Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Finished.


Finished work that is, for 18 days, 14 of which are going to be spent once again on the island of Menorca, laidbacksville-on-sea, the place where you can drive your hire car at 15mph on the one major road ont he island and no one minds even though you have a tailback of beer delivery trucks snaking all the way back to the airport behind you.

Well, I've nearly finished anyway.

Tomorrow theres two hours of clearing up in the office, doing the banking and leaving last minute instructions to the two fools that are my brother and my engineer, they are responsible for the whole operation now for the month of august and they will probably make a complete arse of things.

But I don't care.

I'm on holiday.

Tomorrow I sign for the new car, I go to the library for some reading matter, I have batteries to buy for the minidisc player that is making the trip in preference to the MP3 player, and I have a bag to pack. At some point in the day beer may be consumed, money needs to be stuffed into envelopes and labelled so that my brother can take Jake to the kennels on saturday and pay for him and so that Amanda has money at the airport to get herself out to Menorca on Saturday.

But still, apart form all that I am on holiday now, I have dined alfresco tonight on pasta and beer and I'm in the holiday mood now, everyone can go and take a flying fook, I'm officially relaxed now.

My normal persona is relaxed but my holiday persona reaches new heights of relaxed-ness that are thoght impossible by scientists, you could not unrelax me on holiday if you used guided bombs or those fierce flying monkeys that are in The Wizard of Oz.

Oh yes, tomorrow I must also pack some painting gear, its going to be watercolours that go on holiday with me this year, the pastels weren't such a success the last time, watercolours are much easier to handle and this time I have my nice new white panama hat to wear so I will look like a proper artist, or a proper prat, the photos will help you decide later.

I will probably post tomorrow but if I'm too laid back to do so then toodle-ooh until the 12th August.

I'm gone.

Aren't kids cruel ?

For absolutely no other reason than I read one line in someone elses blog this morning, I've been thinking and a-pondering on how cruel kids are to each other, and whether it just all a part of growing up or something more sinister.

Its 34 years since I left school, flinging books off the back of the bus while the conductor was distracted collecting fares (that dates me, a platform on the back of the bus and a conductor) but at our all boys grammer school we had our fair share of victims to pick on and cruel nicknames to use for the five years that we were there - its called bullying these days but back then it was called "building characters".

So while I cant be sure that "Pretty Woman" David England is not a homosexual by now I am sure that he will probably be grateful that being nicknamed after the Roy Orbison song was preferable to being noted also as the heaviest boy in class. He was though also the recipient of the name "Marine Boy" when he became the last one in our year to learn how to swim, the weekly swimming lessons in our ancient school pool must have been hell for him and as far as I can recall he never did learn to traverse the pool without keeping one foot on the bottom, the deep end was a mystery to him.

Tony Bateson ignored any reference to "Master Bates-son" and that joke wore thin by year three, he was without doubt a wanker though.

Pete "Muddy Waters" Waters was unique in that his nickname was awarded to him by a French master who was trying to appear cool and trendy to us 11 year olds. Unfortunately in 1968 none of us had ever heard of the blues legend Muddy Waters and while the name stuck, the joke fell flat, as did the French masters attempt to ingratiate himself to us with tales of Johnny Halliday - we'd never heard of him either, but the name stuck with Johnny Johnson for a while.

But of course under the surface things were always slightly more sinister.

The school caretaker was a disabled man who I'm guessing with hindsight probably had a mild cerebral palsy and walked with quite a severe limp - from time immemorial he had been known as "Shane" after the Alan Ladd cowboy hero and he'd clip your earhole if he heard you calling him it but in the year below us was a boy who wore leg calipers and despite warnings from the Head as to what would happen to any boy caught bullying him, the kid was always known as "Little Shane". he was a nasty bad tempered bast'ard though and kick from his calipered leg hurt like buggery, if anyone deserved bullying it was him.

Ian Lee in our year had one leg shorter than the other and wore a built up shoe. He never had a nickname though and no-one ever mentioned his strange shoe, he would beat the shit out of you if he ever heard you mention it, he was our class bully and would often hit you in the face for no other reason than he felt like doing it, nasty piece of work he became a psychiatric nurse when he left school.

And of course racism reared its ugly head. Its hard to believe but in 1968 when I joined that school there were 840 white boys attending, and it had been a similar story in my primary school, I'd seen black and asian people but never been to school with them.

A year into grammer school and in the year below us one of the new boys was a Seik and of course wore the turban. It was lucky for him that he had moved from a primary school with many of his white friends and that the school had had the common sense to place those friends in the same form room as him, they formed a protective barrier around him but he was still subjected to what would be regarded now as a most terrible and prolonged racial abuse and name calling, hard to believe it now but it was regarded as "normal" to offer such abuse and apart from keeping him in his familiar group of friends the school did little else to protect him.

We have certainly come a long way since then, not far enough to be true, but there is plenty to be grateful for that children have to be taught racism in the home by misguided parents who wish to perpetuate the hatred, and do not learn it as a matter of rote at school.



Tuesday, July 25, 2006

A long, long time ago...



"A long, long time ago,
I can still remember,

how that music used to make me smile"

Anyone know who this bloke is ?

No ?

Robert Hoffman ?

No ?

No neither did I, but I cheated and google searched for him using the phrase "Robinson Crusoe TV Programme"

Yes thats right - school holidays - late 1960's - ingenious TV scheduling idea - lets try daytime TV.

I can just see the board meeting at the BBC now, oak panelled room full of cigar smoke, brandy decanters, bath chairs and assorted maids to assist the old duffers that make up the BBC board of directors all meeting for their monthly chin wag and set-the-world-to-rights session.

Some young upstart of a producer addresses them and explans his plan to revolutionise TV during the school summer holiday - they'll show a French TV series about an Englishman who is shipwrecked on a coral island and befriends and then enslaves a "native" and teaches him the English way, such as cleaning your masters straw boots every morning, ensuring your master has a nice kipper for his breakfast when he awakens, and holding your masters straw umbrella above his head when he goes out for a walk on the beach in the midday sun.

The board of directors love it, one mentions that it reminds them of the Daniel Defoe novel "Robinson Crusoe", another comments that he knew Daniel Defoe, nice chap. The young upstart producer assures them that this story is nothing to do with the Defoe novel and that no royalties will be payable, in any case it was made in France and it will be their fault if Defoe's lawyers contact the BBC, the director who befriended Defoe explains that the novelist died 200 years earlier so there will be no copyright issues and everyone is happy again.

They go for it, but then discover that the film is broadcast in the French language, damn those Johnny Foreigners, so they hand the series over to the Shocking Dubbing Department who have recently won awards in TV circles for their work on the shockingly dubbed "Tales From Europe" series of childrens programmes. They pull it off and "Robinson Crusoe" becomes an instant hit among schoolchildren everywhere, every summer holiday, for decades.


