Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Self-importance, round two...

Remember this fool from February ?

He rang again this week, I'm sure its him, I hope its him because there cannot surely be two such self obsessed dumbfooks on the planet.

He wants me to go to his office and talk about a product he wants to buy from us and this time I've agreed because I want to see what he looks like - I'm going Friday.

I predict that he will be quite tall, balding if not bald, smartly attired in suit and Wallace and Grommitt tie and will sit me down on the other side of his desk as if doing me the biggest favour in the world.

For my part I will instantly offer him the impression that I don't give a flying fook about his business or his requirements and I guarantee that by the time I leave his office he will have lost his temper with me.

I'm really looking forward to Friday.

October 1988...

October 1988
30th October 1988 to be precise.
Sunday 30th October 1988 to be pedantic.
I became a dad for the first time.
Which means that yesterday she was 18.

30/10/88 - Having spent all night in the delivery suite at the LGI and then accompanying wife and new offspring onto the new deliveries ward where they both promptly fell asleep I took advantage of the nurses advice to go home and grab some sleep myself and emerged out of the main entrance of the Clarendon Wing to a gorgeous, crisp and frosty Sunday morning.

My car was still where I'd abandoned it in the "emergency vehicles only no parking zone" right in front of the main entrance, the chap in charge of parking at the Clarendon Wing was well used to first time fathers-to-be abandoning their vehicles anywhere and everywhere, sometimes with doors left wide open all night, sometimes with engines left running all night, and he'd kindly averted his eyes for 12 hours over my indescretion - he gave me a wave and a thumbs up as I drove out of the car park, the huge stupid grin on my face must have answered his unspoken question.

The drive home was sublime, a beautiful autumnal morning with a hint of winter on the way but with a glaring sun low in the sky, a perfect day, just a perfect day. And then later on that evening as I was leaving the hospital again, I was accosted by a parent and a group of small children dressed in hallow'een costume who were out "trick or treating" and the inextricable link between Amanda's birthday and hallow'een was first made.

And so yesterday, 18 short years on we took her to The Fox to buy her first legal alcoholic drink but for some reason it seemed to be me that was doing all the buying and not her and my dream of becoming an old fart sat in the corner of a pub who sends their offspring to the bar for them is in danger of never being fulfilled.

My how things have changed though.Her boyfriend bought her flowers and a very expensive dress that she'd spotted and tried on in one of the boutiques in the trendy designer zone of Leeds city centre, he'd gone back another day and bought it in her size, all on his own, how brave of him.

When I was his age Suzanne would have been lucky to get a bunch of flowers for her birthday, chocolates were more likely, chocolates were safe, you could always tell the shopkeeper that they were for you as long as you avoided the boxes with pink flowers and ribbons on the front.

Flowers were something different though, a lad could never buy flowers in a public place on his own, not living in a small north east pit village where everyone knew you and your business anyway. If I'd gone into the flower shop in Delaval the word would have been all around "the clerb" that night...

"Nooo hey, guess who ah saw coiming oot tha fluwah shop terday like, man"
"Whey gan on then, divvent keep it ter yersell"
"That big nancy boy from Yawkshire, yer knarr, Harry Jacksons sun-in-lor"
"Whey nivver man"
"Whey-aye, git big bunch o'roses he had, hiding them behind his back like"
"Whey tha big pufta"
"Aye tha big pufta, wait till he comes in here-yah man"

And so each year for her birthday Suzanne received a plain box of chocolates, no fancy wrapping, no ribbons and bows, sometimes if I really couldn't be arsed she just got a bar of Dairy Milk chocolate, she never received flowers from me and my reputation was never sullied in Delaval by stories of how much of a pufta I was - those sort of things were important in those days.

Amanda spent the rest of last night in various pubs with various friends of hers and arrived back home at half past midnight, judging by the difficulty she experienced in getting through the front door and the numerous attempts to lock it behind her, and the fact that she brought home a carrier bag with a bottle of wine in it that had been broken on the walk home, I'd guess that she was a tad tipsy after the birthday celebrations - but this monring she was up at 6.30am ready to face college and the world as an official adult without a trace of a hangover.

God I hate kids metabolism when they don't get the hangovers that I do.

Monday, October 30, 2006

We're all going to die...

The Kings Arms, York (in photo), it stands on the River Ouse, has done for hundreds of years and it floods every couple of years so that you need a scuba qualification to get served - its flooded so many times that they have a guage in the bar where you can see how high the water has reached in decades past.

We're all going to end up like the Kings Arms soon if you believe this report.

But, once again, I have a problem with the whole issue of our beloved Government standing on its soap box and bleating about global warming and how we're going to have to start paying the price right now.

You see our Chancellor Gordon Brown has been borrowing money on our UK credit card and its getting close to the time when he needs to start repaying some of it. This report suggests that we owe £25.4billion and in the Sunday Times yesterday it was suggested that £3.6billion of that needs to be found in the next financial year - the budget for which Gordon is preparing right now as I type.

So what an opportune moment to find a report that suggests that governments all over the world need to start cutting down on pollution right now, and how predictable that our governments response should be that taxation on the use of vehicles and other forms of gas emitting fuel (ie our electricity and gas useage) is the way forward - yes, the way to cut down on emissions is for use to use less because we can't afford to use it anymore.

Except that it won't work that way.

Gordon Brown will target vehicles that are fuel inefficient and that emit high levels of so-called "greenhouse gas" for extra tax levies - in short these vehicles tend to be the expensive 4x4's or SUV type vehicles that are so popular in inner cities - but in short, the sort of people who own these vehicles do so because they bought them through choice, like them, and if they are wealthy enough to pay £50K for them will happily pay another £1000 tax a year on them - which will do nothing for global warming but will work wonders for Gordon Browns budget deficit.

Yes, slap my wrists for suggesting that the huffing and puffing and posturing this week by the Chancellor is less to do with his concern for the environment and more to do with an ideal opportunity to cover up his overspend for this year by extracting more taxation from us - I'd believe him a lot more if he'd prove that all of the additional "climate levy" taxation was spent on projects to reduce personal vehicle use - like public transport for instance, like the Leeds supertram scheme that he dumped for instance - but I fear that we are more likely to see the climate change levy money spent on a huge spaceship to take us all away to a new planet than actually be used for anything practical.

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Chocolate and beer...

Chocolate and beer, my two favourite foodgroups, brought together last night in The Fox in the form of Wychwood's Hobgoblin ale.

Its been our want over the past six months or so to close the office at 4pm on a Friday, or sometimes 3pm depending on how pissed off I am, and retire to The Fox at Horsforth for beer and something to eat from their excellent menu.

As part of the Ember Inns group they are currently in the middle of a six week "real ale" festival of beers, each week featuring six different cask ales and have produced a little booklet to go with it and explain what each of their varied ales are about.

Now I like beer, proper beer, its just that it doesn't like me - the quickest way to bring on a headache in me is to feed me beer, or chocolate - and so I tend to normally drink the nancy boys drink of choice, lager.

But this beer festival has reintroduced to me the delights of drinking proper beer and also confirmed just how piss poor commercially produced lager really is.

Week one of the Ember Inns festival saw me enjoying an ale which was advertised as a "blond beer" having "a lemon after-taste", and bugger me it did, very nice it was too.

Last night we ajourned to The Fox as per normal but with the anticipation of a chocolate beer on the menu, Hobgoblin ale from the Wychwood brewery, it was nice, very nice, dark and full of flavour - but no chocolatey taste, I was devastated and switched to Black Sheep instead which was found to be to its normal high standard, had three pints and a chicken sandwich and then slept for the rest of the evening.

I can't drink a lot of beer these days, but I enjoy what little I do ...


A controlling order too far ?


Police in England are determined to stamp down on anti-social behaviour on Hallow'een according to a report on the BBC.

