To what extent do people sacrifice comfort for value?

Published by Qmunicate

When considering travel, to what extent do people sacrifice comfort for value? Important essay titles aside, this question has been ping-ponging around my brain recently – and here’s the conclusion I arrived at: Megabus.

Megabus holds the monopoly over short-distance city-to-city travel, with fares usually remaining at £1 whether in advance or not, from London to Oxford, Edinburgh to Glasgow, Manchester to Liverpool, Leeds to Sheffield. These cheap, short services are popular among most demographics; commuters, students and night workers, but their long-distance journeys are much less popular.

It always surprises me that despite that their ‘£1 fares to and from anywhere in the UK make them far-and-away the cheapest budget travel provider’, people are petrified of climbing aboard. Recently, after I’d giddily announced to some friends that Megabus had just added two new destinations to their network – Pitlochry in the Highlands and Oxenholme in the Lake District – and suggested a trip during the Christmas break, an eerie silence filled the room. Someone swiftly changed the subject to: “so, that Obama guy got in…?” and the idea was suffocated at birth.

A few months ago, I was booking return Megabus tickets to Liverpool from Glasgow for a meagre £4.50, albeit at the sacrifice of twelve hours of my time. In fact, the cheap journey also offered a nice helping of glamour – I picture myself with a battered old suitcase, scribbling on a dusty notepad, meeting interesting Beat characters on the way (or so goes ‘On the Road’). And like a modern-day Kerouac, I would be travelling the length of the country to find the dream. I get carried away.

But with the glamour came a reality check; personified in friends who’d had recent Megabus experiences: “When I went to London it was thirteen hours there, and twelve hours back, without a working toilet,” said a former flatmate who’d taken a £5 return Glasgow to London journey a year before. “I was hungover, and had a guy sat next to me who would not move, who had a nervous twitch and kept elbowing me. Good luck.” Another friend told me that he’d lost all feeling in both legs during a bumpy £1.50 ride from Edinburgh to London, because the seats were ill-fitted for his six foot frame. Another said she’d heard of drivers who ask passengers for directions, though the worst that happened on her Megabus journeys to Manchester was that the toilets didn't work.

Despite the recurring themes of inoperable toilets and physical discomfort, I still had a smile on my face when my bus pulled into Stand 7 at Buchanan Bus Station at eight in the morning. My battered old suitcase was a sports bag, and my dusty notepad was a piece of revision, but – minus the comfy departure lounges and handy laptop-charging points – I got from A to B with no problems whatsoever.

Speaking for many, comfort or convenience is rarely sacrificed for value, and that’s why Megabus often isn’t included on the travel menu. As things go, I’ve no qualms with pins and needles, long journeys, weird passengers, or wailing toddlers. Just give me a good book and a packed lunch, and let me suffer the cheapest possible journey.

An enlightening Couchsurfing experience

Published by Qmunicate

Qmunicate's nomadic columnist on his alternative travels around the world.

“The best way to find yourself,” said Gandhi, “is to lose yourself in the service of others.” Arranging to stay with a complete stranger in their town or city, anywhere in the world, makes a similar point. During the summer, I took a leap of faith into the phenomenally-popular travelling network Couchsurfing.com.

Couchsurfing put simply: You sign up, host a traveller in need of some crashspace in your town or city (or just show them about a bit if you have no space to offer), and other travellers reciprocate when you’re on your own adventures.

I'll begin with the image of my girlfriend and I, emerging from Bremen train station at 5.36am. We'd spent the night travelling back from Berlin, a journey usually accomplished in under three hours by day, but with a wait of four hours in Hamburg station by night. Being quite the budget traveller, I'd insisted upon the latter to avoid paying another night's accommodation. After a long, sleepless night, we couldn’t wait to find the flat of our Couchsurfing host, a girl named Isis, which wasn’t far from Bremen station.

“Just call me at 6am and I'll open my door,” Isis had assured us, her words comfortably echoing as we staggered through the empty streets. We were tired and needed to sleep, but we didn't know whether or not to feel daunted or excited – after all, in how many different ways could this go wrong?

Taking reassurance in Couchsurfing.com's own statistics – 99.7% of surfers report 'Positive' experiences – we arrived at Isis' flat just after six, and she greeted us with an exhausted embrace. “I'm getting ready for work,” she told us, leading us upstairs. “You need coffee?” She showed us round her flat, and into “our room” – not a dingy cellar with an old mattress and a couple of dirty airline blankets thrown on the floor, which had entered the darker side of my imagination – a well-kept, clean, three-person apartment in the shade of a local park, with a marvellous home cinema.

“I told my friends you were coming – they want to go out with us tonight and meet you!” Isis enthused. Her hospitality seemed surreal yet normal, and all I could do was keep thanking her, before she prepared our couch and we sank into it without any grace.

725,000 couchsurfers represent 48,000 towns and cities in 231 different countries around the world – not just Europe and the United States, but spread over all continents. Even in the earth's most unpopulated areas there are couches available, cluttered among far eastern Russia, Saharan Africa, even the North and South Poles.

So when Isis returned from work that evening, I decided to grill her on her experiences as a Couchsurfing host. “You are the first,” she told us, to our surprise. With 700 couches available in Bremen alone, to stumble upon another first-timer seemed a coincidence – but it also showed just how fast Couchsurfing.com is growing.

“But I've already turned two people down,” Isis admitted. “A 45-year-old guy sent me a request – but from his profile I could see from his age and his personality that it wouldn't have been very comfortable having him stay here.”

Browsing the profiles of other couchsurfers can be a dark and unpredictable affair. As with most social networking sites, you can find seedy, bare-chested males with taglines such as “I have the ability to synthesise some compounds and I can separate drugs from bile, plasma and urine” going unpoliced, but the site does offer some safeguards.

Before negotiating a stay with some stranger, you can read how previous surfers or hosts have referenced them, and take comfort in the ‘vouching’ facility (similar to eBay’s rating system). The extent to which users fill out their profiles can also give you a good idea of who you’re dealing with.

“When you sent me a request I could see from your profile that we would get on fine,” Isis told us, as we awaited her friends.

They arrived soon after, and warmly greeted us with a bottle of Becks and a handshake. We went to one of the city's Irish bars, and before long we were downing pitchers of beer as if in a student union with our flatmates back home. It was a truly exhilarating night, bantering about everything from books to boyfriends, gaining an insight into local habits and – albeit briefly – trading the familiarity of seeing the world through tourist maps and Google for a far richer experience. In the morning we caught our flight, disappointed to be going home.

Growing up in a world far more likely to place safety before adventure, I used to believe that the well-documented 'Golden Age' of travelling – thumbing lifts around whole continents and crashing in generous strangers' homes, personified by Kerouac and glamourised by his sixties children – was only something to read about. Concluding from a thoroughly enlightening stay with Isis, it is making its resurgence.

(A longer account of my stay with Isis can be found here, and here .)

An Ode to Coppaccino

Published by Qmunicate

Qmunicate's sensitive columnist struggles with the loss of his place of work.

Readers, I am grieving – Coppaccino has closed down. If not a business familiar by name, it is surely one familiar by sight; the trio of police boxes – one on Buchanan Street, one near Kelvinhall and one outside the Botanic Gardens – which were converted into booths used for selling coffee? Yes, they’re gone – and only their rusty, graffiti-laden corpses of metal remain.

For six years they stood a bold 9ft tall and 4ft wide, but high above any of their rival cafés in the west end or the city centre. Its employees sat in the box and operated a hissing, spluttering machine which churned out a variety of £1.30 coffees and 80p teas, with a range of cold drinks and snacks hiding underneath in a small fridge. Its architect Gavin Wright served his last caramel latte in September, when he turned out the light and locked its door in pursuit of another business.

Coppaccino was my first job in Glasgow. Needing to make ends meet as a lazy first year student staying in Winton Drive, I’d dropped off my CV at the Coppaccino outside the Botanics – simply because it was the closest possible place of employment. Gavin called me a few nights later and arranged me an interview. It took the form of me standing outside the box, while a girl sat inside grilled me on my customer service experience. After a short trial shift that same day, I got the job. “Any advice?” I asked the girl, who was resuming her shift. “You’d probably better bring something to read,” she replied.

She was right. On rainy days outside the Botanic Gardens, I’d serve perhaps six people in as many hours. Over the next few weeks, I did all my exam revision and essay plans in the box. I even wrote some poetry and started a novel. The only problem was that the rain often blew in, and in such a case a mangled umbrella was provided to hang from one of the door hinges. There was also a small heater and a radio by my feet, and we were allowed hot drinks from the machine so long as we noted it an old 1980s till. At the end of the shift I’d just clean up and wait for Gavin – the man with they keys – to come and lock up.

Coppaccino was unofficially The Smallest Workplace In The World, but Gavin could never get it recognised by Guinness Records. As more people filled the streets when Glasgow got dryer, working within such an enclosed space prompted every second customer to ask: “Do you get claustrophobic in there?” to which I tried to reply differently every time. The customers themselves were a mixed bunch; loyal regulars, curious passers-by – occasionally bemused strangers would just stop and stare for uncomfortable stretches of time.

Ultimately, that’s why working in Coppaccino was the best job I’ve ever had. It was the perfect place for people-watching. On any given day I would serve bleary-eyed students still high from clubbing, wealthy businessmen rushing off to conferences, Big Issue sellers exhausted from selling all day on the streets, junkies demanding sachets of sugar, inter-railers urging me to pose for photographs, Polish workers needing directions, opportunist Jehovah’s witnesses making the most of my inability to escape...


