a message to middlesbrough football club.

Dear Middlesbrough Football Club,

Today I have signed up for your boro+ package, which will cost me an indefinite £4.49 a month. This is a negligible sum of money, yes?

Well, no. Simply when I consider all of the money I am currently spending on food, gas, electric, my car, my phone, my internet, and my TV; I think it's fair to say that this expense could be done without. The best thing, by all means, is the fact that I live in Leeds, and my car radio can (loosely) pick up the live match coverage. Sadly, I live in a less-than-affluent area and if I left my car open so I could hear it from the house whilst I cooked a meal on a minimal budget, it would almost certainly be stolen. Either that or the car battery would inevitably die and I would end up needing to rely on a neighbour to help me to recharge it. I haven't spoken to my neighbours yet, having only moved here a short time ago and working very long hours, I've not really had an opportunity to say hello.

So, my beloved football club, for whom I was a season ticket holder for six years before I had to move away, how do you suggest I foot the bill? What do I sacrifice so that I can know what's happening? Do I reduce my food budget? Do I stop driving and save the petrol? Do I sell my phone to pay off the contract and stop talking to my friends? Do I give up the internet and sacrifice my studies or do I sacrifice hot water, or even better, water?

I followed you unconditionally for as long as I could afford. You let me down so many times and I still was proud to call you my club. Now, however, your money-making ploys and genuine attempts to push me away are leaving me disillusioned and, most notably, poor.

Admittedly, I will continue to give you my constant support. Please let me.

fifty shades of what it's like to think like a man.

I'm sitting on the train and a woman on the table opposite me is reading fifty shades of grey. The unmistakable scent of oestrogen production mixed with that little bit of guilt is definitely in the air.

I'm not sure I understand how so many people have been drawn in by this book. It makes very little sense to me, sex and literature are like putting steak with ice cream, you like them both but you wouldn't ever put them together (unless you're seventy, and mental, and everybody understands that you're quirky beyond belief)

There are so many eligible bachelors out there, why not find one, fulfil the needs the book is trying and failing to offer and then read a Harry Potter when you're done?

Either that or save yourself four quid and have a cold shower.

reasons to stay in bed.

At the moment I'm finding it increasingly difficult to actually get up on a morning. I was once a perennial early riser, midday was pretty much a dot on the horizon as I prepared to actually do something with my day.

Now, getting out of bed is an impossibility. Why? I think I've reduced it to about five factors.

1) Nothing to get up for that is more fun than sleep. How was it that once upon a time we would actually want to STAY UP?! Unless I'm going to the pub then I go to bed relatively early because it's a nice place to be.

2) Xbox- I don't really use my Xbox for what it's made for. I use it to watch films and TV shows because in the housing built before the days of TV signals, as well as the removal of the stronger analogue TV signal, getting any form of signal via an areal has now gone. I like TV, probably more than I should but seeing as the football has now gone then what better opportunity to catch up with my favourite shows?

3) Unexplained additional tiredness- I'm more tired! This probably should have been number one. It explains almost all of my issues. If you're more tired, you're going to spend more time in bed, that's a given.

4) Comfort- It's comfier to lounge around on something a) designed for your comfort and b) in your pants.

5) I can play music I love- There is never the dull, offset beat of 'niggas in paris' coming from my room, there just isn't. As things stand I'm on my second playback of 'For Emma, Forever Ago' by Bon Iver. Truly beautiful music.

So basically, until compelled to do something else, my bed is where I'll stay.

pokemon

I've always been really, really impressed with the way that Pokemon has stayed so timeless.

I can still play it today and get a buzz from it, basically the exact buzz I got when I was naively happy with everything when I was saying goodbye to the nineties and getting my first gameboy colour and Pokemon Yellow, followed by Gold. Now, on Heartgold on the Nintendo DS the format has stayed almost exactly the same, and the amount that I'm impressed by it has wavered in no way whatsoever.

It's a nice game to play. Simple, fun, and offers an emotional bond that you simply don't find in most other games. The way that the modern game designers format their 'anything is possible' format is wonderful, and does literally allow anything to happen within the parameters of the game, games like Fable, and like Mass Effect (which, don't get me wrong, are excellent, but then again they did both take years to make). It doesn't seemingly need to be so complex though. We were happy with our anything could happen format within a few towns and an abundance of catchable Pokemon.

Most importantly, it takes me back to my childhood. I miss my childhood. Being twenty is fun but everything you could look forward to (I.E before the world of work swings round and bites you on the arse) has now been and gone, and I loved that time.

Now I have to get back to Azalea Town to fight Bugsy. Ciao. 

the day boro trended

Today both Middlesbrough and Jonathan Woodgate trended on twitter. Now four years ago this would have been, well, not expected, but not quite so shocking as it is today.

The signing of Woodgate has caused a small amount of conflict, people unsure as to whether it is the best thing for the club. I can tell you now, it will be. Even if he's injured all the time, even if he's the same prat he was when he was here last, it doesn't matter. I can guarantee we're paying him pennies by comparison to his wage while he was here in 2007, wearing the lamentable white with a blue hoop away strip (which, if memory serves me correctly, is the first strip he wore for the first team, vs. Arsenal).

He's had a poor year at Stoke, granted, but he's been deployed predominantly as a right back. One thing that he is, regardless of all the aforementioned problems, is a big scalp.

We've lost our captain, so who better than the local lad who's played in the Champions League, for Real Madrid and scored the winner in Spurs' first tournament win in their recent resurgence to take his place? The odds on him gaining captaincy must be high, very high indeed.

I'd say give him a chance, but in all honesty, we really don't need to.

moving house

As a group of people, students have to be, easily, the most nomadic people to occupy housing (legally, or if not legally not bending the rules).

We seem to be bleeding dry the possibility that we can be temporarily footloose, the fact that we can just linger for a year and then spend our next year in a place we've only previously seen for ten minutes. We move in with people we've known for six months, we probably wouldn't have done this if we'd stayed at home, but at home we have much longer friendships, me personally having made most of my friends at school before I came to uni.

The stupid thing is is that it costs us more money to do this. I don't mean pennies more, either. Since I moved two days ago I've been to IKEA with my housemates and not only did it cost me £11, it also cost me my masculinity. I found myself saying 'I like that bathmat, but I don't think it'll go well enough with the shower curtain.' I admitted from that moment that I was taking metrosexuality just that bit too far, and that I needed to take stock of my life.

So basically, if I can conclude anything from this irrelevant rambling, it is this. Students really need to think about their decision to move, and whether or not they care about expense being spared.

It's not just financial.

education reform

Michael Gove has been on his high horse yet again. Trying to encourage the class divide between those who accidentally voted his party into power.

The dream of trying to get O Levels back is basically his way of saying 'there are idiots and there are their intelligent counterparts- the two must not be mixed.' Now I was by no means a clever kid. When I started secondary school the chances of me going to university looked slimmer than my physique, which at the time was alarmingly thin.

Now, at twenty, I'm a substantially brighter little button. Overall I'm not the same person I was then. I don't live in a constantly bemused state trying to make the best of pragmatic tasks that are beyond me. I'm heading for a 2:1, maybe a 1st at university, and my degree will come from the University of Leeds. It's not in doubt that I have changed academically since I was 11. It is for people like me, who are not common might I add, that show the possibilities offered by the GCSE scheme.

Granted, it isn't perfect, but if the old system was a vision of perfection then it certainly wouldn't have been changed.

Go forward, not back.