Which is all fair and good, apart from the comment right at the end of that report from a spokesperson for Warwickshire Police who states "
...they're the ones we will be cracking down hard on and that sort of behaviour can be knocking and running away from doors, ringing doorbells and running away"

A fixed penalty notice of £80 is available for issue by police for such heinous crimes as knocking on doors and running away and while no-one could argue with the police patrolling the streets to keep an eye open for gangs of youths causing criminal damage to property (for instance) then you have to raise an eyebrow at the waste of police time (and overtime) in putting extra officers and vehicles on the streets to "crack down hard (sic) on ringing doorbells and running away"

The celebration of Hallow'een is a fairly recent phenominum in the UK, hard on the heels and overshadowed as it is by bonfire night on the 5th Nov. When ah wor nobbut a lad in Yorkshire we had "mischievous night" on the 4th Nov during which we kids could knock on doors and run away with impunity, safe from £80 on the spot fines

Note for Non-Uk readers - Bonfire Night celebrates the capturing of a group of renegades who had plotted to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605 in a bid to ressurect a catholic monarch onto the throne of England - the plotters were caputred in the act of preparing the explosives in the cellers of Parliament on the 5th November and in accordance with the law of the country were not handed out an £80 on the spot fine but instead were hung until nearly dead, viscerated (de-gutted), dragged through the streets of London behind horses, then split asunder with swords (quartered) and bits of them stuck on spikes in various public areas - a little harsh perhaps when a fixed penalty and a caution would have sufficed, but it was pre-Blair and pre-police-state.

Other "mischievous" acts available to us young whippersnappers on 4th Nov - the eve of the Gunpowder Plot when the barrels of explosives were allegedly delivered to Parliament - included smearing treacle on car or house door handles, tying rubbish bins to car bumpers and stuffing potatoes up car exhaust pipes - eeeh we were wicked little buggers and no question.

Now of course we have inherited the phenominum of Hallow'een from the USA and no-one can surely object to groups of small children and their parents visiting neighbouring doorsteps for "trick or treats" - the problem is that in our unique British yob society the Hallow'een celebration has simply served to extend "mischievous night" into five nights of anti-social behaviour, and where you get complaints of anti-social behaviour you get a knee-jerk reaction from government ministers who use the police as a large sledgehammer to crack a small walnut and thus ingratiate themselves with the public - its rule by tabloid headline in 2006 UK and this makes for a warm feeling of "goodness" amongst MP's.

Friday, October 27, 2006

Evocative songs...

I love how some songs are soooooo evocative that as soon as the first bars play on the radio you are instantly transported back to another place and time, complete with images and smells, rather like watching a movie of your own life story.

I picked up an iPod in the house early this morning and just for the hell of it pressed the play button and stuck one earphone in my ear - a piano chord and half a second later Paul McCartney's opening line "Hey Jude, don't make it bad" hit my senses and even though it was early in the morning I was instantly sitting in form 1S at Leeds Modern Grammer school, end of autumn term 1968.

The idea that music could fly through a wire into a box in your house and then be stored inside a small plastic stick that had no moving parts was, in 1968, the stuff of Raymond Baxter and his "Tomorrows World" team, in 1968 you got on a bus into your town centre, sought out a record shop and bought your music on either "singles" or "LP's", then jealously guarded them from your friends lest they scratch, or worse still, break them - sharing music with mates was limited to them listening to your records round at your house and music copyright lawyers were a thing of the future.

So there we were in the autumn term of 1968, fresh faced 12 year olds in the first year at what is now called high school but in those far distant days was grammer school complete with oak panelled walls, prefects from the sixth form who still had permission to beat you and who regretted the demise of fagging (readers from the USA - there will be a full explanation of the term "to fag" at some point in the future, yes we know it means something different in your country, but not that different), teachers were called Masters and all wore long black gowns to lessons and discipline was paramount, you certainly did not ever speak until you were spoken to - not unless you wanted a heavy smack around the earlobe or a blackboard rubber lobbing across the form room at your head - corporal punishment by Masters had been banned just two years before we arrived but it was a hard habit to break for most of the Masters who all had there own unique methods of administering physical punishment to errant oiks like us.

Our English Master was Earnshaw, one of a new intake of trendy young English teachers in that year, I often think that some terrible tragedy must have overcome the English department the year before we arrived because all of the English masters were straight out of teaching college, as fresh faced as us, and trendy too in that late 1960's freedom of expression, power to the people, ban the bomb, student protests in Paris stylee.

The English masters all wore their hair just a tad too long to fit in with the old fogies in the staff room and the new fashion for growing sideburns had turned into a competition amongst them, to sharp intakes of breath and horror striken gapes from their older collegues for whom anything other than a short back and sides was an outrage - Weber the old music master used to pick boys up by their sideburns if they ventured below the top of their ears.

But the trendiest of all the English masters was Earnshaw, think David Hemmings in the film "Blow Up" or Steve McQueen in "Bullit", Earnshaw wore the Masters black gown to teach in but underneath his gown he wore a flower power shirt with flared collar and a huge kipper tie, high waist banded Yorker trousers and chelsea boots, but best of all Earnshaw drove a Jenson Interceptor - think Ford Mustang on steriods.

When all of the other masters turned up to school in Ford Anglia's and Morris Minor's, Earnshaw arrived in the Interceptor, top down, exhaust roaring, wire wheels spinning in the gravel - he was our hero, a trendy hero.

In the last week of the autumn term he obviously couldn't be arsed teaching and so turned up one afternoon with a portable record player under one arm that he'd knicked from Weber the music teacher , plugged it in and asked if anyone in the class had any records to play.

We always had recrods to play, we were always bringing records into school to swap with friends, and Rob Vasey the class bully had a classic with him - Hey Jude by The Beatles.

Earnshaw played Hey Jude over and over and over again for forty minutes and we sat there and let it waft over us, joined in the never ending chorus of "nah, nah, nah, nah-nah-nah-naaaah, nah-nah nah naaah, Hey Jude" time and time again until Cheesy Holland the headmaster had to get off his arse and walk down the corridor from his office to see what all the noise was.

And so every time I hear "Hey Jude" I'm there, back in classroom 1S, 12 years old, school uniform, big parka coat on the back of the chair, singing and swaying to "nah-nah-nah..." while Earnshaw sat at the front, leaning back, feet on the masters desk, eyes closed, no doubt dreaming of the bird he'd pull tonight in Rockerfellas with talk of the Jenson Interceptor...

Happy days.

Full history of "Hey Jude" here

Thursday, October 26, 2006

What about ugly people ?

Another one of those "Tomorrows World" stylee predictions this morning from "The Authorities", predicts that we will soon be throwing away our keys, cards, passports and PIN's because computers everywhere will be able to recognise our faces.

Bollax.

I know that technology makes impressive improvements as time goes by, but I've been involved in biometrics at the sharp end (ie the consumer end) for some years now as part of my job - and it sucks.

Let me explain - my company sells time recording equipment - clocking-on clocks in common parlance - and about 50% of our turnover is with the high-end stuff, pc-linked clocking terminals that, in the main, gather the employees attendance by means of a swipe card, usually mag-stripe.

Mag-stripe cards aren't cutting edge technology, but they are cheap and they bloody work, well they work if they are of a good enough quality not to be affected by magnetic handbag clasps, but still, they work - so-called smart cards are good too, although double the cost, bu they too work extremely well and in the market that we are in these two methods of recording data are reliable and are the method of choice.

Seven or eight years ago one of our suppliers introduced a fingerprint reader into their clocking terminals - it worked inconjunction with a "swipe card" and was there as a backup to confirm that the person swiping the card was indeeed the same person that you had issued the card to.

Sounds reasonable, and it solved the problem that has always existed of "buddy punching" (awful american term) where you get a friend to clock you in while you take the day off. Problem was that while the fingerprint reader was accurate it was slow and it meant that instead of simply swiping a card each employee had to wait while their fingerprint was verified - it doubled, sometimes trebled the amount of time that each person took to log in and at one minute to eight in a morning with fifty people stood in the queue waiting to "clock in" you can only imagine the stress that it caused.

We installed several of these fingerprint readers and within a few months all of them had been vandalised - no-one had ever vandalised a bog-standard mag-stripe terminal.

Shortly afterwards I was approached by a company who had a brilliant new idea to verify each and every employee as they "clocked in" - facial recognition software.

We were sceptical - they came to see us and set up their laptop and a tripod mounted camera in our workshop. They took my photograph three times and stored it in their database then explained that the software would compare my video image to each of these three records of me every time I swiped my card at the clocking terminal - sounded good.

