Sunday, December 30, 2007

A review of 2007 in the JerryChicken household



A year of upheaval, a year of change, a year of weddings and (so far) no deaths and (so far) no births, a year in which the strops got longer so that they are almost joined up in the middle now, a year in which I discovered a new solo holiday venue and a year in which I had presents thrown back in my face - and (eventually) a year in which I was bought my first ever dressing gown, I am now officially middle-aged, I look forward to a pipe and a bag of baccy.

January started off all political-like in the JerryChicken blog with lots of politicians being held up for ridicule by yours truly, well its what they get paid for and when the Home Secretary (who wasn't Home Secretary for long afterwards) calls the Home Office "Not fit for purpose" then he appears to be agreeing with me that they are all a right set of wankers in Westminster, so nothing changes there then.

The highlight of my January effort though was my predictions for the British music scene, which can be found right here. I am now free to freely admit that I blagged that list of hot tips straight from Napsters own list of hot tips and I freely admit that I knew of none of their names even while I typed the list, and I now freely admit that I still know of none of their names one year on, that would be the year in which they were tipped to do big things, in other words Napster's tippers spoke bollacks last year.

February was starting to get exciting, for February was the month in which we signed the contract to sell our old house and buy the new, but significantly smaller, house that we now inhabit and for the consideration of almost £10,000 in legal and taxation expenses we were almost packed and ready to go. February was the month when the dear old ladies at the Cancer Research Charity Shop in Horsforth had to go out and hire a small warehouse as a temporary storage facility after we bombarded them day after day with years worth of our accumulated junk, I drove past their shop just the other day and they are still selling old stuff of ours in the window, they have years worth of stock now.

February was also the month in which I went rally driving having been persuaded to part with an extortionate amount of money by our Ned in order to do so. Twas much fun, let down only by the fact that the other nine people on the rally driving course seemed to have come prepared with proper footwear and I had not - do you know how much of a twat you look clad in a fireproof racing suit and helmet with a pair of brown street shoes on ?

A big twat is the correct answer.

However I must have done something right for I finished third on the course ahead of all the young twats in their proper footwear who thought they could drive fast - well you can't, so there - one of said young twats being a petrolhead of my acquaintance who races his Honda veryfastsportscar on proper racing tracks and everything - sorry Richie, I haven't mentioned this before, but you drove like an old woman and I beat you by several minutes and thirty years.

March started with the house move, a day which went remarkably hassle free, perhaps it was because we only moved five hundred yards up the road or perhaps it was because it was our seventh move of our married life, or perhaps it was the fact that this time we paid £800 to four big strapping young lads to come from Whites Removals and do the whole job for us - I think it was the latter .

For anyone else considering a house move then please listen to me now - pay someone to do it for you.

I've moved myself, me and a hired van, for the other six house moves - disaster is always just thirty seconds around the corner waiting for you when you do it yourself - when you pay some big strapping lads to do it for you then the potential disaster is their problem and you just sit their on a box in the middle of your empty house and keep asking them if they want some more tea and biscuits, its dead easy.

March was also the month in which I went to Newcastle on Andy's stag weekend and partook of the noble art of Karting where one thing became immediately apparent when we were split into pairs and set off on a 30 minute grand prix race against each other - the team with the two skinny lads in had a significant advantage over the rest of us, weight being an issue in a motorised go-kart - furthermore I only overtook one other person during my sessions on the track and it is noteworthy that he was the only other person who was wearing a 3XL racing suit.

The seeds of doubt over my weight were sown on that day.

April was the month of the great mobile pond disaster, the post that got the most number of hits last year was "Dude, wheres my pond ?" after my magnificent Koi pond erection decided to go walkabout all the way down my garden, my drive, the street outside my house and the street at the bottom of this street, and onwards to the horizon, in short my new pond collapsed due in the main to faulty nails.

OK, so I shouldn't have used nails at all, and after I'd actually listened to a builder the next time, it worked fine, so the moral of the story is always seek professional advice, or something like that.

The knock-on effect of losing almost a thousand gallons of water down the street and causing the new neighbours to lock their doors and seek refuge on upper floors of their houses was that my project to build a conservatory on this new house has been shelved until I can demonstrate that I am capable and proficient at this stupid building lark to do it in a safe way where it will remain standing for longer than the ten minutes that the first pond did.

May was the month that I sold the family business for the princely sum of £3 rather than have HM Customs and Revenue walk in any day soon and tell me that they owned the place now.

Running your own business, the business that your grandfather started back in the 1920's can be fun, you get to pay yourself whatever you want, you get to take off any days you don't want to work, no-one tells you what to do, you please yourself, all of the time.

Except of course its nothing like that, what really happens is that you get to pay yourself after yoru customers have paid you and after you have paid your employees and you have paid your suppliers and after you have paid the last six months tax bills and after you have paid the last two quarters VAT bills, thats when you get paid, and when you pay yourself what is left your wife nags you because she doesn't think its enough money for the fact that youve not been at home at all for the last twelve years, and she's right because if you divided it up by an hourly rate you're actually paying yourself less then the minimum wage, far less than what you've just paid your 18 year old apprentice.

And when you reach the point where your accountant starts ripping you off with increasing bills for work which you can't remember authorising, and when you get to be on first name terms (as I did) with the Inland Revenue bailiffs - then is the time that you start to wonder whether collecting trolleys in the car park at Asda would be a good career move - and when you tell yourself that yes, that would indeed be a good career move, then you know that its time to fuck off, sell up and move on.

So I did.
I just own 10% now, just do sales now, I love it.
May was a good month then.

June brought rain, deluges of biblical proportions and thoughts turned to summer holidays of which there would be none for the JerryChicken household, us being skint from the house move and all, but I booked a few days in Edinburgh for three of us ...

July and the decking was finally finished at great expense and I finally decided to buy a black car, although the make was yet to be decided upon, and in the long run the new car was not black at all but a sort of grey colour. We started the first of our school summer holiday family days out with a trip to York, shopping and a visit to York Minster where a shock awaited to find that you had to bloody well pay to get in - pay to get in a church, whatever next ?

August and the glorious four days at Edinburgh Festival, what fun I had on my own there after the current Mrs JerryChicken and younger daughter had decided that they did not wish to spend four days of culture vulturing with me, so I left them at home and took all the money to Edinburgh - what a truly wonderful three week event that is and one which I will certainly be rebooking for next year , hopefully I'll get to do it on my own again, that was most of the fun.

September was the month when Northern Rock investors wanted their money back and Golden Brown shat his kecks at the sight of the queues outside their branches, so I wrote of my one and only experience of a savings scheme, the one where I beat the tricksters this time.

It was also the month when my wife demonstrated why women should not be allowed at sporting grounds and how it all used to work perfectly fine when it was just men and boys that were allowed through the turnstiles.

And I spoke of the day I met Elvis.

October was the month when I went and searched for my maternal grandmothers grave, and found it accidentally, and there was lots of talk of purchasing clothing in preparation for the showbiz wedding that we were invited to, and of course I spoke of my childhood dream of being a top scientist, an ambition thwarted by the boy who blew a hole in his stomach, "this big" (holds fist up), he has not come forward yet after publication so I still cannot verify the truth of the old wives tale.
November was the month of the podcast, the month in which I rediscovered my yearning to be a disc jockey in true Tony Blackburn stylee, a yearning not backed up by talent unfortunately.
We discussed at length the Magic Razor Comb of Death and discovered that it was a feared phenomenon in the USA too, ripping childrens scalps being high on the parental agenda in the 1970's and Dennis our Tuorettes service engineer made another appearance with his untimely comments at a funeral.

