Your flights been cancelled...

I took a phone call this afternoon from a friend who's family we will be holidaying in Menorca with, as we do every two years, why we do it every second year is not known but its just worked out that way in the past.

So he rang me to remind me that the payment for the flights was due next Friday and to see if I'd cancelled Amanda's ticket as she doesn't want to go with us this year, what with her being all grown up now and all, doesn't want to be seen on holiday with her parents and their friends, oh no.

And then he rang back a little bit later to tell me that the company that we have booked the flights with, and paid the deposits to, have gone into voluntary liquidation, but that being ABTA bonded the flight operator (Airtours) was taking over the bookings and that we now owed the balance to them, they will apparently claim the deposits back under the ABTA insurance scheme.

I didn't tell our friend that this had happened to us once before and that it took nearly twelve months of red tape and general "we're fucking you about and we know it" sort of letters from the agents that had been appointed to sort that one out, we lost that holiday and waited for ten months to get our money back, ABTA is an insurance company and insurance company's don't give you your money back unless you threaten them really really hard, I think I almost had to use the horses head in the bed threat to get our money that time.

So he told me of the conversation that he'd had with Airtours and he seems quite happy to run along with their story that all will be fine and we just have to pay the balance at the beginnning of June, and he asked them to confirm June because we'd been told it was May 5th, and the guy from Airtours tells my friend that its normal procedure for their agent to request the money a month in advance of it actually being needed so that they could stick it in their bank for 30 days and smile at it - the bastards.

But its all going to be OK anyway because I have a Plan B, and I secretly hope that I have to use Plan B, it goes like this...

The Airtours flight is going from Leeds/Bradford Airport (which is a mile away from our homes) direct to Mahon in Menorca, its costing us £275 each for the return flight .

Jet2.com, a budget airline, have opened a route from Leeds to Mahon, and with a reputation for ridiculously low prices I checked their web site this week, their price for the return flight is in excess of £350 for the two dates in august that we need, so they are out of the question, that one has to be Plan C.

But Jet2.com run some very cheap flights to Barcelona and with a bit of rummaging around on t'interweb I found a ferry that sails from Barcelona to Cuitadella which is the other main town on Menorca, my Plan B, which may come into effect if Amanda changes her mnd and wants to go with us after I've already cancelled her ticket, is to give her my flight ticket and for me to fly out to Barcelona a couple of days in advance of the rest of the party, bum around Barca for a couple of days and if sober enough catch the evening ferry to Cuitadella, the Barca flights and ferry will cost about £180 - it would mean that Suzanne would have to drive the hire car from Mahon airport to our apartment and then drive to Cuitadella to pick me up (or more likely tell me to get a fucking taxi), but still, it sounds like a plan to me.

So thats it, if Airtours mess us about or start to play hardball with the ABTA bond then we'll all fly to Barca and catch the ferry, hell we can even stay in Barca for a few more days at each end of the Menorca holiday and turn it in to a three week holiday, I'm starting to like this plan every time I think of it.

A cleaner by any other name ...

What makes a person want to be a dental hygenist ?

I've been back to the dentist with the big pink chair today, back again for a "scale and polish" today, £27 to let some old bint scrape away at your teeth with a steel pick thing then polish them with a glorified electric toothbrush, they see me coming every time, I'm a sucker for spending money with them.

Arrived at the surgery at 8.50am, I was the only one in again, and fawlty Towers was showing on the LCD TV in the waiting room - again.

It was the one with the deaf old lady who used to be in "Please Sir", she's complaining to Basil Fawlty about her room

MRS RICHARDS And another thing I asked for a room with a view
BASIL Deaf, mad and blind. This is the view as far as I can remember, madam. Yes, this is it.
MRS RICHARDS When I pay for a room I expect something more interesting than that.
BASIL That is Torquay, Madam.
MRS RICHARDS Well, it not good enough.
BASIL Well...may I ask what you were hoping to see out of a Torquay hotel bedroom window? Sydney Opera House perhaps? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Herds of wildebeests sweeping majestically....


And just at that point an elderley lady with mad hair (think Albert Einstein) popped out of the spare surgery door and called my name.

I thought she was the cleaner so intrigued as to why she wanted me to go into the spare surgery that is never used now I followed her beckoning finger.

She wasn't the cleaner, or rather she was the cleaner, the cleaner of teeth, the dental hygenist.

She uses the old surgery room, with the old chair and the old lights and the old spitoon and its all a bit shabby now compared to the other surgery with the big pink chair and computer technology lined up on every wall, I felt sidelined in here, sort of "hes only here for his teeth cleaning, stick him in the old room with the old bag"

And so she started scraping away at my teeth with her steel pick and I started to wonder, what makes someone want to scrape other peoples teeth for a living ?

She's probably got twenty or so patients to scrape away at today, banal one-way conversations to carry on while scraping and flossing and polishing, why would you choose that as a career path ? Is she a failed dentist ? Did she not get the correct grades at dentist school and her tutor advised her to get a job in a supermarket, or, wait, there might be another way, you could be, you could be.....a dental hygenist.

I'd choose the supermarket career, but still...

I don't want the money anyhow...

Bank Holiday weekend is closing in fast, and I have a problem.

Erm, two problems actually, one big problem and one thats not really a problem at all, let me explain.

Problem #1 is that the news from Newcastle is not good. Suzannes mum, after doing so well over the Easter weekend and being released from hospital last Friday, took a turn for the worse this morning and is back on a high dependancy unit in the hospital, and its not looking good this time, Suzannes with her and isn't sure when she's coming back home now (she was due home tomorrow), the staff in the hospital are hinting that her mum might not leave hospital this time.

Anyway, at least we don't have to clean the house tonight.

Thats not very funny is it.

Problem #2 is not really a problem at all, its just that I don't want to do it. Our biggest customer needs a job completing this weekend, the bank holiday weekend, and because its their fault they are throwing shitloads of money at us to work on saturday, I've got one person who jumped at the chance to earn some big bucks for just a few hours (hopefully) work but I'm the other one who'll have to be there, and to be honest I couldn't care less about the money, I won't see the money anyway it all just goes into the business account and then the taxman takes it off us, but even so, I'm not bothered, I'd rather be at home.

But I'll go, it'll be a 5am start on a holiday weekend and if I'm lucky I'll be finished by 12 noon and back home some time mid-afternoon and £500 will find its way into the Inland Revenue account instead of my back pocket, life is so fucked up at the moment.

Ignore me for a bit

...I just want to see what these look like on t'interweb





none of these are finished yet and I don't know if they'll be sellable





but you get a different view of them on t'interweb



One of them is commisioned

but I'm not sure,


hmmm,


move along, nothing to see here...

Its definitely spring now

Its definitely spring now, I've cut the grass, or rather the flymo has.

Suzanne (currently in the north east with her mum for a week) was very impressed when I told her on the phone, I very rarely do the lawn cutting, I prefer to plant plants in tubs and stuff, so she was very impressed when I said I'd cut the back lawn.

She wouldn't be so impressed if she could see it though.

You see the one downside of having a dog is that it has to poo somewhere. Some people take their dogs for walks and let them poo on other peoples space, some take little plastic bags out with them to pick up the dog poo and bring it home to bin it, we let Jake poo all over our back lawn and then when Suzanne needs to cut the grass she goes out with a big plastic bag and collects the poo up.

I have another way...

I just cut the grass, poo and all.

You see, I reckon that poo is bio-degradeable, what the hell, I know poo is bio-degradeable, it just is. And so I don't understand why I should need to pick it up and throw it in the bin, why not, as an alternative, just let it bio-degrade on the lawn ?

