How could something so small hurt so much ?

Today I felt pain like I've never felt pain before.

If you read backwards through this blog to just one week ago you'll know that I paid my first visit to our doctor for 13 years - because I was feeling the need to urinate far to often during the day.

She took a urine test and a blood sample and whilst a quick test showed no urinary infection she sent them off for analysis, and for a PSA test for prostate cancer, which was just one of many probable causes.

I had an appointment to revisit the surgery at 4.15pm this afternoon to get the results and in the last two days the feeling of a need to urinate was with me constantly, not that I needed to, it was just the feeling of needing to - its a bloody nuisance.

I woke at 5am this morning, went to the bathroom and took a leak, no problem there. Went back to bed and awoke at 6am with the constant feeling of a need to urinate strangely absent.

I found out why when I stood up.

In that hour someone had crept up to me while I was asleep and inserted twenty seven dozen red hot needles into the small of my back, left hand side. I had never felt pain like that at all, never.

The problem is that I have nothing to compare the pain to, I'm fifty years old in two weeks time and have never broken a bone in my body, I bruised a toe badly once when I kicked a brick on the beach at Whitley Bay (long story), but thats about as bad as pain has ever been for me - actually thats not true, I crushed a vertebrae disc in my back fifteen years ago, but that was just a bee sting compared to this morning.

For some reason I came downstairs, decided that was a stupid thing to do so went back upstairs and lay on the bed where Suzanne soon awoke to find me soaked in sweat and clutching the sheets in screaming agony, she gave me two paracetomols which were as useless as slapping me in the face and telling me to pull myself together and called the doctor.

After a long discussion with the emergency NHS Direct person it was decided to bypass my GP and head for the hospital and so an ambulance was called, but as my agony was not life threatening (all this from just a telephone conversation, clever aren't they ?) I wasn't a priority.

To cut the story short I arrived at the hospital at 9am after three hours of pain and promptly threw up in the ambulance as predicted by the paramedic who had given me the gas-and-air tube so loved by birthing females with a warning that it would make me feel intoxicated and possibly billious, it did both, but it didn't kill the pain at all - all I can say is that if the gas-and-air stuff dulls the pain of childbirth then childbirth pain can't be that bad, not as bad as what I had anyway.

There, thats got rid of all the indignant women, now read on guys...

After blood had been taken the nurse noticed my writhing on the bed and groaning in agony and asked if I'd like a painkiller - I almost strangled her for asking the most stupid question of the year.

One tiny little white tablet, just 30mg of codeine and a 200mg tablet of ibuprofen and the pain went within three minutes, I told Suzanne to write down the name of those two drugs and find a source for them on eBay, with a packet of them a person could go through the rest of their life and never have a hangover again, ever.

Kidney stones, thats what I apparently have folks, kidney stones.

Tiny little crystals of salt and calcium, tiny little things that in my case don't even show up on an x-ray (I had two), tiny little grains that sit there pressing on a nerve making you want to constantly urinate and then one morning they decide to move along a little bit and BAM - you're incapacitated with blinding agony, writhing, screaming, clenching, pain that cannot be merely described - and two little tablets make it go away.

I've got a three day supply of those little tablets and I'm hanging on to them like grim death. The pain hasn't come back yet and its now 7.30pm, they fed me and released me to come home at 2pm this afternoon - I love the NHS, its a superb service no matter what shit the politicians spout about it.

How do I feel now ?

Full of water for starters, I've got to drink between four and six pints a day now to wash the buggering stones out - and I've been warned that that could be fun too - but mainly I feel bruised...

If you've ever watched the old John Wayne movie "Stagecoach" where he's on a stagecoach being persued by Indians and he climbs over the six horses heads for some reason that I can't remember, then hangs underneath the horses and slides all the way back down underneath the stagecoach, no I can't remember why he had to do that bit either, but you remember the scene ?

Well I feel like I've just done the same stunt.

But when I did it I fell over the lead horses head and it trampled all over me and so did its five other horsey friends. Then the stagecoach ran over me too, and just for good measure all of the persuing Indians horses squished me into the sand as well.

Thats how I feel right now.
But I've got my tablet friends to keep me company tonight.

How does she do that ?

Jane Tomlinson - a remarkable lady.

Here in West Yorkshire we are well aware of this incredibly determined woman as she has dominated our local TV News screens for several years now, and quite rightly too, with her endless feats of endurance raising impressive amounts of hard cash for cancer charities.

Those outside the UK may not be quite so aware of her achievements and unfortunately it seems that the American media are not at all impressed with her latest exploits, full BBC News story here.

Why should they be so interested ? Many people cycle across the USA every year, many do it to raise money for their favourite charities and back in the 1980's a chap called Terry Fox ran across the USA with an artificial leg (lost through cancer) to great acclaim, raised a fortune, had an Elton John song written about him which was a huge hit for Rod Stewart, and probably milked all of the publicity that the news media wanted to give such an event, oh yes, he died of his cancer shortly afterwards.

Oh have I mentioned, Jane Tomlinson has terminal cancer too, her current endurance feat has had to be squeezed inbetween bouts of chemotherapy. Her first breast cancer diagnosis came at the age of just 26 years and in 2000 a scan revealed multiple secondary tumours, at that point the diagnosis was terminal with treatment simply holding the various cancer sites at bay.

Since that time she has competed in numerous marathons, triathalons and ironman events, she has cycled the legnth of the UK and from Rome to Leeds, all of these events dependant on her chemotherapy sessions working effectively, on the ride down the UK she had to break off for a cuple of days for as she was in the middle of chemo treatment.

The Jane Tomlinson Foundation has raised in excess of £1million for UK cancer charities, and a synopsis of how she has achieved this can be found here - the current ride across the USA is to raise funds for American cancer charities but as stated earlier, it has met with a wall of indifference from the media.

All of which is rather unfortunate as after every one of these fund raising events you can't help but think "surely she can't consider doing another one" and then every year the physicians prop her back up on her feet and off she goes again - but for how much longer ?

I take my hat off to the girl, as one who has cycled what I thought were long distances - the longest being a five day ride to Copenhagen - I know what its like to wake up each morning with the first thought "I've got to get back on that fuckin bike this morning", its the sort of journey you'd love to make in your dreams but deep down inside we all know that none of us could do it.

Where did our money go ?

So who spent the £40 million ?

Its old news, the failure of the Leeds supertram scheme, but there are still a hundred and one questions hanging over city hall as to where the £40 million that was spent on the scheme over a ten year period went.

Back in March central government ordered an Audit Commission report into whether or not the money represented "public value for money", which considering that as ratepaying citizens we have benefitted to the tune of zero, should be a very quick and succinct enquiry, but as all government enquiries go there has been no more news since March, still, give them a few more years eh ?

This morning, on the local BBC Radio Leeds news programme a debate was fuelled about contributions to Leeds city Council that were made by local businesses during the Supertram planning process - a sum of just over £4 million was raised from city centre businesses to contribute to "public transport enhancements" which would benefit their businesses.

The esteemed leader of our council, who has ambitions to be the first publicly elected City Mayor, admitted that the "contributions" were made ostensibly to fund the supertram bid, but there were some weasel words in the documents to state that the money could in fact be used to fund any form of public transport improvements to benefit businesses.

Which is all well and good, and the request for contributions is not illegal, its a part of any standard planning application that may or may not be granted as long as the applicant is prepared to pop some money in the city coffers to enhance the environment.

The point that two bar owners were making on the programme is that they had contributed a total of £26,000 in their two planning applications, and seen, erm, nothing.

There are no new public transport initiatives at the moment, there is one in the pipeline, but then again supertram was in the pipeline, and the two bar owners were more than a bit miffed that their money appeared to have disappeared down the same pipeline that supertram did.

Our esteemed council leader mentioned that the £4million raised was still in a bank account somewhere and that £1.5million had already been spent by the people who organise public transport in the city, but he didn't know where the money had been spent because it "wasn't his department". He also mentioned that a new free bus service was now operating around the city centre to transport people around the city centre, which is all well and good but the real initiative was supposed to bring people into the city centre, not move them around a bit once they were there.

Its all a complete balls-up of a magnitude of £40million, and truthfully its not the fault of our local politicians, its central government reneging on promises whilst at the same time encouraging local politicians to spend money, lots of money, on planning applications - its only rubbing salt into the wounds to discover that the extension to the existing Manchester supertram, which was in the same sum of money as the Leeds scheme and which was also refused permission at the same time as the Leeds scheme, has now been approved by central government leaving Leeds as the largest city in Europe without a public service rapid transport system.

But never mind eh, its only our money they're spending.



Late edit - I've just noticed that the picture above is a model, either that or they intended to let lego people drive the Leeds Supertram.

Forgive me my sins.

Bank Holiday Monday. 7.28am

I'm a terrible husband.
I'm always the first to awake in the house and so I'm sitting here alone with a terrible secret.

I forgot to put the bin out last night.
You may laugh, but that is an unforgiveable crime in this house.
We now have a full bin, the binmen have been, our bin will be mega full by next Monday
I now have to wait for the wrath to descend when she descends sometime later.

