Nope, theres nothing quite so satisfying as putting tons of paper through a shredder, except for this of course.
I've just spent a very satisfying half an hour putting reams and reams of used paper through our office shredder, reports most of it but lots and lots of those uninvited faxes that come through the fax machine all day long that beg you to cancel them by ringing an 0900 number at £80 a minute.
Its probably not the most productive use of my very expensive executive time but I feel a warm glow inside now, our shredder really chomps away at the paper like its really enjoying its job and while I stand there waiting to load the next batch of paper I stare at the little symbols printed on top of the machine that implore me not to put my tie into the machine, or long hair (neither of which I posses), nor to put my fingers in the shredder and I explain to the shredder once again that I have no intention of sticking any suitably thin protrubing element of my body down that munching slot.
Its standing at the shredder that gets me thinking of those times when I'd just left school and was working as a trainee something or other office jobbee at an electrical contractors. Back in those dark 1974 days when we weren't having power cuts and binmen strikes and other good communist inspired stuff we had invented a new office gadget that promised to relegate carbon paper copies to the fourth division - the photocopier.
Photocopiers cost a fortune back in 1974, you can buy a photocopier that will do the same job now for about £3.40 + vat but in 1974 photocopiers cost more than houses and yet were far more fragile. The company I worked for was part of a large group of building sub-contractors and we shared an office building with a plastering company and a painting company fromthe group, they had the upstairs offices we had downstairs, they had the photocopier upstairs, god knows how they ever got it up there, but they had snaffled the only one that our head office said we could have.
It was huge, so big that it had a room all of its own, and because it gave out prolific volumes of heat when it was doing its principle job of copying whatever you'd put in it, the room had to have a huge fan fitted to the wall to prevent the room from spontaneously combusting or smelling like a cheap Taiwanese knocking shop.
Access to the photocopier was supposed to be only for a few selected specially trained members of staff, those who were considered technically adept to line the documents properly on the glass screen, then press ever so carefully the green "go" button, but most importantly only those who could be trusted to fill in the "Copies Made" book so that at the end of the month someone could tally all the copies recorded in the machines innards to the book and then charge each company for the appropriate number of copies.
Downstairs in the electrical contractors no-one could be arsed running upstairs for copies so they sent me every time, told me to be carefull with the machine because it was bloody expensive and to run and fetch someone if anything went wrong. They also told me to never write the correct number of copies inthe book as well because each copy was bloody expensive, I always had to half the figure because somewhere down the line at the end of the month someone else would double the numbers when it came to charging us.
Every time I copied more than three sheets of paper in that fookin photocopier something went wrong, every fooking time.
Its like it knew it was me, its like it knew I was the new kid, its like every time I walked into the photocopy room it smirked quietly to itself and decided to chew up a sheet of paper at some random interval just so I'd shit myself and have to run and fetch someone.
But after a while, and after watching someone else open up the innards of the monster photocopier and fish around inside for the tangled shredded messes of paper inside, and after having had a bollacking everytime, I eventually started to fish around inside for myself , and I got quite good at sorting out the paper jams even noticing sometimes that the sheets of paper could sometimes be scorched around the edges when they'd been stuck for more than a few seconds.
Until one day when I was starting to really hate the photocopying job and I left a paper jam in there for just a smidgen too long and smoke started to come from the slot at the end where paper copies should be issuing forth. Seeing the smoke thicken and increase in volume I did what every office junior would do in those circumstances, I snatched up the sheets that had succesfully copied and ran back downstairs, leaving the photocopier to its own devices.
Unattended, it caught fire properly and only a chance stroll by the room by one of the plasterers directors saved the whole building from an inferno, he apparently did quite a good job with a fire extinguisher but the room was smoke logged and the vast photocopier ruined.
An enquiry of course followed, I lay low, the copy book was consulted and fortunately as I hadn't actually finished the job in hand then I hadn't written in the book that day, someone else was indicted for the crime of setting the copier on fire, someone more senior in the plastering company who couldn't be sacked, and the plasterers resigned themselves to replacing the photocopier out of their budgets.
Until some smart arse lifted up the copier lid and found the company letterhead that I had been copying, I was demoted to the stores for two weeks, the most soul destroying job in the whole company, worse than sweeping the yard and certainly worse than standing by the photocopier warming your hands on a cold day.
Still, shredding machines eh ?
How much paper do you reckon I'd have to stuff through ours before it caught fire ?
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Monday, February 27, 2006
Return (again) to the pink lozenge
Once again it was time to return to the big pink lozenge, this time he (the dentist) just wanted to check last weeks work and to see that the gum infection had died down after he filled my tooth root and gum at the same time. It was OK, so he's scheduled me in for another visit in three weeks time (trip to France sits inbetween) next time the new tooth will be installed and I think I was correct in what I saw, but I think he booked me in for a two and a half hour appointment, I'll take a book with me next time.
The dentist and his big pink lozenge chair is only two miles from the office, and downhill, which is just as well because my car is nearly out of deisel and has been for at least a week now so while I was spluttering down the road to the dentist I idly flicked the switch to get the computer readout to see how many miles I could do on what was left, it said four, four miles until the car stopped, then it went to three.
I've never seen it go down to three before, I usually lose my nerve around twenty miles to go, three was cutting it a bit fine especially as I usually have to drive around for a bit at the dentist when looking for somewhere to park, I chickened out and called at a Texaco garage for deisel.
Yesterday we were French again
Yesterday found our happy little bunch of pseudo Frenchmen attending the Les Catalans game at Castleford, we always enjoy going to Castleford because the people there never fail to live up to their stereotypical image. All you have to do to be a Frenchman in Castleford is to wear a Les Catalans rugby shirt, no fake accents, no pretence at not understanding their language, just wear the shirt and the Castleford folk, god bless them, all believe that you simply must be French.
The pub was the best place to start and JohnD asked in his normal Huddersfield brogue for five pints of Kronenburg six-cent soixante quatre, he asked in English, didn't pretend to be from France, didn't put on a silly French accent, all he did was just pronounce the name of the beer as the French would. "Oooh 'ave you cum from France" the barmaid asked, and two lads at the bar turned to our little party obviously impressed that French people would choose their boozer for a pre-match tipple.
"No love, I'm from Huddersfield" he explained
"Oooh nice" she said, obviously not understanding, probably quite pleased that she could understand French all of a sudden.
It continued at the ground where Rob tried to give the turnstile operator a 20 euro note, he didn't have to put the accent on, the turnstile operator looked at the Les Cats shirt, then at the euros, and then tried to explain very patiently that they only accepted pound notes.
In the packed bar inside the ground the request for "Trois vin rouge s'il vous plait" got everyone talking "They've asked for bloody wine, they must be Froggies tha knows", and finally on the terracing when the Catalan flag was displayed we took abuse all afternoon from every little kid who wanted to show off in front of his mates.
The best one though was after the match had finished when a father and teenage son approached us and shook Robs hand and very slowly and very carefully thanked us for coming to Castleford and wished us well for the season, you just can't let someone like that down and so Rob thanked him in his best French accent and wished him "bon chance aussi", but as his son also shook his hand Ron thanked him with a "cheers cocker". As at Salford last week it takes the average person about 20 seconds to realise that "cheers cocker" is not in your average French persons vocabulary, this young lad was walking on his way and several yards away before his penny dropped and he turned and gave us a very funny look as if to say "theres something wrong with those French blokes dad".
Next weekend the Cas fans come to Headingley and we'll be stood amongst them, so we've got four days left to practice the finger plucking chords for "duelling banjo's", we like them to feel at home at Headingley, they're all soft lads really.
The dentist and his big pink lozenge chair is only two miles from the office, and downhill, which is just as well because my car is nearly out of deisel and has been for at least a week now so while I was spluttering down the road to the dentist I idly flicked the switch to get the computer readout to see how many miles I could do on what was left, it said four, four miles until the car stopped, then it went to three.
I've never seen it go down to three before, I usually lose my nerve around twenty miles to go, three was cutting it a bit fine especially as I usually have to drive around for a bit at the dentist when looking for somewhere to park, I chickened out and called at a Texaco garage for deisel.
Yesterday we were French again
Yesterday found our happy little bunch of pseudo Frenchmen attending the Les Catalans game at Castleford, we always enjoy going to Castleford because the people there never fail to live up to their stereotypical image. All you have to do to be a Frenchman in Castleford is to wear a Les Catalans rugby shirt, no fake accents, no pretence at not understanding their language, just wear the shirt and the Castleford folk, god bless them, all believe that you simply must be French.
The pub was the best place to start and JohnD asked in his normal Huddersfield brogue for five pints of Kronenburg six-cent soixante quatre, he asked in English, didn't pretend to be from France, didn't put on a silly French accent, all he did was just pronounce the name of the beer as the French would. "Oooh 'ave you cum from France" the barmaid asked, and two lads at the bar turned to our little party obviously impressed that French people would choose their boozer for a pre-match tipple.
"No love, I'm from Huddersfield" he explained
"Oooh nice" she said, obviously not understanding, probably quite pleased that she could understand French all of a sudden.
It continued at the ground where Rob tried to give the turnstile operator a 20 euro note, he didn't have to put the accent on, the turnstile operator looked at the Les Cats shirt, then at the euros, and then tried to explain very patiently that they only accepted pound notes.
In the packed bar inside the ground the request for "Trois vin rouge s'il vous plait" got everyone talking "They've asked for bloody wine, they must be Froggies tha knows", and finally on the terracing when the Catalan flag was displayed we took abuse all afternoon from every little kid who wanted to show off in front of his mates.
The best one though was after the match had finished when a father and teenage son approached us and shook Robs hand and very slowly and very carefully thanked us for coming to Castleford and wished us well for the season, you just can't let someone like that down and so Rob thanked him in his best French accent and wished him "bon chance aussi", but as his son also shook his hand Ron thanked him with a "cheers cocker". As at Salford last week it takes the average person about 20 seconds to realise that "cheers cocker" is not in your average French persons vocabulary, this young lad was walking on his way and several yards away before his penny dropped and he turned and gave us a very funny look as if to say "theres something wrong with those French blokes dad".
Next weekend the Cas fans come to Headingley and we'll be stood amongst them, so we've got four days left to practice the finger plucking chords for "duelling banjo's", we like them to feel at home at Headingley, they're all soft lads really.
Friday, February 24, 2006
Monday I got Friday on my mind
I wait for friday all week, I'm getting lazy as I get older, by the time I am 60 I may have stopped moving all together, at 70 its possible that I might only communicate by eyebrow movements.
Weekends are good, weekends are the only time that I get to pretend that I'm rich and can do what the hell I like all day, unless of curse the three females need transporting somewhere. This weekend, like last, will be spent in front of an easel trying to do a semi abstract landscape.
I've got the subject in mind and at the moment I'm practising on another scene just to see what will work and not work with different kinds of pastels. The subject is going to be a pub near where the mutha-in-lor lives, its perched all on its own on a cliff top and has been there for about 200 years with the North Sea lashing the base of its cliff and a wind battering its windows that hasn't been deflected by anything since it left Scandinavia - its going to make a lovely backlit subject in blue but I need to abstract the cliffs below it and make it messy in a sort of organised way - I know what I mean just can't describe it.
Its the end of the month, the mortgage is due, bills are due, we've changed bank accounts so some direct debits haven't paid properly and I'm getting calls at home from companies who haven't been paid this month but I'm getting stroppy with them before they get stroppy with me telling them to pull their fucking fingers out and get the direct debit online properly since they had two months notice to do so, I've had three such calls this week and they were all informed on January 4th that they needed to change their collection details, fuckin idiots.
One of them was NatWest Insurance who were bitching about not being able to collect their monthly standing order for two months now, I wasn't in the mood for arsing about on the phone at 8 fekkin 30 at night with the young boy who had been delegated the job of bollacking me, I simply asked him to check my details while he was on the phone, he agreed with me that my bank was NatWest, he agreed with me that I'd sent them the new details seven fuckin weeks ago, he agreed with me that his own company was also NatWest, but he shut up when I asked him why one NatWest company could not set up a direct debit with another NatWest company within seven weeks when I can set them up online in seven minutes.
They drive me up the bleedin wall and I haven't yet had a reply back from the loan company that I wrote to six weeks agao asking why they'd surcharged me for owing them £0.00, they'll need a sense of humour to read my letter to them, maybe thats where they're struggling
Weekends are good, weekends are the only time that I get to pretend that I'm rich and can do what the hell I like all day, unless of curse the three females need transporting somewhere. This weekend, like last, will be spent in front of an easel trying to do a semi abstract landscape.