"Day 72 and wance aga-yan ah am aluurn"
"Poor Robin"
"Fack off parrot"
"Pooooor Roar-bin"
"Ah weell ring your facking neck yuu stoopid bard, carn't yuu see ah am herm-seek, carn't yuu say anny-think else except "poooor Roar-bin" ?"
"You didn't teach me anything else"
"Well dern't say anytheenk then yuu mangy avian yuu"
"Teach me something else and I'll cheer you up then, who's Friday for instance"
"What ? What ? Whaart do yuu know abart Friday"
"Well I hear you calling his name out every night, you seem to enjoy that, teach me about Friday"
"Yuu fackin nosy bas'tard parrot yuu, yuu marnd yuur own business abart me arnnd Friday"
"Only trying to help old boy, only trying to help"

We loved it, never missed an episode, cried when it finished.

Friday came back to London with Poor Robin and was placed as an exhibit in the newly founded London Zoological Society in Regents Park.

Poor Robin turned to drink and lived on the streets for twenty years until he was run over by a brewers dray cart in Soho.

The parrot was elected Member of Parliament for Bow in 1798 and completed 20 years of public service being promoted to Education Minister in 1812, he is now stuffed and resides in the Members Terrace Bar.

Monday, July 24, 2006

I messed up big time.

I did, I messed up big time at the weekend.

In fact its taken until now for me to tell anyone, I feel so guilty.

Someone may have died because of what I did, she could have choked and gagged on her veggie burger.

Let me explain,

It was a close friends 50th birthday party on saturday afternoon/evening and as is tradition on his birthday we all gather at his home and have a barbeque and sit in his gazebo in his garden until the early hours of the following morning making merry noises with the assistance of beer.

This weekend, after a beautifully hot week, it was stormy and on saturday afternoon a thunderstorm crept up on us and it started lashing down, so while everyone else hid in the gazebo I wandered out in the violent rain to help our host and another friend at the barbeques.

Because it was his 50th there were many more people there than normal and he had three bbq's on the go, one of them a gas one which he was unfamiliar with but as I've got a gas one I volunteered to get piss wet through and cook fifty chicken legs on it, after a couple of beers you could hardly notice the rain, or the thunder and lightning anymore, well you only get wet once don't you.

So the three of us were standing there waving steel spatulas in the air in the middle of a thunderstorm singing along to a Beach Boys CD when another guest turned up and handed us a small tinfoil parcel in which she told us was her two veggie burgers that she needed bbq'ing and would I oblige while at the same time requesting that I didn't contaminate said burgers with any animal products.

She disappeared and we started doing our best Gordon Ramsey impressions complaining about fekkin vegetarians and why would you want to fekking bbq a fekking veggie burger anyway - you eat fekking vegetables raw so why would you fekking bbq them when they're in burger form ?

I put the parcel on my bbq and opened up the tin foil parcel, being careful to create a bit of space around it on the grill, but to do so I had to put several of the chicken legs on the shelf above the grill which is actually attached to the lid so that when you lower the lid the shelf rests above the grill and can keep the food cooking.

Yes, I know you've guessed the rest, the chicken legs continued cooking and dripped themselves all over her fekking veggie burgers - but I didn't know that at the time did I ?

It was five minutes later that I lifted the lid up to see how the fekking stupid fekking veggie burgers were getting on and my fellow chef to my right pointed out that the fekking veggie burgers appeared to be swimming in their own little pool of chicken leg fat.

We just laughed.

Chef three stood to my left looked over my shoulder and started laughing too, it was infectious, we laughed and laughed until it hurt and someone came out of the gazebo to see what we were laughing at, at which point I quickly shut the lid and told them everything was just fine thank you and we laughed a lot more, then went and got some more beer.

We discussed the fekking veggie burger business for all of ten seconds and decided to drain off the chicken leg fat and not tell her, but we placed bets to see if she'd notice that her fekking veggie burger tasted of chicken - the best odds that we gave were 3/1 on that she would with odds of 50/1 that she'd actually choke and die when the chicken fat hit her throat.

The fekking veggie burgers looked awful, they resembled that light brown colour best known as the colour of baby shit and they had bits of what I took to be straw sticking out of them, they didn't even turn brown after being fried in chicken fat.

The fekking veggie woman ate them anyway and never said a word except to compliment us on the corn on the cob chunks that we'd done at the same time - they were soaked in chicken fat too and she made us go back to the bbq and turn the gas back on and make some more.

So there you have it - fekking vegetarians don't die when they eat meat after all.

Not that chicken is meat of course, I mean, its not red or anything is it ?

Sunday, July 23, 2006

So, GAP Insurance then...



Bought a new car yesterday.

Well, you could almost call it a new car, when it grows up it will be a car, Suzanne has handbags that are bigger than the Peugeot 107, but her and Amanda like the yellow one and they've dug deep in their pockets and bought a nice spoiler for the back too so that it looks a bit like a fairground dodgem car.

What ?
Me ?
Won't be seen dead in it, no.

Anyhoo,
The chap at the dealership, who I know quite well, starts to tell me all about GAP Insurance, which I also know quite well as we bought it for the Ford Focus that this handbag on wheels is replacing, and so I said no we don't need GAP Insurance, its just a scam.

But Suzanne insisted that we do need GAP Insurance and so we got it - see how it works in our house ?

So what is GAP Insurance ?

If you buy your car on finance then the chances are that on the day that you drive it out of the dealership it will be worth less than what you have just borrowed from the finance company.

If your brand new baby car is stolen that very same night and trashed out of all recognition by the sort of low life mouth breathers who haunt the gutters late at night, then your insurance company who provide your accident cover will make you an offer for the "value" of the car, which will be considerably less than the "cost" of your car.

In other words the insurance company are a lower grade of shit than the low life mouth breather who trashed it in the first place, but if you've read this blog before then you'll know all about lower grade shit insurers.

And they tell you all this up front, they are not ashamed by the fact.

"In the event of a total loss your motor insurer will only pay you the market value of the car at the time of the incident, and your outstanding balance could be more than the market value paid out by the insurer"

Notice how in that statement the GAP Insurance company has distanced themselves from this dubious practice by referring to "your motor insurer", conveniently omitting to mention that the GAP Insurer is quite likely to be the same insurer that won't pay out in full if your car is lost.

So what do they do after they have brazenly admitted that they will only pay you the absolute minimum that they feel that they can get away with in a court of law ?

They sell you another insurance policy to make up for the dreadfullness of the policy that you've just bought off them.

And the bas'tads rake the money in once again.

So she bought the GAP Insurance, another £199 on the price of the yellow rollerskate.

I'm just the fool that signs for all this stuff.