December is almost done, tonight will be spent seeing off the 2007 year and welcoming 2008, a procedure which is highly choreographed in our family being as Suzanne comes from the North East, an area reknown for its voracity in celebrating the New Year Eve - personally I'd be in bed by 10pm but she's upset if she has to go to bed by 10am on 1st Jan.

So tonight I will once again be "First Foot" and at 11.55pm will be evicted from the friends house that we have all gathered at with a glass of whisky and a lump of coal (don't ask why) with instructions not to re-enter until invited to. At the stroke of midnight I will be stood outside int he cold and rain with my nose pressed up against the window while the gathered friends inside hug and kiss each other for what seems like hours until someone remembers that they've locked me outside, at that point they may decide to let me in, on the other hand they may decide that it would be funnier not to let me in yet and I will starve and freeze to death outside.

It happens every year, I've been "first foot" for the past 27 years and yet I still bring no luck to anyones new year, being the most stupid one of the party means that I will be picked until I finally perish in a frozen lump on someones doorstep in the early hours of a January 1st...

Women and the demon vacuum cleaner





Its a well known though rarely commented upon factum that women have a pact with a demon when they switch on a vacuum cleaner.

When they "vac" or "hoover" (dependant on the noun of choice) they are involuntarily possessed by a devil who lives inside the dust bag of each vacuum cleaner until such a time as they switch the bloody thing off and put it back in its cupboard - I've even known Ewbanks to have this ability to turn mild mannered housewife's into raging lunatical care-noughts who will vac up anything left lying around on the floor.

As a child I lost count of the amount of lego and meccano that I lost up inside my mothers vacuum cleaner, as an adult I nearly lost a child up inside our vacuum cleaner as the current Mrs JerryChicken ran over the hand of our firstborn when she was a toddler, skinning the knuckles of said hand - "She got in the way" was the only explanation we received - she was possessed.

All of our furniture has battered legs at the same height as the vacuum cleaner rubber fenders, chairs, tables, settees that have stood in the same position in the same room for several years are rammed daily with the vacuum cleaner as if they had just jumped out suddenly into its path, Jake the dog is rightly terrified of losing his tail up inside the thing and flees whichever room is currently being "vacc'd", I've had the very socks sucked off my feet by her and her terrible machine and so now I flee the room with Jake and we sit together on the bottom step of the stairs, holding onto each other until its all over.

And its Jakes fault that we have to go through this terrible ordeal at least twice a day for Jakes long Retrievers hair and fluffy undercoat falls out constantly and she gets the vac out almost hourly to follow after him - you remember James Dyson, inventor of the Dyson Vacuum Cleaner and his promise of a lifetimes guarantee on his product ?

Well he lies, speaks with a forked tongue, Dysons last narry a year in our house, we've had dozens of them and they now lie with the ultimate ignomy of the vacuum cleaner, covered in dust, at the back of our garage whilst the latest one flogs it guts out sucking the very pile off our carpets twice, thrice a day, she's possessed when she holds the handle, grows horns when she kicks the button to start up the devils implement, grins manically as she swooshes around the room, woman and machine in perfect harmony seeking out small items to send to a cyclonic deathcamp.

My latest theory is that there is something in the pitch of the motor that lies in perfect corrolation with a womans hormonal vibes for I have yet to see a male be so possessed and so eager to do the "vacc-ing", to "do the vacc-ing" holds some sort of sexual gratification to the female and lets face it chaps, if getting your rocks off was as simple as "vacc-ing" then we'd be at it all day wouldn't we ?

Yup, I reckon thats it, we've long suspected that they only need us for farming our baby juices during their limited breeding cycle - that and providing half the excuse to get the vac out again...




Saturday, December 29, 2007

While my Ukelele Gently Weeps




Jake Shimabukuro is the blokes name and no I haven't a clue who he is, whether he is a professional musician, plays in a band, plays for coins in a hat on a street or what.

But he can play a ukelele.
And he more than does justice to one of George Harrison's finest moments, many have tried but few have equalled the master, this comes very close.

Theres a better quality version of that video at http://www.ukuleledisco.com/jake plus some more of his stuff, who would have thunk it eh - a ukelele web site being cool ?

Friday, December 28, 2007

Its useful to know a plumber

Thats my interpretation of Becky, Bob Beck, plumber extraordinaire, dead these past twelve years and one of our dads lifelong best mates.

It was Bob Beck who was the inspiration for my as yet unfinished story The Tomato Dip, the story of a debonair plumber and cafe owner in the late 1960's, the subject matter is true for Becky did own a cafe for a short while as well as doing his plumbing work, and he was what was coyly termed in those days "a lady's man".

Boxing Day 1968 and Ned and I are lying in bed, thick woollen blankets pulled up to our earlobes for it was another cold frosty morning in the bungalow without the benefit of central heating, central heating being a thing that only the posh kids families could afford.

The procedure each morning was for us to wait, rolled up inside our blankets for our mum or our dad to get up first, rake out last nights cinders from the coke burning stove in the living room (the only room to have a source of heat), stack the stove up with more coke and then light the gas poker and leave it burning for ten minutes or so for the coke to take a good light of.

Now some of you will be asking of yourselves here and now, "wait a minute, he mentions gas, they had gas in the bungalow, why did they not have a gas fire, or even gas fired central heating ?" and you'd be right to ask such a question, truth is the thought never crossed our minds in those heady days of space exploration, formica and nylon goods, the bungalow had a coke burning stove in it when we moved in that you had to use a gas poker to light it with, and that's the way it stayed.

Until Boxing Day 1968.

The coke burning stove wasn't the end of the matter, oh no, behind the coke burning stove was a "back boiler" which put simply meant that in order to have hot water in the house the coke stove needed to be lit and burning, it sounds quaint and old fashioned now but laying in our beds wrapped up in several thick and heavy woollen blankets listening to our mum raking out the grate on Boxing Day 1968, wondering how long we could "give it" before it would be warm enough to venture into the living room from our beds, gazing at the bedroom window which was once again covered in a thick layer of frost - on the inside (I kid not) - it was anything but quaint, it was just bloody cold, again.

Our mum kneeled down to rake out the hearth, we heard her knees creak and kneel down and then we heard a gentle "sploosh" as she kneeled down and we also heard a "Oh Frank !" as she realised that she'd kneeled down in a pool of water in front of the hearth where there should not be a pool of water, she was lucky, if that pool of water had been in our bedroom she'd have been kneeling on ice.

Our dad got up to investigate and amid curses and words we had never heard uttered before we came to realise that something was the matter with our back boiler, specifically it was "bloody burst".

No hot water, no fire, a freezing cold holiday, no tradesmen to call on, 'twas going to be a miserable day in the JerryChicken household.

Or at least it would have been had our dads best mate not been Bob Beck the debonair plumber. Not being on the phone at that time our dad had to get himself dressed and drive to Becky's house, get him out of bed, wait for him to get washed in hot water (what a luxury that sounded like by now) and then follow our dad back home to confirm the fact that "your boiler is goosed Frank"

They set to removing the coke stove and back boiler, a not so inconsiderable task as the back boiler was cemented into the chimney breast and the deaf people who lived next door came around to see what all the hammering and deconstruction work was all about (yes they really were deaf next door, imagine living in the 1960's as a kid when it didn't matter how loud you had your music turned up - and still your mum made you "turn it down, its like bedlam in here").

By that afternoon they had not only removed the coke burner and back boiler but Bob had crawled under the floor and laid a gas pipe then driven back home to bring us a brand new second hand gas fire, luxury, heat at the flick of a switch, well, several flicks of a switch because the ignition was knackered which is why the previous owners had gotten rid of it (see also my post on the new second hand cooker last month) - but still, luxury, of sorts.


