Jehovahs galore...

They're all in Leeds today for their annual shindig at Elland Road football ground, sometime home of Leeds Utd, sometime home of 30-odd thousand gullible football supporters who prayed hard last year to win promotion and god let them down - today the Jehovahs took over the stadium to pray and to sell each other the magazines that they couldn't sell door to door since their meeting last year.

I'll not take the mickey out of the Jehovahs, for all I know or care they might even be right, they might be the chosen ones.

Is that why they all look the same ?

Is that why I can tell what they are when they are right down the bottom of my street pestering my neighbours and giving me enough notice to pretend to be out ?

The only religious cult more obvious on the streets are mormons.

If the mormon men didn't all wear long beige raincoats and carry briefcases on a sunday and if their womenfolk didn't wear fancy coloured hankies on their heads then they'd find that a few people might just accidently answer the door to them instead of being met with a thousand "gone to the coast" signs on the doors they knock on.

I'd never trust a religious cult that required me to go out and sell for them, you are either one of gods chosen ones or you're not, its not a sales performance type of thing, you shouldn't make the team just because you can bore the pants off more householders than your neighbour, god doesn't get those magazines printed and delivered to the head jehovah with instructions to "get those goddamn sales crews out on the streets this weekend, we're down 23% in revenue in the first fiscal quarter compared to quarter one last year, I thought you said you were up for this job, your necks on the line this quarter sonny jim"

I only ever knew one jehovah, he was a wanker, the two things may have been mutually compatible, I don't know for sure, but he was definitely a jehovah and a wanker, both at the same time, you make your own mind up.

He was an electrician and was employed by the same company that I worked for when I left school, the first day that started work all the other electricians drew me to one side and whispered, "that bloke there, the weird looking one, hes a god-botherer, a jehovah, and hes a right wanker, you go figure"

I should have known I'd end up working as his apprentice for a few short weeks.

It was only a matter of days before he tried to convert me. We were sat in an empty room of a new house that we were second fixing, having our lunch when he asked if I was any good at algebra. I told him I'd got my maths O level, ok grade 7 wasn't too impressive, but he was impressed.

I should have spotted it coming.

He asked if I'd teach him algebra at lunchtimes.

I sort of grunted a confirmative, wondering where this was leading.

He said if I'd teach him algebra then he'd teach me the scriptures.

That was the first time that I used the phrase "fuck off"

The next morning I was apprenticed to someone else.

I can now spot them a mile off.
,

That player there Bob, He's a cheat...

I've tried not to comment on the FIFA World Cup thing that is currently ongoing (for ever) in Germany, I've tried not to comment on Englands 1-0 win against Ecuador on Sunday.

Because,

I can't watch the game at all without wondering what everyone else sees in it - as I've said before, its the kings new clothes complex, I'm sure I'm the only one who is totally unmoved, nay bored by the whole affair.

The England game on Sunday for instance - I watched it, for the first time in many years I watched a football match all the way through and resisted the temptation to go do something more constructive instead, like for instance flushing something down our toilet and then running outside to see if I could catch it as it ran past the inspection pit in the street outside - I've always wanted to do that, it could be an international sport if I marketed it as good as FIFA do.

Frankly the England/Ecuador game was a complete waste of two hours of my life, I've wasted lots of hours in my life, there was that time went I got all dressed up for a company christmas "do" at a posh hotel but went to the wrong hotel for instance, but Sunday afternoon was a 100% tax deductable write-off of two hours, if I'm not mistaken I believe that it is possible for people who watched that game to apply to heaven and gain a two hour credit onto their lifespan in compensation.

And the worst thing about football is the cheating that goes un-noticed by spectators, commentators and officials.

You know the sort of thing - player A runs towards goal with ball at feet, player B approaches within three feet of him, player A falls over and rolls many, many times on the floor clutching a random part of his anatomy, face screwed in pain, peeping out of one eye now and again to see if he's got the penalty yet.

