The only way is up Castle Hill....

Cambridge, for those of you unfamiliar with local geography, is flat, like pancake flat, flatest, flatmost, flatfull in fact. This is great for cycling and I'm sure part of what makes Cambridge such a cycle city. Once in a while though you can have enough flat and start to crave lumpiness, bumpiness and all things upwards pointing. Pretty much your only choice for what passes for a vertiginous ascent in these parts is the Castle Hill. It's called Castle hill because it used to have a Castle on it, though these days you would be hard pressed to really notice any crenellated evidence to prove it.


In Anglo Saxon times there was apparently a settlement on Castle Hill. As the high ground around these parts you could see anyone coming from miles away and then do whatever Castley things were on your mind, shout insults, throw stuff, you know.

When the Normans turned up around 1068 they built their own castle there, apparently if you go North in a straight line there is no higher ground until you reach the North pole! Though how anyone knows this stuff you do have to wonder, every time I watch that Tony Robinson and his time team I'm torn between thinking it's pretty cool and the fact they could tell me anything and thanks to my pitiful lack of knowledge I wouldn't be able to disagree. You could tell me the King of Sandwich build a magnificent bready castle from loaves, cheese and ham to protect the magical celery forest and, while I may think you are talking toilet, I would actually be fairly hard pressed to disagree on any kind of factual basis.


When I get right down to it there are only three facts I can quote with relative certainty:

1) There is a hill.
2) There is no Castle.
3) It is called Castle Hill.

Still several historically accurate and vital facts short of a prize winning round on Mastermind I tend to think. Though possibly enough riveting facts to get me a guest spot on breakfast television.

Which is quite shameful, a all time low to match Cambridge's all time high. In celebration of reaching not only the very literal peak of Cambridge but also this metaphorical peak of ignorance join us at Cambridge T-Shirts with this special T-Shirt to celebrate our conquest of these great heights.

Go on reach for the stars!

One for the Histon village people...

Say this very, very quietly but I have friends in Histon, as wikipedia describes it "the farmstead of the young warriors", though I think I like the alternate meaning of the name, the "landing place", better, makes it sound all close encounters of the third kind.....

So how do I end up spending time in the village? Easy, that's where the job that pays my way is based, right next to the last outpost of Nadia's before you hit the fens....

So by popular request, in tribute to the home of the jam factory, here are some brand spanky new Histon T-shirts. Show some love for the northside of the city and check out these shiny new glad rags.

And remember you can always design your own at the Cambridge T-Shirts website!

Free Shipping 16th to the 30th of September

Until the 30th of September, Cambridge T-Shirts is offering free shipping on all orders, yes all orders, crikey! All you need to do is simply enter the following code during the order

SHIPFORFREE

and we will send the order with free shipping. You can check out our products here and remember you can always design your own Cambridge t-shirts here.

Now on to the usual legal yada-yada offer ends September the 30th, you can only use one voucher per order. Cannot be combined with other discounts. Never eat more than you can lift. Never hit a man with glasses. Use your fist. Just because it's toxic doesn't mean it's not tasty. The complete lack of evidence is the surest sign that the conspiracy is working. You need only two tools for life. WD-40 and duct tape. If it doesn't move and it should, use WD-40. If it moves and shouldn't, use the tape. And last but not least two rules for life: (1) Don't tell people everything you know. (2) ....

Licensed to Eel

It's now exactly 20 years since the release of the seminal folk rap album "Licensed to Eel" from Norfolk's infamous "Eastie Boys".

The joke of "Licensed to Eel's" cover--that the Easties could crash their tractor into the side of a mountain and keep on tickin'-- serves as a good metaphor for a career that even some of their 1988 admirers thought might be over after the one-time-only shock of this full-length debut.

"License to Eel" is rural, obnoxious, and sometimes offensive by today's PC standards, but if you can take it with a grain of salt, it's also fun to listen to, it was the first rap album all about beet farming, whittling, and disrespecting the Archers.

Even after all this time the songs haven't dated that much and are still influencing the music of today. Yes the Easties may have calmed down over the years but it's always nice to take a trip back to the 'Good Ole Days' when they shook the world and taught it how to party!

So bang it on turn up the volume and revisit those classic tracks "Rhymin & Peelin", "Slow And Lowestoft", "Time To Get Eel", "Slow Ride (stuck behind a caravan)" and of course the classic "No Sleep Till King's Lynn". Every song the grooves, the samples, perfect.

Cambridge T-Shirts is now celebrating this anniversary with a re-issue of the classic "No Sleep Till King's Lynn" shirt, show your love and check it out here.

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.

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!

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....

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!

The Romsey Triangle

The Romsey Triangle has long been full of mysteries. The vast three sided segment of Cambridge in the UK, bordered by Abbey, Petersfield and Coleridge has had many names.

However it didn't acquire its most famous nickname until 1964, when my uncle Dave went out for a few pints only to awake a full 48 hours later with all of his money missing and his trousers gone without a trace. No natural explanation could be found.

Is it an area where the normal laws of physics simply don't apply? Could, under the surface, lie an ancient and mythical city? Are alien forces at work? Might it just be all one giant hoax or is a government cover-up in operation? Limbo of the Lost. The Twilight Zone. The Hoodoo Town. The Devil's Triangle. The answer is still a secret only known to the Romsey Triangle.

Oooohhhh Matron!

I walked into a bar recently and ordered a double entendre... so the bartender gave me one.... sorry, old joke I know, but being force fed a diet of Benny Hill and Carry On films as I was growing up in the UK I thought pretty much that was how the whole world worked. I am still left with a lingering, childish and fairly puerile love of cheap innuendo. Celebrating this refusal to grow up I present you with Melons, a wonderful category of fruit encompassing watermelons, cantaloupes, and cheap innuendo.... mmmm melons are great.......


So while I'm busy lowering your standards let me introduce another new design. Dirty Sexy Money is an American television series which I have to admit I only first noticed because it had Donald Sutherland in it. I've had a deep heterosexual man love for him ever since I saw Kelly's Heroes. As far as I'm concerned he can do no wrong. Anyway back off the tangent, back to the shirts. This one is for the Mum's who still have it. So if you have got it, go ahead, get the shirt, here's your chance to flaunt it.

And if you have got it... well got ideas for anything you would like to see on a t-shirt, leave a comment on our blog and we will see what we can do!

Welcome to Reality Checkpoint!

So new product at last, a real local shirt for local people! Marking the mid-point between town and gown the Reality Checkpoint stands proud in the middle of Parker's Piece. It's been a Cambridge landmark since the early 1970s. The name comes from an unofficial inscription which first painted on the lamp post (allegedly) by students from CCAT (now Anglia Ruskin University) under the guidance of one of their teachers.

Whether it really marks the boundary between the 'reality bubble' and the 'real world' or just because it forms a useful landmark for drunk, befuddled or fog bound, it is the only light for hundreds of yards and makes me smile every time I pass on my way home!

Show it some love and check the new shirts out here.