Saturday, July 22, 2006

Scaredy-dog


Jake is a big wuss, its official.

You need some background information.

Jake is our Golden Retreiver (left) (obviously) thats is his portrait that I did of him last year, he likes it and hangs it above his bed.

Anyway,

We bought him from a gamekeeper eight years ago, way up in the Yorkshire Dales we went, way, way up almost into Richmondshire to a place that I didn't even know existed, a place where we were driving on private land, a country estate where the landed gentry had staff to look after the game on their land, I thought that sort of thing had died out after the first world war, but not so in North Yorkshire.


We eventually found a pair of small cottages on a hillside and around the back of these cottages were the kennels where the gamekeeper kept his collection of hunting dogs, Labradors for sniffing out shot-down birds on the ground (ground scenters) and Retreivers for sniffing out shot-down birds using the air (air scenters) - see, you learn something new every day don't you ?

The litter of pups that Jake came from had already been split up (he was twelve weeks old) according to their destiny, all of Jakes brothers had been moved to another location for their gun dog training and three sisters had been kept back for breeding from - when we eventually got Jakes pedigree it read like a "who's who" of gun dog champions, his mother had been matched up with his father to specifically breed working pups.

But it had all gone wrong with Jake.

The gamekeeper told us that he would be the softest pet dog on the planet once he got over his little problem.

He hates loud bangs.

Which is a bit of a handicap if you're supposed to be a gun dog.

They had taken all the pups out into a field at eight weeks old and fired a shotgun in the air, Jake was back in his kennel before the "g" of "bang".

So he was offered up for sale as a pet dog rather than a working dog, to the eternal disgrace of his family bloodline.

Their loss, our gain.

He is a fantastic family pet dog, totally fekkin useless as a guard dog because he doesn't bark. In all of his eight years I have only heard him bark on a few occasions - when we had a burglar in the house, he didn't even wake up.

But we love him anyway.

So, thats the background.

Oh yes, one more background thing - he is not allowed upstairs in the house and he never, never, ever breaks that rule, ever.

Except for this morning.

5am this morning and a thunderstorm was pasing overhead. The rain started first, it was heavy rain, and then it got heavier, sleeping with the windows open for the last week or so it sounded really, really heavy rain and it woke us up.

And then we heard the tiptoe of paws coming upstairs, the rain was so heavy that it had frightened Jake into breaking the upstairs rule for the first time in his life.

And then the thunder rolled across the valley from the airport and we heard a scurry of claws on the wooden floor of Jodies bedroom, presumably as he tried to get under the bed.

Suzanne shouted at him to get down stairs and like the obedient dog that his breeding makes him he went, despite being obviously terrified, she is a cruel woman is my wife.

I got up shortly afterwards because I could hear him pacing about downstairs and panting in panic.

So I've had to sit with him holding his paw since 5.30am this morning and even after the thunder went away he wasn't convinced, I'm a soft sod me, none of the females in the house have even woken up yet and here I am holding a dogs paw telling him not to be afraid of some weather.

I feel like Judy Garland sitting with the cowardly lion.







Friday, July 21, 2006

Brainstorming cars...

We've had a brainstorming session tonight, me and my brother.

We've got a car in the business which, I believe, is called a lemon in the car trade - a car that spends more time at the dealers repair shop than it does on the road.

Its a Peugeot 307SW, a sort of smallish 7 seat MPV, looks nice, its got a glass roof and other gubbins, but its fooked.

I got it for a family holiday to France in 2003 then gave it to one of my engineers to use, he's done 90,000 miles in it since and two weeks ago it had the latest of its nervous breakdowns on the M62. Our garage has replaced its deisel additive injection thingy and got it going again but now the turbo charger has packed up and it won't do more than 3500 revs, in short its going to cost us another £1000 for a new turbo to get it back on the road.

We'd dump it somewhere if it wasn't for the fact that we still owe £4000 on it, we'd trade it in if it wasn't for the fact that no dealer will offer us any more than a balloon and a goldfish for it, I actually had a private buyer interested in giving us £4000 for it but I just can't sell it to him if he cant drive it round the block without wondering why its got all the pulling power of an old lady pushing a zimmer frame, in a treacle pit.

So we're stuck with it and my new idea tonight would be to park it up at one of our houses and forget all about it and lease the engineer another car, then maybe sometime in the future when we have a spare £1000 lying around, get the turbo fixed and flog the bastard.

Sounds good, my brother agreed, and if it works slowly on the roads then maybe my brothers wife could use it too, sounds good.

And the more we thought about it it got to be a better idea, and then I hit the jackpot - we have an old Dyson vacumn cleaner in the workshop that doesn't work very well but it still whizzes the dust and fluff around in its plastic tub thing a treat, its turbo works just fine.

So maybe, just maybe, we could take the turbo thingy off the Dyson and fit it somehow under the bonnet of the Peugeot, that wouldn't cost us anything, OK we'd probably have to cut a hole in the bonnet to fit the purple Dyson turbo to the engine, but I reckon it would work.

There is a problem though.

Suppose the Dyson turbo starts to pick up all the dust and fluff off the road, as is its habit, and whizz them around and around inside the car while Jon our engineer is driving it, making a loud sucking buzzing noise at the same time - it wouldn't present a very good image for our company when our engineer turns up at customers in a car that whines as loud as a vacumn cleaner and that has a cyclone of road kill whizzing around inside it, would it ?

Time for a slight rethink.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Today is a magical day

Today is the day that all children of school age love, the day when they finish for their school summer holidays.

I was reminded of this when driving past our local primary school this evening and seeing the school railings festooned with school ties - its the tradition around here for the ones who are leaving primary school and going onto high school next term to tie their now-unneeded and unwanted school ties to the fence on their way out.

Don't know who started that tradition but they are a genius, its a rite of passage, the day when mothers stand in the school playground for the last time as their now 11 year olds leave the safety of their primary school and in the same way that those mothers shed a tear when their kin entered that school at 5 years old, they now shed one for their grown-up son or daughter as they gleefully rip off their ties and abandon them on the fence not realising what awaits them in high school in september.

Amanda is now 17 and has just finished the first year of her A level course with a view to moving into vocational further education next year, possibly in tax accounting which is study based whilst working, she passed her driving test last month and is now mobile having snaffled Suzannes car for 90% of the time - Jodie is 14 and moving inextricably towards GCSE's, making subject choices now that will determine which sort of career path her adult life goes down - and yet I can still remember both of them coming home from primary school with their shirts covered in autographs from their clasmates (some of whom went to different high schools and so have never been seen again) and their ties secured to the school fence - it seems like it was last week.


