Educating Yorkshire Three

It is said that most men live lives of quiet desperation.
The same could be said of most schools too;
by far the majority of your day,
like an atom,
is space.
Not free time, but routine;
a metronome of the anodyne and the commonplace, punctuated by the tattoo of the lesson bell.



From Educating Yorkshire 3: bad boys, bad boys- what ya gonna do? by Tom Bennett, TES Connect, 20 September 2013. Submitted by Rachel.

May the punishment fit the crime

Man
who

altered
our

TV
habits

forever
dies.



A Yahoo! news headline. Submitted by JR Solonche.

Skint

Emma
I want better for Tai
I want just a normal life
Just where I can get up in the morning
Get Tai off to school or whatever
Get about my housework
Do you know what I mean?

Do things with Tai at the weekend
Save up for holidays
Do you know what I mean?

I want it to be where eventually
I’m off the methadone and everything
Maybe even go back to college
Do a counsellors course
I’ll get a little office job or summat

Just normal
Do you know what I mean?

Gail
My partner died
He was thirty-seven years old when he died
To see him come off heroin
get his life sorted out
and then to go on drink
and then to die
through drink
it’s hard
It’s really hard

Life throws some things at you sometimes,
don’t it?
And you’ve just got to get on with it
You’ve got to be strong
And if you’re not strong,
and you’re weak
you fall apart,
don’t you?

Skye
Yeah, but it’s because I can
because I can do it
and I wanna do it
I can
so I don’t give a fuck
Do you know what I mean?

Do you know what, yeah?
that’s sticking up for your mates that
She’d booted her in the stomach
and winded her
so I just went over
I was just like
Boom

Dropped her
Banged her
Fucked her up
Stamped on her head
and everything

Tracey
Since I’ve lost me kids
I don’t care anymore
What else have I go to lose
apart from my head?
I regret the prostitution
and not fighting a bit harder
for me kids
but you can’t turn the clock back,
can you?
If you could,
we’d all have perfect lives,
wouldn’t we?



Taken from episode 4 of the Channel 4 series Skint. Submitted by Lisa Oliver.

Dancing on the Edge

His characters
Come on
And make small
Anodyne
Statements
Then compose their faces,
Into expressions
Of meaningful
Intent
Have you seen my glove?
Your glove?
Yes...my glove.
This glove?
The other glove.
Another glove?
Yes....have you
Seen it?
No.
Followed,
By an expression
Of Fleeting
Wind.



Taken from a TV review by A A Gill in the Sunday Times, 10th February 2013. Submitted by HWB.

The darkness and the light

A creature born
within the comforting anonymity of darkness

Awakens in the harsh truth of daylight

It squirms
in the glare
afraid of the light
that pins it to the chair like a needle through its heart

Its heart beats faster
Panic starts to creep into its soul

Does it understand?
Or is it so blinded by the light
that it can think only of returning
to the velvet cloak of darkness?

No matter

Perhaps it is better that it doesn't realize
how close death has come

But make no mistake, there is no escape
It has reached the end, and soon it will die

It bares its tiny fangs
hoping for a chance to strike
to sink its teeth deep into the flesh of its tormentor

But that chance will never come

And somewhere
beneath the gleam of hatred in those eyes
lurks the certain knowledge of its impending death

And it begins to know fear

This is part of your guilt. You did this to me

And you don't even know who I am

I wasn't part of your war
I was an innocent

I'm glad that you remember
Don't you feel guilty?
Don't you feel ashamed of what you did

Indiscriminate killing
No sense of morality
No thought given to the consequences of your actions

That's what makes us different

The creature's diseased mind
cannot understand its plight
Its imagination is too limited
to perceive the truth

It cannot be saved

The creature's cries grow louder
but no one can hear them

It's time



From the lines of Silaran in Star Trek: Deep Space 9 episode The Darkness and the Light. Lines with plot points in removed and punctuation stripped out. Submitted by Wesley Brown.

Weather Girl's Haiku

A wet and cold start
This morning windy. Later
rain dying away.



The BBC Breakfast weather forecast, as delivered by Carol Kirkwood, March 2012. 'The' removed from the start of line 3. Submitted by Fran Isherwood.

Edits

Christmas episode.
Billboard of underwear
model in opening. Black.
Cup of tea or coffee prepared.
Fart sound. Tea served.
Black. Coffee served.
Two doctors are shown arguing with some physical contact as well.
Black. “Thank God
my husband is not my doctor.”
Coffee drunk, and coffee machine
in the background. Black.
Scene in operating room. A baby is born. Non-graphic
and the baby is covered with a cloth.
“Thank God.” “If God”
“If God really
chooses to bless
me” Black.



Taken from KBYU Edits Sheet for a Christmas Episode of "Doc", starring Billy Ray Cyrus on the 1st February 2012. Submitted by Ben.

Slip in their veins

I started as a boy
straight from school
in nineteen fifty
and I enjoyed my
twenty five years here.

It was almost like
a home from home, really.

It was always said
that potters had
slip
in their veins
instead of blood.

That’s what we were.
We were potters.



Terry Abbotts, former Royal Doulton worker, interview in the BBC4 programme Ceramics: A Fragile History. The Age of Wedgwood, first broadcast 17th October 2011. Submitted by Ailsa Holland.

Slater

Habitual close-talker fogs up screen
with grub-related obfuscation.
Nation: whither Listerine?



Sarah Dempster's review of Nigel Slater's Simple Cooking, 16th October 2011. Submitted by Marika Rose.

Vitriol and Opportunity

I would love to say we’ve got a great show for you tonight,
but I’m not sure that’s the case.
Old friends, no one wants to do this listening.
All too often we are here.
Stunned by a crazy that is rarer than we think,
how incredible, the packing of the deceased,
the pain of disturbing nature with a moment of graphic speak,
of toxic and absurdity.

Here we are again, violent.
Vitriol and opportunity on television,
in the way we talk to each other.
Exonerate from blame a reality that we cannot approach verbally.
Our capacity to be horrified by being truly sad.
The shattered lunacy of real dignity,
the sense of such situations.
Senselessness in being cut way too short.

Read up on being numb,
the dispiriting implications,
troubled enemies with families of pain.
Match the forever-paranoid with great rhetorics
of light and thank you.
Never worse than when the actions of madmen take forever.

Don’t you know the leading of thought
away from the tragedy of shame?
How much living and catharsis in predictable crazy.
Something incredibly stupid and silly
that we had previously lost.
Manifestos of anonymous goodness.
More often than not, people creating solace
for tomorrows they’ve never even met.
Wouldn’t it be nice to cause this hyperbole of feeling,
however fleeting?



Taken from the Jon Stewart show after the Tucson shootings, on the 20th January 2011. Submitted by Haley Patail.