I'll tell you right here and now, we've got a beautiful lawn when its cut, my brother came around this afternoon and commented on how thick and lush our lawn was compared to his, I told him my secret, its dog poo, Jakes poo to be specific, I told him the next time Suzanne cuts the grass she'll pick it allup and put it in a big bag and he can have the big bag to smear all over his lawn.

So I just zoomed the flymo all over the long grass (its been a long winter) and the flymo blade did its stuff, mulched the poo and the grass all together, it didn't pick much of it up though like its supposed to and so the back lawn looks a bit dishevelled now with piles of grass and reconstituted dog food scattered all over it, the magpies seem to be enjoying it though, they're walking all over it now turning over the big piles of as yet unbroken-down compost material, probably tutting away at each other saying things like "can you believe this, he never picked the poo up first".

I didn't do the strimmer bit around the edges either because I forgot, I've already told you, I don't do the grass cutting very often.

What I did do though was empty two of the barrels of their stagnant waterlogged soil - last summer I bought four quarter barrels and filled them with soil and planted them up. I was told that they were old oak whisky maturing barrels and bugger me so they were, of course I forgot that to be whisky barrels they'd have to be watertight and so they've stood out in the garden all winter and just filled up with water, killing the plants that were in them and going awfully stagnant.

I emptied two of them this afternoon and was almost overcome with the fumes, refilled them and have put them at the front of the house - I've got a southern hemisphere thing going on in one of the barrels, bought two flax plants, one of Australian origin and one from New Zealand, so we'll see which one is the toughest over the summer.

And finally, the pond is full of a half million tadpoles, they've all hatched out now and so I can't do anything with the pond until they all die or hop away as frogs, I leave the pond over the winter, apart from letting the filter run, as the fish need lots of vegetation cover to hibernate properly, but in a few weeks time the weeds will all be raked out and I'll find out if the carp have all over-wintered again.

I'm a proper little Alan Titcharsh me.

She'd kill me if she could see the back lawn though :)

New Cars

Its that time of year again, new car time.

We have four cars in the business and one of them is a right pain in the arse.

Its a Peugeot 307SW and its a money pit, if anyone is considering buying a three year old Peugeot 307SW HDi then either buy the one I've got for sale at £5000, or don't buy one at all, avoid them at all costs.

Three years ago Peugeot made an almighty cockup when sourcing the fuel tanks for their 307SW's, they picked a fuel tank that deisel fuel can rot, so after two years or so the inside of your fuel tank resembles an old crumbly dried out christmas cake with extremely delicate powdery icing - or something similar if you canthink of another thing that is crumbling to bits.

The stuff inside your fuel tank then gets sucked down the fuel pipes and fucks up the fuel filter, the fuel pump and then the cylinder injectors - its repairable under warranty and we had the whole fuel delivery system replaced last year on ours. The we found out the there is a suspension problem at around 70K miles, we've just had our suspension problem fixed on ours too.

So we're not enchanted by the car and its time to gte rid and the only people who will give us a decent trade-in given its reputation for design faults is the Peugeot dealer that supplied it to us, so I'm looking at replacing it with a Peugeot 407, despite promising that I'd never buy another Peugeot.

And while I was in the showroom I saw the new Peugeot 107, its the sort of car that only young people should drive, young people like Amanda our 17 year old daughter would qualify for instance, so I took her down to the dealership to show her the funky yellow one in the showroom. She loved it and refused to leave the showroom without it, that very one.

She's currently waiting to take her driving test for the second time and was going to share Suzannes car if and when she passes, but we're now seriously considering buying her the 107 instead, well not so much buying it for her but stopping her allowance and paying the finance off with that instead, her monthly allowance actually more than covers the repayments on the ridiculously cheap deal that our local dealer has going - £99 deposit and £110 a month, and now that she has found work in a bar three nights a week she has more disposable income than I have - time to make her understand that the real world does not permit disposable income, you must be in debt in real life and now is a good place for her to start learning.

Now when we drive past the Peugeot dealer (like nearly every day) she makes me slow down so that we can see the yellow 107 in the showroom properly and gaze at it lovingly, I picked her up from her bar job this morning at 1.10am and we had to slow down outside the Peugeot dealer to gaze lovingly at the 107 in the middle of the night.

She retakes her driving test on May 12th and I think we'll sign up for the car for delivery around then, daughters are for spoiling and ours get spoiled, maybe we're not doing them any favours but my dad bought me my first car (not a new one mind) when I passed my test so its just going around again.

I just hope they've fitted a decent fuel tank to it.

Ssshhh ! Its not for the public to use you know...

Last night for reasons to spurious to mention I decided that I may find myself in a situation a week on Monday where I may be stranded in Newcastle without a car to drive back to Leeds in, a genuine situation, I haven't made it up, and conversley if that happens then I will need to get back to Newcastle without a car on the following Friday.

And I thought about trains, I have thoughts of great genius like that sometimes.

Now you have to bear in mind at the start of this story that the last time I caught a train between two cities (what used to be called "inter-city") was 29 years ago, seriously, and since then I've only ever caught two other local trains and someone else organised those for me, its pathetic really isn't it ?

So I looked on this t'interweb thingy and quickly discovered that the two operators at the top of the google listing didn't really want to tell me about their core business, that is they run trains between cities but they'd really like to keep it all a big secret if you don't mind.

GNER was the first that I tried, entered their web site, all was fine, typed in the date of my first journey and the approximate time (2pm) and they quickly told me that they had two trains departing for Leeds within five minutes of each other, which one would I like, oh and by the way would I like to hire a car too ?

I ignored the car hire advert as I couldn't possibly think of a reason why I should want to hire a car whilst booking a train journey, its a bit like McDonalds asking you if you'd like a Burger King instead, so I ignored that and clicked the buttons that said "get prices".

It then asked me to register with GNER with my email address and a secret password.

I didn't want to register with them, I just wanted to know how much the train journey would cost me, I verbally abused the screen and went back to google and chose the second operator, Virgin Trains, Richard Branson wouldn't let me down would he ?

Well actually , yes he would, his web site also wanted me to register with them before disclosing their prices.

I was beginning to feel a bit left out by now, what was it about me that made them want to know stuff before they'd tell me their prices ? It doesn't happen at supermarkets, when I pick up a cabbage I don't have to register with Asda before they'll tell me how much it is, I just wanted to know how much a normal train fare was from Newcastle to Leeds without having to sign the official secrets act - but they didn't trust me enough.

After asking around on a few internet forums I finally found a web site that promised to tell me the innermost secrets of the train operators - their prices. The web site was so obscure that I can't remember what it was called now, but sure enough when I types in all the details it came back with a timetable and .... prices.

On the train that I wanted to catch and ont he two days that I wanted to travel, they had eight different ticket options ranging from £11 return to £80 return, all on the same train, none in first class, nothing special like a three course meal served to my seat by livered employees, just a bog standard ticket, eight options with a £69 price differential and they all had different names with different explanations as to why they should have different prices, the bottom line is that you could have eight people sitting in the same railway carriage and they'd all have paid a different price for the same journey at the same time, and the one who paid £80 would be mightily pissed off with himself.


So here is my suggestion for the train operators.

Have one price for each journey.

Charge a bit more at peak times if you want to, but define what those times are.

Charge a bit more if the train is quicker or direct and doesn't involve changes at other stations.

But at the very least make sure that everyone on the same train is paying the same price.

And then don't keep your prices a big secret, I could have found the formula for processing nuclear grade uranium quicker last night then I did the price of a seat on the Newcastle/Leeds 13.57 on 1st May.

Its supposed to be a public service after all.