Just imagine tonight, sitting at home, with at least six weeks holidays stretched out in front of you in what promises to be one of the best summers that we've had in recent years, make the most of it kids, it doesn't last for long.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Your musical education, part two

The screen door slams
Mary's dress waves
Like a vision she dances across the porch
As the radio plays
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey that's me and I want you only
Don't turn me home again
I just can't face myself alone again
Don't run back inside
darling you know just what I'm here for
So you're scared and you're thinking
That maybe we ain't that young anymore
Show a little faith, there's magic in the night
You ain't a beauty, but hey you're alright
Oh and that's alright with me

You can hide 'neath your covers
And study your pain
Make crosses from your lovers
Throw roses in the rain
Waste your summer praying in vain
For a savior to rise from these streets
Well now I'm no hero
That's understood
All the redemption I can offer, girl
Is beneath this dirty hood
With a chance to make it good somehow
Hey what else can we do now
Except roll down the window
And let the wind blow back your hair
Well the night's busting open
These two lanes will take us anywhere
We got one last chance to make it real
To trade in these wings on some wheels
Climb in back
Heaven's waiting on down the tracks
Oh oh come take my hand
Riding out tonight to case the promised land
Oh oh Thunder Road, oh Thunder Road
oh Thunder Road
Lying out there like a killer in the sun
Hey I know it's late we can make it if we run
Oh Thunder Road, sit tight take hold
Thunder Road

Well I got this guitar
And I learned how to make it talk
And my car's out back
If you're ready to take that long walk
>From your front porch to my front seat
The door's open but the ride it ain't free
And I know you're lonely
For words that I ain't spoken
But tonight we'll be free
All the promises'll be broken
There were ghosts in the eyes
Of all the boys you sent away
They haunt this dusty beach road
In the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets

They scream your name at night in the street
Your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet
And in the lonely cool before dawn
You hear their engines roaring on
But when you get to the porch they're gone
On the wind, so Mary climb in
It's a town full of losers
And I'm pulling out of here to win.


Copyright © Bruce Springsteen

Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen

Now isn't that just the sweetest poetry you've ever read ?

Its even better when its set to a tune

Look for it in a record store (online or otherwise) near you, listen and learn.

But do it when you've left your teenage years behind so that you appreciate The Boss properly.

Wishfull dreamin...

Nearly forgot,

When I could sleep last night I had a dream that I remembered in the morning.

I was driving an estate car down a motorway, my estate car had yellow flashing lights on top of it and a "motorway maintenance" sign too and I was wearing a big flourescent overcoat - I was a motorway maintenance man in my dream.

I drove into a section of roadworks where the left hand lane was cordoned off and the speed limit enforced by speed cameras and when I approached the first of the speed cameras I put the flashing lights on and stopped the car, got out, took out some tools from the back of the car and strated to unbolt the camera from its post.

It came off really easily because it was only held on with one bolt and I put it in the back of the car and then set off for the next camera.

After a short while I had uncoupled and stored six speed cameras in the back of my car when a police car stopped behind me and asked what I thought I was doing, I was a bit uppity and pointed to the big flourescent coat and the "motorway maintenance" sign on top of the car, then showed the police woman my worksheet for the day which clearly showed that I was to remove all the cameras on this stretch of motorway, she argued that the cameras were police property and that I had no right to take them, I told her that my company were sick and tired of its road rollers getting flashed every time they passed one of the cameras, one of our road rollers had picked up forty seven speeding tickets in one day and we'd had to take the number plate off the tarmacadam laying machine because we couldn't keep up with the fines.

She wasn't impressed.

The dream ended with me being sent back to the first camera and she stood and watched while I fitted it back to its post and then told me she was going to watch me put all six back.

I woke up in a bad mood.

So it probably wasn't the owls fault.

Feeling hot, hot, hot

eeeeh, its hot.
7pm and its hot.
One week and three more days and it will be even hotter.
In Menorca.

When you're sitting huddled around the fireplace with the central heating turned up in the middle of January you look forward to the long summer days and especially the long summer evenings when you can sit outside until the sun sets at 10pm and slurp long cold slurps of lager.

And you forget how hot the nights can be.

So you lie awake on top of the bed all night and you try to sleep but you catnap really, and the lager you've been drinking all night doesn't help that much because lager gives you a headache and you should have known that.

And then you do finally drift off to sleep eventually.

Until a bleedin owl takes up residence in a tree near your open bedroom window, and hoots.

Now I know that barn owls screech and barn owls are actually an endangered species which is shocking to me as they were two a penny round here when I was a kid, so I think this one was a tawny owl because it was doing that cartoon too-whit-too-whoo sort of hoot, and it was nice to lie there in the semi-dawn at around 4am and listen to it, I'm a soft sod for wildlife stuff like that.

But after an hour of hooting it was getting a little tiresome, however I have a secret weapon, the hearing in my right ear is now very poor, I'd say its around 10% of the left one, a residue of a childhood spent listening to extremely loud rock music with headphones which resulted in a perforated eardrum at one point, which then led to an infection and me poking around in the ear with pointy things, which led to a torn eardrum that never healed.

Anyway, the good news is that it means that I can lie on my good ear and hear fook-hall of what goes on in the night, so I did, and the owl noise disappeared, until I rolled over in my sleep and the good ear came into play again.

I left for work at 8am, it had been light for three hours and it was already very warm, but the bloody owl was still in a tree somewhere in the garden, hooting every five minutes or so, my theory is that its a young owl who was left there by a parent and it was calling for them, nice to listen to but a right royal pain when you're trying to sleep on a hot night.

And theres another thing - pigeon man who lives next door but one and (obviously) keeps about 40 homing pigeons in his garden has also invested in some ducks and chickens - and a fuckin rooster.

The rooster has to be locked in a darkened shed through the summer otherwise he starts crowing at first light at around 4am - last night someone forgot to draw the blackout curtains and the rooster woke up when the first rays burst the horizon.

So when the owl wasn't hooting the rooster was crowing.

I'm glad that the UK gun laws are so stringent because a shotgun would have found gainfull employment last night.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Me whitey skin am burned

Phew what a scorcher
(copyright the tabloid headline databank corp ltd)

Been sat outside all day reading Island Songs by Alex Wheatle, the story of a Jamaican family who emigrate to the UK after a family tragedy, only 100 pages in but its superb and written in the mountain patois, hence the clumsy title, the strange thing is that while its a difficult read, or rather its difficult to read, the patois makes you slow down and actually read and understand each sentence and you can hear the richness of the voices in the dialogue which is a remarkable achievement for an author.

When I say I've been sat outside I should elaborate - I've been sat outside under an awning. Put the awning up on the gazebo yesterday and I'm glad we did. Set up base camp under it this morning with my easel and pastels and have finished off a commission for a friends 50th birthday today as well as reading the book.

Its been hot this afternoon.