The fantastic contrast of Glasgow was painted on a giant canvas right in front of me every time I stepped inside. I don’t feel like I’ve lost a café; I’ve lost a window – however narrow and rusty – to this city.

On Dr Rowan Williams' visit to Glasgow...

Published by Qmunicate

Taking a coffee break from the mammoth task of pasting together the largest split in the Anglican Church for centuries, Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, delivered a free public question and answer session in Bute Hall last month.

The format of the evening also included an open discussion with British Muslim academic Mona Siddiqui, a Professor of Theology and Religious Issues at Glasgow University. The Archbishop confronted a range of topics, witnessed by 700-strong audience.

2008 has been a struggle for the Church of England and Williams himself – his comments on Sharia law in February created a prolonged media hysteria, and the historic Lambeth Conference was marred by a boycott by conservative bishops over the issue of homosexuality in June. “Anything I say here tonight isn’t just to the audience sitting in front of me,” he recognised.

In spite of this, Williams was composed during the whole event, and his input to the discussion was remarkably frank. He spoke candidly about sectarianism and secular politics, and a sense of realism washed over everything he said. Any form of sermonising was thankfully absent; the Archbishop certainly proved his worth as an intellectual with a broad understanding of modern life, as opposed to a one-dimensional religious zealot – leaving points of intrigue even for a militant atheist like me.

One notable point came when Williams admitted that, “religious language often seems hollow in the context of great human suffering,” and that, as any human being would, he questions his faith amid the worst of natural and political atrocities. However, he affirmed, “I’ve never thought of giving up, as I’ve never felt that nothing’s out there.”

The Archbishop even dared comment on Islam, despite the controversies in February, when provoked by Professor Siddiqui. “I think more Christians need to understand Jesus in the context of Islam. There are certainly many similarities.” Referring to Muslims and Jews as “our brothers and sisters”, Williams also stressed the importance of seeing his job as a pragmatic “listening process”.

Questions from the audience were mixed – one man wanted him to come up with a solution for religious divisions between Catholics and Anglicans, to which he responded by saying that he couldn’t do anything but to “hope to foresee a unity one day.” Another woman wanted to know if Williams be supporting Barack Obama or John McCain at the then-imminent Presidential Election. “I know better than to give you an answer to that,” he joked.

I left the room with a profound respect for the Archbishop. He demonstrated a deep theological and intellectual knowledge that made him appear more in touch with modern life than you’d probably expect. Yet, his affiliations with the ‘liberal wing’ of the church certainly don’t render him less religiously passionate as his conservative critics.

Swapping seats at The Jeremy Kyle Show

Published by Qmunicate

Qmunicate's cutting-edge columnist goes to the source of one of TV's most provocative talk shows.

What would you do if a middle-aged woman confided in you this: that she used to be a man who took to binge drinking to combat the frustrations of not being female, and that the hormonal confusions surrounding her subsequent sex change had led her to further alcohol abuse and to regularly fly off the handle in violent rages. Most of us would run a mile, but how's this for advice? “You were a binge drinking man – now you're an alcoholic woman.” Meet Jeremy Kyle, whose daytime show on ITV reels in 1.5 million of us every single day.

This is where it all begins. Huddled together down a damp, dark avenue outside Granada Studios in Manchester on a wet and windy evening, queue The Jeremy Kyle Show studio audience and I – waiting impatiently to put our own problems at bay so we can enjoy Jeremy exploiting other people's.

His guests, raked from the broken homes of Britain's working-class families, are wheeled out every day before him to have their wounds ripped open in public. Kyle's mantra dramatises the negative effects that drugs and alcohol abuse, parental neglect and unemployment have upon Britain's families, and particularly children. His show was this year publicly criticised by a court judge, who, in summing up a case of GBH on the set of Kyle's show, described Kyle's method of counselling as “human bear-baiting”.

I feel underdressed. Everybody around me is caked in make-up and dressed to kill – but why? Perhaps some of them are taking hope from the fact that Jeremy's wife, Carla Germaine, he met on one of his radio shows. Nevertheless, everyone is soaking wet, so it doesn't really matter.

After bearing the rough edge of the rain for half an hour, we are led inside and nudged politely into a seating area, where a clipboard-carrying woman lectures us about the show. She has the enthusiasm of a Butlins redcoat, but sadly one who is now prostituting her services to the daytime talkshow-watching demographic. “On today's show we have DNA results!” she enthuses, to the giddy murmurings of the eager crowd. “You must all show your most extreme emotions together,” she says, “because the other audiences today didn't cheer or gasp much, and Jeremy was very upset. Jeremy likes it when you cheer for him.”

I read my admission ticket – a yellow slip of paper choked with bullet points such as: 'Remember without you there wouldn't be a show. Use body language to help get your points across – it looks better on TV!' For a few minutes we practise in unison our gasps, cheers and boos, and I take a mental note of a group of five women who seem to be taking this far too seriously as we are led into the studio itself.

Does this man really need an introduction? Where Kyle once lurched in the long shadows of Springer, Kilroy and Trisha, he now marches triumphantly. His cut-the-crap attitude, together with his black-and-white understanding of human relationships, along with his ability to identify The Abuser and The Victim in almost every circumstance imaginable, strike a moral chord with the British public.

With all this in mind, I clutch my plastic seat anxiously as I see a black curtain quiver to the side of the stage, and the man himself emerge. “Ladies and Gentlemen, Jeremy Kyle!” The audience goes wild. Understandably so, as they've been waiting another half hour for this. Kyle doesn't blink, and walks slowly towards the familiar stage, sitting down on the chair he'll be yelling at in about ten minutes time.

“My daughter came from school today,” he smirks, “and she's started saying a new word: boys. Well I'm alright with that, because which boy in their right mind will ever want to go near JEREMY KYLE'S daughter?” The crowd cheers and applauds. He turns to the floor manager: “You alright Will, you twat?” Kyle slowly turns towards his audience again. “Listen everybody, Will needs a girlfriend. His last girlfriend was quite rough, so he wants someone a bit more classy.”

It continues like this for about five minutes, Kyle picking people at random, telling them to “Get a fucking job!” or asking them “Are you pregnant? Who's the father!?” and revelling in the laughter and applause. He seems to enjoy caricaturing himself and referring to himself in the third person for a while, before he suddenly goes off stage, and surrounds himself with a TV crew and a couple of make-up artists, preparing to shoot the promos they use for GMTV's ad breaks.

I find it hard to believe that once, Jeremy Kyle was not on television. His ned-bashing career began on radio, where he presented Jezza's Confessions on various frequencies, in the early noughties. A woman once called into his show and, rather shaken up, confessed to having at least two affairs because of her husband's drinking problem. How did Jezza sum up her problem sensitively? “You're a whore and your husband's a drunk. You need to stop sleeping around and your husband needs to stop drinking.” Exactly Jeremy. Fast forward a few years, and his show is a ratings-winner by miles during the day, as well as being repeated around the clock on three ITV channels.

The success of the show must be partly owed to the moral demise of the past kings and queens of daytime television. A gap in the talkshow market had opened up, and Kyle squeezed himself in. He is slightly more abrasive, “Are you a scumbag? YES OR NO?”, than even Kilroy was, yet he still provides more professional support than Trisha did with his much-referenced “backroom team” and of course “Graham”, the show's psychotherapist.

“So let's bring out Kevin,” Kyle announces. In this episode, Kevin is finding out if he is the father of his ex-girlfriend Tasha's unborn child. Tasha, who admitted that she “might have slept with someone on New Year's Eve” while they were still together, is confident that Kevin is the father, and that they could still have a future together. Kevin, still in love with Tasha and willing to forgive her, is hoping that he is the father too. Their future is printed in ink on one of Kyle's cards as he wanders calmly behind the filming cameras. “Kevin,” Kyle pauses as the audience prepare to go live on their gasp rehearsals, “is NOT the father.” Kevin storms off stage, punches the wall, and Tasha begins to cry. It turns out that Tasha had slept with six or seven people that night. Kyle offers some banal advice about “using protection in the future” before quickly cutting to an ad break, and Tasha is ushered quickly off stage.

Back to Kyle bathing in his own self-importance, again. “That was very good,” he says to himself. He doesn't need to be told. “Hey, Dom!” he shouts across the studio, and a man fiddling with camera wires looks up. “Don't you feel like you owe your whole career to me?” Kyle disappears for a few minutes, before re-emerging for two more episodes.

A few more gasps, cheers and boos later, and the whole thing is finished. The TV crew pat Kyle on the back, and he grins. That's a day's work for Kyle, so it's no wonder he has all the time in the world to spend with his kids. I suspect that the people he riles against, those who live in crumbling council estates in the poorest areas of Britain, those who face a glass ceiling when it comes to education and decent work, those who are merely 'bad parents' because they weren't brought up to be any better, those who live only fifteen minutes down the road from the Studios, where I was born, in Moss Side, Manchester, couldn't care less if an uppity talkshow host with a supermodel wife told them his opinions. But still, it makes great television.

If you've watched the show, you'll know that at the beginning, Kyle enters to a cheering, whooping, applauding audience and shakes a few hands. That must be Kyle's favourite part, because after all, “Jeremy likes it when you cheer for him.” Just as the TV crew are about to let us leave, Kyle speaks up over everyone. “One more thing, guys,” he says with a smile, “can we just do the beginning bit again?”

As we are finally led out of the studio, I see again the five women I remember from the beginning of the show. They are laughing, not at the absurdity of the man I have concluded, but at how lucky they all are in seeing Kyle in the flesh, and they were not alone that day. However, to my surprise, there are also those who seem disillusioned with him, perhaps because of his off-camera comments. We wander out into the rain again, and I begin to think about how in popular culture today lies an exclusive clique of celebrity, occupying a unique position in the public mind. Its members generate so much admiration, but also an equal measurement of loathing among the public, that it is impossible for anyone to have a completely neutral opinion of them. Thatcher is one. Pete Doherty is another. Jeremy Kyle is the latest member.

