The great thing about a Bank Holiday weekend is that it gives me a chance to catch up on the exhibitions or interesting places that I have on a list to visit. One of these places is often my home town of Bradford as that’s where the fantastic National Media Museum resides, which is a place you can always rely on to have some interesting and thought-provoking exhibits.

Recently, various news sites highlighted a report conducted by Ofcom (The Independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries) which stated that Consumers are spending almost half (45 per cent) of their waking hours watching TV, using their mobiles and other communications devices. You can read the full report here.

Read more…

When I was growing up in a quiet little town in the south of England, I was always jealous of people with accents. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful” I thought, “to be able to ask for jellied eels, or a sausage barm, without sounding like a ponce. Wouldn’t it be bloody brilliant if the sound of my voice alone communicated a deep-rooted link to the precise location of my upbringing.”

I do, of course, have vocal indicators that identify me as southern English. Many people are even able to place my accent in the south east. But am I from Basildon or from Basingstoke; from Berkshire or from Kent? My part-BBC part-Estuary English style of speech gives few pointers to a precise location. The fact is, millions of people across a large chunk of the country speak in much the same boring way as I do. My voice is a poor compass. It’s hardly surprising, then, that I dreamt of having a real accent.

And I wasn’t the only one. Quite a few of my schoolmates, acutely aware of our shared non-accent, tried to adopt alternatives – with varying degrees of success. Out of my best friends, Mark went Cockney, Dave became Brummie and Pete plumped for Pakistani: a particularly   ill-considered move that did little for his reputation among the local Asian community.

Now in our mid-twenties, I think we’ve all accepted we’ll never have real accents. We’ll always be simply ‘southern’. Yet I remain absolutely fascinated by cities or small regions with a unique style of speech. So when I was given the opportunity to move to Manchester in mid-2008 there was just a single thought that crossed my mind. Mint. Read more…

On the rare occasion that I visit my home town of Bradford, I always make a point of visiting the National Media Museum. Exhibiting there at the moment, until 27th September, is collection of photographs by one of Britain’s greatest photographers – Don McCullin.

Read more…