Yesterday I finally finished off the coving and hole filling on that panel of ceiling that I replaced above the stairs twelve months ago.
The earned me some brownie points.
But this bin business has nulled all that good work.

I also have to clean the excess weed out of the pond.
That's been waiting for two months to be done.
It wouldn't matter but this house is for sale and the pond is supposed to be "a delightful feature"

I painted the lead flashing above the bay window yesterday too.
That had been waiting for over a year.
That good work will be forgotten over this terrible bin mishap though.

I refused to go any further up the ladder to paint the white wall above Jodies bedroom window though.
I keep telling her that I'll get a professional in to do that.
And then I never do.
And the house is up for sale and the paint is peeling off the front of it.

And we need to start clearing stuff out of the loft.
Putting it in boxes, throwing most of it out at the charity shops
Because we intend to move and the stuff in the loft is still there from the last move
So its not going with us again.
But I can't be arsed
I'll do it when we find a buyer

But when Suzanne wants something doing
She expects it doing within minutes of her mentioning it
So she mentions it over and over and over again until it gets done
She's been mentioning the front of house paintng for over a year now.

The problem is that I enjoy doing what I enjoy doing.
I paint.
I read a bit too
I watch very little TV
I write

And none of that leaves room for being busy around the house
And she says that I'd be happy living on my own
And I probably would
I'd probably be happy being anywhere actually because I just fit in anywhere, don't take any issues with me
As long as I can paint and write and read, I couldn't really give a flying one where I am
Thats how I spent my two weeks in Menorca, sitting on the balcony painting, reading, writing
While everyone else spent time round the pool or on the beach

Ho-hum

I've thought of an excuse.
If I wheel the bin out onto the street now
Before she wakes up
I can say that the binmen must have left it

That might work.

Bank Holiday Mondays past...

In the great scheme of things I'd have posted this tomorrow, being bank holiday monday and all, but hey, I'm not that perfect, so here it is, my outstanding bank holiday monday memory, posted on a bank holiday sunday.

Actually its not that daft because back in the days of my childhood bank holiday monday in august was always at the start of august, so this post isn't a day early, its 30 days late.

Anyway, pedantary over - the only thing that jumps to mind when you mention august bank holiday monday to me is... the English Electric Lightning - see above for visual reference tool.

Picture the scene...

Its early august, 1967, "the summer of love", Procul Harem have spent time at number one with "A whiter shade of pale", and The Beatles "All you need is love" has just been usurped from the top of the hit parade by Scott McKenzies"San Fransico" - I'm 12 years old, the days are wall to wall sunshine, we're on our six week school holiday and the highlight of that holiday is the Church Fenton Air Show - you should by now have a picture in your head of the TV programme "The Wonder Years", that kid Kevin Arnold was the same age as me in that same year, keep that vision in mind while you read on...

RAF Church Fenton is/was an air force base to the east of Leeds with an unfeasibly long runway so that anything could land there, absolutely anything, and every year or so at august bank holiday they'd open up the airfield to the paying public and invite air forces from all over the world to send their aircraft for a bit of a knees-up and a jolly good time, and the other air forces from all over the world would be invited to show the British public just what they could do with their own aircraft and how good they were at flying airplanes in formation and lots of other good stuff like that, and then right at the end of the day the RAF would roll open one of the huge hanger doors and wheel out their trump card - the English Electric Lightning.

Now I'm no aircraft geek, so I'll not bore you with the stats, if you really want to read articles written by fat balding 50 year old geeky blokes slavering all over dead airplanes then you need to click here and here, but what I do know about the Lightning is that it was the star of the show, the one that we had all been waiting for.

We'd have sat there all day on the grass in the middle of the airfield, in the days before Health and Safety was invented the RAF would simply stick a rope up 50 yards from the runway and request ever-so-nicely that you shouldn't cross the rope thank you ever so much.

So several thousand of us would sit there on the grass all day with our picnics and a bottles of dandelion and burdock, and the dads would sup their bottles of Tetleys beer, and we'd all be enthralled by helicopters of all shapes and sizes flying past, we'd gaze in awe at The Red Devils parachute display team, we'd gasp in admiration at the Red Arrows formation flying team, we'd be sat just fifty yards away as a huge Vulcan bomber would arrive on the runway from a North Yorkshire air force base, and then we'd boo the German airforce when they sent a token fighter to torment us and cause our fathers to stick two fingers up at the pilot and remind the young lad that they'd wupped his dads arse just twenty years earlier - it was a great afternoon.

And then to end the show the Lightning would stand at the end of the runway and we'd all crane our necks and screw up our eyes to spot it a half a mile away as it started its take-off run and the commentator who always sounded like a jolly good RAF-stylee wing commander would remind us that this was the fastest aircraft in the world, easily faster than anything the yanks had to offer, it could fly at twice the speed of sound without breaking sweat and it was the only aircraft that had enough balls in its engines to fly vertically upwards "standing on its tail" - ooh we were impressed by the time it roared past us, fifty yards away, with a gut-wrenching, ear-splitting, crackle, a blue flame belching from both its rear mounted engines, and then with the take off delayed for as long as the pilot could hold it on the ground so that we'd all get a good look, it would heave itself off the ground and disappear into the distant blue cloudless august sky.

And we'd sit there and clear our ears out and the women would gabble away to themselves, unimpressed by technology as women are, but we kids would sit there in eager anticipation because those of us who'd been here before knew that this was just for starters, this was the aperatif, the Lightning hadn't even started yet, it was gone from view but we knew that several miles away the pilot was lining us up for a fly past at almost Mach 1 at a few feet from the ground - you'd never get to see this at an airshow now, you'd never get to sit fifty feet away from a runway while the fastest fighter in the world almost breaks the sound barrier so close to you that you can see the pilot wink at you kids as he zips by, pouring himself a gin and tonic and twirling his moustache at the same time.

With an incredible roar and thunder it flashed in front of our eyes once more, a split second and it was gone again, blink and you miss it, but it had been there, just for milliseconds it had been there so close you could touch it and now you couldn't even see it as a dot in the sky anymore - and then the noise hit you several seconds later, blasting yoru eardrums with an incredible barrage of raw, unadultarated, power, the air crackling around you mixed with the jet exhaust fumes - women screamed, babies cried and dogs barked, yes people brought their dogs to the air show and let them roam free on the airfield, life was so much simpler back then - it was the most exciting thing that a twelve year old boy could ever experience and I bet the Church Fenton airshow resulted in hundreds of twelve year old boys vowing to themselves that they would have only one career choice in four years time, they'd be an RAF Lightning pilot.

And for a finale the wing-commander stylee announcer would announce that the Lightning would return to the airfield to do its party peice, it would climb vertically to a height that was unattainable by any other jet aircraft in the world apart from the Yankee spy plane that had crashed in Russia that time - our Lightnings would never crash in Russia though.

The Lightning flew in fast and low and then right in front of us would swoop upwards and turn on something that the wing commander stylee announcer called its "afterburners" and the whole arse end of the plane would glow bright red and it would climb up and up like a Saturn rocket on its way to the stars and the most exciting bit of the afternoon would occur when the wing commander stylee announcer would patch in a radio link to the Lightning pilot so that we could all hear this brave young man go about his daily business in the cockpit.

"Roger Wilco, I say Wilkinson are you receiving me, over"
"Roger Dodger WIng Commander, I'm receiving you, over"
"Good chap Wilkinson, how are things in the old crate today then, over"
"Jolly good Wing Commander, absolutely spiffing in fact, over"
"Good show Wilkinson, good show, how high are you now old chap, over"
"40,000 feet sir, still climbing on her arse she is, over"
"Hows the canopy old chap, over"
"Fine sir just fine, Blenkinsop stuck it down with duct tape after I got in sir, over"
"Jolly good, could you tell the ladies and gentlemen how high you are now, over"
"50,000 feet sir, still climbing on her arse she is, over"
"Very good Wilkinson, we're all very impressed aren't we ladies and gentlemen ? Over"

(sound of muffled cheering from the audience)

"Sir ? Over"
"Yes Wilkinson, over"
"How high would you like me to go sir ? Over"
"We can still see you Wilkinson, can't we ladies and gentlemen ? Over"

(muffled sound of ten thousand spectators shouting "Yes" in unison)

"Its just that, well its 60,000 feet now sir, and erm, I haven't brought oxygen, over"
"Well thats a tad inconvenient Wilkinson, why didn''t you pack the oxygen, over"
"Blenkinsop taped the canopy down before he could pass the oxygen to me sir, we sort of forgot sir, over"
"Well its not good enough Wilkinson, these ladies and gentlemen have paid good money to see how high you can go haven't you ladies and gentlemen, over"

(muffled sound of ten thousand spectators shouting "Yes" in unison again)

"Well I'll do my best sir, over"
"Damn good show WIlkinson, you're a sport and no question, over"
"70,000 feet now sir, over"
"I say, over"
"The canopy's shaking a bit now sir, I think the duct tape is coming loose, over"
"Keep your pecker up Wilkinson, none of this cry baby stuff, over"
"Can I come down yet, over"
"Lets see if we can get you into space eh Wilkinson ? What do you think ladies and gentlemen, over"

(muffled sound of ten thousand spectators shouting "Yes" in unison again)

"Sir ? over"
"Yes Wilkinson, over"
"I haven't brought a parachute sir, over"
"I say Wilkinson, this just isn't good enough, first the oxygen and now the parachute, just what were you playing at boy, over"
"I'm sorry sir, over, sorry, not over, can I come down now, over"
"You'll be a laughing stock you know that don't you, we've got the yanks here today, over"
"Sorry sir, over"
"Bladdy hell, you'd better come down then, you're on a report Wilkinson, my office at three bells, over"
"Sah, over"

Thats how it went, honest.

