The BBC want to syphon off some of my memory for a new project inconjunction with a new TV series that has just started (I've missed the first episode - bugger) which examines the five decades in Britain since the second world war. Full story here.
My 1960's memories ?
Well for starters I'm currently hanging on a mobile phone line waiting to speak to the fekkin Carphone fekkin Warehouse about a £10 charge they made to me last week and their "on hold" music is Thunderclap Newmans "Something in the air" so thats not a bad 1960's track to start with, in fact when the fekkin Carphone fekkin Warehouse answer this fekkin phone I'll ask the child in the call centre why they've sullied such a great 1960's tune with their corporate association.
I was born in September 1956 and so was 3 and a bit years old when the 1960's started and freely admit to not having much memory left of the early 60's years apart from Telstar - the tune and the orbiting tin can. The launch of the first satellite brought a fantastic wave of optimism and a fantastic wave of space inspired childrens programmes on our small black and white tv and its two (count them) two channels - I was convinced as a very young child that by the time I was at big school then we'd be living on the moon, dressing in silver clothes and riding scooters that hovvered in the air, its been to my eternal disappointment that that sort of thing only ever happened after one evening sat next to someone who was smoking something that didn't smell very much like tobacco.
Music defines the 1960's to me, more than any other decade a tune can drag a memory from the vaults and I can see and smell occasions again - Procul Harem's "Whiter Shade of Pale" has me sat in the back of my dads Vauxhall Viva queueing to get into the Church Fenton Air Show on an august bank holiday, Peter Sarsted's "Where do you go to my lovely" has me waking up in the middle of the night and puking up a whole can of baked beans all over my bed and all over the toy car road network that I'd drawn on a huge piece of brown parcel paper, Peter Sellars rendition of "Hard Days Night" has me sitting in the front of my dads Austin A40 on the way to the library on a saturday morning.
Hundreds of songs have individual slivers of my history attached to them, some of them I don't even know about yet, I can still hear an old song on the radio and a previously unrecalled ten seconds of my life flashes in front of my eyes and its as fresh as the day it was put into the memory banks.
The Beatles played a massive part in my childhood, its impossible for anyone now to comprehend how big the Beatles were for six years in the 60's but anyone who was aged from eight to fourteen like I was will understand what I mean by the words "huge influence", there wasn't anything that you did from one day to the next that didn't have a Beatles tune wrapped up in it and the release of a new album could easily eclipse any other news item, anything at all.
Buying ex-jukebox records from a second hand shop Using the phone next door because we didn't have one Feeding next doors dog when they were away so we could watch their colour TV Spending your school summer holidays locked out of your house during the day Tree houses Stealing birds eggs Riding bikes for miles and miles Sharing one bottle of pop between six of you Buying sweets with one farthing (approx one eigth of one new penny) New decimal money Bus conductors and open platforms on buses Seeing the first jet land at Yeadon Airport The cowboy in Headingley who was "damaged in the war" according to our mum My catholic grandma trying to drag me to church every week, she never succeeded My catholic grandma taking us all to the cinema to watch the two Beatles films My catholic grandma taking us all to the pantomime at the Grand Theatre every year Stealing American Cream Soda from my catholic grandma's drinks cupboard Accidently locking myself in my Great-Aunts outside toilet for three hours Ranger magazine Crap free gifts in comics The first Austin Mini with a cord door unlocker and hollow doors Never mix cross plys and radials on the same axel Reginald Molehusband's parking The Petunia advert for the coastguard The Childrens Film Foundation Free school milk and being a milk monitor Mouldy Moulton, I hope that bitch perished in quicksand like I prayed every night Mini skirts on fat girls, what was Mary Quant thinking ? Fighting constantly with Ned Having a fascination with fire, setting fire to our kitchen one evening Setting fire to our Action Men in a terrible war accident Action Man being killed in a tragic parachute accident in our back garden Johnny Seven gun and how I was not allowed one, bastard. Secret Spy breifcase with hidden gun and camera, why was I allowed one then ? "How to Draw" books Enid fuckin Blyton Buying things in Comet without being able to see them first BBC2 starting and the three year time lag before our TV could recieve it Trixie our mad collie dog who hated us all The weekly drive into the Dales to collect Trixie from where she'd run away to The weekend we didn't bother going to pick her up anymore. Sets of tiny plastic soldiers, setting fire to the Japanese ones, accidently Being dragged down Kirkstall Road shopping every Saturday when very young Being dragged into Leeds shopiing every Saturday when older The Merrion Centre opening, a brave new tower block world The International Swimming Pool opening, a brave new, erm, swimming pool
I could go on, and probably will.
These are all snapshots, flashbacks when the phrase "1960's" is fed into my brain and feedback requested, and nearly all of those memories have music associated with them, its a very evocative medium and it was a very inventive decade, unlike the recycled and lazy garbage that passes for most "popular" music today, but you knew I was going to say that...
A wet, cold bank holiday monday, just the sort of afternoon when you want to curl up on the settee and watch a good film for three hours of your life while waiting for tomorrow and work to restore some order to your life.
And on one of the Sky Movie channels was, The Abyss.
I've seen it before.
But as became clear towards the end, I apparently have not seen the whole film before, even given that this was advertised as the "special edition" it was patently obvious that I have not seen all of this film before.
Because if I had remembered how it ends then I would not have wasted those three hours of my life on monday afternoon, three hours that I will never get back now and will have to write off as another poor film experience.
It all starts off quite well, its 1989, no it really was 1989 when the film was made, yes I know, it doesn't seem that long agao but it was, and it was James Cameron that wrote and directed the film so we know exactly where to point the finger of blame - if only I'd watched the whole of The Abyss back in 1989 then I'd have known to avoid "Titanic" some years later, still, we live and learn.
It all starts off well and its nice to be reminded that in 1989 all Americans were terrified of Russians and any weird plot or subterfuge could be blamed on them, "its those damn pesky Russians" was the most over-used plot line of that era although it now seems, odd.
So a US nuclear submarine sinks in mysterious circumstances and lies on the sea bed right on the edge of the Cayman Shelf, an underwater chasm that, if you wish to believe James Cameron is 18000 feet deep, and helpless as the US Navy is to rescue its submariners from the shallow waters off the Cayman Islands (the chasm excepted) it calls in a specialist team of divers who bring with them their specialist equipment in a specialist boat in order to find any signs of life in the submarine.
There are no signs of life inside the submarine, in fact there are lots of signs of death, so thats that and the specialists can pack up and go home and the film is a wrap after half an hour.
Thats what should have happened.
Instead we get a plot twist where a small team of some more specialists fromt he US Navy get involved and in the true spirit of Hollywood they are led by a nutter who thinks that all Russians are baddies and anything unusual that happens is due to the Russians and when unusual things happen then you have to kill everyone, what a good job that people like Lt Hiram Coffey exist, for if he didn't then this film and many others like it would have been straight to video and unknown outside of James camerons close circle of friends.
So the film rambles on and Lt Hiram Coffey gets madder and madder with a nuclear warhead in his cabin until he is ready to blow up most of the carribean with it, there's a big fight, Coffey is not seen again in the film but the warhead ends up at the bottom of the Cayman Shelf with three hours to go before it explodes because of course the bad guy Coffey managed to rig up a timer on it using his alarm clock and some string one night while he was listening to the Late Show on the radio, just for fun you understand but as his contract in the film has now expired then no-one can ask him how he did it or in fact whether or not he was only kidding.
Enter some dubious science fact-ion about whether or not people can breath under water, admittedly its supposed to be "special" water and in breathing it you can go much deeper under water than anyone else has ever done in the whole world, ever, so there, its fact, isn't it, well it may be theory then, have a look at the imdb web site for the ongoing debate that has raged ever since 1989 over whether or not "special" water exists - film buffs are such fucking cretins sometimes, tell them man can breath under water and they believe it immediately and argue like fook when you try and tell them it doesn't work as thousands of drowning victims could testify every year, if they were alive enough to testify that is.
It gets dafter, while the hero of the film, Virgil "Bud" Brigman descends to 18,000 feet breathing water rather than air (fook me it just doesn't even sound plausible does it) he discovers that in order to disable the nuclear warhead he has the choice of two wires to cut and unfortunately the villian Coffey chose two wire colours that look exactly like each othere in the pitch blackness that is 18000 feet underwater, well they would wouldn't they, there is nothing like the off-the-shelf tense moment of all bomb disposal films when the hero hovvers his pliers over one wire, then the other, and someone in his earpiece is telling him, "don't pick the wrong one for gods sake".