I've got the subject in mind and at the moment I'm practising on another scene just to see what will work and not work with different kinds of pastels. The subject is going to be a pub near where the mutha-in-lor lives, its perched all on its own on a cliff top and has been there for about 200 years with the North Sea lashing the base of its cliff and a wind battering its windows that hasn't been deflected by anything since it left Scandinavia - its going to make a lovely backlit subject in blue but I need to abstract the cliffs below it and make it messy in a sort of organised way - I know what I mean just can't describe it.
Its the end of the month, the mortgage is due, bills are due, we've changed bank accounts so some direct debits haven't paid properly and I'm getting calls at home from companies who haven't been paid this month but I'm getting stroppy with them before they get stroppy with me telling them to pull their fucking fingers out and get the direct debit online properly since they had two months notice to do so, I've had three such calls this week and they were all informed on January 4th that they needed to change their collection details, fuckin idiots.
One of them was NatWest Insurance who were bitching about not being able to collect their monthly standing order for two months now, I wasn't in the mood for arsing about on the phone at 8 fekkin 30 at night with the young boy who had been delegated the job of bollacking me, I simply asked him to check my details while he was on the phone, he agreed with me that my bank was NatWest, he agreed with me that I'd sent them the new details seven fuckin weeks ago, he agreed with me that his own company was also NatWest, but he shut up when I asked him why one NatWest company could not set up a direct debit with another NatWest company within seven weeks when I can set them up online in seven minutes.
They drive me up the bleedin wall and I haven't yet had a reply back from the loan company that I wrote to six weeks agao asking why they'd surcharged me for owing them £0.00, they'll need a sense of humour to read my letter to them, maybe thats where they're struggling
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
The white, err, not so white, doves of peace...
One of my office windows looks onto the back of a chinese takeaway.
We see enough things going in and out of that takeaway and stuff being left outside to cool on the fire escape to know not to buy anything from them, but in the past few weeks they've inherited three white fantail doves .
Huge things they are, much bigger than pigeons, and they were white when they arrived, now after spending three weeks messing around in the muddy puddles behind the chinese they are a sort of grubby grey, but still, they look nice.
I can't help but think that somewhere around here, somewhere in this affluent suburb of North Leeds theres a Captain Mainwaring type who's standing in his garden next to his new ornamental dovecot every day with a handful of corn vainly searching the skies for his newly purchased fantail doves and wondering why they flew away the first day he let them out.
If only he knew that the chinese men who live upstairs in the storeroom above the shop are feeding them noodles and beansprouts with black bean sauce and that these doves have no intention of returning, or even flying anywhere within a few yards of the fire escape.
On the other hand, I've only seen two of them today - wonder whats on the "special" menu ?
We see enough things going in and out of that takeaway and stuff being left outside to cool on the fire escape to know not to buy anything from them, but in the past few weeks they've inherited three white fantail doves .
Huge things they are, much bigger than pigeons, and they were white when they arrived, now after spending three weeks messing around in the muddy puddles behind the chinese they are a sort of grubby grey, but still, they look nice.
I can't help but think that somewhere around here, somewhere in this affluent suburb of North Leeds theres a Captain Mainwaring type who's standing in his garden next to his new ornamental dovecot every day with a handful of corn vainly searching the skies for his newly purchased fantail doves and wondering why they flew away the first day he let them out.
If only he knew that the chinese men who live upstairs in the storeroom above the shop are feeding them noodles and beansprouts with black bean sauce and that these doves have no intention of returning, or even flying anywhere within a few yards of the fire escape.
On the other hand, I've only seen two of them today - wonder whats on the "special" menu ?
Monday, February 20, 2006
Return to the pink lozenge
...and so today I returned bright and early to the ever-so-pink dentists chair that resembles a huge throat lozenge, 8.40am my appointment was this morning, eight bloody forty, and someone else was getting drilled in front of me, I think this dentist is getting a little too greedy sometimes.
Today was supposed to be the day when he fitted the new crown to the root that he's been drilling away at for the last two visits, the good news is that the temporary crown that he fitted two weeks ago stayed stuck in this time, the bad news is that when he looked at the root and the gum he thought that another infection site had flared up, which was disappointing for him as he's been treating an infection in the root during the last two visits, but not so disappointing for me as I didn't have the money to pay for the new crown today (£520), god knows what I'd have done if he'd gone ahead and fitted it without asking.
So he decides that there must be another root to this tooth, a sort of branch line that goes in a different direction and when he gets the x-ray out he thinks he can see where this other root goes. I chip in at that point and remember that the last dentist had a bugger of a job stopping it bleeding when he did the last lot of root canal work and the current dentist sort of nods in a "that'll explain it" sort of way.
So he goes back in there and drills for a bit and then squirts gallons of water up the root until he finally declares that he thinks he can see the branch line turn-off, its all good stuff, a bit like following Arnie Sachnusum in Jules Vernes "Journey to the Centre of the Earth", and the dentist gets his glue and filler out and startes stuffing the branch line full of gunge.
Even though my mouth and face were completely numb at this point I could tell he was pressing really hard to get the filling up the branch line and finally with an "Ah-ha" he steps back and looks pleased with himself.
"I was right " he declares, "its another root cavity, and it leads right to the new infection point" and without stopping for me to ask why he is so sure he continues "because I can see the filling coming out of your gum now"
I'm sure he knows what he's doing but the thought that I've now had my gums filled as well as the tooth roots strikes me as a little odd, but he's dead chuffed now and steps back and declares his work done for the day, I go back again next monday for an assesment and if the infection has gone then he'll book me in for the crown fitting, so I've got the temporary crown in again, temporarily glued into place.
The best news is that there was no charge for this weeks treatment, I can't help but think they've made a mistake and I'll cop for a double bill the next time, but that is all for the future, if I die tomorrow I've fiddled him :) but my mouth is as sore as buggery now that the anesthetic has worn off, I may go home and play the injured soldier soon.
Oh yes, one more thing - in his new hi-tech waiting room that looks like an avent-garde furniture showroom he has a flat screen TV on the wall which is usually playing toothpaste adverts, this morning though it was showing an episode of Fawlty Towers, the one where Murphy the builder gets a large gnome stuffed up his arse, I managed to catch about ten minutes of it before I went to the pink lozenge but when I came back out it was toothpaste ads again.
Today was supposed to be the day when he fitted the new crown to the root that he's been drilling away at for the last two visits, the good news is that the temporary crown that he fitted two weeks ago stayed stuck in this time, the bad news is that when he looked at the root and the gum he thought that another infection site had flared up, which was disappointing for him as he's been treating an infection in the root during the last two visits, but not so disappointing for me as I didn't have the money to pay for the new crown today (£520), god knows what I'd have done if he'd gone ahead and fitted it without asking.
So he decides that there must be another root to this tooth, a sort of branch line that goes in a different direction and when he gets the x-ray out he thinks he can see where this other root goes. I chip in at that point and remember that the last dentist had a bugger of a job stopping it bleeding when he did the last lot of root canal work and the current dentist sort of nods in a "that'll explain it" sort of way.
So he goes back in there and drills for a bit and then squirts gallons of water up the root until he finally declares that he thinks he can see the branch line turn-off, its all good stuff, a bit like following Arnie Sachnusum in Jules Vernes "Journey to the Centre of the Earth", and the dentist gets his glue and filler out and startes stuffing the branch line full of gunge.
Even though my mouth and face were completely numb at this point I could tell he was pressing really hard to get the filling up the branch line and finally with an "Ah-ha" he steps back and looks pleased with himself.
"I was right " he declares, "its another root cavity, and it leads right to the new infection point" and without stopping for me to ask why he is so sure he continues "because I can see the filling coming out of your gum now"
I'm sure he knows what he's doing but the thought that I've now had my gums filled as well as the tooth roots strikes me as a little odd, but he's dead chuffed now and steps back and declares his work done for the day, I go back again next monday for an assesment and if the infection has gone then he'll book me in for the crown fitting, so I've got the temporary crown in again, temporarily glued into place.
The best news is that there was no charge for this weeks treatment, I can't help but think they've made a mistake and I'll cop for a double bill the next time, but that is all for the future, if I die tomorrow I've fiddled him :) but my mouth is as sore as buggery now that the anesthetic has worn off, I may go home and play the injured soldier soon.
Oh yes, one more thing - in his new hi-tech waiting room that looks like an avent-garde furniture showroom he has a flat screen TV on the wall which is usually playing toothpaste adverts, this morning though it was showing an episode of Fawlty Towers, the one where Murphy the builder gets a large gnome stuffed up his arse, I managed to catch about ten minutes of it before I went to the pink lozenge but when I came back out it was toothpaste ads again.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Last night we were French...
Its true, last night for a few hours we were French, and we reet enjoyed it :)
"Streets of Philidelphia" by Bruce Springsteen is playing on repeat while I write this, its 10pm in my kitchen and its dark and sleepy and "Philidelphia" is a superb song to have on loud in the background, sets the mood - and it was a terrific film too.
Anyway, what was that all about, French, eh ?
Les Catalans are the new boys in Superleague this year, based in Perpignan right down on the south coast of France they represent the whole of the Catalan region which ignores the border with Spain in the way that ancient kingdoms do, and stretches down as far as Barcelona, its a region with a unique flavour all of its own, a language that both the French Catalans and the Spanish Catalans share, food and wine of its own, we visited there last year and had a superb five days, can't wait to return in just three weeks time.
So, Les Catalans played their second game in superleague last night - last week they beat Wigan in France, this week they were playing away at Salford. Some say that Salford is a city in its own right, in truth its a shitty suburb of Greater Manchester and in the past their rugby team has clung onto superleague status like George Foreman clung onto Ali in the rumble in the jungle, but this year has started well for them and the very optomistic among the Salford fans are predicting a top six finish to the season and onto the playoffs, I don't do predictions but even I think they are talking crap.
Rugby League is a tough game, a masochistic idiot with few brains would do well to play the game, broken bones are two a penny, if you're lucky you'll come off the ground with less than 80% of your body covered in bruises, rib, shoulder and knee injuries are brushed off with nonchalance while the player completes the game, in short its tough, brutal, fast, very fast, with collisions every few seconds, its engrossing, addicitive and impossible to break eye contact with until the final whistle is blown - and its not to be mistaken for Rugby Union, its more pedestrian brother.
Last night was no different, two key positions in any RL team are scrum half and stand off, usually two of the smallest players on the park they are usually the ones who dictate the play and provide the passes to either their forwards or spread the play out to the wings, with a good number 6 and 7 you will always win games, and Les Catalans have signed the worlds best number 7, New Zealander Stacey Jones.
Now heres where it goes wrong - within ten minutes of the game started Stacey Jones left the field of play with a broken arm, which was bad news, but within minutes his half back partner Julian Rinaldi joined him with a dead leg, Les Cats hung onto the game and eventually lost 16-0, which was a hell of sight less than we'd thought after ten minutes.
How do I know all this ? Well I and some fine fellows made the trip over to Salford last night, took along some Catalan flags and claimed a small part of the terracing behind the goals for the Catalan cause, and we weren't the only ones, about 20 to 30 other folk had turned up from different superleague clubs to support Les Cats, being as their own supporters can't travel to every away game in the UK, they'll have a British supporters club instead.
Two barriers festooned with French and Catalan flags, and some bunting, were our domain and we played the part well, shouting insults to the referee and Salford team in our best, and quickly learnt French language, such good stuff as "l'arbitre est connard" (the referee enjoys masturbating) and "Qu'est que le fookin hell est vous ?" directed at the Salford mascot who appears to be an extremely camp Captain America-stylee masked good guy, he heard the question and looked very disgusted at us, he obviously understands basic French as well.
But the moment to savour from the evening was the big daft lad who Salford employ to walk around the ground with a huge cooler bag strapped to his back, selling bottles of beer. Rob, one of our travelling psuedo-French people stopped him and in very poor English asked "Monseiur, deux bierre s'il vous plait", eventually with hand signals making the boy understand that he wanted to purchase said beer.
The poor lad took the caps off the bottle and served the beer to Rob and then set about explaining that the cost would be five pounds, eventually showing five fingers and pointing to a ten pound note in Robs hand, we held our breath as we waited to see if we'd be scammed for a fiver but the lad was as good as gold and handed Rob his five pounds change at which Rob thanked him with "Cheers cocker".
It took several seconds for the beer boy to realise that "Cheers cocker" is not a native French phrase and he looked in astonishment as the gear wheels in his brain finally clicked into place and he asked "Your not from France are you" his face was a picture and I wish I'd taken one.