I think we have a problem, with the lawn, Houston

While visiting Costco today I made a remarkable discovery.

NASA has planted a nice garden feature on the moon - apparently.

It said so on a box which contained 20 metres of plastic lawn edging, that stuff that you drive into the ground around the edge of your lawn to make it look, well, nicely edged. The box said that the design of the stuff used "space age technology".

Well I never.

And there are those who have criticised NASA in the past for wasting American taxpayer dollars on 40 years of pointless space exploration, just think though, without that research into lawn edging as part of the Apollo moon missions we'd all have scruffy lawn edges, like mine in fact, I didn't buy into the space age lawn edging argument, I bought a tray of 20 pain au chocolate instead.

Good News 1 and 2

Last Thursday I mentioned in a post that I might not be stuffing stuff on the blog over the weekend as there was some bad stuff going on in the family - well its worked out just fine and dandy (fingers crossed)

Thursday morning we got a call from Suzannes sister in Newcastle to tell us that their mother had been rushed to hospital as an emergency case after a heart attack, probably exacerbated by a chest infection that she's had for a while, certainly not helped by the fact that she has smoked all of her life and not assisted in any way by the fact that she's diabetic and her blood was all to hell, to quote her sister everyone thought we'd be arranging a funeral this week, it didn't look good at all and we were all set for a dash up the motorway on Thursday.

The only problem was that she was in an intensive care unit and Suzanne currently has the mother of all colds, they spoke to the nurses at North Shields and were told that they didn't really want her inside an intensive care unit with her germs, so we stayed in Leeds while two of her brothers flew up from London to be with their mother.

And today, and with the fantastic care and treatment from our National Health Service, which everyone loves to criticise but which we never appreciate properly until we need it, she is sitting up in a chair getting ready to go home. She is still in a high dependency unit but only because they haven't got a spare bed on a normal ward for her, but the doctors are now talking of discharging her in a few days and that her lifestyle shouldn't be affected by her heart attack which was minor in the grand scheme of things, we'll be up there to visit in a few days when Suzannes cold has gone completely.

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Good news Mk2 ... I've sold a painting :)

Last week I signed up for an online gallery, this one, for a seven day free trial, and four days later they've sold one of my paintings (that one at the top), and better still, I got another email today from someone else who wanted to buy it and has commissioned a similar one - I guess I'll be signing up for the full subscription now.

Uncle Earnie says Hi...

Living 2 channel is showing a lot of the John Edwards "Crossing Over" stuff and the English equivalent Colin Fry's "Sixth Sense" where psychics, or should I say "cynics" speak to the dead friends and family of people in a random TV audience.

I don't kow what to make of these sort of programmes, people in the audiences seem to get a lot of comfort from a "reading" and if I thought that I could talk to my dead relatives (especially my dad) then I'd run along to a TV studio near me and join the queue - mind, I'd know if it was my dad or not because the first thing he'd say would be "How much was that then".

This article offers an explanation of sorts, it clever talking, suggestive speech, its seeking confirmations from people who want to confirm and be a part of the conversation, and heres me thinking it was dead people talking to John and Colin.

It does answer one question for me though - its always puzzled me why only close relatives "come through" to the people in the audience, why is it only siblings and parents and not great-grandparents and certainly not distant relatives from three or four generations ago, "hello, I've got a pirate here, he says you're related to him and he wants to tell you about the treasure map ..."

And how do the mediums conduct their normal life ?

If they can walk into a TV studio and suddenly within seconds be speaking to dead people related to random folk, then how the hell do they go on afterwards when they're stood at the bus stop waiting to go home ? When they get on the bus and the driver asks them for their fare do they sudenly start talking to the drivers dead mother ? How could you live your life like that ?

I once even went so far as to agree to go to a public meeting where a psychic "did a John Edwards", he is well known and sells out all of his meetings, he sold out the one I was supposed to go to which was a shame as I wanted my dad to "come through" and ask me how much the tickets had been to see the show.

National Museum of Photography, Film& Television

Day two of the easter holiday and another free museum on the agenda, the above mentioned National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford.

Took Jodie to this one this morning, I'd been told that we've been before but I don't remember it, anyway this is one of those museums that changes its clothes every year so still worth a visit and repeat visits - and its free.

It was a strange visit all in all, a little bit disappointing in some of the areas but incredibly rewarding in others. There are six floors in total, each having their own exhibition areas, one of them was totally closed due to a big refurbish for the summer season, two were devoted totally to photographic exhibitions which to be honest were not very entertaining, I know its a photography museum as well, but if you're not an arty-farty photography dude then there's only so many pictures of houses and abandoned cars that you can look at without a yawn coming on.

Actually one of the photography exhibitions was pretty good, an American photographer who's name has completely by-passed my brain, lots of his photos of the USA and world politics in general from the 1940's through to the 1960's, the guy was obviously a news photographer and some of his stuff was very good, very evocative, like the picture of Jackie Kennedy at JFK's funeral where he has managed to capture complete grief in her face just after she was handed the stars and stripes from his coffin, very good stuff actually, I'll take that back, one of the photography exhibitions was very good, the other was still shite though.

Another floor is given over to interactive toys for kids to play on teaching them all about light and refraction and how cameras take photos, all that sort of stuff, aimed at schoolkids, loads to do in there, if you got some schoolkids with you, Jodie is 14 so it was a tad juvenile for her, I enjoyed it though, especially the mirror that made me look thin.

The best floor, and the one that I could have spent all day on is the TV Heaven gallery, its a collection of hundreds of the best British TV comedy and childrens programmes with several private booths where you can walk up to the counter and ask for a showing of the programme of your choice from their extensive catalogue. The rest of the floor is given over to the history of animation with loads of tableau from films such as Wallace & Grommitts "The wrong trousers" or a scene from The Wombles and lots of older european animations which I've never seen but looked fascinating, very black and very gothic. In this section is also housed walk-in booths where constant loops of old animated films are shown and all around the gallery are some fantastic cells from well-known and not-so-well-known films.

The top floor has a small exhibition dedicated to David Puttnam, obviously because he has loaned some of his awards to the museum, so here, behind heavy glass security screens you can see his Oscar for Chariots of Fire and a half dozen other film and TV awards, including a Golden Globe.

The museum also has two cinemas of its own showing a constantly changing programme of lesser known gems (see their web site from the link above) and its "piece de resistance", the IMAX cinema.

You don't have to pay for anything else in the museum including the TV Heaven screenings, but you do have to pay for the IMAX, and its worth every penny of the £10.80 that I paid for me and Jodie.

The IMAX screen is like nothing I've ever seen, which isn't completely true as I saw a touring exhibition screening of "How the West was Won" in the 1960's on a proper 180 degree Cinerama screen, but the IMAX is probably the most awe inspiring cinema screen that you'll see in this day and age, its huge, and you're up close to it.

Only a few exhibition films are available in IMAX and these tend to be short (under 60 mins) documentaries that utilise the format superbly, but even better, the IMAX is superb at 3D.

We went into the cinema to see "Sharks" - hence the picture above - and were handed our pair of very nifty 3D glasses, not the cardboard disposable sort, but proper wrap-around glasses. The documentary is filmed underwater on a reef and documents several types of shark in their natural habitat together with loads of fish, millions of fish in fact, but the best bit about the film is that due to the immense size of the screen and the wrap-around glasses, the film takes up all of your peripheral vision and being a true 3D film you are actually sitting in the action rather than watching it.

