Start your engines......

Just mentioning "Mitchams Corner" is enough to prick up the ears of any racing enthusiast. The annual 24 hour urban rally is famous as one of the most mythical races in the world. It unusually takes place on open public roads, with no official timing or prizes for reaching check points first. In fact, with very little point to its very existence, it is by definition one of the last pure sporting events, held solely out of sheer boredom and obviously for the tremendous honour of taking part.

Since 1923 famous manufacturers such as Diashatzu, Toyboata, Volks Wankin, Peugoat, Renfault, Porch, BlandRover, Mercedes Bends, Mitsabitchi and Laguar have taken part and contributed to writing the Mitchams Corner legend. A legend founded on an egalitarian belief that no competitor willing or unwilling should be excluded and unique in allowing both the unwary motorist and cyclist to unwittingly take part.

This exceptional circuit (one of the shortest in the world) bathes in an aura created by the most renowned manufacturers and the greatest drivers in motor sport.

The 24 Hours feels like it lasts a whole week, starting with scrutineering, the peering the prodding, poking and disapproving, followed by practice, then on and on to the penultimate drivers' parade through the centre of Mitchams Corner. Then comes the magic of the race, which continues all through the night.

During the rally, some participants have been fined for speeding and other traffic offences by the police as they passed through, cars have been confiscated and in 2007 the rally was cancelled after the contestants decided they really couldn't be bothered and parked up at the Portland for the night.

It's a breathtaking event, low performance cars thundering down the straight at well under 30 mph, spectators gripped by the suspect nature of this human and technical challenge... experienced drivers pushing back the limits of tedium...

Let yourself be wrapped up, carried away, guided and seduced... Endurance IS Mitchams Corner...

My Day In The City, It's Not Very Pretty

Now don't get me wrong I love adverts, British advertising at it's best can be funny and thought provoking while still trying to persuade you that the answer to your woes is to spark up a cheap cigar and that the opposite sex will genuinely find you more attractive if you smell like a professional footballer or his anorexic wife. Unfortunately the local buses in Cambridge are adorned with some of the most nauseating, shallow, tacky and intelligence insulting adverts I have seen in a long time. It would not be so bad if they were monuments to local heroes like the inventors of DNA or Disco Kenny, but it seems that making it entertain us, say something about us or to us is obviously below the advertising geniuses behind this campaign.

With a blandly smooth picture that's at least six foot in height (if local rumours are to be believed these were bought on the cheap on a computer disc of clip art!) these nuggets of arsepirational 'lifestyle' ordure encrust our council sponsored local transport in a desperate attempt to pimp the notion that it's not just losers who get the bus. These larger than life, emetically hip and upbeat profiles of the smug bourgeoisie leer down down at the gridlocked traffic as they vainly try to impress you with their narcissistic boasts of going to improbable places while doing unlikely things, like some nightmare blind date with some kind of satanic accountant who tries to steal your very soul whilst simultaneously attempting to get into your pants and explain the intricacies of triple entry bookkeeping. They seem to miss the point that I, like a substantial proportion of other local people aching to jump the green band wagon, only embrace the 'citilife' when there's not a lot of other choice. It's not aspirational it's the transport of last resort, but it shouldn't be this way! When I was a student 'ooop north' the local council sunk vast wheelbarrows of folding wedge into the local public transport infrastructure and it was a funky bus lane a go-go wonderland of affordable magic carpets that would whisk you from one side of the city with no mess, no fuss, just a council funded bus. Cambridge by contrast appears to have one of the most enthusiastically half arsed public transport policies I have ever encountered, bus lanes start, then mysteriously end just as they get to a congested piece of road, they get narrower, wider, mingle with cycle lanes and have their surfaces decorated in increasingly lurid shades or orange, you can only assume they form some part of some ritualistic message to the old gods that only makes sense from outer space.

It would be laughable if you had not actually had to stand repeatedly on the outskirts of the city for an hour and a half as the the horizontal rain whips in off the fens and in to any exposed opening in your clothing and body, waiting for the bus that might just arrive in time to get you back to work for tomorrow.

There can be nothing more dispiriting than watching eight consecutive, brightly liveried, mobile billboards trundle past on their way to neverland, or at least never to return land.

As the greatest poet of our generation said "It says nothing to me about my life" and it's about time it did, so why not tell people exactly what it has really been like by wrapping your self in one of these beauties, your shirt, your words, your real day in the city!

Ahoy Shifty Mates!

Well Plagiarims seems t' be havin' hit th' news again recently, in th' academic world, plagiarism by students be a very serious offense that can result in punishments such as a whippin' or hangin' fer cases in which a student commits severe plagiarism (e.g., submittin' a copied article as his or th' lass' own work). Plagiarism be a defined as robbery committed in th' library, or sometimes on th' internet, without a commission from a sovereign nation (plagiarism wi' sovereign commission be research, an' distinct from plagiarism). Plagiarism against famous authors remains a significant issue (wi' estimated worldwide losses o' US $13 t' $16 billion per term), particularly in th' colleges between th' Oxford an' Cambridge Campuses, off th' coast o' journalism, an' also in th' Straits o' political speech writin', which be used by o'er 50,000 commercial reporters a year. A recent surge in plagiarism off th' coast o' journalism spurred a multi-national effort led by th' British Government t' patrol th' waters near fleet street t' combat plagiarism. While books popular an' successful authors be still assailed by plagiarists, th' Royal Navy an' th' U.S. Coast Guard be havin' nearly eradicated plagiarism in U.S. waters an' in th' Caribbean Sea.