One more thing to mark the evening down in the museum of recollections - I managed to get my lip stuck in my zip, yes, my lip. I had a weatherproof jacket on with a storm collar that stand up in front of your face and makes you look like an arctic explorer and after I'd been to the toilet I zipped it right up, or almost right up, I actually zipped it as far as my top lip - it didn't half smart, and bleed, its perhaps one of the daftest things I've ever done, not the daftest, but its up there on the list.
Next week Les Cats play Castleford, or Hicksville as we prefer to call it, they shot the first half hour of the film "Deliverence" in Castleford and its got worse since, we are going to have fun with the locals next week...
"Streets of Philidelphia" by Bruce Springsteen is playing on repeat while I write this, its 10pm in my kitchen and its dark and sleepy and "Philidelphia" is a superb song to have on loud in the background, sets the mood - and it was a terrific film too.
Anyway, what was that all about, French, eh ?
Les Catalans are the new boys in Superleague this year, based in Perpignan right down on the south coast of France they represent the whole of the Catalan region which ignores the border with Spain in the way that ancient kingdoms do, and stretches down as far as Barcelona, its a region with a unique flavour all of its own, a language that both the French Catalans and the Spanish Catalans share, food and wine of its own, we visited there last year and had a superb five days, can't wait to return in just three weeks time.
So, Les Catalans played their second game in superleague last night - last week they beat Wigan in France, this week they were playing away at Salford. Some say that Salford is a city in its own right, in truth its a shitty suburb of Greater Manchester and in the past their rugby team has clung onto superleague status like George Foreman clung onto Ali in the rumble in the jungle, but this year has started well for them and the very optomistic among the Salford fans are predicting a top six finish to the season and onto the playoffs, I don't do predictions but even I think they are talking crap.
Rugby League is a tough game, a masochistic idiot with few brains would do well to play the game, broken bones are two a penny, if you're lucky you'll come off the ground with less than 80% of your body covered in bruises, rib, shoulder and knee injuries are brushed off with nonchalance while the player completes the game, in short its tough, brutal, fast, very fast, with collisions every few seconds, its engrossing, addicitive and impossible to break eye contact with until the final whistle is blown - and its not to be mistaken for Rugby Union, its more pedestrian brother.
Last night was no different, two key positions in any RL team are scrum half and stand off, usually two of the smallest players on the park they are usually the ones who dictate the play and provide the passes to either their forwards or spread the play out to the wings, with a good number 6 and 7 you will always win games, and Les Catalans have signed the worlds best number 7, New Zealander Stacey Jones.
Now heres where it goes wrong - within ten minutes of the game started Stacey Jones left the field of play with a broken arm, which was bad news, but within minutes his half back partner Julian Rinaldi joined him with a dead leg, Les Cats hung onto the game and eventually lost 16-0, which was a hell of sight less than we'd thought after ten minutes.
How do I know all this ? Well I and some fine fellows made the trip over to Salford last night, took along some Catalan flags and claimed a small part of the terracing behind the goals for the Catalan cause, and we weren't the only ones, about 20 to 30 other folk had turned up from different superleague clubs to support Les Cats, being as their own supporters can't travel to every away game in the UK, they'll have a British supporters club instead.
Two barriers festooned with French and Catalan flags, and some bunting, were our domain and we played the part well, shouting insults to the referee and Salford team in our best, and quickly learnt French language, such good stuff as "l'arbitre est connard" (the referee enjoys masturbating) and "Qu'est que le fookin hell est vous ?" directed at the Salford mascot who appears to be an extremely camp Captain America-stylee masked good guy, he heard the question and looked very disgusted at us, he obviously understands basic French as well.
But the moment to savour from the evening was the big daft lad who Salford employ to walk around the ground with a huge cooler bag strapped to his back, selling bottles of beer. Rob, one of our travelling psuedo-French people stopped him and in very poor English asked "Monseiur, deux bierre s'il vous plait", eventually with hand signals making the boy understand that he wanted to purchase said beer.
The poor lad took the caps off the bottle and served the beer to Rob and then set about explaining that the cost would be five pounds, eventually showing five fingers and pointing to a ten pound note in Robs hand, we held our breath as we waited to see if we'd be scammed for a fiver but the lad was as good as gold and handed Rob his five pounds change at which Rob thanked him with "Cheers cocker".
It took several seconds for the beer boy to realise that "Cheers cocker" is not a native French phrase and he looked in astonishment as the gear wheels in his brain finally clicked into place and he asked "Your not from France are you" his face was a picture and I wish I'd taken one.
One more thing to mark the evening down in the museum of recollections - I managed to get my lip stuck in my zip, yes, my lip. I had a weatherproof jacket on with a storm collar that stand up in front of your face and makes you look like an arctic explorer and after I'd been to the toilet I zipped it right up, or almost right up, I actually zipped it as far as my top lip - it didn't half smart, and bleed, its perhaps one of the daftest things I've ever done, not the daftest, but its up there on the list.
Next week Les Cats play Castleford, or Hicksville as we prefer to call it, they shot the first half hour of the film "Deliverence" in Castleford and its got worse since, we are going to have fun with the locals next week...
Trouble with Ellery (II)
mmmmmmm, its still not right.The few people who have seen it say its recognisable but I'm not happy with it, its the eyes and the forehead but mainly the eyes, I've redone the eyes eight times now and this is the best effort and I didn't actually draw the eyes at all, just put a blob of cream in there to describe the whites.
Its still not right though.
But I've gone as far as I want to with this now, it happens sometimes, maybe I'll do it again soon, this time I'll start with the face first though !
Friday, February 17, 2006
Trouble with Ellery
I'm having trouble with Ellery Hanley, I thought I would, but thats why I chose to do him, its a challenge you see, I've never done a black person before.
What on earth are you talking about and how on earth could this racist rubbish be hosted on a site like this ?
Well its like this you see...
I've recently switched from painting landscapes to painting portraits.
I've been painting landscapes (and townscapes) in all sorts of media for about 30 years now and its time to try something else, what better subject to try than portraits ?
The problem with portraits is that you can paint the most technically superb painting ever, but if it doens't look like the person its supposed to be it will be rubbish. When you are painting a landscape no-one is ever going to tell you that you moved some trees or there are actually some farm buildings in that field, because no-one really knows what your subject is unless they were stood next to you when you did it - they just look at the landscape and consider it for its technical ability.
Not so with portraits, everyone, not least the subject, has an opinion, a strong opinion on whether or not its the person its supposed to be.
I've done a few rugby players and they came out OK, a few people have passed complimentary comments on them and I think they are OK so far although I'm still only hitting the likeness thing by chance and I'd only say that I've hit the likeness thing on one occasion, this one, but I was ready for a new challange last week.
And so I picked Ellery.
Certainly the greatest rugby league player of his generation, argueably the greatest RL player ever I had no shortages of images to work from, the big challenge is that Ellery is a black person and I've never drawn or painted black skin before.
In the event its not the skin tone that has stumped me, although black skin has a huge range of tones in it, far more (I found out) than white skin does, the range of tones in Ellery's painting range from green through a yellow ochre and all shades of brown inbetween and then finally blue, but its the likeness thats giving me problems and particularly the eyes. I've redone his eyes six times now, each time I blank them out with a deep grey (his eyes are in shadow in the picture) and the rest of the face comes together and starts to look like him - with no eyes. When I add the latest version of his eyes the whole thing falls apart again , its really wierd and although frustrated with it I'm now even more determined to complete the painting even if it takes all weekend of painting eyes.
All of which prooves one astounding fact - its not skin colour that determines how we recognise faces, its eyes, the first point of contact on any face.
What on earth are you talking about and how on earth could this racist rubbish be hosted on a site like this ?
Well its like this you see...
I've recently switched from painting landscapes to painting portraits.
I've been painting landscapes (and townscapes) in all sorts of media for about 30 years now and its time to try something else, what better subject to try than portraits ?
The problem with portraits is that you can paint the most technically superb painting ever, but if it doens't look like the person its supposed to be it will be rubbish. When you are painting a landscape no-one is ever going to tell you that you moved some trees or there are actually some farm buildings in that field, because no-one really knows what your subject is unless they were stood next to you when you did it - they just look at the landscape and consider it for its technical ability.
Not so with portraits, everyone, not least the subject, has an opinion, a strong opinion on whether or not its the person its supposed to be.
I've done a few rugby players and they came out OK, a few people have passed complimentary comments on them and I think they are OK so far although I'm still only hitting the likeness thing by chance and I'd only say that I've hit the likeness thing on one occasion, this one, but I was ready for a new challange last week.
And so I picked Ellery.
Certainly the greatest rugby league player of his generation, argueably the greatest RL player ever I had no shortages of images to work from, the big challenge is that Ellery is a black person and I've never drawn or painted black skin before.
In the event its not the skin tone that has stumped me, although black skin has a huge range of tones in it, far more (I found out) than white skin does, the range of tones in Ellery's painting range from green through a yellow ochre and all shades of brown inbetween and then finally blue, but its the likeness thats giving me problems and particularly the eyes. I've redone his eyes six times now, each time I blank them out with a deep grey (his eyes are in shadow in the picture) and the rest of the face comes together and starts to look like him - with no eyes. When I add the latest version of his eyes the whole thing falls apart again , its really wierd and although frustrated with it I'm now even more determined to complete the painting even if it takes all weekend of painting eyes.
All of which prooves one astounding fact - its not skin colour that determines how we recognise faces, its eyes, the first point of contact on any face.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
A result - sort of
Oh yes, nearly forgot, last week I wrote this stuff about one of my employees and his unfortunate littering fine.
Well yesterday I took a phone call from the Enforcement Officer at Leeds City Council.
You see I'd written to him to say that I wasn't sure who had been driving the vehicle in question that day but that it may have been "xxx xxxxxxxx" - well I'm not going to pay the fekkin fine am I ? But I also asked if he (the Enforcer) would issue a littering ticket to one of his own employees, the binman who left a newspaper scattered all the way up our street two weeks ago when they emptied my neighbours dustbin.
I didn't really expect to get a reply, it was more of a piss-take, but the Enforcer rang me in person to thank me for dobbing in my employee and assure me that he was dealing with my information regarding the binmen and that I may soon be receiving a call from the head of the binmen (who happens to be a lady) by way of an apology.
Of course I had to get all indignant then, no use telling him that I was just taking the piss, and I bristled just long enough on the phone to convince him that the newspapers really had been a risk to life and limb and someone really should swing for it.
PS : Why was I suprised that the binmens boss is a lady ? Its a perfect job for a lady.
Well yesterday I took a phone call from the Enforcement Officer at Leeds City Council.
You see I'd written to him to say that I wasn't sure who had been driving the vehicle in question that day but that it may have been "xxx xxxxxxxx" - well I'm not going to pay the fekkin fine am I ? But I also asked if he (the Enforcer) would issue a littering ticket to one of his own employees, the binman who left a newspaper scattered all the way up our street two weeks ago when they emptied my neighbours dustbin.
I didn't really expect to get a reply, it was more of a piss-take, but the Enforcer rang me in person to thank me for dobbing in my employee and assure me that he was dealing with my information regarding the binmen and that I may soon be receiving a call from the head of the binmen (who happens to be a lady) by way of an apology.
Of course I had to get all indignant then, no use telling him that I was just taking the piss, and I bristled just long enough on the phone to convince him that the newspapers really had been a risk to life and limb and someone really should swing for it.
PS : Why was I suprised that the binmens boss is a lady ? Its a perfect job for a lady.
Smoking - is it good for you ?
Well thats set 'cat among pigeons hasn't it ?
The House of Commons vote to ban smoking in all public and private licensed premises that is.
I'll declare right now that I don't smoke, never have done, may have had a puff on a few ciggies as a feckless youth, and there's a photograph of me somewhere as a pissed up 18 year old enjoying a cigar outside a pub, but apart from that I class myself as a non-smoker.
But thats not to say that I'm anti-smoking.
I hate the smell of stale smoke on your clothes the morning after a night out in a pub, but I suspect that (if they had a sense of smell, which most of them don't) even smokers actually hate the smell the morning after, but I do enjoy the smell of fresh tobacco smoke especially in a pub, its a part of the pub atmosphere, maybe I'm addicted ?
Other tobacco smells can be so evocotive too, a pipe for instance will always remind me of my first job where my boss always had a pipe on the go, all day long, most afternoons you couldn't see into his office at all and the only way to find out if he was still in there was to check to see if his car was still parked outside.
