Ben’s Musings

A few days ago there were riots in Manchester after Manchester City Council invited then allowed 150,000 Rangers football fans to come to the City Centre and drink in public from 6am when the match was later that evening.

I was appalled by the violence and still feel very angry towards the City Council for letting it happen. I fully agree with my friend Paul’s review of the whole thing.

But something beautiful happened that evening too. A chap called Tom, walking out of an internet cafe, saw a baying mob kicking, punching and stamping a Police man on the floor. He ran over, grabbed the police man, helped hiom up and ran with him to a Police Van, despite another Police officer hitting him with a baton.

Later, he helped Firemen rescue a drowning Rangers fan in the canal, shoulder lifted an unconscious man to an Ambulance and chased off two Rangers fans who were looting a Police Van, locking it up afterwards.

In-amongst all this horrible violence and disgusting preference of economy by the City Council, goodness, love and peacemaking was found.

Well done Tom.

On Tuesday 6th May, Police beat and attacked members of the public outside Bridgewater Hall including a prominent Peace Activist who I know. See the report on the MEN website here.

Basically, there was an event showcasing the talents of young black people across Manchester in Bridgewater Hall. Just as the event ended, outside, Police stopped and searched a car believing there were drugs or weapons inside. The passengers started getting agitated as people started streaming out of the Bridgewater Hall, some of whom came over to see what was going on. The Police sent a distress signal which menat that many other Police rushed to the scene. Police then started attacking people causing some serious injuries, including Raymond Bell, who works for Carisma, an anti-gang and gun charity who work in inner south Manchester.

I can only believe that the Police initially at the scene didn’t see themselves surrounded by 120 people, but by 120 BLACK people. Their mindless racist fear then led to calling for backup and the mindless racist fear spread throughout the Police via mob mentality.

Of all the people to punch, strangle to the floor, then kick, you don’t do it to Raymond Bell! He is not only well connected in the council, community and even the Police, but he is a prominent Peace activist who has done massive work bringing the Police closer to the black communities!

And you don’t attack the people whoe are peacefully making the best of themselves and you certainly don’t start attacking children!

I having been fuming over this for the last week and have become nervous about the reaction of the community towards the Police and the breakdown of those relationships. Erinma, Raymond’s Wife, said it had set back Police-community relations by ten years, and I fear she is right.

Tonight I went with a friend to see our local Labour councillor, Ray Walters. My friend was there to talk about cycle lanes but I thought I’d ask him what he and the other councillors are doing to not let the Police-community relations to deteriorate. He took a deep breath, thought for 20 seconds in silence, then simply said they were aware of the situation - what a politician! He said he can’t comment while the IPCC are investigating and it would be a mistake to organise a community meeting about the incident. I’d rather have seen some emotion and a commitment to work hard to bring together the affected people and work toward reconciliation.

I know there have been many private meetings since last tuesday to try and minimise the fallout. I hope the IPCC make some heads roll. It seems that the City Centre Police mantra is “act fast and hard, think later” in the hope that the City Centre keeps being seen as a lovely safe place to spend your money. It makes me wonder whether the effort by Police to build relationships with communities is genuine.

I’m angry, and I’m not sorry for that. I want the institutionally racist Police to repent, fire everyone involved and radically change their approach and attitude to the public.

Coming home, remembering Amy, visits from family and friends , bathtimes, real nappies, a routine, Toby’s weight, feeling safe, weekly baby activities.

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Mary-Lou and I went into St. Mary’s yesterday afternoon thinking we were to have the c-section at 9am this morning. But after 7 hours waiting, we finally had our beautiful boy, Toby Jacob Gibbs at 4.38 pm this afternoon! He was 8lbs 5oz, chubby, hairy and cute!
Here is his Flickr Photo Set, and here are some pics to introduce him:

A stolen car crashed into our neighbours car today, just 30 seconds before I turned into our road. I was coming back from town and saw a Police lady running out of our road and round the corner and I wondered why she was running out of our street. I turned the corner and saw the above scene!

The Dungeymobile was damaged because my neighbours car got rammed into it, smashing the headlight and damaging the radiator.

They caught the driver who had stolen the car after burgling a house earlier today. The police said they turned around to follow him because he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, then he sped away, they chased, then he crashed on our road.

