Jon Hickman

@jonhickman.bsky.social

629 Followers 323 Following

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Podcast: btlpodcast.com Podcast: runnerpod.com Words: paradisecircus.co.uk Everything else: theplan.co.uk

Kids playing in the street in water spray from a fire hydrant. 1930s photo by Weegee
Old picture or Hylton Street, Birmingham. Prominent is the sign for Lessar Brothers Ltd
Tom Scott is at the world’s hottest bus
Legal Name Fraud The Truth It’s illegal to use a legal name
A jar of Frank Cooper’s “Oxford” Original Oxford Marmalade
Inside the Sutton Coldfield assembly rooms
Engraving “Aston Villa FC” into the Europa League trophy
“We don’t want any more well wishers or distant relations”
Nearly 26 years after the album’s release, Green Day’s frontman still has a few questions about the back cover art. In his post, he says that he still wonders what happened to one of the people featured in the photo and is asking for an update from anyone that may know. “I always wondered whatever happened to this girl just to the right of the puppet with short hair,” Armstrong asks. “Anyone know?…thought of the day.” So far, no one has commented on Armstrong’s post about the mystery girl. In the meantime, next time you happen to be browsing through the used CD section and come across Dookie, take a look at the back and see if Ernie is still hanging out in the crowd.
A man in a cool as shit motorbike vigilante outfit doing some light attempts at breaking and entering
The last DVD of the complete Friends box set
I had to ask the guy next to me to pinch me to make sure I wasn't dreaming.
A photo of a street where not much is happening, 70s/80s home photo colour graded. Across it is written "A Good TV Show © MMXXVI To look more 1970s we did this with roman numerals". It is a comforting reminder that you have chosen a serious but whimsical quality TV show, made by artists.
Still from Channel 4 sitcom Spaced. A man looks sad and confused. He’s holding a paint roller. In the original broadcast he was saying: “It’s a bit more complex than that”
Old key on left with Sugru fix on one button, and other button entirely missing. New shiny key on right
Settings>accessibility>display & text size: reduce transparency on.
We would rather not be taking strike action. We are educators and our role supporting your children who attend a school which is part of the ATLP. For us, our jobs don't start and finish at the end of the school day. The majority will plan their lessons, mark books, make calls to you parents, plan school trips, deliver extra revision classes and offer enrichment opportunities outside of the normal school day to make sure each day at the school can be the best it can be for your children. Despite this, the ATLP Board has announced that there will be over 100 redundancies across the Trust. They have been given loans by the DfE and taking a massive 29% of school budgets to help balance the books but have delivered another deficit this year. Their solution to this? Cut the numbers of teachers and support staff. What would this mean to your children in the classroom? Larger class sizes leading to less support from teachers and support staff. Teachers with higher workloads and an impact on SEND support. What will it mean to the Central leadership team? 'Management' during the last year, whilst the Trust has had a budget deficit, has increased from 12 to 34 staff. That is an additional 22 staff who have been employed on at least £60,000 per year. This is over £1.3 million. NEU members have attempted to engage with the Trust but have been met with a lack of detail surrounding the redundancies. We agree with the CEO when he says he says it is regrettable we have decided to take industrial action, but we are left with little option. NEU members are really concerned for the students that they teach and believe that any cuts should come from the massive central office spend which includes 29% of all school funding and not from teachers and support staff who do so much for the children they support, day in, day out. We will continue to try and speak to the Trust and seek a negotiated resolution, but our concern for the future education of your children is paramount.
A very good boy is picketing Arthur Terry School, Sutton Coldfield, during industrial action by staff across the Arthur Terry Learning Partnership. The ATLP runs a number of primary and secondary schools across Birmingham and Staffordshire. To summarise his sign, the dog says that the partnership has been top slicing their schools’ budgets by nearly 1/3. Some trusts take as little as 5%. The ATLP is running a deficit of £6.05m and secured an injection of £4.5m, bought 1100 iPads and paid a lot of senior educators to manage things, and it has no money left. So those managerial educators did the managing badly but they want to cut 100 frontline teaching and support staff. No cuts are being planned centrally, in the management of ATLP, that we know of.
A young man who likes tank tops and just wants to be recruited
Two cops.
A man looking sad. He is in a full body cast in a doctor’s office (Jon Favreau as Pete Becker in Friends)
Bland
A coop in a pub next to the main road
Kaboom. Lawyered
Still from Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade. Henry Jones Senior holds an umbrella and is walking towards Junior on a beach.
The Separation by Christopher Priest
A pile of the hottest new format of 2026 ready to rack
Risotto with squash and sage
Vegan black pudding
Bubble & Squeak al forno
Do you like photographing your surroundings?
Bernard & The Genie / Truly Madly Deeply dvd double bill
A plant based black pudding by Bury Black Pudding company, and an upsetting and unflattering angle of my hand
Arthur Dent and Mr Prosser in a standoff over the building of a bypass through Arthur’s house. Still from BBC Hitchhikers Guide TV adaptation
A lady reacts to Emi Buendia being a magician
The cover of 101 Things Birmingham Gave The World, features a collage by Brummie artist Mark Murphy showing many of the things invented in the second city such as tennis, football, the USA…
Ah shit here we go again
That would be an ecumenical matter!
A DVD listing on eBay that promises (in German) a trip around London at Christmas with a fleshy ghost!
An ecstatic reaction to a long forbidden treat
A big French Fancy cake accompanied by normal ones
A blue man on a red planet (Doctor Manhattan, on Mars) considers the fact that it’s eternally Black Friday
A library copy of Aftermath by Christopher Priest, with a handwritten correction of the word “soccer” written by a terrible pedant (who is incorrect)
Television House, Butler Avenue, Guernsey
Lidl nut roast, not so great Al
A young man shouting into the ear of a bored young girl in a night club
Yorkie it’s not for capitalists
Shimano PD-R7000
Joe Marler, Celebrity Traitors (2025, colourised)
College of Optometrists eye health leaflet. Real sexy just like you asked
Motherfucking hydrofoil
Sign by road advertising summer fun and kum squash
A footpath closure notice in Staffordshire
Absolute unit (buzzard) sitting
A great tree
Instructions for a lamp assembly, with no spaces or punctuation
I am not cool enough to know all the names and so forth. It’s an absolute banger toadstool and or mushroom. A fungi.
Harlequins do be jumping off small bits of broken masonry. Defeat the harlequin troupe with this one neat trick: form battle lines on a very smooth surface
Nitro stout, M&S x Siren
The Entertainer is now open Sundays