But the daftest bit is saved for last, after he has cut the correct wire and finds that he hasn't got enough "special" water to get back to the surface he sits down on the bottom of the ocean to spend his last five minutes when along comes an alien space craft, what are tha chances of that happening then ?
There you are, sitting on the sea bed 18000 feet below what should be your natural environment when along comes a UFO and offers you a lift to the surface and while its doing that it tells you how naughty mankind has been in wanting to kill each other all the time and we are offered via the guilt complex of James Cameron a sunday school lecture on how nasty humans can be, its probably the most awful sequence of film that I have ever witnessed, truly dreadful.
To say I cringed at the last half hour is not the case, I was twisted in knots of embarrassment when the epic three hour turdfest actually finished and left wondering how I'd managed to miss that bit at the end when I last saw the film several years ago.
So there you have it - "The Abyss" - sinking to depths that no film should ever sink again.
I strongly recommend that you avoid it at all costs.
I seem to have been nominated as the official administrator for Ned and Pauls "up Great Britiain" bike ride, I now get early morning phone calls informing me of their intended destination with a request that I book their accomodation for the night - I think they were impressed with the four star hotel that I found on the edge of Loch Lomond for them last night, hope they didn't use the sponsorship money to pay for it.
Todays destination is Speay Bridge which is apparently near to Ben Nevis (see Fort William on map below) so I guess that today will be the highest part of the ride in altitude terms, not that they will be bothered by altitude, riding at less than 4000 feet but still, I hope the hilly bits are nice and steep for them, they sounded far too bright and bubbly this morning.
The attention that they are getting in these no-horse towns also seems to be going to their heads, my other task this morning was to find out what the local radio station is int he highlands and to contact them, giving them Neds mobile number so that they can do an interview, no doubt listened to by four farmers, a couple of bed-ridden old ladies and four hundred cows in their milking stalls, still, if it keeps them happy I've contacted Moray Firth Radio for them, on the slender chance that anyone knows what it is or where the hell it is then you might hear of two nutters on a bike this morning.
Spent a while on the phone and t'interweb this morning with our Ned and Paul who are now in Scotland on the last few days of their Lands End to John o'Groats bike ride.
They spent last night in a cottage just outside Kilmarnock which is just below and to the left of Glasgow on the map above and is in Neds words last night when he rang "a shithole".
Thats the thing with Scotland - its mainly a place of outstanding natural beauty, mainly hilly, sometimes mountainous, often breathtakingly beautiful, a land where the mountains plunge thousands of feet down into deep lakes (lochs), a land of castles and historical conflict and a land that outside of it two main cities is still sparsely populated.
But its also got some shitty little towns where, true to stereotyping, the main occupation of its residents is getting drunk in the absence of anything else to do, such a shitty little one cow town is where they lay their heads last night in a cottage lent to them by a kindly old lady who insisted that she make them a cup of tea - she made them a huge urn of tea and waited until they'd drunk it all and then gave them the keys to the cottage and told them to come back to her house this morning where she'd make their breakfast - they assumed it was her cottage to lend and in any case didn't ask questions.
Today they head for Loch Lomond (marked on map) which is one of the aforementioned beautiful places, some would argue THE most beautiful place in Scotland if not the whole of the UK, a short leg of 45 miles today after yesterdays epic 91 miles whilst trying to find the least shit-iest town to stay in, they rang me with the name of a hotel that they wanted to stay in which is right on the loch itself, I found the telephone number on t'interweb and told them the overnight price, £130 per head, there was a long silence and then Ned asked me to search for some nearby Bed and Breakfast accomodation and text it to him instead, I guess they haven't been staying in the sort of accomodation that I would have chosen had I been mental enough to do the trip with them.
After Loch Lomond its the hilly bits, the bits that us Britons call the "mountains" although if I explained that the highest bit of those hilly bits is only 4400 feet above sea level then we'd hear the laughter from here from Canadians, mid-America and those Europeans for whom The Alps are a backdrop every time they draw back their curtains - final destination the last bit of mainland that you see on that map just above Wick in the top right corner.
Today, for a want of nothing else to do, and after the plan was suggested and hatched over several pints of some delightful real ale and a game of dominoes in a country pub last night (I got delightfully drunk and suffered naught this morning apart from only managing five hours sleep), we went to an auction.
I've never been to one before but one of the two lads who went with me is well used to "proper" auctioneers, being that part of his job is working with them - but this wasn't at a recognised auction house, it wasn't an auction that had been authorised by anyone in particular, this was an auction which by anyone's definition would be instantly defined as "shady" the minute you walked into the very expensive hotel who were innocently hosting it.
I say that anyone would define it as "shady" whereas the truth is that most of the hundred or so people in the room seemed quite happy to part with a few hundred of their hard earned pounds for so-called "bankrupt stock", assorted bits and pieces of electrical goods, garden implements, cases of wine and jewellery.
We stood at the back and watched in amazement for an hour while people fell over themselves to be scammed by the very clever "auctioneer" who actually didn't auction anything at all but merely set his own prices for items and waited for the fools to get their credit cards out, abley assisted by several meathead "assistants" smartly attired in suits and waistcoats that showed their body-builder physiques to the best advantage, you wouldn't want to renege on a bid in this room.
So what was so wrong with the "auction" ?
The lack of opportunity to place a bid for something for one, a typical item would be sold like this ...
Auctioneer, who was very clever with his patois, joking with the audience and criticising his staff in a jocular way whenever anyone was kept waiting for more than a few seconds for their credit card details to be taken, describes an item in a lighthearted way, typically stating that he "doesn't know much about radios/wine/diamonds/whatever" and then going on to state just how valuable the item in his hand is.
Having built up the item to hand and half convinced everyone that its really worth several hundred pounds - a typical example being the watches in boxes that look expensive but could in fact have been the sort you can buy wholesale on eBay at £50 for ten - he suggests a starting price of £100.
Of course there are no takers, he knows there will be no takers, he wants the audience to think that they are smarter than him and so the audience sit there and think , "I'm not bidding that, he'll have to come down if no-one bids" and indeed he does, he suggests a second starting price of £10 stating that he "has to sell these today".
Instantly several hands go up and he counts quickly upwards in bids of £10, "£10, £20, £30,£40, £50" and he points randomly around the room so that no-one can follow his gaze and/or identify who is actually bidding these amounts, if indeed they are and if indeed there are five people bidding in the room.
The truth is of course that no-one has actually offered a bid, they've put their hand up because they wanted to buy it at £10 because it seemed like a bargain even if it was a cheap watch in an expensive looking box, now all of a sudden they are sitting their holding their numbered bid card up for something that has jumped up to £50 within three or four seconds and the man at the front who looks like you wouldn't want to mess with him has written their number down and they've bought a watch - within seconds another man is stood above them with a portable credit card terminal asking how they'd like to pay for the item which is now priced at £64 because, as the huge assistants explain with a smile as they process your credit card, they have to add 10% commission and VAT.
We saw this happen time and again in the hour, and several thousand pounds were spent by the gullible crowd, we were amazed, my friend who is the auction expert had whispered the word "dodgy" to me within a few minutes of the auction starting but we stayed to watch the show - none of the purchasers were offered a receipt (illegal if you are charging VAT), none of them even knew who they were buying the goods from, all of them accepted the premise that they would receive a manufacturers warranty on the goods despite no such guarantees or receipts being issued, it was so blatant that you could only shake your head at the gathering of stupidity in the room.
One woman paid £50 (plus commission plus VAT) for six bottles of wine that were randomly chosen from a huge pile of boxes and another paid £60 (plus commission plus VAT) for six bottles of "Chateau de Pape 2002" wine which sounds like it should be from the expensive Chateuaneuf de Pape producers but could in fact be from any wine producer anywhere in the world who wanted to call his wine "house of the pope".
A 40" flat screen TV with surround sound went for £750 (plus commission plus VAT) without being demonstrated, someone authorised them to debit £970 from their credit card for a TV set that he'd seen from across the room, and he meekly accepted their word that Sharp would give him a 12 month warranty when he filled in the Sharp registration card and wrote "don't know" in the box that asks which dealer he bought it from.
On the way home my friend explained how "proper" auctions work, how the sale of goods is usually on behalf of a private individual, a bankruptcy or Government seizures, the sum raised goes to the seller, hence the auctioneer having to add a percentage on top of all sales - but the auction house MUST state up front what the percentage is and they MUST state whether or not VAT will be added, its also a legal requirement to issue a VAT invoice with all VAT transaction.
None of this was done today and there was no indication that a disposal was being done for any thrid party - this was a group of chancers who had purchased all of the goods as "end of line" or "discontinued" items and were selling them for their own profit, then adding ten percent on top of their own illegitimate style of auctioneering.