I stood in front of the clock, swiped the card, it was rejected.

They fiddled with the camera a bit, I tried again, I was rejected, the computer said it wasn't me.

They fiddled with the computer a bit, checked my card, I tried again, computer said it definitely wasn't me, I was my own imposter.

They started looking at the lighting in the workshop, we had lights above the bench and above but behind my head - it was decided that there was too much of a shadow on my face, we arranged the lighting so that there was no shadow, I was still an imposter according to the computer.

Eventually we stood a spotlight directly in front of me, shining straight onto my face, we took three more photos of me for the database and tried again - the computer recognised me - hurray.

The rep acknowledged that there were "teething problems" and in a commercial situation in a dark, dirty factory they envisaged that they would need to build a photo booth at the works entrance so that the lighting and employee positioning in relation to the camera cold be strictly controlled - we thanked him and sent him on his way.

And so today on GMTV the same topic was raised in relation to passports and facial recognition data encoded into the new style EU passports, and once again the problem was raised of having a good enough photograph, full face, staring straight at the camera, no spectacles, properly illuminated, not smiling, eyes straight forward, no hat, no teeth visible, no other part of the body visible - and why ?

Simply to save a human looking at the passport photo when you enter a country.

All in the name of "security" - we do not trust a human immigration officer to check passports anymore and prefer a computer to do the job for us - a computer that can't recognise you if the light is not good enough.

Is it just me that thinks this is a little bizarre ?

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Postscript - Rod Stewart

Just as a postscript to this mornings entry regarding Rod Stewart.

Napster are featuring his new album "Still The Same - Great Rock Classics of our Time".

I've been streaming it today in the office.

Its fucking awful and I'm ashamed to admit that I used to be a big fan.

It really is awful, just dreadful.

And worse still - its apparently gone straight to number one in the American album chart - shame on you Americans for proving what we British always suspected - you have no taste.

The choice of songs is a mystery for a start, remember the title "Great Rock Classics of our Time" ? Have a browse through this lot...

Have you ever seen the rain
Fooled around and fell in love
I'll stand by you
Still the same
Its a heartache
Day after day
Missing you
Father & son
The best of my love
If not for you
Love hurts
Everything I own
Crazy Love
Lay down Sally

Rock Classics ?

Do me a favour.

Its obvious, clearly obvious that Mr Stewart has lost it - I'm no musician but even I can tell just by listening to the dreadfull album that all of the above songs have been selected simply because they are in a single key and are by and large sung in a monotone style - he's lost the ability to sing properly and now simply speaks the words to each of the songs in a similar manner to Johnny Cash on his last album "Hurt" - but at least Johnny Cash had an excuse - he was dying.

There are two stand out songs for awfulness on there - the Bob Seger classic "Still the Same" and the Eric Clapton classic "Lay Down Sally" - both of these renditions would be boo'ed off in any pub kareoke competition.

"Best of my Love" the Eagles classic love song is just a laughable dirge at the hands of the 2006 version of Rod Stewart as is the Cat Stevens "Father & Son", I'm shaking my head in amazement and sorrow at how poor a singer he is now.

At least I didn't buy those tickets to see him at Newcastle arena.

Its all wrong, its just wrong...

I've just heard the most dreadful so-called vocal entertainment perpetrated on GMTV - Rod Stewart has just murdered a Bob Seger song.

I may have mentioned elsewhere that I used to be a fan of Mr Stewart, back in the days when he and I both looked like that photo of him (above), but I don't now and he hardly does either.

His musical output fell out of favour with me when he left The Faces and moved to Los Angeles and started producing albums full of shoulder padded, spangly-suited disco rubbish and in recent years his production of what he calls "the standards", ie songs that the original crooners were producing so much better than he can back in the 1940's and 50's, has been just, well, just simply, awful.

So when he sat on the couch this morning on GMTV and announced that his new album was full of music which reflected his soft-rock roots then my ears pricked up a little - this may be worth listening to on Napster thought I.

Then he stood up and sang "Still the Same", the classic Bob Seger song.

Took a wonderful song and turned it into bland 3 minute filler, a crime worthy of my turning my back on him once again, Rod Stewart has become a parody of an old club turn, churning out tired productions of other peoples work, unable to invent his own original stuff anymore, he now relies not only on the words and music of other more talented artists, but also their arrangements, so what you get is Rod Stewart trying to be Bob Seger.

It will never work.

It will sell lots of albums to the gullible though, because the music business works like that now.

A little project...

This here is a little writing project that I've been partaking of recently involving the life of a young bloke in 1970 - a young bloke who seems to live in the same sort of area of Leeds that I used to live in when I was a young bloke, who supports the same rugby legue team that I supported when I was a young bloke, and who's social life revolves around drinking beer with his mates like mine used to.

But its not autobiographical, oh no.

Its based loosely on fact though - the fixtures, scores and players mentioned in the story are for real, I've taken them from the 1969/70 supporters handbook that I have at home after I rescued it from the clearout of my fathers house a few years ago.

Its also involved me doing a bit of research into news story's of the time but more importantly the attitudes of the time, in particular the attitudes of the different generations of men towards women and race - it was a very different time and hopefully some of the writing will offend - its supposed to.


There is a little problem though.

I've written it for another project somewhere else on t'interweb and never intended to put it into a blog format, but have. Problem is of course that as I write each chapter they are posted in date order, so the first chapter appears at the bottom of the pile and you have to read upwards through the blog to get it into some sort of order - does anyone know of a way to post items in anything but date order in a blog ?

Oh yes, there's another piece of writing what I have wrote here - this one is set in 1968 and , erm, its set in the same area and, erm, during the same period, and erm, its nothing like the other one, not much anyway.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Memory loss

A news item today mentions the case of a man who turned up in Denver without a clue who he was or what he was doing there. After an appeal on American TV his fiancee in Olympia Washington recognised him and he was reunited with the family that he'd forgotten all about.

Sound strange ?

Well, yes it is, but not unique.

Andrew Purdy could lose his memory if you hit him hard enough.

In 1974 I was a tall gangly youth of 17 I was at what would now be called 6th form college although what I was doing there is anyones guess - in fact I was there because I couldn't be arsed getting a job and two years messing about with my mates in 6th form seemed like a good alternative to working - nothing changes eh ?

We had discovered Andrew Purdy's unfortunate ability to lose his memory on the rugby pitch some years earlier - if he got a bang on the back of his head he would lose conciousness for a few seconds and when he woke up he would have varying degrees of memory loss and it would take a few hours for everything to return to him again.

At first this was merely unfortunate and when it had happened a few times the sports masters stopped him from playing rugby, which was then unfortunate for us because it was quite fun to watch him try and work out who we were and more importantly who he was.

By the time we had reached 6th form we had mastered the art of making him blank out and knew exactly where to hit him on the back of the head and how hard, the memory loss being dictated by how hard you hit him - in the rough and tumble world of an all boys school it seemed like fun at the time.

And then one day we all went on an end of term day trip to Scarborough.

It was a large group of hyper active 17 year olds who descended from the steps of the bus and headed straight for the nearest pub and some time later we all took a stroll along a steep grassy embankment on the sea front. As was always the case when we were all gathered together it only took one person to trip someone else up and suddenly you'd have a huge ball of dust with of limbs flying from the periphery as we partook in a youthfull mock fight, twenty of us rolling all over the grassy bank, throwing each other down the hill, occasional bouts of serious fighting when someone went too far and blood was spilt - all typical stuff that happens when young males gather together to bond.

And when the dust settled and we all sat on the grass bank exhausted, pissed, bloody and laughing, someone noticed that Purdy was missing - and there in the distance we spotted him, making his way into the town centre.

We sat and stared at him for a while and then someone asked where we thought he was going and a few seconds later as the penny dropped someone else asked if he'd been involved in our rumble on the grass and if anyone had hit him on the back of the head - a lone voice admitted that yes he may have had a "bit of a bang".

We chased after him yelling his name as we ran but of course he couldn't acknowledge us, as far as he was concerned we were shouting "Purdy" at one of the seagulls circling above his head. When we grabbed hold of him he ran away, scared by this gang of youths who were shouting things at him that he couldn't comprehend.