We had a row of young (4 to 10 years old) kids in front of us, the 4 year old told his brother to put his 3D glasses on at the start "for safety" and as the opening sequence started with thousands of jellyfish floating towards, and around, and in your face the kids were jumping up and down, screaming and trying to grab the jellyfish that appeared to be right in front of your face and above your head, it was hilarious and it continued on for the whole film, they never got tired of trying to grab at the fish and only sat down in silence when the sharks drifted by, its great to see kids get involved like that even though their parents were mortally embarrassed and kept trying to sit them down and keep them quiet.

There are two other 3D films on the agenda there, one on an african safari and another on the moon landings - we will return to see both of them.

And then finally on the way out I bought a dvd of the Mitchell & Kenyon films in the museum shop. Mitchell & Kenyon were cinematographers who worked the streets of northern England around 1900, filming everyday street scenes which were then quickly processed and shown to a paying audience the same evening in church halls and libraries, working people leaving their factory gates would be filmed, dash home and then dress in their sunday best to go watch themselves on a portable cinema screen in what must have seemed to them to be the miracle of the age.

28 hours worth of the Mitchell & Kenyon footage were found in the cellar of an old shop several years ago, they had been sealed in an old milk churn and the nitrate film had not deteriated at all, the films are all now in the national archive and have been featured on TV as well as a couple of hours worth being released on the dvd that I've bought today, lovely stuff.

So, £10 for the IMAX and £20 for the dvd, not a totally free day, but well worth it.


PS - Just been looking at the web link to the museum and realised that they've got loads of archived photography on the web, and realised that we missed the Lower Ground floor exhibition hall too, if your a photographic geek due then have a look at their archive material.

The Royal Armouries

Good Friday, time for a family trip somewhere.

And what better place if you live in Leeds than the Royal Armouries ?

Ten years ago the Government made a brave decision to move the nations massive collection of old and ancient armourment from its far too overcrowded site in the Tower of London to a brand new home on the riverside in Leeds, a brave decision because on far too many occasions the only place considered for national collections of this type is London.

And the Royal Armouries is an important collection, a globally important collection of mainly medieval european armourments together with an incredible muslim, chinese and japanese collection of ancient armour and weapons.

Spread across five storeys in an award winning custom designed riverside building the static displays are complimented by the outdoor arena where on most weekends and holidays you can watch live displays of medieval jousting, hand combat and horse combat, not some staged hollywood stunt, real life jousting - its fun.

We've been to the Armouries several times in the ten years since it opened and yes its true that the very nature of the exhibits means that they tend not to change from year to year but there is so much stuff there that you find something new to catch your eye every time you go, you could easily spend all day in there if you were given to geek-ishness but today we had a great hour and a half looking mainly at the far east collection which is much, much older than the european stuff, full of atmosphere and some incredibly decorative weaponary - the armour in ancient times for instance consisiting of fine chain mail sewn into silk padded jackets and decorated with silk ribbons and tassles, its obvious why for instance Vivienne Westwood wanted her clothing emporium to be associated with the Amouries.

And I found out today why the european stuff in the museum mainly only dates back to the 1500's, it was because Henry 8th, when he was king, spent an inordinate amount of taxpayers money on new and exciting armour and weapons, so much so that the Tower of London, which is where the nations depository for weapons always has been, was quickly filled with Henry's stuff, so he ordered all of the old gear in there to be either thrown away or recycled into new armourments, wiping out the previous 200 years history, shame on you Henry, on the other hand he saved most of his own personal armour which is on display in a "Field of the Cloth of Gold" exhibition which details a very famous meeting of all the european kings and rulers in 1520.

We were told that nugget of information by one of the current day knights in shining armour as he was dressed in his armour by his two aides in readiness for one of the jousts - all over the museum there are guides in medieval dress ready to offer such snippets of info, which made for a rather bizarre lift journey from the fifth floordown to the ground floor as one of the knights in full armour got in the lift with us, being transported downstairs to his horse and competition. The lift kept going up and down the building instead of straight to the ground floor which left him complaining that he'd lose competition points if he was late for his joust, and he gave a medieval jester a right bollacking when he got in the lift after calling for it on the third floor and diverting us again, by the time we got to the ground floor we had the knight and his two assistants with us, a jester, and a rotund food retailer all in medieval costume, the kids in the lift had eyes on stalks .

And that was another thing about the Armouries, it was obviously quite full today with it being a bank holiday and all, but there were hundreds of kids in the place, and every kid had a wooden sword and every kid had a cardboard mask of the helmet which is synominous with the Armouries, its the one in the picture above and it was custom made for Henry VIII by a german manufacturer who wanted to ingratiate himself with the English king.

Children from toddlers to teenagers were all over the place in there, play fighting with their wooden swords and masks, there was a great atmosphere in the place, just like a huge playschool, perhaps not condusive to serious study of the exhibits but great fun on a holiday.

And the best bit of all, like all English museums, its free to get in.

Stuff connected to my birthday (which isn't for ages yet)

Okay-cokey, acting under instructions from Misty, heres my list of stuff that happened on my birthday, which incidently, have I mentioned it, isn't for ages yet, but this year it will be my 50th, I may start celebrating soon...

September 17th

Events
1967 - Jim Morrison and The Doors defy CBS censors on The Ed Sullivan Show by singing the line "Girl we couldn't get much higher" in the song "Light My Fire" when asked not to. Things were so much simpler in those days weren't they ?

1976 - The first space shuttle "Enterprise" was unveiled by NASA. If I remember rightly we were all supposed to be going on holiday in it by now weren't we ?

2001 - David Letterman's "The Late Show" is the first TV talk show to return to the airwaves six days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the USA.

Birthdays
1929 - Stirling Moss
1960 - Damon Hill

(more syncronicity, see)

Deaths
2000 Paula Yates



Hmmmmm,

There's some bad stuff floating around the household at the moment so may not post over the next few days, then again, I may ;)

Creationism, whats all that about then ?

In the spirit of easter week I thought that I should investigate the phenomena of the religious movement Creationism, that band of half-lunatics who follow the teachings of the bible to the letter and attribute most of the scientific understanding in the world today to "The Great Flood" of Noah fame.

The Great Flood made the Grand Canyon and killed all the dinosaurs because Noah didn't check in the dinosaurs on time, its simple really when you think of it, don't know why we never realised it before now.

So in an attempt to reach a greater understanding on what exactly happened when god created the world and exactly how he fucked up with the dinosaurs I undertook some research last night and invested in a few grams of a hallucinogenic substance, purely in the interest of research you understand, in order to arrange a short interview with god, here is the transcript...

Me : Thank you for the opportunity to interview you tonight god, its very good of you to see me at such short notice, and may I say god, that shimmering cloak of many colours that you're wearing is just, like, wow, its so groovy man, how do you make it change colour so often

God : Its actually white Gary, the stuff that you smoked earlier is making you think its a cloak of many colours

Me : Oh, ok.

God : I like your tee shirt though

Me : Thanks, I got it when we went to Centre Parc a couple of years ago

God : Yes I know. Now, what did you want to ask me ?

Me : Do you mind if I take notes ?

God : No, but I'll need to run a copy of them down to St Peter afterwards, just to be safe you know, I get misquoted sometimes.

Me : Thats ok god, no problem, before we start can you turn the lighting down a bit, the backlighting behind your head is making my eyes ache, I get migraines see, your cloak of many colours is going to set one off I just know it is.

God : I can't I'm afraid, its not a lighting effect, its my presence.

Me : Oh ok, I may need to take a solphadine later though. So god, what about all this Creationism then eh ? Phoo, eh ! what do you make of them then, fuckin loonies or what ?

God : What part of their teachings would you like to discuss Gary, which bits make you think they are fuckin loonies ?