Cigars do the same thing, they remind me of the golf club that my dad used to be a member of, most of the blokes there would light one up in the mens bar when they'd finished a round of golf, I think they sold more cigars than cigarettes inthere, and it was never an unpleasant smell.
What I didn't like, and have never understood, is the all-consuming addiction to cigarettes that some people have. When I was 20-something I worked all over the country for my company and for six months or so was based in Birmingham where they found me lodgings with a lady in accounts.
She and her relationship with her husband and his mistress deserve a blog all on their own, but the main point here is that they were both chain smokers, and when I say chain smokers I mean that they were never seen during their waking moments without a cigarette on the go.
Their house fekking stank, they fekkin stank, and because I stayed there then I fekkin stank, of old stale cigarette smoke and it was not very pleasant. Everything in their house was brown, everything that she put on the table tasted of cigarettes everywhere you turned, every room in the house had an ashtray and a spare lighter, even in the bathroom, they were nice people but I was glad to move on, after I'd broken their glass dining table, but thats another story.
Of course the most ironic thing about the whole vote to ban public use of cigarettes is the fact that the bar in the House of Commons will not be included in the legislation, its classed as a Royal Palace and apparently the rules do not apply to royal palaces, which makes me wonder which other rules do not apply in royal palaces, can the Queen do literally anything in her palaces and if so then why doesn't she make the tabloids more often with tales of outrageous behaviour ?
The House of Commons vote to ban smoking in all public and private licensed premises that is.
I'll declare right now that I don't smoke, never have done, may have had a puff on a few ciggies as a feckless youth, and there's a photograph of me somewhere as a pissed up 18 year old enjoying a cigar outside a pub, but apart from that I class myself as a non-smoker.
But thats not to say that I'm anti-smoking.
I hate the smell of stale smoke on your clothes the morning after a night out in a pub, but I suspect that (if they had a sense of smell, which most of them don't) even smokers actually hate the smell the morning after, but I do enjoy the smell of fresh tobacco smoke especially in a pub, its a part of the pub atmosphere, maybe I'm addicted ?
Other tobacco smells can be so evocotive too, a pipe for instance will always remind me of my first job where my boss always had a pipe on the go, all day long, most afternoons you couldn't see into his office at all and the only way to find out if he was still in there was to check to see if his car was still parked outside.
Cigars do the same thing, they remind me of the golf club that my dad used to be a member of, most of the blokes there would light one up in the mens bar when they'd finished a round of golf, I think they sold more cigars than cigarettes inthere, and it was never an unpleasant smell.
What I didn't like, and have never understood, is the all-consuming addiction to cigarettes that some people have. When I was 20-something I worked all over the country for my company and for six months or so was based in Birmingham where they found me lodgings with a lady in accounts.
She and her relationship with her husband and his mistress deserve a blog all on their own, but the main point here is that they were both chain smokers, and when I say chain smokers I mean that they were never seen during their waking moments without a cigarette on the go.
Their house fekking stank, they fekkin stank, and because I stayed there then I fekkin stank, of old stale cigarette smoke and it was not very pleasant. Everything in their house was brown, everything that she put on the table tasted of cigarettes everywhere you turned, every room in the house had an ashtray and a spare lighter, even in the bathroom, they were nice people but I was glad to move on, after I'd broken their glass dining table, but thats another story.
Of course the most ironic thing about the whole vote to ban public use of cigarettes is the fact that the bar in the House of Commons will not be included in the legislation, its classed as a Royal Palace and apparently the rules do not apply to royal palaces, which makes me wonder which other rules do not apply in royal palaces, can the Queen do literally anything in her palaces and if so then why doesn't she make the tabloids more often with tales of outrageous behaviour ?
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
How can I say this ...
OK, this is rather delicate, and it may cause offence to those of a delicate constitution, it may even put some people of their meals, or going to the toilet ever again.
My arse is as sore as an extremely sore thing that has been rubbed with sandpaper to make it even sorer.
If your constitution is feeling delicate after reading that then now is the time to click somewhere else.
It started this morning, well no, I think it started last night.
You see we (the family) were going out last night, valentines night, for a chinese meal at a swish chinese (obvious) restaurant in Leeds but then I pointed out that as it was valentines night it would probably be fully booked and wouldn't it just be much easier to get a chinese meal and eat it at home, so we did, got the banquet for two plus a load of other stuff and filled the table. Included in the stuff was a dish of beef and cashew nuts, no-one else liked it so I wolfed the lot down.
Cut to the scene this morning and I'm sitting on the toilet as I do most mornings expecting a normal crap, I'm sitting there humming tunelessly and looking at the ceiling when suddenly something feels stuck.
Something was stuck, I'm blaming the chinese food last night but really it could have been a coincidence, except for the fact that I think that some of the cashew nuts had passed through undigested and I think that one of them was sticking out of the obstruction.
Now I did geology at school and I know how, during the last ice age, glaciers would slide ever so slowly down valleys and the bits of rock and stuff that they had picked up en route would carve out the valley sides into shapes that they hadn't been before, I know all that, I listened in geology.
And this morning all that geology suddenly came flooding back to me as the iceberg up my arse struggled to get through the normal sized opening that is loosely described as my arsehole.
I had to push, I just had to, there was no alternative other than to sit there all day and the kids needed taking to school soon, so unless I was to write a note to their teacher on a piece of toilet paper and stuff it under the toilet door with instructions to hand it to the headteacher, "dear headteacher, my kids were late for school today because a huge turd won't come out of my arse this morning, I think its the chinese meal we had last night, anyway, sorry about the kids being late", then I had no choice, I pushed.
My god it felt like I was pushing a bowling ball out of my arse, and the cashew nuts stuck in it brought tears to my eyes as they slowly, millimetre by millimetre scraped and scratched their way out of there, leaving striations that any geologist would go into raptures about and would cause a surgeon to reach for his gloves and face mask.
Eventually it came out, but I haven't been the same since.
This must be what childbirth is like.
My arse now feels three times bigger than it was yesterday and I daren't sneeze in case my dinnertime sandwich comes flying out, as yet undigested and twelve hours before it would normally exit the system.
I can't sit down, the whole of my bottom feels bruised and invaded, as if I'd just starred in "Nancy-boys do it with broom handles" it really hurts and its not fooking funny so stop laughing.
I write this in the interests of blogging and as a public information script - if you feel something stuck at anytime in the future, if something feels like its coming down sideways, then don't push, write a note to the headmaster and make your excuses for work, just let nature take its course, it will break down eventually, hopefully.
I'm limping off to bed now in the hope that the muscles can relax and restore overnight, tomorrow could be a long day.
Stop laughing at the back, its not funny.
My arse is as sore as an extremely sore thing that has been rubbed with sandpaper to make it even sorer.
If your constitution is feeling delicate after reading that then now is the time to click somewhere else.
It started this morning, well no, I think it started last night.
You see we (the family) were going out last night, valentines night, for a chinese meal at a swish chinese (obvious) restaurant in Leeds but then I pointed out that as it was valentines night it would probably be fully booked and wouldn't it just be much easier to get a chinese meal and eat it at home, so we did, got the banquet for two plus a load of other stuff and filled the table. Included in the stuff was a dish of beef and cashew nuts, no-one else liked it so I wolfed the lot down.
Cut to the scene this morning and I'm sitting on the toilet as I do most mornings expecting a normal crap, I'm sitting there humming tunelessly and looking at the ceiling when suddenly something feels stuck.
Something was stuck, I'm blaming the chinese food last night but really it could have been a coincidence, except for the fact that I think that some of the cashew nuts had passed through undigested and I think that one of them was sticking out of the obstruction.
Now I did geology at school and I know how, during the last ice age, glaciers would slide ever so slowly down valleys and the bits of rock and stuff that they had picked up en route would carve out the valley sides into shapes that they hadn't been before, I know all that, I listened in geology.
And this morning all that geology suddenly came flooding back to me as the iceberg up my arse struggled to get through the normal sized opening that is loosely described as my arsehole.
I had to push, I just had to, there was no alternative other than to sit there all day and the kids needed taking to school soon, so unless I was to write a note to their teacher on a piece of toilet paper and stuff it under the toilet door with instructions to hand it to the headteacher, "dear headteacher, my kids were late for school today because a huge turd won't come out of my arse this morning, I think its the chinese meal we had last night, anyway, sorry about the kids being late", then I had no choice, I pushed.
My god it felt like I was pushing a bowling ball out of my arse, and the cashew nuts stuck in it brought tears to my eyes as they slowly, millimetre by millimetre scraped and scratched their way out of there, leaving striations that any geologist would go into raptures about and would cause a surgeon to reach for his gloves and face mask.
Eventually it came out, but I haven't been the same since.
This must be what childbirth is like.
My arse now feels three times bigger than it was yesterday and I daren't sneeze in case my dinnertime sandwich comes flying out, as yet undigested and twelve hours before it would normally exit the system.
I can't sit down, the whole of my bottom feels bruised and invaded, as if I'd just starred in "Nancy-boys do it with broom handles" it really hurts and its not fooking funny so stop laughing.
I write this in the interests of blogging and as a public information script - if you feel something stuck at anytime in the future, if something feels like its coming down sideways, then don't push, write a note to the headmaster and make your excuses for work, just let nature take its course, it will break down eventually, hopefully.
I'm limping off to bed now in the hope that the muscles can relax and restore overnight, tomorrow could be a long day.
Stop laughing at the back, its not funny.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
That was a nice weekend ...
The posh frock do on saturday night went well, I was on orange juice all night as usual but at least it was the fresh stuff and not out of a bottle.so the headache on sunday wasn't that bad.
Within 15 minutes the format for the night had been well established, women all sat around in a circle, men all stood at the bar, and thats how it stayed until we went home at 1.30am, apart from the bit where we were all invited out onto the verandha to freeze our cobblers off while we watched and laughed as Chris set fire to £500 worth of fireworks.
The posh and ritzy golf club was just as I expected it to be, lots of pictures of past presidents in the entrance all bearing a remarkable likeness to Mr Cholmondley-Warner, rules everywhere, no-one allowed to use the club presidents chair, all the stuff that I hate about private members golf clubs, no wonder I gave up my membership at my club two years ago, it must be just me who feels an overwhelming need to park in the Presidents car park spot every time I drive into any club car park, even better if you're driving an old car or a scruffy van at the time.
Our 25th wedding anniversary will be coming around in two years time - it won't be held at a golf club and it won't involve vast expenditure either, guests may get to share a small and inexpensive firework (one between two) and dine on peanuts and crisps, money will be prefered in leiu of corny silver-based presents, but before then its my 50th birthday in September to sort out, I may just opt out of a party and get them to post money in an envelope instead.
Within 15 minutes the format for the night had been well established, women all sat around in a circle, men all stood at the bar, and thats how it stayed until we went home at 1.30am, apart from the bit where we were all invited out onto the verandha to freeze our cobblers off while we watched and laughed as Chris set fire to £500 worth of fireworks.
The posh and ritzy golf club was just as I expected it to be, lots of pictures of past presidents in the entrance all bearing a remarkable likeness to Mr Cholmondley-Warner, rules everywhere, no-one allowed to use the club presidents chair, all the stuff that I hate about private members golf clubs, no wonder I gave up my membership at my club two years ago, it must be just me who feels an overwhelming need to park in the Presidents car park spot every time I drive into any club car park, even better if you're driving an old car or a scruffy van at the time.
Our 25th wedding anniversary will be coming around in two years time - it won't be held at a golf club and it won't involve vast expenditure either, guests may get to share a small and inexpensive firework (one between two) and dine on peanuts and crisps, money will be prefered in leiu of corny silver-based presents, but before then its my 50th birthday in September to sort out, I may just opt out of a party and get them to post money in an envelope instead.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Posh Frock Saturday
Its posh frock saturday today.
Tonight is the night of our friends Chris and Sue's 25th wedding anniversary and they are hosting a party at their golf club, which just happens to be a very razzy and posh golf club, one of the razziest in Leeds and frequented almost without exception by posh people.
So despite Sue insisting that no-one has to "get dressed up" and that its "not a posh frock do", all of the ladies who are going (I use the term "Ladies" very loosely), (not that they are loose ladies or anything), have all decided that a new posh frock is in order and we gentlemen have spent weeks being dragged around shopping malls having our wallets emptied and cursing Chris for having agreed to host their "do" at his golf club, which he knows is inherently posh, as we tell him every time we see him.
