..im back in birmingham for a few days in between lectures and a talk by howard marks on saturday which means i have access to the lovely internet ..so i thought id drop by and share what i hacve learned thus far at university..

first off, stoke-on-trent - for the love of god dont come here; the place is a hole, its full of stokeys, chavs and lepers.. the biggest local event so far has been the BNP rally a few weeks ago... you get the idea, stay away..(i might have lied about the lepers)

but university life is the best, and i dont regret going, will try to get on and whup you all at some point before saturday

Fox, just some advice. If you living somewhere a bit dodgy. Invest in a carbon monoxide detector (you can get them for a few quid at sainsburies) and check it regularly. It's definatly worth it. Make sure you have smoke detectors too... I know it's not very rock n roll... but you may be happy of them one day.

Worst place I lived... it was in a converted loft, had a broken window, and I was sleeping on a VERY questionable matress on the floor... during the winter... I would awake in the morning to find mist forming in my room and everything covered in frost. I couldn't afford a hot water bottle to keep warm, so I used an old sherry bottle filled with boiling water. One day the gas man turned up to check the meter... before we knew it there were 12 gas men trudging through the house... turns out it was a deathtrap... and we were VERY lucky to be alive, The cooker was fitted by our landlords friend... it used "ancient" gas pipe connectors... and was on casters. Apparantly if we had moved it a milimetre forward (not forgetting it was on fecking WHEELS) then we would have either gassed ourselves, or blew the street up.

The landlord also tried to have us arrested when some kids kicked down the crumbling outside wall. The police were almost as confused as us, especially when witnesses came forward to confirm it was kids... and the landlord was still insisting it was us.

Great days tho.

I suppose I shouldnt mention how I used to put socks over all my fire-alarms, so my manic marijuana consumption didnt call the firebrigade* automatically and result in a 50 pound fine then?

(Uni approved landlords had to install automatic alarms with that auto alert thing)