Bob Beck worked for cash and in the true spirit of all self employed tradesmen of the time Bob Beck's cash was his own affair, tax returns were few and far between and only completed upon final demand from the tax office and then never in complete truth.

Bob was no different to any self employed tradesman, he was loaded with cash, embarrassed with cash riches he had to eventually buy a safe and dig and cement it into the floor of his garage just to have somewhere to keep all of the undeclared income and when one year a tax inspector turned up at his house to ask why he had not completed a tax return for the last three years he blamed it on his accountant, a dwarf named Bruce, who when questioned by the same tax inspector blamed it on Bob as he'd done the accounts but Bob had thrown them in the bin without forwarding them to the tax office, Bruce was telling the truth, Bob was not, the taxman returned to Bob's house.

Three years worth of tax had to be paid in an instant, Bob asked for time but the taxman asked how much more time he thought he deserved given that he'd already had three years, Bob pleaded poverty but the taxman had seen the brand new bungalow with the Jaguar XJS parked outside and suggested that some asset selling might be in order.

Finally cornered with inescapable logic Bob went to the garage safe one morning and withdrew huge fistfulls of cash, counted out the amount demanded and drove his Jag down to the tax office to hand it over. The tax inspector received the money, checked the amount, gave a receipt and then bade Bob a friendly farewell.

But just as Bob reached for the office door handle the taxman used the classic line that appears in all those old Peter Falk "Columbo" tv movies, "Just one more thing..." he said, "...where did this cash come from ?"

It was a fair cop, after pleading poverty for months Bob had suddenly appeared with several thousand pounds worth of hard cash and he had to admit to having "a little bit stashed away" and in order to prevent a threatened police investigation he had to seccumb to a second tax office assesment and a subsequent demand for more cash a few weeks later.


Bruce the dwarf accountant was sacked the following day even though it was none of his doing.

Thursday, December 27, 2007

The Scard-iest Dog In The World



I may have mentioned this before, in fact I have mentioned this before, but we share our abode with the scard-iest dog in the world.

Jake is a Golden Retriever, ok he's more white than golden but Golden Retriever is his breed and he has an impressive pedigree to prove it.

Golden Retrievers are gun dogs, that is their purpose, the reason for their breeding and we bought Jake from a proper, real-life gamekeeper, yes I thought gamekeepers only existed in Catherine Cookson novels too, but this was a real live gamekeeper living in a tiny cottage way up inside North Yorkshire, it took nearly an hour to drive to and find his humble abode on a large private estate there.

The gamekeeper had two pens of working dogs, some Retrievers and some Labradors, and he explained how they work both breeds out in the field, the Labradors being the best ground scenters and the Retrievers being the best air scenters, work both together and you'll get your shot-down game back every time.

Jake was a twelve week old pup in a cage with two of his sisters when we first saw him and the genuine gamekeeper explained that all of his brothers had been taken for gun dog training, he then showed us the family pedigree with Jakes father being a champion gundog, as was his grandfather and several other relations in the family tree.

It begged the obvious question, "Why is Jake not being trained as a gun dog then ?", so I asked the obvious question.

The obvious question had an obvious answer, "Because he is frightened of guns" the gamekeeper informed, "...but he will make an excellent pet dog..." he hurridly tagged on, "...because he is as soft as shite"

And indeed he is

So we are all sitting around the Christmas Day dinner table tucking into our turkey etc, and someone decides to pull a cracker - as crackers do it went off with a soft bang - and Jake scarpered out of the room

We didn't notice he'd gone at first and so continued pulling crackers until someone mentioned that he was not sitting at the end of the table waiting in vain for scraps as is his duty as a Retriever (they eat until they burst then eat some more), I found him in another room curled up and shivering on a settee - he is ten years old this year and he has never ever jumped onto a settee, he just knows its not the dog thing to do but he was terrified by the christmas crackers and something in his doggy head related the settee with a safe place

I dragged him back into the dining room and we continued with the traditional "eat until you are sick" christmas lunch until another cracker was pulled and he ran out of the room again

This time we found him in one of the girls bedrooms, a place he always goes to when we have a thunder storm during the night, apparently its safe for dogs if you hide from thunder under a bed, the same goes for christmas crackers apparently

It was then that we realised that it was the crackers that were doing it to him so we had to desist - does anyone want to pull the remaining five crackers out of the box for us - preferably out of hearing range of one big scare-dy dog who's profession should have been hunting with guns ?

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Christmas Day in the Chicken house

If you lived on top of an active volcano then you'd expect disruption from time to time.

If you live in a household of three females, each of which have only the merest trace of the hormone that controls the temper function then you expect disruption all of the time that they are in contact with each other.

Christmas Day is no different.

The seeds were sown on Christmas Eve, Jodie, the youngest, was at her boyfriends house for most of the afternoon with instructions from Suzanne to be home for 7pm. At 6pm she phoned to say that she would be eating at her boyfriends house with his family at 7-ish and that she would get a lift home at 9pm, it seemed innocuous enough, it saved me having to drive across the city to pick her up, it saved us having to feed her, so I agreed.

Amanda, the eldest was also out of the house celebrating Christmas Eve with her friends and so it left just the two of us in the house, I casually informed Suzanne of Jodie's message - and the seeds of anger were sown.

It built up over the next half hour, for what reason I know not, I do not pretend to understand either the mind of a woman or the forces which drive the temper function, for I have no practical experience of either brain function, I simply do not lose my temper for I don't think that I actually have one.

Luckily when Jodie returned home a few minutes after 9pm she decided to retire to her bedroom thus saving the Christmas Eve peace but of course only prolonging the stewing anger and temper-ism for Christmas Day.

We walked on egg shells all through Christmas Day, there was a general sulk in the air with not much conversation coming from the elder female, the two offspring of the elder sensing this and so not ruffling feathers, I made dinner, as is customary I received a present from each daughter but none from wife, and most importantly I found my drawing pen which I have been searching for for weeks.

The explosion occurred during the second episode of Coronation Street later in the evening, over what I know not for my "switch off sensory organs" function tripped in perfectly as soon as the first voice was raised - I do not stand between feuding women.

It was over very quickly, an explosion of two tempers, resulting in both retiring to their bedrooms leaving me with the chocolates, gin and tonic and TV remote control.

I watched "Pulp Fiction" on my own - a fine result then.

Monday, December 24, 2007

Joe the Butcher, A Christmas Story



Joe the butcher man was a friend of a friends dad and we all played dominoes in a pub of a Sunday lunchtime when ah wor nobbut a youth.

Joe the butcher was your archetypal butcher, big and round like a barrel, jolly smile on his face, made a lot of sausages and pies, which turned out to be fortuitous one Christmas...

It was their busiest Christmas ever, they had taken over a hundred orders for free range turkeys and even more orders for their home made pork pies, Christmas Eve through the daytime was as busy as Joe could ever remember it and as he told the story to us in the pub the following weekend his jolly, ruddy face lit up and we all knew that he'd taken a boatload of cash that day, nothing made Joe the butcher happier than a till full of cash for Christmas.

The fresh, free range turkeys had been delivered freshly killed and hung the previous night, each one labelled with its weight, each one checked against the ledger and customer's name assigned to the label according to the weight they had ordered and paid a deposit on.

Joe the butcher and his three helpers rushed around the shop counter all day, in and out of the chiller room, checking the customer order ledger, checking the turkey tags, making sure everyone was happy and that they stumped up the cash, a turkey for every customer and every customer for a turkey, including Joe, who had picked out the biggest and fleshiest one for himself as he had lots of family coming around to his house for Christmas dinner, him being a butcher and all.