I mean its been very hot, as hot as I have known it in this country. I sat out in the sun for 15 minutes with the book at 3pm and I burnt my legs, thats how hot its been, its dangerously hot, not that I'm complaining, love sitting under the canopy painting and a-reading all day and I've opened the first tin of beer now so am going out there again for a warm evenings drinky-poo soon.

Getting into the Jamaican book and burning myself in record time has also got me reminiscing of my time in Barbados a few years ago, its the chapter that I'm also working on at the moment in the classic tale of JerryChicken - What the Hell Kind of Dog Did That. I loved Barbados and its people and the friends that I made there on my five annual working trips, its an island that was granted its independance from the UK sometime in the 70's but it still clings to its Brtishness even more than we do here in Britain, its like visiting a pre-war Britain where everyone greets each other in the streets and old men raise their hats when you pass them, a lovely island and lovely people but with an increasing influx of British holiday makers since I was last there in '98 I hope that we do not dilute their colonial Britishness with what we have in this country now - fukkwit drunk Britishness.

The other thing that has had me thinking this afternoon is the speed at which I burnned me white leg skin in the sun and the way in which we complain when its too hot for one day of the year. The last time that I visited Barbados was in August '98 and in the middle of what they call their "wet season" when every day you can guarantee a couple of hours rain in the afternoon, except that it wasn't raining.

Sonia, the payroll clerk that I worked with at the hotel was complaining to me one afternoon that the heat was simply overwhelming and it was, but I was enjoying it and came out with the typical British response to a fine weather complaint, "don't complain Sonia, its lovely today, it might rain tomorrow".

She replied that it hadn't rained since April and that if it didn't rain soon then the island would have water problems in the coming "fine season" from October onwards, it sort of reminded me that some other countries can't rely on rain as much as we do in this country and that constant sunshine isn't always a blessing.

She also complained to me that the endless days of record sunshine that they were experiencing that year had led to a big increase in sunstroke and sunburn among the indigenous population and that was probably the first time that I realised that black skin burns just the same as white skin and that heat exhaustion also disregards race - I learned a lot about my subterranean whitey views during my visits there, stuff thats normally buried deep within a persons genes, mainly based on ignorance, they were very enlightening visits and I'd love to go back there one day in the hope that things are still the same and not tarnished by the British holidaymaker invasion.

Ho-hum, back to the painting - donkeys on Scarborough beach this time, its raining in the painting, people would never believe it if I showed the sun in a painting of Scarborough.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

This is where you check in...

Its all done, shes booked on the 18.50 Leeds/Mahon flight in two weeks time.

And Jake is booked in a nearby kennels for the same week, and he's had all of his innoculations today too, what a busy lad I've been.

Of course as soon as I confirmed the flight she started moaning that she had no new clothes to go with and somehow parted with £50 so she could go into Leeds to buy something.

There's one bit of bad news I'm saving for later for her - her baggage allowance is only 18kg or for those who prefer it in imperial measurements, thats just a tad under 40lbs.

If that doesn't sound much then you have to consider that last year when the four of us went to Menorca we had a 20kg allowance each, 80kg in total.

I packed my few tee shirts, a couple of pairs of trolleys and some shaving stuff and then left the three females to pack their own suitcases.

Two days later and on the evening before we were due to depart I went to bring one of their suitcases downstairs, picked it up and the handle fell off, it was the one with the hair dryer, straighteners and an iron in, as well as 40 pairs of shoes a whole professional make up kit, 20 or so bottles of nail polish and lots, and lots, lets say an awful lot, of perfume.

After lots of tears and tantrums I finally got them to empty some of the baggage and having caught them trying to sneak some stuff back in I put the suitcases in the car where they couldn't get at them - at check-in our four suitcases weighed a grand total of 80.5 kilos, 177 lbs of luggage for a two week vacation.

She is going to struggle to keep below 18kg this year.

Sometime between now and the week after next I have to take her to the airport and show her where to check in and then what the procedure is after that, she's 17 years old and has been to dozens of airports with us but I doubt very much whether she has ever paid attention to how it is that you actually manage to get on the right aircraft and then eventually collect your luggage at the other end.

I'll be sat in Son Bou two weeks today waiting for the phone call that says "Dad, I'm at Leeds Airport and the man at the desk says I have to pay £134 excess baggage, its just some shoes thats all and I can't come without them..."

Holidays to arrange

I had nothing to do on this hot afternoon
but to settle down and write you a line

I have to finish off the job I started doing yesterday and get Mandy on a filght to Menorca in two weeks time.
And get Jake into a kennels in two weeks time.

Item one is fairly easy, Jet2.com have started a three times a week route to Mahon from Leeds and the bleedin annoying thing is that its cheaper than what we've all paid ten months ago.

Let me explain,

Every second year we journey to the fair Spanish paradise isle of Menorca with some good friends of ours, first two weeks in August every second year, our family and theirs, our kids are exactly the same age, its spooky, we have a great time.

But its not cheap.
OK its not expensive either, about £2500 per family.
The apartments we book direct with the spanish owners, the flights are more difficult.

Leeds/Bradford airport serves the fourth largest connurbation in the UK and yet it is still not over-served by flights and the vast majority of our holidays have always commenced at Manchester Airport, but at least there is a weekly flight to Menorca from Leeds, operated by Airtours, at £275 a seat, for that sort of money I could fly to New York (seriously), but if we want the convenience of journeying from an airport that is only one mile from our home (as the crow flies across fields) then we have to pay the premium.

So last September we booked eight seats on the Airtours Leeds/Mahon flight (four per family) and left it at that.

A few months later Mandy decides she didn't want to go with us this year, she's 17 and doesn't want family holidays anymore, etc etc teenage whines etc etc..... so I cancelled her ticket in May after giving her several last chances to change her mind, she didn't, I cancelled.

Last week she changed her mind.

It was my fault, I gave her another very, very last chance when I told her that Jake would need his kennel cough medicine at least two weeks before we left, if she was staying at home then Jake wouldn't go in kennels, if she was coming then Jake would need his kennel cough certificate, it was decision time yesterday.

She wanted to come, but just for a week.
Luckily for her Jet2.com have launched their new route, so I could get her a return flight for one week for £177, almost £100 cheaper (times three) than what we had paid to Airtours - bas'tads.

I have to book it this morning, its a late night flight which means that for two nights of my holiday I can't have a drink at all as I've got to collect/deliver her to Mahon airport, but hey, what are dads for ?

So the problem now is Jake.
I rang three local kennels yesterday, two are fully booked (hardly suprising) and one can only keep him sunday to sunday, we need saturday to sunday.
My brother offered to look after him for one day and deliver him to the kennels on the sunday so we are running with that plan and Mandy is all excited now - I only hope that the place is still open today when I ring to confirm.