These are my people

So, family history.
Who's done theirs then ?

This is one of just a few old photos I have of what was my mothers side of the family, the Atkinsons, obviously on holiday at some un-named beach location that I don't recognise as being any of the obvious places such as Scarborough, Bridlington (although it may be) or Blackpool.

Without having to do the research I knew who everyone was in the photo except for the old man in the bowler hat on the left. I seem to recall either my Mother or my Auntie Irene mentioning that he was a Great-Uncle or maybe he was their grandfather, I can't recall, but for the purpose of my research I've assumed that he is their grandfather as he appears in some other photos with the two girls - for no other reason than that actually, you are allowed to cheat a little on family research, just like everyone always claims to be related to King James II.

So from left to right...

My presumed Great Grandfather James Atkinson looking magnificent in his best suit, tie and bowler hat whilst on a family holiday and relaxing on the beach, its good to see that he rolled his trousers up in concession to the general frivolity of the holiday, I've got a superb picture of him and a similarly dressed woman out shooting on a hillside in full tweed sporting attire and a bowler hat, he seems to have been something of a country gent and I can't help but wonder what he did, what was his position in life, and how come his lifestyle wasn't handed down to me ?

My Auntie Irene, the only person in the photo who is still alive and well, living in a sheltered housing complex in Blackpool, mother to my two cousins Alan and Ray, wife to my hilarious Uncle Sid, stalwart of our future family holidays together in Scarborough.

My Great-Aunt Beattie, a lovely lady and a lovely Great-Aunt to have, I used to cycle to her house in Horsforth during the school holidays just to sit in the front room of her old stone terrace house and have a cup of tea and some of her home baked cake. She had had some drama and heartache in her life as her bast'ad of a husband was unfaithful to her on several occasions (more of the slut later), but she would never allow a wrong word to be spoken of his memory - a lovely faithful old lady.

My Mother, Joyce, with a football at her feet although I doubt very much whether she actually knew it was a football as she certainly had no interest in kicking one when me and Ned came along. She and Auntie Irene should have been boys according to their father, and he simply assumed that they were boys when they were young, he was an ace cricketer my grandad and would force his daughters to play cricket on the beach for every day of their holidays, if only the England womens cricket team would have been around in the 1930's then my mum and auntie Irene would have been a shoe-in for it.

My Grandma, Elizabeth, again a lovely old lady in her later years who always kept a bottle of American Cream Soda in her old sideboard for the four of us grandsons when we visited - it was such a decadent thing to do to lower the drinks cabinet section of the sideboard, take one of her sherry glasses and help yourself to some of her American Cream Soda, drinking with your pinky finger sticking out as she had taught us.

My famous Grandad Richard, famous in Meanwood anyway. Stalwart of the Woodhouse cricket club, cricket dominated his life, my grandma was a cricket widow but after he died of lung cancer in 1961 she was ever so proud of his gold medal that he won for winning a local league one year and kept his cricket bat in her sideboard, oiling it with linseed oil still, as she had watched him do so often. I vaguely remember my grandad as I was five when he died and would have loved to have known him better as he always spoke of his joy at having four grandsons and couldn't wait until we had grown a little older and to have taught us the wonder of cricket - unfortunately he died before he got the chance.

The bas'tad Great Uncle Victor who broke my Great Auntie Beattie's heart. He died of lung cancer in 1958 shortly before my brother Ned was born and such was the affection that my Great Auntie Beattie held him in that she asked if Ned could be named in his memory, hence Ned's middle name being "The Bas'tad". My Great Aunt Beattie had suspected his infidelity for a long time before one day she followed him to work on the bus to find him greeted in Leeds by a floozy - I can only imagine what she felt like having sneaked out of the house behind him and somehow hung around out of sight, running to get on the bus at the last minute and sitting downstairs while he went unsuspecting to his upstairs seat where all the male smokers sat, then sitting there and watching him in the arms of a sluttern women as she waited for the bus to pull away so that she could alight at the next stop, heartbroken and just wanting to get back home again, how horrible that must have been for her and how magnificent that she remained faithful and loyal to him right up until his death - yes you're right, I've put her on a pedestal because in reality thats what women did in those days - still, I can think of no other suitable word but "bas'tad" for my Great Uncle Victor, at least my middle name is Richard as I got named after the cricketing hero of the two brothers.


I'd estimate the picture to be in the 1930's, my mother was born in 1923 and I'm guessing that she is about ten years old there so we're talking about 1933-ish, just 15 years after the Great War in which my Grandad and the Bas'tad had served and just five or six years before the world would once again be thrown into turmoil and even as they sat there (presumably) on the north east coast of England, just a hundred miles or so away across the North Sea a small man with a scribbled on joke moustache and a bad haircut was making his plans for European and world domination, and my Grandad and the Bas'tad would once again be called to arms, this time as home guards on firewatch at Leeds railway station armed with buckets of sand and brooms, its a good job that Hitler never invaded this country as the Bas'tad would have had it away with Eva Braun on the 56 bus to Leeds.

Camper than a row of tents...

Its a bank holiday weekend and here in Leeds we have the Carling Music Festival, a huge gathering of unwashed youth and the not-so-youthfull gathering at a country estate just outside of Leeds for four days of camping and listening to some of the countrys top rock, pop, and indie music - and if I knew what all of that meant I'd put a fuller description, as it is you'll have to follow the link. Its sold out by the way.

Travelling through Leeds past the railway station for the last two days I've seen them arriving from all over the country, hordes of kids, some of them no more than kids really, all humping huge backpacks with four days worth of pot noodles, cheap canned lager, a sleeping bag and a tent whilst at the same time wearing all of the waterproof clothes they can find in their parents home as everyone knows it always rains at music festivals.

Last night on the local TV News programme the scene was there for all to see, acres and acres of tents and thousands of young people getting to know their new neighbours and cracking open the beer whilst waiting for the first of the ear-splitting bands to appear this afternoon.

It sounds like my idea of hell on a bank holiday weekend, absolute hell.

But it wasn't always that way.
Oh no.
I've done my fill of camping.

Many, many years ago when the world was a younger place, just shortly after Noah had broken up his ark when the rain stopped actually , I, and dozens of my friends would head off to the Lake District of a bank holiday weekend for three days of beer, beer, a tent, and then some beer.

To be honest I don't really know why we bothered driving all the way up to the Lake District - for those not in the know it the nearest thing that we Brits get to mountains and wilderness although in reality you are never more than 500 yards away from a pub in the Lake District, its like a brewery theme park with what we jokingly call mountains - I don't know why we bothered with the travelling because we only ever sat in a pub drinking beer for three days, we could have been in any pub anywhere for all the attention that we gave to the outside world.

And it always rained, always.

Which should come as no suprise as the Lake District is reknowned for rain, lots of it, storm clouds that have made there way across the Atlantic for four days, gleefully dump their precipitation on the first bit of high ground that they come across, you don't need to be a meteorologist to understand that suprising fact, and the first bit of high ground they hit is the Lake District.

So we would lie on the wet ground in our wet sleeping bags in our wet tents at night, wide awake and in a drunken haze, listening not the drip-drop of a gentle bank holiday shower, but the thunder of gallons upon gallons of water hitting our feeble nylon flysheet every second whilst a howling, whining banshee of a wind would arrive all the way from Newfoundland just to torment us and threaten to whip our tent out of the ground and carry it away up onto the top of Helvelyn every night, just for fun.

I still remember the very night when I decided that camping was just pathetic and a complete waste of my life energy - it was the Queens Silver Jubilee bank holiday weekend in 1977.

It had been such a promising start, I'd borrowed the company van for the trip and had picked up John the electrician who claimed to have in his possesion a tent, well he called it a tent anyway, I'll call it a tent for the purpose of this story, but in fact, and despite looking like a tent, it was as useful as a sponge would have been for sheltering under.

It was a glorious Friday evening as we travelled up to the camping location of our choice, a lovely summers evening with the promise of a three day weekend in store, in all the villages that we passed through people were hanging out bunting and flags in celebration of our Majesty's 25 years on the throne, including a man up a ladder who had a suprise waiting for him when he came back down it as John the electrician leaned out of the van window and threw up all over his ladder and house wall - he'd already been drinking for most of the afternoon and was feeling a little worse for it.

It all changed when we arrived in the Lakes - it started to rain.

We put up the tent in the rain and then walked to the pub in the rain, and then later we walked home from the pub in the rain and slithered into the tiny two man tent in the rain to find that it was raining inside the tent too and had been busy raining all over our sleeping bags while we'd been in the pub.

