My Saturday Nights By Harry Slater

We'd kill for the four o'clock stumble home at around one, when the cocktails are just about to kick in, and we're forgetting the indignity of cheap fucks bumming cigarettes off us.

Acute nihilism's filling the air, the kind of repulsion that drags you away from sense, sends your head spiralling into the same unforgettable-dross filled rant about how we're all better than the people who are thinking exactly the same thing; how all the people who aren't leaving alone are sluts and heathens who'll regret it in the morning, when they choke up the last of the night and realise they've slept with exactly the person their mother warned them about.

By now the music's a dull thud somewhere behind the eyes. It was a cacophony of everything we hated when they slung open the saloon doors and we announced our entrance with fucks and spit and pointing. But now, now it's a monotone old friend, the perfect soundtrack to the crap we're talking to the people we don't even like. They'll try to look you in the eyes, don't ever let them, because it's there that you keep your soul, and your soul has nothing to do with a place like this, with all the bland forced debauchery.

Trussed up minors strike poses as we stumble past, disgusted at the things they have to look forward to. Light insults become death threats screamed with the rage that we've built up for the rest of the week, spitting bile up with the tragic angst that no one will ever understand, because we're FUCKING special. Special like the solidity of the first thing we turn our hate to, cracking knuckles against sweat stained walls.

And we all know better than the twist of flesh when it connects, the ugly beauty of sinew and muscle straining against infinity, but fuck if it doesn't feel as good as last time.

Then outside, a wave of newly christened babes, all innocent as the day we first crawled into our own special hole, innocent as the first sip so long ago, collapse into taxis, into buses, into walls and into lovers. It takes a while before we catch the chill, somewhere in our bones to start with, then it rockets its way around and the shakes kick in.

The lucky few explode in corners, lining the pavement with something that they don't remember imbibing. The rest, bleary eyed and dazed simply fade away until next weekend, back to the same thing they do every week, a drudge, a trek just to get them back here to lose a little more liver and a little more mind. My Saturday nights are the best.

Articles - There's Nothing Familiar Within 500 Miles! By Matt Hill in Thailand.

I finally managed to get a picture with some People in for you, this was taken yesterday in my favourite tea shop. The entire bill came to less than a pound, the tea's really thick and sweet, and they leave plates of cakes, buns and somosas on the table in a clever ploy to get you scoffing. So, I've hit the half way point of my time here and suddenly everything's changed - when, at first, I Read more...

Articles - Hami Kurd's Response to "At a Turning Point?" by Gary Craig 25/7/05

	This is a Hami Kurd response to the above report by Professor Gary Craig. This was a research report on race relations in Hull. It seems that Gary Craig has sentenced the research to be negative before he even started writing it. Below is what we think of it as a Kurdish community living in this city with normal people of Hull, not behind nice desks and offices. Read more...

Articles - Concerned About Africa? A Chance to Help Hulls Twinned City

	Hull is twinned with Freetown in Sierra Leone, a city which is trying to become a Fair Trade city like York. Fairmade is a new business employing 25 people in Freetown; a place where everything, every day and every penny is a struggle. It's trying to do its bit to reduce the devastating poverty of the war torn West African country. Help Sierra Leone Read more...

Articles - On 'At a turning point? The state of race relations in Kingston upon Hull' a report by Prof G Craig, 26 July 05

	'What do you think about the state of race relations in Hull? Your chance to express your views. Professor Gary Craig has been commissioned to conduct an enquiry into the state of race relations in Hull'. Prof Craig issued this invitation through the local press and radio and Hull City Council departments and other Read more...

Articles - "Funky's" Matt Hill writes to us from Thailand

Hey, Matt here :-) I know it's been AGES since I sent some pictures, so I finally made myself take some - you know what it's like, the weather's never good enough or you know the camera won't do it justice, but the time has come. OK, so you have to realise that these pictures aren't going to really impress you, this place isn't big or clever. Also, my digital camera disk keeps getting wet Read more...

Articles - Panic, Paranoia and Peter Levy's Top Lip By Joe Hakim

	The world is a welter of conflicting fanaticisms - Betrand Russell And so it begins... You can feel it, a charge building - energy rushing up through our veins, a huge shock to the brain, fuse has gone, no light anymore. The smell of candle wax in your nostrils. Squinting in the dark. The fuse has gone. Read more...

Articles, - The Drugs Box By Rich Mills

	The Drugs Box; I'd heard of these things, I'd even seen one once, but never had a chance to have a go on one. So when I got the chance to see one in action I jumped at it. As an ex Drugs Worker, particularly having worked with young people, one of these would have been invaluable. A fully interactive, touch screen, educational tool, ideal for use Read more...

Articles - Quitting My Job - A Prologue By Joe Hakim

The idea comes to me in a dream. I know listening to other people's dreams is more boring than listening to their problems, but bear with me. I grab an hour's kip before work, and I enter that half-asleep/half-awake state where dreams are vivid and loaded with symbols. I'm in my flat and I have a pet lion. I'm watching it run around, and I'm upset because I know that I have to get rid of it Read more...

Articles - Ladies and Gentlemen, the Freakshow is Over...For Now By Jane Foster

So, we finally have the official verdict on Michael Jackson - ill, but innocent; nuts, but not guilty; freaky, but to him and his equally barmy fans, free. Frankly I could never see what all the fuss was about. Surely anyone who has had to endure his tedious dance routine (consisting of squeals of Ow! Ee-hee! whilst grabbing his genitals) should be glad that at last he's moved on to fondling someone else's? Read more...

Articles - Gary Bushel - My Hero by Andrea Longstaff

	Why is it that the practical workman or Sun reader is as thick as pig shit? Is it a pre- requisite for tradesmen's school? One workman asked my boss What's your favourite colour? Dunno, red he says. I'm only the cleaner but I couldn't believe it. What an enthralling conversation, I had to say, Read more...

Articles - All Mod Cons By Jim Higo

	Jimmy Pursey once sang There's gonna be a borstal break out but I don't remember him going on to say, Just as soon as me and Andy get out of double Geography and Johnny finishes that History essay that has to be in tomorrow. Mind you Pursey also said Angels from nowhere places. So what does he know? Read more...

Articles - Mobile Phones: Pain or Pleasure? By Sandra Blemster

	Do you consider your mobile phone to be a pleasure or a proverbial pain, a help or a hindrance? Sandra Blemster investigates. In recent years we have seen a little known fad sweep over the nation and take it over with fervent ferocity. The name of the culprit? Mobile telephones. And, I must admit, until recently, I was not a fan at all. Read more...

Articles - The Sixties By Marion

	Everyone has memories from their childhood. Some of mine involve making a union jack windmill while at primary school, then standing on Beverley Road, waiting to wave it at the Queen, when she visited Hull once. Another thing that sticks in my memory was when a new food fad came into being: frozen beef-burgers, chips, and peas. I drove my poor mum mad wanting them all the time! Read more...

Articles - Birds in Hull By Pete and Sue

	In November 2004 Sue and I promised ourselves a really special present for Christmas this year, we needed something really special because of the shitty year we had had. We decided that we should buy a parrot. Actually you can't buy a parrot, everyone we spoke to on the Net told us that we had to adopt one. Read more...