And instead of the commentators mentioning that player A is a big wuss and a cheat, they replay the incident forty two times in an attempt to justify the lots of rolling around and the obvious agony and come up with a comment like "Yes Bob, I think he just clipped his heels there" or "Oh yes Bob, shirt pulling, look just there".

"I can't see any reason for that Bob, I think he's a fuckin cheating bastard" is what they should really say, but they don't , they partake in the charade that football is "the beautiful game" and that tugging someones shirt really is a grevious crime tantamount to murdering your mother.

Its a game for big nancies.

To play, and watch.

So there.

Doh !!!

Noticed last week that the pond was starting to get cloudy, which is normal, normally, at this time of year with the summer sun causing a plantlife and microbe "bloom" in the water.

Except that I've got an ultraviolet filter fitted which is supposed to clean all that sort of stuff out of the water and leave the pond nice and clear right through the year, I just leave it running all year, never check it, not supposed to touch it actually as inside the filter trap is a "live" colony of all sorts of super-bacteria stuff that eats the stuff you don't want in the water - actually it works by magic as far as I'm aware.

So I checked it.

It wasn't working.

There was no water running through it, and there should have been.

Fished the pump out from its home in the bottom of the pond, it was working but not pumping any water out, the "fans" on the whirring thing were broken, in short the pump was knackered.

Told Suzanne I'd need to buy a new one but with one eye on the fact that we're selling the house she told me "no" even when I asked seven or eight times. A new pump would be around £50 or so , so maybe she had a point.

So I bought one on eBay for £6.

Went to fit it this morning, connected it up no problem, switched it on and water came through, we were back in business, just had the old one to remove then.

Now the old pump obviously had an electrical cable running to it and I'd buried it under some sand and some flat stones that line the edge of the pond, and I could have removed the stones and gently tugged the cable out of the sand covering.

But I didn't.

I yanked the cable and it gave a little so I gave it a bigger tug and then I put all of my delicate frame behind it and gave it a really big pull.

It came out.

And in doing so it dislodged a big flat stone from the side of the pond, which ever so slowly slide into the water, sharp edge first.

Fished the stone out and hoped that it hadn't damaged the pond liner.

Came out a couple of hours later to find my pond lower by at least two inches. Fuckpigs.

And thats where its stayed all afternoon, the stone has obviously punctured the liner near the top (fortunately) so I now have a slightly shallower pond than before with a rim of liner visible all the way around - I'm going to shovel some sand on it tomorrow to give the sparrows and blackbirds a beach when they bathe, the frogs will probably enjoy it too.

Every cloud etc...

It all starts here...

Have put an offer in on the house that Jodie liked, our house goes up for sale today.

And now the clear-out starts

This house is full of accumulated stuff from at least 15 years ago, the loft is jam packed full of stuff that we haven't looked at since we moved here five years ago - all of that will go for a start, I think eBay will be getting a big hammering in the next couple of months.

I'm also in mind to plan this removal with some sort of move-house-by-stealth strategy.

One of my customers rents out storage space in a huge warehouse so I'm considering taking one of his units and moving the stuff that we are keeping in there over a period of time rather than have an almighty rush on moving day to get everything out of the house for noon and in the new house by sundown - our last move was absolute chaos and there must be an easier way to do it.

Tim the removal guy, who I sat in front of at school 40 years ago has moved us three times now and each time when I ring him he asks the same question "Have you still got those fekkin pine wardrobes ?", well I'm sorry Tim, but yes, we still have those fekking huge git big pine wardrobes, the ones that are actually bigger inside than the room they are standing in, in a "Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe" sort of stylee.

He'll probably say he's not available when I ring him, even before I've told him what moving day we have in mind.

In the meantime we continue to look for a house to hold in reserve just in case they don't accept our pitifully low offer on the first choice and of course we need to sell this one, its a long drawn out process is buying and selling houses, most of it sitting and waiting, still, we've done it seven times now so should be used to it.

I like this one, can we buy it ?

Went back to see a house that we liked last night, the first time we saw it was on a bit of a miserable day and no-one was in so it was all a bit dark but still Suzanne and I liked it, we liked the location, we've lived on that development before and we liked it then and inthe intervening 20 years it seems to have grown even nicer now that some of the trees and shrubs are maturing.