For the first night I lay on my back inside my wet sleeping bag, looking up at the wet nylon roof of the tent from which water poured down on me without let or hinderance from the nylon and I lay there and thought how stupid this all seemed and how much dryer I'd be if I actually just went and lay outside and didn't bother with the tent.

And then it rained all through the saturday and we spent all day saturday in the pub and then walked home again through the rain and crawled into the useless tent and into our sodden sleeping bags and I lay there again for another night of staring at the water pouring in through the not-so-waterproof nylon and the next morning in our wet clothes we went to the pub in the rain and spent all day and all night in the pub and then we walked back to the tent in the rain and I looked inside the fekkin useless contraption and decided there and then that camping was not my cup of tea at all.

And at that point I had a brainwave - why not sleep in the van ?

Parked right next to the tent that doubled as a shower enclosure had been, for the last three days, a nice, waterproof, sometimes warm metal box who's principal use was for transporting electrical goods around but with a little imagination could easily double up as a bedroom.

I used it.

It was freezing cold in there, my sleeping bag was still wet, the steel floor was ribbed and hurt you whichever way you lay and the relentless rain just sounded a hundred times louder on the steel roof than it did on the nylon joke-of-a-tent.

At 4am I'd had enough and went to the tent to awaken John the electrician and tell him I wa sgoing home and that if he wanted a lift he'd better be in the van in three minutes, its a good job I did awaken him at that point as the water level inside the tent had almost reached his open and snoring mouth, another half hour or so and he would have been submerged and likely drowned.

I've never been camping since.
And if it rains this weekend for those kids at The Carling Music festival,
Then I will laugh my dry socks off.

Thats my financial future sorted then

I was so pleased to get home tonight and find a statement from one of my pension providers.

Its not my main pension provider, its one that holds some contributions that I made in the land that time forgot when I was first employed as a young whipper-snapper at an electrical contractors - the company had its own fund and for ten years they took a few pence a week off me to "invest for your future young man".

When I left they transferred it to the Friends Provident pension fund so that "it will continue to grow as an investment for your future" with lots of leaflets of old couples enjoying round the world cruises on the back of their Friends Provident payouts.

My statement confidently predicts that they will, unreservedly, without prejudice, and with all bonuses and goodwill added, pay me the impressive sum of £55.12 per annum when I reach retirement age.

I can hardly wait.

Theres another thing to add to my list of "lifes fekkin pointless activities" - pension plans.

This could be fun

I'm going to see my doctor in ten minutes time.

I can't remember when I last went to see him/her and the name they've given me to ask for doesn't sound familiar, in fact its a Dr Ho and I'm sure it was a Dr Ho that I went to see at the dental clinic last year, maybe he does mouths and wee-ing devices on alternative days ?

Damn, I wasn't going to tell you why I was going.

This is secret by the way, not even my wife knows I'm going, in fact I didn't even know I was going until I rang them 20 minutes ago - that must be some sort of a record surely, you ring your doctor at 8am and get an 8.45am appointment ?

Anyway, must fly, update later.



4pm UPDATE...

So I turned up at the doctors surgery and my how its changed since I was last there. Was told to sit down in the waiting area by the receptionist and so just politely sat there waiting as instructed, expecting that she'd shout at me when it was time to see one of the doctors.

I heard a "Ping" noise a few times but ignored it and then suddenly the woman next to me stood up and disappeared down a corridor on her way to see one of the doctors - "how the hell did she know to do that ?" I thought, I hadn't heard the old bag behind the counter shout her name out, do they do it by hypnosis now ?

And then I saw the huge big illuminated sign which filled nearly the whole wall opposite me which "Pinged" everytime a doctor was ready for you, I was fascinated, and I bet the old bag behind the reception desk was too as she didn't seem to have a function now, the last time I was in the doctors you relied on her to tell you everything, including the latest news on Mrs Thompson's fallopian tubes.

Shortly after I'd learned the rules to the game the sign "Pinged" and displayed my name and instructed me to go to room seven, so off I trotted to find a young lady doctor who wasn't called "Dr Ho" at all, maybe I should have my hearing checked out too. The first thing that she mentioned was that it had been a while since I'd been to the surgery, 1993 to be exact, and I mentioned that I remembered it well because it was the day of the great weighing confusion which is now part of my biography, she was impressed at my memory and added that she was new here herself, she'd only been a doctor for two weeks.

So we sat and smiled at each other for a few minutes and then she asked why I was there, "its the toilet" I said, and before she could advise that it might be a plumber I needed I added "I can't stop going", or rather "I can't stop wanting to go"

I got a long explanation about urinary infections and/or prostate problems and then she produced a small tube with a screw cap lid, "can you fill this" she asked, "what from here" I replied because of course the old jokes are always the best ones, but she shoved me into the corridor and pointed out where the toilet was and I was back in twenty seconds with a steaming tube full of this mornings breakfast coffee, because of course the desire to piss all the time is what is causing the problem at the moment.

She tested it for something or other and declared it infection free, but she stuck a label onit and said she'd sent my piss to a laboratory somewhere for more tests, boy that is one job that must be top of everyones wish list, testing other peoples piss, I bet they don't have to advertise for that job in school careers offices, they'll be queueing round the block for any vacancies at the piss testing laboratory.

So having ruled out an infection she then started to talk about prostates.
And how there are only two tests for a poorly prostate.
One involves a blood test.
One involves her sticking her finger up my arse and waggling it around for a bit.

She actually asked me which one I'd prefer.

I mentioned that perhaps we could try the blood test first and if all else failed then maybe, just maybe, I might consider the invasive option.

So I'm going for a blood test at 5pm.

Its the PSA blood test for prostate cancer which hopefully will be a "low" result, which apparently is what it should be, but she did mention that a high result doesn't mean that you have cancer and neither does a low result or even a result somewhere in the middle, in fact she mentioned that the test is pretty much inconclusive and the only way to tell would be for the finger job and/or a biopsy, which involves sticking something else up your arse too.

I'm still favouring the blood test myself.

Public transport again...

I missed a programme on Channel 4 that I wanted to watch last night, because I was being nagged for an hour - the story of my life, the only hours worth of TV that I want to watch this week and I have to sit and be berated instead.

Anyway,

It was part of the "Dispatches" series and featured Bob Kiley the former London Transport Commissioner and outspoken New Yorker who has apparently rattled a few cages with his opinions on the UK's public transport systems.

From what I saw of the few seconds previews and having read the synopsis of the programme on the Channel 4 website I can roughly guess that he wasn't too complimentary and that his basic premise is that Central Government should bite the bullet, tax motorists off the road and invest in much, much better methods of transporting large numbers of the public to and from their desired destinations.

Its all obvious stuff and its not like we haven't heard it before or even disagree with it.

There is a problem though.

Most, if not all, Central Government transport planning, and indeed local government transport planning is based on the planners own experiences, that is that they all work in city centre locations and all have problems commuting into and out of these locations.

Which is fair enough, commuting in and out of city centres is a pain in the arse, but its not where most people work. In the last twenty or thirty years there has been an exodus of non-office based businesses out of city centres to out-of-town Industrial Estates where space is not at a premium and their deliveries can gain access at all times of the day without hinderence, many of these Estates are also located on or close to the motorway networks for obvious reasons.

As an example, when I started work in 1975 three of the electrical wholesalers that I had to visit were located right in the city centre because it was seen to be desirable to have an LS1 address, it sort of made you appear to be more important - such a warehousing business would not dream of locating in a city centre nowadays, it would be pure madness.

Jump forward to today and in this fair city we have for the past ten years spent in excess of £40 million trying to persuade Central Government that Leeds needed a supertram system throughout the city to alleviate the congestion on three major commuting routes - Central Government made all the right noises for nine years then rejected the plan last year, but thats another story.

And yet the acclaimed supertram plan, which involved a mix of public money and private investments, had a major flaw in its plan - it had been designed by civil servants who fell into the trap that all civil servant planners fall into - they thought that everyone in Leeds worked in the city centre.

So the three main routes that they planned ran from the Northeast, Northwest and South of the city and all linked up together int he city centre, so that for instance I could catch a tram very close to my house (and would have done) if, and only if, I wanted to get into the city centre very quickly - it would have been fantastic if I wanted to get into the city centre very quickly.

But totally useless if I wanted to go around the city to, say, the Seacroft Industrial Estate area.

Which a lot of people would want to do if thats where their jobs were based.

Its all obvious stuff.
But totally ignored by planners.

And despite not seeing the programme, I would wager a small bet that Bob Kiley fell into the same trap last night.

Unless they properly answer the issue of transporting people to all parts of the city in which they live and work then you will never persuade anyone to abandon their car in favour of a public transport alternative that doesn't take them to where they need to be taken.

Travelling whilst asian...

I don't know how Pakistan Internatinal Airline (PIA) or Air India manage to do it - transport all of those asian people around the globe every day like they do, we're having a terrible problem in the UK trying to do it.