And then finally it was 6pm and the till rang up one last sale, the door was locked as the last customer left the shop and they all wearily took off their aprons and congratulated each other on a successful day's trading, Joe shared a sherry with them all. slapped them on the back, wished them all a Merry Christmas and then accompanied them to the door waving them all off down the road to their buses and their homes.

Turning back to his shop he filled a cash bag with the takings ready to drop off at the nightsafe on the way home, put on his overcoat and cap and then went to the chiller room to collect his bag with his Christmas turkey inside, the pick of the bunch it was.

Except that it wasn't.

It wasn't there.

In fact the chiller room was empty, sold out, everything gone, some daft bugger had sold Joe the butcher's turkey.

He searched high and low for his turkey, in cupboards, under shelves, in the fridge, the display cabinets, nothing, not a sausage, well actually there were sausages, in fact the only piece of meat left in the shop were the sausages, everything else had been sold, cleaned out he was and he had the cash in the bag to prove it.

He had no choice for in those long past days all the shops were closed as late as 6pm, no late night shopping, no 24 hour supermarkets, Joe the butcher took home six pounds of pork sausages for the huge family gathering on Christmas Day.

When he recounted this tale in the pub the following week we were hurting with laughter by this time, you see we all knew that Joe the butchers wife was a fearsome women and more than that he had three fearsome grown-up daughters, and they and their families were all coming round for Christmas lunch - sausages.

He declined to inform his wife on Christmas Eve, came in, got changed and went straight to the pub but when he came home later that night, very much later and very much drunker his fearsome wife was waiting for him demanding to know where the turkey was so that she could get it ready for the morrow.

"Some daft bugger flogged it in the shop my love" he explained through a beer cloud and raising each forefinger and doing a little flapper dance added "ooh-poop-ee-doo" in an attempt to make light of the matter.

By the time he got to explain all of this to us the following weekend his wife and his daughters were still not speaking to him especially after he jokingly stood at the head of the Christmas Dinner table and pretended to carve the string of sausages that he had proudly presented to them on a silver patter surrounded by sage and onion stuffing and roast potatoes.

He never failed to recount that story every year and neither, you will not be surprised to note, did his wife and daughters.

The moral of this Christmas Story (for there has to be a moral at Christmas) is "Fook everyone else, make sure your turkey's in the bag, Christmas is for taking, not for giving".

Saturday, December 22, 2007

A Merry Christmas Message From Santa ...



"Ah bloody hates Christmas me, bloody hates it ah do...
oooh my bloody back..."

Click to enlarge Santa image
And a very Merry Christmas to you all.

Just a dancing queen...



Abba may have sung of a Dancing Queen.

But last night in Birmingham, I was THE Dancing Queen.

I don't dance, simple rule, I don't dance.
Ever.

When we go places where dancing occurs I stand at the bar and occupy myself with stuff, talk to random strangers, pretend that I have far more important things to do other than dance.

I don't dance you see.

I have never danced, not even in the bathroom where there is only my reflection in the mirror to laugh at me, the only time I have been known to dance, the only times that Suzanne can ever remember me dancing is on our wedding night when the DJ pulled a handgun out from under the decks and threatened me with death by pain if I didn't get up on the dance floor with my new bride and take the first dance, I aquiesced under extreme protest and the bas'tad made us dance to John Paul Youngs "Love Is In The Air" an absolute belter of a contender for "The Worst Song In The World - EVER" award, its the sort of song that really bad club turns perform to old ladies waiting for the bingo to start - I hate the song, I hate the singer, I especially hate the bas'tad DJ, I hate to dance.

Last night I was THE Dancing Queen.
For three minutes I danced before sneaking off back to the bar.

When your boss tells you that you cannot leave the ballroom and nor will the DJ pack up and go home without you first dancing with her, then you dance, you dance like your end of year final dividend depends on it, which I believe it did, so I danced, there are mitigating circumstances you see.

Friday, December 21, 2007

New Car and off to Birmingham


Busy day today, finally got the new car yesterday after a man drove it all the way from Birmingham to deliver it.

Today I get to drive it all the way back to Birmingham for our head office Christmas party tonight.

Yes, it would have been easier to pick it up in Birmingham today, but I didn't know it was coming from Birmingham and the man who delivered it didn't know we were going there, so what could have been a good plan did not happen.

Tonight's "do" is a black tie function in a 1960's hotel in the centre of England's second city, a place that I detest almost as much as London. The hotel looks like a cheap Spanish tourist tower block, I just hope that the rooms have been upgraded a little from the 1960's standards, back then this particular hotel would have been cutting edge and you may even have had carpet on the floor and one of those new "continental quilts" rather than heavy woollen blankets and an eiderdown.

Christmas meal tonight followed by a 70's tribute band and disco the only saving grace being that it is all paid for by head office including (I hope, it had bloody better be) the booze, then on Saturday morning its up early and the new car can drive us all back to Leeds - by Sunday the poor thing will wonder what its life is going to be like with the Leeds/Birmingham route being thrashed every day of its short life so far.

I like gadgets on cars, couldn't give a stuff what they look like or how fast they accelerate or any of that Jeremy Clarkson stuff, I just like gadgets and this car (Mondeo Titanium X) has headlights that turn corners with you - turn the steering wheel and the headlights move and point to where you are going to go, its like the car has real life eyes that follow the road for you - I will never bore of playing with those and will probably break them soon.

In the meantime and in lieu of Video Saturday tomorrow, here's the best Christmas song ever...

...I mean ever...





Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Menston - "You're a loony you are"

We'll be tip-toeing around the subject today being well aware that Dan of All That Comes With It works in Mental Health, but there was a time, not so long ago, that the phrase "You're from Menston you are" was flung around the school playgrounds and pub taprooms as an insult, being that it referred to the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum at Menston, or to give it its more modern name, High Royds Hospital.

Its been in the news again this week as someone was criticising the developers who purchased the old hospital (above) from the Health Care Trust in 2003, accusing them of not providing enough security on site to prevent the theft of lead from its roofs which is allegedly destroying irreplaceable Victorian plasterwork and marble floors.

The huge site - it was a originally its own self contained village complete with four farms for its inmates sustenance and rehabilitation - is being redeveloped in a four year plan to include housing, new apartment blocks, and the jewel in its crown, the conversion of its original admin buildings with their fine decor into prestigious apartments.

Which is a far cry from its original use which was very simple - to shut away the mentally ill, far enough away from the city for no-one to care anymore, making it self contained so that the "lunatics" did not have to venture forth and mix with the public - rich folk shut away their mentally ill in their own houses, hired governesses to care for them but locked them away from visitors, the rest of the country sent their mentally ill to the asylums and tried to forget that they ever existed.

The history of Menston (the word Menston has now been reclaimed by the village on the hospitals doorstep and a very well heeled village it is too, but I still cannot think of that word without thinking "mental", sorry Dan), is much better told in this short document (pdf document), so I shan't bother with the fascinating story of the place.

Instead I shall recount the story of the bloke who used to own our last house, and in doing so illustrate how the mentally ill were treated right up to our own modern day world...

The last house that we owned was built in 1932 and owned by one married couple right up until 1992, the people who bought it from them then refurbished it and sold it to us, we were the third owners of the house and unusually after we had moved in we were sent a whole bundle of papers which included the deeds to the property and some legal papers, the reading of which engrossed me for several hours.