So we took Jodie to see it, Amanda was working so she is out of the decision making for the time being, the house is being rented at the moment so isn't exactly spruced up for the viewings so we warned Jodie to try and see through all that.

And she loved it, wanted to stay there, wanted to buy it there and then.

Why ?

This tells you something of what goes on in the mind of a 14 year old girl with an older sister.

She liked it because both bedroom 2 and bedroom 3 were the same size and for all of her 14 years so far she's always had the smallest bedroom, with this house there will be equilibrium.

Oh yes, she also liked it because the current tenants have a house rabbit, a big lop-eared thing that followed us everywhere we went, I hope they take it with them though or Jake the retriever will be a tad disappointed that he isn't the most favourite animal in the house any more.

Time to make an offer on the house methinks.

The car is fine...

The car T-Cut up a treat, all the scratches came out and just left us with a small dent in the door and one on the wheelarch which might be persuaded to pop out if I can find a G clamp somewhere - I almost sound like I know what I'm talking about.

I'm writing this one off to another one of lifes pissing bad luck stories and have explained to the eldest daughter just what that means - its not worth persuing via the insurance company because those bastards will end up charging us through the nose for the repair and won't bother pressing the claim against the other party.

We had a long conversation about how crap life can be sometimes and I used the example of how her mother was once deemed to be 50% to blame when she was parked in her car, in a car park, and someone reversed into her - presumably the insurance company must have argued that the collision wouldn't have happened had she stayed at home that day - I feel like a very wise old man when I impart these pearls of wisdom to my innocent and gullible daughters these days.

So there we have it - One day a total shit will damage your car and when they do you then have to decide whether its worth dealing with the shits who run the insurance companies, or whether to save your time and energy and use it to enjoy yourself elsewhere.


oh yes, nearly forgot - she broke the CD player in the car last night.

Bump ... oops !

Its probably not a record, but its not bad going.

Having your first car accident just 72 hours after you've passed your driving test.

Amanda took the car out today and whilst driving down a busy shpping street near here a jerk in a large 4WD reversed out of a parking bay and caught the back wheel arch of our car.

No one hurt, the dickheads car unscratched and just a slight dent and a surface scratch on our car, but it upset Amanda. Fortunately she had the presence of mind to remember what I'd told her to do in those circumstances and she got the fekkwits name and address and then a very kind third motorist stopped and offered his name as a witness to Amanda and wrote a statement on the back of an envelope which put the blame fair and square on the 4WD dick-for-brains.

All of which leaves me in a quandry now.

The insurance was all sorted out and she was covered to drive that car within an hour of passing her test, so it should be a simple job to ring the company tomorrow and put in a claim for perhaps a £300 to £400 repair (yes I've paid for "slight scratches" before, how could you tell).

But Amanda told me that the tool in the 4WD mentioned something about "I've got my witness too" and that he had two other males in the car with him.

And I've dealt with insurance companies and their fekkwit operations many times in the past.

I know for a fact that if we didn't have a witness statement then the insurance companies would simply deal with the incident in what they call "knock for knock", in other words both insurance companies involved would pay for their own drivers repair bills - and then my insurance company would come back to me and invoke the £400 "young driver" excess on me and mention the fact that my protected no claims bonus was under threat now, and of course next year the premium would be mysteriously increased to "gasping" proportions - in other words for the sake of a small scratch and a little dent in the wheel arch I would suffer financially, tremendously financially.

But wait you say, you have a witness, surely your insurance company will force the other party to pay all of your costs ?

Possibly, I reply, but just suppose that the other driver claims that he too has a witness, we don't know who the two other people were in his car, lets just suppose that he gets one of them to state that the roles were reversed and it was Amanda who was reversing out of the parking bay ?

Another knock-for-knock situation.

With such small claims the insurance companies wouldn't even question the validity of the witness statements because they can't be arsed and its easier just repairing the damage and getting their punter to pay for it himself, they certainly aren't going to invoke legal action to recover the cost of such a minor scrape.