But as the saying goes "let the buyer beware" or as I prefer "there were a lot of fuckwits gathered in that room today"
It provided us with some lunchtime entertainment though.
OK, so its my team Leeds being beaten by Hull in the 2005 Challenge Cup Final at Cardiff's Millenuim Stadium but the video encapsulates what the game of Rugby League is all about and more importantly what the Challenge Cup final means to the supporters.
Hull (black and white hoops) went into that game as underdogs, it had been twenty years since they had reached the final, but the hordes of supporters in the motorway service areas on the way to Cardiff that morning didn't appear to be lacking in confdence that their team had what it took to overturn 4/1 favourites Leeds.
Its a four hour trip from Leeds to Cardiff, five hours from Hull, we'd all had an early start that day but the 74,213 spectators who packed the enclosed three tier stadium were far from sleepy as the teams took to the field, my seat in the lower tier corner of the ground offered me a completely crap view of the game and it was made even worse by the party of Leeds supporters around me who seemed to have travelled all that way to simply drink beer, lots of it, necesitating trips to the bar and/or toilet every five minutes, disruptive was not the word.
There was never more than one score to seperate the two teams right through the game but when Leeds sneaked into the lead again with five minutes to go we breathed a sigh of relief and out on the field the team seemed to do so too, so much so that, as can be seen in the video, Hull's Paul Cooke slipped almost unnoticed through the Leeds line to score and clinch the game by one point.
To the neutral it had been one of the best finals seen in the modern Super League era and strangely enough it was to me too, despite losing, despite leaving yet another challenge cup final on the losing side I was happy to have been there to witness a great game played with 100% commitment, a rought, tough hard physical contact game played without animosity by athletic young men at the prime of their physical condition - this is the sport of rugby league and the passion displayed in this video is the reason why I have been supporting it since I was ten years old.
But why did Marcus Bai throw that pass out behind his own line ?
Another bank (public) holiday weekend dawns bright, warm and sunny, I love this new meditteranean climate that global warming has brought to the UK, time was when the two May public holiday weekends would be stormy and wet in accordance with the other 50 weekends that used to be the weather system in the UK.
Now though we awaken almost without fail to sunny mornings, not always hot, but clear skies abound on most days, the downside being that there isn't as much rain as there used to be but I'll gladly sacrifice half of the UK's rainy days per year for a bit of sun on my face, christ knows what sort of eather the mediterranean-ees are getting now though.
Having said that the forecasters are in "gloomy" mode and are telling us that it will rain shortly, certainly before today is out and that by tomorrow it will be cold and wet in accordance with tradition.
Time to get some building and planting done in the garden then.
When we moved into this house the previous residents had made a good start on the front and back gardens by clearing them and laying shale and gravel down on at least 50% of the previously grassed surface, it looks fairly good and in accordance with the contemporary interior of the house (we've got a circular fireplace in the front room, no I don't know why either, its too frikkin hot to use), the coloured gravels and shales are laid out in unusual shapes, nice but that is as far as the coloured hardcore needs to go.
I needed a pond and my trials and tribulations upon building the pond are well documented but now the pond has been extended by a raised deck area with inset planting spaces, its not finished yet but one of the planters now has seagrass blowing in it, shielding a large laughing buddha (he just looks right, no religious connections, he actually looks like a friend of mine, hello Rodney) and the other planter was to have an Acer tree in it but the one that has arrived from the grower is a bit small at the moment so in that planter will go a Fushcia that is currently growing near to the house, just where the conservatory is going to be build through the winter - yes we have a lot of plans to fulfill don't we ?
Todays jobs will include finishing off the hedge trimming that was stopped a few weeks ago by the nest of blackbirds (do keep up, its all in here somewhere) and the building of some six foot high trellis down the side of the garage to hide its ugly appearance, I've got some young honeysuckle and jasmine plants to grow up the trellis in the years to come and need to get them into the ground this weekend.
If all this sounds like I'm a keen gardener then no, I'm not, I didn't touch one single element of the garden in the previous two houses but theres something about this one that makes me want to build things in it and I have to say its very satisfying is this gardening bug, I'm turning into a proper Percy Thrower me.
You see, I was going to write something flippant and vaguely humorous about this story.
The story of how the owner of a rememberance web site where people could host commemorative pages on friends and loved ones when they have died, had introduced Google Ads in an attempt to fund his voluntary site which has grown to a proportion never envisaged by him when he set it up.
The problem with Google Ads is that it looks for key words on each page and then places advertisements on there appropriate to those words.
Appropriate to those words maybe, but not necessarily appropriate to the deceased person on that page - so a victim of a motorbike accident found themselves hosting and advert for motorbikes and the page for Soham murder victims had a self defence class advert placed on it, bad taste even for my taste.
Still, it did bring to mind the story of the tree that we wanted to be placed in the garden of rest where my dad's ashes lay, the plaque to read "how much was this then", his favourite saying.
But then I visited www.gonetoosoon.co.uk and the first page I read was for a 15 year old girl that by complete coincidence looks vaguely like my 15 year old girl, except this young lady has recently died very near to where we live, her friends at school have entered tributes on her page and it hurts to read them, it hurts very much.
So I'll leave it there then, another fine example of how to use the internet and a fine effort by the person who started and now funds the whole thing, not his finest hour when he decided to use Google Ads but you shouldn't condemn otherwise.
Its 4pm, I need the pub and some lager to get rid of this lump in my throat.
HM Government Cabinet Office Minutes of Cabinet Meeting 24/05/07 9.00am
A full quorum of Ministers, excepting Deputy Leader John Prescott
9.01 The Prime Minister arrives to chair the meeting. 9.02 Prime Minister : Good Morning everyone, where's Prescott ? 9.02 Secretary for the Deputy PM : He says he can't be arsed Sir 9.02 PM : Why's that then ? 9.02 Sec DPM : He says you never ask him any questions anyway 9.02 PM : He knows why 9.02 Sec DPM : Yes he knows why, and he says to tell you "fuck you too" 9.02 PM : Strike that from the minutes please.
Prime Minister asks that the meeting be a quick one this morning as Cherie is at the hairdressers and he is supposed to be babysitting, the Minister for Women offers to babysit as she rarely takes an active role in these meetings but the PM declines stating that they are only 50 yards down the corridor, he's locked the room and he'll keep an eye on them every half hour or so.
9.03 PM : So, right then (smiles, glances around table) who's in charge of transport this week ? 9.03 Secretary for the Prime Minister : Douglas Alexander sir 9.03 PM : (whispers) Is that him there ? 9.03 Sec PM : (whispers) next but one 9.03 PM : Right Douglas, Doug, can I call you Doug ? Good, Doug, tell me again about this road charging
9.04 Secretary of State for Transport : Its very simple sir, we charge motorists for every mile that they drive 9.04 PM : How do we do that then 9.04 SSfT : Its very complicated sir 9.04 PM : Try me 9.04 SSfT : Well sir each car has a tracking device which is activated as the car moves along ... 9.04 PM : Right, right, yes, ok lets not get too technical then, so we charge them then ? 9.05 SSfT : Yes sir, we charge them for each mile they drive 9.05 PM : Excellent, did you hear that Gordon, more money (rubs hands) 9.05 Chancellor of the Exchequer : Yes Tony, its an excellent idea (licks lips) 9.05 PM : Right then, what shall we call this new tax, names everyone, round the table, we need a good name for this 9.05 SSfT : We had thought of calling it "The Road Tax" sir 9.05 PM : Excellent, thats a good one, that'll will do won't it Gordon ? 9.05 CotE : Not really Tony, we already have a road tax 9.05 PM : We already have a road tax, we need a new name everyone
9.10 PM : So we'll stick with "The Road Tax" then, everyone agreed ? 9.10 Chief Secretary to The Treasury : There is a concern sir that people will think we are charging them twice, especially if there are two taxes called "The Road Tax" 9.10 PM : Nonsense, they're two completely different things, one get charged annually the other gets charged by the mile 9.10 CStTT : Yes but they are both taxes targeted at your car 9.11 PM : I don't think you're following me here, yes they are both car taxes, but, erm, they are different, how are they different Transport Minister, Doug isn't it ? 9.12 SSfT : Yes sir its Doug, they are not different sir, we're going to charge people twice for the same thing 9.13 PM : Are we ? 9.13 SSfT : Yes sir 9.13 PM : Will that work ? 9.13 SSfT : We think so sir. 9.13 PM : Bloody hell thats good, did you hear that Gordon ?