I met Carmel in Asda last night, Carmel is another old friend - her husband and I have been friends since we were five years old, and that is eons ago - and Carmel asked me what I would be wearing for the posh frock do tonight, I shrugged my shoulders and she seemed shocked. She asked me if men deliberatly don't think about what they are wearing on any occasion and I agreed that that was a possible explanation, truth is I don't know what I'll wear and I probably won't know until about ten minutes before I leave the house tonight, I certainly haven't gone out shopping for stuff for the last three weeks.
Tonight the loosely described ladies will compare posh frocks, they will comment on each others posh frocks as they each enter the room, they will talk of how they have searched for weeks for the right accessory, and they will talk on the subject all night.
We menfolk on the other hand will not mention our garb once during the evening, I would curl up and die if one of my friends paid me a compliment (or otherwise) on my shirt or my trousers and I owuld be viewed with great sexual suspicion if I touched or felt a friends shirt or pants and asked him where he'd bought such an item and "my how it matches his eye shadow".
As part of the celebrations Chris has organised a nine hole golf competition for the lads this afternoon, we're not all taking up his offer though, our little group of golfers have not played for over a year and the first hole on one of the posh-ist golf clubs in Leeds is not the place to discover that your vicious right slice has returned to harrass the members watching from the posh golf club windows.
In retribution Sue has invited the loose ladies to an afternoon's pampering at a nearby hotel spa and so they are all going down there after lunch, leaving us non-golfing menfolk to stay at home and sulk, I might just get my golf clubs out of the shed and clean them up, the last time I saw them a couple of weeks ago the bag was covered in mould, another good reason not to turn up at the posh golf club with them this afternoon.
On the other hand I may just paint.
Tonight is the night of our friends Chris and Sue's 25th wedding anniversary and they are hosting a party at their golf club, which just happens to be a very razzy and posh golf club, one of the razziest in Leeds and frequented almost without exception by posh people.
So despite Sue insisting that no-one has to "get dressed up" and that its "not a posh frock do", all of the ladies who are going (I use the term "Ladies" very loosely), (not that they are loose ladies or anything), have all decided that a new posh frock is in order and we gentlemen have spent weeks being dragged around shopping malls having our wallets emptied and cursing Chris for having agreed to host their "do" at his golf club, which he knows is inherently posh, as we tell him every time we see him.
I met Carmel in Asda last night, Carmel is another old friend - her husband and I have been friends since we were five years old, and that is eons ago - and Carmel asked me what I would be wearing for the posh frock do tonight, I shrugged my shoulders and she seemed shocked. She asked me if men deliberatly don't think about what they are wearing on any occasion and I agreed that that was a possible explanation, truth is I don't know what I'll wear and I probably won't know until about ten minutes before I leave the house tonight, I certainly haven't gone out shopping for stuff for the last three weeks.
Tonight the loosely described ladies will compare posh frocks, they will comment on each others posh frocks as they each enter the room, they will talk of how they have searched for weeks for the right accessory, and they will talk on the subject all night.
We menfolk on the other hand will not mention our garb once during the evening, I would curl up and die if one of my friends paid me a compliment (or otherwise) on my shirt or my trousers and I owuld be viewed with great sexual suspicion if I touched or felt a friends shirt or pants and asked him where he'd bought such an item and "my how it matches his eye shadow".
As part of the celebrations Chris has organised a nine hole golf competition for the lads this afternoon, we're not all taking up his offer though, our little group of golfers have not played for over a year and the first hole on one of the posh-ist golf clubs in Leeds is not the place to discover that your vicious right slice has returned to harrass the members watching from the posh golf club windows.
In retribution Sue has invited the loose ladies to an afternoon's pampering at a nearby hotel spa and so they are all going down there after lunch, leaving us non-golfing menfolk to stay at home and sulk, I might just get my golf clubs out of the shed and clean them up, the last time I saw them a couple of weeks ago the bag was covered in mould, another good reason not to turn up at the posh golf club with them this afternoon.
On the other hand I may just paint.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Dealing with self obsessed idiots
There are lots of disadvantages to owning your own business, long hours, huge responsibility, big potential for financial suicide if it all goes wrong, and the ever present spectre of HM Government leeching your profits off you in ever-more ingenious ways.
But sometimes things work in your favour.
Like being able to tell customers, or even potential customers to fuck right off and stop pestering you.
We do this on a fairly regular basis with those customers who have become a vexation to the spirit, I'm sure I don't need to explain that you occasionally meet people in your life who just irritate the hell out of you, generally because no matter what you do for them, it will never be good enough. They are the born complainers, they are never happy and the sound of their voice on the phone just plunges you into depths of despair that you never thought existed.
In an ordinary salaried job you have to bear these people like a huge millstone around your neck, you have to be subserviant to them, apologise constantly and try and find ways to appease them, although you know its an impossible task - if you don't do any of this stuff you are likely to find yourself bollacked by your boss for upsetting customers and losing business.
At my company you are allowed to tell these people to fuck right off and stick their business up their arses, followed by a recomendation that they ring our competitors and pester them instead, all our employees have this right ordained on them, they only have to ask for the key to the cupboard, explain why the customer is a pain in the arse, and I will grant them full "fuck right off" rights - we have a lot of fun with this precedure, but we realised two years ago that 90% of our time was being spent trying to appease 2% of our customers, so we told them to fuck right off and we've been much happier since, and we still make a profit.
For instance,
I received a phone call last Friday from a guy in a staffing agency who was so far up his own arse that he will never have a problem with prostate cancer, he'll see it developing long before anyone else. He commenced this huge, long pre-prepared speech about how he had to prepare a tender for a contract with "a large soft drinks manufacturer in Wakefield" to which I interrupted "you mean coca-cola", he confirmed a little suprised as if it were a secret that Coke has been canned at Wakefield for the last ten years, I muttered the word "wanker" under my breath.
I sent him a quote for some of our equipment and software, itemising everything and hoped that I wouldn't hear from him again, he had irritated the hell out of me in just a few minutes conversation but to be honest I've found that the same sort of wankers tend to work in the staff agency business, it must be a pre-requisite for the job.
Monday he rang and left a message for me to ring him, I didn't so he sent me an email asking if I'd go and see him "for an important meeting", his use of the word "important" meaning that he was the important element - I've been to these meetings before, you are meeting with someone who hasn't even won the contract yet and yet still wants to impress you as though he is the world best negotiator - I've sat in front of, and wasted so much time on these pre-tender staff recruitment wankers that I just don't do it anymore.
I emailed him back saying that I could go any day this week, he replied with the answer "you are making me work really hard for this, come on Friday, tell me a time". This answer did it for me, if he thought he was working hard now then he'd have to work fucking harder to get to speak to me again.
He rang all day Tuesday, he emailed me all day Tuesday, trying to get a time arranged, people in the office fended him off while I told them that I had no intention of speaking to him.
I picked the phone up on Wednesday morning and he was on the other end, he sounded pissed off, which is exactly what I wanted him to be, I went into belligerent mode, he demanded to know what time I would be meeting him on Friday.
"I'm not coming" I replied
"Well it very important that you do, I need some answers for my tender documents"
"What are your questions"
"I'm getting the impression that you don't want my business"
"Yes"
"But I need these questions answering"
"Ask me the questions now"
This threw him slightly, I heard him throw the phone down on the desk and shuffle through reams and reams of paper, complaining all the while, muttering stuff like "I don't believe this, I don't believe this"
He came back to the phone, I was laughing out loud at him and sharing the joke with my brother who was sat opposite wondering what was going on.
"Can this equipment be accessed remotely" he asked, question one.
"Yes" I replied, "Thats why we've itemised a modem on your quote"
"Can it link to Sage payroll" question two
"Yes, thats why theres an item on the quote that says Sage payroll link"
Silence.
If I'd gone all the way to his office that would have been the sum total of our meeting.
"Are there any other companies apart from yours who sell this stuff"
"Yes"
"Where"
"Yellow Pages"
I put the phone down, he didn't ring back.
Its times like those that make it all worth while.
But sometimes things work in your favour.
Like being able to tell customers, or even potential customers to fuck right off and stop pestering you.
We do this on a fairly regular basis with those customers who have become a vexation to the spirit, I'm sure I don't need to explain that you occasionally meet people in your life who just irritate the hell out of you, generally because no matter what you do for them, it will never be good enough. They are the born complainers, they are never happy and the sound of their voice on the phone just plunges you into depths of despair that you never thought existed.
In an ordinary salaried job you have to bear these people like a huge millstone around your neck, you have to be subserviant to them, apologise constantly and try and find ways to appease them, although you know its an impossible task - if you don't do any of this stuff you are likely to find yourself bollacked by your boss for upsetting customers and losing business.
At my company you are allowed to tell these people to fuck right off and stick their business up their arses, followed by a recomendation that they ring our competitors and pester them instead, all our employees have this right ordained on them, they only have to ask for the key to the cupboard, explain why the customer is a pain in the arse, and I will grant them full "fuck right off" rights - we have a lot of fun with this precedure, but we realised two years ago that 90% of our time was being spent trying to appease 2% of our customers, so we told them to fuck right off and we've been much happier since, and we still make a profit.
For instance,
I received a phone call last Friday from a guy in a staffing agency who was so far up his own arse that he will never have a problem with prostate cancer, he'll see it developing long before anyone else. He commenced this huge, long pre-prepared speech about how he had to prepare a tender for a contract with "a large soft drinks manufacturer in Wakefield" to which I interrupted "you mean coca-cola", he confirmed a little suprised as if it were a secret that Coke has been canned at Wakefield for the last ten years, I muttered the word "wanker" under my breath.
I sent him a quote for some of our equipment and software, itemising everything and hoped that I wouldn't hear from him again, he had irritated the hell out of me in just a few minutes conversation but to be honest I've found that the same sort of wankers tend to work in the staff agency business, it must be a pre-requisite for the job.
Monday he rang and left a message for me to ring him, I didn't so he sent me an email asking if I'd go and see him "for an important meeting", his use of the word "important" meaning that he was the important element - I've been to these meetings before, you are meeting with someone who hasn't even won the contract yet and yet still wants to impress you as though he is the world best negotiator - I've sat in front of, and wasted so much time on these pre-tender staff recruitment wankers that I just don't do it anymore.
I emailed him back saying that I could go any day this week, he replied with the answer "you are making me work really hard for this, come on Friday, tell me a time". This answer did it for me, if he thought he was working hard now then he'd have to work fucking harder to get to speak to me again.
He rang all day Tuesday, he emailed me all day Tuesday, trying to get a time arranged, people in the office fended him off while I told them that I had no intention of speaking to him.
I picked the phone up on Wednesday morning and he was on the other end, he sounded pissed off, which is exactly what I wanted him to be, I went into belligerent mode, he demanded to know what time I would be meeting him on Friday.
"I'm not coming" I replied
"Well it very important that you do, I need some answers for my tender documents"
"What are your questions"
"I'm getting the impression that you don't want my business"
"Yes"
"But I need these questions answering"
"Ask me the questions now"
This threw him slightly, I heard him throw the phone down on the desk and shuffle through reams and reams of paper, complaining all the while, muttering stuff like "I don't believe this, I don't believe this"
He came back to the phone, I was laughing out loud at him and sharing the joke with my brother who was sat opposite wondering what was going on.
"Can this equipment be accessed remotely" he asked, question one.
"Yes" I replied, "Thats why we've itemised a modem on your quote"
"Can it link to Sage payroll" question two
"Yes, thats why theres an item on the quote that says Sage payroll link"
Silence.
If I'd gone all the way to his office that would have been the sum total of our meeting.
"Are there any other companies apart from yours who sell this stuff"
"Yes"
"Where"
"Yellow Pages"
I put the phone down, he didn't ring back.
Its times like those that make it all worth while.
Methods for extracting money...part XVII
If there is one thing that acts as a signature for this current government since they came to power, its the word "fines".
I'm not a political animal, I despise them all with equal ferocity and simply refuse to accept that an MP can become an MP without having worked in a "proper" job first, its the accepted route into Westminster these days to simply finish your degree course and then brown-nose your nearest political party HQ until they accept your nomination to be an MP.
All of which is irrelevant to todays gripe.
I received a letter in the post yesterday from Leeds City Council advising me that the driver of one of my cars was seen to throw a cigarette stub from the window of said vehicle at a particular date and time, and that for this heinous crime I need to send them £50 right now (or within 14 days) as they "have a no-tolorance stand against littering".
I may be the registered keeper of the vehicle in question but I don't drive it, they explain that if I know who the driver was then I must inform them immediately as they are entitled in law to know the information whilst investigating a criminal offence (their exact words).
I may just tell them to fuck off and behave themselves.