Assessing 'Smart Drugs'

Published by Qmunicate

Qmunicate's controversial columnist investigates smart drugs.

Procrastination. Hmm – it's strange that even writing that word almost slips me into Useless Mode; gazing into the most unusual corners of the World Wide Web and choking my ashtray with dozens of twisted cigarettes stubs. It's a part of our academic lives which we're all frustratingly used to. However, in May, I decided that these I'll-do-it-later binges were becoming ridiculous and must stop. I had an exam the following afternoon, and despite surrounding myself with a dozen books and a few mountains of lecture notes, I hadn't read a word since settling down to do so four hours before.

It was then, in that moment of procrastination, I stumbled upon an article which seemed to suggest its antidote. The article held my concentration for longer than any YouTube video or Wikipedia page had that evening.

It said that there was a huge debate about the increasing use by students of 'smart drugs', which were, they said, “Viagra for the brain”. Modafinil was originally designed in the seventies to treat narcoleptics and later for sufferers of ADHD. However, in clinical trials, the article said, scientists had discovered something odd: if you give it to non-sufferers, it just makes them smarter. Their memory and concentration levels improve remarkably, and so does their academic performance.

Modafinil doesn't work as an amphetamine or a stimulant – it doesn't make you high, or wired – it simply works by limiting the brain's natural tendency to become sluggish or sleepy, so you can maintain a heightened line of concentration all day, and all night, or all week if you want.

I always felt sympathy for Medics who moaned at their 8-hour days and exams that ran deep into June, but was this their best-kept secret? It sounded perfect. “I get up at 5am, take a 200mg tablet, then go back to sleep for an hour. Then I get up feeling completely refreshed, and can work flat-out until 1am the following morning – I did that for a whole week,” said an undergraduate from Oxford University of a typical Modafinil day.

When my exams were over, I decided to look into getting hold of some Modafinil ahead of the new academic year. I'd heard from friends that you could get a supply by coercing someone with an irregular sleep pattern (a night-shift worker for example) into getting a prescription on your behalf. I'd also been told – to my amazement – that by feigning ADHD you can pick up a prescription of Ritalin, which works in a similar way. But after a few clicks online, they were in my shopping cart – just £30 for a month's supply, from an Indian pharmacy.

It was only at this point, the cursor hovering over the Proceed To Checkout button, that a powerful yet inconvenient wave of morality engulfed me. I was watching the news, and Dwain Chambers was on. Chambers was unable to join Team GB at the Olympics this year, because drug tests had proven him guilty of taking banned 'performance-enhancing' substances at the previous Olympics. So what's the difference between Modafinil for students and steroids for athletes? I thought.

It would also be silly to try the drugs without medical opinion. So when I returned back to Glasgow, I called Matthew Walters, a former senior lecturer in Medicine and an Honorary Physician at Western Infirmary, to arrange a discussion. While he admitted that “there is evidence that Modafinil promotes wakefulness, preserves one's attention and advances specific memory cells,” Matthew expressed a doubt on the health implications surrounding students taking them. “Even if it works for an exam or two, it can affect a person's mood or behaviour, and in the long-term, brain damage is a huge, huge risk. The Modafinil you can buy online is unlicensed and mostly untested. It could be contaminated, and, most dangerously, is supplied in compounds so strong that people who don't need it would struggle to shake off its short-term effects.”

Matthew also said that there isn't much knowledge regarding Modafinil in the medical profession – very few studies have actually been performed recently – and he attributed the popularity of 'smart drugs' to the pressures placed on university students today.

I began to think how dull the West End would be if everyone managed to obtain Modafinil – nobody wasting time, ever. The parks and the bars would be empty. University Avenue would extend to Byres Road and the library would need to grow at least six times its size to cater for the huge demand in computers and desks, in front of which all students would be huddled, each upgraded to Version 2.0s of themselves.

In the end, it's the lack of knowledge about what it could do to my brain that was a deal-breaker for me. Matthew's strong discouragement rang through my rusty, sluggish brain as I made my way back to a room full of books I intend to read, and essays I intend to write.

The Couchsurfing Chronicles: Sofa, So Good.

Published by The Skinny

Steve Clarkson is the latest to nestle up on someone else's settee.

“The best way to find yourself,” said Gandhi, “is to lose yourself in the service of others.” Arranging to stay with someone you've met on the internet, who is willing to host you and others in their town or city, anywhere in the world, makes a similar point. The travelling facility Couchsurfing.com, also known as 'The Couchsurfing Project', will be celebrating its official 5th birthday in January, and I, as one of its 725,000 members, will be celebrating.

I'll begin with the image of my girlfriend and I, weary-legged and bleary-eyed, emerging from Bremen train station at 5.36am. We'd spent the night travelling back from Berlin, a journey usually accomplished in under three hours by day, but with a wait of four hours in Hamburg station by night. Being quite the budget traveller, I'd insisted upon the latter to avoid paying another night's accommodation. Catching half an hour’s sleep among the homeless in the station McDonalds, we couldn’t wait to find the flat of our Couchsurfing host, a girl named Isis, which wasn’t far from Bremen station.

“Just call me at 6am and I'll open my door,” Isis had assured us, her words comfortably echoing as we staggered through the empty streets. My girlfriend and I discussed what we were about to undertake and the fragility of the situation – in how many different ways could this go wrong? Despite being active travellers, we were complete virgins to the community and the practise of Couchsurfing. We were tired and needed to sleep, but we didn't know whether or not to feel daunted or excited.

I took reassurance in some of Couchsurfing.com's own statistics: 99.7% of surfers have reported 'Positive' experiences, with around half of these experiences resulting in permanent friendships. A few of my friends were also about to experience it for the first time themselves, in Estonia, Russia, Argentina and Peru. So, it was a blend of my friends' willingness to do it themselves, the encouraging statistics and my own curiosity and principles that inspired us to take this leap of faith ourselves.

We arrived at Isis' flat just after six, and she greeted us with an exhausted embrace. “I'm getting ready for work,” she told us, leading us upstairs. “You need coffee?” She showed us round her flat, and into “our room” – not a dingy cellar with an old mattress and a couple of dirty airline blankets thrown on the floor, which had entered the darker side of my imagination – a well-kept, clean, three-person apartment in the shade of a local park, with a marvellous home cinema.

“My flatmate is sleeping, but she is excited to meet you,” Isis enthused, “and I told my friends you were coming, they want to go out with us tonight for a drink and meet you too!” Her hospitality seemed both surreal and normal at the same time, and all I could do was keep thanking her, before she prepared our couch and we sank into it without any grace.

As the birds sang outside, I began evaluating the different forms of accommodation available when it comes to travelling – each owed their own merits, as well as perils. One choice is to take night buses or trains – something which would save money, but an option not always comfortable, possible, or safe. Then there's the comfort of hotels, the most expensive option and entirely anonymous, giving you all the comforts of your own home and delivering you nothing of real cultural value or experience. Hostels can be fun and sociable for meeting other travellers, but they don't take you much further towards really understanding a location and its natives – perhaps they just add a few more pages to your Lonely Planet guide or a few new Facebook friends when you get home.

It were these frustrations that led a web consultant from New Hampshire to provide the world with a fundamentally different way of travelling itself. “I decided to take a weekend trip to Iceland one May,” Couchsurfing founder Casey Fenton writes on the website. “I'd gotten a web-special from Boston to Iceland on Monday and would fly on the Friday. Only one problem though. What would I do when I got there? Stick it out in a hotel? A hostel?” He managed to get hold of the University of Iceland's student directory and promptly emailed 1,500 of its students, telling them of his trip to their country, and asking them for a place to crash.

“Within 24 hours I had between 50 and 100 saying 'Yeah, come stay with me!' So I stopped with [a girl named] Yoa and her friends. They showed me 'their' Iceland. Great stories, great fun, and amazing friends were discovered on that weekend in May. When I was on the plane back to Boston, I thought to myself, 'That's how I want to travel, every time.'”

Casey was clearly not alone, as now 725,000 couchsurfers represent 48,000 towns and cities in 231 different countries around the world – not just Europe and the United States, but spread over all continents. Even in the earth's most unpopulated areas there are couches available, cluttered among far eastern Russia, Saharan Africa and, incredibly, the North and South Poles.

So when Isis returned from work that evening, I decided to grill her on her experiences as a Couchsurfing host. “You are the first ones to stay here,” she told us, to our surprise. After all, there were 700 couches available in Bremen alone, so to stumble upon another first-timer was a coincidence – but it also showed just how fast Couchsurfing.com is growing, with an average of 1,100 new members registering to offer their couches every single day.

“I joined the site about a month ago,” Isis continued, “you are the first, then a couple from St Petersburg arrive next week.” She then explained how one of the reasons she registered herself as a host on Couchsurfing.com was to improve her language areas. “My grandparents live in Moscow, so I'm able to speak some Russian but I'd like to know more, also English is always important to know.” On their profiles, most users add which languages they speak and to which level (Beginner, Intermediate, or Expert). However, Isis won't always approve requests from those who speak languages she'd like to learn.

“I've already turned two people down. A 45-year-old guy from England sent me an email requesting to stay on my couch – but from his profile I could tell from his age and his personality that it wouldn't have been very comfortable having him stay here.”