{At this point the sky grew dark outside, there was a huge crash of thunder and a loud squeal as if some small mammal was in its death throe}

God : Shit, I forgot again

Me : Forgot what ?

God : Every time I say fuck something sweet and cuddly gets killed, that was a seal pup I think

{The sky grew even darker and another deafening crash of thunder shook the whole of heaven followed by a tiny whistle}

God : Did I say fu... that word again ? Shit, thats a guinea pig.

Me : I think you did god, anyway, where were we, yes, creationism, how did it all start then god ?

God : I made the world and all the living creatures therein in seven days, well six actually, I took a day off on the sunday, I was fucked

{another rumble of thunder, this time further away, and then a clicking noise}

God : A kangaroo

Me : So all that shit is true then, you really did create the world in seven days

God : Six

Me : Six days then, it really happened that way ?

God : Yes, I was good back then, I was younger, more supple, more energy, I got things done, I made my mind up and just went ahead and did it, didn't stop to think of the consequences, 'course I made mistakes, who wouldn't, we're all human aren't we, but still, I didn't do such a bad job did I, in fact even though I say it myself, I think I did a really good job of earth, yes, I'm quite pleased, six days eh, six fuckin hard days.

{a fireball flashed past the window and foreshortened quack}

God : Baby penguin

Me : So, when you'd finished, on the seventh day, and you looked all around...

God : ...and I said that it was good...

Me : ...and you said that it was good, was there anything that you didn't really like, perhaps something that you'd do differently if you had another go ?

God : You're talking about the dinosaurs aren't you ?

Me : I don't know, are you ?

God : Yes, I ballsed up on the dinosaurs, it was late, I'd been working solid for five fuckin days mate...

{burning spear whizzed over my head followed by the faintest of sqeaks}

God : Pygmy shrew, I was tired see, even though I was young and fruitfull I was still tired and I was running out of ideas, well you see if you can create a whole world in six days, you'd be bloody tired wouldn't you, bloody tired I was, it was at the end of the fifth day see and I'd sat down for a few minutes, poured myself a scotch and soda, St Peter was here, we were right here in this room actually when we invented the dinosaurs, Peter was sitting where you're sitting right now, and he was fiddling around with some clay, rolling it into sausages, squashing it on the table, you know, and he sort of stuck two sausages onto a ball of the stuff and then another long sausage with a little head on the end, poked two eyeholes in it, well I pissed myself laughing, it was the daftest thing you've ever seen.

We poured ourself another couple of scotch's and I had a go, it was a good laugh, I made one that stood on four tiny legs but gave it a huge body and a really long thin neck with a minute head, Peter had a fit laughing at that one, so he did one with big wings and pretended it could fly, gave it a beak with teeth in, silly bugger, oh I could laugh all over again thinking of it, anyway, we had a few more scotch's and before I knew what was happening we'd decided to go into production, gave them "osaurous" names, just made them up on the spot, that was funny too, didn't really mean for it to happen but when I woke up on the sixth day there they all were, I had a fuckin awful...

{as sytheing spear whooshed through the door followed by a dull thud}

...photographers chimp, hangover and when I looked out the clouds, there was the earth, populated by these monstrocities, I tell you, it was not good anymore, but I had to run with it, sort of made it awkward for Adam and his missus and their lot for a couple of centuries after that, well you've seen the films haven't you, bloody dinosaurs fighting everywhere, mind there was plenty of meat to go around, but it wasn't how I'd planned it see, not like the plans at all, no sir, a bloody mess it was actually.

Me : So what did you do about it, when did you decide to get rid ?

God : I left it for a long time, too long really, thought they'd all die off pretty quick see, me and Peter, we'd forgotten to give them brains, well we were just messing around weren't we, anyway, they didn't die, they bloody thrived on earth, just my bloody luck, so I had a good long look around to see if I could find a human who was smart enough but stupid enough to follow my instructions without asking questions, thats another thing I did wrong, made humans question me all the time, always asking bloody questions they were. Anyway I find this one called Noah, had a quick word with him, told him to build a fuckin ...

{a bolt of white flame hissed by the window and a scream chilled me to the bone}

...ooh shit, that was a human, told him to build a big boat out of gopher wood, whats gopher wood he said, I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and stuffed him up a bleedin gopher tree, thats gopher wood I told him, I said build it three hundered cubits by fifty cubits by thirty cubits, whats a cubit he said, I tell you, I nearly told him to sod off and send me a carpenter instead, but I drew him some plans and do you know he wasn't that bad with a plane really, the ark was a bit shoddy when he'd finished, I mean you could tell that he'd only done a bit of DIY before he built the ark, didn't dovetail anything just used big nails and brute force, but it looked like it would float so I told him to gather all ye animals around him on his ark, except the fuckin dinosaurs...

{wham..blinding light…screech}

…parrot, don’t bring the fuckin…

{whoom, whooosh…thump}

…easter bunny, dinosaurs I said, why he asked, I grabbed him by the throat and shook him for a minute or two, because I fuckin…

{whap. Slap, eeeek}

…piglet, said so that’s why you dumb fuck..

{kazaaam, stick, eurgh}

…lamb, and he nodded his head and just got on with it, took some getting through to him but he did a good job in the end, got most of the stuff I wanted to keep on board, maybe I should have told him to make the ark three hundred and fifty cubits long and we could have got some more things on board like the unicorns, the fantasmotrons, and the organaphallus’s, a gmupf or two would have been nice too, but hey, we got what we could and then I made it piss down for forty days and forty nights, like leaving the bath taps running it was, lost everything we did, everything except what was on the ark, all apart from the fnarks who jumped overboard chasing a ball one day, bloody idiots, anyway after that we started again, its been ok since.

God : Are you still awake ?

Me : Whaaa, whaat ? Me ? Yeah I’ve been taking notes god, all the time, you got any coffee I could have, I’m getting a bit of a headache.

God : No, so is there anything else ?

Me : Yes, erm, let me see {consults notepad which is blank} erm, so this flood story, how did it all happen again ?

God : You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said have you ?

Me : It’s the cloak of many colours man, its just vivid, know what I mean ? Its just so vivid man, can you turn it off ?

Have you had the back off ?

The easter eggs arrived yesterday - hurrah !!!

Just one each, one for each daughter and one for me, but we've been warned by the wife and mother, no sproaching (as she says in her geordie terminology, no we don't understand her either).

What she means is that we are not to eat the back out of the eggs before easter sunday, she knows me so well.

I told my youngest the story of how, when my brother and I were kids, we would each receive around ten easter eggs each and by the time easter sunday came around we'd have eaten the back out of all of them.

We were experts at carefully removing the packaging from the back of the easter egg box and then picking away at the chocolate and the smarties or chocolates inside, leaving the front of the egg in pristine condition so that our mum would never notice when she was cleaning around them, every year, every one of our eggs had no back left in them by easter sunday.

Until one year when our posh auntie popped around on easter saturday with a couple of easter eggs for us in her wicker basket, our mum had not bought an egg for our posh auntie's daughter and so she grabbed one of our eggs off the sideboard and gave it to her.

My brother and I nearly choked trying to keep the laughter down and after they'd left we just exploded with hysteria, it was probably an hour later that we finally admitted to our mum that the egg that she'd given to our cousin had no back in it, and no smarties either.

As usual she used the age old mothers threat "wait 'till your father gets home" but when he got home he was drunk again and found the whole thing even more hilarious than we did, our posh auntie was his posh sister and I reckon he'd been waiting all his life to put one over on her.

The back will be out of my egg before sunday.

Cardboard coffins and syncronicity

I love syncronicity - those moments in life when things come together randomly and yet seemingly by prior arrangement.