I went to a Homewatch meeting on Tuesday night where the Police pointed out the burglaries were down in Moss Side over the last few months, but anti-social crime was up dramatically. So it was a bit wierd to see such crime so soon and on my doorstep. One of the Police ladies at the meeting was actually at the scene today and said hello which was a bit awkward.

If burglaring a house, stealing a car and crashing it into another car isn’t anti-social, I don’t know what is.

Mary-Lou, her Mum and I went to Trof in Fallowfield on Sunday and were thoroughly disappointed.

There was a 1 hour wait for food - sure it was a Sunday lunchtime, but don’t increase the amount of seating (which they did just over a year ago) when you can’t cater for that many people!

The knives were blunt - guess what Trof, knives are supposed to slice, not rip things apart!

Mary-Lou’s Hot Chocolate was warm - hey Trof, Hot Chocolate is supposed to be HOT!

My Ciabatta had onions in it - Trof, when I order something on your menu, I expect it to have in it what the menu says, not additional bits. I orgered that ciabatta because it had NO onions on the menu!

A few weeks ago mary-Lou and myself went to the Trof in the Northern Quarter for a fry up. We knew they stop at 11 and got there just before, ordering at 11:01 to find that they just wouldn’t do us a fried breakfast. We were miffed at the customer care.

Trof are opening a new outlet near All Saints Square just off Oxford Road. it seems that Trof have gone from being a nice, small, cosy, independent restaurant in Fallowfield to a money-grabbing chain. And that has led to a fall in customer service standards and food standards.

Trof has changed irreversibly for the worse, Boo to you Trof.

A pregnancy scare, the first kicks, latest baby development, maternity shopping and a holiday.

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I created a petition on the Governments petition site yesterday. It is about removing the byelaws which ban skateboarding in Manchester’s City Centre. Click here to sign the petition.

Here’s the blurb:

The Byelaws, introduced in 2001, prohibit skateboarding in Manchester’s City Centre and criminalizes young people who, by skateboarding, are doing something physically active, socially engaging, constructive and creative.

The Government want to reduce obesity, increase social inclusion, encourage “play” activities among young people and reduce youth offending rates. The Byelaws oppose all of these aims.

Email this link to your family and friends to make this a big one: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/SkateMCR/ 

I agree with recycling. It’s not gonna save the planet, what with the increasing pillaging and raping of it’s resources by the West and booming countries like India and China. But it’s something positive and it makes sense.

Manchester City Council collect our paper, tin and glass recycling from our doorsteps ever two weeks, so recycling those items is easy. But they don’t collect plastic. I’m confused about that because I remember at school being taught about recycling and plastics were one of the main things we were told to recycle. So if recycling plastics is so important, why doesn’t our Council recycle them for us?

I joined www.change.org a while back and publicly committed to recycling even when it’s not convenient. I even wrote:

Recycling Plastic Bottles are a pain in my area (Manchester, UK) but I commit to getting them to a recycling place even though it is on the outskirts of the city.

I confess that I haven’t recycled any plastic since then. Sorry.

I tried to find plastic recycling banks near me but couldn’t find any locations. So I gave up. I could have asked friends, I have enough environmentalist friends to have found my nearest plastic recycling bank, but I’m lazy.

So I pledge anew: I commit to recycling the plastic we use, even when it’s not convenient.

I have been encouraged by the non-violent protests in Burma over the last few days. It is exciting to see non-violent action gaining worldwide attention and worrying the Burmese military government.

I was chatting to a friend recently about non-violent resistance and pacifism and whether it can really work in the world today. We talked about whether it could have stopped the Nazi’s in the 40’s. I suggested there was no way it could unless the entire German population were committed to non-violent protest and disobeyed their government since it only has power over those who obey it.

A few days before that chat I was wondering whether Britain might ever disband our army and become a proactively pacifist country. I concluded that there was no way that could happen because the British people wouldn’t have it.

During my chat with my friend he talked about laying the groundwork now for a pacifist society in the future. I liked the idea that people are attempting to change our culture and attitudes in a positive way with a long-term vision. There needs to be some opposition to the culture and attitudes of capitalism, individualism and consumerism.

I think I am a pacifist, but you couldn’t tell it from what I enjoy watching - Heroes, 24, Lost, etc! I also think I’m and anarchist at heart, but that’s for another day.

I also learned today that there is not enough evidence to convict the people suspected of killing Jessie James. Jessie was murdered the same weekend that Amy died and I feel upset that the killers have got away again.