On the other hand I will reply to inform them that it wasn't me and could they help me with more information to identify the driver on that day, its a ploy that worked once with an alleged speeding offence. You see the thing about these instant fines for any tiny, minor transgressions of the rulebook is that the pedants at City Hall know that 99% of us citizens are honest and that we will simply cough up, challenge their lack of evidence and they generally have to back down, because they have no evidence.
On the local radio news today is the story of a Leeds woman who, this very day, is to appear in court accused of avoiding payment of the correct train fare sometime last year, she didn't avoid paying the fare at all, she underpaid by ten pence, that is she bought a ticket but it was ten pence too little, she now faces an instant fine of £100 and court costs.
You can be fined for anything and everything today, national and local government offices have the power to fine you for anything they like and need offer no evidence to you, its almost a random event, and in the meantime we have one of the filthiest city centres that I have ever seen, with a complete lack of manpower or willpower to do any cleaning, cleaning the streets expends income, fining people for dropping litter raises income, its plain to see what emphasis the national government places on local authorities.
This one will run and run.
I'm not a political animal, I despise them all with equal ferocity and simply refuse to accept that an MP can become an MP without having worked in a "proper" job first, its the accepted route into Westminster these days to simply finish your degree course and then brown-nose your nearest political party HQ until they accept your nomination to be an MP.
All of which is irrelevant to todays gripe.
I received a letter in the post yesterday from Leeds City Council advising me that the driver of one of my cars was seen to throw a cigarette stub from the window of said vehicle at a particular date and time, and that for this heinous crime I need to send them £50 right now (or within 14 days) as they "have a no-tolorance stand against littering".
I may be the registered keeper of the vehicle in question but I don't drive it, they explain that if I know who the driver was then I must inform them immediately as they are entitled in law to know the information whilst investigating a criminal offence (their exact words).
I may just tell them to fuck off and behave themselves.
On the other hand I will reply to inform them that it wasn't me and could they help me with more information to identify the driver on that day, its a ploy that worked once with an alleged speeding offence. You see the thing about these instant fines for any tiny, minor transgressions of the rulebook is that the pedants at City Hall know that 99% of us citizens are honest and that we will simply cough up, challenge their lack of evidence and they generally have to back down, because they have no evidence.
On the local radio news today is the story of a Leeds woman who, this very day, is to appear in court accused of avoiding payment of the correct train fare sometime last year, she didn't avoid paying the fare at all, she underpaid by ten pence, that is she bought a ticket but it was ten pence too little, she now faces an instant fine of £100 and court costs.
You can be fined for anything and everything today, national and local government offices have the power to fine you for anything they like and need offer no evidence to you, its almost a random event, and in the meantime we have one of the filthiest city centres that I have ever seen, with a complete lack of manpower or willpower to do any cleaning, cleaning the streets expends income, fining people for dropping litter raises income, its plain to see what emphasis the national government places on local authorities.
This one will run and run.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
I shall salsa no more
"They weren't for me" I explained, "Oh no, not for me at all, they were for Suzanne, honest they were"
My brother, peering over my shoulder at my email inbox clearly didn't believe me and he clutched his ribs as another spasm of laughter racked through his torso.
They were for Suzanne, they really were, its all the gym's fault.
She and a friend of hers had signed up for an aerobics class just after xmas and for the last three weeks she's been extollig the virtues of salsa-cise, a sort of, well, salsa-based exercise I suppose.
So much so that two weeks ago she got me to order the Tracey Shaw Salsa-cise dvd, plus, and because "other people who ordered this dvd also ordered this one" she got me to order the Tracey Shaw Salsa-cise part II dvd, total cost £23.99 for the pair, and like a fool I ordered them on my Amazon account.
By the way, Tracey Shaw is the blonde slapper who played some hairdressing character in Coronation Street, she was Ashley's wife until Richard Hilman murdered her, not that I watch Coronation Street of course, oh no, it just explained all of that in the blurb for the Tracey Shaw Salsa-cise dvd, not that I read the sleeve notes for salsa-cise dvd's, oh no - I'll stop digging now, this hole is deep enough.
So two weeks later and suzanne is nagging the life out of me as to why her salsa-cise dvd's haven't come yet, I cuold tell her that the Tracey Shaw Salsa-cise regime didn't exactly set the world on fire and perhaps they've had to get Tracey Shaw to re-record the routines in her front room with a video camera, "Hey Tracey, we've got an order for another dvd, wheres the master copy ?", "I threw it away, it was shit".
And then on Monday I get an email from Amazon to apologise and advise that the Tracey Shaw Salsa-cise dvds could possibly take up to another three weeks to arrive, Tracey has apparently forgotten the routines and they are having to make some more up, Suzanne tells me to "cancel the bloody order".
And so I cancel them and pray to whatever god is in flavour this month that no-one intercepts my email, I check and double check the address and ensure that I haven't accidently forwarded it to everyone else in my address boook, oh the shame of having those few words "Tracey Shaw Salsa-cise dvd" flying around the ethernet with my name associated with it.
My brother, peering over my shoulder at my email inbox clearly didn't believe me and he clutched his ribs as another spasm of laughter racked through his torso.
They were for Suzanne, they really were, its all the gym's fault.
She and a friend of hers had signed up for an aerobics class just after xmas and for the last three weeks she's been extollig the virtues of salsa-cise, a sort of, well, salsa-based exercise I suppose.
So much so that two weeks ago she got me to order the Tracey Shaw Salsa-cise dvd, plus, and because "other people who ordered this dvd also ordered this one" she got me to order the Tracey Shaw Salsa-cise part II dvd, total cost £23.99 for the pair, and like a fool I ordered them on my Amazon account.
By the way, Tracey Shaw is the blonde slapper who played some hairdressing character in Coronation Street, she was Ashley's wife until Richard Hilman murdered her, not that I watch Coronation Street of course, oh no, it just explained all of that in the blurb for the Tracey Shaw Salsa-cise dvd, not that I read the sleeve notes for salsa-cise dvd's, oh no - I'll stop digging now, this hole is deep enough.
So two weeks later and suzanne is nagging the life out of me as to why her salsa-cise dvd's haven't come yet, I cuold tell her that the Tracey Shaw Salsa-cise regime didn't exactly set the world on fire and perhaps they've had to get Tracey Shaw to re-record the routines in her front room with a video camera, "Hey Tracey, we've got an order for another dvd, wheres the master copy ?", "I threw it away, it was shit".
And then on Monday I get an email from Amazon to apologise and advise that the Tracey Shaw Salsa-cise dvds could possibly take up to another three weeks to arrive, Tracey has apparently forgotten the routines and they are having to make some more up, Suzanne tells me to "cancel the bloody order".
And so I cancel them and pray to whatever god is in flavour this month that no-one intercepts my email, I check and double check the address and ensure that I haven't accidently forwarded it to everyone else in my address boook, oh the shame of having those few words "Tracey Shaw Salsa-cise dvd" flying around the ethernet with my name associated with it.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
The pink lozenge revisited...
So I'm lying there on a huge vivid pink lozenge, its just after 9am and I'm totally relaxed but I can't feel my mouth and I'm sure its three times bigger than it normally is. I'm staring straight up at the ceiling at a huge bright light feeling just like a rabbit in car headlights when suddenly this huge face appears above me, staring down into my eyes and a soft voice asks "could you bite down on this please"
No, I havent been smoking those "funny" cigarettes again and no I haven't overdosed on my well worn copy of Sgt Peppers again , I'm at the dentist - again.
I show him the crown that he fitted temporarily two weeks ago, the fact that its in my hand instead of in my mouth suggests that the glue didn't work too well and he nods in his gentle way and ignores the issue, today I'm here for the root to be filled permenantly and then decide what sort of new crown I'll have the pleasure of financing.
The filling goes fine, I lie there in a stupor staring at his light fitting while he does his stuff using gallons of water to clean out the drilled out root, he cuts my gum back and I can't feel a thing, I haven't felt anything in the last half hour but the real pain is yet to come, the pain in my wallet.
The work for today is finished, the root filling completed and I sit up in the pink lozenge as he explains what the next session will bring - he is going to fit a new carbon fibre post into the root which will apparently bond much better than the old titanium one that had a life span of "lifetime" when it was fitted, which converted quickly to just three years. Apparently they use much stronger glue with the carbon fibre ones, I hope so.
On top of that he will then fit a brand new tooth made from porcelain in his very own studio, it all sound just whoopee-doo until he explains that the tooth will cost £520, its either this or the pirate look and the gap-toothed pirate look isn't too good.
So its another £95 for yesterdays session and another appointment in two weeks time and another temporary crown in place held in with not-so-strong glue so I have to be careful eating on it, and I'm left wondering again, whatever happened to the National Health Service ?
No, I havent been smoking those "funny" cigarettes again and no I haven't overdosed on my well worn copy of Sgt Peppers again , I'm at the dentist - again.
I show him the crown that he fitted temporarily two weeks ago, the fact that its in my hand instead of in my mouth suggests that the glue didn't work too well and he nods in his gentle way and ignores the issue, today I'm here for the root to be filled permenantly and then decide what sort of new crown I'll have the pleasure of financing.
The filling goes fine, I lie there in a stupor staring at his light fitting while he does his stuff using gallons of water to clean out the drilled out root, he cuts my gum back and I can't feel a thing, I haven't felt anything in the last half hour but the real pain is yet to come, the pain in my wallet.
The work for today is finished, the root filling completed and I sit up in the pink lozenge as he explains what the next session will bring - he is going to fit a new carbon fibre post into the root which will apparently bond much better than the old titanium one that had a life span of "lifetime" when it was fitted, which converted quickly to just three years. Apparently they use much stronger glue with the carbon fibre ones, I hope so.
On top of that he will then fit a brand new tooth made from porcelain in his very own studio, it all sound just whoopee-doo until he explains that the tooth will cost £520, its either this or the pirate look and the gap-toothed pirate look isn't too good.
So its another £95 for yesterdays session and another appointment in two weeks time and another temporary crown in place held in with not-so-strong glue so I have to be careful eating on it, and I'm left wondering again, whatever happened to the National Health Service ?
Monday, February 06, 2006
Searching for ancestors...
oooooh, I've found a new hobby :)
Was given a link to a couple of websites yesterday, one of them (ancestry.co.uk) set me off on the "tracing your ancestors" trail, and I think I'm hooked now.
I tried to do this four years ago, even bought some software that helped you draw up a family tree then left you high and dry to fill inthe details when I realised it was based on access to American registery web sites - the places you go to to check Births Marriages and Deaths.
Since then the UK seems to have caught up and grown up with the idea that ordinary citizens should have the right to browse public archives online and there are something like 150 years worth of public records available now.
In two hours yesterday I followed my family through the bits that I already knew back to the 1901 census where I found my paternal grandfather as a boy living with his parents and NINE other brothers and sisters in a pub in Meanwood, Leeds.
I knew about the pub because its still there and when my dad was alive he'd poin tit out every time we passed it, telling me that if his father had won the coin toss then we'd have been running the bloody pub instead of his cousins family, quite honestly I'm glad my grandad lost the pub, its a right shithole.
So I found my great-grandfather and now know how old he was in 1901 and hence his birth year, my next task is to trace his birth certificate and move further back -its addictive !
And then we started on Suzannes family.
Suzanne comes from a mining village background where it was common for families to have six or even ten children, Suzanne has five brothers and sisters and her mother is one of nine so her family tree is going to provide full time employment for the next six or seven years.
We chose her mothers fathers line to go back down and again found our way to 1901 very easily, especially as the 1901 census is free to access, ie you don't have to pay any fees to view the info unless you want to view the actual documents. I really wanted to view her families census form so I paid £5 for access to ten document downloads and got the page from the census that listed her great-grandfathers family at the time.
They lived in the next village to the one they are in now but as all the villages around there were attached to pits that were owned by the Delaval family then its not suprising that they moved three miles in 100 years, they would have moved to their current location when their own pit closed.
Her grandfather had three other siblings and the children and both parents all lived in one room, looking at the address it seems to have been a sub-divided house, the father is listed as "miner, hourly paid" which basically means he was the lowest of the low and only worked when there was a demand at the pit, one of the children was also working, the eldest boy was 14 years old and was listed as "miner, pony driver" which is self explanatory - its this sort of detail that I love to read about even though you are peeking at someone elses miserable lives.
In contrast my great-gradfathers family of ten had two of the boys old enough to work in 1901, one was an apprentice plasterer and the other at 21 years of age an auctioneer - this one is interesting because one generation down from him my fathers cousin ended up as a director of a large estate agents, not sure if there is a link yet but theres another branch to climb down :)
The two families seem poles apart, one scraping (literally) a living underground and the other running a succesful business producing sons who were succesful in their own lines of business, my grandad formed the company that I run now, another one of his brothers continued the pub business.