Inevitably, browsing through the profiles of other couchsurfers, as a host or as a surfer, can be a dark and unpredictable affair. As with most social networking sites, you can find seedy-looking, bare-chested, middle-aged men with taglines such as “I have the ability to synthesise some compounds and I can separate drugs from bile, plasma and urine” going unpoliced, but the site does offer some safeguards, which are taken seriously.

Before negotiating a stay with some stranger you can view references other members have left on their page, and there is also a 'vouch' system, similar to eBay's or Amazon's. Hosts can also prove their whereabouts by receiving mail from the site admin which earns them a higher 'Verification level', and last known log-in locations are posted for all to see, making them more attractive hosts to the couchsurfing newbie.

Similarly, surfers are encouraged to describe themselves in depth on their profile page in order to make it easier for their potential hosts to find out what sort of person they are. “When you emailed me requesting to stay here I could see from your profile that we would get on fine,” Isis told us, sipping from her glass of wine as we await her friends.

It was ten o'clock before Isis' friends arrived, and we were warmly greeted with a bottle of Becks and a handshake. They took us out instantly to one of the city's Irish bars, and before long we were downing pitchers of beer as if we were in a student union with our flatmates back home. Isis and her friends explained Bremen's bar and club scene and offered us advice as where to go and where not to go – as well as describing its thriving industries, its student life, its local habits and lifestyles, popular films and the German arts scene – and of course, we were more than happy to correspond with their eagerness to understand the British, too.

After a truly exhilirating night, we bid our new friends guten nicht, and went to bed, disappointed that we were getting our flight home in the morning. We'd traded in the familiarity of seeing the world through tourist maps and Google for a far richer experience – understanding the world through its people.

Growing up in a world far more likely to place safety before adventure, I used to believe that the well-documented 'Golden Age' of travelling – thumbing lifts around whole continents and finding places to sleep in generous strangers' homes, personified by Kerouac and glamourised by his sixties children – was only something to read or reminisce about, and had been confined to the dustbin of culture. Concluding from a thoroughly enlightening stay with Isis, it is making its resurgence.

A short review of Latitude Festival 2008

Published by Qmunicate

Stretching my legs on yet another local East Anglian platform – it was my fourth change since York – I had the feeling that giving Latitude the nod over a closer Leeds option was already a regrettable decision.

Not so. This year – its third birthday – played host to headliners Interpol, Sigur Ros and Franz Ferdinand… but Latitude is of course “more than just a music festival” as it claims to be, with the Cabaret, Literary, Poetry and Theatre tents creating a vibrant fusion of the arts. In many ways it was like the Fringe, but set in the leafy Suffolk countryside.

The lineups featured both established and upcoming acts across the various stages, attracting fans of culture in all its diversity. It seemed remarkable that break-dancing fans, Bill Bailey lovers and Radio 4 listeners had all squeezed through the same entrance gates, prompting the Independent on Sunday to review that “One day, all festivals will be like this.”

Why are we waiting so long on album releases these days?

Published by Qmunicate

Qmunicate's irreverent columnist finds it hard to keep up with all this new music.

I have to admit something. I can’t keep up with the pace of today’s music world. Don’t get me wrong, I love the stuff – but adrift in what seems like an ocean of marketing for this ‘music by numbers’, I’m drowning. No, I don’t know the name of the song that goes “La La Oh Ohhh”, although it does sound familiar. No, I haven’t looked at where The [insert noun]s are gigging this summer. Yes, I was force-fed a myriad of flyers about album launches – but no, I couldn’t possibly visit them all. And yet, how could anyone in my position actually accuse today’s bands of being too slow at making music?

The fact is that bands simply aren’t making music as much as they were. Let’s take two popular British groups from the sixties, and two from the present day. (If you don’t trust Wikipedia, look away now). In the sixties, The Kinks recorded ten studio albums in their first six years; The Beatles managed thirteen in their seven-year existence. Both bands managed to put out two albums a year on a frequent basis. Today, The Futureheads, in their eight-year existence, have recorded three studio albums; Muse have churned out four albums since 1999. So about one album every three years, then.

The differences are stark, but surely it should be more possible to record, produce and supply albums even faster now than they did forty years ago – with the internet, digital technology, and arguably a more greedy, disposable music culture.

However, the long, lengthy, formulaic process of recording-promoting-touring has become so ingrained in music culture that it is almost unthinkable to dismantle.

In 2004, Justin Hawkins ironically predicted the fate of The Darkness. “We’ll win awards, tour this album to death, then never make any more music” he told Q. Two years after they headlined Leeds and Reading Festivals, The Darkness’ last single collapsed into the chart at No. 39. Martyrs don’t usually wear spandex, but this cry-for-help showed that he was conscious that the band’s over-saturation in the media was leading to antipathy, and he was just about right.

It’s nothing new to conclude that the music industry is more reliant upon record-breaking, platinum-selling debut albums than it is with creating legends here in the noughties. Nor is it to suggest that the distance between album launches and tours are fixed to spread the source of profit out over as long a period as possible.

What I wonder is, are the events of the past year signalling a change in this silly equation? Aspects of the way the industry works are being questioned, when Radiohead, Prince and The Charlatans all circumvented the traditional ways of supplying music to their own fans last year.

So is the pendulum finally swinging the right way?

Defining 'Travel' in the narrowest sense of the word

Published by The Skinny

Jack Kerouac once wrote: "No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength."

It's true. Travel, in the narrowest sense of the word, as I know it, is a challenge. It's a challenge which spits you out into an alien civilisation, then tries to drown you in the perhaps murky waters of other cultures, and finally, when you resurface, gasping for breath, it gives you only foreign air to survive. Travel is the cultural equivalent of the bends; but from the departure lounge, to the check-in desk, from the goodbye drinks, to the foreign greetings, the challenge offers an incomparable lust for adventure.

One crucial element of travel is, for me, the interaction with other travellers. Two years ago, I met some American backpackers at a hostel in Interlaken, Switzerland. One day, we visited a the small town of Lauterbrunnen, in the Alps, and that day I recognised that despite being complete strangers, we all shared something in common – an invisible string which bound us together, and to every other traveller in the world.

I came to realise that those seeking to escape a community - those who travel - create a community of their own in doing so; a thread connecting people striving to do things differently, one which makes tracks over any national and cultural boundaries, and embraces the most relentless passion for discovery - not just of other places, but of other people, and even ourselves. The experience of interaction between travellers is one that changes your perception of humanity for life, where the artificial walls of nationality crumble in one benevolent, inclusive, global collective.

The community is one which embodies a few different traits and characteristics – one, the most important of which, is based on empathy; the passion and enthusiasm to explore a patchwork of different peoples, and in doing so, adding width your own global consciousness. As the American travel author Mark Twain chronicled in 'The Innocents Abroad': "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."

A second characteristic draws a line between itself and the holidaying community, and despises those who spend lots of money on package holidaying, only to check into somewhere with all the comforts of their home – with the designer suitcases, the sunscreen and the ignorance to boot.

Connecting the travelling community is a camaraderie, which is riddled with cooperation and respect of all kinds; exchanging maps, recommending or condemning places, cooking together, talking over bunk beds until the sun rises… however, an interesting aspect of the interaction is the lack of permanence – the checking in and the checking out, the coming and the going – which is where it stops short of friendship. Because the inclination of the community to keep moving on and discovering, this is silently accepted. Kerouac, in the traveller's Bible 'On the Road', summed it up beautifully: "What is the feeling when you're driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? it's the too huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies."

But what is most important to travellers? The belief that no matter how much time spent submerged in the swamp of alien cultures, you'll always feel cleaner when you come out on the other side.

Taking issue with the Big Issue

Published by Qmunicate Magazine, 9 April 2008

You've probably seen Jamie around. He sells the Big Issue on Byres Road, and whether you're heading for your eleven o'clock lectures, some shopping or a cup of coffee, he's probably the one you either walk straight past or give £1.50 and some small talk to. As far as Big Issue vendors go, he's quite eccentric – known for his leather jackets and his quiff – and he often seems less subdued than the students he's selling to. “Doing this job can be a laugh,” he says, wiping the rain off his forehead as we dodge a crowd of umbrellas. “But there is a certain input of ignorance in the west end, people can be quite patronising and ingenuine – they sometimes ask questions to be polite, but then don't listen to the answers I give. Selling the magazine can be good though, most people in the west end are friendly.”

It's around eight o'clock when Jamie sells his last Big Issue of the day, and after often twelve hours of selling, he catches the subway to something like home. He currently stays with a friend in Townhead; a grey, concrete paving slab of redevelopment near Cowcaddens, from which he commutes daily.

Jamie's life reads like a Hollywood script with the wrong ending. He was born and raised in the Drumchapel district of Glasgow, and left school when he was 15. “I think that so many young people from areas like that face a glass ceiling when it comes to education in their chances in life,” adding, “so I spent ten years travelling the world. I lived in lots of different places in Europe doing odd jobs, just making enough money to move on again – Munich, Istanbul, Morocco. It just became my life.” When he returned, Jamie then began studying for a degree in social and economic history as a mature student. “I was the first person in my family to go to university. Nobody suggested it, nobody expected it.”

However, when he was in his early thirties, he found it difficult to find real work, and spent years in low-paid jobs. But he shared a flat with his girlfriend, where they both paid their share of the rent, and he got by. Then one day, his girlfriend left to visit her family in Dublin, and never returned. At around the same time, Jamie's landlord wanted to redevelop the area and then let rooms out to the new Polish workers. “I didn't really mind,” says Jamie, taking a drag off a cigarette. “I've been a guest worker in lots of other countries so I know what it's like to come to a new place and look for somewhere to stay. So I lost my flat, and the rest is history.”