The problem is you see that as well as the terrorist attacks in the USA in 2001, we've had the London bombings in July of last year and another attempted attack in august of that year, and then two weeks ago 21 people were arrested in London accused of plotting to board aircraft with concealed chemicals in order to cause explosions on aircraft.

So what are we to do ?

Well the tabloid newspapers know what to do - urge their readers to keep an eye open for anyone who "looks asian" and who is "acting suspiciously" at airports, and the great British tabloid reading public have done just that, hunting down "asian looking people" wherever and whenever they have the nerve to appear in an airport lounge.

A few weeks ago the UK's most senior muslim police officer, Chief Superintendant Ali Dizaei warned that we were in danger of creating an offence in this country of "travelling whilst asian", news link here, at which his own Federation accused him of sensationalism and inflaming muslim opinion.

He has been proved correct.

Just last Wednesday I was listening to our local radio station, BBC Radio Leeds, who were carrying a story from a local man who would certainly fit the description of "looking like an asian" and who was explaining how his elderly mother had been offloaded from an America bound flight at Manchester Airport, (actually taken off the plane whilst it was preparing for departure) held without explanation for three hours, missed her flight and then had had to be collected from the airport by her family, again without explanation from her detainees.

Unfortunately this story never made the national news because the family had requested the radio station to keep their annonimity, they were embarassed and their elderly mother was upset and confused by her treatment - what they did say was that all she could remember was being asked repeatedly what her connections with Pakistan were, her answer, quite correctly, was that she had no connection with Pakistan, nor was there a muslim connection - she had a UK passport, the family were originally from India and were of the Sikh religion.

It was a suprising story, suprising to me anyway, I niavely thought we were better than this, I, in my stupidity, thought that our "security experts" would be able to quickly check the credentials of someone who was "travelling whilst asian" and prevent such a monumental cock-up.

I guess I was wrong.

Because it happened again last week.
Probably on the same day actually.

The news story broke this weekend of a pair of "asian looking people" who were offloaded from a holiday charter flight departing from Malaga in Spain travelling to Manchester.

The reason for this ?

The other passengers (no doubt tabloid reading, easily panicked, on alert citizens) had demanded their removal from the flight because "they were acting suspiciously" - and lets not forget that they were "travelling whilst asian".

The reason for their suspicion was that the two men in question were wearing pullovers and jackets, whereas everyone knows that in Spain you should wear shorts, tee shirts, socks and sandals, even for a night flight, even when you're flying back to Manchester where the weather at the moment is inclement to say the least, November-like would be more accurate.

The men were offloaded amidst their fellow passengers outrage at their presence, and were "questioned for several hours" thus missing their flight, then released without charge and returned on another flight "a few days later" - guilty as charged, "travelling whilst asian".

Personally I would have thought that a simple question on the lines of "could we search your jacket and pullovers please gentlemen" would suffice, being as they had already passed through the "heightened security checks", a quick search for bottles of fluid, chemicals or mobile phones would have sorted the matter out in minutes rather than "questioning for several hours" and creating yet another press story of "travelling whilst asian" which is surely going to inflame muslim extremist opinion and reaction far more the Chief Superintendant Ali Dizaei had ever intended.

The return of Simon Cowell

I'll be mentioning this particular TV programme fairly often between now and christmas.
Not that I'm a particularly huge fan.
Its just that it now dominates our Saturday evenings.

I don't normally watch much TV since the females in the house mastered the remote control and managed to remember where all the TV Soaps are broadcast and at what times - my life is now spent sitting in the kitchen listening to music on t'interweb, its a sad life but I don't have to speak to them anymore so it has its advantages.

But Saturday night is X Factor night from 7pm through to whatever time they stop broadcasting, its basically on one channel or another for the whole night, and they watch it all.

And so do I.

Its car crash TV at the moment, its the auditions stage, and you watch it through your fingers, hands clasped to your face as you die a million deaths for the imbociles on screen who think they are the next Michael Jackson, you can't bear to watch the wailing, whining, no-marks, and yet you open your fingers just a tad and you watch, you can't help yourself.

They are awful, just awful.
And yet without exception, they all think they are superb.
And thats what makes it watchable.

If they all knew that they were so awful, if they all admitted that they were doing the audition as a dare in front of their mates, then it wouldn't be so adictive, in fact I wouldn't watch it at all.

But the level of self belief in that crowd of audition-ers (100,000 this year) cannot be under estimated. If you could bottle that self belief then this nation would be capable of ruling the world again (without the slavery and assett stripping this time).

People of all ages stand in front of the three professional music makers with an equal opportunity to convince them that they deserve a place in the next round and at that point in time all four of those people believe that this could be the next big recording artist, the next Madonna, the next Jackson, the next Orville the Duck.

And then just ten seconds later you are shrivelling up in your armchair again, or like my eldest daughter last night, howling with laughter for so long that she had to leave the room and stand outside in the rain for ten minutes to regain some sort of control.

Its compulsive viewing until the audition stages are finished, then I start to criticise the talentless try-ers for what they are, kareoke singers at best - and I get stick for it from them, I get told "You can't do any better" to which my stock reply is "Yes, but I know I can't do any better" and thats the difference between the rest of the world and the kids who think they are great singers - we would never put ourselves through all that.

Back in t'olden days when ah wor nobbut a lad there was a well established system for "making it" as a singer or entertainer of any flavour - it was called the "working mens club". Every saturday night working mens clubs all over the land would pay a few bob to someone to come along and entertain their members and if you could stand on a stage in front of a concert room full of working class people who had come to this place on their saturday night only because they had nowhere else to go, and who were really here just to drink enough beer to make them fall over when they left, and who's wifes were with them because it was traditional to take her with you on a Saturday night so that she could play bingo while you boozed in the other bar with your mates, if you could stand on a stage in front of that sort of crowd and leave the stage having completed your act without having things thrown at you, and if you could complete your act without the secretary asking you to leave, and if you could actually complete your act and have the secretary actually pay you, then you knew that you might just have a modicum of talent in your bones.

But all of that is gone.

Trendy bars have attracted the working mens club audience, only old people go to working mens clubs now, and the clubs can't afford to pay for turns to entertain their increasingly elderly members, the saturday night concert rooms now look like a waiting room for the next train to heaven, each male member clutching their quarter full pint glasses and staring at the wallpaper across the other side of the room, occasionally nodding at Nobbie or Fred as they walk past to attend to their ever-more-frequent toilet needs, while their blue-rinsed, bingo-frenzied wives all huddle around a table and gossip about the other women in the room.

The breeding ground of entertainers for generations is dead.
And so we audition them on TV, in front of a saturday night audience of millions.
And it is hilarious.

A living nightmare happened today

Went to the public library today.
Fantastic things public libraries.
Where else can you just walk in, join and take stuff home for free, stuff that you really want I mean, on a promise that you'll bring it back in three weeks time ?
Just try doing that in Blockbuster or whatever the hell they call themselves now.

So I've got four good books to keep me happy for the next three weeks.
And normally I love browsing around the library.
But this time the library visit was so, well, so .....tacky.

Let me explain...

And before I start, I'm not normally snobby.
But this, I acknowledge right now, is going to sound snobby.
I'm sorry if it offends.

Our local public library is attached to a local high school, which in turn is attached to a sports centre with a swimming pool, which in turn is attached to a very small shopping mall which in turn is attached to a large supermarket of whom Wallmart are the major shareholders. Its a sort of 1970's social city planners dream, you'd put the supermarket, some smaller shops, the school and the public library all in a sort of a precinct arrangement and everything would have a focus, there would be a "centre" to this community that you were building and people would stroll with casual abandon to the supermarket and then maybe they'd go to the library too, or perhaps for a swim, and they'd smile at each other and say "good morning" and there would be trees in the precinct and birdsong and no litter and the folks would whistle "zippedy doo-dah" out their arses they'd be so happy.

It hasn't quite worked out that way.

What really happened was that alongside the library and the sports hall and the school and the mall and the supermarket, they also built a whole wedge of council (or social) houses, an "estate" as we like to call them in the UK and usually when you say the words "council estate" you say it with a sneer on your lips because everyone knows that only poor people rent houses in the UK and if you rent instead of buying then you are either too poor to borrow £200,000 to buy a house or you're too stupid to know that your council house rent is just money that you might as well have buried in field somewhere you forgot where, or flushed down the toilet because when you die they just rent the house to another person and you get to leave no assett to your kids.

There I've said it.
Its snobbish I know,
Sorry if it offends.

But hey...

Anyway, back to the story.

So I went to the library and as I parked the car in the Wallmart/Asda car park I noticed that at one end of the car park they had a huge caravan and an equally huge bouncy castle and then some other tents and things, and kids were walking away with balloons and their faces all painted up, and as I walked towards the small precinct or mall I could hear the distinctive sound of The Village People singing "YMCA", which, as I entered the mall I perceived to be coming from a mobile disco that two geeky kids (one of whom was deaf and wearing a hearing aid, the other of whom looked like Plug from The Bash Street Kids) had set up.