The chap who had originally bought the house in 1932 worked for the local Gas Board and purchased the place with the aid of a mortgage which in todays money must have been colossal, but to be honest I have carried far more than that amount around in my wallet on many occasions, sometimes for just one night out.

He lived there with his wife until just after WWII when, and there is no explanation why, but I'm guessing that perhaps the war had something to do with it, he was admitted to Menston Hospital (as it was known then).

How do I know this ?

Because he never returned and when his wife was finally assessed as being in the final stages of Alzheimer's and could not be held responsible for her estate, their niece had to sign an affidavit to prove that she was who she said she was, part of which included the whole history of her uncle and aunt, describing in some detail of how her understanding was that her uncle had had a "nervous breakdown".

He was an "inmate" at Menston from 1948 to 1968, 20 years in which he never returned home, 20 years in which his wife, who could not drive, could visit only occasionally as Menston is a difficult place to visit on public transport, its only three or four miles as the crow flies but I wouldn't have a clue which buses (and there will be several) to catch to get there.

The old chap, who I imagine would have been treated in his home with drugs these days, was locked away with up to a thousand similarly affected people until one day in 1968 he hung himself in a barn on Home Farm, one of the farms that was owned by the Hospital Trust, its a fate that I imagine many of the inmates chose - they have their own graveyard on the estate.

You might successfully argue that the former owner of my former house had his nervous breakdown at the wrong time in the wrong place, theres no doubt that no Government likes to be reminded that its soldiers often return home with mentally inflicted wounds but the harsh answer to the problem, even in our parents lifetime was to have these problems shut away and not spoken of, "Send him to Menston love and lets forget about him, start again love", luckily, according to the documents I had, he had repaid the mortgage on the house just one year prior to him being committed or else his wife probably would not have been able to live the rest of her natural life in the house of their dreams.

My First Bike

Actually this story isn't about my first bike, but me on the bike in the photo is my first bike and reeee-al cool I look too in my cowboy hat ready to ride the range on my first tricycle.

This story isn't even about my second bike, my second bike was a bigger version of the one in the photo and it had a box on the back to put things in.

No, this story is about my third bike actually.

When I was seven years old we moved from working class terraced house Burley to middle class semi detached Cookridge, newly built, concrete roads rather than cobbles, people who spoke posh, people like my Auntie Doris who you could tell were posh, people a million miles removed from us street urchins with permanent holes in our jeans, the same shirt every day for school, and rubber bands to hold the flapping sole of our shoes from flapping, yes I actually repaired my own shoes with rubber bands, a fine idea unless you actually wanted to walk in them as the rubber bands tended to twang apart after walking on them for more then twenty yards.

So all my posh new Cookridge friends had bikes, one of them even had a sports bike in British Racing Green with five gears, count them, five Sturmey Archer gears, drop handlebars and everything, it was an item to covet and no-one was allowed to touch it let alone ride it, he was a bastard was Stuart Ackroyd.

So I nagged my dad for a bike for I had not one, the second tricycle having been passed, or more likely sold, to someone with small children, I nagged and nagged for a bike but our dad was unrelenting, I had feet that I could use to run alongside my friends when they went for rides on their bikes, why didn't I run alongside them, was I lazy or something ?

I did run alongside my friends on their bikes, for many months I ran alongside them, for the one and only time in my life so far I became adept at long distance running, but still I wanted a bike, a new shiny bike like they all had, one with three gears and white brake cables and mud guards with reflectors on them, a bike that you could stick the cardboard liner from a Bounty bar into the spokes to make a noise like a motorbike engine when you rode it, all of this I coveted, and for nearly a year I begged our dad to buy me one, it still hurts today to think that I even sunk to the depths of promising our mum that I'd run errands for her on my bike and that I could use it to carry her shopping on - thats how low I sunk in my attempt to procure a bike.

The promise of a lacky to shop for her seemed to bring our mum onside and she started nagging our dad to buy me a bike, he relented.

One Saturday afternoon he arrived home from his regular Saturday lunchtime drinking session at his club to declare that he had a friend who owned a bike shop (why hadn't he told me this before, he'd kept this news quiet all the time I was begging) and that he'd sorted a bike out for me, a two wheeler bike just like the bike I'd been nagging for, I couldn't contain my joy even when he admitted that he hadn't seen this bike yet and didn't know if it had white brake cables or gears, still, it was a bike, my new bike.

The bad news was that I would have to ride it all the way from Meanwood, a not inconsiderable distance for a seven year old, but what did I care, it was my new bike and I'd ride it to the end of the world to own it.

We drove straight to the bike shop where his friend, who had obviously been involved in the same lunchtime drinking session with our dad was waiting, sozzled, inside his bike shop. They greeted each other in that smoky, brotherhood way that drunken men do with lots of hand shaking and back slapping and jokes about things that weren't for small boys ears, they shared a cigarette together, prolonging my agony as I wandered around the small lock-up shop wondering which one of the beautiful, brand new, sparklingly-new bikes was mine, which one would I be riding all the way back to Cookridge just as soon as our dad had stopped telling jokes and smoking with his drinking buddy.

The answer to my question was "none of these".

When they'd finished laughing and smoking in the shop doorway our dad and his mate lead me though a door to the back of the shop where, in a dusty workshop that contained the carcasses of dozens of ancient bikes and hundreds of assorted bike parts there stood a bike, which they both pointed to in a "ta-daaaaa" sort of way.

It wasn't exactly what you'd call new.
It was brown and maroon for a start, not colours that had been trendy for at least twenty years.
It had steel rods instead of cables for the brake connections, something that hadn't been seen on modern bikes for a generation.
It had no gears, none at all.
Worst of all it weighed several tons, I could hardly pick it up, how the hell would I be able to ride it ?

"Thats smashing" was all our dad could say, "just the job"
"It is indeed" his friend confirmed, "its a smashing bike is that"

"Its awful" I thought to myself, "they'll all laugh at me" I thought, thinking of my mates.
"Thank you" I said out loud for I was a polite young chap, "could you lift it up and put it on the road for me"

Our dad set off in his car in front of me and the industrial weight bike, our Ned who had accompanied us was in the back of the car and stared out the back window pulling faces at me and laughing all the way back to Cookridge. We held up the traffic all the way back home because I could only push the heavy pedals around at a rate of around one revolution per minute, and Cookridge being on top of a hill it was uphill all the way, to say that my brown bike was of industrial weight is to be kind to it, it most closely resembled one of those big black butchers bikes but thankfully without the basket on the front.

Worse still it had a fixed wheel rather than a freewheel hub, which to the non-technical means that you couldn't stop pedaling the bloody thing, that wasn't a problem normally for you rarely got the momentum up high enough to worry your legs going uphill or even on the flat but when going downhill the sheer weight of the thing came into its own and I'd overtake all of my mates flashy sports bikes as gravity pulled on the thing so hard that my poor legs couldn't keep up with the pedals and I'd have to stick my legs out and let the pedals fly so fast you couldn't see them anymore.

Stopping the bloody thing at the bottom of a hill was nigh on impossible, the speeds that I reached sometimes were far beyond what the brakes had been designed to cope with, and bear in mind again that Cookridge is built on a huge hill, speeds in excess of the road speed limit were not unusual and I wore out the soles of many shoes trying to use them on the road to supplement the weak braking system that had been provided - on several occasions I jumped off the bike rather than try and stop it before it crossed a main road and on these occasions it would continue on its merry speeding way for several hundred yards demolishing bus shelters and brick walls until falling over and taking up huge swathes of concrete road with it.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Primark - Does it Get Any Worse Than This ?