Jamie's been without a permanent home for over a year now, and he got the idea of selling from another homeless man. “Before I knew it, I had my own badge and it's a good opportunity, but selling the Big Issue should only be a stop-gap in between different circumstances. I know people who've been selling for fourteen or fifteen years, since the Big Issue began in 1991, but I'd feel very cheeky if I was still doing this for another five.” He's optimistic for the future, but admits that it's difficult to progress with so many barriers. “There are all sorts of obstacles, the main one being the lack of a permanent address, which immediately prevents you from getting beyond an application form for most jobs. No fixed address, no chance of a job; no job, no chance of a fixed address.”

“I've tried to find work in restaurants, hotels, but I'd much rather be learning again. Still, an address is needed by most educational institutions, which is why I've applied four times for teacher training. I think I'd be a good teacher because of my outlook and life experience. I'm not giving up,” he adds.

On our way down to the Tennents bar, Jamie greets another seller, and tells me that “there's no professional rivalry at all, all of us are in the same boat and have either temporary homes or live in hostels around the city. We help each other out where we need to.” The Big Issue sellers in the west end share a camaraderie, exchanging pointers on new housing incentives, job opportunities and occasionally, going out for drinks just as students do. “The only problem lies with,” Jamie adds, “the Romanian sellers.”

Jamie reflects a recent tide of disgruntlement which has been seeping into the change bags of Glasgow's local Big Issue sellers. Ever since Romania and Bulgaria entered the European Union in January 2007, a new demographic has crash-landed on Glasgow – and in this case, our Big Issue sellers are feeling its tremors. “They give the Big Issue a bad name,” argues Jamie. “They can't engage with the public because they don't speak a word of English and they're not local.”
Another Byres Road vendor added, “we try to take it up with the [Big Issue] office, but it's dismissed as racism. Political correctness? Political crap.”

As many people understand, the Big Issue serves to give local homeless people the chance to work themselves out of poor conditions, but as the Big Issue Scotland national sales manager Michael Luby describes, it's homelessness in general they are trying to find a solution for. “When the EU expanded its borders, in many ways they left us to pick up the pieces. Over 7,000 Romanians have arrived here in the past year. They expected the streets to be paved with gold, but they aren't, and a lot of them found quickly found it difficult to find a home, just like the local sellers did. In that way, the Romanians met our criteria, and nobody who meets our criteria will ever be turned away. If their only other options are begging or stealing, I'm proud that we've given them a chance.” But Michael concedes that the Big Issue has attracted negative publicity for doing so.

This isn't the first time the Big Issue has been vulnerable to criticism. In Oxford, there were around ninety registered Big Issue vendors – quite a large number for a relatively small city. For the local vendors, it was difficult to sell effectively because of the disproportionate number of sellers to streets to sell on, and they found this to the detriment of their own profits.

Michael also admits that there's an increased number of “blaggers with mags”, or fraudulent sellers, since the European enlargement. “This is something we work with the police on. We have an outreach team who check badges and who stop people begging whilst selling, which is against our rules. We have a very rigid code of conduct, but there will always be a minority of rogue sellers.”

Oddly, when Jamie was giving his interview, there wasn't a single Romanian seller on the street. Apparently, some members of the Big Issue's 'outreach team' had come to the west end to check badges that day, so a few of them hadn't turned up. “They didn't want to get caught. They'd been informed by someone,” claims Jamie. “By who, I don't know.”

In a largely depoliticised society where popular culture is more prone to discuss Pepsi v Coke than most wider issues, many people simply pop up their umbrellas to shelter from the drizzly political weather. But if you buy Big Issues – make sure you know exactly where the money is going, or else the meagre profits of many in “homelessness or vulnerable housing” kicked into the long grass.

Totally Tongue Tied

Published by Qmunicate Magazine, 25 February 2008

There are many things to write about in Glasgow – the International Film Festival has just drawn to its end, with the Comedy Festival on the city's damp horizons (the 5-day forecast is still bleak, sorry folks); but there is scarcely a topic so universal in our academic lives that it is any observer's crime not to pay it some sort of attention. So it's within my great taboo -breaking pleasure to introduce a subject which is hardly ever on everyone's lips – the mobile-clicking, room-gazing, paper-rufflingly awkward seminar silences, probably taking place right at this moment just down the road.

I'm reminded of my 'first time' on every occasion I set foot in the first seminars of a new semester. I'd just worked out when the traffic lights would change on the Byres Road crossing, and I was still wiping away the crumbs from the free cake stall when I found the right room, which turned out to be the venue for a scene Harold Pinter never wrote. I think we were actually studying Pinter at the time, but the irony of the situation was lost on us all – the silence stretched out until the tutor arrived, unhindered, for what seemed like an ocean of time.

Week followed week, and the silences were given a bit more depth with the notable creation of inventive silence-slaying tactics. Our class began gazing around the room, aimlessly tapping buttons on our mobiles, ruffling sheets of paper, or prolonging the experience of opening our bags in order to replace conversation with movement and noise, and to appear otherwise occupied – too busy to talk. The ten seconds we were given to introduce ourselves were quickly forgotten, and over the weeks, attendances began to suffer, and people began to arrive late to soften the blow. But by this time, the hanging, visible awkwardness seemed annoying and unnatural.

Despite the fact my seminars were for arts subjects, I felt like I'd walked out of the building with a master's degree in human psychology. Seminars do grow more relaxed from term to term, but they're a clear microcosm of the vast and ugly obstacles that divide one stranger from the next – a cornerstone of any advanced society; one in which work and leisure are rarely mixed, and one in which we're fed individualism to the extent that it becomes blurred with isolation.

Now, if you'll excuse me – I'm running purposefully late for my history tutorial.

A travel writing competition

British Airways Writing Comp - 21 November 2007

This is my entry into the first British Airways travel writing competition. The winner will be commissioned to go on an expenses-paid travel assignment for their 'High Life' magazine, and the resulting 1800-word feature will be published next year.

Write a 500-word feature covering any element of travel.

"Travel – travel in the narrowest sense of the word, as I know it – is a world apart from holidaying. Travel is a challenge that first spits you out into an alien civilisation, then tries to drown you in the perhaps murky waters of other cultures, and finally, when you resurface, gasping for breath, it gives you only foreign air to survive. It is the cultural equivalent of the bends, but from the departure lounge, to the check-in desk, from the goodbye drinks, to the foreign greetings, the challenge offers an incomparable lust for adventure.

The most gratifying element of travel is, for me, the interaction with other travellers. Last year I met some American backpackers at a hostel in Interlaken, Switzerland. One day, we visited a the small town of Lauterbrunnen, in the Alps, and that day I recognised that despite being complete strangers, we all shared something in common – an invisible string which bound us together, and to every other traveller in the world. I came to realise that those seeking to escape a community, those who travel, create a community of their own in doing so; a thread connecting people striving to do things differently, one which makes tracks over any national and cultural boundaries, and embraces the most relentless passion for discovery, not just of other places, but of other people. Without intending to write a utopian hymn, the experience of interaction between travellers is one that changes your perception of humanity for life, where the artificial walls of nationality crumble in one benevolent, inclusive, global society.

The community is one which embodies three different traits – one based on empathy; the passion and enthusiasm to acknowledge a patchwork of different peoples, and in doing so, adding width your own global consciousness, another despising those who spend lots of money on package holidaying, only to check into somewhere with all the comforts of home – with the designer suitcases, the sunscreen and the ignorance to boot.

Interaction between travellers is riddled with cooperation and respect of all kinds, which can take the form of exchanging maps, recommending places to visit, communal cooking, and talking over bunk beds until the sun rises. An interesting aspect of the interaction is the lack of permanence – the checking in and checking out, the coming and going – which is where it stops short of friendship, as because the inclination of travelling is simply not to stop, it is silently accepted.

The third common trait is the belief that no matter how much time spent submerged in the swamp of alien cultures, you always feel cleaner when you come out on the other side again."

In no more than 100 words, review somewhere you have stayed.

"Budapest is a tale of two cities. The two boroughs and the bridge which connects them, are the visualisation of a post-Communism timeline in a history lesson – the developed, and the developing. In Buda, vast office buildings create a modern, business-littered skyline, where western-minded men scuttle around carrying briefcases and sipping lattes. On the other side of the river, in Pest, the homeless lay, begging and broken on the curb outside MacDonalds and chain fashion shops – which comprise the first floor of the grey, Stalinist buildings. It is a city of extraordinary contrast."

Skip Surfing USA

Published by Glasgow Guardian, 7 October 2007
The freegan community across the Atlantic share similar stories, with blogger ‘Madeline’ explaining how “with friends this week, I served Rondele cheese with crackers, followed by a pasta with tomato and eggplant sauce, a lovely big salad, and strawberries with whipped cream for dessert. The following morning I had a big glass of fresh squeezed grapefruit juice, then an omelette with shitake mushrooms and fresh sage, accompanied by whole-grain sourdough toast.”

There are freegans all over the world, but New York City has emerged as a freegan hub, boasting a vast community of dedicated followers and volunteers. Earlier this year, following NYU’s class of 2007 graduation, a group of around thirty men and women assembled to take advantage of the end-of-year move-out – and pocketed free televisions, desk lamps and other objects for re-use.

Most were there in response to the NYC-based freegan website (http://www.freegan.info/), which posts details and listings of such events and rendezvous ‘dumpster diving’ points in the city, as well as information for followers across the globe. The site, run by volunteers, has become a database for all things freegan – including a recalled products and food safety alerts list (updated daily), a reuse/recycle directory and even an ‘internship and opportunities’ section. The website also posts a fanzine, a 34-page tirade against capitalism and globalisation, with the occasional quirky cartoon – sort of a bizarre marriage of Karl Marx and Quentin Blake. They claim that there are “at least 400 to 500” freegans living in New York who are part of their network alone.