I'm dead if it isn't.

Friday, July 14, 2006

Damnation.

This can't be right, the bloody spam catcher's caught nothing in it.

Which is bloody useless in terms of visitor hits, the meter is moving slower than a line of pensioners outside the post office an hour before it opens.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Spam, spam, spam, spam...

Good people, this is a blatant attempt to get more hits on the hit counter, its embarrassing having to ring people up and ask them to visit my site just so the the number will move up one.

Theres only one way to attract lots of hit - go fishing for spam.

So here is the list of words that I'm using as bait today...

Insurance
Money
Cash
Loans
Artificial limbs
Viagra
Erectile Disfunction
Corn plasters

There, lets see what hits that lot will bring in.

And just as a PS for the companies who do the spamming, just on the off chance that you might actually read some of the sites before you post your crap, you'd be advised to not post your crap here, if you do we are all going to point at you and laugh at how small your penis's are.

Actually, I'll add that word to the list as well.

Penis enlargement

Off we go then, 24 hours of super-hits ...

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

I'm counting you all out, and I'm counting you all back in

Yes.
I've added a visitor counter to this site.
Today.
Its pathetic right now.
Because its stuck at four.
I'm going to have to visit as many pc's as I can and log myself in to get the number up a bit.

I could have told it to start at 1,000,353 to look good,
But its more honest this way
And as Stan Laurel said one day, "Honesty is the best politics"

But if its still at four next week
I'll nudge it along a bit.

Your musical education, lesson one

North winds have made my face a little older
and my back is bent through trying too hard
My vest is torn so I make no perfect picture
to place upon your white-washed wall
I'd like to stay but you have not asked me
Still I don't really expect you to
Dusty boots would shame you now Lady Day
Are we really that far apart
I wish the world could see you now Lady Day
laughing down at your oldest friend
The one who shared just about all he had
in a one-sided love affair
I get scared when I remember too much

Wasted time I suppose you could say that
Strange it don't seem that way to me
But wait a minute
I don't even think you're listening
Just let me tell you how I really feel
I've seen the inside of your heart Lady Day
when you wanted to be shown the way
I loved you then as I love ya now girl

Lady Day, lyrics by Rod Stewart


Not sure why I wanted to put those lyrics on here, I just like the song, have done since I first heard it in 1970, can remember first hearing it and its bookend partner "Jo's Lament", I just like it and its playing on the iPod now.

So where did it all go wrong for Rod Stewart ?

When I first start buying his few scarce albums 36 years ago they were full of self-penned lyrics like that one, Bob Dylan was a big influence on him and all of his early albums have at least one Dylan cover on them, beautiful ballads such as "Tomorrow is such a long time", "Only a hobo", and the gorgeous "Mama you've been on my mind" where the arrangement is (unbelievably) better than Dylans.

I'll tell you where it all went wrong.

When he moved to LA.

And the disco crap took over.

And again when he'd run out of steam and started recording "the old favourites" in that awful "American songbook" series.

My recommendation - don't listen to anything he's done since 1976, but listen to everything he did from 1970 to 76.

Lesson 2 of your musical education will follow at some point in the far distant future.


Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Headachesville

Took the day off work today to attend the funeral of a close friends mother who we all loved as if she were our own.

The family have taken the bereavement quite hard and so it was nice to see almost all of our gang turn up to support our friends, a bit like an episode of that 30-something programme that used to be on, except that when we watched it we all were 30-something and now we are all 50 this year.

The funeral was at 10.20 and we all gathered at the house afterwards and had coffee and sandwiches and talked for a bit and our friend started to come out of the shell of despondancy that he had wrapped around himself for the past ten days and when people started to drift back to work at around lunchtime he asked if anyone fancied a beer.

To cut a long story short a few of us sat with him and his dad all afternoon in the hot sun, in our funeral suits, drinking his beer in his back garden and now at 7.30pm I'm sitting at home with a sunburnt head and a monster headache which I'm hoping (in vain) two paracetamols and two mugs (so far) of black coffee will shift.

He was much happier when we left him though so it should all have been worth while, and we enjoyed the beer too.

Its a really great achievement in life if you can point to a group of people and say out loud, "those are my close friends" and then lean on them when it matters.

We don't like your bathroom

Got some feedback from the couple that viewed the house last night.

According to the estate agent they said that the house needed some redecoration and a new bathroom and they thought it was overpriced, but thank you anyway.

It had a new bathroom last year.

My response was a shoulder shrug and "fukk you then"

The three females who live here are still bitching about those comments ont he lines of "who do they think they are" etc etc.

This selling house business can get personal if you let it get to you.

I can't beat that price...

I had to hire a car yesterday for my employee who's car stopped living on the M62 last Friday.

A quick t'interweb search brought up Stelio's EasyCar as a nice cheap option, we could get a Ford Ka for £117 a week, that would do nicely thank you Stelios, after all, I don't have to drive the bloody thing.

Compared the price with a few others and it remained the cheapest until I tried Alamo car hire, only because they have a branch close by us, they had a Corsa type car for £117 too, so I rang them.

Told the bloke on the phone that I'd seen the price on t'interweb and he paused, then in a small voice mentioned that he couldn't usually match the t'interweb prices.

No I said, it was your company's t'interweb price, £117 for a week, Vauxhall Corsa.

Mmmm, said he, not sure if I can do that he said, but he agreed to try. Came back within seconds and confirmed that he couldn't match or beat the t'interweb price and at this point I was getting very confused, said t'interweb price supposed to be his company or what ?

Then he tells me he can do a Corsa for £113 plus vat.

Then a few seconds later he tells me he can do a Corsa for £113 including vat.

I'm very confused now, but I accepted before he got unconfused and changed his mind.

When we got to his place to pick it up it had grown up into a Vauxhall Astra as he didn't have a Corsa.

I just signed for it and hope it doesn't turn into a pumpkin at midnight.

Monday, July 10, 2006

The guided tour will start in two minutes

We're flogging our house.

And I seem to have been delegated to do the flogging.

I thought the estate agent was going to do the flogging tours, but apparently its me.

I've taken four lots of people around it this weekend and I'm bored with the routine now.

"This is a room downstairs, we live in it sometimes so we call it the Living Room, you'll see it has an open fire, its gas, and , erm, well, this is where we live"

"This is another room downstairs, we live in this one too and so we call this the living room as well, what, confusion, oh no, its not that big a fuckin house you know, anyway, this one has an electric fire, no its not gas, yes I know the estate agent thought it was a gas fire but she's an idiot, if you follow me now into the kitchen..."

"...and this is the utility room where the wife does all the washing, just step over my underpants on the floor, I don't think shes finished beating them yet ..."

"...and you'll see theres a toilet just off the utility room, useful for when she's feeling billious after loading my smalls into the washing machine..."