He ran into an amusement arcade and sought sanctuary with the woman who doled out the coins to the punters and when we all ran in after him she shoo'ed us all off and threatened us with the police, there was nothing more we could do but leave Purdy and his blank mind with a woman who ran the amusement arcade - it was like an Enid Blyton story where some random orphan is brought up by gypsies.

He turned up back in Leeds the next day after having spent a night in Scarborough Hospital and finally being able to tell them who he was and where he came from, his dad had to drive over to the coast to pick him up and wasn't best pleased with any of us - that was the last time that we made Purdy's brain reboot as he was told to play with boys who "weren't as rough" and presumably didn't know where to hit him or how hard.


More rubbish from the JerryChicken biography here

Monday, October 23, 2006

The X-plotation Factor

I actually sat through the whole programme on saturday night, a feat not normally endured by someone like me - someone with taste.

I normally watch the auditions phase if only to shake my head in wonder at the disallusioned talentless no-marks who bring everlasting shame and embarassment on their familes by appearing on national tv at the peak viewing time to wail the wrong words to "Flying without Wings" or random lines from that weeks random chart topping act who no-one else has heard of.

But on saturday night I watched the second of the knock-out live rounds - it was "Rod Stewart night".

Now when ah wor nobbut a lad I was a bit of a fan of Rod Stewart, right from the "Every Picture" album up to somewhere around the start of the eighties when he went too Los Angeles disco crap for me and I left him for a diet of Terry Wogan inspired rubbish.

So I awaited the "Rod Stewart night" with anticipation.

And my anticipation is still waiting.

It was crap.

For a start, two of the songs weren't what any sane person would label as "Rod Stewart songs" - "Try a little Tenderness" and "What a wonderful World" (yes Louis Armstrongs song) aren't instantly and inextricably linked to Mr Stewart although I acknowledge that the recent releases from him have tapped into the awful genre of "lets sing the old songs" and that it is feasible that he may have recorded Mr Armstrongs swansong, if it is so then I don't want to hear it by the way.

Putting the song selection aside though, the performers were just poor - with one excepton.

Ashley McKenzie should win the competition now, simply give him the prize and give him a recording contract and show some Tom and Jerry cartoons at 7pm on a saturday night until christmas - he is head and shoulders above the average club turns that remain in the competition right now and is the only one with anything like a unique voice and a unique image - his performance of "I'd rather go Blind" was inspirational and bore a remarkable similarity to the original recording by Etta James rather than Rod Stewarts version.

Down at the bottom of the pile was a truly appaling rendition of "Sailing" by two pimply scottish youths under the name of "The MacDonald Brothers" - they were awful, just awful, and yet they were voted straight through to the next round without having to perform in the "last two playoff", although with hindsight it was a relief as I couldn't have sat through them singing "Sailing" again.

The rest of the competitors are simply bland - looking at them on the X Factor web site I cannot remember their performances at all, if they were a colour they would be beige, if they were a vegetable they'd be heavily stewed cabbage - they are all unmemorable.

Which seems to be the point of the whole programme. in past years they have produced such superstars as Michelle McManus (see photo above), who as everyone knows, has sold lots of records to her family since she won, or Steve Brookstein, a pub singer who, erm, is a pub singer now (he's not very happy about it either) or last years winner who is so famous that he has completely slipped my mind, and apparently Googles mind too as I can't find any reference to him/her at all.

My cousin was a professional session guitarist and now produces musical tribute shows and for a long time he has explained to us how the music business takes aspiring young acts (such as the recent ten year long phase for boy bands), eats them up, milks them dry then spits them out the other end, skint.

He has dozens of tales of working in studios on backing tracks for 17 year olds who thought they had made it when they signed a "million pound record deal" - unfortunately no-one explained to them that they do not get the million pounds personally. he would love it when these precocious "talents" would keep everyone wating in the studio because they had just returned from spending some of their advance payment in a night club somewhere, whilst all of the session musicians sat around earning overtime until they were ready.

He had tears of mirth in his eyes as he explained that at the end of the first year an accountant would sit down with these young kids and explain that they had spent all of their million pound recording contract on studio time, musicians overtime, hire of those limos that they insisted on, 300 nights in a night club buying everyone drinks and the rent on that apartment in central London that they had insisted on, in fact, the accountant would explain, you owe us money now and so your second album (which will always be crap with no money spent on it) will have to be done for free to repay us. And when the second album sold only to their families then they were out of the door, passed in the reception by the next 17 year old with stars in his eyes and a million pound recording contract.

X Factor is just the starting point of that conveyor belt its just that, like cattle waiting in a field outside an abbatoir, the performers have no idea.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

It was forty years ago today...


Forty years ago today 144 people died in the small Welsh mining village of Aberfan when a coal pit spoil heap became unstable after several days of rain and slid down the hillside enveloping a row of houses and more tragically a primary school where 116 children were crushed to death by the shale and mudslide.

The scene above is a familiar one to anyone who has ever lived in a pit village. My wife is from such a place in the northeast and whilst their pit closed in the early 1960's the spoil heaps still remain in what is now a commuter suburb of Newcastle - landscaped, lowered and made more stable maybe, covered as they are now in grass and small trees, they still look incongrious in an otherwise flat coastal landscape - and they exist all over the north east coastline in the same format.

Its the price we pay for our industrial heritage, just as in the blogs from yesterday where large industrial cities like Leeds copped for the filth and blackness of manufacturing pollution, then pit villages had their own filth to contend with - the constant presence of dust and mud in the streets, swept clean every day by proud housewifes but still omnipresent in the air and in the clothes that the menfolk brought home after every shift, filth and grime and huge mountains of waste shale and shattered coal fragments towering around the village wherever the pit managers could find to dump them.

The facts of the Aberfan disaster are well documented - a shale heap dumped many years previously on top of a natural spring, made unstable by years of saturation and then made mobile by heavy rainfall over a period of several days, shale fragments became liquid, the base collapsed and the mountain moved.

The facts from my recollection were that I was the same age at the time as many of the children who died at their schooldesks, I was ten years old. Without checking I believe that it happened at the end of the week (should be easy to check) as my recollection is of visiting my grandma (the same one who ran away from the Queens Hotel) and we always visited her house on a Saturday - it was the day after the disaster when the newspapers were simply filled with the news and the photographs and the immense sadness of the event and she sat there in her chair surrounded by the newspapers that she had bought that morning and cried the whole time that we were there - she was a god fearing catholic and carried all of the human guilt of that religion, never questioned how a god could apparently order that sort of thing to happen, simply accepted that it was his way, even at ten years old I couldn't reconcile how a god could be so vindictive as to wipe out a generation of children from a village just to teach the National Coal Board a lesson, still can't.

In human terms it can be compared to the events of 9/11 in America - this country stood still for a week while the uncertain death toll rose and then the anger kicked in although in this case we had no foreign country to go and bomb afterwards, we just had the National Coal Board to blame, who were in fact a Government owned company. Ultimately they were held responsible but no one person in particular was ever stood up as a stool pigeon, no-one was sacked or reprimanded, a faceless Government corporation had messed up big style, they apologised, they cleaned the village up, they paid for the funerals and built a nice garden of rememberance - and then they carried on digging for coal.


Friday, October 20, 2006

A little more local history - and my grandma

























Nicked unceremoniously from Leodis.net the two photos above sort of extend the theme started in last nights blog.

Both photos show the hub of Leeds City Centre - City Square, the aerial view taken in, or shortly after 1937, and the other taken in 1955. In the aerial view the dominant feature is the brand new (in 1937) Queens Hotel which was the biggest and best in Leeds for many decades - if you wanted a real swanky function you simply had it at the Queens Hotel, there was no other choice, and as can be seen in the aerial view its location right next to Central Station made it the first and only choice for many travellers.

Built of concrete, redbrick and gleaming white portland stone it gleams like a new pin in that photograph amongst the black ness of all the other surrounding buildings - to the right and top of the photo are the warehouses and heavy industry of Wellington Street and Whitehall Road with a taste of what was to come for the Queens in the smoke belching from Whitehall Rd power station at the top right.