The message that you can kill with guns and get away with it in Manchester, and more specifically Moss Side, angers me. I heard two gun shots last week as I was cycling through Moss Side.

This time last year, Mary-Lou and I were thinking through what type of Post-mortem we wanted performed on Amy

Today is the 1 year anniversary of the stillbirth of our daughter Amy Isabel Gibbs. She actually died on the 8th September but was delivered on the 10th. It has been a sad weekend for Mary-Lou and myself.

We had a picnic to remember Amy at Fletcher Moss Park yesterday and invited family and friends to come, and many did. It was nice to be with friends and our families, but I felt quite lonely. We released a helium filled balloon to symbolise letting go of something you know you will not get back - people seemed to appreciate that.

It was the first time we had seen some people since they found out we are pregnant again, and they congratulated us. Each time, their excitement seemed strange to me, but I just smiled and said we were happy but scared too.

We booked Minty today and went to Chorley to see the place and do some Charity Shop shopping, then we went to Preston to do the same. Neither of us felt particularly emotional, probably because we had the picnic yesterday and felt sad more intensely on Saturday.

My Amy bracelet broke months ago, but I bought a strip of suede to fix it in time for Amy’s Picnic yesterday. It feels good to have it back on my wrist, to feel something devoted to her close to me again.

Well, I’ve finally got around to some writing. There are many things I think I need to write about, I was going to list them here, but it might box me in a bit.

I’ve wanted to do more writing for a long time. A couple of years ago, I felt God encourage me to write down more of my thoughts about Church, and the bunch of people I am Church with in Manchester. But I didn’t, I did the easier thing which was not to make the time to write, but to watch TV instead (probably!).

Alot of thoughts come into my head and some just pass through. Some settle down into piles of coherent thoughts somewhere in my brain and others clatter around and knock down all my piles then stare at me demanding to be noticed. It is these thoughts which I want to write about the most, so that I don’t just ignore them and hope they go away.

I also want to start writing down the thought processes I have made to come to some of the conclusions I have come to - like explaining what thoughts make these loose piles, and how they connect and seem to make sense. I don’t want to write to find the right answers and discount the wrong answers. I want to understand why I think what I think and why I do what I do.

My ideas seem to be in a state of flux right now and I think this is a good thing. Since Amy died last year, everything in our lives was blown high in the sky, and Mary-Lou and I are still trying to figure out which bits to catch and which to leave.

I didn’t sleep at all on Saturday night.

My parents and my brother came up to see us for lunch on Saturday. Just before they arrived, I started getting blurry areas around the right side of my vision. I hoped it would disappear, but it didn’t and I realised I had a migraine coming on. I have migraines around once every 2 years and have learnt to take paracetamol as early as I can when I notice my vision going odd.

During our lunch, my head started hurting and I wasn’t able to concentrate on much, so I ended up going to bed and sleeping for 4 hours leaving Mary-Lou to entertain my family! I woke up later feeling much better but still groggy so I missed a friends birthday meal which I was looking forward to.

Sunday was the 9 month anniversary since Amy died and the days in the weekend were the same as the weekend when she died, Friday being the 8th and Sunday being the 10th. We decided last month that we wanted to try for another baby but on Thursday Mary-Lou got a period which we were both really disappointed about. I think that these things and the fact that my grief is growing made me feel the lowest I have felt since Amy died.

When Mary-Lou and I went to bed, I couldn’t sleep and just played on my laptop and phone until about 3am, then watched TV from 4 – 5am and eventually went for a walk around Platt Fields at 5.30am.

10 babies are stillborn every day in the UK, and I couldn’t help thinking of the dozens of couples who were having a horrendous weekend, not caring what time of the morning it is, but simply trying to deal with the shock of their loss. I almost felt that by staying up all night I was empathising with and sharing in their loss.

I ended up spending nearly 3 hours wandering slowly around Platt Fields, watching the birds, listening to the morning sounds, sitting while enjoying the early Sun, and thinking about how much I miss Amy.

The last few days have been a bit of a culture binge for me. I’ve been to an art exhibition, the theatre, a festival and a film premiere!

It started last Friday with an art exhibition launch at Projekts skate shop. The artist is a chap called French who has done numerous skateboard graphics over the years. He has a really distinctive style of line drawings, mostly focussed on heavy metal and death. See his website for a feel of his work. One of the pictures was of an Orangutan - it was brilliant and is my favourite.