The voice inside my head which guides me through the day uttered "what the fuck is going on here" and at about the same time I noticed that inside the mall, down both sides of the mall were lined tables upon which people had spread things and they were trying to sell the shit that they had spread on their tables - and there walking towards me was someone inside a Bob the Builder costume and a little further behind him was someone in some sort of super hero costume that I didn't recognise at all, probably because the person in the super hero costume only weighed seven stone soaking wet and didn't fill out the costume at all.

And as I walked down the mall, thronged by standing people of all shapes and descriptions the voice inside my head kept repeating "what the fuck, look at that, what the fuck is she doing, look, look at that stall, shes selling complete shite, what are you doing here ?"

What indeed I thought, what have they done to this normally quiet shopping mall, why do I have to fight through this moronic crowd to get to the library and where has this moronic crowd come from ?

There was something going on, something organised but for the life of me I couldn't work out what it was, it was like walking through a dream sequence and I had to check to see if I was wearing pyjamas because thats the only thing that was missing from this dream sequence - and the people, where had all of these people come from, there were hundreds of them wheras normally I only see two or three when I go to the library. Hundreds of them, shuffling, poor people from the poor council estate, shuffling, mumbling, poor people, ferreting around on the stalls, not buying anything but just picking up free leaflets from loan companies or coupons for two pence off their next bulk Pot Noodle purchase, I looked out of place, I felt out of place, I was out of place.

Bob the Builder tried to hand me a leaflet from a social housing association, I just stared at him, just stared, and the person inside the Bob the Builder suit must have felt a little uncomfortable with my stare and so they backed away and let me pass through to the open air part of the mall where the public library stands across on the other side - and they'd filled the open space with a huge inflatable car racing track thing inside which four small go-carts were chugging around at less than walking pace, driven by four small children at £1 a go, none of the children were smiling, they all looked miserable as if they'd handed over their £1 a week pocket money expecting to race at 80mph and then found that less than walking pace is all that was available, I stood and watched them for ten seconds and then had to walk around this huge inflatable Silverstone to get into the safe sanctuary of the library.

But it didn't stop there.

Inside the library, blocking my path was a tall, smelly old man. Deeply tanned to an almost impossible mahogany brown so that it must have come out of a bottle of wood stainer, he was dressed in dirty white shorts that were too short to be decent, and a pair of ordinary black shoes on his feet with grey socks on, and was wearing a scruffy, mis-shapen dirty beige tee shirt from whence an incredibly strong smell of BO was issueing forth.

He was tall, six and a half foot tall at least and had a scraggy beard and equally scraggy hair that looked like they had both last seen a barber back in the 1970's and as with all lunatic old men like him he was talking in a voice that was far too loud for public decency and far too opinionated. He wanted to use one of the public computers in the library but couldn't work out what his password was as he'd not used the ones here before but he had used the ones at a different public library and could he still use his old password here ?

The librarian just wanted to get rid of him so she actually gave him her own password to use so that he'd take his opinions and his BO to the far end of the room where the computers were, and as I stepped up to the counter she just looked at me with a gaze that read "see what we have to fuckin put up with all day ?".

I found my four books in record time and within five minutes was gone, fought my way back through the incredible poor peoples table-top-sale-in-a-mall and caught a fleeting glimpse of a police officer sat inside a transit van that was covered in the logo's "Community Policing", he was doing nothing, just sitting there inside his van with the back doors open, sitting on a plastic seat, and by his side was a little police car of the sort that you sit your kids in and put £1 in a slot to make it play a tune and move up and down, except that it was just sitting in his van for him to stare at, he looked very bored.

I almost ran back to my car, it had been a bizarre trip, truly bizarre, and I still do not believe that I witnessed it, I keep checking the clock to see if its just 7am and I've just woken up but no, its 5.30 in the evening and I really did live through a most bizarre morning.

I was shocked today

...shocked whilst browsing the excellent Youtube.com site.

I like YouTube, no, I love YouTube, if only for the fact that many people who are seemingly of the same vintage as myself have bothered themselves enough to post lots of lovely videos of the artists that I used to watch way back int he 1960's and 70's, those halcyon days of popular music that are now lost to all but those who have exceptional memories - lost that is but for YouTube.

I'm currently building up a Favourites list on YouTube that will seriously threaten Jimmy Saviles back catalogue of pop pickers recollections, all in aid of my 50th birthday party in a few weeks time which threatens to turn into me and my mates in the kitchen with a computer and an lcd monitor playing the videos of our youth crying tears of nostalgia and mirth whilst the women sit in another room and complain about how none of us like tunes they can dance to.

But anyway, back to the photgraphs above.

I was shocked today.

Shocked by innocuously clicking a video of Harry Nilsson performing his massive worldwide hit song "Without You" live in front of a TV audience (OK he was obviously miming to the recording, but still). I'm assuming that the video was shot towards the end of Harry's career, its a big assumption I know but I'm basing it on the fact that Harry Nilsson's life was one big drinking party and his death in 1994 from a heart attack was not entirely unpredictable, I'm assuming that the party lifestyle took its toll on his weight, which, as can be seen by comparing the two photos above, ballooned to Elvis proportions.

The "thin" photo by the way was snatched from an excellent video of the TV documentary that was made for the album "A little touch of Schmilsson in the night" when the whole of the recording sessions with Gordon Jenkins and his orchestra were taped, its one to look out for on dvd if its ever available.

Am I sounding like a geek yet ?

I loved Harry Nilsson's music, and frankly when I saw the "fat" video I was shocked and sorry that I'd seen it, he looks ill and uncomfortable in the video and its not how I want to remember him.

Mind you, if I looked hard enough I bet I could find two comaprable photos of myself...

Could you be as cool as this man ...

Anyone know who it is ?
Yes, you at the back ?
No ?

Have a look at the video then.

Bobby Darin of course.
Coolness personified.

I dance like that when I'm drunk.
It embarasses the children.
Which is my job as a dad of course.

Anyway,
Frank Sinatra.
What ?

Yes its a tenuous link, but still, we're there now.
Frank Sinatra.

Have I ever mentioned that Frank Sinatra was my dad ?
No ?
How did I miss that one then.

Let me explain.

I grew up in the 1950's in a house full of music. No-one played a musical instrument but my dad sang, and sang, and sang. He sang in pubs, clubs, wherever they'd let him sing. He sang in the bath, in the car, in the garden, he sang for almost every minute of his waking life and when we were older he would not go for a drink with me and Ned unless there was a "turn" on at the pub or at the very least someone who could play the piano so that he could get up and sing.

In fact the pubs that allowed singers to get up and accompany their pianists were his favourites and he knew every pub piano in Leeds - the pianist would only have to start to say, "does anyone have a singing voice ?" and he'd be stood at the side of the piano before he'd finished saying the word "does".

We also had the radio on in our house - constantly, in fact I don't think anyone ever switched it off.

A great big super modern thing in beige and yellow plastic with wire feet and handles that you could pick it up (two handed) with and a great big dial on the front with the names of every European capital city on it so that you could tune in to their short wave broadcasts, which we never did.

The radio was always tuned to The BBC Light Programme, the one that mainly played music for my dads generation, music from the 40's and 50's, big band stuff, swing, jazz, and the crooners. My dad had grown up listening to Sinatra and his like, and knew all of his songs and wasn't afraid to sing them in pubs - "Lady is a tramp" and "That old Black Magic" being his favourite or if he could find a pianist who knew the tune, "All or nothing".

So there I was as a young child, two or three years old, pre-Beatles, indoctrinated into the swing and crooners sound and at the same time as I was listening to the BBC plum-in-mouth presenter speaking of a "Frank" on the radio singing "All or nothing", here was my dad, who I knew was also called Frank, singing "All or nothing" in our front room, and when we went on holiday he'd sing "All or nothing" in the talent conpetitions too, and of course he'd win the competitions, what with him being Frank Sinatra and all, it was almost dishonest for him to enter actually.

And later in his life when he went to live in Benidorm, he'd be out every night in the showbars singing Sinatra songs and when me and Ned went to visit him we'd feel obliged to go into his favourite bars and sit there and listen to him belt out a few tunes for his adoring old lady audience and instead of being embarassed about having a singing dad like we used to be when we were kids, we'd actually be just a tad proud of him, it takes balls to get up and sing like Sinatra or Darin in a bar, swaying your hips, clicking your non-mic-holding fingers casually by your side and ad-libbing with the words like you'd been doing it all your life - which he had.

Of course there was the unfortunate incident in one Benidorm bar when I wasn't with my dad but my wifes uncle instead and he introduced me to the owner of the place as "Franks lad", the pillock switched the microphone on, handed it to me and announced me as the next "turn" assuming that I'd be a singer too, nothing could be further from the truth actually and fortunately for me and the audience I'd remembered where the door to the street was.

I do look cool on the dance floor though - in my head anyway.
The offspring don't necessarily agree with that summary though.

On the subject of flying...

A few short notes from the holiday log ...


On the subject of flying

My eldest daughter flew out seperately from us, she wasn't going to come with us at all then changed her mind at the last minute and we couldn't get her on our flight.