The other photo shows the frontage of the Queens Hotel in 1955 after less than twenty years of standing in the pollution that was industrial Britain - that frontage is supposed to be a very expensive white portland stone feature - but obviously its not anymore. happily the strict pollution controls introduced in the city in the late 1960's led to property owners taking advantage of grants to power wash their buildings and the Queens Hotel is now restored to its former glory, even if it is now just another bog standard hotel in the midst of many more in the city centre, not longer is it the automatic choice of swanky "do's".

And my grandma ?

When she was young, and shortly after the hotel was opened, she applied for and was given, a job as chambermaid at the exclusive, snooty establishment - it was a very prestigious job to win, even more so as she'd never worked outside of her house before in her life.

She was instructed to report to the house managers office and on the appointed day at the appointed time she alighted from her bus and made her way to the subterranean staff entrance at the less than ostentatious rear aspect of the hotel.

She found the staff entrance and was directed to the house managers office.

She couldn't find it.

She swore that she walked for at least a mile in the underground maze of service corridors, upstairs, downstairs, gaping in wonder at the opulence of the Palm Court room and other public areas and ducking beneath pipes and ducts in windowless cellars and narrow passageways, she even found herself in the huge hotel kitchen at one point where she was shoo'ed out by an angry chef.

Eventually, footsore and fed up, she found herself at the front entrance where a livered doorman opened the door for her and scowled at her obvious working class winter coat and wollen hat, she wasn't the sort of person who should be using the front entrance of The Queens.

She walked out of the front door and carried on walking to her bus stop, caught the bus and went home - "bloody sod the job" thought she, "I'll stick to the housework at home".

And apart from the job in the munitions factory during the war thats where she stayed for the rest of her life.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Once upon a time...



















Once upon a time Leeds was a grimy city.

Great Britain may have been the birthplace of the industrial revolution but all it did really was to give us 50 years start on the rest of the world when it came to pollution and grime.

By the time Victoria was on the throne Leeds was a well established metropolis of engineering and clothing production and wherever you had factories and associated dwelling houses for tens of thousands of people, you had smoke, and lots of it, not the "clean" sort of smoke (by comparison) that gets burnt today, but the thick, black smoke that comes from not having any regulations on what you can burn and where you can burn it.

Every town had to have a monument to civic pride and Leeds got their's in 1858, a colonnaded centre of local government and a place to lock up the drunks, the silver and honey coloured millstone and sandstone was soon blackened, as was every one of the buildings in the city centre.

The photo from the Leeds photographic archive at www.Leodis.net is taken from Gt George St behind the Town Hall but its a view I particularly like because of the buildings in the foreground. In the picture, even though its a black and white picture, you can clearly see that all the buildings are black, and thats the way it was right up until the late 1960's when some bright spark at the council decided to scrub away at the stonework a bit and found sandstone underneath.

Throughout the 1970's and after the inttroduction of strict smoke control measures, most of the public buildings in Leeds were pressure washed to reveal some spectacular and beautiful facades of sandstone, millstone, gleaming white portland stone, and terracotta tiling and sculpting.

So here's the quandry.

Top right is the photo of the Victorian or possibly Edwardian street scene in coal blackened Leeds.

Top left is the modern day scene, a watercolour winter scene that I did a few years ago for a christmas card.

And lower down is the acrylic version of the same scene that I'm currently on with.

And I'm seriously thinking - should the acrylic (36" square) one really be done almost monochrome, sticking to its victorian roots ?

Or should I save that for the next painting and do a snowy winters scene in monochrome, literally black and white ?

I think I've just made a terrible mistake

Its currently 12.51 pm, lunchtime UK.

I've not brought any lunch today.
I haven't got much money, certainly not enough to buy a sandwich from the £3 a bite sandwich shop around the corner.

But not to worry, there's a sausage roll in the fridge.
So I ate it.

And whilst eating it I got to thinking when it was that I bought it.
I think it was a week last friday - thats 13 days ago.

Pastry was a bit stale but coffee swilled it all down.
But at the end I couldn't help but notice that the sausage meat had black bits in it.
And now I'm wondering whether they were pepper, or some filthy disease bacteria, there were rather a lot of them.

If perchance I don't blog tomorrow will someone call a paramedic round to my house for me ?
Thank you.

Don't tell anyone...

I'm currently working on a painting of Leeds Town Hall from Great George Street and had intended to mention how the massive historical archive of photogrpahs of Leeds which is online and free to view at www.Leodis.net had assisted me in the initial preparatory drawing - and how I'm now in a quandry as to whether to paint the buildings in their original sandstone and redbrick facades (as they stand restored now) or whether to paint them black, black as the coal smog that had coated them black for a hundred or more years - as they used to be in my childhood.

However - the Leodis.net web site is currently "out of order", so we'll abandon that blog for another day.

But wait I hear you cry - what is this old photo doing here ?

Surely thats not the Town Hall ?

No its not, its Cookridge Street swimming baths in the centre of Leeds - scene of a crime of indescribable proportions when I was a child, not perpetrated by me, but witnessed by me and unspoken by me for forty years - until now.

When I was ten years old our school decided that all of us young oiks needed to learn to swim, fair enough we thought, and once a week we would be loaded onto a bus and transported into Leeds to partake of free swimming lessons at the Victorian Cookridge Street swimming baths - a beautiful building in the style of a turkish emporium of steam and water (a similar, restored building remains at Bramley in Leeds) which was demolished in the late 1960's and replaced by a shite concrete block of a swimming pool which leaked from day one and is now also destined for demolition any day soon.

I digress, the crime ...

So we'd troop off the bus every week and split into two groups - those who could swim and those who couldn't swim. those who could would go to the large adults swimming pool at one end of the building, whilst those who couldn't (including me) would shuffle embarrassed to another room which held a smaller, learner pool.

In the style of all of those victorian bathing establishments the pool was surrounded on all four sides by wrought iron stachions and a balcony on which were perched the small changing cubicles, and so we'd stomp up the iron stairs and as there weren't enough changing cubicles for all of us we'd have to share with a friend - it had to be a close friend because even though we were only children at the time you were hard pushed to fit two of us into one cubicle.

Anyhoo - I shared with my best friend Christopher Rhodes, who I hope now lives in some far flung outpost of the empire where they cannot recieve t'interweb coverage and therefore he will never read this - or he'll sue.

On the fateful day Chris Rhodes didn't look all that well on the way to Cookridge Street, but we got changed in the cramped cubicles, being careful that our bums didn't touch when we dropped our pants as that was the sure sign that you'd both be "puffs" when you grew up - and we gathered around the pool downstairs for our usual lesson of torture from a fat lady in a bulging swimming costume who really couldn't care less whether we learned to swim or drown in the process - she didn't care so much that about halfway through the lesson and without explanation Chris Rhodes climbed out of the swimming pool and went back up the iron stairs to the changing cubicle.

At the end of the lesson I went back to the cubicle and found that I couldn't get in, the door was jammed by Chris Rhodes standing behind it holding it shut.

"I need to come in, let me in" I told him
"Can't you get changed somewhere else" he whispered through the door
"No, all the cubicles are full" I whispered back, "anyway my clothes are in this one"
"Find another cubicle and I'll pass your clothes over the door" he hissed
"Just let me in" I implored "Crawfords coming" and indeed she was, our fat lady teacher was patrolling the balcony banging on each door to hurry us kids up.

The door opened by a crack and I squeezed through the narrow gap to find Chris Rhodes squashed into the corner behind the door, staring at the floor...

...at a huge big turd.

A long curly turd, freshly laid, all curled up with a Mr Whippy flourish on the top, steaming.

"Don't step in it" Chris Rhodes fortuitously told me.
"Where did that come from ?" I stupidly asked
"I couldn't help it" he offered as some sort of explanation
"What do we do now" I gasped, the air in the cubicle was growing distinctly foul
"Get changed quick and don't say a word" he offered as a solution, "don't step in it" he reminded me as an afterthought.

I changed on tiptoe, holding my nose against the stench, surely by now the kids in the neighbouring cubicles would have noticed and would be enquiring of their sharing friends whether or not they had dropped their guts ?

I dressed in record time and Chris Rhodes opened the door a crack again and shove me out onto the balcony, he intended to stay in the cubicle until the last second before the bus left to ensure that no-one came looking in there.