On Saturday Mary-Lou and I were treated by a kind friend to tickets for a play at the Palace Theatre. The play was an adaptation of Mahabharata, an ancient Indian legend. I enjoyed the play, especially during the opening dance when it dawned on me that these were real people doing all this great dancing just a few yards away.

This production was an extremely whittled down version of the actual story - 74,000 verses and 1.8 million words! I was excited about seeing a play based on ancient Hindu beliefs and tried to find meaning in the story. There was quite alot of philosophy in it with the god Krishna taking us through the story. The 2 main points I got from it were that we are born with a duty which we must fulfil - regardless of the consequences, and that mercy is better than revenge. I get the latter point, but not the first point. Surely with free will we must consider the consequences of all our actions? Anyhow, I enjoyed the experience.

After the Theatre we were going to go to FEAST which is creative festival in Platt Fields Park. Mary-Lou was going to sing there with her singing group - Singing For Larks - but we were too tired so we just went home.

Then on Sunday I ran the Skate Area at the Burnt To The Ground festival in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. It has been a stressful couple of weeks trying to organise this but it went really well, everyone enjoyed skating the Mini-Ramp we got and there was a really great vibe.

This evening Mary-Lou and I went to the Premiere of a movie called Black Gold. It is a documentary about the global coffee industry, focussing on a co-operative in Ethiopia struggling to find buyers for it’s coffee. I thought it was put together really well and clearly explained the cause and effect relationship between western consumer choices and the coffee farmers. I highly recommend that you go and see it this weekend when it opens nationally. See the website to find where it is being shown near you. And here is the trailer to encourage you to go and watch it!

I’ve been busy recently. April was a busy month because I was organising ASBO, a skate competition over 4 sundays in April, and ChurchMCR launched on April 1st so I was deaing with that too.

I decided not to be busy in May. Mary-Lou was upset that I had not given proper time for my grief over Amy because of my busyness in April. I agree that it is not healthy to push away my grief so I wanted time to dwell on Amy and to work through by pain and confusion, especially about God.

But the last couple of weeks have been hectic!

First, some of the Advisory Team for ChurchMCR have become concerned about the sustainability of ChurchMCR after the current funding runsout in a couple of months. It has been a stark warning that I need to focus on ChurchMCR’s financial future, which has meant busyness.

Secondly, I’ve got involved with Burnt To The Ground, a fundraising festival being held as a positive response to the Dale Street fire a few weeks ago. It destroyed a whole building and the work and property of many small businesses and freelancers who have been left without offices.

The organisers of the festival wanted there to be a skate area, so they contacted me. I thought it was a great idea and got involved, but it has led to a great deal more busyness which I wasn’t expecting.

I’ve been reading a book called “Velvet Elvis” by a chap called Rob Bell. It is about his understanding of the Christian faith and is brilliant and challenging. I have made notes on it which I will share soon as it has impacted me in many ways.

One of the things Rob Bell says in this book is that it is easier to stay busy and get busier than to stop and face your personal issues and get healing for them. God wants to restore us to become the people we were created to be, but we rarely give him and ourselves the chance to do that.

The chapter made me want to be less busy and to go for counselling to work through my grief and other things. So I’ve gone ahead and got a counselling session booked with Reach at Kings Church, but at the moment, it seems like just another item in my busy schedule!

Yesterday was Poll Day in England to vote for our local Councillors. I voted for the Green Party. I don’t even know the name of the guy who was standing for them, but I see it as a vote for a political party anyway.

My first vote was when I was 20 and I voted for Labour in a General Election. Then the next vote I voted Lib Dem, the next was for the Green Party, then Green again yesterday.

I recently found out that my Grandad, Neil Crompton Haigh (we all called him Bobop), voted for the Green Party towards the end of his life. My Grandad and Grandma, Florence, met because their parents were involved in setting up the Labour Party, back when it was socialist. Before he died he wrote this for his funeral:

The greatest disappointment has been in the World Community - in its failure to build good, peaceful, respectful and generous International relations. My parents and Florence’s worked very hard years ago for a more caring and equal society, and with some success. This success has been less than they hoped for, and we see that, today, there is much to do before all will enjoy a caring World Community. My generation must regret its failures.

It pleases me that I decided to vote Green for my own reasons and as it turns out, Bobop did too.