But Adam Weissman, activist and co-creator of freegan.info, is however quick to dispel the notion that his movement is a brainchild, instead preferring to emphasise the collective nature of society. “We did not begin the freegan movement. The website is simply an organisation that exists to promote freeganism and to teach people how to live as freegans. The term ‘freegan’ goes back to (I think) the 1980s, and the practices and ideas it refers to are even older.” Speaking to the New York Times, he continued, “it has resonated around the world with people who love community, cooperation, and our planet. We believe that the survival of life on this planet requires a shift to the replacement of industrialism, capitalism, and globalism with a society that consumes less and shares more.”

The success of the movement in New York may also be owed by the quantity and quality of New York waste. According to the Environment Protection Agency, 245 million tons of municipal solid waste has been produced by individuals, businesses and institutions since 2005 across the whole of North America, equating to 4.5 pounds per person per day. New York’s equivalent figure is 7.1 pounds. Poverty statistics are just as alarming – one third of the city’s children live below the poverty line, every day 2,500 are turned away from food pantries and soup kitchens and 400,000 New Yorkers suffer from “moderate or severe hunger”, according to the website’s own findings.

Freegan Fighters

Published by Glasgow Guardian, 7 October 2007

They strike in the early hours, while most of the city sleeps; sometimes alone, sometimes in crowds of a dozen. Anyone is a suspect. Put this paper down and have a look at the nearest stranger – could they be? Meet my new favourite community of people – Freegans.

You might think that consuming waste food lies deep in the preserve of the impoverished or daring, but it's also a rather practical alternative to extortionate weekly shopping at Somerfield and Iceland, as many Glasgow students and residents have found. Supermarket waste bins in particular have become free-of-charge vending machines in the last few years, because of the excess amount of unsold food and goods thrown out to waste at the end of the last shift – their lids forced open and their contents raided by night by the munchie-craving. But it didn't stop there. The practise has become so popular throughout Britain that it has snowballed into a phenomenon known as 'Freeganism' – and the ethical backlash against British supermarkets has been rattling teacups in their head offices ever since.

The Freegan lifestyle involves salvaging discarded, unspoiled food from supermarket waste bins – food that has passed its expiration date, but is still edible and nutritious. They salvage the food, not always because they are hungry, poor or homeless, but sometimes as a political statement against the over-disposability of consumerism.

“To be honest, part of the appeal is that it has to be done in the cover of darkness, and it's a lot more exciting than your average supermarket experience,” comments Ailsa Kay, 21, a Glasgow student. “However, the more I frequented the bins, the more food I discovered. It made me determined to undermine huge supermarkets by using their waste and not spending a penny more than I really needed to.”

The Marks and Spencer bins on Ashton Lane in particular served as Freegan youth clubs last year, with sometimes up to a dozen taking anything they liked the look of – giddily burrowing through plastic bags like a bunch of seven-year-olds dizzy on lemonade. At best, you could come out with anything – currys, juice, new potatoes, pies, salads, sandwich fillers, Yorkshire puddings, (including my favourite – two chicken breasts wrapped in bacon, topped with a creamy white wine sauce) all hitting their expiration on the day or the day after; at worst, a few loaves of bread to cram into the freezer. So why buy their crap if you can eat their scrap?

“The first time I went I found an Irish soda bread and a chocolate Swiss roll, both still sealed in their packaging and their sell-by date was the following day,” says Ailsa. “It's a great feeling when you manage to feed yourself and a group of friends without spending a penny, and re-using food that would otherwise just be taken to a landfill site. I've come across many characters in the early hours – some in suits, some in kilts, some curious and some who either look extremely confused or disgusted.”

However, the Freegan party has recently been busted by a harsher enforcement of wastage policies. Marks & Spencers have begun locking their bins at night, and are known to now purposely open the packaging of waste food, to prevent people like Ailsa from taking it. “It's common sense to know what's edible. I find it particularly frustrating when you find a bin choked with food, only to discover that an employee has slashed open the packaging, making the food unusable.”

A supervisor from Marks & Spencers claimed that new health rules had been in place for a number of years, but only recently had head offices begun issuing preventative measures to combat freeganism. A moral pulse exists however, in their 24-hour stores, who occasionally have food waste picked up by the charity Rainbow, and distributed to the homeless. This progressive agreement is exempt from such wastage policies as the waste in 24-hour supermarkets is thrown out minutes after being removed from the shelf, when it is left for sometimes a full day at room temperature in stores with opening hours. The Greggs bakery on Byres Road was also until recently partial to giving away a few unsold sausage rolls and on mornings they are collected – but now the delivery driver is explicitly forbidden from giving any food away, on the same health grounds.

After the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004, I wrote a long letter to the Co-op I used to work in – challenging the wastage policy of our store and suggesting that some of the waste be sent over to the worst-off parts in East Asia, or at least be put to some other use. One of my points was: “Surely starving people would appreciate countless loaves of bread and other goods, regardless of their expiry dates, and would rather have their lives saved and have a stomach bug than starve to death.” All I received was a chuckle and when I suggested that they send the letter to their head office, my manager said that no-one would read it. The following day we threw away twelve stacks of bread and five full bags of snack foods, all of which had 'gone off' over the Christmas closing period, and all of which was delivered to a landfill site – 34 miles away. And to achieve what, exactly?

When it comes to food waste, shops and supermarkets have two options – one costs something and achieves nothing, the other costs nothing and achieves something. I've not set out to flood these pages with hyperbole, and I've tried to avoid churning out yet another hymn to recycling. The redistribution and availability of unsold food in Glasgow should be given the green light, or even debated in the relevant circles – when it is a glaring truth that our supermarkets cannot contain the issue by simply locking their bins.

Down and out... on MySpace.

Truth Telling E-zine - 9 January 2006
Glasgow University Magazine - 14 April 2006

MySpace may be the preserve of wannabe models and nerdy teenagers (my MySpace name is theunknownsoldier1) but as of January 2006, the number of MySpace-ists hit 47 million. That’s enough people to replace the entire population of Italy. Imagine that - the People’s Republic of MySpace, with spear-gripping indigenous tribes like the 28,000-strong ‘I Luv Pink’ clan and hardline political forces such as the ‘Decriminalise Weed Club’ (population 5,543) and the ‘Republicans Are Better In Bed’ Party (5,996). The State owns the mass media and the arts (‘MySpace Records Vol.1’ is out now) and inhabitants are kept updated by web bulletins from their Head of State/Webmaster – who goes solely by the name of ‘Tom’.

Tom Anderson, the 30-year-old techie-genius who co-founded MySpace, sold the site to media-hawk Rupert Murdock for $580m last July. Afterwards, he sent out a weepy (and very American) bulletin to all of his then-22,500,000 friends declaring: “Many of you have asked about NewsCorp buying MySpace … everyone seems scared that MySpace is going to change. I’m not leaving, I’m still going to make the decisions about the site and I’m not going to let things suck. MySpace has been an important part of my life for almost two years now. I know it’s as important to others as it is for me. I won’t let it get jacked up.”

Click onto MySpace. You’ll find 47 million people with their own profile pages, over 500,000 bands and solo artists (including a 63-year-old Jimi Hendrix?) and almost 2 million discussion groups. I think I’d throw up if I knew how many hits MySpace.com received every day. For those of you who don’t know, MySpace is a web service that allows people to connect with other people. It trumpets itself for “making ordinary people famous and famous people ordinary” (it’s true – pop stars like Ashlee Simpson and Nelly have public accounts). Users can find friends by searching their email address, real names or their MySpace names, and they can create ‘profiles’ filled with their interests, their biography, their top eight ‘friends’ and who they’d like to meet.

It’s an online palace where the vain meet the shy, the lonely meet the culture-vultures and the stars meet the fans. On a typical 5-minute scroll through the mazes of online egos, I found a young female singer humming about her new folk album, a dyslexic narcotic blogging about his concerns with democracy and a young girl with as many spot-the-difference webcam pictures of herself to cover the surface area of Argentina.

According to Tom’s own statistics, the average registered MySpace user spends an hour and a half on the site per week. Some of my friends log on more than quadruple that time per day – but what is the appeal? Can we imagine the hypothetical MySpace island, governed by Tom himself – a society of many different cultures, a society of many different talents, where everyone is nice, eloquent and civilised? Perhaps it’s this notion of utopia that keeps people logging on and blogging on. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go and reply to my friend from Tokyo.

Facing the enemy - in my home town.

6th Magazine - 6 December 2005

I casually bulldozed through the human traffic that is carried by my town’s Monday market today. I passed the usual medley of men haggling over shoelaces and kids perusing fake Smarties, rounding the pungent smelling fish stall at the end. Except it wasn’t the end. There was newcomer to the usual market stallers – a group of men stood behind a small wooden table. On the table lay dozens of folded newspapers entitled ‘The Voice of Freedom’. Hmmm, I thought. I glanced at a copy of my dusty ‘Communist Manifesto’ that I planned to read on my imminent bus journey to York. But this looked like a worthy read – probably a fanzine or an ‘underground’ journal or something, or so I thought. “I’ll take one, please,” and handed over 50p to a young skinhead. “Better still if you join,” an older man snarled. The penny had dropped – I gazed down at the paper I’d just bought. The beaming red, white and blue of the BNP logo stared me in the face. A woman came from my right and thrusted a leaflet in my other palm. This one read ‘Islamic Terror Labour Failure – How right was Enoch Powell? How right is Nick Griffin?’ I’d had enough. I fled the scene before you could say ethnic cleansing and crammed the diseased trash in someone’s wheelie bin. I needed a fix; I read Marx from cover to cover as though I were a Communist junkie, all the way to York…

My struggle: Two years of double standards on the shop floor

Website - 7 November 2005

I’ve taken some time off from my meagre chores of replenishing the bacon section and slapping half price stickers on oranges to scribble some notes on the reverse side of some advertising for ‘Jumbo Salted Peanuts’. People around me are contently placing own-brand beans on shelves and mopping up wine spills while the 80s-biased radio is humming Nik Kershaw’s ‘Wouldn’t it be good’ for the thirteenth time over the Co-op airwaves. But if you don’t like new wave music, it gets much worse here.