9.20 PM : So any more good ideas for raising more taxes ? 9.20 Secretary of State for the Environment : We have an idea sir. 9.20 PM : (whispers) Whats his name ? 9.20 Secretary to the Prime Minister : David sir 9.20 PM : Go on then David, share it with us. 9.21 SSfE : We'd like to charge people for collecting their refuse 9.21 PM : Ha, ha, yes, thats a good one, any more ideas anyone ? 9.21 SSfE : Sir, we're serious, we'd like to charge people for collecting their refuse 9.22 PM : Look here, erm, David, its David isn't it, look here David, even I know that they already pay for refuse collection through their council taxes every year 9.22 SSfE : Yes sir, but thats once a year, what we'd like to do is charge them for every collection too 9.22 PM : Yes, I see, a bit like the road tax taxes then ? 9.22 SSfE : Thats right sir, we charge them once a year then charge them again for every collection 9.22 Chancellor of the Exchequer : (whispers) It could work Tony 9.22 PM : (whispers) Do you really think it could, I mean, are they that daft ? 9.22 CotE : (licks lips again) Yes Tony, I think they are.
Ten Things About Me... (this could take some time)
1. I'm probably hearing impaired in my right ear, I say probably because no doctor has ever said "you are hearing impaired in your right ear" but I know I am because if I sleep on my left side then I cannot hear anything in the room, which is handy when your partner wants to watch tv in bed, in fact there are many advantages to being hearing impaired in one ear - you should try it.
The cause ?
When I was 11 years old I had really, really bad earache one christmas and to cure it I stuck a hairpin in my ear, it seemed like a good idea at the time, it ripped my eardrum to shreds so that a few years later a doctor said "I don't believe you" when I replied "No" to his original question of "Have you at any time in your life stuck a hairpin in your ear ?"
2. I've just sold the family business for £3 because the other choice was to let HM Revenue and Customs wind us up for a lot more money, I'm extremely happy with my choice and have no guilt in losing the family heirloom business in this way, the business that my grandfather started in 1923, the business that he would only work for cash for so that he never had to pay tax, he had the right idea but you can't do that now, not with a very expensive empire building campaign to maintain in Iraq and Afghanistan.
3. I am curently building a large decking structure in my new back garden, it was never meant to be this big and I can't stop it from growing now, its a monster that I have created, Suzanne thinks I know what I'm doing with it but the truth is that I've lost control now and I can't stop, I'm just making it up as I go along and she thinks I have some sort of masterplan for it, I lie when she asks "whats going here then" and I tell her "some planters and some trellis and some honeysuckle and jasmine" because in reality I'm not in charge of the nails and hammer any more, theres a joinery devil inside me thats taken over and I don't know where it all going to lead to.
Are you sure you want ten of these ?
4. When the company who have just bought my company sent me my new contract of employment, under the section that described my entitlement to a company car they stated that I could spend, exclusive of vat, maintenance and petrol, the sum of £700 per month on a lease. When we arrived at their offices to sign the contracts they laughed and said that of course it was a mistake and the real figure was in fact £350. A few hours later when I signed the contract I noticed that it still said £700 and so of course I said nothing, my current car lease finishes in October of this year and then I am going to spend all of the £700 per month on a Bentley, or maybe a Rolls Royce, or perhaps I'll get two ordinary cars instead and use them on alternative days, or I could lease five Fiat Cinqucento's and call them Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and use the bus on a weekend.
Yes I am so taking this seriously...
5. When I was 17 years old and during my first week at work in my first proper job I accidently set fire to the very expensive and very rare (in 1974) photocopier that was so expensive and so rare that we shared it with three other companies, I ran away and left it burning and five minutes later the fire alarm went off and we had to gather outside in the car park, "they'll never catch me alive" thought I but they found out it was me who did it because I had left the original paper document under the lid of the photocopier when I ran away, I recieved my first verbal warning for that.
6. I am currently six stones overweight according to the Tesco email Diet Plan, "lose weight for just £2.99 a week", but what do they know, I only told them how tall I was and what the circumference of my wrist was, they've never even seen a photograph of me, I think they are charlatans.
7. I worship at the altar of chocolate.
8. I have an intolorance to alcohol which crept up on me fifteen years ago resulting in me abstaining from the demon for five years until being sober got to be too boring. I can now manage on average two pints of beer before I start puking but sometimes I can slip several more under the radar and the brain misses them altogether, its on those nights that I think I am telling my funniest stories but no-one else agrees with me.
9. I wish I could play the piano, or keyboard of any description, and I can with one hand (right) but very badly and only selected tunes that I have recently been practising very hard with - the concept of using the left hand on the keyboard and/or what part of the tune it is supposed to be playing has bypassed me completely so I use it to turn over the sheet music pages instead.
10. I have a famous cousin in the music business, but he's not as famous as his partner, who is very famous in showbiz and TV presenting and I am invited to their wedding party next year but not to their actual wedding day which is on a carribean cruise ship at a cost of £7000 a head. I am glad that he did not invite me to the actual wedding.
Theres more...
You only have to ask...
I'm now going to tag my good friend and professional moaning bastard John_D who will probably pooh-pooh me, still, here goes...
See the map above ? Thats the British Isles that is. But you knew that anyway.
See the bit right down in the bottom left hand corner, the bit where the British Isles stops being the British Isles and becomes the Atlantic ? Thats Lands End that is.
See the bit right up in the top right hand corner of Scotland, the bit where it stops being Scotland and becomes lots of broken up islands instead ? Thats John O Groats that is.
Inbetween those two points is around 1000 miles of hills, ok so they are little hills and the things we laughingly call mountains would be called "undulations" in areas of Europe and the USA, but they are hills nevertheless, lots of them, all the way up the country.
My brother Ned is currently riding his bicycle from Lands End to John O Groats. He is a nut.
He and a friend caught the train from Leeds to Penzance (the nearest bit of civilization to Lands End) on Friday and then had to ride the 12 miles from Penzance to the start-off point for the ride, so not content with having to do 1000 miles in two weeks they did an extra 12 as well.
I told you he was a nut.
He rang me yesterday on the third day of their ride to say that they were somewhere in Somerset, three days, three counties covered, about 70 miles a day, I told him again that he was a nut, he agreed.
Then he told me that they had collected money, lots of money on their three days and that a person could actually make a living at this, people keep driving past them, stopping, and then giving them money as they ride past.
They (the two of them) are not doing it for money, its not a charity bike ride its just something that they've alwasy wanted to do and so they've organised it themselves for their own satisfaction, weird isn't it ?
They had some T-Shirts made up for the epic with something like "two nuts on a long bike ride" printed ont he back and this is what is causing all sorts of people to just give them money, just stop and give them money, I don't know who the biggest nuts are.
Neds friend has had to organise a donation to our local hospitals babycare unit as his three kids all required help from them and they are having to stop in towns to find a bank every couple of hours or so to save having to lug around bags of money as well as a fresh pair of underpants and a clean T-Shirt.
Which reminds me...
About 15 years ago I went to France on a cycling/camping expedition with Ned, bear in mind here that at that point he had just returned from his second walking trip around the world where he'd lived out of a backpack for 18 months - I on the other hand was more used to suitcases and four star hotels.
We went for seven days and I packed accordingly and riding down our first French lane after alighting from the ferry at some god-awful early morning time I commented that he appeared to have forgotten our tent. He replied that it was in the left rear panier bag on his bike.
I asked him where he'd packed his sleeping bag then as mine was tied rather intidily across the back of my saddle - his was in the right rear panier bag, likewise upon asking he informed me that the cooking implements were in his left front panier bag and his clothes in the right front one.
There was a long silence. We rode on for some more miles, or kilometres as we were in France.
He then asked curiously what it was that I had brought in my four panier bags and one handlebar bag.
"Clothes" I said.
He nearly fell off his bike with laughter.
I explained that we were away for seven days which to my mind meant a set of clothes for during the day (the riding of the bike bit) and then a set of clothes for the night (the going out boozing bit), 14 pairs of underpants, 14 pairs of socks, 14 T-shirts, a smattering of pullovers, three pairs of jeans, shoes smart and casual, in fact my whole wardrobe had come on holiday with me, I had probably even packed a suit, just in case you understand.
He actually did fall of his bike laughing at this point.
I asked in a sarcastic way what clothing he had brought with him, him being the travelling globe trotting cleverclogs then, he explained that you carry two of everything, one to wear, one to wash - "wash" I replied startled, "you wash your clothes ?", it was an alien concept to me as I had a wife who did that sort of thing who was waiting at home to greet me in seven days time with the washer already running ready to receive my fourteen sets of dirty clothing.
Its one of the reasons why I wasn't invited on the Lands End to John O Groats bike ride.
I bet you can't guess who this is until you hear his voice.