So she was stood in the check-in line at Leeds/Bradford airport on the saturday night and a family were weighing in their luggage when the check-in girl asked them the usual questions about have they packed the case themsleves, are they carrying items for other people etc etc - those questions where you keep a straight face and only answer yes or no - and the bloke of the family blurts out "theres a bomb in that suitcase, ha, ha"

Mandy said he was not a young kid but a middle aged man with his wife and two small children with him and you can only think that that he must have had some sort of radical brain surgery where the surgeons had removed all of the part of the brain that makes you function as a person and only left behind the bit that allowed him to breath and walk.

He was asked to repeat his comment and the fekkwit repeated it at which point two police officers appeared as if from nowhere and arrested him and carted him and his young family off somewhere else.

Can you imagine what those kids think of their dad now and for the rest of their lives ?

They'd probably been looking forward to their family holiday for a long time, saving up, buying new clothes, getting all excited packing their suitcases, and then their idiot dad gets arrested and they can't fly with that airline ever again for the rest of their lives and will probably struggle to book with anyone else too.

The capability of some people to self destruct in a brain fart of fekkwittedness never ceases to amaze me.
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And then on the following saturday Mandy was flying back from Mahon to Leeds and so we took her to the airport for her late night flight (the late ones are the cheapest) and waited in line at the check-in desk for her.

As we suspected the flight seemed to be sparsly populated, there were only about twenty people in the queue in front of us. With it being a last minute (literally) booking we had booked her on a Jet2.com service - Jet2.com are a rapidly developing budget no frills airline that operate out of Leeds and Manchester with a small fleet of 737's and one 757, when you look at their schedules their aircraft are like albatrosses - they are in the air for 98% of their working life, 30 minute turnarounds, turn up at the airport, walk on and go.

Its a very popular way of travelling from the UK now, operators like this have become air taxis and with flights sometimes available for just five pence (like the one I booked to France last March), its obvious why they are so popular.

There is a downside though.

The operator has absolutely no responsibility to carry you at all.

If you turn up with the confirmation email and your passport at least 40 minutes before your flight then you'll get on it but if for any reason they have overbooked or they cannot provide an aircraft at that time then all they'll do is give you your money back, no compensation, no overnights in a hotel and no guarantee that they'll put you onto another flight, you certainly have no priority for rebooking another flight.

Its like missing a bus - you wait for the next one but theres no guarantee that you'll get on the next bus either and the bus company won't want to know about your complaint.

So we are standing in line and telling Mandy that the plane should be nice and empty and that she'll have a spare seat to spread out on when we turn around and suddenly another 100 or so people have joined the queue.

They were all from Liverpool and should have been flying out on an Easyjet (another budget airline) flight ten minutes before Mandy, but it had been cancelled.

Thats all, just cancelled, no explanation, the airport had no representation for Easyjet and as far as they knew the aircraft had just not turned up from Liverpool on the outward leg and would not be turning up. Easyjet were not sending another aircraft and had simply cancelled the return leg, leaving 100 scousers stuck in Mahon to find their own way home.

It was 11pm and the last flight back to the UK that night was the Jet2 flight to Leeds which fortunately had plenty of capacity on it, so the 100 or so unhappy Liverpudlians had to troop over to a ticket shop and purchase seats on the Leeds flight - they couldn't transfer their Easyjet tickets to the Leeds flight and were told to claim their money back from Easyjet when they got home - a scouse family in the queue right behind us had five members and had to fork out nearly £1000 for the trip back to Leeds which was a lot more than they had originally paid Easyjet.

Then of course there was the problem that they'd be arriving in Leeds instead of Liverpool, at 1am in the morning. The woman in the group behind us asked me if Leeds was as close to Liverpool as Manchester was as they often took taxis from Manchester to Liverpool. I tried not to laugh at their predicament and gently told her that yes, Leeds was a lot further from Liverpool than Manchester was and she'd struggle to get a taxi driver to take her there at 1am in the morning for anything less than a kings ransom.

So there you have it - you'll save a stack of money with a budget airline provided that they don't have a "technical problem" and cancel your flight, if they do, it starts to get expensive for you.

The petrol pump hates me

Our hire car needs petrol. The petrol pumps in Menorca are a little bit different to the ones in the UK in that you have to type in the amount of money you wish to pour into your petrol tank and then the pump will automatically fill up to that level of spend - not too complicated, we've got those in a few places in the UK too, its just that we prefer to do it the hard way by letting the petrol trickle ever sooooo sloooowly into the tank when it gets to £19.95, barely touching the pump trigger at all , holding our breath when it gets to £19.99, then £20.00 and let go, phew.

And then it trips to £20.01, you curse and slam the nozzle back into the pump holder, and it trips to £20.02, you curse again and thump the petrol pump, it trips to £20.03 and you swear you hear it laugh at you - you go into the office and pretend that you really wanted £20.03's worth of petrol all along.

But that doesn't happen in Menorca, oh no, you type "20.00" (shit, what's the shortcut key for the euro sign, anyone, anyone ?) euros and the pump puts exactly 20 euros into your tank, its cheating and its an extravagant use of technology but still, no scratting around for odd cents in your pocket in Menorca.

So I pull up to the pump and I take hold of the pump nozzle and press some buttons on the pump - nothing.

I press a button with a UK flag symbol on it and then the reset button but its still showing the last sale on the pump - Pedro in the office hasn't reset the pump, I glare at him across the forecourt but he doesn't look up so I curse him silently and press some more buttons - still nothing.

A car full of Spanish youths pulls behind my car, they look impatiently at me, I press some more buttons, I've pressed enough buttons on the frikkin pump by now to have written the code for a new 3D Playstation game but still, nothing.

I see movement out of the corner of my eye, the Spanish youths are getting restless, one of them has wound his window down and just as he's is about to shout something sarcastic at me in Spanish I enact "The Englishman Abroad Guide To Making Yourself Understood, Lesson III", I shout loudly at no-one in particular, but in particular I shout at the petrol pump, very loudly, and with feeling.

I call it a fekking useless piece of fekking junk, I call it a bastarding fekking piece of fekking junk thats as fekking useless as my arse at dispensing petrol, I nearly hit it with my fist but pull back from the brink, that would not be the English thing to do.

The Spanish youth says nothing and slides back down in his seat and mumbles something to his Spanish youth friends about "zat eeenglish man eez fekkin cray-zee" and they all nod in agreement - it works every time, avoid confrontation abroad by feigning crazyness, it helps too if you are wearing a white panama hat as I was, Johnny Foreigner sees a white panama and instantly sees "Crazy Englishman Abroad".

Still the pump does not want to know so I slam it back in its holder and still cursing at anyone who looks in my general direction I stomp off to the office to give Pedro a piece of my mind, but theres a queue in the office now, all trying to pretend that they weren't watching me and so I turn on my heel and decide to give the pump one more try.

I tell the pump using extremely profane language that it had better fekkin work this time and I suddenly have a vision of John Cleese whipping his Austin 1100 with a tree branch, I press the "English" button and it clicks and whirrs and its ready for me to tell it how much fuel I want, "Fuck me" I declare, "Halle-fuckin-lulah, now we're getting somewhere" and I type in "20" for twenty euros worth of fuel.

I pull the trigger on the pump and petrol pours into my tank, well thats avoided a confrontation with Pedro then.

Three seconds later it stops.

I call the nozzle a whole new string of obscenities and notice that the car with the Spanish youths in has moved to another pump now where they are all staring straight ahead and pretending that I'm not there at all, but thre more cars are now waiting behind me and so that they don't get any funny ideas about taking the piss I shout in their direction too about what I'll do to the bastarding pump if it doesn't give me some fekkin petrol soon, the one nearest to me reverses out of the way and joins another, much longer queue at a different pump.

I turn to the petrol pump and notice that its dispensed twenty cents worth of petrol - for fucks sake, I must have typed "20" instead of "20.00", what a fekkin stupid way to sell bastard petrol this is.

I look for a reset button, there isn't one and with a heavy heart I realise that I've got to go into the office and pay Pedro for twenty cents worth of petrol before he can reset the pump, twenty cents worth of petrol won't even get me off the fekkin forecourt.

I join the queue in the office with twenty cents clenched in my fist and when I get to the till and Pedro asks what pump number I tell him "Quatro" (I always have to go to pump four as its the only Spanish number I know), he looks at his computer screen then scowls a bit and looks at me again where I am displaying a nice new twenty cent coin gripped tightly between my thumb and forefinger and I nod and say yes, its only twenty cents, can you reset the pump please.

He laughs, takes my twenty cents, laughs some more and resets the pump.
And then laughs some more.
The bastard.

So I walk back to the car and the Spanish people in the queue behind me think I've finished swearing at inanimate objects and they start their car up to move forward, I mouth "fekk off" at them and take the nozzle from the pump again and this time I type in "20.00" and this time finally the pump dispenses twenty euros worth of fuel and then with one last curse at the pump for good measure I have to go back to the office and join Pedros petrol queue for the third frikkin time to pay for what I wanted ten minutes ago.

I tell him "quatro" again and he looks up at me and say "aaah yesss, twenty pleese" and the bastard laughs at me again and then finally I can leave his stupid bastarding petrol station and even though I only know of one other petrol station on the island I promise that I won't be visiting Pedros again.

