Andy Potts
Bio
Community focused sports fan from Northeast England. Tends to root for the little guy. Look out for Talking Northeast, my new project coming soon.
Stories (173)
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Playlists of 2024
In 2024, I started a new semi-regular column, Playlist, picking out tracks that caught my ear. It quickly turned into a way to try and promote the work of artists from around the Northeast of England and formed a natural counterpoint to my Talking Northeast project.
By Andy Potts11 months ago in Beat
Rugby special
Somebody once described 80 minutes of rugby league as the equivalent of running a half marathon while being run over by a truck 10 times. It’s an uncompromisingly physical sport, full of juddering full-body collisions and the kind of tackles that would earn you an assault charge anywhere off the field of play.
By Andy Potts12 months ago in Unbalanced
Pints & Parkruns: Cardiff (main course)
This wasn’t my first look at Cardiff parkrun. Almost exactly a year ago, working in the Welsh capital at the same event, I got along and ran the reserve course. But today was a first look at the usual route on the opposite side of the River Taff and it feels like a sufficiently different experience to justify a new write-up.
By Andy Potts12 months ago in Longevity
Derby day
It’s not often I get to spend most of a day in town when there’s a big game on. It’s even less often this happens when the game doesn’t involve my team. But last Saturday I was in Cardiff for the South Wales Derby. And it made for a more engaging time than my previous trip to a match in Wales.
By Andy Potts12 months ago in Cleats
Jolabokaflod - a word I never knew I needed
The December nights are long and cold in Iceland. And, with alcohol at prohibitive prices, literature becomes the local solution. Jolabokaflod is the festive tradition of turning up at your mate’s on Christmas Eve with the gift of a book. Volumes exchanged, everybody slumps by the fire in a companionable silence and reads the night away.
By Andy Pottsabout a year ago in BookClub
Transactional relationship
Jeff, I love you too But don't forget where we met Onlyfans; pay up! Another entry in Raymond's 'Oh, Jeff' challenge. You asked for succinct, and a haiku is about as brief as I can offer. I first saw the brief when there was a frankly grim Onlyfans-related story in the news, which sparked the idea for me.
By Andy Pottsabout a year ago in Poets
Getting the bird
Oh Jeff ... I love you too ... but ... The birds have got to go. I mean, seriously? The partridge in the pear tree, that was sweet. You remembered how I talked about Christmas when I was a kid, and that song, and all those memories. And really, I’ve no idea how you even managed to find a live partridge – you don’t get them in pet shops, right? – and persuaded it to stay perched in a rinky-dink little pear tree while you brought it round.
By Andy Pottsabout a year ago in Fiction
Nativity, Neapolitan style
If your childhood Christmases were anything like mine, sometime round about now you’d be trying to make a nativity scene. And, if your craft skills were anything like mine, you’d have ended up with an oddly sticky holy family attended by a wonky donkey.
By Andy Pottsabout a year ago in Art
Cloe Sparrow
Ceramic tablets, embossed with sea creatures. Strung together by assorted pieces of flotsam and jetsam from our beaches. Snatches of verse, reflections on the strange hinterland of sand and foam. Cloe Sparrow’s first solo exhibition ‘Pages of my Mind’ delivers memorable images from our shorelines.
By Andy Pottsabout a year ago in Art
Playlist: new releases
Binaries – If God Exists, I don’t First up, great song title. Intriguing, and likely to annoy all the right kinds of people. But that doesn’t mean much without the music to back it up. Happily, from the first stabs of menacing synth strings, this one is a belter. There’s a whiff of Paranoid Android-era Radiohead about the vocals – never a bad thing – charting a descent into tech dystopia with memorable flair.
By Andy Pottsabout a year ago in Beat
The search for 'proper footie'
When it comes to history, whose side are you on? A trip to Oakwell might help provide some answers. You could watch Barnsley FC from the imposing East Stand. When it was opened in 1993, it made Oakwell the first football ground in Yorkshire to have purpose-built executive boxes in the stadium. The jury’s still out on whether this is a smart commercial move, or a sell-out to the prawn sandwich brigade.
By Andy Pottsabout a year ago in Cleats