Was driving along the Leeds ring road today and saw a breakdown truck - that was broken down, nothing to do with the rest of this piece but it looked beautiful, a breakdown truck broken down at the side of the road with its bonnet up and the driver scratching his head staring at the engine, and it got me thinking, if an AA truck breaks down, do they call out the RAC ?

Anyway, back to the title.

Just after I'd passed the poorly breakdown truck I got stuck behind a hearse on a bit of the ring road thats single carriageway, had to follow it for five minutes or so at 40mph, there was just the hearse on its own, no courtege, but it had a coffin in the back and a single bunch of flowers and just two undertakers - the song that was playing on the radio at the time was Eric Carmens "All by Myself", syncronicity at its best.

So I'm driving behind this hearse with its lonely looking coffin in the back and I notice that its a white coffin and its quite square for a coffin, or at least the back of it looks square, not slightly pointed like coffins are supposed to look, and then as I concentrate on the coffin a bit more I notice that it looks, well, sort of like a cardboard box and I think that maybe the undertakers have just picked up a box of coffin handles or something from their wholesalers.

Just then we reached a bit of the ring road that turns into a dual carriageway and I pull alongside the hearse at some traffic lights and get a good look at the coffin.

Its is a coffin, its a cardboard coffin, its got three bits of string hanging out of this side of it presumably as handles and the top looks just like a filing box lid thats been hastily shoved on top because it looks lop-sided, and as I pull further alongside the hearse I can see the other end of it and its like one of those fold-flat cardboard boxes that you make up by folding one edge over the other to make them lock together, you can tell this because there's a gap all down the side of the cardboard coffin that you could easily get your fingers inside.

And its been puzzling me all morning, these cardboard coffins are promoted as being "green" and "environmentally friendly", but what is more environmentally friendly than a wooden coffin anyway ?

I'm all for eco-friendly stuff and a coffin made of chipboard is obviously not as eco-friendly as one made of pine or even mahogany (as long it they are from renewable sources of course), but the cardboard coffin that I saw today just looked cheap and nasty and if I'm going to meet my maker (whoever my maker was, I can't find my warranty record), then I don't want the last word from my relations to be "oooh doesn't that coffin look cheap and nasty, suits him doesn't it "

Bird flu could be a good thing...

I'm standing by this weekend.

Standing by ready to torch my neighbours pigeon coops, I only need just one word from the government, the first government minister who mutters the words "bird flu" and "pigeons" in the same sentence is the only excuse I need, I've been waiting for this moment for four years now.

Our next-door-but-one neighbour is crazy, a first class, qualified, certified nut. In his normal, suburban garden, in this leafy middle class suburb of north Leeds where people get on with their lives quietly and without disturbance to others, this man keeps pigeons in his garden.

Pigeons, flying rats, filthy flying shitting machines that he keeps locked up in sheds, only letting them out to fly about twice a day, their numbers vary but there has never been less than 20 and often more than 40 circling around my house every day, shitting on my house, sitting on my roof shitting on my house, they are a friggin nuisance, and so is he and his rat-faced noisy family.

And he keeps chickens too, and a fucking cockerel that wakes everyone up at 4am during the summer. He also has ducks in his garden - this isn't a big garden we are talking about but he keeps all of these birds penned up in his shit filled garden for fun, spending most of his day walking amongst them talking to them, I tell you, he's a nut, I can hear his friggin ducks quacking now as he feeds them.

The funniest thing by far that happened last summer was when his terrier dog got into his chicken coop and killed three of his avian friends before he could drag it out backwards by its tail, I applauded his dog on that day for its responsible citizenship.

So all I need is one word, one word is all I need, I have kindling wood and accelerant and torches ready for lighting, say the word and I'll be through our hedgerow like a possessed demon, with roast pigeon and duck on the menu tomorrow.

Will the real Lionel Richie please stand up ?

Speaking of Lionel Richie, who was, me, see the post below..

Speaking of Lionel RIchie, my cousin is a not-so-famous professional guitarist who is partnered up with a famous ex-singing star of stage, screen and Top of the Pops, but guitar-ism isn't what its cut out to be and the big money is in promotion, for promotion read exploitation of ill prepared young aspiring soon-to-be pop stars, and so he promotes more than "guitars" now.

He especially promotes several look-ee-likee tribute acts, one of whom is the aforementioned Lionel Richie, or as he is better known, Lionel Richards, a white guy who has a good wig, flares and lots of theatrical make-up in various shades of brown.

Last year my cousin took a phone call from a charity event organiser who was organising a very big gig in London for a retiring England Rugby Captain, money was no object and they were talking of raising a six figure sum for charity and needed a big star name to attract the silly money that those soft southern nancies in London like to throw around as if they had no pockets to keep their money in.

My cousin nodded and "ummed" at the end of the phone and wondered all the time why the fuck this promoter had called him, a penniless ex-guitarist living in Blackpool trying to get gigs for poor look-a-likeees at crappy working mens clubs, but all soon became clear as the promoter mentioned that he wanted Lionel Richards to appear at the top of the bill.

At least thats what my cousin thought he said and he confirmed that indeed he was Lionel Richards agent but just before he was about to mention his £40 plus travelling expenses and a ham supper fee, the promoter spoke those magic words, "we'll pay whatever it takes to get him over from Paris that night".

It was around this time that my cousin realised that the promoter was speaking of the real Lionel Richie, luckily just before my cousin mentioned the fact that Lionel Richards was actually booked in Skelmersdale that night not Paris.

He told the promoter that he'd make enquiries and get back to him with a price.

Fortunately with his partner being a famous ex-singing star of stage, screen and Top of the Pops, she still had contacts "in the business" and he found the real Lionel Richie's agent who is based in London, relayed the story to him but somehow gave him the impression that it was my cousin that was promoting the event, a deal was struck at £46,000 for the evening, plus a private aircraft from Paris and suitable limousine transport for Mr Richie, his band and entourage, Mr Richie would perform in Paris, hop over the channel for the charity gig sometime after midnite and then return to Paris to continue with his European tour, my cousin added £5000 to the figure quoted, rang the real promoter back and was instructed to go ahead with the deal.

The only down side to the story is that my cousin arranged a backstage pass for himself and his two stepsons but after the real Lionel Richie (who my cousin admitted was marginally better then Lionel Richards) had finished he and his entourage were off into the night in the hired limo's as fast as a well enema'ed bowel.

Still £5000 for taking a phone call...

Real Songs #1

Aren't love songs nice eh ?

A sugar-coated view of life, an unrealistic sugar-coated view of life, totally unrealistic, in fact unfairly unrealistic.

In order to try and redress the balance so that young people don't think that love and marriage are always like Lionel Richie tries to sing it, here's the first in a series of REAL love songs, this is the way that Kenny Rogers wanted to sing it but his agent made him do the sugar-coated version instead...

She Believes in Me
Kenny Rogers
While she lays sleeping, I stay out late at night and play my songs
And sometimes all the nights can be so long
And it’s good when I finally make it home, all alone
While she lays dreaming, I try to get undressed without the light
And quietly she says "Where the bloody hell do you think you've been then, out 'till this time of bloody night, and don't go giving me that "playing my songs" shite, you're a lying bugger you are, my mother said she never trusted you and I bloody know why now you fuckin gigalo bastard you"
And I come to her and say "It was alright" and I hold her tight - and she takes a swing at me with the bedside lamp and catches me on the top of the head with the hot light bulb which shatters into the bed and opens an angry gash on the top of my head which bleeds like a butchered pig all over the eiderdown.