There is a retail phenomenon that has enveloped these shores in recent years, at first it was just the cheaper cities, the ones who didn't care too much about image, the ones where the planners had no grand ambition to be held in city planning esteem as the sort of planned city centre that every city should aspire to, the ones with a more than three to one ratio of social housing schemes on their perimeters and a bus service of sorts to shuttle the social security clothing coupon bearers in and out of the centre...

But now every city centre has a Primark.
And Leeds has a fekkin huge one.

If the polyester "shell" or "leisure" suit is your bag then Primark is your Valhalla, if you do not own footwear that does not have vertical stripes and the makers name down the sides, if the phrase "shirt and tie" bears only faint whisps of recognition from the time that you had to attend the magistrates court, if you are capable of arranging the words "Adidas", "Fred Perry" and "Nike" into some sort of order of preference and desirability for any given month in the year, if you spend more on ornaments for your ears, neck and hairstyle than you do food for your several children, then Primark is your Sweet Home Alabama, its the place you wish you could return to just by clutching your small dog to your breast, screwing your eyes tight shut, clicking your heels three times and saying it's so.

And if its so then you will resemble the Primark Ladies in my sketch, a sketch that was made last Thursday when the person who proclaims to be welded inextricably to my wallet until eternity (even though I have pleaded loss of memory for the whole of 1983), took me to that high alter of appalling taste and cheap fabrics.

I swear that I could have searched all day in that city block sized four storey retail emporium and still not found a single item of clothing priced above £3.99, and I'd have searched for the rest of the following day to find and item that was worth its price tag, and I would have failed my mission on both days as well as being declared clinically insane at the end of the task.

Somewhere in India, or Indonesia, or Taiwan, there are whole cities of dirt poor downtrodden people who harbour dreams of wealth, importance and prestige, all to be earned at the high alter of Primark's annual purchase order for polyester track suits in various garish colour combinations starting at size 2XL and increasing. In these cities the children forsake their education completely to work in the same sweat shops as their parents, grandparents and great grandparents, four generations aiming at the golden shot target of 200 4XL sweatpants a day, a target which if achieved will mean each pant can leave the factory door with a price tag of a few coppers, a price tag which even after being shipped halfway around the world to our shores will be still struggle to hit double numbers of pence, thus maintaining the Primark promise, proclaimed from all of its street front windows "We May Sell Shite, Hell We Admit To Selling Shite, But Its The Cheapest Shite You'll Ever Buy Lady".

Its a horrible shop where horrible people fight to buy horrible goods, goods which are at first piled high, not hung on racks, but piled high on pallets with a cardboard price stand placed on top, all of which is soon spread all over the floor for many aisles around as the clientele fight each other for the dubious honour of being the one who manages to check out a whole trolley full of goods and break the magical £10 mark - no-one has ever spent £10 and managed to carry all of their own bags out of Primark, it is simply impossible, a £10 expenditure would require a forklift truck assistance.

I lasted for ten minutes in Primark last week, ten minutes in the living reincarnation of Bedlam until I sold my, and my children's souls to a devil who promised to show me the fire exit and the stairs to sanity in return for my afterlife, its a small price to pay.

Monday, December 17, 2007

The Broadcast





Questions have been asked.
"What the hell is that quotation from on your profile ?"

So there you are - "The Broadcast" from Paul McCartney's "Back to the Egg" album

And no, I don't know what its all about either...

Woolworths Ladies

I visited a Woolworths store in Leeds last week.
I didn't even know that we had a Woolworths store in Leeds anymore, but we have.

It was pleasing to note that it still sells crap and that it hasn't lost any of its reputation for cramming as much crap with as much variation of crap into its floorspace as possible, aisles are only twelve inches wide and the crap falls off the shelves on top of you as you walk past, its a retail phenomenon that could not work anywhere else but Woolworths.

It was also pleasing to note that FW Woolworth have not lost sight of their original mission statement, that is to employ the ugliest, most miserable women in the city and clad them in tabards so that they look like school dinner ladies causing us to revert to the worst of our primitive childhood phobias and fear them deeply.

Its almost as if all of the Job Centres in the city gather together their chubbiest, ugliest, and most miserable of women seeking retail employment, garner together the ones who will not (for obvious reasons) ever find themselves seeking an honest days pay behind the makeup counter in Harvey Nichols or Debenhams (for no makeup is that good) and when they have a brace or two then phone up FW Woolworth and ask the Personnel Director to make an offer for them,

"Two ugly miserable ones willing to work for minimum wage, make us a bid"
"How ugly are they ?"
"Really ugly, we've had to keep them in a separate room from the rest of the jobseekers"
"How miserable ?"
"They haven't stopped complaining since childhood"
"We'll take them, minimum wage, let me know when you get some more"


The above quick sketch that I did of the Woolworths women that served me last week is not a cartoon stylee, its almost photographic in its representation, they really do look like that and they really were as miserable as their pictorial countenances appear to be.

The Woolworths Ladies, captured by my pen on 13th December 2007, all rights reserved, FW Woolworth.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Yet another Christmas #1




December 1971, in the two months before Bennie Hill foisted this pile of dogpoo upon the British record buying public we had seen Rod Stewarts "Maggie May" at #1 for five weeks and Slade's "Coz I Luv You" for four weeks, then along came Christmas and once again the record buying public lost their marbles and bought the first novelty record ont he shelf, its not like we had learned our lesson earlier in that year as Clive Dunn's "Grandad" had topped the charts at the start of '71.

"Earnie - The Fastest Milkman In The West" stayed at #1 for four weeks from the 11th Dec and it went from bad to worse when it was finally ousted by The New Seekers and their coca-cola anthem "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing", normality only being restored in February 72 when T Rex sold enough copies of "Telegram Sam" to oust the sickly sweet full of goodness aren't we so virtuous New Seekers - of whom I once went to watch one of their members (the blond one Lynn Paul) after they had split up performing in her role of icon to the gay population at the first gay bar in Huddersfield (its probably still the only one).

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Another Christmas #1




I don't like the "normal" version of this song, the one that got to number one in t'hit parade at Christmas 1977 and stayed there for thirty weeks (or so) and sold 140 million copies (or so), and I don't normally like anything that Paul McCartney has done since 1975...

But.

This recording is (apparently) a recording "in the raw" made at his farmhouse on the Mull of Kintyre during '77, done as a demo before the main thing - and its pleasantly acceptable, if a little repetitive.

Actually the only reason that I picked this former Christmas #1 today is because of the story I read in Denny Laines autobiography some years ago.

As most people will know Denny Laine is not Mr McCartney's best mate and hasn't been since he walked out on the band slamming the door very hard behind him, and certainly hasn't been since he alleged that Mr McCartney didn't pay him properly for his songwriting share of the "Mull of Kintyre" royalties, and certainly hasn't been since he revealed that the Campbeltown Pipe Band, who lets be honest made the single what it is (compare to the non-Campeltown Pipe Band version above), were only paid a meagre session fee for their morning in the recording studio whilst the single earned trillions for the McCartney estate, trillions that he has since wasted on monoped women and more failed writing projects.

So,

Denny Laine is not fond of McCartney in his biography.

And in his biography he emphasises the reknown care that Mr McCartney takes of his money, so much care that most of it is locked away in a tin box somewhere and the key hidden, put plainly, Mr McCartney is a bit of a tightwad and will not spend a penny where a farthing would get the job done a quarter as well.

I recall having a father like that too.

So the McCartney's proclaim to the band WIngs one day that they have purchased a substantial estate on the picturesque Scottish peninsula "The Mull of Kintyre" and indeed when they look on the map the area does seem to be nicely isolated and the estate does seem to be of a substantial nature and the band envisage a large rambling Scottish manor house with hundreds of rooms and roaring log fires, Scottish lacky's to tend to their every need and a baronial lifestyle that they can only dream of in their pop star St Johns Wood main residences.