Insurance company's are one big sack of shit, all of them.

I'll check the damage again tomorrow in the cold light of day, if its as minor as it looked in the rain this morning then I won't be advising the insurance company and Amanda will have learned another of lifes hard-knock lessons - this world is full of shits and sometimes they reverse into you and sometimes you have to keep quiet to avoid having to deal with the corporate ones.

70 miles on a bike...

I used to do it every year, the annual Wetherby to Filey bike ride across the North York Moors.

Its a slog with lots of hills and an almost mountain climb of a hill at the halfway stage but you get a lot of satisfaction from having done it at the end.

The last time I took part was, I believe, 1996. I only remember the date because its always on this saturday every year and at the time the Euro 96 football competition was ongoing and England were playing Scotland so every pub along the 70 mile route was beseiged by most of the 1500 participants whilst the game was on.

My brother and I stopped at such a pub way up on the moors in blistering June sunshine, the pub was packed and so we fell off our bikes onto the grass verge and lay for a while relaxing until my bro got up and went to fetch us a couple of nice ice cold lagers.

He was gone for a while as the bar was full and he stopped to watch a bit of the football and within two minutes I was fast asleep. I had a lovely half hour nap there on the grass verge in full view of all the traffic and fellow cyclists, helmet for a pillow and feet up on the bike, and was eventually rudely awoken by my bro with my now warm lager.

Unfortunately we had underestimated the distance to the finish line and let me warn you here and now, if you ever find yourself with another 20 miles to ride over an undulating moorland landscape then taking a nap and drinking beer is a bad idea, I struggled like hell to finish that day.

Today I was up bright and early to take my brother to Wetherby racecourse where the ride starts, did I wish I was going with him ?

Yes.

But on the other hand, No.

I'm now sat back in my kitchen with a nice cup of coffee and some chocolate biscuits while he's out on the road pedelling like buggary for the rest of the day.

Yes I wish I was doing it.

I've entered for a ride in September though which is organised by the Yorkshire Cancer Research people, a choice of 20 miles or 50 miles in a circular route around Wharfedale, all I need to do now is find the touring bike in the shed somewhere and get my arse out on the road on it again, oh yes, and lose about two stone in weight, I might just manage the 20 mile route then.

No more dads taxi...

At last, Amanda passed her driving test today - yippee !!!

I have to confess that whilst I was happy for her, and she was ecstatic, my first thought was "thank god I don't have to do the dads taxi thing now", for the last three years I've been on call at all hours of the night and early morning, in recent months its been a regular late night pickup from the restaurant where she works, Friday nights have always been a 1am pickup - and I like my bed at that sort of time.

It also means that I don't get to drink any beer in the house because I have to drive later on, not that I can drink a lot of beer, I can't, but even one bottle is out of the question on dads taxi nights.

But now - she can drive herself.

First thing I did was get on t'interweb and shop around for insurance for Suzannes car, its due for renewal this week anyway so Ieft it for today just in case. Yesterday with just me and Suzanne as drivers it would have cost us £202 fully comprehensive with legal cover too, today by adding Amanda onto the policy its just cost me £1090 and that was cheap, the next nearest price was over £2000.

A Ford Focus, 1600cc, fairly standard second family car, worth about £7000, and because she is a new driver and under 25 years of age then the insurance companies rub their hands with glee and even the ones that advertise "special deals for new young drivers" start their pricing schemes at £2000 - the bastards.

After booking the insurance and paying for it I got a call from the company to confirm everything and the woman asked me how long Amanda had held a licence, "about an hour now" I replied and there was a long pause while she tried to find that option on her computer screen, I think she glossed over that question eventually.

And the most stupid thing is that the insurance policy that I bought online was from Budget Insurance, who just happened to be our previous insurers too, yet when I rang them last week and asked about putting Amanda on the old policy they said that it wasn't possible as she was too young to be insured on a 1600cc car, seems like their office staff don't use the same software that their own internet site do.