One thing is worthy of note though - none of the daughters of either family are listed as having jobs of any description.
Was given a link to a couple of websites yesterday, one of them (ancestry.co.uk) set me off on the "tracing your ancestors" trail, and I think I'm hooked now.
I tried to do this four years ago, even bought some software that helped you draw up a family tree then left you high and dry to fill inthe details when I realised it was based on access to American registery web sites - the places you go to to check Births Marriages and Deaths.
Since then the UK seems to have caught up and grown up with the idea that ordinary citizens should have the right to browse public archives online and there are something like 150 years worth of public records available now.
In two hours yesterday I followed my family through the bits that I already knew back to the 1901 census where I found my paternal grandfather as a boy living with his parents and NINE other brothers and sisters in a pub in Meanwood, Leeds.
I knew about the pub because its still there and when my dad was alive he'd poin tit out every time we passed it, telling me that if his father had won the coin toss then we'd have been running the bloody pub instead of his cousins family, quite honestly I'm glad my grandad lost the pub, its a right shithole.
So I found my great-grandfather and now know how old he was in 1901 and hence his birth year, my next task is to trace his birth certificate and move further back -its addictive !
And then we started on Suzannes family.
Suzanne comes from a mining village background where it was common for families to have six or even ten children, Suzanne has five brothers and sisters and her mother is one of nine so her family tree is going to provide full time employment for the next six or seven years.
We chose her mothers fathers line to go back down and again found our way to 1901 very easily, especially as the 1901 census is free to access, ie you don't have to pay any fees to view the info unless you want to view the actual documents. I really wanted to view her families census form so I paid £5 for access to ten document downloads and got the page from the census that listed her great-grandfathers family at the time.
They lived in the next village to the one they are in now but as all the villages around there were attached to pits that were owned by the Delaval family then its not suprising that they moved three miles in 100 years, they would have moved to their current location when their own pit closed.
Her grandfather had three other siblings and the children and both parents all lived in one room, looking at the address it seems to have been a sub-divided house, the father is listed as "miner, hourly paid" which basically means he was the lowest of the low and only worked when there was a demand at the pit, one of the children was also working, the eldest boy was 14 years old and was listed as "miner, pony driver" which is self explanatory - its this sort of detail that I love to read about even though you are peeking at someone elses miserable lives.
In contrast my great-gradfathers family of ten had two of the boys old enough to work in 1901, one was an apprentice plasterer and the other at 21 years of age an auctioneer - this one is interesting because one generation down from him my fathers cousin ended up as a director of a large estate agents, not sure if there is a link yet but theres another branch to climb down :)
The two families seem poles apart, one scraping (literally) a living underground and the other running a succesful business producing sons who were succesful in their own lines of business, my grandad formed the company that I run now, another one of his brothers continued the pub business.
One thing is worthy of note though - none of the daughters of either family are listed as having jobs of any description.
Saturday, February 04, 2006
Another shopping saturday
Its not a well known fact that as the fourth largest city in the UK, Leeds has no large shopping mall to speak of.
It could be argued that with such a vibrant city centre we have no use for an out of town shopping mall and that is indeed part of the reason, the other reason is that while Newcastle was building its Metro Centre, Sheffield its Meadowhall, Manchester its Trafford Centre etc etc etc, the Secretary of State at the time (who's name escapes my memory banks) placed an embargo on planning permission for any more out of town Malls, stating the financial destruction of existing city centres like Newcastle and Sheffield (especially Sheffield) as a direct result.
Leeds ended up with the White Rose Centre which is probably worth one fifth of The Metro Centre and a quarter of Meadowhall, and we invested in a vibrant city centre instead, which is why Leeds city centre is full of Geordies every saturday, come to visit and reminisce over what Newcastle used to be like.
Which takes us to today.
Next weekend is the 25th wedding anniversary of some close friends, they are having their "do" at a golf club, they promise that its not a posh frock do but you try and explain that to any woman who has got half a chance of buying a new posh frock for a golf club "do".
And so it was decreed this morning that the wife and my youngest daughter would like to go to Meadowhall to do the shopping thing for a posh frock for next week, I did try to explain that it was not a posh frock do, but they weren't listening, actually I told the dog that it wasn't a posh frock do as I knew they would not listen anyway.
Its a 40 minute drive to Meadowhall and once there I did my usual thing of losing them inside the mall within two minutes, they keep in touch by mobile and when they are ready to go home they call me, I'm only there for the chauffeur duties.
Its hard trying to keep yourself interested for three hours in Waterstones and WH Smith, there is only so much reading and re-reading of book sleeves that you can do, only a finite number of times that you can read every single magazine on the rack without shop assistants starting to notice you.
I went for a coffee, ate a large muffin with it, read their newspapers, sat and stared at the ceiling for a while and then the Costa Coffee assistants came to clear the table and stared in that way that they have that says, "you've drunk our coffee, read our papers, now piss off".
I wandered around shoe shops picking up shoes that I would never buy in a month of sundays, pointed shoes seem to be in this spring, I found myself in the Apple shop with no intention of buying yet another iPod, we've got three already, but they do have some very nice looking PC's and I mentioned this to a very bored assistant who was aged about twelve years old.
In Body Shop I sprayed myself with all three of the gents aftershave that they sell - just three things for men in the whole shop, Anita Roddick you're a bitch, but didn't buy any of them, left smelling like a tarts boudoir though.
I avoided the likes of Top Shop or River Island as the clientel in there seem to be still in kindergarten these days and so found myself browsing Marks & Spencers with zero interest in anything they had to sell, and Debenhams with just a flicker of interest in a big fookoff coffe machine with loads of chrome on it and some very dangerous looking tubes and spouts and loads of buttons to press to impress guests.
The coffee machine ignited an interest and I went and sought out the Kitchen Shop where apparently their stock is for professional cooks, their coffee machines were certainly fookoff professional ones at fookoff prices too, but it killed ten minutes just comparing each one and counting the number of buttons on each and how their uses differed, the interest wained as I reminded myself that I've got a perfectly good caffetierre at home that only needs you to push a plunger to make perfectly good coffee without the need for a plumbing qualification.
And then finally she rang me to ask where I was and would I come to Wallis' to see what she'd picked for herself, the thought did cross my mind that Wallis' was the very first shop that she'd walked into, it was where I'd left her three hours earlier, and sure enough when I got there she showed me the outfit she'd picked and confirmed that it was the one she'd seen within three minutes of us arriving at Meadowhall, but of course I am by now too wise in my ways to point this out to her, and not too keen on receiveing another black eye in the middle of a shopping mall.
Money spent, outfit obtained and we were on our way back home.
Until we reached the outskirts of Leeds and she uttered the words I had been dreading, "We pass The White Rose Centre coming this way don't we, I need a blouse for this outfit".
Fortunately I was as mellow as the weather has been today and so I found myself browsing again in the Whte Rose version of Debenhams, a half hour enlightened by an announcement that if all customers would make their way to the "Home" department then every adult in the store would be given a free chefs knife.
As it happened I was already in the "Home" section looking at coffee machines again, Debenhams coffee machines aren't as good as the Kitchen Shop's by the way, they haven't got as many knobs (god I must have been really bored by then), and I was nearly trampled in the tsunami of elderly women who descended on the "Home" department for their free chefs knives.
Within fifteen seconds the demonstration table was mobbed by at least 70 or 80 old ladies, many of whom probably didn't even know what was being given away, but it was free so they wanted one, whatever it was. I left quickly as something in my mind felt uneasy by the thought of hundreds of people, many of them already senile, wandering a department store armed with free chefs knives, as I left Debenhams I could already hear the clash of the cutlery at the demo table, either they were handed them out hand over fist, or the old gits had already started hand to hand combat to get at their freebies.
It could be argued that with such a vibrant city centre we have no use for an out of town shopping mall and that is indeed part of the reason, the other reason is that while Newcastle was building its Metro Centre, Sheffield its Meadowhall, Manchester its Trafford Centre etc etc etc, the Secretary of State at the time (who's name escapes my memory banks) placed an embargo on planning permission for any more out of town Malls, stating the financial destruction of existing city centres like Newcastle and Sheffield (especially Sheffield) as a direct result.
Leeds ended up with the White Rose Centre which is probably worth one fifth of The Metro Centre and a quarter of Meadowhall, and we invested in a vibrant city centre instead, which is why Leeds city centre is full of Geordies every saturday, come to visit and reminisce over what Newcastle used to be like.
Which takes us to today.
Next weekend is the 25th wedding anniversary of some close friends, they are having their "do" at a golf club, they promise that its not a posh frock do but you try and explain that to any woman who has got half a chance of buying a new posh frock for a golf club "do".
And so it was decreed this morning that the wife and my youngest daughter would like to go to Meadowhall to do the shopping thing for a posh frock for next week, I did try to explain that it was not a posh frock do, but they weren't listening, actually I told the dog that it wasn't a posh frock do as I knew they would not listen anyway.
Its a 40 minute drive to Meadowhall and once there I did my usual thing of losing them inside the mall within two minutes, they keep in touch by mobile and when they are ready to go home they call me, I'm only there for the chauffeur duties.
Its hard trying to keep yourself interested for three hours in Waterstones and WH Smith, there is only so much reading and re-reading of book sleeves that you can do, only a finite number of times that you can read every single magazine on the rack without shop assistants starting to notice you.
I went for a coffee, ate a large muffin with it, read their newspapers, sat and stared at the ceiling for a while and then the Costa Coffee assistants came to clear the table and stared in that way that they have that says, "you've drunk our coffee, read our papers, now piss off".
I wandered around shoe shops picking up shoes that I would never buy in a month of sundays, pointed shoes seem to be in this spring, I found myself in the Apple shop with no intention of buying yet another iPod, we've got three already, but they do have some very nice looking PC's and I mentioned this to a very bored assistant who was aged about twelve years old.
In Body Shop I sprayed myself with all three of the gents aftershave that they sell - just three things for men in the whole shop, Anita Roddick you're a bitch, but didn't buy any of them, left smelling like a tarts boudoir though.
I avoided the likes of Top Shop or River Island as the clientel in there seem to be still in kindergarten these days and so found myself browsing Marks & Spencers with zero interest in anything they had to sell, and Debenhams with just a flicker of interest in a big fookoff coffe machine with loads of chrome on it and some very dangerous looking tubes and spouts and loads of buttons to press to impress guests.
The coffee machine ignited an interest and I went and sought out the Kitchen Shop where apparently their stock is for professional cooks, their coffee machines were certainly fookoff professional ones at fookoff prices too, but it killed ten minutes just comparing each one and counting the number of buttons on each and how their uses differed, the interest wained as I reminded myself that I've got a perfectly good caffetierre at home that only needs you to push a plunger to make perfectly good coffee without the need for a plumbing qualification.
And then finally she rang me to ask where I was and would I come to Wallis' to see what she'd picked for herself, the thought did cross my mind that Wallis' was the very first shop that she'd walked into, it was where I'd left her three hours earlier, and sure enough when I got there she showed me the outfit she'd picked and confirmed that it was the one she'd seen within three minutes of us arriving at Meadowhall, but of course I am by now too wise in my ways to point this out to her, and not too keen on receiveing another black eye in the middle of a shopping mall.
Money spent, outfit obtained and we were on our way back home.
Until we reached the outskirts of Leeds and she uttered the words I had been dreading, "We pass The White Rose Centre coming this way don't we, I need a blouse for this outfit".
Fortunately I was as mellow as the weather has been today and so I found myself browsing again in the Whte Rose version of Debenhams, a half hour enlightened by an announcement that if all customers would make their way to the "Home" department then every adult in the store would be given a free chefs knife.
As it happened I was already in the "Home" section looking at coffee machines again, Debenhams coffee machines aren't as good as the Kitchen Shop's by the way, they haven't got as many knobs (god I must have been really bored by then), and I was nearly trampled in the tsunami of elderly women who descended on the "Home" department for their free chefs knives.
Within fifteen seconds the demonstration table was mobbed by at least 70 or 80 old ladies, many of whom probably didn't even know what was being given away, but it was free so they wanted one, whatever it was. I left quickly as something in my mind felt uneasy by the thought of hundreds of people, many of them already senile, wandering a department store armed with free chefs knives, as I left Debenhams I could already hear the clash of the cutlery at the demo table, either they were handed them out hand over fist, or the old gits had already started hand to hand combat to get at their freebies.