"...if you'll follow me upstairs I'll show you some bedrooms, who would have thought it eh, bedrooms upstairs, full of suprises this house is, what, why are the blinds closed, because the pigeon man two doors down has let his fuckin flying rats out and I don't want you to see them, so we'll go to the front bedroom first..."

And for the man who came on saturday, yes the waterfall pump in the pond does work, I've got it switched on for tonights viewers, no I don't know what chemicals they inject into the brickwork for the damp proof course but I saw you counting all the holes, the hedges all get cut by you if you buy the house, no-one else, you, and no I'm not leaving my hedge trimmers, it hasn't got a garage because theres no fuckin need for one, its got three sheds instead, and ok I admit it, the cctv is because we got broken into 18 months ago but it was a random burglary and the scrote won't be coming out for another 12 months at least, this time you'll be able to record his face though, unlike the fuckin Shell garage down the road who had forgotten to switch their recorder on when he used my credit card there.

Any more fuckin questions before you pay the asking price ?

Your last supplier was crap

I don't like motor insurance companies.

You may have gathered that I don't like motor insurance companies if you have read this blog through June.

Unfortunately, because I have three cars to personally insure in the business then I have to deal with them from time to time, and occasionally I take the bit between the teeth and I shop around using this t'interweb thingy to find a better price than the one that my current provider promises me is definitely the cheapest after they've searched an searched for a better price for me.

Strangely enough, year on year, when they search and search for me they always come up with one thats slighty more expensive than last years premium, whereas when I search and search I can always find one thats cheaper.

It happened last month, Budget Insurance got a strop on with me after direct debits missed payment for two of the policies, (I accidently cancelled one of them - tee-hee) they sent a standard letter stating that they'd cancel both policies if I didn't buck my ideas up.

So I went shopping with a "fuck you Budget" attitude.

One of the cars ended up at Admiral Insurance, home of the most annoying fuckin advert on TV involving Harry Enfield doing a parrot voiceover, absolutely appalling, I almost refused on the principal that any executive who passed that idea as being a good marketing campaign needs his fuckin bumps feeling, but still, they were the cheapest by a long way, so they got the business.

The other car ended up back at Budget.

Yes thats right, just two months earlier Budget had promised me that they had searched and searched and searched for the cheapest ever, ever, ever policy and cross their hearts and hope to die they'd found it for me. Just eight weeks later I found a cheaper one - on their own fuckin web site, the twats.

So I signed up for it and when they asked for proof of the no claims bonus I put a copy of their own letter from eight weeks ago which showed the no claims bonus, in the envelope and sent it back to them.

They wrote to us today.

It was their stroppy letter again.

The one that said I was a bastard for not sending all the details that they'd requested and that they were stomping their feet again and cancelling the new insurance, because they could, so there. And I had to send all of the documents and the insurance certificate back or I would be a very naughty customer and they'd set the bobbys on me.

I rang them in "don't say much make them squirm" mode.

Asked the lady which policy it was that they were going to cancel

She confirmed it was the new one.

Asked why.

She told me that the no claims bonus confirmation that I'd sent back was not good enough proof for them and then she asked the golden question, the one that had me smirking and trying to hold back the gales of laughter - she asked me who it was that had issued that previous proof of no claims.

"It was you"

"Pardon"

"It was Budget Insurance"

"Was it ?"

"Yes, and it was your office"

She looked again at the copy I'd sent and then I heard her mumble to herself "Oh shit"

She didn't cancel the new policy after all.

I bet that ruined her Monday morning, it certainly made mine start nicely.






Sunday, July 09, 2006

Walk along the sides please...

Had to go to Coventry on Friday on a call-out, its a two hour drive and the job took me a couple of hours to complete.

Got back on the motorway and realised that I hadn't had a cup of coffee all day, a shocking state of affairs, so pulled into a motorway service station for my takeaway caffeine fix, I actually found a parking space right in front of the main door too, which was nice as it had just started raining.

And then I saw them...

Old people.

Old people alighting from a bus, one at a time, on shaky legs, shivering down the steps like a new born foal until they could grab the zimmer frame that the carers were holding out.

And worse.

There were only a few of them left on the bus.

Which meant...

The rest of them were already on their way in towards the service station shop.

Bollacks.

Managed to squeeze past several of them on the short dash to the door but still got stuck in the bottleneck to get into the building and had to join in their shuffle where you move one foot along the floor so that it takes up a position just a few inches in front of the other foot, then repeat with the second foot, and so on and so on.

It took five minutes to get through the door, five minutes in the rain behind two old blokes wearing those "windcheaters" that only old men buy, and baseball caps - only teenage boys and ancient men wear baseball caps these days, and this pair had very nice tartan pattern baseball caps on, christ knows where you buy tartan pattern baseball caps, Scotland probably.

And then when I was finally in the shop I couldn't get around thes two old codgers, I went left, they went left, I went right they went right, it was like they had rear view cctv built into their spectacles, they read every one of my movements and blocked me in an instant, I had to bite my tongue to stop myself shouting out "walk to the bloody side of the shop you stupid old bastards".

I should have known better of course, the middle of the afternoon is no time to be entering a motorway service station. Its just two hours after the touring old bastards have had their lunchstop and now they need a piss break and another cup of tea to get them through the afternoon, the queue outside the ladies toilet was stretching back so far in the rain that they were nearly standing on the motorway itself.

When I made it to the caffe culture automated caffeine machine my heart sunk for there at the button pressing light flashing self service front end were two old buggers trying to work out how to extract a hot chocolate drink from the machine, ten minutes I waited behind them listening to endless explanations to the one pressing the buttons from the other who was equally clueless, ending in a three minute search for the chocolate powder to sprinkle on top.

All of which is why I want to retire early from my job, I don't want to be consigned to a coach tour of the UK's service stations when I grow old, I want to be able to drive myself, stop when I want to stop, not stop when a coach driver says I have to piss, I want to retire now and I want to slow down gracefully to the speed of a snail and hold up all of the other working people who are having to rush through their lives at the speed of sound.

I'm jealous of these old people, why can't my life be so slow ?

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Le Foot-ball

So there we have it, France v Italy in the FIFA World Cup 2006 final, and what good semi finals they were.

Which all goes to prove my point of some days back - football is a very simple game which England have managed to turn into a very complicated affair.

All four semi finalists, with perhaps the exception of Portugal, managed to understand the very simple concept of football - you win by scoring more goals than your opponent.

There is nothing more to learn, there is only one way to score points in football and that is to put the ball into your opponents net, for this task you score one point, or a goal, and if after 90 minutes play you have scored more goals than your opponent then you are the winner.

France, Italy and Germany understand this concept well, Portugal less so, England not at all.