Don McLean of course, he of "American Pie" fame, the simply superb album that is, not the appalling film of the same name.
Released at the end of 1971 as a single which went straight to the top of the UK charts despite being cruelly cut in half to suit the three minute attention span of your average radio DJ, the album was released shortly afterwards and then the full version became known to all of us who ever listened to late night radio when the DJ's spoke with soft voices and had the freedom to play what the hell they liked rather than stick to chart music.
It was six months later in the summer of '72 when I was 15 years old that the second single "Vincent" was released and whilst I liked "American Pie" I loved "Vincent", being that I was an art student and it was, well, arty, you know, Van Gogh, you knew that didn't you, for gods sake tell me you knew that.
My weekend and summer holiday job was to work for my uncle at the famous Headingley cricket ground and my wage for selling sweets and scorecards at the five day test match was completely spent in buying the "American Pie" album, I even sneaked off work early one afternoon to pop into Leeds to purchase it.
The song in the video above "Castles in the Air" came along later, but this is the one that made me buy the album, again, the years have not been kind to him, or me come to think of it...
I was sat alone in the office yesterday afternoon getting bored with the local radio station when I noticed a box of audio cassettes that had somehow found their way down here when we moved house, most of them were knackered but one which still played was an interview that McLean had done with radio 2 in or around 1995 or 96, (maybe it was for the 25th anniversary of the release of American Pie), its an hour long programme of interviews and all of the tracks on the album and it meant that I sat in the office until it was quite late listening to it and I missed my evening meal, so i starved last night for this artist.
Its a great album, it should be in your record collection - NOW.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Old Hartley beach in Northumberland yesterday afternoon, and it really was a peaceful and still as the photograph suggests.
This month is the one year anniversary of Suzannes mothers death and three years since her father died and so yesterday morning we travelled up to the North East for a visit to Whitley Bay cemetry, a trip to Old Hartley beach, some shops (there always has to be shopping when the females are out of the house) and then a visit to her sisters for afternoon tea with friends where the theme was "bring food but it has to be home baked".
I only ate two things - a massive wodge of meat and potato pie that must have been at least three inches thich with a coating of gorgeous crispy pastry, and three slices of a sublime lemon merangue pie, and cream, with lashings of coffee - a nice way to spend a couple of hours before heading back down the motorway in the evening sun.
I don't go in for the cemetry thing, visits to place flowers and all that jazz, I haven't been back to my own parents final resting place since they were finally rested there, its not needed in my mind. But Suzannes family do it and they have a small plaque with their parents names engraved and an area to leave flowers and, as we noticed, one of the grandchildren to lay some pebbles and shells that they had picked off the beach.
When we arrived yesterday the sun was warm, the tide at its lowest ebb and the air still and calm, it really was a beautiful place to be as the graveyard is right on the seafront near the lighthouse and while Suzanne paid her respects I wandered around for a bit reading some of the headstones in the burial section and I realised why I don't really go for the whole graveyard business - its too upsetting.
Reading the headstones I mean, you wander the rows and rows and see lots of old folk who died after having had a good innings and you think nothing of it and then just as your defences are lowered you come across the stone of a ten year old girl who's epitaph bears parental pain but because she died thirty years ago its now neglected by those parents who are probably either dead themselves or too elderly to tend it and all you can do is stand there and shake your head at the tangible sadness on this beautiful day.
And yet there is also intrigue in there - the grave of a 60 year old who's family needed to add that he was a train driver and that he died tragically in 1998 gets you wondering if it was a train accident and you try and remember if there was a big rail accident in that year and you sort of remember that there was and is this the driver ?
Weirdest of all in this quiet corner of a quiet municipal graveyard in the north east of England is a chinese section with several graves decorated in beautiful chinese illustrations and lettering, and right next to that a whole phalanx of Italian graves dating back several decades.
But the one headstone that really got me thinking was a family plot with several names on it, and there in the middle was their 19 year old son "lost at sea" in 1942, a young kid who never came home to his parents, literally "lost" somewhere whilst serving his country in wartime - it just stops you up short on a lovely May afternoon and you stand and stare and wonder who this person was.
The reason for the visit to Old Hartley beach straight after the cemetry was that this time last year Suzanne and her five brothers and sisters took their mothers ashes here to scatter them on the rocks, the same rocks where she would take them on the short walk from their house when they were kids to spend whole days on the beach during their summer holidays and while we were there Suzanne showed Jodie how they would hunt for whelks, or as she pronounces them in her Geordie accent "Will-acks", you couldn't step on the rocks in those days without crushing hundreds of them and as kids they ate them raw off the beach, but yesterday all they could find was one small shell, and it was empty - how relieved me and Jodie were as we suspected that Suzanne would have demonstrated the winkling out of the shell and eating part if she'd found a big juicy one.
Our first visit of this year to the North East and we'll have to do it more often soon.
This is a good, concise article written on the Madeleine McCann disappearance and the link at the foot of that page which gives the Portuguese point of view also has a ring of truth to it.
Fact is that in the UK we do not like our children to be visible, or audible.
We never have, when I was a child we would be told not to play in the street by neighbours within two minutes of doing so, we were fortunate back in the 60's in that our parents were not filled with the paranoia that haunts the population today that if a child leaves its parents sight then it will be kidnapped - we could escape to the woods and spend every day climbing trees, falling out of trees and hitting each other with big sticks, pleasures that todays children will not discover for if a parent sees them hitting a friend with a big stick they will surely stop them from doing so.
Its not just parents though, there are very few places in the UK where you can take a child for an evening out unless you want to eat some mass produced burger or pizza in a prefabricated box that is specifically aimed at the child audience - there are very few bars and restaurants catering for adults that will allow children to sit quietly at a table with their parents and enjoy a meal together unless it involves one of those awful "fun pubs" where the children are packed off to a playground section (which the parent has to pay for) while the parents eat pre-fabricated portion controlled shite that masquerades as food.
And I'm not sure that we deserve such treatment as civilised eateries either, for parents do not seem to exert any control over their offspring now, visit any one of said "fun pubs" and your trip will be ruined by a hundred under eights running in between and under the tables,not just their parents table but yours and everyone elses too.
You'll sit and watch as they climb all over the furniture and take things from the walls, or raid the cutlery stand and spread knives and forks all over the floor, and while you're sat watching this so will their parents who will then turn away and light up another cigarette, presumably accepting the behaviour as normal and not at all disruptive to other people.
So the news that British parents could leave their children in an apartment while they dined 50 yards away in sight of said apartment, instead of taking them to the table and inflicting tears and tantrums and cutlery-on-the-floor throwing on the other diners is not suprising to me - its suprises other societies, other nationalities who wouldn't dream of doing such a thing, but in the UK we are conditioned to ignoring our children when night falls.
An 11 year old gorilla called Bokito escaped from its enclosure at Rotterdam zoo yesterday by somehow crossing the moat (they can't swim apparently) and during its freedom injuring several people who were daft enough to get in its way.
It must be awful.
Being a gorilla that is.
You sit in a concrete compound all day, a tyre and a football to play with, you're an 11 year old gorilla for gods sake and they think that you still play on swings and you don't even know what the football is because during your ancestors evolution they never invented football, it was the humans who did that.
So you go for a bit of a walk and it takes you precisely three minutes, you don't know that it takes you precisely three minutes because gorillas haven't invented watches yet and you don't know how many paces it takes to circumnavigate your compound because gorillas can't count - but you know that nothing has changed since the last time you paced your compound and you're bored.
So you sit down next to the bit of your compound that you're frightened of, the bit that seperates you from those bald monkeys who keep walking past and who seem to have a much bigger compound than you, they make a lot of noise too and they throw things at you and shout at you and generally seem to be unafraid of you when in reality you know that if you could only cross this awful stuff that seperates you then you'd be able to tear them limb fromlimb because they only look very skinny from where you are sitting.
And they have ice cream.
One of them threw an ice cream at you once and you ate it and it was delicious, far better than the old vegetables and scabby fruit that the ones behind the barriers leave in your cave every night, if you had ice cream every day it would be a different matter, you know its called ice cream by the way because the one that got thrown at you still had its wrapper on and of course gorillas can read, but just English, which is unfortunate being a gorilla in Rotterdam, and all.
And then one day you've had enough, its a warm day, there are lots of those bald monkeys over there, lots of small ones with ice cream, the only thing that stops you taking the ice cream off them is this stuff in front of you, this stuff that your DNA tells you is not to be fekked with, but theres ice cream over there.