I applied for a job at Co-op when it was a Safeway store just over two years ago. I over-eagerly wrote my details on an application form that bore the shiny, plastic grins of two ‘workers’, handed my form in and then waited. Within a fortnight I was jogging around with milk dollies in a pathetic effort to please my superiors, but within a few months, my enthusiasm was fading like the colour of my lime green uniform. I’d befriended a few other young people in my position – students who had been working just a few months. One of them jokingly remarked: “I’ve got amnesia. I can’t remember why I applied here.”

Working at my local supermarket has also completely reversed some of my economic views. In two years, I’ve gone from being a ‘free-market freak’ – babbling about efficiency and the importance of profit – to a soft Marxist. My political views have also been dragged over to the left and I now have a problem with authority.

So why did things change? Let me explain. Three people call the shots at my work – the managers. Just below them in the hierarchy are the supervisors – the people in charge of particular departments. Finally, there’s me and the rest of the proletariat, or “the bottom of the barrel” as we are described by the Human Resources Manager. We unload the goods that are delivered from the depot, fill shelves with it and then go home, with a few added menial tasks sandwiched in between. The next day we do the same, starting as early as 7am, finishing as late as midnight. If we finish the job before the end of our shift, we do someone else’s job until we are scheduled to finish. We are granted three (unpaid) breaks per day for a nine-hour shift, and I earn around £170 for a 37-hour week.

And the unwritten rules… we cannot chat – to neither workmates nor friends; we are picked up on things like “working with one hand”; people from the same department cannot take simultaneous breaks; we cannot take more than our allotted breaks; we cannot use mobile phones on the shop floor; we cannot chew on gum; we cannot work together – to name a few.

And here’s the day of a manager: they turn up to work no earlier than 9 o’clock, hold a meeting with supervisors, tally up their profits and costs (incidentally as a store we do quite well). They have no allotted breaks – but this works to their advantage as they are not deducted pay from the breaks they do take (as their breaks are unrecorded). One of my workmates spotted one manager take eighteen breaks in one morning. At around 2pm, they begin filling shelves like the rest of us. They always work in twos (what rule book?) whilst they chomp on Wrigleys (rule book…) and check their mobiles. The manager is paid a fixed wage of £3,000 per month and works less than I do.

For people like me, it is easy to spot inequality, double standards and hypocrisy – we are earning disposable income, not a living. But for people who have made a career out of stacking cheese, it is a lot easier to ignore the issue. A woman I work with has been working here for fourteen years – whenever I raise a conversation about this she ponders me for a moment, before shrugging and sighing “I know…” she continues to open boxes of tomato juice while the managers pocket the receipts upstairs.

The people whose careers are made from this place divide into two groups. In group one are the people who ignore these issues and simply want to earn their living, when in group two are those who view the inequality as something they can skew to their own advantage. Patronage has been an active hobby among the staff at Co-op – one woman who supervises her workers on the Delicatessen is given huge amounts of time off work (to share with the managers) in return for her maintenance of the double standards. Other manager cronies call their customer friends over to have a chat, but are quick to separate us from a casual chat, which we are not entitled to.

In a very real sense, they are stamping out the very things that make mundane jobs bearable. A chat with a colleague, a sneaky fag break – they’re fast becoming rights confined to the dustbin of history. And so now we are faced with the very cold ambiance of the smoking room – the break which a workmate and I share with a couple of managers. “No one talks. There is no morale here. To them we are just human resources, not people,” my friend comments as the two managers vacate the scene, chuckling.

Recently, I found myself voicing these concerns to someone above my level for the very first time. I’d been taking a break, defiantly, with a friend (who was a member of a different department) – we were heading back to work when two managers (the only two working that day) objected to us being on our breaks at the same time. I was about to utter “practice what you preach” but instead, like on so many occasions, I spoke to someone else. My Human Resource Manager listened closely. The essence of his argument was based around maintaining and increasing profits, and the basis of mine was the concept of morale, and how it would improve productivity if we gain more respect. At the end of my “rant” he said: “Why have you not told any of the managers about this?” I replied, “I’m a coward and I want to keep my job.” “Well they definitely think it’s a case of you versus them. Do you want me to mention it?” he said. “That would be nice,” I replied.

But why on earth would they listen? In December last year, I wrote a letter that highlighted my concerns with the large amounts of good food we throw away – I was motivated by the terrible scenes of starvation in the Boxing Day tsunami aftermath. I proposed that we try to distribute the food over there somehow, or at least to the British homeless, rather than have it burnt like we currently do. Indeed, one manager did speak to me about this – only to tell me “it’s more efficient this way” before shredding my letter.

I’ve since found comfort by attempting to organise a workers’ revolution, or a coup. The idea is very much pretend – my workmates and I joke about using trolleys as makeshift trenches and pork pies as weapons. But, if I’m honest, I’d love to fly the red flag over this place.

A review of 'Withnail and I'

Glasgow University Magazine - 11 April 2006

'Withnail and I’ was one of those films that everyone but me had seen. Just as with ‘Napoleon Dynamite’, my friends mimicked the film’s slapstick moments to death – so I feared that the over-hype would naturally result in a huge disappointment for me when I finally got around to watching it.

The tale follows the miserable lives of two anarchic, shabbily dressed, ex-public school out-of-work actors at the wrong end of their twenties; Withnail (played by Richard E. Grant) and I (Paul McGann), who’ve somehow found themselves in the dank slums of London in 1969. The opening few scenes lend themselves to describing the mundane lives of the pair – a living hangover of booze, pills, insomnia and paranoia – portraying Withnail as the eccentric alcoholic, and ‘I’ as his fed-up, going-insane lodger with a twinkle of ambition in his eye. The early scenes are an odd cocktail of semi-slapstick comedy with melancholic undertones.

After an aggressive encounter with an Irishman in a pub, ‘I’ suggests an inspiring trip to the North, to a Penrith cottage belonging to Withnail’s gay uncle. The pair head off with suppressed enthusiasm to the rattle of the dodgy exhaust and Withnail swigging whiskey and howling at pedestrians. Their enthusiasm fades, however, as the “holiday by mistake” comically descends into a farce as rain, lack of food, inhospitable locals and the bitter cold generate yet more desperation and misery. The pair resume their continual fight for food and warmth by killing a live chicken and badgering a local farmer for wood and coal.

Uncle Monty returns to the cottage in typical flamboyant style, with ‘I’ having to fend off his attentions – but he gives them food and money, which they squander on booze to escape from the relentless penury and discomfort they were trying to flee in the first place. When they return to their flat in London to sign on for another week, Danny (their friend and drug dealer) is talking philosophically about the hippy dream gone sour, the end of the sixties, whilst smoking the infamous ‘Camberwell Carrot’ – a half-foot, inch-thick spliff. “They’re selling hippy wigs in Woolworths,” he says poignantly. Shortly afterwards, ‘I’ finds work in a play, and as a working thespian, he moves out to earn a living. An emotional farewell leaves Withnail toasting his departure - but now living alone in squalor.

So as the end credits rolled, I gazed down at the borrowed DVD case – and realised what a well-rounded film this actually was.

A review of 'Headache Hotel' by Karen Cheung

Aesthetica - 1 February 2006

Ever wonder why you have a certain song in your head? I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve mind-sang my way through entire albums during work shifts – but the wondering is over. Karen Cheung has the answer: a small black-and-white bird crawls through your earlobe, checks into a cheap hotel in your brain, bashes away at its piano and you hum away.

But this amusing 2-minute animation is also artistically pleasing, as well as psychologically pondering. The sheets of music that seep from the piano aptly fade into the rooms of Mind Hotel – and we can see the protesting heckles of the other ‘guests’ – a barking dog, a banana-drumming monkey and two chirping birds – who are simply adding backing sounds to the tune played by the bird.

Unfortunately, the bird is booted out of the hotel and thus from the ear of its human host. “I’ve just ‘ad this awful tune in my ‘ead,” the man says.

A review of 'Family Portrait' by Rob Brown

Aesthetica - 1 February 2006

Behind every instance of domestic violence, psychological torment and neglect in families sits a patchwork of happy memories – but also a myriad of sad ones. In this snippet of gripping drama, Brown serves up a monstrous plate of murder, with the very vivid cocktail of fear and revenge that washes it down.

Throughout the short, we are shown photographs and home videos of an average nuclear family – the usual medley of weddings, birthdays and Christmases, to a backing track of the mother and wife, Denise, screeching for help to an emergency service operator as her husband breaks into their home after shooting their son. Brown cleverly juxtaposes the happy memories with the reality, so much so, that if you close your eyes, you weep in fear for Denise – when if you mute the sound, you smile in awe of their scrapbook of family love.

Chu Ma Shu - a profile.