The one thing that was obvious from tonights France/Portugal semi final is that Portugal are not as bad a team as they appeared to be in the quarter final against England, which brings you to one conclusion - Portugal played down to Englands level in the quarters.

England play a very methodical game, a very slow game where its often better to pass the ball backwards towards your own goal rather than knock it forwards to your opponents goal. Its a game that lends more towards the tactical blackboard upon which most English players seem to learn their footballing skills nowadays, its almost as if there is a chalked out route for every circumstance that a player will ever find himself in so that all sponteniety is wiped out of their brains and replaced by set patterns of play - in order to remember and enact these set patterns the players have to first slow the game down, hence the boredom creeps in.

Football should be played like the two semi-finals were, no leeway for losers, a draw was not good enough (which it always is in an England footballers mind), in the semi finals the only option when in possesion was to go forward and try to score, both games had end to end play and for once the referees were not influenced by the diving, spinning, cheating players who fall over when nudged.

Lets hope that the final is more of the same, I just hope that France can pull something out of the bag, they looked very tired in the last 20 minutes tonight and would surely have lost if the game had gone to extra time.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

We're going - its official

The estate agent sign is in the front garden now, they've been and taken the photographs, its on the web in all its glory - our house.

Its up for sale.

And within ten minutes of taking the approval of the text into the estate agent they rang with an appointment to view, who knows, the viewer tomorrow might even buy the place.

Which wouldn't actually beat our family record for selling a house, after he died we sold my dads bungalow within an hour of putting it on the market, but then again the estate agent did have a list of old codgers who were waiting to buy a bungalow in that street, he hardly earned his commission that day.

If we sell quickly we have a place in mind to buy, I've already put in a low offer for it and in doing so got rejected but found out what they'd be prepared to settle at, hopefully we'll find a buyer for this place and then its all settled.

If it takes a while and the first choice is sold then I fancy selling and moving out into a short term rent, maybe in the city into a new apartment, live the cosmopolitan life for a short while, eat out every night and learn to love caffe culture, the offspring would love that and it might turn into a long term plan, not sure how Jake the retreiver would take to it though.

Oh yes, I booked tickets to go and see "Grease" the musical in Bradford on Thursday, must get up to speed on the lyrics for "summer nights" and the like, can't be seen to be square or a grumpy old git, this is the prime opportunity to embarrass the youngest daughter and must be seized without hesitation.

Sunday, July 02, 2006

You'll die if you don't breath

Something really wierd happened on Friday night, something that I had never realised in the last 17 years and eight months.

My eldest daughter is terrified of the sight of blood.

Was sitting in the kitchen late on Friday night when I heard the front door go and in walked Amanda, still in her black restaurant uniform, which was a little unusual as she normally works until 1am on a Friday night.

Asked her if they had closed early and in reply she just held up a shaky finger around which was wrapped one of those blue sticking plasters that they use in the food trade.

She couldn't talk, just stood there shaking like a leaf, gasping for breath, in the middle of a panic attack.

I sat her down and got a glas of water and in between lots of sipping and controlled breathing got the story out in little chunks, she'd been forcing some kitchen roll into a dispenser when her hand had slipped and sliced a finger against the serrated tear-off strip inside the dispenser.

She and one of the other waitresses had tried for over half an hour to stop it bleeding and one of the chefs (who are used to slicing their fingers open) had bandaged it up and declared it "deep but not needing stiching" but because it wouldn't stop bleeding she wouldn't be pacified and had eventually been brought home, still in a state of panic bordering on hysteria.

It wasn't bleeding anymore and I finally got her calmed down enough to tell her to go to bed and sleep it off, but she insisted that it was still bleeding and that she wanted it dressing again as the chefs dressing was now soaked in blood.

Took off the dressing with a little difficulty to find an innocuous slash along the top of one finger and down the side of the nail, no doubt it hurt like buggery but it had all but stopped bleeding and the flap of skin was in place and should heal. I cleaned it up and rebandaged it and eventually got her to go to bed.

The next morning she was still panicky about it, after all these years I never realised that she was quite so bad with wounds, redressed it again and it really is just a bad cut, nothing more, it really needs to be exposed to the air to heal now and two days later we've managed to persuade her to take of the dressing and look at it.

Very strange behaviour, she gets it from her mother of course, I'm far to tough to be fightened by things like that :)

Put away the flags, the party is over...

Thank god for that.

In the dullest sporting competition in the world, one of the dullest competitors is out - its England.

I watched the England v Portugal FIFA World Cup Quarter Final yesterday with the honest belief that it couldn't be as poor and boring a game as the previous round against Ecuador, I was wrong.

Both England and Portugal appear to have been coached from the same manual, that is that football is a game where you keep possession and, erm, well thats it really, you keep possession and the other side can't score goals then.

Score goals ? But shouldn't you be scoring goals too ?

Oh no, you keep possession and if you keep it long enough and if you're very lucky then you might find that someone on your side will manage to score a goal, if not it doesn't really matter because a draw is pretty good too, you get a point for a draw in the league so thats not all bad.

But of course this is knock-out football and you get nowt for a draw in the FIFA World Cup, in fact if you draw at the end of full time then they punish you by making you play another half hour, its a bit like detention at school, you get to stay behind until you get it right.

And then when you still can't score a goal (and you've been playing for 120 minutes now), they make you take penalties until a result is reached, and as every England supporter knows, when it comes to penalties you've lost already, everyone knows that, which makes it all the more puzzling why the players don't seem to want to score a proper goal during the two hours of proper play.

To put it simply, at the end of 120 minutes, if Portugal had left the field, got changed and got on the bus home and left England to continue playing on their own, they still wouldn't have scored a goal by midnight, in fact they might have conceeded an own goal and lost.

The same could also be said of Portugal.


After the game I sat and forced myself to watch another quarter final involving Brazil and France in the belief that there must be something that I'm missing about this football lark, too many people are swept along with the hype for it to be all hype and no substance, there must be something good about the game surely ?

And there it was on the TV right in front of me, Brazil v France was an incredible game of football, played the way that it should be played, two teams who both wanted to score goals to win, here was a game that had no chance of going to extra time, penalties were not on the agenda, whenever either side had the ball they used skill and flair that is not seen in the English game to get the ball up into the other sides half and onwards towards their goal - simply superb stuff and I loved watching it.

So maybe, just maybe this week there will be the chance to see two semi finals that are a tad more interesting than the fare provided so far, although as one of them involves Portugal I won't be holding my breath for too long and maybe we could just end up with a France/Germany final that will kick some backsides in this country.

I doubt it though.

In the meantime the bandwagon-jumpers can put away their silly little car flags and take down their JJB flags from their bedroom windows and we as a nation can stop pretending that we know how to play football and stop pretending that we are anything but quarter finalists.