I heard an interview with someone from the Green party on Radio 4 a few weeks ago where the interviewer was asking him about how their own website describes the Green Party as anti-Capitalist. He went on to talk about how Social Justice was much more important to them than whether a multinational make a few more million this year. I had never heard a Green Party member talking about Social Justice and the fact that they are a large Party with an anti-Capitalist agenda excited me!

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First I woke up and had a bacon bagel, then I opened my cards and presents and I got Archery Lessons with the Bowmen Of Lyme (that’s not me in the picture - I don’t wear glasses!), a Thermos flask, Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, a Computer Arts magazine, a Picnic Rug and pair of wellies from Mary-Lou, a New Scientist magazine and some fruit and nut nibbles from my Mum & Dad, some money from my parents, Mary-Lou’s parents, Nelson and my Grandparents, a new dressing gown from Nelson and a subscription to National Geographic magazine from Caleb, then we went to the cinema to watch Blades Of Glory which made me laugh and even Mary-lou liked it, then we went to Bolton and had lunch at the Olive Press, I had a Burger and Mary-Lou had an Aubergine dish which she wasn’t impressed with, then we did some shopping in the charity shops there and I bought a nice pair of Jeans but Mary-lou couldn’t find a skirt, then we went to a Trophy shop but it was closed even though I had phoned earlier and they said they would be open, then we got a canvas and paints which Mary-Lou will paint, then we came back home and had a cup of tea, then we went to the Gurkha Grill in West Didsbury and I had a Lamb Garlic dish which was gorgeous, then we bought a bottle of Tiger beer, then we came home again and bought the futon into the living room and I watched Mercury Rising with Bruce Willis in it whilst I drank my beer but the film wasn’t that good, then we went to sleep.

I was 26 yesterday and it was a lovely day. Thanks for all my birthday wishes via text, email, card, phone and Facebook.

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Today marks the 6 month anniversary of Amy’s stillbirth. “Anniversary” seems the wrong word because in my mind it is to do with celebration and happy times, and today hasn’t been happy.

We went to Fletcher Moss park to go and see Amy’s tree (the tree we scattered her ashes around) and I took some photo’s. I was hoping that the sky would be blue for a nice background to the branches, but the sky was grey instead.

I have been getting sadder and sadder recently, a delayed grief. I am realising what I am missing with the loss of Amy and more things trigger thoughts about her. Mary-Lou is learning to cope with her sadness more and more but I amonly just realising my grief now. I find myself getting angry quickerand when I get stressed I am not able to calm myself down like I used to. Also, my concentration span is shorter which is frustrating when I’m working.

Mary-Lou and I often think about the alternate universe where she didn’t die and what we would all be doing at that moment. It is such a strange idea that the last 6 months could have been filled with joy (and tiredness!) as we looked after her, watched her develop and, most of all, got to know her.

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Today was a wierd day. I currently have a cold, so I was awake from 2.30am to 6am this morning stressing out because we had planned to go down to Wednesbury to see my Grandparents today. I really wanted to see them, but had to face the idea that I might be too ill to drive down.

We eventually got up after a lie in at 10am aiming to leave Manchester at 11am. So off we went to get to Minty (our car-share car) only to find that the battery was dead and it wouldn’t start. The battery had died on a couple of the other folks in the car-share recently and they had jump started it back to life. So after some phoning round and further stressing out, Claire Trivino came to the rescue with her car - but it still wouldn’t start!

So we phoned Ben Gilchrist, who’s house Minty is left outside of, who called the car breakdown company which Minty is with, and came to let us into his house to get warm - we had been in below freezing shade for a good couple of hours by now. The mechanic turned up and got Minty working but suggested getting a free battery test at ATS in Rusholme.

After phoning my grandparents to let them know we couldn’t come to see them, we went to the ATS garage and got the test which showed that it definately needed replacing, so we got it replaced and wondered what to do with the rest of the afternoon.

As I left the garage in a stressed state, I drove through a pedestrian crossing on red lights startling a mother pushing a pram, but missing her by some way. I immediately realised what an utterly stupid thing I had just done and when we got home, before heading out to lunch, I felt so guilty and gutted at my foolishness. So I phoned the local police to confess.

The lady I chatted to seemed quite confused and had to put me on hold to find out what to do! She eventually returned and told me that I was very lucky becuase they had no other reports of the incident and until they do, they wouldn’t take it any further. I asked why since I was confessing as a witness so she explained that they have many people trying to get attention from the police by admitting to crimes they hadn’t committed. I felt like vehemently defending myself from being such a person but i thought I would seem more suspicious if I did so!