And his plan worked, we got away on the bus and spent the next week laughing about him taking a shit in the cubicle rather than use the toilet which he'd actually had to walk past first.

And then the following week we had to return.

And there, waiting for us was the manager of the swimming pool.

He was a big man, he was a huge man, he must have easily weighed well over twenty stone and clearly didn't make much use of the exercise facilities that he was in charge of - and he was a friend of my dad and had spent many a sunday afternoon after a lunchtime session in the pub fast asloeep in one of our chairs at home while his wife sat there apologising to our mum and dad while she waited for him to sleep off his skinfull - our house was often used as a temporary refuge for my dads drunken friends after a lunchtime session.

He stood there blocking our way and we could tell that he was annoyed, he was very annoyed.

He told us to go to the exact same changing cubicle that we had used the week before and to stay there until he managed to climb the iron stairs and join us.

I looked at Chris Rhodes in a "what do we do now" sort of way

He looked at the floor,

We were doomed - there were no spare cubicles for us to claim, we'd have to stand outside the shitty one.

It was too late to run away, we trudged up the iron staircase and hung back from the crowd as everyone dashed to their own cubicles, leaving the shitty one in the corner.

And then there was a moment of divine intervention.

Right in the very corner of the balcony, right next to the shitty cubicle, was a small wedge shaped cubicle that was useless to change in and so was used by the cleaning staff to store mops and buckets, and God had made sure that today the cleaners were out with the mops and buckets and the tiny storeroom was empty - we dived in there and claimed it as our own, it had no bench to sit on and no hooks to hang your school blazer on, it looked so much unlike a changing cubicle that I knew we wouldn't get away with it, but Chris Rhodes was grasping at any alibi and this was as good an alibi as he had.

The huge fat manager finally made it up the iron stairs and wheezing and gasping for breath he made his way straight to the shitty cubicle and flung open the door only to cry out "WHAT !!!" when he found it to be empty.

"WHO USED THIS CUBICLE LAST WEEK ?" he bellowed out and we stood behind the cleaners cubicle door trying not to laugh.

A few seconds later the door of our newfound refuge was flung open and there he stood, red faced, extremely annoyed, appoplectic actually - "WHAT ARE YOU TWO DOING IN THE CLEANERS CUPBOARD" he demanded of us.

"We always get changed in here" Chris Rhodes lied extremely well, "theres more room in here" and at this I turned and with a wave of my hand demonstrated that indeed there was more room in here - the fact that there wasn't more room in here was patently obvious to all, but when you are in the middle of a blatent lie you have to see it through, no matter how outrageous.

"ARE YOU SURE ?" the manager demanded and turned to Crawford our teacher , "ARE THEY SURE ?" he asked of her, she shrugged her shoulders and gave him a look that read "Well they are both stupid enough to get changed in a cleaners cupboard"

He could do nothing, he knew that we'd used the shitty cubicle last week and he knew we were both lying but he had no proof, and more than that I'm sure that he recognised me from one of his sunday afternoon drunken stupours, he turned form us and gave everyone on the balcony a huge bollacking for letting one of our number befoul his beloved victorian swimming emporium by shitting in a cubicle, then he buggered off.

We got away with it.

But after that, every week we had to get changed in the cleaners cupboard and most weeks that involved climbing over steel buckets, mops and industrial solvents , to the tune of Crawford standing outside shouting "Why don't you two use this empty cubicle next door" while we assured her that no, we were alright in here and there was loads of room for us, standing in this bucket of Vim like I was.

I didn't learn to swim at all at Cookridge Street baths.


More from the JerryChicken life story here



Wednesday, October 18, 2006

We behave like perfect gentlemen..

A good friend of our is getting married next year, he's one of "The Originals" and by that I mean that we've known him virtually all our lives - a whole gang of us grew up together in this part of Leeds and most of us still live here - The Originals.

We've known each other for almost 50 years, we're all 50 years old this year.

How the fook he has managed to get away with not being married for 50 years when the rest of us signed up more than twenty years ago escapes me, but the bas'tad has been caught at last and his bachelor ways will come to an end in April next year.

The womenfolk all had a girlie night last Thursday and one of the things that came out of the drunken gathering was that the hen night was to be held at the end of February at a Haven Holiday Camp 80's weekend in Skegness.

I stifle my laughter very well when Suzanne told me, "ooh that sounds nice" I said encouragingly, happy in the knowledge that I would not be going to one of Britains trailer trash resorts for the shell suit clad, welfare recipients, Suzanne looked less than happy at the prospect.

She's been inventing her excuses not to go ever since, even though its still four months away.

Today I discovered where the lads are going for the stag weekend.

We are booked into the four star Mariot Gosforth Park Hotel for two nights with a day at Newcastle races thrown in and possibly a paintball session on the second day, a weekend suitable for the gentlemen about town that we are.

I told Suzanne tonight.

I wish I could describe the expression on her face.

I think she actually hates me properly now, I think she thinks that I have organised the whole thing myself.

I daren't tell her that Stag Weekend Mk2 (yes we are having two whilst the womenfolk have only the imagination to organise one), is a four day stopover at a golf resort, the venue to be decided by the only decent golfer among us when he gets back from his current trip to China - suffice to say that he tends to opt for the sort of places that only the well heeled inhabit and I'm wondering if I can convince Suzanne that its actually going to be a 60's weekend at Butlins.

At last, some common sense...

Police are today doing the rounds of many West Yorkshire grocery retail outlets and urging them to apply a ban on the sale of eggs to under 18's until after Halloween - and quite right too.

In fact the police should ban the sale of eggs, full stop, for ever.

Eggs are evil things, food of the devil, I've hated eggs, boiled, fried, scrambled, poached or raw, ever since I was a small child and saw them for what they are - a product of a chickens arse.

I often wonder who it was who first watched a chicken lay an egg and thought "hmmm, that thing thats just dropped out of that chickens arse, I wonder what it tastes like ?" and did he run similar experiments on horse dung, boiling or frying the stuff to test its edibility ?

Foul, awful things, a ban is long overdue.


One drawback of course is that if the rest of you don't continue to eat eggs then this small island will soon be at chicken max, a situation highlighted recently by a comedian at a sportsmans dinner that I went to - the sort of function where chicken is always on the menu - and as he fortuitously pointed out "If it weren't for these sportsmans dinners this country would be over-run with fookin chickens"

Still, ban the buggers I say, and not just for Halloween.


Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Madonna adopts african child, shock, horror, read on...

News stations were this morning scrambling all over Heathrow Airport desperately trying to obtain the first live pictures of one year old David Banda, the child that the gap-toothed strumpet of popular music, Madonna has adopted from his native country of Malawi. Full story here.

I plugged myself in to my patented Acme Interest-o-Meter this morning to see if this news was worth blogging - the results can be seen above.

Monday, October 16, 2006

Your hamper is empty this christmas...

Another wonderful investment opportunity has just presented itself to me as I sit here at the kitchen table tonight browsing t'interweb whilst the rest of the famille ensemble gaze in open eyed awe at Emmerdale.

I don't know what attracted me to this story in the first place, but there you are, we'll call it good fortune, in the right place at the right time.

Christmas hamper company Farepak have gone into receivership and thousands of familes up and down this fine country of ours will face a bleak christmas without their usual tub of brandy snaps and a jar of premium sweet mincemeat.

Housewives who have been scrubbing rich peoples floors, putting things into envelopes, and home helping all year to earn a little "pin money" to put aside for the weekly payment to the Farepak agent have recieved the shocking news today that they'll have to get off their fat arses and go buy their own fekking christmas shopping this year instead of waiting for her down the road to bring the hampers around in her van.

Who the fook buys christmas hampers any more ?

See the hamper above ?

It costs £45 from the company who are even now advertising it.

Its called the "Senior" hamper, its for yer granny and it contains stuff that only grannies have in the house at christmas and you wondered all along why the fook you granny ever bought it - well, she got it in a hamper that she paid weekly for, she handed over a pound a week out of her pension for stuff that you'd look at in her house on christmas day and say "granny, why the fook did you buy lime marmalade ?"

Heres whats in it together with my evaluation ...