So she's gone to work in the car tonight and I've sat down and had two cans of Tetleys to celebrate the tearing up of her "L" plates and the tearing up of my Dads Taxi franchise, it feels so liberating.

When Jodie baffled the careers advisor

Was summoned to the school early this morning for a meeting with a careers advisor for Jodie, all of which is a bit premature as far as I was concerned as she is only 14 and like all 14 year olds, next week is a long time let alone discussions on what she is going to be doing for the rest of her life.

But still we humoured the careers advisor and went and sat in his office and he started by asking lots of questions on what subjects she's taking, what she's good at, what she enjoys, and it was plainly obvious that she likes practical things and not academic things.

Then he went through a list of job types and she rejected all of the office jobs, the legal jobs, the accountancy jobs, the retail jobs, and just when we were htinking that perhaps Jodie didn't really have any plans to join the workforce at any time in the future she mentioned that she likes animals and would love to work with animals.

The careers advisors face lit up as he thought he was getting somewhere now and so he turned to the page in his book that gave details on animal care and vetinary occupations, she told him in no uncertain terms that she didn't want to work anywhere that kept caged animals as she objected strongly to caged animals, which was news to me and I mentally unticked the box with the "Summer holiday good idea #24, Flamingoland" option.

She told him that a vetinary nurse would be ideal and as he looked up the qualifications required she added "In Africa" which sort of took me and the advisor by suprise, him especially so as he probably didn't get too many 14 year old students who wanted to work in Africa.

All he could suggest was that she tries to get a bit of work experience at a local vets in a couple of years time and then maybe takes a gap year with a voluntary organisation when she's 18, all of which was bleedin obvious advice which I could have given her without much research.

Still, at least it keeps him in a job, does anyone ever tell a careers advisor "I want to be a careers advisor" ?

Its certainly small, but ...

Went to see a nice house today, well a bungalow anyway, and was very impressed, it was option 2 from my post of yesterday and if we bought it I would save myself £70K, which isn' t to be sniffed at.

It would take a bit of a rethink as to what furniture and other possesions we took from here but thats a good thing as we've accumulated too much stuff here now and I'm getting in the mood for a de-clutter and a fresh start without all the crap, this family needs a possesions detox.

I'm collecting Suzanne from the northeast tomorrow, an early start and with a bit of luck and a quick turnaround I'll be back in Leeds before 2pm so I can go see Bramley RL play - none of that England nancyball shite for me, somehow though I think that with this superb weather we're having, she'll want to stay a little longer tomorrow, they are up at the caravan in Rothbury and she was enjoying herself tonight when we spoke on the phone. Leaving Newcastle at 2pm might not be a bad idea either as the whole population of this country will be watching the England nancyball game at that time so I might have the A1 to myself - I'll miss the Bramley game though.

Got another house to go look at next week and another valuation on ours from a different estate agent and then the decision needs to be made - do we go for it or not - at the moment the answer seems to be yes.

Was reading some stuff that an estate agent gave me today in whch they expressed their amazement that most other estate agents don't do accompanied viewings unless you specifically ask them to, whereas they do accompanied veiwings as a matter of course - and of course they are correct.

We have bought and sold seven houses now and when I say "sold" I mean that we have sold them ourselves even though we appointed an estate agent to do the selling bit, it never crossed my mind before that in fact all an estate agent does is market the bloody property and leave YOU to sell it.

The agent in question is valuing the house on Monday and if their rates are ok (I've been quoted anything between a three quarter percent and one and a quarter percent) then I'll go for them and their accompanied viewings, their office is right in front of mine and so all I need to do is give them the keys when they find someone interested - I like the easy way out, as I get older I get less and less arsed to do things, if this deal comes off and I can start takinga back seat in the business then I'm going to really enjoy myself.

To sell or not to sell ?

I'm in a quandry now.

Had the house valued today and it increased in value very nicely thank you very much.

If we sold it for what the estate agent thinks we should get for it then we have some good options ...

