Trumpington is a village set in the heart of rural England. Once the main town in the county of Trumpingtonshire, it is now effectively a suburb, within the boundaries, and only a short bus-ride away from, Cambridgewick Green. It's located on the south-west side of the city and borders Chigley Hinton to the east and Grantchester to the west.

The Trumpington Market Square is like many other market squares, with numerous shops, a handsome Gothic Town Hall and an assorted collection of shops and houses; but one feature is unique - the town hall has a clock tower, telling the time, steadily, sensibly; never too quickly, never too slowly; telling the time for Trumpington.

Every morning, the people of Trumpington take in their milk, open their shops and set out their wares. They do this with one eye on the town hall clock, and one ear too, for they know that dead on the hour a slight rumble from the recesses of the tower will announce that free entertainment is about to begin. With a loud clonk the two doors on either side of the clock face slide open. To the regular rhythm of a gay mechanical tune, the gilt figures of Sir Roger de Trumpington, and Lady der Trump emerge and solemnly strike the hour on a bell. Not until the automatons have returned to the tower and the doors have shut do the trumpspeople resume their activities.

In the rather nice park is a bandstand, and it is at this bandstand that the Trumpington fire brigade band play, while the people from Trumpington and nearby areas listen and watch, though this does sometimes clash with the six o'clock dance at Chigley Hinton.

The Fire Brigade are perhaps Trumpington's most-recognised feature, their Fire Engine is the most modern, sleekly-lined, gadget-filled vehicle it is possible to buy. It is Trumpington's pride and joy. The fire-bell regularly shatters the peace of the countryside. The great doors swing open and the six stalwart firemen slide down the pole.

The obsessive compulsive Trumpington Fire Brigade roll-call has become famous locally: "Pugh! Pugh! Barney McGrew! Cuthbert! Dibble! Grubb!" They are continually being called out to attend some emergency or other (in many cases to resolve fairly trivial matters); but to their annoyance, rarely an actual fire. (One reason for this may be that both fire and water would be difficult to animate.) However, this doesn't stop the Fire Brigade absent-mindedly getting out their fire hose and receiving a rebuke ("No no! Not the hose! Remember what the judge warned you about!").

The fact that there hasn't been a fire for 30 years is, of course, rather a pity, but there are many things one can do with a modern, sleekly-lined, gadget-filled fire engine, and since the fire brigade also have to work second jobs as the Town Band to make ends meet, time never drags in Trumpington.

Stop dreaming of the quiet life cos it's one we'll never know.....

A Town Called Malice was and still is the one for me that started it all. I wanted to start dancing and never stop, but more importantly I wanted to be him, I wanted to make that noise, the bumping, pumping, insistent, infectious bass line that underlined the whole thing, the engine room that dragged the song forward by the scruff of its neck. Together with the poignant lyrics it seemed that, in just 2:55, it offered that rarest of things to anybody left with the imagination to hear it, namely things don’t have to be shit if you want them to change. I worshipped at its bass altar.

It was only as I got older, mellower and my musical tastes started to broaden that I realised that the very bass gods I worshipped might have gods of their own. All roads lead to James...... The ultra-catchy bass line was in fact pretty heavily influenced by "I'm ready for love" by Martha and the Vandellas. Check it out.

Yet even when I realised that perhaps after all nothing is new, even when I realised he was singing about Woking, this still warms my heart every time I hear it, join me and worship.

Waiting For The Big One...

So you may look at the current designs on the Cambridge T-Shirts site and wonder why they are not a little more 'fancy', you may rightly assume my limited artistic abilities have something to do with this, but wait.... let me play me geeky get out of jail card!

Our current printing technology uses plot printingwhich gives great quality hard wearing results, but limits us to pretty simple designs. There are all sorts of rules that have to be followed to get designs to print using this technology, you can't use more than three colours, no element of the design can be less than 1.5mm, etc, etc, etc... painful in other words, but a change is about to come! None of our existing designs are going to vanish and we will keep using the existing technology because it gives some really cool results, but very shortly we are going to start using some cool new technology called " Digital Direct".



With digital direct, no transfer material is needed anymore, which looks better and makes the shirt more comfortable to wear. It's basically a mighty big ink jet printer you stick a whole T-Shirt in at a time.