When I get in the car the wife and two teenage offspring are sat there silently staring at me, in shock.

"Did we lose it a bit there dear ?" the wife asks sweetly

And then I realise that they all had their windows open in the heat and had heard everything, which came as a bit of a shock to them as I normally swear less than our local vicar - they don't know what I'm thinking though.

"No, no my dear" I explain, "Sometimes you have to show Johnny Foreigner that he can't mess about with an Englishman abroad thats all"

And I think they accept my explanation.

So where would you shelter ?

So you are driving around a fairly small island and its been sooo hot and sooo sultry over the past few days that you're wishing a big storm would come and blow it all away, and today its looking like you'll get your wish because those clouds that were on the horizon a few hours ago are now filling the sky, and they are black, and they look angry, there's going to be a big electric storm anytime right now, and no messing.

So where would you go to shelter from the big electric storm then ?

Perhaps if I told you that the highest peak in Menorca is right in the middle of the island and that for hundreds of years its had a monastery on top of it but in more recent years its become home to dozens of radio masts and air traffic beacons and all sorts of electrical wizadry stuff being that its the highest place on the island and all that - would that seem like a good place to shelter from a big mean old electrical storm ?

Well it seemed like a good place to us and so we stuck the Ford Focus into a low gear and wound our way up and up the mountainside until we were pulling into the car park alongside the monastery just as the first dinnerplate sized raindrops started to hit the ground, time to head for the coffee shop with the outdoor terrace I decided.

And so we sat there under a canopy waiting for the storm to pass over and after about ten minutes of non-action and with the asistance of a large cup of caffeine I sat there perusing the multitude of radio masts and wondering if they all had lightning conductors and then ever so slowly realised just how vulnerable we were up here.

We finished our coffees and tiptoed ever so slowly out of the monastery so as not to upset the god of the storm which was still poised over us, big, black and angrier by the minute but still not so much as a flicker from it - we dived in the car and zoomed back down the mountain as fast as the Focus would take the numerous U-bends.

The storm didn't attack Menorca until later on that evening, until much later on when we were sat safely on our apartment verandah to watch the light show - and the tornado.

Yes we saw a tornado descend from the black clouds a couple of miles out at sea, it hung there for about five minutes and eventually at one point actually touched down in the sea - thats my own photo of it above - impressive eh ?

Well its impressive when you come from the UK where the BBC call a strong gust of wind in Kent in 1987 a tornado.

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And another thing...

The monastery.

Its supposed to be run by nuns, according to the tourist info, but its not, its run by quiet men.

I assumed they were monks, if they weren't monks then they were very quiet men, so quiet that they must have been specially selected for their quietness, you couldn't hear them at all when you spoke to them, god knows what they must have been like at the interview...

"Good morning Mr Gonzales, what skills do you think you think you can offer the monastery coffee shop then ?"
" "
"Pardon ?"
" "
(turns to fellow interviewer)
"What did he say ?"
"Haven't a clue old boy"
"Did he say anything ?"
"I think so, his lips moved a bit"
"Is he a mute ?"
"Well he's perfect for the coffee shop if he is"
"Whys that ?"
"We asked for quiet men, don't you remember"
"I didn't mean that bloody quiet"
"Language Brother Timothy, language"

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And one more thing about the Monte Torre day...

As I sat there pondering on which of my family would be struck by lightning first, and wondering if our Advantage Gold insurance policy covered acts of stupidity or whether we could convince the insurers that the storm had rushed up on us when we were already up there, I spotted a very strange looking woman.

It was her face that was strange.
As though she'd had botox treatment.
In random places on her face.

She had the face of a hamster thats just stuffed enough food in its cheeks to last it the winter, the face of such a hamster that has then gone and had botox treatment on its eyes and forehead.

And then been stung by lots of bees on its way home.

But just when I was feeling sorry for the woman with the face like a bag of walnuts and wondering what strange tropical disease she might have, and whether it was contagious, and whether she was up here for the electric shock treatment, I noticed her two kids - they were just as ugly.

So it wasn't a terrible disease at all, nor a tragic beekeeping accident, she was supposed to look like that and her good looks (if you are a warthog that is) had been passed down to her two young boys.

Poor sods.

You won't believe who we saw on holiday ...

You simply won't believe just how many stars of popular music we have seen whilst on holiday, I know I still don't, I never knew just how popular the small but perfectly formed resort of Son Bou, Menorca was with holidaying superstars.

George Michael for one.

Yes really, George Michael performed in the Copacobana bar for no fee.

I think he may have been drinking actually because his words were very indistinct, I know his family are Cypriots but when I've seen him on TV he does speak with a very refined English accent so there really is no other excuse but the drink for the fact that he sang "Waaaa-me aap, beeefor-u-go-go, don't wanna (random elongated noise follows for second line) "

And we saw Anastacia, and Freddie Mercury (I thought he was dead, but maybe not), The Four Tops, The Temptations (I'd never noticed before just how much the Four Tops looked like The Temptations, they could have almost been the same people), we've seen The Bee Gees (all three of them), Robbie Williams, three random women who cold have been the Three Degrees or maybe The Supremes, and, wait for it, Abba.

Yes we've been watching an array of tribute acts.

What a fooking waste of time.

The only thing that made watching these jokers bearable was the fact that most of them were Spanish, spoke very little English and had learned their acts in the style of Pepe Hernandez.

Let me explain...

A long, long time ago my dad discovered Benidorm.

For those whose lack of European geography has denied them the undoubted pleasure of familiarity with Benidorm, think Las Vegas or Atlantic City without the casinos or the big star shows and then add a couple of thousand more bars - you've got a 24 hour drinkers paradise with sun and sand and some third rate entertainers perfoming in what they jokingly call "show bars".

My dad loved Benidorm, he loved it so much that he went on holiday there three or four times a year for ten years and then when my mother died he went and lived there until he eventually departed this world with a final encore of Sinatra's "Thats Life".

After one of his trips there he returned to England with a cassette tape of a singer that he had heard in some random "show bar", who, my dad promised, would be the next Tony Bennett. He gave the tape to my brother and I and we eagerly inserted into the hi-fi and switched it on.

What we heard next could have single handedly destroyed the entertainment industry within days if my brother and I had not worn out the tape by playing and replaying it whilst howling with laughter and pain from the cracked ribs, I walked around for days with blurred vision from the tears in my eyes, chuckling like a lunatic at bus stops every time the memory of Pepe Hernandez sprung to mind.

Pepe Hernandez was a keyboard player who toured the show bars of Benidorm with his Casio keyboard under one arm and its power transformer in the other, perfoming nightly for no fee other than tips from the appreciative British audiences.

Pepe Hernandez could not speak one word of English outside of his catalogue of learned songs.

Pepe Hernandez learned the English in his songs by listened to the original recordings of those songs and reciting the noises that he heard those singers making, with mixed results.

So for instance when Pepe Hernandez decide to add the recent number one hit "Tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree" by Dawn, it came out as "Die a jello ribbo roun ze ooo-ooo-dree, its beeen dree ooong ears, do you steel wan me", and we had a C120 tape full of that sort of stuff.

I've recently checked the t'interweb and searched for Pepe Hernandez - he's still playing the show bars of Benidorm.


But he's spawned lots of pseudo-English singers in the otherwise cultured country of Espana, and we've seen some prime examples in Son Bou over the past two weeks.

Actually they were not all Spanish, The Bee Gees for example were German, very teutonic they were, quite frightening actually, especially when they tried to get us all to rise as one and invade the bar next door at the end of their act (tired old cliche acknowledgement, they didn't really).

Abba had two English girl singers and two German boys in the background, oh how we laughed at the tall blond-bewigged one at the back when he had to sing the line in the famous Abba hit "Waterloo", you know the line, the one that goes "Waterloo, how does it feel when you won the war ?" - boy did he have to grit his teeth when he sang that line, it was so good we made them sing it again as an encore.

George Michael was a fresh faced Spanish lad who had not yet started to shave and for some strange reason had chosen the George Micheal persona as seen on the album "Faith", the moustachio'ed one with four days beard growth and a leather jacket - painted on stubble and a Village People style false moustache certainly distracted us from the lisp that he sang with.

He had appeared on the same bill as Freddie Mercury who apparently borrowed the Village People style moustache for his over the top performance of phonetically pronounced Queen songs to a backing tape that leaned somewhat heavily on Pepe Hernadez's Casio keyboard and try as they might, the boffins at Casio have not yet perfected Brian May's guitar solos or the multi-tracking backing of "Bohemian Rhapsody" which the Freddie tribute attempted all on his own - poorly.

Robbie Williams was by far the worst for entertainment value though - an English lad who's large wingnut ears just attracted your attention throughout his performance, and he should really have been a Butlins redcoat for all the audience participation that he tried to engender.

By the time he had finished explaining exactly what it was that he wanted his audience to do during each of his tortured songs, they had long since lost the will to live and simply didn't join in, which led in turn to a more lengthy explanation for the next song, and so on - his first forty minute spot consisted of just five songs, still, we could laugh at his ears.

And no, I didn't bring any tapes home.