So you put one foot in it and fekk me its cold, but so is ice cream and now you spot a small bald monkey with a particularly big ice cream and he's right in front of you just a short distance across this stuff - you put the other foot in and suddenly your underneath it and its cold and you can't see and you breath as normal and you find you cant, what the hell is this stuff, you thrash your arms around and you find that you're going back up and suddenly your head is above it and if you keep thrashing your arms around a bit you can ride on top of it and breath again, and its quite pleasant and you find that if you roll onto your back you've got the sun on your face and you can float along by simply revolving your arms over your head in a lazy motion, this is fun not dangerous and you've forgotten all about the ice cream, you've discovered the back crawl and as you drift slowly along your moat you imagine teaching the other gorillas to do this and you can have competitions to see who can do this the fastest and maybe another competition to see who can get into your moat in the most outrageous and splash-i-est way...
...and then one of those bald twat of a monkey's shoots you with a dart like they did when they moved you here and you're going to sleep doing the back crawl, and you're going under again and the last thign you hear is another bald twat of a monkey shouting "you fool Van Voltz, you should not have darted him while he was in the water, we're both in the shit now..."
Here's a sad story to end the week with, one that I'd forgotten about...
Two weeks ago Suzanne decided that the twelve foot high Leylandii hedge that borders one complete side of our garden needed trimming and then within minutes of her starting to trim it with the electric clippers she dedcided that it should be my job and added "take four foot off the top of it while your at it" to the job specification.
The neighbours didn't mind but they quickly found something else that was much more urgent in their life and fled the street on a flimsy excuse, it was too much to ask of our black and decker hedge trimmers so I called in a friend who owns a chainsaw and who is always looking for even half an excuse to get it out and use it - chainsaws are the ultimate in big boys toys, with a chainsaw you feel the power and after cutting down one tree you have to be physically restrained from chopping down everything in sight, trees, sheds, anything.
I asked him and he was round at our house within four minutes, which wasn't bad going as he lives five minutes away even at a jog, he must have run all the way, chainsaw in hand, and arrived flushed with the saw already running and a mad glare in his eyes that I've never seen before.
We set to the hedge and after a short tussle I managed to wrest control of the chainsaw off him - what fun - I would have happily taken the whole hedge down to the ground but Suzanne insisted that seven foot was about as low as we needed to go.
My friend took over the saw again after I'd got a little too enthusiastic and ripped the chain out of the guide on a particularly stubburn trunk and it was while he was lopping away and I was holding the ladder that I heard the saw stop and him sigh in disbelief and then groan an "oh no".
He'd uncovered a blackbirds nest in the hedge, one with four chicks in it, all of whom were now staring up at him wondering where the fook their hedge had gone and who was this man who had nearly just bloody decapitated them.
Like all of us of a certain age we'd both collected birds eggs as kids but he seems to have a guilty conscience about it and now gets quite upset at the idea of accidently killing birds or at the very least disturbing their homes, he explained to me from the top of the ladder that the mother would now abandon this nest and the chicks would die and he was quite upset about it.
I explained that if they were going to die anyway then we might as well chuck them over the hedge into a neighbours garden who had a cat , this didn't impress him nor did my explanation that "it was natures way".
The only way I could placate him was to replace the cut-off tops of the trees and try and disguse the nest again, which made our hedge look daft and didn't impress him, he was sure that my hastily constructed nest defence wouldn't fool a crow or a magpie and that they'd have the chicks out of the nest as soon as our back was turned, I assured him that birds aren't that smart but he still wasn't convinced - we cut the rest of the hedge very carefully and left this daft looking clump of Leylandii sticking up in the middle.
I promised to keep an eye on the nest over the next few days and tell him when the chicks had flown.
I forgot as soon as he'd left.
Two days later I received a text message from him stating literally "How are our birds doing ?" to which I was glad that Suzanne had been in the garden at the time and knew that he was referring to the blackbird chicks and not some secret tryst that we'd set up in a Sid James "Carry On" film stylee.
I checked the nest two days ago - its empty.
I sent him a text and received a distraught one informing me that it was too early for them to have flown and that they will have been taken by a bigger bird, I shrugged my shoulders and texted back "hey-ho, when are you coming to cut the rest down then"
He hasn't replied yet, I'll give him a couple of days to recover from the trauma.
Hard on the heels of Jodies birthday yesterday comes yet another special day in the life of the famille JerryChicken - our eldest's last day at school.
OK so Amanda has to go in to do study and revision for her upcoming A levels but thats now voluntary, today is the very last day when she will have to compulsory attend class and be marked at registration.
To her its probably the end of a very long path that started when she was just four years old, to us it seems like just last week that she was stood in the playground at Holy Trinity Infants School, clad in a smart new little uniform, waving goodbye for four long hours to her tearful mother stood on the pavement outside.
Now at eighteen there is only one step between her being the first in either my, or Suzannes family to attend university next year, the A levels in a few weeks time, but today its time to bid farewell, hand in your locker keys, attend the leavers service (its a church school - bah ! ), and then all down to the pubs of headingley in fancy dress this lunchtime - I believe that her outift is something on an equine theme as I saw the top of her riding crop sticking out of her bag this morning - I hope its an equine theme anyway.
She's promised not to get too blathered this afternoon before ringing me to pick her up, ready to go ut tonight as well, but I don't believe her - let a crowd of 18 year olds loose in pubs that will serve them until they fall on the floor (literally) and there is only one thing for certain - I bet she doesn't make it out tonight.
And of course as a father I sit here and tut-tut and tell her to be careful and not drink too much and behave and, and, and...
...and then I think back to when I was eighteen and recall that Saturday night consisted of cramming as much beer down your gullet as possible and if you found yourself in the car park at 9pm puking up down the drain then all that that meant was that you could start again in a few minutes and still have 90 minutes left until closing time.
Waking up on a Sunday morning inside your 18 year old throbbing head often meant wondering how you got home last night, why do you have blisters on your feet, where are your shoes and where are your trousers, questions that still have no answers 32 years later.
So yes, I'm a hypocrite, and stories of me behaving myself and drinking moderately when I was her age are blatant lies and she knows it and when she walks out of the door they are forgotten, its a game we parents play.
I just hope that at 6pm tonight she, and all of her drunken friends in the back seat keep the noise down to below 150 decibels while I deliver them to their homes.
Fifiteen years ago today was a Sunday and on that Sunday morning I left the Clarendon Wing of the Leeds General Infirmary proud as the proudest thing you can think of, a peacock maybe, or, erm, another proud thing, but prouder
Our second born with the blondest hair possible lay sleeping with the female who had begat her upstairs inside the hospital, and a kindly nurse that recognised that a maternity ward was no place for a male had suggested that I go home and grab some sleep myself, after all, I'd had a long night waiting for the birth and I was shattered at having had to sleep in one of those comfortable maternity ward upright nursing chairs.
I'm currently skint after buying her an object of desire for a 15 year old - its another mobile phone - whenever you ask teenage girls what their object of desire is, its always a mobile phone, its just that the one they want is always different to the one they've got.
The one that she picked this year is tarted up in pink with whirly wierd designs on it, it comes with a designers label attached to it and is part of Nokia's l'amour collection - a very clever marketing ploy aimed at teenage girls who will pester their mothers for a replacement phone and then when that gets them nowhere will pester their father for all of three minutes before he backs down (like he always does) and shells out a kings ransom for something that is in fashion for these next few months.
My two daughters know the system, they know that the first approach for anything is through their mother and when she says no for the first and only time then its time to change tack and ask me, when I say no for the first time they are on the finishing straight, they only have to ask once more and its theirs, I don't know what this hold is that daughters have over fathers but its evil.
Tonight we go out for a meal at her choice of restaurant, so its a local place that masquerades as a sophisticated olde worlde bistro stylee place but actually only serves twenty different types of burger and pizza - its corny with plastic vines on the ceiling and fairy light twinkling everywhere and the food is ordinary but plentiful, but teenagers love it and its her birthday so I will tolorate the place tonight and chomp on one of their Dickens inspired burgers, probably the Pickwick burger which comes with a mountain of chilli con carne slopped all over the top - sounds disgusting, and it is.
Sometimes you read a news story and sit back and wonder if you've actually read it properly, so you re-read it and find that yes, you did read it properly.
So you sit for a while longer and try and construct the events in your mind, try and figure out just what a person or persons were thinking of when they embarked on a course of self-destruction of such high stupidity that if there were a cult for stupid people then they would be the Great High Grand Master of Stupidity.
Lindisfarne (Holy Island) is a particularly beautiful, yet deserted part of the Northumberland coast, sheltered in a bay of tidal mud flats stands the island linked to the mainland by a causeway that is covered by the tide twice a day, it was an excellent place to build a monastery in 635AD especially in that part of Northern England which was frequently in dispute from various tribes and nationalities who invaded that part of the country for the next 1000 years or so.