Ambrosia Creamed Rice 425g - for fooks sake, does anyone still eat this stuff ?
Australian Gold Pear Quarters in Syrup 220g - will stay in grannys cupboard for three years
Bakers Delight Date and Walnut Cake 275g - would never sell in a supermarket on its own
Bakers Delight Sticky Ginger Cake 200g - sounds ok, would try
Batchelor's Bigga Processed Peas 300g - processed peas are soooo 1930's, granny food
Big D Salted Peanuts 200g - she ain't going to eat these, not with her false teeth in
Bird's Whisk & Serve Brandy Sauce 74g - no, just no
Crawfords Garibaldi Biscuits 100g - crawfords make pennywise, nuff said
Crosse & Blackwell New Potatoes 300g - for christ sake, tinned potatoes for xmas dinner
Crosse & Blackwell Whole Carrots 300g - likewise
Elkes Malted Milk Biscuits 200g - words fail me, these are supposed to be treats
Elkes Vanilla Cream Biscuits 150g - sales of zero last year, hence hamper fodder this year
Fox's Millionaires 150g - Netto give these away in their doorways
Hartley's Prunes in Syrup 210g - more granny food, will stay in her cupboard all year
Hayward Traditional Pickle 270g - she still hasn't finished last years
Heinz Baked Beans in Tomato Sauce 200g - fookin baked beans in a xmas hamper
Heinz Cream of Chicken Soup 290g - its getting worse
Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup 300g - granny knows how to live
Heinz Spaghetti in Tomato Sauce 200g - xmas day lunch if you don't turn up
Holmfield Mince Pies pack of 4 - one will be eaten, the rest will be binned
Iced Christmas Cake 400g - will never be cut into
Jacob's Hovis Crackers 150g - never seen outside of a hamper
John West Sardines in Tomato Sauce 120g - boxing day lunch if you don't turn up
Mathew Walker Christmas Pudding 100g - will shrivel up to currant size and be binned
McVitie's Mini Cheddars 250g - say it ain't so
Nescafe Instant Coffee 50g - your granny only does tea
Nestle Carnation Evaporated Milk 170g - no-one has used this since the war
Princes Corned Beef 200g - soggy reclaimed meat
Princes Pink Salmon 105g - watch for the bones, remember the queen mum fell for this
Princes Salmon Paste 75g - surely not, think of the children
Princes Tuna Steaks In Sunflower Oil 100g - this stuff is foul, I bought this by mistake once
Pringles Salt & Vinegar Crisps 50g - will be given to dog if you don't turn up
Quality Street Chocolates 275g - the only thing to make the effort for, eat, thank her, then leave
Roses Lime Marmalade 454g - no-one has ever opened these jars
Simpson's Chocolate Sponge Pudding 115g - very dangerous to microwave
Simpson's Steak & Kidney Pudding 140g - don't confuse with chocolate pudding
Simpson's Syrup Sponge Pudding 115g - if your granny has bad eyes, best to remove these products
Tetley Tea Bags pack of 40 - the only thing your granny will use
Uncle Joe's Mint Balls 75g - reasonable
Victoria Fruit Jellies 240g - snaffle these before anyone else gets there
Walkers Luxury Shortbread Fingers 250g - more granny food, her friends will have these
Whitakers Mint Cremes 100g - reasonable
Ye Olde Oak Pork Luncheon Meat 200g - foul, foul, jellied abbatoir floor meat
Ye Olde Oak Round Ham 200g - only ever sells at xmas, only ever sells in hampers.


I'd give you a couple of quid for the lot

How much do you think the let-down clients of Farepak will give you for that lot of bog standard groceries that we could buy for £20 in Asda, maybe less if we buy Farm Foods range, even less if we check out the "ooops too late" bargain bin.

I've just realised, theres no box of dates in that hamper - what sort of a fekkin hamper is that ?

Religious symbolism...

Fekkwittery hits the news stands once again.

In two contrasting reports over the weekend, editors have been getting into a froth over the British Airways employee crucifix row whilst taking a completely polarised view on the Muslim teaching assistants veil row - shock, horror, disgrace, why did we win the war, etc.

Both stories are unworthy of the numerous column inches that have been devoted to them, both stories could and should have been sorted out quickly and simply with a little on site common sense - both stories were created by management who are either afraid to manage or afraid to offend and so hide behind "company policy" and their legal advisors.

The BA story is so much of a non-story that it is incredible to comprehend - a woman who works on a check-in desk tells the news media that she has "effectively been forced to take unpaid leave" (whatever that means) after being told that she cannot wear a simple chain and cross around her neck in an act of "religious discrimination".

BA have stated that they have no such banning policies in place. they have stated that employees can choose to wear whatever jewelry they like as long as it is concealed under their uniform - which is reasonable.

But the woman and the news media have managed to mobilise lots of quotes from "church spokespersons" and even MP's such as Northern Ireland spokesperson Peter Hain who is quoted as saying "I think the BA order for her not to wear the cross was loopy" - well actually Peter, nothing of the sort happened, I'm afraid your comment is the loopy one and a prime example of a reporter phrasing a question to a rent-a-quote minister who is unaware of the story up until that point.

My solution ?

Explain to the employee what the company rules are on wearing of jewelry - BA check-in staff do not wear plunging necklines and as such it is a non-issue for the employee to wear the chain beneath her clothing - end of story.

*********************************************************************

The muslim veil story attracted similar rent-a-quote comments from uninformed, ill advised MP's - everyone has a comment to make in Westminster and it seems to be very important to have your say in the news media, even if you haven't a clue what the topic is.

The bottom line in this story is that a muslim lady was employed to assist in English lessons in classrooms where the majority of children were from homes where English is not the first language, she was interviewed on TV this morning and despite her wearing a burqua style headcovering she was very comprehensible and from her Yorkshire accent I'd guess that she is of a second generation asian background, born and raised in this country with a knowledge of her parents first choice asian language but who uses English as her language of choice - she is a very typical British woman of asian descent.

Because of her religious beliefs she has to wear a head and face covering when in the company of men, although its not considered necessary when only women and children are present. In addition to this it also appears to be her personal choice to wear the veil whenever she feels necessary, and despite the protests in the press that children and parents have objected to this and found her difficult to understand, her legal advisors have not been able to trace anyone who has complained.

My solution ?

The headteacher of the school interviewed her for the job.
The school is in a predominantly asian part of Dewsbury.
The post was for a teaching assistant to liase with asian speaking children
She would appear to be eminently qualified and was offered the job.

It shouldn't be beyond the wit of a headteacher or a school governor in that situation to raise the issue of the veil given that the ideal condidate for the job would be such a muslim woman who may or may not need to wear such clothing.

The school fooked up and are now using the news media to claim the innocent party line.

They will lose the tribunal and rightly so, however the next time they may learn from their mistake and employ someone who doesn't have to wear the veil - they just might not be as good in the job thats all.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

You're not supposed to tackle them around the head

What a wonderful game of rugby we saw this afternoon.

The newly crowned NL3 Champions Bramley were out there parading their trophy and had a so-called "friendly" game lined up against a touring team from the Manly area of Sydney, Australia, led by the ageless, timeless, Cliff Lyons who played throughout the game even though he must now be well into his seventies.

It was a slight mis-match, the season ended last week for Bramley and several first team players were missing from the squad, and there was an "end of term" feeling about the side - having said that the aussies were certainly the equivalent of at least one, maybe two divisions above Bramley, they were bigger and significantly faster and played with the ease of a team that has bonded together well whilst on tour, it shows in their interaction on the field of play.

So skill wise Bramley were always in a deficit position, but when it came down to the part of the game lovingly referred to as "the biff" by supporters who remember the bygone era of rough tough rugby, then Bramley matched everything pound for pound.

Rugby League at Superleague standard has become sanitised over the past 12 years, no longer do we see big hard men with lumps missing from their faces playing the game, no longer do we see mass brawls erupted spontaneously at every match we go to - its not like that any more and whilst it is the better product for that, some of us do still miss watching a bit of biff now and again.

Today Bramley unpacked "the biff" tactics and set about their antipodean guests with a fervour that had the decent sized crowd baying for blood from the first contact, and although the aussies rose above it and refused to engage in the slog early on, by the time that one of their players was helped from the field of play, (just before half time), after suffering from a perfectly executed, and perfectly illegal, grapple tackle, it was obvious to all of us that the aussie calm and collected facade was going to crumble in the second half, so much so that I suggested to my compatriots standing with me that we had better move away from the fence as it could get dangerous in the second half.