1. We could buy a small 3 bed semi on a 1970's estate close to here on a minimal mortgage, so minimal that I could probably give up work altogether and run the business part time from home just doing the odd mail order thing. It sounds nice but I'm talking a small house here and friends would point and laugh and comment on how the mighty had fallen - no they wouldn't really but they'd think it, but fuck them, I'd be the one retired at 50 and enjoying my freedom from the rat race.

2. We could buy a 1960's 3 bed bungalow close to here in a nice location and have a small mortgage, probably wouldn't be able to pack in the business as it is now but at any time in the near future I could sell the business and easily get rid of the mortgage or keep working and certainly pay it off before I'm 60, and more importantly have money to spare between then and now - I like the idea of this option, it opens up the opportunity to buy a "holiday home" in Northumberland to spend the three and four day weekends - I haven't told my co-director brother yet but I'm going to start taking lots of these extended weekends from now on.

3. We could buy a 1980's 3 bed house on a smart estate close to here and have the same mortgage and options as (2) above.

I'm feeling good about this, options 2 and 3 above are ticking all the right boxes and setting me on the path to taking life a bit more easy over the next ten years, I've taken a lot of shit over the last 22 years in business and I'm getting mightily sick of it, its time to find out what else life has to offer and shaking off the bulk of this mortgage is the starting point. Neither me or Suzanne are emotionally tied to this house, its bricks and mortar and has money locked up in it, I think its time to release that money and release myself a little from the financial need to work like a fucking demon until I'm 67 which is what I'd have to do if we stop here.

Waynes toe is better now

I can't describe to you how pleased I am at the news that Wayne Rooney's toe is much better now thank you, what with him running up and down and kicking a football again, its much much better and he should be alright for the world cup.

How relieved I am, I've hardly been sleeping with worry.

No really.

So relieved am I that I may even go out and buy some England flags with which to bedeck my house, like this tosspot in Sunderland did, why is it always the ones in social housing that have to go overboard with house decorations, did his local supermarket run out of cider that week so he bought flags instead ?

Which reminds me, I've got an estate agent coming to value the house on Thursday, it'll annoy Suzanne no end as she's still away and has no idea that we're selling this place, if she stays away much longer we might have moved when she comes back.

Actually its her idea, we want to downsize to shake off most of this horrendous mortgage that we currently have, if this house is worth what we think it is then we can go down to a slightly smaller house on a new-ish development and owe less than half of what we do now and in the next ten years when my company pays me back what we borrowed against the current mortgage then we should be all paid up and done and dusted ready for me to retire in ten years time - thats the big plan.

Hope it works that way.
The alternative is that I work until I die.
And that sounds like a crap idea.

So not only do we have to keep the house clean for when Suzanne comes back on Friday, we now have to keep the house clean for the estate agent to visit on Thursday, its ridiculous having to run the dishwasher twice in a week, we've got loads of plates left in the cupboard and lots of space left on the worktops to pile the dirty ones up on.

We need food

Have just received the following text message from my youngest daughter...

"dad, we need 2 go 2 asda coz all da food is out ov date !"

Don't you just love it when your wife has been away from home for several weeks and you're putting to the test the theory that your family could live for months on all the crap thats in the freezer - the stuff you bought last year and thought your offspring would devour quickly only to find that "we don't like this, its got onions in it".

Well tough, there's loads of crap frozen food to go at yet, we ain't going shopping until we're down to the last freezer basket.

World Cup 2006 and all that crap...

With just seven days to go to the opening game of the 2006 Football World Cup I feel a need to nail my colours to the mast.

A small point first for our readers from the American colonies.

When we say "football" in the rest of the inhabited world we mean that game where you kick a round ball across a pitch for a while whilst trying to put it inside a goal once or twice in 90 minutes, or not at all as the case often is - its that game that you all play if you're women or children, but to make the point again, its not that game where you all dress up in outrageous slabs of kevlar padding and throw an oval ball to each other for 20 seconds at a time before stopping to get your breath back for a while.

I needed to make that point.