But the natural defence of having your only access route covered in deep water twice a day now causes modern day visitors a problem - they want to visit the island and the remains of the monastery, but how do they know when the causeway will be covered ?
Its a problem isn't it ?
I mean, you wouldn't want to drive your car across the causeway only to find that you get stranded on the island for 12 hours when the tide comes in and you're not watching, do you ?
But wait you say, surely a knowledge of the tides is all that is needed in order to time your visit on the outgoing tide and return before the incoming tide, surely thats all you need to do ?
Yes, that is indeed the answer, and thats why the local council have a fekking gret big sign at the mainland side of the causeway to advise you when the tides are, this week and every week through the year.
The idea is that you dirve up to the sign, you read it, you spot when the tide is coming back in, you decide whether or not that is long enough for your visit and you either turn around and don't bother or you drive on and enjoy your visit.
Very simple then.
So yesterday a family of four, including children aged two and four turned up, presumably ignored the sign, presumably ignored the fact that they couldn't actually see the causeway because it was covered in water, and decided that it was probably only shallow water (it wasn't) and set off on the couple of hundred yard journey, driving through the sea on a causeway that they couldn't see at all.
Enter the RAF with a rescue helicopter to winch them to safety after their car started to float int he waist deep water halfway across, personally I'd have winched the kids to safety and left the adults to swim back, telling the kids "its for your own good, we'll find you some more parents with brain cells, you'll thank us for this one day".
Yes I know its actually "Geordie Jumpers" but there is another one on YouTube for "Geordie Jeans", ("they're re-aal tight aroond the arse like"), both of them a pisstake of course by the Reeves and Mortimer "Shooting Stars" programme.
Thats the explanation out of the way.
Apart from the fact that its a funny sketch I suspect that the funniest part of it will be lost on those who didn't live in the north east in the early 1980's - like I did.
You see Geordie Jeans were/are a real company.
They might have a large store in the Metro Centre now (they did the last time I looked) but in 1982 their emergence on the fashion scene was much more subdued - a small lock-up shop in a run down part of North Shields was where I first found them - what am I talking about, all of North Shields was run down then, but the Geordie Jeans shop was in the run down part of run down North Shields.
They sold jeans, end of mission statement.
They sold jeans in three styles, standard, tight fit, and a third option where you were surgically sewn into your tightfit jeans, never to remove them ever again, there are geordies walking around today with a pair of 1982 Geordie Jeans still faintly visible under several layers of skin.
Because I was young and trendy and because Suzanne insisted on me being a young and trendy trendsetter, and even though I was happy with my 1970's flares, she forced me to buy the tightfit options and over time I perfected the stiff legged walk of one who is wearing a pair of Geordie Jeans that are two sizes too small for him because they didn't have them in your proper size.
The shop interior was small, but simple to operate, you squeezed in through the front door to join the throng of eager customers inside and eventually would find one of the young girl assistants who would stop chewing gum long enough to speak to you, you'd point to one of the three styles of jeans that were pinned to the wall behind the counter, your girlfriend would tell her what size you needed, and the gum-chewer would go away and try to find that size in that style.
She'd return with the wrong size to tell you that they only had this size left, obviously a downright lie as shortly after you'd paid for yours you'd hear another assistant telling another customer "we only have this size in that style" and it would be the size that you really wanted.
But you'd buy them anyway because to leave Geordie Jeans without buying a pair of Geordie Jeans was unforgiveable, it was the mecca of jeans in the north east and on a saturday night out you were a nobody if you weren't wearing your Geordie Jeans, the tighter the better, which led to some very painfull expressions later on in the night as lads tried to squeeze down their eighth bottle o'broon without a toilet visit - toilet visits were virtually impossible in a pair of Geordie Jeans as you had to lie down on the floor to zip the fly up.
Thankfully that was the last time that I ever became infatuated with jeans, my choice of jeanwear now is in the main sourced from George at Asda where a shapeless creation in blue demin with plenty of leg waft and ample girth (I haven't yet resorted to elastic waists) can be had for £2, plenty enough to pay for something that looks crap.
Police were involved in a "calm down, calm down" operation at Newcastle airport yesterday as a flight to Sharm el-Sheikh was delayed for eight hours.
Eight hours ?
Pah ! Thats nothing.
An uncle and aunt of mine (my aunt in a wheelchair at the time) were delayed for 25 hours at Leeds/Bradford airport once, and the plane tried to take off three times and aborted each one - thats what I call being messed about by an airline.
I was once delayed for six hours but in contrast to the het-up Geordie customers at Newcastle the collection of Brits flying back from Barbados with me were calm and collected throughout - it may have helped that we were all reluctantly returning home from a holiday (well they were, I'd been working) on the most laid-back of all carribean islands, but I believe that it was due to the airport announcer keeping us all up to date with the problem - a little too much up to date sometimes.
It started as we were ready to board, a nice disembodied bajun voice appeared on the airport tannoy to advise us that the BA flight would be delayed "for a while" as when the 747 had landed "a small piece of one of the engines had fallen off".
Its just what you need to hear when you're preparing yourself for an eight hour overnight flight home.
For the next six hours we were regaled with his laid-back patois and informed that it was part of a cowl that had fallen off, twenty minutes later he informed us that a truck had been dispatched on to the runway to find the disgarded part followed some time later by the joyous news that they'd found the cowl and were returning it to the aircraft.
A half an hour later we were given the bad news that the cowl was distorted now and was interfering with the reverse thrust mechanism, but they were working on the problem and would we all like a free sandwich and coffeee ?
The hours flew by as 300 of us sat on hard plastic seats waiting agog for the next announcement, munching on our free sandwich which looked like someones mum had gone home with twenty loaves of bread and some potted meat to make them for us.
Eventually the nice announcer made a call for a British Airways technician who they'd noticed was booked on the flight and would now have to work his passage home, and then finally at midnight we were advised that we could now board as the cowling had been "reformed" and "should work" now, whoever the invisible announcer was was worth his weight in gold that night as we laughed our relaxed way onto the plane with one engine held together with bits of string and a prayer.
I was lucky, I'd been upgraded for the first and only time in my life to Club Class and as I reclined my seat fully and paid special attention to the stewards invitation to "raid the fridge" as and when I desired through the night for beer, ice cream and chocolate (I stayed awake all night just to try and empty the glass fronted fridge, and almost managed it), I found that my seated partner across the aisle was none other than the BA engineer who had helped to fix the engine - he was covered in oil and sweat and his intervation had earned him an upgrade too.
I rather stupidly asked him if the engine was really fixed or whether we'd be flying home on just three, I know he wanted to tell me to fook right off at that moment but instead he smiled ironically and told me that he wouldn't be sitting there if that was the case.
He changed his tune in the morning though, as I sat there in my window seat surrounded by a huge mound of chocolate wrappers and crushed beer cans I glance out of the window at the repaired engine as we descended into Gatwick, then glanced over at him to see him making the sign of the cross and grinning nervously, "tell me if the reverse thrust works ok will you" he asked before running to the toilet and soiling himself.
In complete contrast to the last post (which was all about shite music), this one is about a musical diamond who still sparkles and inspires 34 years after his death.
Its a familiar story, the story of a determined singer/songwriter who lives a pennyless life along with his wife and newborn child, travels thousands of miles on the road playing no-horse town gigs for food money and literally selling his guitars to pay the rent until one day he is recognised and signed to a three album deal (that wouldn't happen now), and then tragically, just one day before his third and critically acclaimed album "I Got a Name" was to be released his light aircraft fails to clear a clump of trees at takeoff and he, his playing partner and sometime co-writer Maury Muehleisen (seen in the video above) and three others are killed - 20th September 1973.
Once again a light aircraft crash denied the world the ongoing talent of a musical genius and we are now left with Croces back catalogue to sate our appetite and long for more - I think I have everything that has been released by his record company and I can't think of a bad track amongst it all, I was introduced to the "I Got a Name" album in December '73 by a more enlightened friend and I've been a huge fan ever since.
His young baby son at the time of his death, AJ Croce, is now a performer and details of his gigs and a history of his father can be found at www.jimcroce.com - heres hoping he's half as good as his old man and that some recordings find there way over here soon.
I broke one of lifes rules last night - the one that states "thou shalt not watch the Eurovision Song Contest for it be shite"
But I watched it anyway, and it was shite and if I could have yesterday evening back again then I'd spend it delivering charity appeal envelopes, or saving kittens from wells, or fostering small black children from newly created african countries, something creative or worthwhile or newsworthy.