After my confession, we went down to West Didsbury to The Deli On Burton Road for lunch, then went to the cinema for some escapism. We decided to watch Pan’s Labyrinth, which I thought was going to be a fantasy adventure, but turned out to be quite bloody and depressing, whih was not what we were looking for.

On our way home we got some food from the Co-op shop in Didsbury Village hoping to use our new Co-operative membership cards and get some points on it only top find out that this shop was not the right Co-op shop - that there are 3 types owned by different people, and only one lets you get points. We thought it was really daft and argued a bit to make our point, then left feeling even more disappointed with our day.

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On a lighter note… Get down to the Manchester Pillow Fight! Mary-Lou and I will be there (me with a pillow). I’m looking forward to it, I’ve never done a Flashmob thing before but I’ve heared about them for ages.

Here are the details:

What is this?
It’s a pillow fight in Manchester. Where everyone turns up somewhere and have a big pillow fight. Were not claiming to have thought of the idea, were just bringing it to Manchester.
Videos of these fights in other cities:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F516QAn2JNo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxHvHBmPP80

Who can come?
Absolutely anyone. Young’uns, Old’uns anyone at all. Just as long as you bring a pillow.

Where is it?
The pillow fight itself will take place in Albert Square, opposite the town hall most probably, but be sure to check back here the night of the 22nd.

How can I get there?
Theres a map, in the “pics” section of the profile detailing how to get there from St Peters Square metro station.

When is it?
Saturday the 23rd of December 2006.

What time does it start at?
2pm exactly, so get there for around 10 minutes earlier. Not too early though or we’ll evoke suspicion.

What is it for?
It’s a task from a list of 101 tasks to be completed, you can find out more about that by going to the Life List’s profile (top friend). But that’s not really important, it’s mainly for fun. It’s free aswell, incase your wondering, and it’s not some stupid viral campaign for a new company product either. I promise.

Will I be the only one there?
Of course not. At the very least there will be a minimum of 500 people but most probably many, many more. If you’re still nervous about coming on your own then come with some friends.

What if I have no friends?
You can come with me.

Who will be there?
Everyone who’s anyone. Were hoping for between 1000-2000 people to turn up so make sure you tell everyone you know about it. The more people there the more fun it will be. We’ll also try and get some television crews down to record the event.

What about the christmas market there you goon?
It leaves on the 20th of December, if theres any other kind of problem meaning we can’t do it there or if it rains, we’ve got another few locations lined up in reserve. If this happens still meet at Albert Square and details will be given out.

Do I need to bring my own pillow?
Unfortunately, yes. If you don’t want to get your own pillow lost/burnt/eaten in the fight we recommend heading to primark for some cheap, cheap feather pillows.

What else do I need?
Nothing really, maybe a bag to hold the pillow in before hand.

So can I start pillow fighting as soon as I get there?
No, please don’t get out your pillows or even acknowledge the fact that you have a pillow before the signal is sounded at 2pm exactly.

What will this signal be?
A horn.

Really?
No. Probably a whistle or something.

How many people can I bring down?
As many as possible. If you want to give our flyers about it get in contact and we’ll get some to you.

When will it end?
Such events in other cities have been known to go on for hours…

How can I win?
By being the last man standing when everyone else has given up. And yeah we know what your thinking, and no you can not.

Are there any rules?
Yes, four:
1)No fighting before the 2pm signal.
2)Don’t put anything hard in your pillow.
3)Only hit other people carrying pillows. 
4)Tell everyone about it.

Who’s gonna stop people putting bricks in the pillows?
Let’s be honest. Nobody’s actually going to come with a brick in a pillow and start swinging it around wildly into other people’s faces. But if you still don’t believe me and are scared off random brick attacks then we’ll be sure to carry out random pillow searches and make sure theres a police presence. Happy? Anyway if one person out of the 1000 does come with a brick then the over 999 people there will kick the shit out of him…or her. If your still worried then wear a helmet or something.

Can I come in fancy dress?
Yes.

Will I be the only one in fancy dress?
Yes.

It’s the day before Christmas Eve.
It is.
Any other questions can be asked through myspace. Please give us a line if your planning to come, just to get some idea of the numbers who will be there.
Thanks.