They are very excited when Mr McCartney tells them that he is to take them all to his new Scottish estate in the winter of 76 and that they will stay there until he is satisfied that they have produced enough material for their next album, it will be good for our souls he tells them, we will commune with nature he tells them, the country lifestyle will invigorate us and our creative juices will flow like they have never flown before - the band are very excited and don't think twice when he tells them that they will be travelling in his tour bus to Scotland, which is a shame because if they had thunk twice then they would have thunk that perhaps at least one of them should have taken their own mode of transport, if only to keep in reserve for a potential escape bid.

They arrived at the rambling Scottish estate on the wild and remote peninsula which was inhabited totally by sheep int he middle of one of the coldest winters experienced on these isles, the tour bus being abandoned in a nearby village and farmers tractors commendered for the last few miles, still, all of those cosy rooms, all of those roaring log fires, the staff awaiting their arrival with an excellent malt whisky and nibbles...

The two roomed ex-bothy that McCartney introduced to them was a hugely funny joke and the band were in tears of laughter as he explained that he and Linda would use one of the rooms (the one with the tin roof on) as their bedroom and that as soon as the band had refixed the tin roof on the other room, rescuing the tin roof from the nearby bog where it had been blown to, then the other room would be used for cooking and socialising.

So busy laughing and asking "so where is the manor house then Paul", that it took them several minutes to notice that Paul and Linda were indeed unloading the tractors of their luggage and arranging sleeping bags in "their" bedroom, the truth dawned slowly and horribly, the McCartney's millions had sent them finally around the twist, there was no Scottish manor house, no cosy rooms, no roaring log fires, no lacky's with good malts to hand, this was it, this abandoned half-roofed stone outbuilding was it, the total extent of the McCartney's investment, and it was snowing outside, and it was very fekking cold.

When they finally plucked upt he courage to ask the band members were shown to their quarters - a nearby barn, but it did have a roof so they couldn't really complain as it was 50% more of a roof than what the McCartney's had.

No electricity, no water other than what they could pull from a hole in the ground that masqueraded as a well, the band started whingeing five minutes later.

The main whinge was the severe lack of electricity, the McCartney's did have a small generator in their hovel but the band had none in their barn, nor did they have beds and sleeping on straw loses its initial attraction after, oooh,three minutes or so.

But worse of all, no electricity meant no TV, how could he be so cruel ?

McCartney wasn't very amused one morning when walking to the barn he opened the door to find his band all sitting on the stone floor staring intently at a stone wall, encouraging them to visit the main house to start doing whatever it is musicians do when they are composing he was ignored as the band members sat staring at the wall, engrossed in something he couldn't see from the doorway.

It was only when he stepped inside that he noticed that one of them had drawn a television set on the wall with a piece of chalk and they were watching a drawing of Reginald Bosanquet reading the news.

It wasn't a happy band of musicians and Denny Laine left the band in 1980 after McCartney was arrested at the start of their world tour in Japan for possesion of marijuana, quite frankly it was not only an unhappy band, but a crap one too, McCartney has never since clawed his way back to the heady songwriting heights of his partnership with John Lennon, maybe he is just not that good, maybe it was the Lennon/McCartney catalyst, maybe living in a stone house and sleeping on a stone floor under half a roof is just not a good creative meduim.

Friday, December 14, 2007

The best Christmas song....ever




Yes thats right, its time to reveal the worlds best ever Christmas song, ever.

Its had some strong contenders of course, in no particular order...

The Beatles, I wanna hold your hand (1963)
The Beatles, I feel fine (1964)
The Beatles, Day Tripper (1965)
The Beatles, Hello Goodbye (1967)
Scaffold, Lily the Pink (1968)
Rolf Harris, Two Little Boys (1969)
Benny Hill, Earnie, the fastest milkman in the west (1971)
Slade, Merry Xmas everyone (1973)
Wings, Mulligans Tyres (1977)
St Winifreds School Choir, There's no-one quite like Grandma (1980)
Renee & Renata, Save your love (1982)
Cliff Richard, That awful christmas song about how virtuous he is that all the grannies bought (erased from memory)

...and many, many more appalling examples.

But Porky Pig caps them all, play it, learn to love it, you'll be singing it all day, I promise.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

The A1, Nickolas Nickleby and Accountants


After three days of early morning forays 100 miles up the A1, queues around Newcastle's Western Bypass both morning and evening, days spent studying accounting and payroll programmes, free coffee and food on demand, and a hell of a traffic jam on the Tyne Bridge one night, I can finally put my feet up tonight happy in the knowledge that tomorrow is a day off especially assigned to Christmas shopping, oh joy of joys.

Three days of 7am drives up the A1 has actually been very enjoyable, reminding me of the times 30 years ago when life was much simpler, my job was much simpler, my mode of transport was much simpler, and I had to make the same journey up the A1 to Newcastle every Monday morning for eight years until my company finally realised that they were still paying for my hotel bills and perhaps now might be a good time to buy a permanent residence in the North East before the head office accountant started asking too many questions.

In 1977 even the A1 was a much simpler road, intersections with other major roads used roundabouts instead of the proper motorway junctions that we have now and so the two hour journey could be broken down into four or five mile segments between roundabouts and I knew to the exact minute what time it should be if I was (for instance) at Catterick roundabout or Dishforth roundabout, now its one long 100 mile straight road with no stoppages and no landmarks for timing your journey...

Apart from the shed.

The shed is a tin shed that stands in an old overgrown field next to the motorway near Darlington. In 1977 when I started my journeying the shed in the field was old and rusty and leaning slightly to the left at an angle of five degrees or so - it became a landmark, a checkpoint on my journey, it was at 1 hour 15 minute marker from home heading North and it served me well as a marker post all of those years.

The shed is still there, completely rusty now, almost hidden behind a row of conifer trees that weren't even saplings when I started making the journeys, it now almost lays flat to the ground as 30 years of wind rain and snow have conspired to kill it off completely but still it stubbornly refuses to lie down and you could, if pushed, probably still crawl into it now, every time we pass the shed on the way to the North East we look to see if its gone, its a family game now, I checked again on Monday, its still there, and despite the car I drive being light years ahead of the old van that I used to drive in 1977, the shed is still at the 1 hour 15 minute marker, vehicle technology is star wars stuff compared to what it used to be but we still can't drive for any distance any faster than we used to.

Having said that I did two round trips (400+ miles) and still didn't empty a tank of diesel whereas in 1977 the Ford Escort van would not do one return trip on a tankfull of petrol, in fact it wouldn't do one return trip without the oil being refilled either, for it was a knackered van.

The Nickolas Nickleby audio book has kept me entertained on the night return trips these past three days, its bloody good, one of (not the best) Charles Dickens masterpieces and the characterisation by the out of work actor who reads it is just excellent, Dickens had a way of creating unbelievable characters who were believable and as always the names of these characters are just sublime, Wackford Squeers being the evil headmaster of Dotheboys Hall, a private school in Yorkshire, and Smike the pupil in his care who was abandoned there by his parents because he was, in Squeers own words (whilst tapping his temple), "He's not all up there, no matter how hard you knock sir", was surely the inspiration for JK Rowlings "Dobby" the elf. Full synopsis here.

My task for this next week is to stream (and perhaps snaffle) THE book for christmas, Dicken's "A Christmas Carol", click that link and you can stream it online for free, the task after christmas will be to obtain Dicken's finest work (in my very 'umble opinion Master Copperfield spaketh Uriah Heep), David Copperfield.