And she believes in me, sort of, I'll never know just what she sees in me
I told her someday if she was my girl I could change her world with my little song
I was wrong, in fact I can't sing a note in tune to save my life, I mime to backing tapes at all my gigs and my guitar has no strings but the audience at the working mens clubs are usually too pissed to notice
But she has no faith in me, and so I go on trying faithlessly because I've having it away with a blond I met in Cleckheaton Miners Welfare one night
And who knows maybe on some special night, if my song is right I will find a way, find a way.

While she lays waiting for a second swipe, I stumble to the kitchen for a bite
And I see my old guitar in the night just waiting for me like a secret friend, and theres no end
While she lays bitching again I fumble with a melody or two
Then I'm torn between the things that I should do but the bedside cabinet comes flying down the stairs and I take some spare blankets from the airing cupboard and go spend the night in the car again.
While she waits, while she waits, for me, so she can have another go at taking my head off with a blunt instrument

Nearly crime-free now

I didn't really mean to do the "Iconic album" post today, I had another topic in mind but sat in front of the computer and couldn't for the life of me think what the hell it was, the "Iconic album" is a great fall-back position though, I'll use that again, and again, and again...

What I really meant to say, and I've just remembered since coming home, is that the area that I live in is almost crime free now.

Harry Potter stuffed a copy of a letter through my door yesterday - what ? Harry Potter ? He's our neighbourhood watch co-ordinator, spitting image of Harry Potter, loves to organise things, he nearly jumped out of his seat with his hand in the air when the neighbourhood watch policeman asked for a co-ordinator, it was only Harry Potter that had his hand up, so he got the job.

Anyway, our friendly policeman in charge of all the neighbourhood watches in this whole area of North Leeds has sent this letter to say that in the previous few months the burglary rate has been dropping dramatically, so that in the last month only ONE burglary has been reported in the whole of his area.

Remember a couple of months ago I got a nice letter form the same nice policeman to say that the scrote who burgled our house back in December '04 had been caught ? ("scrote is my word, the nice policeman wouldn't use a word like scrote to describe a villian, no, I think he said he was a theiving bastard - I'm not being serious again).

Anyway, I reckon its no coincidence that our scrote gets arrested and the crime rate in the whole of the north of Leeds goes down to almost nothing - this is the sort of evidence that should be presented at the scrote's trial, "Yes m'lud, the crime in our patch has dropped to nothing since we arrested the scrote, I mean theiving bastard, I mean accused, so we're pressing your worships for expulsion to an uninhabited and barren island in mid-atlantic, or if your worships please, the death penalty, thank you".

Its all they deserve, our particular scrote showed an amazing lack of brain activity during our burglary, leaving so many clues that I had almost solved the crime myself the following morning, if I'd been allowed access to the taxi driver who picked the scrote up after he'd done our house (he called the taxi using my mobile phone and paid for it using my fekking charge card, I ended up paying for the call too), and been allowed to use a big wooden stick to coax the drivers memory along a bit, then I'd have had the scrote trussed up with his ankles padlocked behind his ears within the hour.

One more thing too, Harry Potter mentioned in his letter that apparently this street has a Millenium Street Party fund, we didn't live here during 2000 but the ones who did had a big street party and raised lots of cash for the event, they still have some cash left in the account and Harry Potter wants us to let him know what to do with the cash, I'm forwarding him my account number tonight via email, I do hope its more than £100 thats in the account as the holiday fund is looking a little bare at the moment.

Iconic albums of my time #1

Every Picture Tells a Story - Rod Stewart

It started with the single Maggie May, which I bought from Kennedy's Records at the back of the markets in Leeds. As was the protocol in those early teenage years I bought the single first, for ten shillings, played it, liked it, flogged the single to Rodney Emmott for ten shillings (secondhand) and went and bought the album for (I think) £2 10s.

Its still very listenable, hasn't dated at all in my ears, in fact all of the Faces stuff is still very listenable, was listening to "Long Player" just last night on Napster, excellent stuff.

After the "Every Picture" album I bought the two previous solo albums and the two previous Faces albums, and then followed that with everything they released as a band or solo (including Ronnie Lane and Ron Woods solo stuff) for years after that - you could say I was a fan, had the hair all rough cut and spiked up, tartan scarf, mod jacket and everything - there is photographic evidence but it is safely locked in my safe at home with instructions not to be made public until 50 years after my death, I have my childrens reputation to think of.

Rod Stewart went badly wrong after "Tonight I'm Yours" in 1981, the writing had been on the wall for a couple of years after he'd moved to Los Angeles on a permenant basis and joined the rest of the bland stadium rock bands, frmo then on his writing and albums took a very predictable course with only a few exceptions every couple of years, the contributions from Tom Waits being ones that spring to mind, and his recent success at crooning the old crooners songs, whilst commercially very successful, are simply appalling to listen to, if I want Natt King Cole, Sinatra or Tony Bennett then I'm still capable of finding their original and best recordings thank you very much.

"Every Picture Tells a Story" is still a stand-out album for me though, I've had vinyl and CD versions and have also downloaded it on MP3 for my iPod, it describes a great era for me, 1971 and all that jazz, the album is a great mix of soul derived rock (The Temptations "Losing You"), beautiful Bob Dylan lyrics in "Tommorrow is a Long Time", pure Tim Hardin folk on "Reason to Believe", vintage Elvis on "Thats all right" and the superb but pure pop lyrics of Mr Stewarts own contributions "Maggie May" and "Mandolin Wind", there isn't a bad track on the whole album, I recommend it to the house.

Don't wave at us from motorway bridges

Another thing that crossed my mind yesterday during my little jaunt over the border in Lancashire - those kids who stand on motorway bridges and wave at you as you drive past hoping to get a wave back from you ?

Well I passed a bus yesterday with the signage "British Limbless Ex-Servicemen Association" emblazoned all down the side.

My first reaction was what a strange thing to start up an association for and why do they need a 52 seater bus in Nelson, is there a proliferation of limbless ex-servicemen in this small town or are the Royal Nelson Fusiliers simply a lot more careless than the rest of the British army, and how appropriate that the bus should be based in a town called Nelson.

My second and more evil thought was that those kids who wave at vehicles off motorway bridges needn't bother waving at this one.

Thats awful isn't it, but I laughed.

SatNav - what would I do without it ?

Had to go to a small Lancashire town called Nelson today on a callout to a Morrisons supermarket.

Got to Nelson with no electronic assistance and I thought I'd be able to find the supermarket with no electronic assistance as well, but after driving around for a bit decided to summon up the genie with the womans voice that lives in the dashboard to give me directions and save a bit of time.

Typed the address in while I was moving slowly throught the town centre, confirmed that I wanted to find the quickest route, confirmed the street number, pressed ENTER and the genie with the womans voice who lives in the dashboard proclaimed proudly "You have arrived at your destination".

Looked out of the car windscreen for the first time in five minutes and sure enough I had arrived at my destination - there was the supermarket not ten yards in front of me.

I just don't know what I'd do without SatNav.

Old friends...

As in, friends from a long time ago, although as most of us in the pub last night are hitting 50 this year then it could mean old in the literal sense.

To set the scene, back in the 1960's the suburb of Leeds where we lived (and most of us still live) had a "village" feel about it, it actually had been a village 80 years ago when my house was built so that probably helps, but in the 1960's it was suburbia in a Norman Rockwell sort of stylee and a huge group of us kids would spend evenings after school and summer holidays playing football, we all went to local schools and the football team continued on until some of them were well into their 30's, not that I ever got involved in strenuous activity mind, but a few of them are still trying to play competitive football this year and finding that muscles don't work but snap when you are 50 years old.