Instead I sat through Eurovision.
That is to say I sat and watch all of the 24 terrible performances, I couldn't bear to watch the voting section after that as it had given me a headache and so I took aspirin and went to bed - this morning I read that Serbia won and I'm not suprised at all that I can't remember what the Serbian entry was like even after seeing a photograph of them.
For those not of a European persuasion the Eurovision Song Contest is an annual televised song competition, but you'd probably worked that out for yourself already. It was founded in 1956 in the enthusiastic brave new technological world and seven European television companies chipped in a few hundred quid each and bought themselves the right to impose one full evening of dire TV upon their citizens every year inperpetuity.
Its grown since then and now includes countries that no-one else has ever heard of outside of Eurovision, invented countries that at least give us ten seconds of amusement as we try and pronounce their names, last nights competition kicked off with BosniaandHerzogovenia, spelled just like that on screen and it took three reads before I realised who they meant.
We also had the translated subtitles on screen so that we could understand what the Johnny Foreigner ones who refused to sing in English were singing about, quite frankly I wish we hadn't bothered as the translations all turned out to be the same song with a few words re-arranged here and there, except Irelands song, which finished 24th out of 24and consisted of a crazy looking female singing about springtime and talking to flowers, if she wasn't popping LSD tablets before during and after the competition then I'll eat my hat.
Jodie noticed pretty quickly that the translated lyrics in Johnny Foreigners songs didn't rhyme, so they must be crap then, and whilst I couldn't disagree that they were crap it took some explaining to convince her that the lyrics probably rhymed in the original Johnny Foreigner language but didn't necessarily have to rhyme when translated into English - we both ended up agreeing that it was crap anyway.
The UK entry was by a singing group (I use the word "singing" with caution) who were so bad that they were disbanded by their record company some years ago and then reformed recently when said record company realised that the BBC were looking for a really bad singing group to enter into Eurovision.
If you have never seen "Scooch" then consider your self lucky and under no circumstances go searching for them on YouTube, your life will never be the same after plunging to the depths of poorness that is Scooch. Imagine the sort of singing group that you see performing on a very bad childrens TV programme, the sort that is aimed at the under 3's and thankfuly televised while the rest of the world is either at work or asleep at 7am on a saturday morning - dayglo outifts, perma-fixed smiles, a general air of squeaky-cleanliness but with the obligatory extremely camp member who makes cheeky quips and innuendos for the parents to giggle to, yes they really are/were that bad.
The UK would have faired much better if they had entered the singing kids from Seseme Street.
However its over for another year and I still have the headache this morning, its a mistake that I will not make again next year and I have already marked in my diary to ensure that next May I am in Umslobogoland with a reporter from OK! magazine picking out a small black child from an orphanage there, whilst smiling with a Scooch-stylee perma-fix smile.
PS - The BBC, who we citizens actually pay good money to present this trash to us, feel so moved by the whole eurovision thing that they have posted a series of photos on their web site today - view with caution for Scooch are in there somewhere.
News of a multi-million pound redevelopment of a section of Leeds city centre that is currently in need of some tender loving care will bring deep joy to the three females in my house.
Because of course, what Leeds is short of is some shops, isn't it ?
You could have fooled me Watson.
The last time I looked Leeds had a huge array of what we will call for the purpose of this document, retail outlets. Personally I'd prefer to call some of them "shite-shops for the low esteemed" but each to his/her own.
As always with these grandiose planning applications there is an outcry against the old buildings that will have to be sacrificed to make way for what is being modestly called "The new Barcelona" or "The new Sydney" or "The new anywhere that sounds chic to your average Leeds resident", but in this case the outcry is more of a whimper against a couple of seedy old pubs that will have to be demolished, other than that there is nothing inthe footpint worth saving, its a disparate part of town consisting of already demolished buildings serving as rip off car parks who charge by the 15 minute period and shabby old warehouses that are jokingly referred to as "the Chinese quarter" because it houses a couple of chinese food wholesalers.
So yes, the whole area needs a facelift, nay, needs knocking down and rebuilding.
But more shops ?
Leeds city centre has been undergoing massive redevelopment over a period of twenty years or so and this time the developers and planners appear to have at least met in the same room once and discussed what they are going to do with the mishmash of shitty 1960's concrete buildings, the legacy of the last round of redevelopment when anyone with a cement mixer and a labourer was allowed to build a lego-stylee blockhouse and call it "the brave new world", those 1960's buildings are all but gone or stripped out and re-clad to suit modern taste, any taste would have done actually as previously they had none.
The result is that to the south and west of the city we have apartment over-saturation - ten years ago someone decided that the city was developing outwards to the uburbs too quickly and that building three bedroomed houses all the time wasn't doing single people any favours, apparently someone in government invented the statistic that the brave new future held a singles society in store for us all, people would not marry and raise kids in this brave new world, they would live on their own in glass fronted apartments high in the sky and drink wine and eat ciabattis at trendy steet bars instead of cooking for themselves in their thre bedroomed suburban dwellings - and so was born the ideal of the city centre apartment.
We laughed at first, who would be so stupid as to want to live in the city centre we all cried, why if you lived in the city centre and worked in the city centre, then you'd never get to commute on our brave new supertram that we'd been promised, how foolish we all cried, only Londoners live in the city centre, and even then, not many of them.
But we were the foolish ones, the new city centre apartment blocks did indeed create a huge demand from the city's singletons, a numerous species which none of us had even noticed up until then, they flocked to the new developments and bought the apartments before they'd even been built and so more developers turned up and promised their dreams of sky-living, glass walls, steel balconies and small bistro style single tables at 100 feet above ground level - they loved it, they bought them, and many bought several and so others rented them.
And now Leeds south and west is chocked full of towering apartment blocks, each different, some being ingenious redevelopments from existing 1960's concrete buildings, most being complete new builds, all of which feature lots of glass, oh to be a window cleaner with a long ladder and a head for heights in Leeds city centre.
We have just opened the tallest of these buildings, the 32 storey Bridgewater Court, a mix of office and apartments to the south of the river it encroaches on the industrial area known as Holbeck or maybe its Hunslet, no-one rally knows any more because the boundaries of what used to be heavily populated working class terraced houses since the 1800's were ripped apart during the 1950's and 60's and replaced with industry - now that industry is relocating and selling its precious nearly city centre plots so that more developers can flood into the city and build even taller blcoks than Bridgewater Court - the Leeds planning office is currently looking at 25 applications for high rise buildings and the average height is 30 to 40 floors, one as high as 54
May 11th 1985 and just over 11,000 spectators are packed into Bradford City's Valley Parade ground for the last game of the season against Lincoln City, a day of celebration as Bradford had already won the third division championship and were presented with the trophy before the game kicked off.
Partway through the first half a spectator dropped a lighted cigarette to the floor of the seated wooden main stand, it fell through a gap in the floorboards and set fire to decades of rubbish that had accumulated there.
What followed, live on TV, was a disaster that few will forget, neither the ones in the goround nor the millions who watched in horror at the TV footage.
The fire in the 77 year old wooden stand spread quicker than anyone's worst nightmare could ever imagine and from the sight of a few flames licking up between seats, a few spectators backing away from the corner where it started, to a full scale evacuation and consumption of the whole stand, was just a few precious minutes - a horrifying flashover fire under the roof meant that just two minutes had elapsed before the whole structure was ablaze.
56 people lost their lives and over 200 were injured as the evacuation took place out of the front of the stand and onto the pitch - many of the fatalities occured when the victims made the decision to evacuate via the doors at the back of the stand, doors which had been locked shortly after kickoff and with the bitumen clad roof ablaze and collapsing into the stand there was no way out for them.
22 bravery awards were made after the event with many people going back into the stand to assist injured and elderly spectators out onto the pitch - the TV footage of a police officer helping an old man over a wall to safety with both of them afire (both survived) is a vision that no-one will forget.
Later, when the names of the victims were announced we realised that the tragedy had hit even closer to home than we had known, two teenage sisters who lived just a few streets away had both lost their lives, their parents sat at home and watched the fire on TV news before the police called - a situation to me, now with two teenage daughters, that is simply unthinkable, unbearable and just downright un-fooking-fair.
Today, as in every year since, the City of Bradford will hold a memorial service outside city hall.
Stupifyingly handsome, well turned out, pleasant, conversationalist, compulsively listenable, a must-have at all dinner parties, life saving hero, millionaire philanthropist, these and many other phrases have not yet been written to my epitaph, more is the shame.
The BBC want to syphon off some of my memory for a new project inconjunction with a new TV series that has just started (I've missed the first episode - bugger) which examines the five decades in Britain since the second world war.