And finally the accountants, having been crammed full of Sage Accounts and Sage payroll these past three days I now have to take the online exams to become an Accredited Business Partner, yes, well, we'll see, at £50 for each resit I may need a posse of advisors to shout out the answers for the timed exam with its 80% pass mark.

If anyone ever asks the question "what is it that makes British people British" then I had the perfect answer to the question on Monday - I arrived at the Sage Training facility at 9am Monday and was shown to a waiting room where coffee and danish pastries awaited on the table together with six other people who were also on the course.

We all sat there in silence for 30 minutes until the tutor was ready, no-one spoke and no-one ventured near the coffee or the Danish's, we sat in silence and twiddled our thumbs or fiddled with our shoelaces and tried not to look anyone else in the eye.

We hadn't been introduced you see, and one simply cannot be so forward as to introduce oneself to a room full of people, its just not done, for that is a job for your host and our host had left us in the room alone, a bad show by our host if you ask - so we sat in silence and the coffee went cold.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Nothing ever wears out, part two


And so when we moved back to Leeds our new house on the new estate, built by the same builders who built TV's "Brookside" estate, and co-incidently looking exactly like TV's "Brookside" estate, was severely lacking in the gas cooker department.

Fortunately we knew someone who had just purchased a new gas cooker and wanted to dispose of their old one - with one proviso.

Their old gas cooker had been condemned by the Gas Board as being (and I think these are the engineers exact words) "a bloody death trap" and the person who was disposing of the gas cooker made me promise faithfully that we would never use the oven part because the fault on it meant that if the oven was lit and you opened the door then you would be instantly incinerated by a huge flare of gas - we agreed never to use the oven bit, which was fine as we didn't know how to cook.

Our dad was delighted for us that we had sourced a free cooker, it was the sort of thing that he coveted, stuff for free, it made his day.

Six months later we were ready to buy a brand new cooker and dispose of the "bloody death trap", the new cooker was delivered and installed and the old one dropped unceremoniously out the back ready for me to take it to the rubbish dump.

I went to work and mentioned that I needed to borrow the van to take the old cooker to the rubbish dump.

My dad went crackers.

He told me in no uncertain terms to take the cooker to the bloke up Harehills and sell it to him, I told him the story of how it was "a bloody death trap" and that we couldn't sell it for this very reason, he insisted that the fact that it would kill the next person who used it was nothing to do with me and that I would get "good money" from the bloke at Harehills.

He wouldn't give me the van keys, it was against his principles to allow me to dispose of something that he could get "good money" for, it was a sin that I should want to throw something away that was worth "good money", even though it wasn't worth tuppence to anyone who cared for their own life.

We had a huge row which ended with him storming out of the office with the van keys, driving to our house, loading the cooker into the van on his own (a 70 year old with a cooker on his back) and taking it to Harehills to flog to the junk man there.

He walked back into the office with a big smile on his face and a ten pound note to wave in my face.

Make do and Mend.

Even if it kills the next person to use it.

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Yeah, yeah, yeah



No rhyme, no reason, no excuse ever needed for a Beatles video, 1963 in Manchester, how did they ever sing harmony when they couldn't hear each other ?

Anyway,

Tomorrow I venture north, Newcastle for three days training on Sage Accounting products, I never wanted to be an accountant, I don't understand accounting, I have yet to meet an accountant who breaks the stereotype of being the sort of person who finds the colour brown avent garde, I don't belong in that club, yet I am soon to sell the UK's premier accounting software to people, such is life when you sell your soul to a corporate.

Rather than stay in the fair city of Newcastle for two nights I have decided to drive it, every day, two hours there, two hours back, add half an hour to each trip for the bit around the Western Bypass, five hours a day sat in the car that is due to go back to the lessors next week and therefore has not been maintained to its usual average standard, so yesterday I popped to the library to find a talking book to play during the trip as the standard of radio in the early hours is abysmal.

After some time I found a biography of Cynthia Lennon narrated by Nerys Hughes which looked jolly good, twelve hours on eight cd's should cover my journey thought I, so I checked it out at the library auto-check-out-machine thing and it tried to charge me £1.50 for the pleasure of loaning said audio book.

"I'm sorry" I spoke to the machine, a large vending style machine with lcd interactive panel and a slot for the money, "but I don't normally pay over my money when I borrow stuff from the free library, hence the word free in the title over the door"

"Ah yes" replied the chrome plated machine, "but this is a talking book, you get reading books for free, you pay for talking books, think yourself lucky though, if you'd picked up a dvd it would have cost you a fiver - now do you want the audio book or not ?"

"No" I replied, rather indignant at being spoken to in this way by a mere machine that only a couple of months ago would have been an actual real person behind the library counter, "no, I don't think I do want to loan said audio book, principally on the principle that the council library facility should be free at the point of use, but mainly because I have brought no money out with me today being that I only intend to visit the free library this morning"

"Press the button that says "reject" then" replied the machine, so I did.

It left me standing in front of the check-out machine by the library door still holding the Cynthia Lennon talking book which I now didn't want so I tried to put it in the bin where you put the returned books after the machine has checked then back in but the machine saw me trying to do this and refused to unlock the flap on the check-in bin.

"You bastard machine" I thought, and looking around to see if any librarians were watching I placed the Cynthia Lennon audio book on the floor by the side of the checkout machine and walked briskly out of the door, lets see the chromium checkout machine sort that one out then.

So I've got nothing to play in the car on the tedious five hours times three days, except a four part adaptation of Charles Dickens Nicholas Nickleby which I snaffled in a download on t'interweb then never listened to some months ago, trouble is they are in a zip file format and when you unzip them the files are too big to burn to an audio cd, I could edit them and spread them over six cd's or so...

But frankly I can't be arsed.

So who is on Radio Two at 6am every morning then ?




PS - postings may be scarce for the next three days unless the classroom is full of geeks in which case I'll simply have to write something scathing.

Saturday, December 08, 2007

8th December 1980



Twenty seven years ago today in an action that has never been explained in terms other than those of a crazy young kid (see other assorted high school and shopping mall shootings), the world was robbed of a unique talent.

At 5pm on that day John Lennon and Yoko Ono left their apartment in the Dakota Building in New York to work on Yoko's musical album, outside the building they signed autographs for a handful of fans, among them the 25 year old Mark Chapman who had his photograph taken whilst Lennon signed his copy of the new Lennon and Ono album "Double Fantasy".

When the Lennons returned to the Dakota at 10.50pm both the doorman and the cab driver saw Chapman waiting in a nearby doorway, as Lennon exited the cab Chapman called his name out once, Lennon turned to face Chapman who had already pulled a gun and dropped to a "combat" stance whereupon he fired five shots, one missed, two hit Lennon in the left shoulder, two in the left side of his back, all the hollow point bullets caused serious internal damage rupturing an aorta, Lennon staggered up the entrance steps to the Dakota Building where he was held by their doorman who had summoned emergency help, in a famous statement the doorman called out to Chapman who by now was sitting motionless on the pavement, "Do you know what you have done ?" to which Chapman calmly repled "I've just shot John Lennon", Lennon died in the emergency room at Roosevelt Hospital at 11.15pm.

The video for "Woman" was described by Lennon as being a "grown up version of the Beatles song "Girl"" and was released early in 1981, it was a #1 hit.

There is no doubt that Lennon would have still been involved in the music scene if he had still been alive and whilst, like most artists, he had produced some dross, the Double Fantasy album had been marked as a highlight in his solo career, who knows what would have followed ?