Yet still fer many plagiarim has a magic, glamour an' romance. This romaticised image o' th' plagiarsit possessin' parrot, peg leg, hook, cutlass, bicorne hat, skull an' cross-bones, fearsome copyin' skills, a learned intolerance fer absolute captainliness, an' a disdain fer th' copystarboard laws they b'lieve be havin' abandoned them be strong in th' public imagination. So lets raise th' Jolly Copyer an' before we keel haul th' plank show our support fer th' buccanneers o' academia wi' a new T-Shirt, Ya lily livered scallywags!

This other Cambridge

So a while ago I got name checked on a local web-site We're All Neighbours, not entirely in a positive way mind, it was part of a thread on "Why is Cambridge Shite", my t-shirt site was held up as an example of the "pretension.... and overly inflated ego..." of the city as a whole, which was pretty funny. Of course the beauty of other peoples pop-psychology analysis of you is that they might just be right, doing anything in public, and the Internet is pretty public, does require a certain amount of raging ego!

Anyway it got me belly button gazing for at least five minutes and trying to justify me to my head, and that is obviously where blogging closes the circle given that it's main purpose as far as I can see is to allow geeks like me to whinge about how the world is so very, very cruel to them and how they are going down the bottom of the garden to eat worms....

So why did I start the Cambridge T-Shirts site? Well I had been churning out t-shirts in a variety of guises for a while, mainly for my own amusment/ego, most of the stuff on sale said "nothing to me about My life" and the more obsessed I became with shirt design the more I started to notice the Cambridge shirts. The visitor to Cambridge could be forgiven for jumping to the conclusion from the visible evidence that the only thing in Cambridge is the University. They would not be entirely wrong, to a large extent the town has and is defined by the University, yet at the same time the students are only 20% of the population, outside the reality Bubble there is another 80% of the town who sometimes seem to not exist... except they do because they are the people I work with, live with, play with and drink with. The same people who post on Internet bulletin boards asking why Cambridge is so shite?

This antipathy that sometimes bubbles up between the 80/20 divide is no new thing, you can even go on tours within cambridge to discover the "Town not gown", it's even been around long enough that even wikipedia has a page on it, which makes it fact with a capital Fac.

Anyway as ever on to where this blog always ends up, trying to flog you some brightly coloured and mildly entertaining coverage for the top half of your body. In the spirit of equal opportunity we present something for both the 20 and the 80.

Until next time, ego a go-go!

Busted!

"The macho elite Cambridge University Top Don school for advanced fellows and tutors was established to select the best Academics and develop, refine and teach them tactics and techniques The Academics selected to attend are considered to be the best of the best.... I feel the need..... The need for tweed...."

Or at least that's how the advertising fluff on the Cambridge T-Shirts web site used to read..... until I got an email reading:

"We're concerned that there is a possibility your designs are copyright protected by a third party."

Which, ignoring the initial human urge to disagree, you can see their point... especially as that was pretty much the whole motivation behind the T-Shirt, the very idea that there might theoretically be an "elite Cambridge University Top Don school" made me giggle. Plus lets be honest with the seeming constant academic one-upmanship and even wikipedia recognising the concept of the Superdon, it didn't even seem that far fetched.

Still I have no particular desire to be banged up for copyright crimes so I guess it's back to the drawing board, rest assured the top don will re-appear, if for no other reason than the design for the back of the T-shirt is just too good to waste....

What Cambridge Needs Is A Monorail

Everyone who lives in Cambridge knows it is is approaching gridlock. The council is busy wasting our money on the misguided bus, a classic example of group think, to provide an impractical service that won't solve the problem, it's dangerous with a potential to have spectacular collisions with cars, bicycles, and pedestrians, it will be hideously expensive and won't actually make anything better! It's too little too late.

Monorails have evolved over time to become an incredibly safe and efficient transportation choice used all over the world. A 12.8 km monorail opened in Naha, Japan in 2003 with 15 stations. There is also a 27 km, 29 station monorail line currently under construction in Jakarta, Indonesia!

Monorails NEED to be incorporated into a regional transport system. Anyone with any idea of creating transportation that "Really served" the community can see what an essential role a monorail would play, 100,000s of commuters could be moved daily at rapid speed and to all the local areas. Over time more lines could be added

Every right thinking person knows what the the real answer is! Elevated rail is inherently cheaper than tunnels and safer than the alternatives, obviously commuters will benefit from a choice of leaving their cars and riding a monorail, the fiscal logic is so compelling, yet resisted by the powers-that-be, SOMEONE has to be making money off the more expensive alternative. Who?

Drum Roll Please....

Yes celebration and cake all round or something.... we have a new site.... a splinter site if you will.... full of Cambridgy goodness and local things for local people, you want niche product you've got it!

There are currently t-shirts for Arbury, Cherry-Hinton, Coleridge, Cottenham, Market, Newnham, Petersfield and Romsey with more coming soon!

Unique designs from in and around Cambridge City in the UK, you won't find these T-Shirts anywhere else! We only use quality brand name products and all printing is done using a special plotting technique that gives a very high quality durable print where the colours don't fade. Whereverer possible we offer organic and fair trade versions of our products. Is that hard enough sell for you? Don't make us beg come check it out!