Chu Ma Shu on MySpace - 7 December 2006

Chu Ma Shu are everything and nothing you’ve ever heard. Formed in Pickering, North Yorkshire in 2002, the band’s recreational habits form a pillar of the culture we know as ‘rock n roll’, whilst they are both innovative and creative with their ever-evolving musical output. Marrying influences from bands like AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and Del Amitri, the band has won Battle of the Bands contests in both Helmsley and York. They recorded an E.P. in 2004 with 6K Vision, which was mixed at the infamous Abbey Road Studios in London. The band has also played at a cluster of diverse live venues since its birth – from the smoky pubs around the area, through the swanky music bars of York and Scarborough, to open-air events at Pickering Castle.
But Chu Ma Shu have changed three members in as many years. Twins Dan and Mike Harding (who co-founded the band back in ’02) left the band in 2005 to pursue their interests in A Dog Named Hero, whereas Rob Lumby seemed to follow the fate of the Manics’ Richie Edwards and promptly vanished into the leafy York suburbs. In one fell swoop, the band was robbed of its drummer, bassist and rhythm guitarist. But as the months wore on, Chu managed navigate their way back into the limelight with new bassist (Jake’s brother) Max D’Alquen and new drummer Andy Wardell.

Now, after an era of music drowned in side-partings and black-rimmed glasses is drawing to an end, Chu’s roots in the classic rock camp are making themselves heard again.

A review of 'Just Passing Through' by Ruth Nicklin

Aesthetica - 24 November 2005

You could expect this documentary to be the music video for The Kinks’ infamous ‘Waterloo Sunset’ – a city where 7 million strangers hurry past one another every day. As the camera darts up and around the station, we see a huge mass of concrete and tyres, and one countryman comments: “One feels like a matchstick man”.

Nicklin plays us candid footage of the systematic arrival of trains and the patter of commuting feet alongside a backing track of her interviewees’ lives. A woman picking her son up from his girlfriend’s, a newspaper salesman and a platform worker comprise the mundane routines of the Londoners we see snippets of. Nicklin cleverly films her subjects going about their day-to-day businesses as the fast-paced station operates in black and white behind them. She makes her characters seem bigger in this way, shedding their anonymous skin for just a moment.

As the haunting tannoy booms: “Calling at…” a frenzy of trains and people come and go in fast-forward, until daylight fades.

Two lovers lay across one another on the station floor. The male describes how “On Valentine’s day, I was waiting under the clock with a red rose … we fell in love.” A contrast with the earlier countryman – two people managed to find love in the station, where he just feels lonely.

London’s large homeless community is also represented – tramps who sleep underneath the station are content with the surrounding cafés and tea stalls – one man explains how “If we ain’t got money, he let us off – ‘cos he knows if he gets mugged, we all jump in.”

It puzzles me to think how a short documentary about a train station has gripped me. A social document which echoes of Orwell’s ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ – and as the light darkens over Waterloo, I feel enlightened that someone has put faces to the faceless strangers of London.

A review of 'What Barry Says' by Simon Robson

Aesthetica (submitted but unpublished) - 24 November 2005

We are led on a lightspeed journey cross a sea of stars and stripes, when Barry asserts: “The United States of America is the most powerful nation on earth.” At this point, we can expect Barry to go one of two ways – either he will describe the U.S. as an economical phenomenon, led by humanitarian free marketeers, or will portray it as a nation led by neo-conservative, belligerent demagogues. Barry chooses the latter.

Barry begins his rant on U.S. foreign policy by describing the recent ‘War on Terror’ as “a campaign against opposition to U.S. domination”. We can only hear his voice, which is spoken with a calm sophistication. Visually, key words in Barry’s argument such as ‘Exploit’ glisten in black and blood red. We are subjected to a speedy slideshow of globes, tanks, bombs and caricatures of Cheney, Rumsfeld and, you guessed it – Dubya himself.

Barry’s argument is clear – the U.S. has developed an “insatiable appetite for conflict” as it is simply feeding its own financial interests around the world.

Barry argues that the U.S. aims to turn the world into “its very own enslaved global market”. He controversially asserts that “the attacks on the world trade centres by Al Queda were just one response to it.” Barry uses the idea that the Iraq war was a business trip to develop his concept of ‘War Corporatism’ and explains how “September 11th was merely a pretext.” Barry then turns his attentions to the U.S. Administration, Inc. He describes politicians Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld as a “sinister group” and explains how George W Bush is “merely the figurehead” of this monstrous war machine.

‘What Barry Says’ reeks sourly of Michael Moore’s ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ although it is considerably shorter (under 3 mins). It’s Globalisation For Beginners, a bite-sized flick of world affairs that could politicise a sheep.

A Leeds Festival diary

Website - 1 September 2005

This was my first time at the 50,000 capacity festival and I was looking forward to four days drowned in beer, spliffs and decibels. I was not disappointed and the level of enjoyment surpassed even my optimism. The festival lineup was, admittedly, not entirely to my taste (I hadn't heard of many bands that were on the main stage - and a lot seemed of the samey indie sort, Razorlight, Kings of Leon etc etc) but I could hardly have expected a perfect lineup. Like all weekenders, I got there on Thursday. I was camping with Lianny, Hayley, Adam, Jake, Rowan, Gaby, Freer, Ashley, Kairo, Umi and Stacey. I brought my own beer, but my money was soaked up by burgers and the arena shops. We didn't meet anyone new this night, which ended around 3am. THE BANDS-- Friday in the arena was fantastic - I was looking forward to Marilyn Manson, but found myself liking the My Chemical Romance and Incubus performances which seemed to weigh up the quality of the rather dire Alkaline Trio and Turbonegro. I managed to make it quite far forward for Manson avec Jake, Rowan and Lianny - and the end result made me thirsty for headliners Iron Maiden. Now, I'm not a big Iron Maiden fan; I only really know two songs: 'Run to the Hills' amd 'Number of the Beast'. But as I watched the set with Rowan - I certainly grew to love them. The singer was marvellous - it was made clear that the band hadn't toured for 25 years, but it certainly didn't show. The pyrotechnics were incredible - including the definitive 'Maiden Monster' which was awesome theatre as well as a fantastic musical performance. In comparison with the songs I've heard on CD, his voice was even better live, 25 years on. That is some achievement and the show left me buzzing until about 5am. 666! Saturday had a slightly different feel. Goldie Lookin Chain (GLC) opened at midday and had most of the crowd in fits. Afterwards we all went back to the campsite for b urgers and beer, before myself and Freer, Adam and Kairo drove to Tesco for more beer and cleaner toilets. I inadvertantly missed Graham Coxon. I got back for QOTSA though, who stole Saturday for me with dire competition from The Killers, The Coral and even headliners Pixies. I only caught a glimpse of Pixies before we headed for the Kasabian tent; annoyingly we could only watch (hear) them from outside as it was nigh impossible to squeeze through the slippery bodies that comprised the crowd. Even so, some were catching crowd surfs as if they were public transport. I woke on Sunday (from two hours' sleep) with little recollection of the night before. The day in the arena was fun. My 'The Who' band t shirt drew the attention of one or two drunk sycophants, and I sat and watched Roots Manuva and Dinosaur Jnr with Lianny. I stood with everyone else watching Razorlight and Kings of Leon, who both played well. Immediately following the supporting KOL, I dived into the crowd for the headlining Foo Fighters. In between songs, I noticed Dave Grohl embodies plenty of Jack Black traits. He's a funny guy, and he played with such energy. The quality and the visual effects almost levelled with Iron Maiden, but not quite. They were awesome though, and got everyone singing and jumping. THE BURGER GYPSIES-- We were pitched right next to a burger van, which served for obvious advantages. One day, they took down a wooden wall that shielded their supplies van. Adam and Ashley invaded the van and sounded the horn. This happened, unfortunately, as a worker was returning to the van. He threatened to unpeg our tents, even though he didn't know which tent neither Adam nor Ashley were stopping in. Late on Sunday, the workers, who owned the burger vans on our campsite, were thrown out for allegedly selling ecstacy. The didn't leave quietly though. Before they were forced to leave, they discovered we had been 'borrowing' their ketchup for our own burgers. They washed our tents (and Jake) in the stuff. THE RIOTS-- Rumours began circulating that on the last day of the festival, people burnt tents and looted the shops. Some denied this had ever happened, but as we made our way back to our tents after FF, we found ourselves in Vietnam. I was a little afraid - would they burn our tents? It got worse. Gas cannister explosions were occuring almost as fast as you could blink. The place was freckled with fire. People tore down the campsite lights. We gave up guarding our tents at around 1am, and headed for the crossroads (just down the hill) where there was a huge fire and many other people watching. There was a small crowd of about 100 that surrounded the fire. They were feeding the fire, whilst trying to topple a pole that supported the lights, which were out. After about 20 cannister explosions, followed by rapturious cheers by about 1,000 observers, I noticed a formation of red glow sticks. They each belonged to a riot policeman. No one had really noticed them, but then there was a huge explosion that seemed to rock the whole festival. Except it wasn't Iron Maiden. It inspired the riot police to act. They chased the rioters, amidst 1,000 boos. The fireman also came and destroyed the fire. It was then relit. Over the next hour, the riot police were fairly brutal (I'd never seen this happen before) - I heard someone mutter that the police refused to touch the festival, so the campsite's own police were employed. No rules, just shields and batons. The fire was relit many times and it always grew to its former level. People were still trying to topple the pole. Tents were being thrown on. People were banging on the bins in the fire, and the tribal sound added to the madness. A red flag of Che Guevara was defiantly being held aloft, and the atmosphere certainly resembled a supressed revolution. Then, the riot police began to turn on the viewing crowd. I ran for my life, over people's tents, down hills.. I made it to the other side, and then I went back again. Someone had broken into the nearby Carling tent, and there was widespread looting of the overpriced beer. A million things were happening at once, it was a tremendous scene.