Friday, February 03, 2006
It starts again...
At last, its time, the season starts this weekend.
What ?
The rugby league season of course, my game of choice, for viewing that is.
Tonight sees the World Club Challenge, a made-up invention of a trophy which in theory should have the ultimate status in terms of club rugby league, its played between the last seasons British Superleague Champions and the Australian NRL Champions, in fact its viewed as an almost meaningless friendly by most supporters of the game (apart from those supporters who's team win) but its a great curtain raiser for the start of the Superleague season next week.
Also this weekend is the first round of the RL Challenge Cup and Bramley are competing at home to Thatto Heath, we won't go into the complications of explaining which leagues the respective teams play in, suffice to say that all the teams in the challange cup at this stage are amatuer, with the superleague teams joining at round three.
So there we are, bottles of beer are currently chilling in the beer fridge for tonights World Club Challenge on Sky Sports and I'll be wrapped up on Sunday for the short trip to Stanningley and more beer and rugby on the hill watching Bramley - with a bit of luck I'll even get to see the bench coats that I sponsored last year (which idiot uses his company money to sponsor insulated bench suits to keep the substitutes warm in a summer game ?) - (me, thats who, it seemed like a good idea at the time).
What ?
The rugby league season of course, my game of choice, for viewing that is.
Tonight sees the World Club Challenge, a made-up invention of a trophy which in theory should have the ultimate status in terms of club rugby league, its played between the last seasons British Superleague Champions and the Australian NRL Champions, in fact its viewed as an almost meaningless friendly by most supporters of the game (apart from those supporters who's team win) but its a great curtain raiser for the start of the Superleague season next week.
Also this weekend is the first round of the RL Challenge Cup and Bramley are competing at home to Thatto Heath, we won't go into the complications of explaining which leagues the respective teams play in, suffice to say that all the teams in the challange cup at this stage are amatuer, with the superleague teams joining at round three.
So there we are, bottles of beer are currently chilling in the beer fridge for tonights World Club Challenge on Sky Sports and I'll be wrapped up on Sunday for the short trip to Stanningley and more beer and rugby on the hill watching Bramley - with a bit of luck I'll even get to see the bench coats that I sponsored last year (which idiot uses his company money to sponsor insulated bench suits to keep the substitutes warm in a summer game ?) - (me, thats who, it seemed like a good idea at the time).
More Apologies...
'kin hell
More apologies in order.
Anyway its sorted now - comments should appear without delay, 'kin tick box options, grrrrr.
More apologies in order.
Anyway its sorted now - comments should appear without delay, 'kin tick box options, grrrrr.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
They've caught the bastard
I received a letter over the weekend from Her Majesty's West Yorkshire Police Force informing me that they had caught and charged the scrote who burgled my house in December 2004, well done to them.
Let me at this point state that I am very pro-police, I have family members who are serving officers and the friend that we go on our summer holiday with is a serving officer, so I have an insight into what goes on behind the closed interview room doors.
Obviously what has happened in this case is that the suspect was suspected all along and they've just been waiting for him to make a big mistake (instead of the small mistakes he made at our burglary) so that they could nail him then get him to admit to (probably) hundreds of other offences.
Still, it was nice to get the letter, the police are much more communitative these days, especially as they are always having to justify their council tax inspired budgets.
In my case the lowlife had peeked in the kitchen window, seen my wallet and mobile phone on the worktop and kicked the kitchen door in to snatch the two items, a not inconsiderable feat as its a steel framed upvc door with five locking points and two internal bolts - it just burst open - the attending police officers were most impressed and not to keen to go out seeking the superhuman person who had achieved this.
We of course were in bed when this happened, three loud bangs on the door was what we heard and by the time I'd tip-toed downstairs and searched the rooms before finding the knackered back door wide open, the scrote had long gone. jake the Golden Retreiver was sleeping in the kitchen that night but of course he doesn't bark and so I found him stood at the back door staring out with a "what the fuck was that" expression on his face.
The police got lots of evidence, a big shoe print on the pvc door which they could identify without even sending to a lab, we got the phone records and found that he'd used his own phone to ring mine, presumably to see if it worked, then used my phone to ring for a taxi to take him home to Becketts Park, and we found from one of my Switch cards that he'd called at a local garage and used the card to buy cigarettes and £20 cashback, the garage provided their own cctv evidence to the police - it was all pretty conclusive really.
And that was the sum total of it until this weekend, I wonder how quickly I could become a magistrate and if so would they let me apply the death penalty ?
Let me at this point state that I am very pro-police, I have family members who are serving officers and the friend that we go on our summer holiday with is a serving officer, so I have an insight into what goes on behind the closed interview room doors.
Obviously what has happened in this case is that the suspect was suspected all along and they've just been waiting for him to make a big mistake (instead of the small mistakes he made at our burglary) so that they could nail him then get him to admit to (probably) hundreds of other offences.
Still, it was nice to get the letter, the police are much more communitative these days, especially as they are always having to justify their council tax inspired budgets.
In my case the lowlife had peeked in the kitchen window, seen my wallet and mobile phone on the worktop and kicked the kitchen door in to snatch the two items, a not inconsiderable feat as its a steel framed upvc door with five locking points and two internal bolts - it just burst open - the attending police officers were most impressed and not to keen to go out seeking the superhuman person who had achieved this.
We of course were in bed when this happened, three loud bangs on the door was what we heard and by the time I'd tip-toed downstairs and searched the rooms before finding the knackered back door wide open, the scrote had long gone. jake the Golden Retreiver was sleeping in the kitchen that night but of course he doesn't bark and so I found him stood at the back door staring out with a "what the fuck was that" expression on his face.
The police got lots of evidence, a big shoe print on the pvc door which they could identify without even sending to a lab, we got the phone records and found that he'd used his own phone to ring mine, presumably to see if it worked, then used my phone to ring for a taxi to take him home to Becketts Park, and we found from one of my Switch cards that he'd called at a local garage and used the card to buy cigarettes and £20 cashback, the garage provided their own cctv evidence to the police - it was all pretty conclusive really.
And that was the sum total of it until this weekend, I wonder how quickly I could become a magistrate and if so would they let me apply the death penalty ?
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
British troops in Iraq
A serious blog !!!
My first in two months, unless you count the ones about my errant tooth.
Anyway, this country awoke yesterday morning to the sad news that another British soldier had been killed in Iraq, its unfortunately not as newsworthy as it used to be nowadays, except for the headline fact that this unfortunate combatant was the 100th British soldier to give his life for the Iraqi cause.
Compared to the American combatant deaths of around 2250 at the latest count, the number 100 pales almost into insignificance but the British media dined out yesterday on the number 100 and predictably called for troop withdrawals, or at least a plan for eventual withdrawals.
GMTV started the ball rolling with one of their mind-numbing Yes/No telephone polls - "Should British troops be withdrawn now" the question asked, I didn't even stick around to see the result as the poll was always preceeded by an interview with a grieving mother.
GMTV viewers vote for whatever option the producer has placed at the top of the list, in this case the option to vote for was clearly "Yes" and so I assume they got their overwhelming answer, GMTV polls are always overwhelming. it makes for good reporting, they can't really announce "well none of you can be arsed voting in our poll this morning, how are we going to pay for this TV station if you won't vote ?", its almost as if the reaching of 100 British deaths was the original quota, as if Tony Blair will sit before his cabinet today and ask "well chaps we've reached the 100 figure, are you going to vote for another 100 or do I get to pull the troops out"
If only it were a Yes/No solution, if only Tony Blair could ask GMTV to decide his Iraqi policy for him, or indeed any policy come to think of it, we could have a government policy vote on GMTV every morning, "Do you want to pay more tax, vote Yes or No, calls should cost no more than £1".
The sad, undoubtable and (we should be) proud fact is that the British Armed Forces have a reputation second to none in world armed forces rankings and we are the obvious choice when allies wish to put their "world policemen" theories into practice, whatever you think of those policies it is not an option for us to say "No thanks we don't want to come to this party this time".
And its probably a tad insensitive at the current time as 100 families are reminded of their loss today, but our armed forces are not exactly strapped for volunteers, young people who want to be a part of this extremely professional force, whether for patriotic or personal reasons (I'd like to come out with a good trade etc), despite the knowledge that they will invariably be placed into a combat situation during their contracted period of service.
And its an even harder statement to make but its a hard fact that as taxpayers we contribute mightily towards our armed forces, admittedly the sums are getting smaller in real terms year on year and the armed forces are screaming for more as a result, but still, our so called "defence budget" is huge, topping £30billion, and if our armed forces aren't going to be deployed to the worlds trouble spots, then what the hell do we need so many of them for and why do we need to equip them so expensively ?
There is no simple solution, Bush does not have a simple strategy, Blair cannot make any promises on Iraq other than allow murmurs to creep out of the Defence Ministry that we will start a withdrawal "sometime this year", maybe.
And in the meantime troops will die, like they always have done, there is statement issued every year in November by the British Legion that a British soldier died in conflict in every year in the 20th century, we are always in conflict, even as peacekeepers we are in conflict, its what our armed forces are there for and the crocodile tears of the media are frankly shamefull.
My first in two months, unless you count the ones about my errant tooth.
Anyway, this country awoke yesterday morning to the sad news that another British soldier had been killed in Iraq, its unfortunately not as newsworthy as it used to be nowadays, except for the headline fact that this unfortunate combatant was the 100th British soldier to give his life for the Iraqi cause.
Compared to the American combatant deaths of around 2250 at the latest count, the number 100 pales almost into insignificance but the British media dined out yesterday on the number 100 and predictably called for troop withdrawals, or at least a plan for eventual withdrawals.
GMTV started the ball rolling with one of their mind-numbing Yes/No telephone polls - "Should British troops be withdrawn now" the question asked, I didn't even stick around to see the result as the poll was always preceeded by an interview with a grieving mother.
GMTV viewers vote for whatever option the producer has placed at the top of the list, in this case the option to vote for was clearly "Yes" and so I assume they got their overwhelming answer, GMTV polls are always overwhelming. it makes for good reporting, they can't really announce "well none of you can be arsed voting in our poll this morning, how are we going to pay for this TV station if you won't vote ?", its almost as if the reaching of 100 British deaths was the original quota, as if Tony Blair will sit before his cabinet today and ask "well chaps we've reached the 100 figure, are you going to vote for another 100 or do I get to pull the troops out"
If only it were a Yes/No solution, if only Tony Blair could ask GMTV to decide his Iraqi policy for him, or indeed any policy come to think of it, we could have a government policy vote on GMTV every morning, "Do you want to pay more tax, vote Yes or No, calls should cost no more than £1".
The sad, undoubtable and (we should be) proud fact is that the British Armed Forces have a reputation second to none in world armed forces rankings and we are the obvious choice when allies wish to put their "world policemen" theories into practice, whatever you think of those policies it is not an option for us to say "No thanks we don't want to come to this party this time".
And its probably a tad insensitive at the current time as 100 families are reminded of their loss today, but our armed forces are not exactly strapped for volunteers, young people who want to be a part of this extremely professional force, whether for patriotic or personal reasons (I'd like to come out with a good trade etc), despite the knowledge that they will invariably be placed into a combat situation during their contracted period of service.
And its an even harder statement to make but its a hard fact that as taxpayers we contribute mightily towards our armed forces, admittedly the sums are getting smaller in real terms year on year and the armed forces are screaming for more as a result, but still, our so called "defence budget" is huge, topping £30billion, and if our armed forces aren't going to be deployed to the worlds trouble spots, then what the hell do we need so many of them for and why do we need to equip them so expensively ?
There is no simple solution, Bush does not have a simple strategy, Blair cannot make any promises on Iraq other than allow murmurs to creep out of the Defence Ministry that we will start a withdrawal "sometime this year", maybe.
And in the meantime troops will die, like they always have done, there is statement issued every year in November by the British Legion that a British soldier died in conflict in every year in the 20th century, we are always in conflict, even as peacekeepers we are in conflict, its what our armed forces are there for and the crocodile tears of the media are frankly shamefull.
An Apology ...
An apology to those who have posted replies in the last month and not seen them appear on the blog, fekkin technology eh ?
How did I know I had the setting made so that I had to approve them first, anyway, I've unticked the box and comments should appear now, even the spam ones, I'm frightened to tick any more boxes to get rid of the spam ones as I'll probably delete myself next time.
How did I know I had the setting made so that I had to approve them first, anyway, I've unticked the box and comments should appear now, even the spam ones, I'm frightened to tick any more boxes to get rid of the spam ones as I'll probably delete myself next time.
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