But over the years most of the group have gone their seperate ways, moved away from the area chasing a career, one in particular moved to the USA where he still lives 20-odd years later on the shores of Lake Michigan, he visits the UK every few years and last night had asked if we could all have a pint in The Fox together.

It was a good turnout, people made the effort and travelled some distances to be there and we ended up with 20 or so individuals and their wives, some of whom I hadn't seen for 30 years. In amongst the crowd were four individuals that I went through the same high school class with and we compared notes in our 50th year and realised that some of our class have started dying already, you get a strange feeling of your own mortality at times like that but on the other hand another strange sense of imortality in that old friends who you haven't met for 30 years don't seem to have changed at all.

This happened to me last night when I met Vaz, I sat next to Vaz on my first day at Cookridge County Primary Schoolwhen we were both 8 years old, we both went on to High School together and were in the same class there, Vaz was a genius at maths, so good that when he went to university and had earned all the honours in mathematics that they could bestow upon him, they asked him to stay and lecture and all these years later thats what he still does, lectures all over the world in maths and electronics, none of which was important last night, careers and jobs weren't discussed, weren't boasted over, you don't do that with really old friends, when you go back as far as the years before careers took over then it doesn't matter how important your job is or how much money you make or don't make.

The last time I saw Vaz would have been when I left High School at 17 years of age and yet last night, 33 years later when he walked in the pub I recognised him instantly and it was as if we'd just not seen each other for a few weeks. The same thing happened with another old school friend who I met at a rugby match in Newcastle last year, I'd arranged to meet him outside the ticket office and stood there waiting with my brother in law, he asked who it was we were waiting for and when I told him that it was someone who I hadn't seen for 33 years he told me I was crazy and how would we recognise each other - just then I saw my old friend from 50 yards away across the car park, and he recognised me at the same time.

Its an amazing thing when that happens, you talk about what you used to do as kids and you both tend to have the same memories and the friendship is so easy to pick up and walk with for a short while before you go your seperate ways again - when Vaz left the pub last night I told him I'd see him again in another 30 years time, we'll be 80 then, I hope we've both kept our marbles.


Over the past few years I've been writing what I grandly call "my memoirs", they are here on the JerryChicken web site, theres a lot more to post and maybe I'll update it again today, and then some day put it all in some sort of chronological order, it keeps me amused anyway.

I've just re-read some of my recent posts, I'm turning into a right moaning old bastard aren't I ?

Am going to a pub shortly to meet up with a boatlaod of old mates, I'll try and be more positive in the morning.

Toodle pip.

Fekkwittery abounds in Leeds

Spent a few hours in Leeds city centre today, had a few hours to kill, its a nice enough city centre, the fourth largest in the UK, a huge range of shops, a superb indoor market, lots of historic buildings - and mainly inhabited on a saturday afternoon by an underclass of obnoxious, ill behaved, louts who seem to have no pride in themselves or a knowledge of how to behave in public.

I don't suppose Leeds is any different to any other city or even small town in the UK, we probably have the same classification of yob in any populated area, its just that in a city centre they are more numerous and therefore more noticable.

I really despair of our society when we breed such ignoramous's, cannot understand why someone (for instance) shoudl stand quietly at a cash machine then suddenly explode in rage with a string of obscenities when the machine refuses to give him any money, is that really satisfactory behaviour in a public place ?

Why would a group of three women sprawl themselves across the entrance to a hotel lounge and not allow anyone to pass by, all the time shouting at each other and shrieking with laughter ?

These are not young people that I speak of, they are adults who certainly should know better, but probably due to their upbringing do not know any better and probably assume that their behaviour, acceptable at home, is the norm when out in regular society - I really despair of these people, they just get in the way, vex the spirit and contribute nothing to our communities.

We also visited the filthiest Starbucks that I have ever had the displeasure to be in, Starbucks in The Light, the carpet is sticky with spilt beverages, the fabric easy chairs are all stained from what must be deliberate spillages, the walls even have coffee stains on them - a chimps tea party wouldn't manage to make such mess, and yet when you view the sub-species that inhabited that coffee house this afternoon its hardly suprising that it ends up in such a state, its not the total fault of the teenagers that work behind the counter, its the fekkin morons who use the place.

As I sat there surrounded by filthy furniture, plastic cups and dozens of newspapers scattered all over the floor I couldn't help but contrast with the numerous bars and restaurants that I visited in France a few weeks ago, and I tried to remember if any of the establishments in France were treated quite so badly by their clientele, I couldn't recall any litter or rubbish being left behind at a table for more than a few seconds before a waiter removed it, nor could I recall anyone reading a paper at their table then simply throwing it on the floor as they left the building, it only happens in the UK.

A few years ago Leeds City Council established what it jokingly called a "cafe culture" in the city centre, it was well meaning and meant that bar owners were encouraged to open up their bar frontages and let people sit outside to drink, it was an attempt to emulate the French way of life where going out for a drink means one or two glasses of wine and a long conversation with friends in a relaxed atmosphere, its a very pleasant way to spend an evening and I fully partook of the environment in Perpignan a few weeks ago.

In the UK we are apparently bred differently, going out for a drink means getting drunk as quickly as possible and if they allow you to sit outside the bar and do it outside then so what, and if a coffee house encourages you to relax in comfy armchairs and read a paper while you enjoy their coffee then that means its OK to spill what you don't want, fling the cup and newspaper on the floor and walk out, leaving your filth behind for someone else to enjoy, and add to.

I didn't enjoy my afternoon in Leeds at all.


I did however enjoy a visit that we made to Leeds City Art Gallery, even though half of it was closed in preperation for an exhibition. Its not a big art gallery, most of the city paintings are spread amongst several other public buildings and so for instance we didn't see the Sisley painting today, but the Renoir was there on the staircase and John Atkinson Grimshaw's work was in abundance, indeed in the Arnold Ziff victorian room there are several fine paintings including "Scotland Forever", "The death of General Gordon" and a version of the impressionist "The Bathers" all three of which will be instantly recognised by anyone who has been given a tin of biscuits at christmas by their auntie, a small collection of French paintings and sketches from the 1890-1915 period also decorate the main staircase, but the Turner and Cotman paintings are for private appointment viewing only.

Suprisingly the main gallery was quite full this afternoon, the annexe which houses some Henry Moore and Barbera Hepworth sculptures was not, it never is as it also contains a lot of contemporary crap, I love painting and I love painting in an abstract style occasionally but cannot help but feel that some of the contemporary stuff in the exhibitions is there by virtue of "the kings new clothes" type decision, some of it is simply trash.

April Fools Day

...what a load of bollocks.

Its bad enough that sad tosspot individuals think it hilarious to pull practical jokes on their friends, but the media frenzy to construct april fool jokes on what they concieve to be a gullible public (well they have been gullible enough to buy their newspapers) is just poor, poor unimaginative humour, ill concieved and indicative of a complete lack of imagination.

I haven't checked the online newspapers yet, but they will be there, april fool headlines, a weak storyline that you see through straight away and then there at the bottom a footnote from the editor to say "ha! ha! check the date".

Thats even worse, it wouldn't be so bad if a newspaper would construct a believable april fools story, something like "Queen dies peacefully in her sleep" followed by thirty pages of black bordered obituary, but on the thirty first page some sub editor would have to put "ha! ha!, check the date" in a smarmy schoolboy prank sort of fekkwit way.

The BBC will do an april fool news story today and at the end the news reader will lean towards the camera, wink knowingley and whisper "ha! ha!, check the date", its pathetic, if you want to do a spoof story then run with the "Queen dies peacefully in her sleep" obituaries and no winking at the cameras at the end.