It might be easier if I refer to the rest-of-the-world game as "nancyball" rather than "football", its a phrase I prefer to use myself and it will prevent confusion with the padded leviathons game.

So, nancyball it is...

The nancyball world cup - its starts next week.

I shall hide in a nearby cave until it finishes.

Here in England - for in the international nancyball world there is no UK team, we have seperate teams for each of the four UK countries, and unfortunately Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland don't have nancyball teams, well not so that you'd notice anyway - here in England we have been inundated, nay, saturated, nay, wall-to-wall newsround covered in bulletins on the current condition of a toe bone, broken in a game of nancyball some weeks ago by an England player who apparently is vital to Englands world cup hopes.

Its not for nothing that Wayne Rooney has earned the nickname "Shrek", he is not a good looking lad, in fact I now have doubts as to whether the Shrek films were animated or not, I honestly believe that the main character part was probably played by Wayne Rooney in a live action / animated movie genre made famous by Gene kelly and Jerry Mouse in "Anchors Aweigh", but I digress.

Mr Rooney apparently is the only England player capable of scoring goals, having no interest in the nancyball game I cannot confirm or deny this, I simply report what has been flung at me in saturation by the English press, we shall not win the world cup unless Shrek plays for England and so every day we have an update on his broken toebone on every news channel and every day I switch off when Shreks face appears.

You see the problem with nancyball is that its protagonists have been elevated by the press to the status of gods and it seems like the whole world outside of the USA have gone along with the hoax, except me. I feel like the little boy in the Hans Christian Anderson story of The Kings New Clothes, any day now, and probably while the whole of the known world is slavering in delight over their TV screens at the latest dullfest involving two teams from parts of the world that you couldn't point to on a map, I am going to run out into the street and bawl out "this game is crap", and no-one would hear me, beacuse they are all watching what their media has dubbed "the beautiful game" - my arse.

Why England will never win the World Cup

This theory has been developed over decades of being force fed nancyball on an almost daily basis by friends and family who have fallen for the Kings New Clothes dialogue, its an observation from someone who isn't at all inspired by the game and who sees its protagonists as big wet nancies who fall over writhing in mortal and terminal agonies if you stand too close to them or, god forbid, have the temerity to touch them with any part of your body.

England will never win the world cup because they play to draw.

Yes you heard it here first.

The little boy at the back of the crowd has just stood up and pulled the wool from your eyes, the king is naked, and still you do not see.

In the English leagues it is regarded as "a result" if you can reach a stalemate after 90 minutes of play. If a team is playing an away game then a draw, whether scoreless or not, is regarded as a victory, and if a team is playing a home game then a draw is also ok, you get one point in the league table for a draw and a draw is better than losing and having no point at all.

And so for nine months of the year the players in the English football leagues set out evey weekend with the express intention of making it impossible for their opponents to score against them while at the same time forgetting that in order to win then they need to score at least one more goal, when 90 minutes is reached with no result, then that is a result for both teams, well played, good game.

So we take an England football team to the world cup every four years who are well coached in the art of drawing football games and in the initial group matches they unsuprisingly draw at least one of the first three games which immediatley puts them at a disadvantage to the other teams in the group who astonishingly have arrived at the tournement with a desire to score more goals than their opponents and therefore win all of their games.

It will only take an uninspiring draw against Paraguay and a loss against Sweden, with Paraguay beating Trinidad, for the panic button to be slammed in the English press, and once again the nancyball supporters will be left in bars all over europe, but especially in this country, stood with a bottle of beer in their hand, shaking their heads and wondering where it all went wrong - well you heard it here first again - England football teams like to draw games too much.

My tip for the world cup - buy stock in beer companies, and razor blade and rope manufacturers.

More photos from the north east...

My favourite bay at Cullercoats, subject of my next painting (starts tonight !)

Tynemouth Long Sands today, basking in the warmth of the first hot day of summer, they were surfing here on Friday but it was a flat calm today and time for the dogs to chase sticks into the sea

Seaton Sluice harbour looking towards Blyth

The beach at Seaton Sluice, close to the village where Suzanne was raised, the sand dunes here stretch the full three miles of the beach towards Blyth.

