it manages to interweave the history of Hull’s fishing industry with classic crime thriller motifs – is ambitious enough to show that this is unlikely to be a one-off.

All in all, a fascinating and educating look at crime fiction, from three writers who all approach their common genre in very different ways. Further literary evenings are forthcoming from the Philip Larkin Centre, and one can only hope that future events are of the same quality as this one. Bravo.

(c) Nick Boldock 20.03.2010

or you can also use tenfoot@nicktaylor.karoo.co.uk ….and soon you can also use

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