This means we can get a whole order of magnitude more fancy in our designs and that some of the things we have been promising will shortly start to appear. Just as a taster check this one out for the River Cam Surf Punting Club...



And if you can't wait you can checking out the current range of local things for local people right here.

TANSTAAFL...

"To get one thing that we like, we usually have to give up another thing that we like. Making decisions requires trading off one goal against another."

TANSTAAFL means that a person or a society cannot get something for nothing. Even if something appears to be free, there is always a cost to the person or to society as a whole even though that cost may be hidden or distributed. For example, you may get complimentary food at a bar during "happy hour," but the bar owner bears the expense of your meal and will attempt to recover that expense somehow. Some goods may be nearly free, such as fruit picked in the wilderness, but usually some cost such as labor or the loss of food for local wildlife is incurred.

So roll up, it's cheap postage promotion time. It's pretty simple from today to July the 17th just use the special secret magic code "SUMMERSUNPOSTAGEFUN" and you don't have to pay any P&P when you order from the Cambridge T-Shirts shop. Not a lot more to it than that, pretty simple.... or is it.... are you paranoid.... or are they out to get you?

For those about to detune.... we salute you!

Many people can play Guitar, but very few can play heavy and fast! You have to play fast to be a good Guitar player, people who disagree with this are people who can't play fast themselves! Have you ever heard someone who can really shred say that they don't like playing fast? No, because everybody knows that if you can play fast, more people are going to like you more.

Since the dawn of rock when the first ancient Persian plectrum performer plugged his kithara into the first hand carved marshall amp guitarists have craved heaviness and speed and tried everything to achieve this, patches, pumps, strange mechanical devices, spending 18 hours a day locked in a room practicing, even heading down to the crossroads to sell their soul to the devil himself.

Tantalisingly existing at the very edges of music and legality there has been the legend of Dropped-D, what the speed, skill-level, intensity and purity of formula one is to your average driver, Dropped-D is for your average guitarist.

So how can you unlock this mystery? Traditionally this art has taken years of solitary study to achieve mastery combining the physical skills of a highly trained martial artist with esoteric musical knowledge.

Trying to explain the difference between drop-D and normal guitar to a non-musician is like trying to explain to your special cousin from Norfolk why they should get the short bus home and not accept a lift home with a drunken Richard Hammond in his brightly painted, puppy filled, fun time ice-cream dragster.

First you must train your hands through hours of repetitive drilling and meditating to master "the bird", one of the most difficult techniques for any normal musician to conquer, even I lack the verbal acuity and elegance to reduce it to a simple form you borderline moronic musical mortals will understand without patronising you , it is best represented via a picture illustrating it's raw power. A power that you are unlikely to every fully comprehend.

We then must move on to the theory that underlies this dark art. A normal guitar is tuned to E, the ancient secrets of Drop D change this in subtle and mysterious ways, with years of practice this can then be combined with the"bird" to unlock EXTREME TECHNIQUE, the deeper, fuller, faster sound that all guitarist secretly crave.


So how can you a mere mortal get a glimpse of the power and the glory currently only attained by the guitar gods? Well thanks to the gaming geniuses at Cracktivision™ harnessing the bleeding edge console potency of the CantPlayStation™ even you mere mortals can now experience the ecstasy of becoming a Drop-D Hero.



With it's patent pending single button controller, a revolutionary new system to get you very real results in very little time, nothing comes close to matching the thrill of Drop-D, now even you can play along with your favourite anthems from Drop-D masters such as Nickelback, Linkin Park, Creed, Nickelback and some more Nickelback. Only power chords, one finger drop D power chords, these are the best and most difficult chords to play, now you can play them at every opportunity! Just put your fat finger across the stings and, wow, a power chord. Slide it up and down and you've got a song! Seriously, you could step on this drop D beauty and it would sound good!

Of course wherever there is beauty and truth you will find jealousy and envy, the envious who say Drop D power chords, easy song structures, no solos, it's for morons, well if you are one of those myopic melody loving fools then maybe what you are looking for is something simpler to suit your addled tastes, we suggest you try something a little easier for you to understand, maybe try putting a t-shirt on instead.