And indeed it did - wonderful stuff to watch, every tackle above the shoulders, sometimes the first tackler holding his victim around the throat while a second tackler hit him again, and this was no WWE or WWF or whatever initials those over-steroided puffballs in American Choreographed Wrestling use these days - this was serious full contact biff, just like it used to be.

With a handfull of sin bins and two sending offs the game concluded with lots of points to the aussies and very few to Bramley, but no-one cared, the crowd were enthralled and entertained, the best £4 I've spent for a long time, and in the true tradition of rugby league both teams applauded each other off the field before swapping their shorts in a not-seen-before ritual that excited the ladies, presumably the shirts weren't theirs to swap, and trooping off together exchanging laughs and back slapping.

What a wonderful game this rugby league is.

The agenda for this afternoon

Will certainly be giving the disco and kareoke a miss but the rugby looks promising as the newly crowned NL3 Champions take on a touring representative team from the famous aussie club.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it...

War Scene 1810-12 Brush and Sepia sketch
Francisco Goya

"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will.
War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out."
Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman
Letter to Mayor Calhoun of Atlanta and others
September 12, 1864

Yesterday the official inquest into the death of British ITN news reporter Terry Lloyd on one of the first days of combat in Iraq in March 2003, concluded that he, his cameraman and their translator were "unlawfully killed" by American soldiers, and the Coroner is now to write to the Director of Public Prosecutions to ask whether or not it would be possible to bring war crime charges against those responsible. Full story here.

I have a problem with that news story.

Its a problem of reconciling General Sherman's quotation (above) with the attempt of a government legal representative trying to break down the chaotic multitude of individual actions that exists on any battlefield, from the Trojan wars to Iraq 2003, and turn it into some sort of courtroom game of chess.

If it were possible to legally define what is right and what is wrong in military campaigns, why it is correct to kill one person but not another, why it is correct to kill one of your enemies but a war crime to kill a whole group of them together, then we will have finally cracked the age old problem of conflict - don't blow each other to pieces - fight it out in a courtroom.

Whilst it is a tragedy for the Lloyd family that their son, husband and father will not be returning home from Iraq, it has to be said that he placed himself, voluntarily, into a situation of severe conflict with an immense possibility that he and his party of travellers would come under fire from one side or another.

Unlike other news media groups involved in the Iraqi conflict, Lloyd and several of his ITN collegues had made the decision not to be attached to the British or US army but to report the conflicts independantly - it was their concious decision to do that and in doing so they shunned the protection available to them from the greatest and most advanced battlefield collection of armourments known to mankind, in favour of a bullet-proof vest each and a couple of minibuses with PRESS written on the roof and sides - and off they set in advance of the allied forces to find and report on conflict wherever they found it.

And they found it very quickly.

In the confusion of a typical battlefield it seems that the Lloyd entourage had been approached by an Iraqi pickup truck with a gun mounted on the back, and while a conversation ensued the ligitimate Iraqi target was picked out for attention by American tanks - Lloyd was wounded in this initial exchange and then hit by another round to the head as he was being loaded back into one of the minibuses.

Its a fairly straighforward act of war, the tank crew were under orders to take out an Iraqi threat and from a distance did so, forgetting of course to first of all pop down the road to ask if all of the persons on the scene were in fact Iraqi.

The bottom line being that if you, as a television news reporter with immense combat experience (probably far more than the US tank crews) made a concious decision to place yourself independantly on the battlefield, then you yourself become a target.

Its not a game of chess and it is not a place of legal niceities, battles can now be fought from a distance and modern weapons mean that you don't need to stand face to face with your enemy before you can kill him with a sharp blade, stand next to the perceived enemy and you become part of the target, questions will be asked later when the turmoil of conflict becomes the black and white two sides of a coin in a quiet remote courtroom.


And in a sort-of-related and sort-of-ironic counterpoint to the Lloyd story, the British Government is now considering whether or not to pardon 300 British soldiers who were executed by the British Army for cowardice during the 1914-18 World War One conflicts.

Its now recognised that most if not all of these soldiers, who had in some cases spent many months, even years, living in filthy conditions on the front line of battlefields, under constant bombardment and threat of physical attack, were in fact suffering from mental problems caused by the very conditions in which they were forced to exist by their own Government representatives.

In other words they weren't cowards when they refused to fight or refused to return to the front line, but were victims of the very government forces that then tried them and quickly executed them as a brutal lesson to other soldiers not to do the same - it was better to face the enemy guns than to face your own governments guns, it was better for your family to learn that you died a hero than die a coward at the hands of your fellow soldiers and bring lasting shame on your family - a shame that some of those soldiers descendants still feel today, together with their rage and determination not to let this current government off the hook and earn a pardon for their grand and great-grandfathers.

War is hell, always has been, and as a soldier you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Friday, October 13, 2006

Of course you look attractive dear,

The fashion industry.
Specifically the fashion industry for women.

How depressingly stupid is it ?

Two news items today on the fashion industry, both relating more towards the fashion industry for women than men - because as we all know your average Joe in the street cares about fashion almost as much as he worries about whether or not he washed the breakfast dishes this morning.

The first story relates to the almost compulsory use of diet pills and other methods of reducing your weight down to your birth weight which has been well publicised for several years in the fashion model industry.

But now its endemic in women in general - apparently.

According to Closer magazine, 55% of women in the UK have used diet pills to reduce their weight.

Shocking.

But then of course you read the survey a little more and realise that its actually 55% of the women surveyed and when you read to the bottom of the article you learn that the survey was carried out on a total of 1230 women - but still, and even given that its a survey of celebrity obsessed women (Why would they buy "Closer" if not) then its still an eyebrow raiser.

But why does it happen ?

Who was it that dictated some years ago that catwalk models looked best when carrying no more than six stones of flesh vaguely hanging off their bones ?

Do clothing designers really think that the best showcase for their next seasons designs - on which hang their route to fame and fortune - is a feeble, barely standing, exploited young girl who's sexual development has almost certainly been halted and possibly even destroyed, by the belief that taking horse drugs will make them desirable ?

And how worrying is it when that belief spreads from a narcissistic, egocentric, mercenary industry to females in general ?

And it has to be said that it is mainly females that it affects, the fashion industry is geared up for females, males are almost totally ignored in the self-indulgent rush for perceived beauty - walk into any high street clothing store and you'll see the same designs for men on display year in year out, the same suits, jackets. coats, shirts, the same colours, the same cut, the same accessories - men never change their clothing habits and do not require a horde of designer names to tell them what their winter wardrobe should be this year - beacuse its going to be the same winter wardrobe as last year - and thats OK by men.

Its different for women though.

Each year they need to be told what colour is "in" this year, they need to be told how long the skirts should be this year, pencil cut or flared, high waistline or hanging off your hips , worn with tailored jackets or cardigans, accessorised with what, and most importantly, what is "this years black" ?

Apparently "this years black" is grey, and its causing problems for retailers.

You see, for various reasons, women don't want to buy grey. Men have been buying grey since the dawn of time, men are comfortable in grey, it works.

Women don't like grey and the designers who six months ago decided that it would be grey this winter are now wondering if any of their ranges will sell, or rather they are wondering if any of their ranges will sell at the hugely inflated high street prices or whether they are going to have to flog them off at cost before going away and panic buying some short runs of clothing in more gaudy colours.


I confess to understanding nothing of this fashion business.

I live in a house with a fashion concious wife and two daughters aged 18 and 14 for whom their clothing choice each morning can take upwards of an hour and certainly nothing like the ten seconds that I take.

Last night as my wife came downstairs, on her way out to a night out with the girls, and having raided the 18 year olds wardrobe, I casually asked her if she was supposed to be wearing that black belt just under her ribcage rather than on her waist where I foolishly believed that belts should be worn - ie they are for keeping your pants up.

I cannot describe the withering look that all three females gave to me, its the sort of look that they give Jake the dog on the rare occasions when he is caught short through the night and does a whoopsie on the carpet - its the sort of look that says, "shut-up male creature, you know nothing".

And indeed I don't.