The last few days ...

Have just returned this afternoon from the northeast after a three day break in which we reunited most of suzannes family and said goodbye to her mother who died ten days ago.

Its been a strange few days in which myself and the girls have played second fiddle to the family and have deliberately taken a back seat in the proceedings. Suzanne has four brothers and a sister and emotions which were kept under wraps for several weeks (and years) have broken to the surface - I believe that the term that is used in political reporting is that "there was a frank exchange of views", so I'll use that phrase.

Its a long story but one of her brothers estranged himself from the others many years ago and since then has always kept himself at arms length, in the last couple of months of his mothers illness he was initially informed but then made no contact again, its a strange situation and one that I refused to get involved with, the brothers and sisters washed their hands of him many years ago and if it wasn't for the eldest brother taking a lead and speaking to him on the phone then he probably still wouldn't know that his mother died.

He came to the funeral, as did many, many people, I'd estimate almost a hundred from the village and dozens of them couldn't get into the chapel and had to stand outside for the service. The family have always lived in what would at some point have been termed "a pit village", it was a mining community with its own pit until the mid-60's but since then has developed into the large community that it is now, its fairly non-descript and consists of several hundred private and council-owned housing estates just like most villages and towns in this country, but at its heart, and on the council estate that Suzannes family came from, it still has a small, and decreasing element of the original pit village community who turn out to attend the funerals of those original community members.

Its a very touching sight to see, we saw the same thing at Suzannes dad's funeral exactly two years ago, the floral tributes were many and neighbours constantly arrived at the house yesterday with flowers and condolences, then with a half hour to go we noticed whole families leaving the street to attend the crematorium, those who couldn't make it there stood out on the street as the hearse arrived at the house - this sort of thing wouldn't happen where we live, a funeral procession would go unnoticed in our area, but yesterday was a reminder of what communities used to be like.

The funeral service itself was superbly conducted, from one of her small grandsons placing a flower that he had picked himself onto her coffin as it arrived, to an old friend of the family giving a lovely speech about the last fifty years of their friendship and the trials and tribulations that the family had gone through in raising six children on limited means, if it is at all possible to enjoy a funeral service then this one was for enjoying.

And then afterwards, as is traditional, a buffet and an afternoon of drinking and reminiscing in the local Working Mens Club, the former mine workers club, and it was there as the afternoon wore on and the alcohol took effect that the emotions ran high between two of the brothers, one the black sheep (the second eldest) and the other his younger brother an ex-professional boxer who's grief tore to the surface late on in the afternoon as he almost came to blows with his older brother. Fortunately the other two brothers are police officers and intervened to stop any violence but it wasn't pleasant although very understandable, after an hour or so of simmering hatred they eventually agreed to disagree but I don't think that they will ever speak again, Mark still hurts very badly, a side of him that I've never seen before, you need to be tough to earn a broken face like he has but the death of both parents within two years has hit him particularly hard. He's the second youngest and he and his younger brother disappeared for a couple of hours later on in the evening and apparently shed a lot of tears together, they returned later in much better spirits and joined everyone else for some final drinks and memories.

On a more pleasant note they all agreed what should be done with their mothers ashes, when they were all kids and on their school summer holidays their mum would take them all on the short walk to the beach, and because she didn't like sitting on sand she'd take them to Old Hartley where the cove is broken down and filled with rocks and rock pools. Suzanne still talks of spending days and days playing at Old Hartley, picking cockles and muscles and what she calls "whil-acks" or whelks to you and I, and then eating them raw on the beach. For someone who spent his childhood 70 miles from the nearest beach it all sounds disgusting to me but they loved it and it was one of the things that they discussed a few days ago and then came up with the brilliant idea of scattering her ashes on the rocks at Old Hartley later on this week, I popped down there yesterday and today and took 90-odd photographs all along the coastline in brilliant sunshine, the one above is Old Hartley bay, soon to be the last resting place of Susie Jackson.